“I don’t like this,” Lyon said. “I don’t like any of it.”
“It doesn’t seem to bother Specks,” Weams said.
“That’s because he’s a fucking animal.” Lyon went to the door, peered out, then closed it again, making sure Specks wasn’t out there eavesdropping. “I mean, c’mon, whose idea was it to kill fucking Pauly?”
“Specks’. But we went along with it.”
“Sure we did. And whose idea was it to slice the body up? Specks’. He’s too easy with all this, man. He’s done this shit before.”
Weams had been thinking that, too. Specks did the shooting. He’d known exactly how to bag up the remains and he seemed to know exactly how to cut them up. “Specks has been around. He’s a bad boy. But he got us out of some ugly shit with Zaber. I mean, shit, I was into the guy for almost twenty G’s.”
Lyon sighed. “Me, too. But still… we should have thought about this. Killing a guy… Christ, that makes us no better than Specks. He’s done time before, but we haven’t. I don’t think I could take it.”
Weams didn’t say so, but standing there with that massive legless, headless corpse spread at their feet, he was thinking that prison was the least of their worries.
“Okay, we’re part of this now. No going back. But I’m not going any farther,” Lyon announced. “I won’t butcher a… a corpse.”
“Me either,” Weams sighed.
They pushed it into the hole with their boots and it landed with a flopping, rubbery sound that made them both gasp. Then they buried it, smoothed out the soil. They dug a dummy hole out in the woods, buried it back up. It would convince Specks… unless he wanted to paw around in there.
When he returned, they were fitting the floorboards back in place, nailing them tight.
“How was it, girls?” he asked, rain dripping from his hair. “Messy?”
“Let’s not talk about it, okay?” Weams said.
“Sure, sure, whatever you say. The arms?”
“Out in the woods,” Lyon said.
Specks seemed satisfied. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s the last we’ll see of Pauly Zaber.”
But Weams had to wonder.
Later, the night thick as soup beyond the windows of the old house, Weams was watching Lila mix him a vodka martini. Just watching her, you knew she had been a bartender once. Too smooth, too easy with it.
Just like Specks with a dead body.
Lila was all dolled-up in a short skirt and sequined top, a gold chain teasing her ample cleavage. That was Lila: all dressed-up and nowhere to go. And she knew damn well why there was nowhere to go: no money, no nothing. Just that old creaking house and Weams, her husband.
Lila handed him his drink. “Let me guess,” she said, her eyes frigid and brittle like black ice, “you were out with Lyon and Specks? Stop me here if I’m wrong. Out playing the ponies, working the slots, dropping a few hands of blackjack. Am I close on this?”
Weams sipped his drink, heard his wife, but only saw a blubbery white thing falling into a grave. “I guess. Maybe… what did you say?”
“How much this time?”
“How much what?”
“How much money did you drop?” she wanted to know, those eyes not black ice now, but something colder, maybe absolute zero where even oxygen freezes. “And, better yet, how much did you borrow from that loanshark, from—”
“Change the record,” Weams snapped, sweat beading his brow.
“You have a problem,” his wife said. “You’re an addict. You need help.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you? You know what I heard? Lyon’s wife is leaving him and he’s about to lose his house. Does that little bell ring familiar?”
Weams’ hands were shaking and it took both of them to get his drink to his mouth. “Leave Lyon out of it.”
“How about Specks… how is Specks doing?”
Weams slammed his drink down on the coffee table. “Why the hell are you always asking about Specks? Do you like the guy? You got something going on with him?”
“That’d be the day,” she said. “He’s a creep and we both know it. An ex-con. How can you associate with a guy like him?”
“He’s okay.”
And Weams almost started laughing. Sure, he’s okay. And Pauly Zaber? He was okay, too. Salt of the earth. Just normal, hard-working guys.
Lila laughed. “Me and Specks. Don’t be ridiculous.”
But Weams didn’t think he was being ridiculous. He just stared at his wife, his complexion pasty, his eyes red-rimmed and fixed. “Sometimes I wonder about the two of you.”
“You don’t look good,” Lila said, crossing to the picture window and looking out across the darkened yard, the trees blowing in the wind, the gate creaking open and shut on the fence. “You look sick. Maybe you should tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“About what happened tonight? Did you sign away the house? The car? Is it that fat loanshark? What’s his name? Zab—”
“I’m fine, dammit!” Weams told her, brushing perspiration from his face. “I’m perfectly fine! Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how fine I am?”
When the phone rang just after midnight two days later, Weams came awake with a scream on his lips. He held it in check, shivering and sweating, trying hard not to remember what he’d been dreaming about. Lila was gone. Out God-knows-where with God-knows-who.
He stumbled over to the phone. “Yes? Hello?”
“Listen, Weams, you got to get over here.” It was Lyon and he sounded funny. Drunk? Crazy? Maybe both. But there was something in his voice, a sharp-edged dread that was positively frightening in its urgency.
“C’mon, Lyon… do you know what time it is?”
But Lyon didn’t seem to care. “You have to get over here. I mean it. Something’s happening and, God, Weams, you gotta help me…”
“Calm down, will ya? Just take it easy. Tell me about it.”
Weams could imagine him over there, clutching the phone in a sweaty hand, alone in that house now that his wife had left and just white with terror… but terror of what?
Lyon’s voice went down to a whisper, a gritty rough sort of whisper like he was afraid somebody was listening. “It… it started about midnight, no eleven-thirty… I’m not sure, but that’s when I first heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“Something scratching at my door.”
Weams’ belly felt loose. “Scratching? Like what? A dog? A cat?”
“No, nothing like that… just a scratching like… like maybe nails being drawn over the outside of the door.” He paused there, as if he was listening again. “It kept on and on and, God help me, I was scared for some reason… I didn’t dare look out there…”
“But you did?”
Lyon swallowed. “Yes.” Swallow. “Yes, I did. I… I crept up to the bathroom window and looked out on the porch—”
“And?”
All he could hear was Lyon breathing, licking his lips. “Out there… I wasn’t sure… something fat and white like a body, Weams… something that didn’t have a head and didn’t have legs… it was scratching the door with its fingernails…”
Weams just stood there, sweat running down his spine. He wanted desperately to fall over like a post. He was dizzy and nauseous and his throat had constricted down to a pinhole. His breath came in short, wheezing gasps. “Lyon… you’re losing it… do you know what you’re saying to me?”
But then the phone was dropped and there were sounds over there. The sound of shattering glass. The sound of something thumping and crashing around, something wet and heavy.