Sumner hadn’t recovered for years. Deese didn’t know that, not being a historian, or even a reader of comic books, but he knew about the uses of walking sticks.
Deese’s stick was made of coffee-brown blackthorn, with a rounded knob head, weighted with lead, and a steel rod inserted down the length of the shaft. Getting hit with the knob was like getting hit with a hammer, but a hammer with a thirty-seven-inch handle.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the approach, the attack, the departure. He stood like that for a minute or more, thinking about Howell Paine, until the smell of the sizzling steaks called out to him from the grill.
He was tired, Deese was. He’d murdered a young woman that day and had buried her body an hour ago. Now he had Howell Paine. Busy, busy, busy.
—
HOWELL PAINE
Howell Paine had bumped into a forties-something MILF at a downtown dance-and-cocaine club. She had a nice post-divorce seventy-footer parked at the Orleans Marina, which is why Deese wouldn’t be able to find him the first four times he went by Paine’s apartment.
As it happened, the MILF could dish out more than Paine could take, though he struggled manfully to stay with her. In the end, though, he left her snoring in the fo’c’sle double bunk and snuck out barefoot, until he was on the dock, only pausing to steal two bottles of eighteen-year-old Macallan scotch and the ex-husband’s 18-karat solid gold bracelet as he passed through the saloon.
Dressed in a rumpled blue seersucker suit, a white shirt, and dark blue Tom’s sneaks, he hurried along the dock to his Volkwagen, climbed in, and sped away.
He stopped at Hyman’s Rougarou for a ham-and-cheddar quiche with waffles and a quick read of theTimes-Picayune, before continuing on to his apartment. Paine’s apartment was one of those places that might be considered a middle-income structure on its way to the slums. That is, green-painted concrete block, twofloors, outside walkways to the multicolored doors. The place looked fine, at a glance, but the apartments would smother you if the window air conditioners stopped working, and there were rust stains coming through the paint on the stairways.
Paine found a free on-street parking place under a sweet gum tree and was walking down the street toward the apartment, admiring the new gold bracelet on his wrist, when Deese, who was just leaving, spotted him. Deese pulled over and watched as Paine climbed the outer stairs to the second floor and walked along to his apartment, carrying a brown paper bag and whistling.
Deese hated whistlers.
No time like the present, he thought, as Paine opened the door to his apartment. Night would be better, but Paine had been hard to find and by nightfall could be gone again. Besides, if everything went as planned, most of the beating would be administered inside the apartment, out of sight of the street.
Deese found a parking place, got his walking stick, crossed the street to the apartment building, climbed the stairs, and ambled casually down to Paine’s apartment.
Instead of knocking when he got to the door, he turned and leaned on the railing, looking out over the street. He looked for a full minute, watching for eyes. He saw nothing alive except a red tiger-striped cat that padded across the street and disappeared into a hedge. There was somebody close by in the apartment building because he could smell frying bacon, but somebody who was frying bacon wouldn’t be running outside anytime soon.
He slipped the tan ski mask out of his pocket, pulled it over his head, turned toward the door and knocked, raising the cane,ready to kick it open. Like many perfect plans, his didn’t go quite right.
—
HE DID THEKNOCK, shave-and-a-haircut:BOP-BODDA-BOP-BOP! BOP-BOP!Inside, Paine had taken the two bottles of Macallan out of the paper bag and still had one of the bottles in his hand when he heard the knock. He assumed it was the woman from next door, with whom he sometimes shared a bed when nobody richer was available. He knew she did the same, but, still, a civilized relationship.
He was farther away from the door than he normally would have been as he reached out and twisted the doorknob as Deese kicked it and the door exploded inward and Deese was swinging his walking stick at Paine’s face.
Paine blocked the blow with the whisky bottle, which shattered, spraying glass across his face and into the room. Paine screamed in pain and rage, and found, in his hand, the jagged remnants of the broken bottle. Deese was off balance, having swung at a man farther away than expected, and it took him a split second to recover. In that split second, Paine jabbed at Deese’s eyes with the broken bottle.
Deese ducked, and the bottle slashed through his mask and into his scalp, and blood spattered on the wall, the door, and began running down into his eyes. The sight of the blood made Paine hesitate for a fraction of a second, which was time enough for the stick to come around again, and Deese used it to break Paine’s arm, the one with the bottle.
Paine screamed as the bottle flew off somewhere and smashedinto even more pieces. Paine grabbed Deese by the shirt, with his working arm, and swung him toward the couch. Deese involuntarily sat down as the couch hit him behind the knees, but he had the stick free again and this time hit Paine on the side of the head and Paine went down. Deese clambered to his feet and whipped the other man hard across the top of his back—once, twice, three times—and then pinned the broken arm, and Paine screamed again. And Deese screamed back, “Motherfucker!”
He smashed the knob of the cane into the hand of the broken arm—once, then again, and again and again—then kicked Paine over. Paine raised the other, unbroken arm just in time to catch the next blow on the forearm, which broke, and Deese pinned that arm with his foot and began beating the hand, shattering the bones. Deese was hurting and bleeding, which he hadn’t expected, and was screaming “Motherfucker! Motherfucker! Motherfucker!” in time to the beating. Paine rolled up on his side, not screaming but choking and in pain, and with Deese’s pant leg now pulled up, Paine, with no other weapon, bit him on the calf, like a feral tomcat, wrenching his head from side to side as his teeth sank in.
Deese screeched again and dealt Paine a glancing blow on the head as Paine came away from Deese’s leg with a half-dollar-sized chunk of meat in his mouth. He tried to roll away, but now Deese, still howling “Motherfucker!” over and over, began beating Paine on the upper arm and back with the walking stick and was so angry, with blood in his eyes and mouth now—his own blood—that it took him a few seconds to realize a young woman was standing in the doorway, gawking at them.
He straightened and looked at her. When she ran off, he staggered toward the door but tripped over one of the couch cushionsand went down, cracking his head on the arm of the couch. Dazed, he floundered for a moment, then crawled to the door, his stick in his hand, and looked down the walkway... but nobody was there.
Wherever she’d gone, he thought, she was calling the cops. This was not one of those live-and-let-live places; she’d definitely be on the phone. He looked back at Paine, who was lying motionless on the carpet. Blood everywhere. Maybe he’d hit him too hard? He’d sort of let it out there.
Had to get out of there...
He half jogged, half limped out to his car, wiping blood from his eyes. Didn’t see the woman come back out on the walkway with her cell phone, taking the video that would help hang him.
The cops came for him later that day.
He’d gotten all cleaned up... But then they pulled up his pant leg, ripped off the newly applied bandage, and looked at the half-dollar-sized hole.
