The Beast. Or Medianoche. Maybe neither was my father.
I was a grown man, told myself that my answers didn’t matter.
I told myself that every day.
I was doing this for my brother.
For Andrew-Sven.
Yerres would be for me.
Paris was colder than the souls of men.
Colder than a whore’s heart.
But this room felt like heaven. A man like me, with the things I had done since I was seven, this was as close to heaven as I’d ever get.
I got back in the bed with Lola Mack and Mrs. Jones, and more soft kisses were shared, and for a moment we were a lazy three-headed beast.
I said, “One more day. Then I’ll pack my gun and go to Yerres.”
Lola Mack pouted. “Three more days?”
“Okay. Three.”
“Five?”
“Four.”
“For real?”
“Four.”
“Four more days. We can kick it at Au Petit Fer á Cheval, Le Sancerre, Chez Prune, and Pause Café. We can go dancing again too.”
Mrs. Jones smiled. “After you go to Yerres, then to parts unknown, you’ll come back to us soon. I hope.”
I didn’t make a promise. They were too hard to keep.
Then we were quiet, cuddled against each other, sleeping as the City of Lights screamed to life. Two million people were in the city. I focused on the two in this room. The gregarious attorney and the loquacious actress held on to me. Gun on the nightstand, within reach, gradually, reluctantly, I closed my eyes. I surrendered to the weight of exhaustion, to the need for rest.
As I took shallow inhales and exhales, my trigger finger twitched. With each twitch, there were a dozen flashes in my mind.
Then my mind lit up like Dubai at midnight on New Year’s Day.
And with each flash, I saw Mr. Midnight.
Whenever a room was too dark, I saw Medianoche in the shadows.
Dreams always became nightmares and I saw our last fight.
I relived that battle over and over.
He was a warrior.
A man who parachuted out of planes.
A soldier who had gone on countless missions for his country.
He was a man who had beaten bulls with his bare hands.
He was the strongest man I’d ever fought.
Injured, he was still as powerful as a raging bull.
I had killed many, and that battle troubled me.
I remembered how Medianoche had tumbled eighteen levels.
He fell and all I could hear was my own angered breathing.
I had listened for some sort of outcry.
There was none, not a sound from him.
Only the sound of rain and the din of Buenos Aires.
We had battled, and he had barked, cursed.
He had fought like a warrior who would never surrender to death.
But Medianoche had fallen soundlessly.
Without a scream.
Without fighting the fall.
That disturbed me.
It fucking disturbed me.
It always would.
Like Mr. Midnight himself, it always would.
Chapter 33
Los Últimos Recuerdos
Mind sharp, body weakened by the stroke, Medianoche had fought Gideon. Medianoche hadn’t given a shit about his faulty brain; he would be a warrior to the end. He had been a soldier most of his life. One arm was numb, wasn’t strong enough to wipe his ass clean with a roll of Elite Premium Triple Hoja toilet paper. The other arm wasn’t deadened, but it wasn’t much better. But he fought his oldest living enemy. Medianoche had screamed as he struggled, had tried to swing his good arm, shouted the way a soldier did when he was on the battlefield attacking his enemy head-on. This would be their final battle. He would kill Gideon.
But Gideon was powerful, much stronger than he looked. Gideon was as focused as he was talented. He was angry, but the surge of energy from his wrath remained under his control.
This was the man who should have been a Horseman.
With Gideon as his XO, they would have won every battle.
Gideon threw blows, connected with his chin, and Medianoche went down on one knee.
It felt like he had been kicked by a horse.
Gideon let him go, then returned, beat him with the saxophone. Medianoche couldn’t stop him, because once again his mind lit up.
The inside of his head clicked and whirred.
Memories rose. Daguerreotype memories came in black and white.
He saw himself now as he was then. Barely out of high school, already enlisted, gun in his hand, fighting for his country. Had never killed a man before, but learned how to do it and walk away. After two bombs had been dropped over Japan, but before there were drones, he had fought teenagers with guns. Those teenagers had been slaughtered by teenagers with bigger guns. That summed up every war. That summed up the rich man’s and politician’s entertainment. War was all he had known. He had left California and the war in his own home, had left the beatings put on him by his old man, and went to Uncle Sam. War was what he lived for. He lived to beat others as his father had beaten him. He loved the feeling. Not the war, but the feeling that came with victory. He had fought African children wielding guns manufactured in the US, guns now being used to slaughter American soldiers. He had almost been killed by Middle Eastern women and children turned into walking time bombs. He had smelled the scent of many deaths.