Grandfather must have left it unlocked as well …
The screen door opened.
Paul put his arm around my waist, and we hobbled back to the living room to meet our Grandfather.
The door opened.
We stood at the kitchen, arms around each other in our nakedness, bracing ourselves for one dooming whopper of a reaction.
Grandfather entered …
He surveyed the room with surprisingly steady eyes. First he assessed the two of us, then the masses of ricocheted red spots streaking across the white walls, and then Graves, facing down on the mattress with his firm yet pruned bare ass smiling at the ceiling and a chunk of his cranium blown off. Wet pellets of gore still glooped sporadically off the wall to the carpet. Grandfather returned his gaze to us.
For the first time ever, we experienced an expression in his face we'd never seen before. His lips curled upwards ever so slightly as his eyes glazed over with the thinnest film of moisture. He was not angry. He was profoundly pleased. And I was profoundly confused in that moment by that reaction.
But now … now …
Yappity yap yap.
My eyes opened and darted right to the two silver, gleaming framed photos of my parents as children. My eyes were open, but my brain was arriving at a conclusion like a tourist on his first visit to Niagara Falls in the late spring. The Vastness. The Torrent. The Invasive Spray. The Inescapable Roar. The Destruction of Nature. The Construction of Nature. The Coalition of Both. The Inevitability of Everything.
Minnie sounded the alarm again, but I could not yet break my train …
Grandfather wanted Graves dead.
Specifically, Grandfather wanted us to kill Graves …
Whatever code of honor Grandfather and Graves lived by, it would have been unthinkably disloyal to blow out the brains of the man who stuck his hand in your stomach for seven miles in the back of a Jeep to prevent you from bleeding to death. He couldn't kill the man who saved his life in Korea. But he could live with getting others to kill him, especially if they killed him in self-defense. That's why we were taken out to the woods and taught to shoot from the first day we arrived. That's why we were trained to shoot progressively larger and larger animals. That's why Grandfather taught us to shoot handguns.
Grandfather had been training assassins.
And while he was training us, he'd been setting a trap. We'd been set up as targets from day one. He'd seduced Graves night after night by parading his nubile grandsons in front of him and leaving open the one curtain that looked directly into Graves' kitchen. Graves wouldn't even be able to clean the dishes without viewing Paul and me. He was being tantalized all summer, repeatedly, only feet away. He'd made sure Graves had a clear view of Paul and me in bed when Graves prowled at night. Grandfather had the trap wound up until all he had to do was let it spring.
He uncharacteristically organized that poker game. He invited Palmer to the game to remove any neighbor who might possibly impede what had to occur that night. He changed the lock on the bathroom to eliminate any place to hide. He left the closet unlocked for the first time ever to give us complete access to the rifles and handguns. He removed our Swiss Army knives to increase the odds that we'd kill Graves, not merely wound him. He left the front door unlocked to give Graves free access to his targets. And then he drove away, with the gravel announcing loudly to Graves that his grandsons were now left alone.
Grandfather thought of everything that would increase the chances of Graves' assassination. As I looked at my parents' gleefully carefree childhood photos on the shelves, I remembered that day in the woods when we'd blown the photos of our parents as miserable, sluggish adults away. Suddenly I realized exactly what tragedy lay between the two sets of photos, and therefore exactly why Grandfather wanted Graves dead.
Graves had molested Mom and Dad when they were young as well.
It made too much logical sense for it not to be true.
Soon after Graves and Grandfather became Palmer's neighbors, Graves' pedophiliac proclivities surfaced when my parents came to stay some summer in the early 1960's. Having his life saved in the Korean War by Graves, Grandfather would have been in no place to confront him and, in the 1960's, it was possible Grandfather hadn't even the vocabulary to truly comprehend the horror of an adult neighbor desiring children sexually. Grandfather had no recourse, and no path towards justice that he could enact-until the day Paul and I had been sent to stay with him. A plan surfaced. With military precision, it was covertly executed.
But, as with every war, fallout could not be avoided. Grandfather knowing and doing nothing mangled the development of my parents until they evolved into the creatures Paul and I knew. And, then, years after Graves' assassination, the mangling of my brother and my development …
Yappity yap yap yap.
I was refocusing on the present, but the clarity of the past left me breathless. I was filled with anger at this man who involved Paul and me into his twisted plot of revenge, yet I was simultaneously overcome with compassion for a man who suffered horribly under the weight of loyalty, duty, honor, and forbearance. It became clear that the central collateral damage of the battle between Graves and Grandfather was, of course, Grandfather himself. A man who hardened with restraint every minute of his life, two thin metal walls away from the man who committed irrevocable atrocities on his own flesh and blood. Yes, he could have moved to another trailer park after Graves had first touched his son, but Grandfather was a man imprisoned by the need to exact justice on his neighbor as much as my parents had been imprisoned by their inability to exact justice. Just as much as my brother and I were imprisoned by our inability to understand injustice, and therefore our inability to forgive when it was finally exacted.
Until now.
The clarity forced its way through my fogginess and burst out of my eyes in a sheet of tears. I had so much I wanted to explain to my brother. So much I still needed for him to understand, let go, and hold on to. To forgive himself. To forgive me. But I was too late. Instead, I could spill it all to the one person miraculously thrust into my little life that would, could, and wanted to understand as much about me as I could muster spilling … .Marzoli.
Marzoli … shooting … the Layworths...shit!
I jumped up and looked out the window. Marzoli was still slumped on the chair. He was unconscious but breathing.
Thank fuck!
Mrs. Layworth was still a bloody dead mess behind him.
Then I realized Mr. Perfect was nowhere to be seen.
My blood turned to ice.
Yappity yap yap yap.
The silhouette of two feet appeared under my front door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The doorknob turned.
It was pushed in a centimeter in a failed attempt to open the locked door.
Then the silhouetted feet disappeared.
Where was he going?
I remained absolutely silent and listened for any and every sound.
A honking horn two blocks away. Jennifer Lopez on a television faintly defending her choice of dress as articulately as she was able. Two dogs claiming territory on a grey patch of sidewalk. Justin Timberlake electronically stuffing his message that what-goes-around-comes-around into some teenager's brain via the entire courtyard. The ho-hummm of a busy city drifting in and clouding the courtyard.
Then I heard it.
The click of Ruben and Nathan's door upstairs being opened.
Only two people had the key to that apartment now. Me, with the contents of Marzoli's pocket in a neat cluster on my desk, and the Layworths, with the contents taken from the pocket of a dead kid in their closet.
I heard the faint footsteps above me cross to the window, and then it opened. I looked at my own window, shattered from the first bullet, now framed with sharp little triangles. The outside could enter unimpeded. I was a sitting dick of a duck.
I called 911.
A chunk of snow fell in front of my nose as a foot landed on the fire escape landing above me.
Shit! No time!
I tossed the phone to the side.
Where's that gun?
I'd dropped it in my last trip to trauma town.
A shiny black loafer appeared on the step in front of my eyes.
Did Layworth have a gun? Did he have a knife? Fuck!
I couldn't find the goddamn gun! I could turn on the lights, but that would only reveal his target even clearer.
I ran to the front door, unlocked it, and placed my hand on the knob.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get my two eyes to focus on one thing. My veins surged like a torrent. Marzoli was right. My past found the right moment to finish me off. My years of shoving memories into the blades of the disposal failed to destroy it, and for all of the grinding and screeching, it still crawled back up from the dark hole at the worst possible opportunity.
I opened the door.
The amber hall light funneled across my floor to my window.
Layworth faced me on the other side of the shard-encrusted window frame. .