“Are those for me?” she asked surprised, as she looked down at the bouquet of cheap flowers Rudy had grabbed off the counter as he charged out of the store. For just a moment she was touched: Not too many men brought her flowers. Rudy was so enraptured he’d forgotten he was even holding them.
“Oh, these? Yeah, I brought them for you.”
“Why, thank you!” Lucy took his hand, led him through to the living room and sat him down on the couch. “Now you relax. I’ll put these in some water and I’ll be right back.”
She threw the flowers on the counter in the kitchen and was back in an instant, carrying two frosty mugs. She was eager to land this fresh young catch and alcohol always helped.
“I only have beer,” she lied as she handed him the mug. A red flag went up in Rudy’s head. Alcohol was another one of those dangers his mother had warned him about. But somehow he couldn’t say no, couldn’t bring himself to disrupt the mood. He took the beer and gulped down a quick mouthful.
Lucy slithered up next to him and tucked her feet underneath her. Rudy was afraid to look down, afraid to discover if she was really wearing panties. They sat there like that making small talk for a half hour or so, Rudy sipping nervously at his beer and Lucy becoming increasingly impatient. Finally, she took his mug and headed to the kitchen for a refill.
She had no formal education but Lucy was wise in the ways of the world. His first few words had told her he was just a boy in a man’s body, and she had pretty much decided she was going to call it a night. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the excitement in his eyes. She hadn’t seen that kind of anticipation in a long time. Maybe it will be fun, she thought. And he is so beautiful. . She poured a shot of Jack Daniel’s into his second beer.
The Jack Daniel’s did it. Rudy began to relax, touching her face gently with the palm of his hand, massaging her neck, all the while responding to her passionate kisses. He moved his hand slowly to the edge of her teddy, and then, at last, he was caressing those warm, perfect breasts. Waves of delirious pleasure washed over him, and he could feel the blood rushing from his head.
Suddenly it was all too much. He was dizzy, his head was reeling and his stomach was churning. He knew he was about to be sick. He made a mad dash for the front door and the outside air but his knee hit the coffee table as he started to rise, tipping his beer mug over. Already off balance, he tried to grab the mug and caught it just as he hit the floor, smashing it to pieces. The mood was permanently and irrevocably broken.
“I’m sorry,” he spluttered as he gazed at his hand, which was bleeding profusely from a nasty gash and dripping blood onto the carpet. “I’ll clean everything up.” He still felt sick but the accident had erased the sudden urge to puke, at least momentarily. Lucy stared at the broken glass and the blood on the carpet. She stifled the urge to scream.
“That’s okay, I’ll get it. But I think you should go now.” Without waiting for a reply she helped him up and ushered him to the front door, grabbing some paper towels on the way and stuffing them into his still-bleeding hand. “I’ll call you,” she told him as she not-so-politely pushed him out and closed the door behind him.
Rudy staggered down the street a few doors until he could no longer hold it, then puked on a patch of grass that masqueraded as the front lawn of Carlos and Pilar Rodriguez.
Farther south on Mercer Street, Geronimo Cruz was drinking beer with two of his “friends,” Raymond Castro and Jose Guerrero. Geronimo was from Texas, and he always carried a knife. Ray and Jose hung around with him only because Geronimo had chosen them and they were afraid to turn down the invitation.
Ray and Jose had been sitting on the stoop of Ray’s apartment one night about a month before when Geronimo showed up.
“Got an extra cerveza?” he inquired.
“Sure,” Ray responded. That was all it took. They couldn’t get rid of him after that. Every night he stopped by, and every night he was empty-handed. He told them about men he had stabbed, women he had raped, always brandishing his knife with the serrated edge. Both men wished they had never met him.
They knew he was seeing Lucy because he bragged about her. Two or three nights a week, they watched him stroll over towards her trailer after a few beers. They knew Lucy, knew of her affinity for men like Geronimo. They figured she could handle herself.
They were on their third beer the night Rudy came stumbling down the street and started puking on the Rodriguez lawn. Geronimo’s eyes narrowed.
“Who the fuck is that?”
“I don’t know,” Ray responded. “I saw him go in Lucy’s just before you showed up.” The words came out without thinking. Ray wanted to slap himself when he realized what he had done. Geronimo immediately put down his beer and drifted into the shadows, walking towards Lucy’s trailer.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he said without looking back. Moments later he was at Lucy’s door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when she answered his knock.
“Who was that that just left?”
“None of your business. I don’t answer to you.” He was itching to smack her with the back of his hand but that was too easy. He decided to play her game for a while.
“I just was curious, that’s all.” He wasn’t all that convincing but she didn’t want to piss him off too much. Like Ray and Jose, she had a healthy fear of Geronimo.
“It was the kid from the convenience store. He was drunk. He just stopped over.” She had just finished picking up the broken glass.
“How long was he here?”
“Just a couple of minutes. I sent him home.” Geronimo knew she was lying. She’d worn the same skimpy little teddy the first time she had him over. He didn’t expect the bitch to be faithful, but lying he couldn’t tolerate. Lucy could tell that he was on to her. “Well, I’m glad you showed up,” she said as she kissed him on the lips and pressed up against him. When he put his arms around her and returned her kiss, she hopped up and wrapped her legs around his waist and gave a breathy sigh. He carried her into the bedroom, dropped her on the bed and roughly pulled the teddy up over her head.
Moments later they were naked and at each other. Lucy was on the bottom, on her knees, face down, moaning into the sheets. It was violent, even brutal, but she loved it.
As she was about to climax, the thought hit Lucy that she belonged with a man like Geronimo. At that same moment, Geronimo reached down and slipped the serrated knife out of his pants. As Lucy raised her head for one final scream of ecstasy, Geronimo grabbed her hair with his left hand, yanked her head back, and cleanly slit her throat with one smooth slash of the knife. The force of the slicing knife and Lucy’s instinctive reaction caused her upper torso to twist around to such a degree that she fell back on the bed face up, blood spewing everywhere.
“No bitch is going to lie to me,” he told her already dead ears.
Two
“Get all those people back. Send them home if you can. And I don’t want anyone in here except who I tell to come in.” The barking voice belonged to Sergeant Wesley Brume of the Bass Creek police. He was standing at the door of Lucy Ochoa’s trailer. The place was alive with cops and people from the neighborhood. Murders didn’t happen every day in Bass Creek.
They had gotten the call at six that evening. One of Lucy’s co-workers, Brenda Carrero, had stopped by on her way home to check on Lucy because she hadn’t shown up for work that day. That was highly unusual for Lucy. Her job was to keep track of the pickers’ attendance and their count, so she was pretty fastidious herself about calling in if she was sick or had to miss work. Brenda had knocked for several minutes but there was no answer. She shouted Lucy’s name. Still nothing. Maybe it was the neighborhood dogs sniffing around the trailer or maybe it was the flies, she really couldn’t explain it, but for some strange reason she tried the door. It was open. A whiff of something putrid hit her as she stepped inside, like maybe a rodent had crawled under the trailer and died.