Over Exposure Part 6

Already dark out there, but the floodlights from the rear patio were on. Sometimes his son and the anorexic forgot and left the floodlights on all night, blasting into Mason's bedroom. Penetrating the slats in his worthless mini-blinds. Mason would lie there and stare at the slits of light and he'd think of what his wife would say. She wouldn't complain about there being too much light to sleep. No, that old woman would be blathering about the wasted money. Ten dollars at least, all those lights running through the night. You know how hard people in her generation had to work for ten dollars, the things she had to do. Take in sewing, baby-sit, all the pennies she put away, and look at that waste, those big fancy lights burning for no good reason.

Mason didn't miss his wife. He didn't miss her bird and if something happened to his own son and the grandchildren, h.e.l.l, he wouldn't miss them either. All three of them were brats. Screaming in the pool, going out of their way to raise the volume. And did his fat, lazy son put down his c.o.c.ktail for a second to go out and see what they were screaming about? Never. Not once. They could be drowning, or being molested by a pa.s.sing pervert.

"I don't want my son going to jail."

"You don't mind killing him," Mason said, "but what is it, you don't want some big black guy bulldozing your baby's b.u.t.t. That it?"

"You're a crude man."

"I don't get paid for my refinement and urbanity."

Chalmers watched a few seconds of the TV show, another sitcom set in New York City. "Friends." A bunch of do-nothing twenty year olds who could spend half an hour whining about an ingrown toenail or a souffl that collapsed. Mason usually switched over to CNN after Seinfeld, spent the evening catching up on all the ways the world was going to h.e.l.l. Something the dead wife would appreciate. See there. See there. See there. Gloom, gloom and more gloom.

Chalmers sat down in the chair beneath the Jesus picture. He raised both hands and finger combed his hair, raking it back into place.

"I don't want my boy going to jail."

"Yeah, we established that. We just haven't figured out why that's worse than him being dead."

"Don't you have what you wanted? Isn't it enough he killed this girl?"

"That's a start, yeah. I'm getting into your head a little, seeing your misery. Yeah. Digging a hole, rolling a dead girl into it, son scratching his nuts the whole time. I'm warming up to it, I'm just not quite there yet."

"I'll give you five hundred dollars. s.h.i.t, I'll give you ten thousand. I don't care. Just no more questions, okay?"

"That's a good sign, resisting like that. Means we're getting closer, a layer or two more, we might have a deal."

"Look, maybe you should just shoot me. Just shoot me now. Right here, right now. Do it. Take all my money, get rid of my corpse. n.o.body knows I'm here. You could get away with it."

"That what you want?"

"I don't know. Maybe it is."

"Do me a favor, Chalmers. Before we go any farther with this, get up, take down that picture."

Chalmers looked at Mason for a few seconds then turned his head and looked up at Jesus.

"That?"

"That."

Chalmers rose and lifted the painting off its hook. Grunted a little. The thing was heavier than it looked.

He set it down, propped it against the TV.

"So?"

"The wall," Mason said.

Chalmers looked back at the wall. Chunks missing in the drywall, fist-sized holes, dried blood, some fragments of bone and hair.

"f.u.c.k."

Chalmers swung back, giving Mason a wild stare.

Expecting the Ruger to be aimed his way. But it lay on Mason's lap.

"What is this?"

Chalmer's mouth was open, a ribbon of drool showing at the corner.

"You execute people in here? This is a murder chamber?"

"That makes it sound creepy."

"You shoot people. Clients coming in to hire you. You kill them instead."

"Right where you're standing. Ten, twelve. I don't keep a total."

"Why?"

"They ask me to. Sometimes they beg."

"Jesus, this is f.u.c.king crazy. You're a crazy man."

"Some guys, they come in, tell their story, I bully till it's all out, last bit of puke from their guts, then bingo, they ask me to do it. They plead. Well, sometimes they plead, not always. Different people, it works different ways."

"And how's it working with me?"

"Don't know yet. We're not there. Not at the end. We're sort of stuck on why you'd rather your son be dead than go to jail."

"I'm out of here," Chalmers said.

"No one's stopping you."

Chalmers stared at the wall again as if counting the holes. That wasn't a reliable way to figure out how many had died because sometimes it took two shots, sometimes, Mason hated to admit, he missed with the first one, sometimes the second one too. So there had to be a few more holes than victims.

"What were you wearing?"

"Wearing?"

"We're back at the hole, the grave for this girl. What'd you have on?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know. Why's that matter?"

"I'm trying to get a picture. I'm trying to put myself there, inside your skin. Get the feel."

