Finding Gideon(130)

But none had smelled like the arrival of his own.

Blood dripped down his face, across his goatee, turned the gray hair red.

Medianoche’s words were garbled. “Caprica Ortiz . . . three more jobs . . . Nunca Más.”

His words went unheard.

Gideon was in a rage. The whore’s son had become a monster.

A powerful monster. The child of a beast and a whore.

Medianoche felt Gideon pull him to his feet, heard the gaucho yell and curse. He told Medianoche he had no right to call his mother out of her goddamn name.

Bloodied, incensed, words slurring, Medianoche said, “Your mother . . . brothers . . . dead.”

“Then you better fucking apologize when you see my mother in hell.”

The enraged gaucho grunted and dead-lifted him, picked him up like he had the strength of Atlas. The gaucho held Medianoche over his head as if he weighed no more than a folding chair.

That was the first time Medianoche had ever felt amazement dance with fear.

Now he knew what other men had felt like when he had done this to them.

He tried to fight, tried to at least make the gaucho drop him on the floor.

The headaches that had marched into his life and become more frequent, more severe, the pain that heralded the blackouts, all of his troubles were caused by a tumor in his brain.

A goddamn brain tumor. Frontal lobe. Made a man swear a lot, become aggressive, and lose inhibitions. But he had always cursed like a sailor, had always been aggressive, and didn’t have any inhibitions left to lose. He rejected that prognosis. Walked out of the hospital.

Men like him lived forever, or died in battle and became mythical. Men like him didn’t die in a hospital, withering away and shitting in a bedpan and being spoon-fed oatmeal.

Medianoche had planned to take a fertility test, to see if his vasectomy had come undone. But after the news about his brain starting to rot, he didn’t care.

He didn’t care if he had fucked it undone and had kids all over the globe.

The gaucho stepped over broken glass, grunted again with each step.

Medianoche was thrown from the terrace out into the darkness of the night.

As Medianoche fell from eighteen stories aboveground, his brain set fire.

And he remembered everything in color. Beautiful color. He remembered it all. Back then he was married to his first wife. The Beast was married as well. His wife was pregnant.

He remembered that Thelma had two children, twins, and she had given one to someone else to care for, had left a child overseas because she couldn’t afford to feed two. The French whore told the Beast and Medianoche that one of them was the father, and the French whore had called the Beast’s wife, had called Medianoche’s wife, had told both women everything. She demanded money to care for her love child. Her love children. One million for each child. Or she would go to the courts and file papers. It was all fun and orgasm until a whore was pregnant.

Margaret had put Thelma up to calling the wives. The Beast was pissed off, livid, and in anger he had grabbed Margaret, caught her in the kitchen, trying to use the phone. She threatened to call the police on the both of them, threatened to tell the police they were assassins, threatened to give names of people the Beast had revealed during pillow talk, threatened to tell all the secrets she knew to the police and the news. The Beast struck Margaret with his fist, struck her hard, like she was a man, and then he had wrapped the telephone cord around her neck, begun strangling her. Thelma had screamed, tried to save her friend, had gone after the Beast with a butcher knife, but Medianoche had jumped in the way, had knocked her silly, and when she had made it back to her feet, Thelma had spat in Medianoche’s face, had bared her teeth and yelled that she was not afraid of him, yelled that she was not afraid of anyone, not anymore, and yelled that she had killed men before, said that she had killed men in Paris, had killed them and run away. She started stabbing at Medianoche, stabbed at him over and over like that demonic doll in Trilogy of Terror, stabbed until Medianoche caught her wrist and wrestled the blade from her hand. He took it and twisted her arm, made her yell in pain. The Beast had ordered him to kill one whore and he would kill the other, because he was not going to jail, and his brother Medianoche would not go to jail, not for this, and he would not pay for a whore child, would not give a dime, not to a prostitute. As two women screamed for their lives, the Beast dragged Margaret out in the backyard, dragged the West Indian woman down three concrete stairs, then across high grass, dirt, and more concrete.

As he fell soundlessly, Medianoche remembered.

Remembered.

Remembered.

He had taken his gun out, then paused to watch the Beast in his ruthlessness.

The Beast had beaten Margaret until she was unable to scream, had beaten her as dogs barked, then thrown her in the trash, in a Dumpster, threw her on a bed of nasty food, maggots, and flies, then fired off five rounds into the container. He pulled his weapon from underneath his coat and put five slugs into the West Indian woman. He shot a woman he used to be fond of for years. This would be the cause of Medianoche’s first divorce, the cause of the Beast’s separation.