SIXTY-NINE
Ron Hamilton sat in stationary traffic. The wipers did little to clear the rain off the windshield. He watched a cluster of flashing blue lights at an intersection. He tried Sean O’Brien’s cell phone. No answer. Hamilton was stuck in a three-car pile-up on rain-sliced Dixie Highway. Hamilton could move the single blue light from his dash, stick it on the car roof and try to maneuver and bump stalled traffic out of the way. But he was still fifty yards from the intersection. There was no turning around.
He tried O’Brien’s phone again. It went to voice mail.
Salazar came at O’Brien and danced around him. Jabbing. Faking. Weaving. The dark eyes laughing behind the mask.
O’Brien turned. He was still groggy from the earlier hit to the head. He countered Salazar’s every move; the wind from Salazar’s punches fanning O’Brien’s face. Salazar connected with a blow to O’Brien’s forehead, cutting him above the eye.
Blood splattered on the mat. Salazar danced to the ropes and said to the crowd, “I give you’re the first stroke of the brush!” The crowd cheered. Salazar pranced around the ring like a rock star. Then he ran straight for O’Brien. He stopped abruptly, spun around and kick boxed, landing his foot in the center of O’Brien’s chest. Nausea rose from O’Brien’s stomach into his esophagus. The blood ran into his left eye. He shook his head, causing a stream of dark blood to splatter across the mat.
Salazar, shouted, “Art in its purest form!” Applause and laughs from the crowd. Salazar dropped into forward stance and then did a flying kick, his heel grazing across the tip of O’Brien’s nose. O’Brien jerked backwards as Salazar followed with a second spinning kick, connecting with O’Brien’s jaw. He felt a tooth loosen. His mouth filled with blood. He spit it out and wiped the stinging sweat from his good eye.
“The painting grows my friends!” shouted Salazar. There was applause and a few jeers directed toward O’Brien. Salazar looked up at the ceiling camera and said, “Capture the canvas. I will call this painting ‘Dance of the Butterfly!’” There was a burst of applause and laughter as Salazar did a back flip and crouched low, arms extended, eyes following O’Brien.
Salazar moved in a slow circle around O’Brien. “Don’t run out of paint just yet, there is still much canvas to cover.”
Salazar charged, throwing a full roundhouse kick. His right foot missing O’Brien by an inch. O’Brien hit Salazar hard in the ribs. The crowed yelled for more.
Salazar trotted around the ring twice. He stopped and moved like a cat, low, sizing his pray. He sprang toward O’Brien with a triple butterfly kick, his left heel catching O’Brien on the jaw.
O’Brien saw nothing but white for a second. He closed one eye to stop the double vision. Blood poured from his mouth.
“This may be my best painting yet!” Salazar raised a clinched fist. He turned his back to O’Brien, the crowd now on its feet. The cheering was deafening.
O’Brien focused on the blue and red tattoo on Salazar’s back. He concentrated on the image of the muscular winged beast with hoofed feet, the scaly tail of a snake. He stepped forward. Closer. O’Brien drew back, ready to plant his fist right between the horns-right in the center of Salazar’s spine.
Salazar spun around, his left connecting with O’Brien’s lower jaw. The contact knocked O’Brien to the ropes. Salazar laughed. He jabbed. He danced and heckled O’Brien. Then, Salazar made the mistake of looking toward one of the cameras.
Focus. O’Brien told himself. He shut out the noise of the crowd. He heard only his own breathing. He saw only one spot-Salazar’s chin. When Salazar started to turn, O’Brien plowed a powerful right into the chin. The impact spun Salazar in a circle. As he turned, O’Brien waited for the exact second when the mask would face him again. Then the slammed a hard left into the rubber lips. Even through the mask, O’Brien knew he’d taken out some of Salazar’s front teeth. Blood flowed from below the mask. Salazar stumbled. The audience screamed for more.
Salazar shook his head, regained his footage and landed a blow in O’Brien’s stomach. O’Brien slammed his forearm into the center of the mask. The sound was like stepping on a Styrofoam cup. O’Brien hit Salazar with all of his strength, driving his fist deep into Salazar’s solar-plexus. He bent over, vomiting behind the mask. O’Brien brought his knee up hard, connecting to Salazar’s chin. The strike caused Salazar to fall back like his legs disintegrated. He dropped to his knees.
The crowd chanted, “Kill…kill…kill…”
O’Brien took a few steps toward Salazar who was still on his knees, his arms dangling powerless by his side, like a puppet with the strings severed. Blood rained from beneath the mask, dripping over the image of the Virgin Mary. O’Brien used his left hand to pull the mask from Salazar’s head.
The crowd chanted louder. Salazar’s eyes were rolling back. O’Brien steadied Salazar’s floating head with his left hand. He tuned out the chants. Heard only the gurgling, sucking sound of Salazar trying to breathe through the blood.
Focus. No sounds. Nothing but Salazar heaving for air.
O’Brien drew back his right fist. He said, “What did you tell Sam Spelling before you killed him? What did you tell Father Callahan before you shot him? Tell me!”
Through shattered teeth, pulverized lips, and bloody gums, Salazar tried to smile, his face muscles jerking, lips trembling. He coughed and said in a raspy voice, “I beat up the girl. But those others, that’s something between you and Russo, ‘cause I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about, cop.” Then Salazar fell backwards, his back flat against the mat, the demonic image pressed into the bloodied canvas. He stared up at the overhead camera, breathing heavy, the tiny red light glowing dimly like a distant planet in a universe of black.
O’Brien staggered across the mat. He steadied himself on the ropes. His right eye was swollen. He tried to climb down through the ropes, faltering on the edge and dropping against the concrete floor. Nausea rose in the pit of his stomach. He felt someone pick him up, carrying him on a set of massive shoulders.
Lowe, Tom
The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller))
Through his left eye, O’Brien saw a shiny black eye, an earring, attached to an earlobe. O’Brien batted weakly at it, the earring falling to the concrete. Then the room grew dark, he fought back the bile and vomit. The last thing he heard was an Irish accent. “You’re one tough motherfucker, dude. Bet you killed him.”
SEVENTY
O’Brien awoke to the guttural sounds of feral cats challenging each other. Their long, throaty snarls and hisses echoed off the brick walls in the alley. The shrieks reverberated, like two cats at the bottom of a well, backs arched, falsetto cries calling out in the dark. He opened his eyes. Through one eye, he could see the gang graffiti painted all over the walls. Through the other eye, the graffiti was blurred, like looking through a keyhole to read an eye chart where the letters were in soft focus.
He was lying on his back in an alley, having been tossed between leaky plastic garbage cans and wet newspapers. The stench of cat litter, acrid urine, and feces came from a broken, black plastic bag near his head. His shoe and sock were soaked. He lifted his foot from a pothole filled with rainwater. A single light bulb burned above the back entrance to a place called Lucy’s Lounge.
O'Brien touched his face, feeling the dried blood around his mouth, eyes and nose. He touched a torn piece of flesh, the size of a nickel, which hung over his eyebrow. He struggled to sit. He could feel the Glock under his belt near the small of his back. Somehow he had slept with the pistol grip pressed against his spine. He propped himself up against the wet brick wall and wondered if he had suffered brain damage. He whispered: “Name: Sean O’Brien. Birthday: December twelfth…mother’s…maiden name…Lewis…”