CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brandon Michaelson had lived a reckless life, and for all intents and purposes, he probably shouldn't have lived as long as he had, dying at the ripe old age of thirty-two.
A year younger than me.
The guy hadn't been a stranger to a variety of party drugs, and his sister told Shawn that he would start most of his days with a shot of whiskey.
“To take the edge off,” Brandon would tell her, as if waking up alone was something to cope with.
He died single but left behind the four kids he had helped to conceive, each born to a different woman.
He'd maintained a relationship with none of them—not the women or the kids.
No, Brandon’s longest, dearest relationship was with his motorcycle. A twelve-year-old Harley, bought off a friend for a couple hundred bucks and a bottle of Jack when he was down on his luck, between jobs, and needed to sell his car for some cash.
"He loved that bike," his sister told Shawn with tears in her eyes, the only member of his immediate family who cared to share anything about her older brother.
The only one who had shown up to plan his funeral.
The only one Brandon had maintained a relationship with after his parents kicked him out of the house and after their other two sisters went into no contact with him during his more recent stint with cocaine.
"You loved that bike so much that you drove it into a brick wall," I muttered to his corpse, digging a piece of shrapnel out from the top of his battered skull. "And no helmet too. Man, you must've really wanted to die."
The truth was, whether he had wanted to or not, Brandon was already well on his way to dying a slow, agonizing death. He spent his entire life drugged up and/or drunk. He bounced from couch to couch without an end in sight and couldn't hold down a job to save his life.
But the real cherry on top was that he'd been diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer a week before the wreck, which his sister learned from his suicide note. It had already metastasized, spreading to his lymph nodes, spine, lungs, and liver.
A few questionable spots had been found on his brain that they wanted to run biopsies on, but Brandon decided he had other plans.
I'd rather go out on my own terms, the note his sister had found read.
I could relate.
"You had the right idea," I muttered to a body that was proving to be quite the challenge, getting it ready for the viewing his sister had insisted on having …
despite Shawn's gentle coaxing. "But if I went ahead and drove the hearse into the fucking harbor, that son of a bitch wouldn't think twice about coming after Shawn or Ike. I can handle his shit, but them?"
I shook my head, dropping another piece of broken glass into the metal bowl beside me. He'd really done a number on himself. Not that I couldn't piece him together enough to look presentable, but, boy, what a job.
"Shawn's smart. But he’s too soft," I explained in a low, mumbling tone. "He’s … emotional, you know? Too … squeamish."
I closed my eyes momentarily, the events of the other night coming to mind, alongside an aching nausea in the depths of my gut.
It had only been a month since I had agreed to Gerald's terms, and he'd already called me once.
He gave me an address to a warehouse on the outskirts of Revere, and there, he orchestrated the kidnapping and beheading of a gang member called Tick—though I seriously had my doubts that was his birth-given name—while the big fucker was still breathing.
I held the machete.
It should've disturbed me more that I felt little of that empathy Leonard had always talked about.
But I couldn't say I felt all that much guilt after Dean showed me the pictures of the guy forcing his greasy dick down the throat of a girl too young to be legal …
and even if she had been, from the looks of it, it hadn't been consensual.
I only wished I could've prolonged his suffering … even if it meant spending more time vomiting afterward.
"What a mess though," I said, opening my eyes to the sight of Brandon's crushed skull and breathing beyond the urge to puke. "You too, buddy. But you didn't have this coming. You didn't deserve this.”
Tick had deserved his fate, and I assumed many of the people Gerald did business with did too.
A part of me—the part I hadn’t been aware was lurking within my skin all these years—was glad they would receive their punishment.
I was glad their part in the plague upon our society would be eradicated once their last breath was taken.
A part of me was even glad to watch it happen, but that was a part I wasn’t willing to put a voice to. Not yet. What I could say with certainty was that I wished I weren’t the one handing them their one-way ticket to life’s final judgment.
That, I could’ve done without.
"Anyway …" I sighed and poked at my inner cheek with the tip of my tongue, wrenching the last and biggest piece of debris from the back of his head. "With Ike, I'm afraid he'd like it too much. I'm afraid he'd … I don't know … be too stupid. Careless."
