Milton Ramos
The call from Anita came in as he was sitting on the side of his bed, rewrapping the Ace bandage on his empurpled thigh, Victor’s boot print there still so clearly defined on his flesh that he could have accurately ordered him a pair of shoes.
“Milton, your daughter left three messages on your phone. Why aren’t you calling her back?”
“I’ve been drowning in work,” he said, reaching for the Chartreuse on his night table. “Is she OK?”
“Other than you not calling her, she’s fine.”
Milton threw back a shot, got up, and began looking for his car keys. “Is she mad at me for last night?”
“She hasn’t said anything.”
Dropping to the floor, he felt around beneath the bed. “I have to apologize for my behavior. I was upset.”
“It’s OK. I just figured with all the terrible stress you have on you right now.”
He stopped moving. “What do you mean.”
“That gang contract.”
“Contract . . .” Crouching there confused, then remembering his story, rising to his knees. “I have to ask you again. Sofia, do you still want her?”
“Do I want her?” Anita sounded unsure of his meaning. “Sure, she’s a delight.”
“Good,” returning to his search.
“Just give me an idea of when you’ll be taking her back.”
“It’s almost over,” he said, spotting the car keys in one of his tossed-off shoes.
“I just don’t understand why you don’t call her.”
He was pretty sure he could drive.
The cemetery was one of those unending necropoli that lined the ride into the city from JFK, a crowded mouthful of gray teeth, unkempt and askew. But up close, say, if you found yourself kneeling before a loved one or two or three, it wasn’t that bad. And that’s where he found himself, in a catcher’s squat before the stones of his mother and two brothers, desperate to get his bearings.
He was no great master planner of revenge, no fiendish calculator; he was nothing more than an increasingly violent and out-of-control wreck whose hands shook all the time now from drinking, nothing more than a raging borderline wet-brain, so constantly tired these days that he could barely get in or out of bed. And assuming they had recovered his bat from the scene, it would only be a matter of days before they matched his prints.
In high school, his English teacher didn’t think anyone in class could get through Moby-Dick without tossing the book out a window, so she had brought in a Betamax tape of the movie, drawn the blinds, and played it on a roll-down screen. Most of the students were bored stupid by the black-and-white film, but not him. He had been riveted by the metal-eyed captain, his blazing doggedness, and in the end, when he went down into the sea strapped to the beast that he had lived to kill, it had struck Milton as the perfect outcome.
And that’s how it should end between him and Carmen.
Sofia was with the right people, and this patch of earth, right here among his brothers and his mother, looked so inviting. He was so tired, all the time now. He just had to move fast before he was unable to move at all.