"A suit," Chalmers said. "A black suit."

"Armani, that's what you wear?"

Chalmers swallowed.

"How'd you know that?"

"I got an eye for tailoring. I'm not a clothes horse myself, but some of the guys I a.s.sociated with in my younger days, they dressed nice. I made it a hobby. So you're in your black Armani, five, six thousand dollar coat and pants. You're sweating like a pig. Your son is all cranky about his itchy d.i.c.k. I bet there were mosquitoes out there too."

"A few, but I wasn't feeling much."

"Too focused on the inner turmoil. Cleaning up after your son's murder. A guy wouldn't feel a few mosquito bites."

"I got blisters on my hands from the shovel. I remember that."

"Bleed a little, did you?"

"Where's this going?"

"Hey, you were there, not me," Mason said. "I don't know where it's going."

On the TV the good looking blond girl who is also the resident airhead is trying to cook something for Thanksgiving dinner. But she'd read the recipe wrong. That was supposed to be funny? Maybe his wife had a point. The world was going to h.e.l.l. Men wanted to hire other men to kill their r.e.t.a.r.ded sons while there were all those people in an audience laughing at a girl who couldn't cook.

"I buried the girl then Jules and I drove back to my apartment and we took showers and changed clothes and I ordered a pizza."

"A pizza."

"Jules has a very limited range of foods he'll eat."

"Picky boy."

"It's part of his disability. He gets stuck in ruts."

"Happens to the best of us," Mason said.

Chalmers glanced back at the wall behind him.

"What do you do with the bodies?" Chalmers said it, then he swung around to face Mason and said, "Never mind, that's none of my business."

"I use a wheelbarrow," Mason said. "Roll 'em out to my car, put them in the trunk. I got a ca.n.a.l I like out in the Glades. Shovels, no way, I'm too old for shovels. This ca.n.a.l, though, it has gators."

"No one's ever been found?"

"Not that I heard."

Chalmers sat down in the chair again. His body seemed heavier than it had a few minutes earlier.

"So you and Jules are eating pizza. How's his itch doing?"

"Still there," Chalmers said.

One of the girl brats, fourteen, fifteen, Mason could never remember, she turns on the music in her bedroom. Window open, this ghetto rap, hip-hop bulls.h.i.t starts booming. The boys in the pool yell for her to turn it down. It turns into a war out there. Girl screeches and little boy screeches, and the volume of the music gets higher. And where's Daddy and anorexic Mommy? No f.u.c.king where to be found.

"I told Jules he had to go see a psychiatrist. He had to get this new l.u.s.tfulness under control."

"l.u.s.tfulness? That's what you think?"

"Whatever the right word is. I'm no shrink."

"So this just started? Came out of the blue, did it. He's thirty, all of a sudden he's h.o.r.n.y?"

"As far as I know."

"Nothing set it off?"

"What're you saying?"

"I'm asking questions. I'm not saying anything."

"You're suggesting something I did might've set it off. That I'm responsible for what my son does. My adult son. My dating habits influenced him to go out and rape a girl."

Mason looked across at the holes in his wall. Seeing a little fragment of a blouse wedged into one of the ragged craters. Mason remembered that one. She was one of the pleaders. Yeah, down on her knees. Begging with her hands pressed together like Mason was the Pope. Pretty woman. Mason made her stand up. Made her look him in the eye. Made her stop crying. Made her stand up straight. Then that was that.

"If Jules went to jail, it would all go public. It would be a major story. The people I represent, they're the movers and shakers in this community. Names you'd know. Owners of the sports franchise, the cruise ship company. You know who I mean. I'd be ruined. My business is built on trust and confidence. How's anybody going to give me their life savings to manage if they know what's in my family's bloodstream?"

"So, your boy's got to die to protect your net worth."

"He could rape and kill again. Another innocent girl. That's my number one concern. But, yeah, to be completely honest, the money's an issue too. I've got obligations."

"Mortgage, things like that."

"Alimony payment, mortgage, I've got obligations like everybody else."

"So Jules gets two in the brain."

"Oh, f.u.c.k it. Forget this. I'm out of here. Go ahead, try to shoot me. I'm gone."

But Chalmers didn't get up from the chair. They usually didn't.

"Pizza is over, you had some ice cream, whatever, and what then?"

"I don't remember."

"Sure you do. That's a night you're not going to forget."

"I had an appointment. I went out."

"Left your boy in your condo, blood on his hands, while you went out on a date."

"Where'd you get 'date?' I went out."