He felt the water rush into his mouth. Tasted the salt and the fish. He waved his arms and kicked his legs because his body was filling with the sea, but however much he raged, it did no good. He tried to spit the water out but the water was all around him. Inside and outside. He was like the tuna he had hated all these years: defeated by the sea, driven toward his death with nowhere to turn away.
From under the water, another explosion filled his ears. And then Angelo Tornabene was not raging. Or struggling or spitting or moving at all, except to bob up and down in the turbulent water, rolling with the sinking ship.
He was finally free.
He had finally left Favignana. Alice, Texas June 8 It wasn't so long ago that Teddy Angel figured out that, when he really thought about it, he liked four things in life.
Not just four things. There was plenty of other stuff he was pretty fond of. Pussy, for instance. That was always good. And one of the guys on American Idol-he could never remember his name-the fat black guy whose stomach shook like crazy when he sang. That dude was pretty fuckin' amazing. Teddy also liked really hot, humid days, the kind that made everyone else uncomfortable; it was pretty awesome just standing in the sun and wearing a muscle shirt and dripping with sweat, watching the little drops gather on his triceps and then stream down to the sizzling sidewalk. And he had to put frozen grapes right up there. He was crazy about frozen grapes; they almost made it into his top four. Whoever invented that was one motherfucker of a genius. But when you got right down to it, there were only four things he really, really liked. That he considered essential.
He liked having money in his pocket, that was number one. And he had some right now-did he ever-almost five thousand dollars. Well, really about forty-two hundred because he'd pissed away four dimes in a card game last night, most of it coming when he'd had nines over sixes but lost to a bigger boat, queens over eights. He'd also spent a hundred on a used.38, a really nice piece, good weight, comfortable fit in his hand (he liked guns, too, liked the way they made him feel, although not as much as frozen grapes; guns were maybe sixth or seventh on his list). The other two or three bills he'd spent buying drinks, tipping heavy, showing off. All well worth it. Especially because he had plenty more. And even more coming when he got to Mexico; and that wouldn't be too long now-maybe another couple of days, tops-till he got to the town he was supposed to get to, dropped off the truck, picked up his plane ticket, and got the hell back to Detroit where he belonged. He was in Texas already, had crossed the state line about half an hour ago. Teddy decided he didn't like Texas, not that he'd ever been there before, but what the hell was there to like? Been pouring rain ever since he'd arrived, raining so hard it was steaming up the highway. Huge drops of water were banging into the windshield like they were gonna bust it open. It wasn't just the rain, though. He knew it could rain anywhere. But Texas was still a fucked-up state. Bunch of cowboys and rich white men, that's what was in Texas. It's why he'd bought the.38, in case one of those cowboys called him a nigger. He almost wished someone would. He'd just saunter up to the guy, blow the asshole away, toss the gun, and get back in the truck and keep on driving.
He liked being called Teddy Angel. That was probably number two on his list. He wasn't sure when it had started. He thought maybe when he was a kid. Always in trouble. Always getting picked up by the police, getting in fights, talking back, stealing something. His real name was Anjule. Edward Anjule. His grandmother was the one who used to call him Teddy. He wondered if she'd tagged him Angel, too. Maybe she thought she was being funny. Such a nice name for such a bad boy. If it was her, he decided he owed her one. He wondered if she was still alive. If she was, he thought maybe he'd drop in on her when he got back, buy her a drink, maybe lay a hundred on her, thank her for the cool name.
Teddy also liked being drunk. He put that third. Drugs were okay, too. Weed, coke, X-he wouldn't turn none of that down. But he mostly liked liquor. Tequila, scotch, bourbon, any of it straight up. A nice cold beer when he was hot. He didn't just like drinking, he loved it. Did it pretty much all day and all night long. Was doing it now while he was driving. Swigging from a bottle of Jack. The bottle was almost empty, now that he looked, but that was okay because there was another one, this one full, sitting right next to it. And beside that was a six-pack of Bud. Probably not real cold by now, but that was okay, too, the air-conditioning in the truck was on and working pretty well, so Teddy Angel wasn't too hot or too thirsty. If he felt like a brew, a slightly warm brew would be just fine.
The fourth thing that Teddy liked was music. All kinds of music. He was into 50 Cent pretty heavy, hard not to be. That motherfucker spoke some shit. But he liked older stuff, too. The classic stuff is how he thought of it, early Puff and Jay-Z and Tupac-those were good days for sound. He liked all the way back to Motown. Had to appreciate the Berry Gordy shit when you came from Detroit. The Four Tops, Supremes, Stevie Wonder. That's what he was listening to now. On his iPod, 'cause there wasn't a CD player in the truck and the radio was for shit and the speakers were even worse. So it was Stevie and Talking Book. A classic. Some major phones clamped on his ears, the little touchy white dial thing fingered all the way to the right, as loud as it'd go. Drivin' along at eighty-six miles per, "Superstition" blasting into his brain.
Teddy Angel was a happy man.
And he was happy right up until the very moment he died, when he was reaching for the second bottle of Jack and the truck started to skid on the wet, slick road. He tried to grab the wheel with his left hand, never letting go of the bottle with his right-tried to turn himself out of the spin-but his reflexes were slowed by the alcohol and his hand slipped, banging into the dashboard, and the truck rumbled over the divider. It just missed a Caddy coming from the other direction; then it rammed into a shiny green Taurus that couldn't get out of the way; and then it jumped off the shoulder, toppling, turning over twice, the second turn breaking Teddy's neck.
The truck was on its side, the wheels still spinning, when the police arrived, maybe ten minutes after the accident. A couple of state troopers. One of them, Wade Turner, was thirty-eight years old, had seen plenty of accidents, been next to his share of dead bodies. His partner, though, Morgan Lanier, was only twenty-four, and this was his first.
The Caddy had never stopped, the driver didn't even slow down and think about it-just tore the hell out of there to wherever he was headed-but the Taurus was damaged, and sat sideways on the road, half in the right lane, half on the narrow shoulder. Turner went to check on the driver, a woman in her late twenties who had used her cell to call in the accident. She was not at all bad looking, could've been a cheerleader-maybe UT, not the Cowboys, not that good-looking-and luckily she wasn't hurt. She'd been wearing her seat belt and was a little hysterical but no serious injuries. Turner assured her that she was fine and that everything would be all right. "Just a little accident," he said, "and you're fine." Then he went to the trunk of his car, got a flare and lit it, stuck it on the road side of the car-if anyone else drove by they wouldn't hit the Taurus again by mistake.
The woman in the car had been too frightened to check on the driver of the small truck-she hadn't even gotten out of her car-so Turner nodded in that direction and he and Lanier left the woman and went to see the extent of the damage.