Chapter 12 #2
Henry waves me away with his hand. The high proportion of gin in bloodstream, together with his tendency toward deluded self-aggrandizing, still affords him a decent amount of misguided courage. In other words, Henry isn’t scared of me, but he hasn’t met the new, improved Heath.
“I’d like to see you suffer, to realize how insignificant you are. Your misguided delusions of importance are over, Henry Shaw. You are broke. Broken. And unfortunately, dependent on me for your future wellbeing.”
I step on his hand gracefully, pushing my shiny Italian leather boots down until the snap, crackle, and pop of his bones crushing under my foot give rise to garbled screams as Henry vomits on himself.
I grind my foot with a little wiggle like I’m putting out a discarded smoke, pulverizing the bone shards and making his hand unusable for the rest of his life.
He needs to be humbled, put in his place.
“Shame Dad spent so much on piano lessons. Guess you won’t be signing any more papers, Henry, probate or not.
But not to worry. I can take over and become the man of the house.
You’re in no shape, anyway.” I tsk and shake my head as I tell him, “I’ve looked into some fantastic in-patient psychiatric programs that seem right up your alley. Lock-down, but you’ll get used to it.”
“Kat would never let you throw me out. She’ll stop you.”
“It’s funny the things we tell ourselves in moments of duress. If you believe for a single, solitary second that Kat will come to your rescue, then you, my poor brother, are sicker than I thought.”
Henry’s eyes go wide and his bottom lip quivers as his gaze moves to the hunting knife I pull from the holster.
He cradles his mangled hand. Bending down to his crippled form, I press the blade gently to the corner of his eye.
“I don’t think Kat will do much. Probably still recovering from last night, when she watched helplessly as I fucked her dear, devoted husband Eddie up the ass with the handle of this very blade. ”
I press into the blade gently, the tip quickly splitting the thin skin at the corner of his eye, not enough to do serious damage, but enough to leave a reminder, a pretty little nick in his skin.
“I’m pretty confident she won’t give a shit about you, Henry.
Kat’s dealing with her own issues. Seems you let her marry one of your prick friends with a proclivity for taking women against their will.
Not only that, but the douche puts his hands on her.
Did you know that about Eddie? Seems you would since you were all so tight back in the day.
I mean, you can’t miss all those bruises, even in your drunken state. ”
“Shut the fuck up, Heath. What she does with her husband isn’t my concern. I told her not to marry that loser. She could have stayed with me.”
“You and your frat boy friends sure never learned how to treat women. Do you think she likes it when he forces her to fuck him while she begs him to stop and sobs in the sand?”
“I don’t fucking care,” he sniffs.
“Maybe it’s what you guys like. Maybe that’s why you all do it. Should we give it a go, me and you, the little handle of my trusty blade made Eddie come hard. I can provide the bruises, too, free of charge, for old time’s sake.”
Henry creeps away from me on the floor like the roach he is. “Kat could have been comfortable here with me, but she wanted to get away. She probably couldn’t stand this house because this is where she gave up her pussy to a piece of trash like you.”
“Let bygones be bygones, Henry. That’s all in the past. Let’s see if I can make you come in your cute little pajama pants. You like it rough, or so I’ve heard around the way.”
Henry screams as I dip the blade into his flesh superficially, pulling down from the corner of his eye to the edge of his lip.
Crimson blood gushes from the wound and quickly covers his face.
Not the smartest move on my part, but I didn’t appreciate how he talked about Kat.
I’m showing restraint because usually at this juncture of the game, I like to pop the whole eyeball out.
“Don’t kill me,” he begs as his hand moves up to his face, clawing at the knife.
“Oh, I don’t plan on killing you, Henry. At least not yet.”
Where I come from, we call that a “buck fifty,” on account of the roughly one hundred and fifty stitches it takes to close that up.”
I dislodge the knife from his face and clean both sides of it on his dirty wife beater. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, did you forget how to bathe? You’re absolutely disgusting. You used to call me the dirtbag, and now look at you.”
“You’re going to jail!” He screams as he scoots backward until his back hits the staircase, his fresh blood mixing with the filth on the floor.
“Good luck with that, Henry. You see, I’m now connected to powerful people who make things happen in this city, even out here on Long Island.
I’ve got everyone from judges and politicians to celebrities and mobsters eating out of my hand.
I made our old man proud. He gave me a pittance of his estate and I took that and transformed it into an empire. What did you do, Henry?”
“Mind your own business, you fucking psycho!”
“You squandered every cent down the drain. Booze, gambling, cheap women, and coke. You brought down a whole empire, Hen. Too damn bad it was your own.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, you’d be too drunk to know, wouldn’t you.”
I pull out my cell phone and offer it to him. “Go ahead, call the police.” I stare at the blade in my hand and smile before turning to him. “I won’t even wipe my fingerprints off the evidence.”
Henry blinks at me, his one remaining functioning eye focusing on my phone.
Hesitation and fear flash in his eye, and then I hear the faint shushing sound of liquid.
I peer at Henry's filthy pajama pants to the big wet spot on his groin and quickly pooling yellow piss on the floor dangerously close to the toe of my shoe.
“Aww, Hen, did you just piss yourself? I’ll add diapers to the grocery list and make sure someone picks them up for us.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he whimpers, looking up at me. “All I have is Wainscott Hollow. I don’t have any family or anywhere to go,” he pleads.
“I know exactly how you feel,” I tell him in mock empathy.
I pull a hundred from my wallet and drop it so it slowly flutters down to his lap.
“I don’t care, Henry, as long as you’re out of my house. Shelters in the city can get pretty crowded, but I’m sure you can find a McDonald's bathroom to clean yourself up, and maybe they’ll take pity on you and give you a job.”
Henry’s hands are stained with blood and dirt, and the half-moon crescents of his fingernails are black. “Please, Heath. Have some mercy. I’ve got nowhere to go.”
My foot connects with his face as I tug my leg from his grasp, but I pull back, not wanting him to contaminate my clothes.
“I might have shown you mercy at one time, Henry. I believe there was a point when I thought maybe we could have been brothers, but that time has come and gone. Now get out of my house.”
“Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’m begging you.”
If I were a lesser man, I could think of a few depraved tests I could put him through, but truth be told, Henry Shaw means so little to me that I don’t want to waste my time dealing with him.