Switchback Ch2

 

Henry Caine’s chubby fingers stuffed a handful of French fries into his mouth as he managed the final stair up to his first floor apartment, and this time he only had to stop twice to catch his breath. Just twenty stairs, one for each of his years, and he hated every one of them. His breathing started to labour after the fifth stair, he began to sweat at fifteen, and by the time stair twenty came along, his inner thighs were sweaty and sore from chafing. His gym teacher had once told him he had less physical attributes than an overweight Woolly Mammoth, a statement which Caine could do little but agree with.

          His apartment number was thirteen and was the third door down his landing, he’d never been superstitious about thirteen being unlucky, if anything he considered it to be very lucky, it was a nice place, it was big, and best of all, it was paid for by his Uncle Eddie, the Senator.

          As he turned at the top of the stairs he saw his neighbour, Mrs Houseman, the nosey cow from number eleven. She was outside mopping her own small patch of landing and smiling as she sang some shitty gospel tune. Every night she’d be out at ten, smiling, singing, mopping, and dragging that damn tin bucket along the floor.

          He past apartment nine and grinned because he was about to walk over the silly bitch’s nice clean floor.

          ‘Oh the Lorrrrd … he comes down to the rear-ver. Oh the Lorrrrd … he comes down to the sea. And when he− Hey...’

          ‘Oops, sorry, Missus Houseman, I didn’t see you there.’

          ‘The hell you didn’t see me, fatboy. Is you blind or summin? Guess you need spectacles, huh?’

          ‘I see fine,’ he said. ‘And don’t you call me fatboy, lady. And if I were you I’d watch my mouth.’ He dropped a fry and smeared it with his foot. ‘Because one of these days it’s gonna get you into a whole mess of trouble.’

          ‘Don’t you threaten me, Henry Caine, I ain’t afraid o’ you. Just coz you got some high-flyin’ uncle up in DC don’t make you no big tough guy, ya know.’

          ‘Boo!’ he shouted, then belly-laughed as she jumped.

          He turned and tossed more fries over his shoulder, some of which had landed in her bucket, all the while singing the same tune he just heard; even after he got inside and closed his door.

          ‘Oh the friessss … they landed in your bore-kit. Oh the friessss … they landed on your floor. Oh the−’

          ‘You gone all fuckin’ religious all of a sudden, Caine?’

          ‘What’s it to you, Henderson?’ he said. ‘And what the hell are you doing bringing a gun into my apartment?’

          Henderson spun the little pearl-handled revolver around his finger, gunslinger style. ‘It’s my moms,’ he said. ‘I took it because it was there. And it ain’t your apartment, it’s ours.’

          ‘If it’s our apartment why don’t you go find yourself a job so you can pay some rent? And take fuck-face here with you. And that gun.’ He kicked the sofa hard enough to wake the guy lying there. ‘It’s about time you two chipped-in and helped around here.’

          ‘Why should we pay rent if you don’t?’

          ‘Uncle Eddie pays for me, not you two, and if he ever finds out you’re here…’ he trailed off, kicked the sofa again. ‘Get up, Wade, ya lazy fuck.’ He turned to Henderson. ‘And I might not pay rent, but I buy all the damn food around here.’

          ‘That’s because you eat all the damn food around here, ya fat fuck.’

          Caine tossed his box of skinned chicken bones at Henderson and sat on the sofa just as Wade moved his head. ‘I ain’t a fat fuck,’ he said. ‘It’s a glandular problem, hereditary.’

          Wade scratched his mussed black hair. ‘What the hell’s got you all pissy, Caine?’

          ‘It’s that fuckin’ black bitch next door, moppin’ and singin’ all the time about the Lorrrrd … he comes down to the rear-ver.’

          ‘Shut up, you sound like a stuck pig.’ Wade tossed a small plastic bag onto the coffee table. ‘Here, snort your troubles away with that and cut me a couple o’ lines, too.’

          ‘Y’know what, Wade my old pal, I take back what I just said about you, you can stay as long as you like, free of charge’ He took a card from his wallet. ‘It’s just Henderson who needs to get a job.’

          ‘Tell you what,’ said Henderson. ‘Me and my little pearly gun will stay here all day and guard your secret little greenhouse back there. And if anyone comes a knockin’ we’ll send ‘em a packin’. That can be my job.’

          ‘Well start right now and go see if that nosey whore’s done cleanin’ and gone back inside, because Wade and me’s gonna snort the stairway to heaven.’

          Henderson licked his forefinger and slipped it through one of the lines Caine had laid out. He rubbed it over his gums before he went to look out the front door.