The chunk of metal was dropped into the bowl as I leaned back, sitting on my stool. I sighed again, pulling my soiled latex gloves off and tossing them on top of the collection of glass, metal, and rocks.
"I don't like it," I said. "I don't find pleasure in doing Gerald's dirty work—you know what I'm saying?
But I get it done because I have to. He says I have a choice, but there's not much of a choice to make.
I'm doing what I need to do while I need to do it, and when all of this is over, then …
it's over. But Isaac … he wouldn't do the right thing.
Let's just put it that way. No, this is better.
Of the three of us, I'm the one with the level head.
I can handle this and do what I have to do to set things straight. This is how it has to be, you know?"
Brandon wasn't much of a conversationalist, but that was okay.
As it turned out, he was a better listener.
"All right, well”—I reached out and patted him on the cold shoulder—"I'm going upstairs to grab something to eat. Don't go anywhere."
As expected, Brandon didn't say a word, didn't move a muscle, and I left the room, stepping into the cold basement, and headed up the stairs, where I bumped into Shawn, coming out of the storage room we'd broken into as kids, carrying a few boxes of tissues.
"Hey, how's it going down there?" he asked.
"It's going," I muttered, walking with him down the hall. "I got all the shit out of what’s left of his poor head. Now I just have to make him a new one."
"Ah, arts and crafts. Good times."
I snorted and jabbed my elbow against his arm as we reached Leonard's old office. "You want to help?"
"No, thanks.”
“Oh, okay. Next time then.”
“Unlikely, but, hey, you never know," he quipped, steering into the room and dropping the tissues onto the desk. "What are you doing for lunch?"
Leaning against the doorframe, I shrugged. "Not sure. Why? Any suggestions?"
"Do you wanna go out? There isn't much in the kitchen. I need to get to the grocery store.”
“I could go after I’m done downstairs if you want,” I offered.
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I was thinking of asking Shelby if she wanted to go with me later anyway."
I laid a hand over my heart and feigned a wistful sigh. "That's the epitome of romance right there, folks. A moonlit walk down the bread aisle."
“Nah, I know. I need to talk to her though, so I figured …”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good.”
“She’s just …” He sighed, the sound forlorn as he reached up and around to grip the back of his neck. "She's been, um … I don't know …"
I narrowed my eyes as my amusement vanished at the expression of discontent and doubt on his face. Then I jerked my head, gesturing toward the door.
"Come on. Let’s get some food," I said. "I'll buy."
***
We ended up at a pub nearby, just down the road from the funeral home.
The fries weren't great, but the burgers were stellar, and the fountain drinks were somehow always free.
I had never been sure, growing up, how they managed to stay open, but now, after receiving a cool twenty grand for ending Tick's life, I had to wonder what nefarious shit the owner of this place got up to if he was able to afford giving out unlimited drinks.
Was it drugs? Murder for hire?
Was he the leader of an underground sex trafficking ring?
I'd only just entered the world of illegal activity, barely grazing the tip of the iceberg, and I couldn't imagine how deep into hell a person was willing to dive to make some good, quick cash.
"Hey, earth to Bram."
My vision refocused until I no longer saw the machete somehow on the other end of my arm, sawing its way through flesh and bone. Now, there was only Shawn with his forehead crumpled with concern.
Somewhere along the way, he’d developed a pair of twin lines between his eyebrows from all the worrying he did. It made me feel bad, but it was endearing all the same. Somehow, they suited him.
"Sorry," I said, clearing my throat. "What were you saying?"
"I didn't say anything,” he replied with an incredulous chuckle, that anxious expression remaining on his face. “You were talking about the free soda and just … stopped mid-sentence."
"Oh." Fuck. Maybe I was more screwed up than I thought I was. How could I not be? "Sorry. I was just thinking about how much I'm not looking forward to reconstructing Brandon's head later. That poor guy.”
"Oh, yeah," he replied with a groan. "Can't say I envy you there. But you know, it’s a good thing we’re doing for his sister. This is important to her—to have the open casket viewing. I tried to talk her out of it, but …” He lifted a hand in a helpless shrug.