Tommy was on the floor in the center of the living room, not quite where Mikel had fallen only four days before. His knees were drawn up to his belly, and his arms were bent behind his back, and his face was bleeding a new stain into the carpet. His mouth and brow looked like a mess of torn skin, and I saw froth at his lips as he struggled to breathe. I saw something white shine in all of that red and pink, a broken tooth or an exposed bone.
Parka Man grabbed my arm, and I was twisted around, and I saw the gun coming up at me again, and he hit me with it. There was a gap, jarring like a bad edit, and then I was on my back, still on the floor, and pain was blossoming from my forehead, making the world tumble, making everything so very much brighter.
The Parka Man leaned down and reached for me again, and I tried to fend him off, screaming and kicking. He shoved his gun against my cheek and his other hand into my throat, forcing my head back down. The barrel of the gun on my skin was sharp and wet. I couldn’t breathe.
“Scream again and I write this off here and now,” Parka Man said softly. His mouth was close to mine, and his breath hit my lips and ran up my nose, and if I’d had the air, I would have gagged. “Scream, I do you both right here.”
I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t even nod. The terror was so complete that it felt like I had no body, that I was just a form of fear, lying on my dead brother’s floor. I tried to make some kind of noise of understanding or assent or surrender, but the flat pressure on my throat grew as Parka Man pushed the barrel of his gun a little harder into my skin, his gloved hand a little harder on my throat. Then both were suddenly gone, and he was backing away. I started coughing, rolled onto my side, trying to stop it, terrified that even that would be too much noise, and I saw Tommy again, and he hadn’t moved.
“Get up,” Parka Man said.
I tried, had turned onto all fours in an attempt to rise, but it still wasn’t quick enough for him. He came back and grabbed me by my hair, and I started to shriek but stopped myself, even though I felt roots tearing. He shoved me at the easy chair by the foot of the couch, and I went into it headfirst, twisting. When I completed the turn, he was standing by Tommy, holding the gun on me.
“Sit. Still.”
I felt blood running from my forehead, catching in my right eyebrow. It felt like it would start dripping into my eye. I didn’t move.
Parka Man backed out of the room, into the entry hall, out of sight. There was a cordless phone on the wall by the stairs to the second floor, where Mikel’s bedroom had been, but before I even thought about going for it, he came back. He was folding the FedEx envelope in both hands, forcing the cardboard to bend down, and as soon as he’d finished he put it in one of the parka pockets, then brought the gun out again from another.
“He’s alive,” Parka Man said, and he used the gun to indicate Tommy. “Remember that. Bad as he looks, he’s alive.”
I could see that Tommy’s hands were cuffed together behind his back.
“You want him to stay that way, you’ll listen to me,” Parka Man said.
The blood that I’d feared would run into my eye turned right, flowing along the ridge of my brow, and I could feel it trickling along my hairline, down my jaw.
Parka Man came closer, holding the gun casually in his hand, pointed down. I waited for him to stop, but he didn’t, kept coming, until he was standing over me in the chair. I stared at his middle, at his parka, at all the shiny metal of his zippers and buttons and clasps.
His free hand came up to my face, and I flinched, but kept silent. I felt a gloved thumb touch my brow, follow the line of blood, wiping it away. I could feel the stitching that surrounded his finger. When he reached the end of the blood trail, he dragged it across my cheek, toward my mouth. He touched my upper lip, pressed, then flicked his finger away.
It felt like something inside me would explode. Somewhere beneath the edge of the parka was his groin, and I thought about kicking, striking out hard.
Then I remembered the gun.
He made a noise, like he was happy with the way things looked, like he was satisfied. He backed away, toward Tommy, and used the toe of a black work boot to roll him onto his belly.
“Didn’t want to have to do it this way,” Parka Man said. “But he was being stubborn. I’d have settled for a hundred thousand, honestly, but he had to get a spine or soul or whatever you friggin’ drunks discover in AA, so now we’re doing it the hard way. So the price goes up, too.”
I stared, confused, terrified, trying to make sense of the words. It was as if he wasn’t really talking to me, more to himself. I told myself he was crazy, but he didn’t sound crazy; he sounded like someone who enjoyed having power, enjoyed using it.
“Straight to the source this time,” the Parka Man said, and his black-toed boot kicked Tommy in the gut. It wasn’t savage, almost absent, and I thought I heard Tommy groan. “No middleman.”
He looked up from where Tommy sprawled, the emptiness inside his hood settling on me.
“A million dollars. Not too much, not for you. You’ve got until noon Friday to get it, in cash. Soon as you have it, you go home, turn on your porch light. Leave it on. I see the light, I know you’re ready, and I’ll tell you where to bring it. I don’t see it on, the next time you see your daddy is when the Detective Division comes and asks you to identify the body. You understand me?”
Tommy made a cracked sound that died in the carpet.
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
Parka Man slid his gun back in his pocket, crouching. He grabbed Tommy with both hands, one on the cuffs, the other on his upper arm, hoisting him to standing. Tommy’s legs seemed like they were hollow, like they were crazy straws beneath his torso, and they bent with his weight, unable to support him.
“Believe me when I say this,” Parka Man told me. “I’ll know if you talk to the cops. I will know if you even whisper to them. If that happens, I’ll kill Tommy, here. I’ll take my time about it. Then I’ll come and kill you, too. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Who says celebrities are unreasonable, right?”
“Right.”
“You just sit there and catch your breath, think sweet thoughts for a couple minutes after I’m gone. You’re in no hurry. You’ve got until noon on Friday, like I said.”
He grunted, turning Tommy and then hoisting him onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. They went down the hall, out of sight, and I heard the front door open. A couple seconds later I heard it close. An engine started outside, and I supposed it was the Parka Man’s SUV, and it sounded like it was coming closer, and then it was moving away, and then it was gone.
The shaking started in my hands. It ran up my arms, it slid into my legs. My stomach went wild. It felt like stage fright, and it felt nothing like that, because this was terror, and it was different.
I was certain I was going to vomit, steeled myself for it, but it didn’t happen. Then the shakes went away, just as they had come, and I thought about getting up, but didn’t. My stomach settled, and I started to feel heavy and strangely euphoric, almost postorgasmic. All of the adrenaline, I guess, leaving me high.
The room had huge windows on the east side, to allow the view of the city. The room had been tidied after Mikel’s death, and the fresh bloodstains on the carpet looked grotesque next to the ones that had refused to come out.
There wasn’t really any doubt, anymore.