          Caine rolled a dollar bill into a thin tube and drew-in two of the four white lines. He rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand then plucked at the end of it. ‘Wow, ‘sgotta kick, dude.’

          Wade smiled. ‘This ain’t no cheap shit, man.’

          ‘Shush,’ Henderson said as he came back.

          ‘Why, that bitch still out there?’

          ‘Yeah, but there’s someone else comin’ down the landing.’

          ‘Wadda-ya-mean someone else?’ said Caine.

          ‘Some black dude, a really big black dude. I think it’s that cop, ya know, the one we seen talkin’ to that loud-mouthed bitch Sonia fuckin’ Marsh.’

          ‘Fuck, don’t let him in,’ he said.

          Five very loud knocks hit the door

          ‘Who’s there?’ Henderson shouted.

          Caine thumped him in the arm. ‘You stupid fuck.’

          ‘Police, open the door, Mister Caine.’

          Wade jumped up, took his plastic bag from off the table and ran to the toilet. ‘Fuck, shit’ he shouted. ‘It won’t flush.’

          ‘So what,’ Caine said. ‘I got a bedroom full of fuckin’ weed growing in there. Was you gonna flush that, too?’

          ‘Mister Caine, I need you to open the door right now please.’

          ‘Shit,’ Wade said, looking for an exit. ‘What the fuck we do now?’

          Caine jumped when he heard Henderson fire the first shot at the door, and the next five shots came so rapid he had no time to react.

          ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said.

          ‘My job, remember?’ said Henderson.

          A heartbeat later the door exploded open and the black cop fired two shots into the room, one hit Henderson in his right shoulder, the other hit Wade in the back of his left thigh as he attempted to flee out the fire escape window. Caine saw both his friends hit the floor and, not remembering what his gym teacher had once said about the Woolly Mammoth, he too made for the fire escape, but with an ass half as big as his sofa, he was soon stuck there.

          ‘You ain’t going anywhere, sunshine.’ He heard, just before a crackling noise sounded and then an explosion of pain that started in his butt cheeks and shot through his whole body made him puke his KFC.

          He felt the cop grab the back of his pants at the belt and drag him back into the room, and once more the pain shot through his body, this time starting in his balls.

          ‘I want a confession from you, Caine,’ the cop said, then zapped his nuts again. ‘I want you to tell me what you and your friends did to Sonia Marsh.’ Zap, zap-zap. ‘And don’t you leave anything out.’ Zap.

          Caine puked two more times before he found the ability to speak. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Just don’t hit me again with that thing, please.’

           

After he’d belatedly Miranda’d Caine and his two friends, and had the uniform boys and ambulance crews come pick them up, Carter returned to the station with a very-willing Clarissa Houseman to write out his report and get a signed statement from her, which was something she was more than happy to do for the sake of losing a few hours sleep.

 

After he dropped Mrs Houseman at her apartment block, Carter eventually reached home at around two-thirty, and was so wired he felt sleep was almost a lifetime away. At two-thirty-eight he poured his second straight scotch and swallowed it in one just like the first, and then stood to remove his shoulder holster. He put his Glock in the gun safe and, just as he’d done every night for the past five years, took a Colt forty-five from the safe and brought it back to the table where he laid it before a silver-framed photograph.

          Other than his wedding ring, the only item he kept after the accident was that one photograph of his wife and son, everything else, clothes, jewellery, toys, furniture; he gave to Saint Joseph’s Villa, a facility in Richmond for homeless mothers and their children. He had taken the photograph in the garden of their house, it was Theo’s eighth birthday party and he was on his mom’s knee and wore the biggest smile Carter had ever seen. His mom was looking straight at the camera and was half way through saying “I love you, Adam” when the flash went off and froze her words for ever.

          He saw no point in holding on to their four bedroomed house in the burbs and sold it at half its market value for a quick sale. His current abode was a rented two bedroom apartment in the north of Richmond. It wasn’t anything impressive and could do with a much-needed lick of paint, and on damp mornings smelled of the dog the previous renters were evicted for having. But the most important thing for Carter was the place held no memories, other than the photograph he held and now stared at.

          After a third scotch he lifted the Colt and flicked open the magazine to see the dull brass jacket of the solitary bullet he put there after he attended the double funeral five years ago, a bullet that so far hadn’t once managed to find its way into the barrel. He closed the magazine and spun it with the heel of his left hand to hear the well-oiled mechanism whir its way to a slow click-click-click before it stopped. He poured his fourth drink, a large one this time, he gulped half of it but didn’t feel the burn that came with the first two or three. He raised the gun to his right temple, looked again at the photograph, and then squeezed the trigger.