The Fury - Jason Pinter [95]
"I find that a little hard to believe. I mean..." I
motioned to the joint. Clarence laughed.
"Yeah, I used to do harder stuff. Crack. A little heroin
here and there. The weed's a cooling-down drug. I'll get
off it at some point." He took another long, deep, drawnout puff, then smiled lazily. "Just not yet."
"The sins of the father," I said under my breath.
"What's that?"
"Nothing. So do you remember when your father
was killed?"
"Remember?" Clarence said, coughing into his fist.
"I was the one that found him."
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"You're kidding," I said.
"Nope. Thursday nights I had me a pickup game of
basketball in the park with some other kids. I was about
six-two by high school, and could handle it like a dream.
I thought if I kept growing I could be another Magic
Johnson, the kind of big guy who had the skills of a
point guard. Then one Thursday I came home. Picked
up one of those ice-cream cones in a wrapper, you know
with chocolate around the cone and nuts in the vanilla?
Carried it home with me, went upstairs, first thing I see
is blood on the carpet. I couldn't see my dad, that's how
big the puddle was. He was lying in the living room, the
puddle had spread into the hallway. I go in there, and
he's facedown, arms above his head like he was trying
to fly and fell from the sky."
"You saw the words?" I said.
"Yeah. Just barely, but they were in the carpet. Lucky
for us we had an off-white carpet, otherwise I might
have missed it. The Fury. That's what my dad wrote
while he was dying on our floor."
"I can't even imagine," I said.
"No," Clarence said, putting the joint into an ashtray.
"You can't. The cops told me they used a silencer. It
took a few years until I knew what that meant."
"My brother was killed the same way," I said.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then I said, "So once you
came out and saw him, you called the cops?"
"No. First I tried to wake him up," Clarence said. He
spoke slowly, the words rusty like they hadn't been
spoken in a long time. His voice was soft yet gritty, and
it chilled me to the bone. "I turned him over. The back
of his head was almost gone. I remember seeing bone
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and brain on the floor, but I was a kid. I figured there
was always a way to put someone back together. I
turned him over, saw that glassy look in his eyes, the
same look you see on the mannequins in department
stores. And I held my father's head in my hands and
tried to get my daddy to wake up. Finally a neighbor
heard me crying and called the cops. She actually
reported it as a domestic disturbance, thinking my dad
was beating me. Then when they came in and saw
him...man, that's a picture that'll never go away."
I was almost afraid to ask, but I said, "What hap
pened then?"
"The cops came and took me away. I stood outside
and watched a whole mess of them go into our building,
wearing gloves, carrying all sorts of equipment to bag
and tag my dad. I'd seen bodies before. Even if my dad
was straight, that's a dirty game, and some of his friends
didn't play the same way. It's not the same when it's
your kind. Whether you love 'em or not, when it's your
own flesh and blood lying there, something just dries
up inside of you. Drains the life out of you."
Inside, I knew how Clarence felt. Only to a much
smaller degree.
"Then I got sent to foster care. Lived with a nice old
family until I turned eighteen. Moved out, went to
school and never seen them since."
"You graduate?" I asked.
"Cum laude," Clarence said. "I don't like to keep up
appearances, but this is my crash pad. My real place of
business is in Gramercy."
"What kind of work do you do?" I asked.
"Graphic design," he said.
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277
"That's funny," I said. "Do you know a woman
named Rose Keller?"
"Sounds familiar, why?"
"Friend of my brother's. Also works as a graphic
designer."
"Hmm..." Clarence tapped a finger against his lower
lip. "Think I might have smoked with her once or twice.
Or maybe more." He smiled.
"She's kicked her habits.