Ugly As Sin (7 page)

He fell to one knee beneath a shower of broken glass and foul-smelling water.

“Aww, shit!” said a voice that seemed to come from a million miles away at first. “Not
you
! What have I
done
?”

Nick found his way to his feet again. It seemed to take an hour to get there. Broken glass crunched under his weight and the drenched carpet made squishing sounds as he turned to face his attacker. He ran one hand over his buzzcut, and his fingers came away smeared with blood, dirty water, and slimy strings of algae. A gritty rainbow of pink, blue, and purple pebbles was stuck to his palm.

Nick flicked a dead goldfish off his shoulder, and his already-mangled features twisted even further, into a scowl of disbelief.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

Another dead fish went
pop!
beneath his boot.

“You hit me with an
aquarium
?”

Nick’s attacker wore nothing but a pair of cut-off jean shorts and enormous plastic-framed glasses that magnified his eyes to cartoonish proportions. His hair fell to his shoulders in a mullet the color of old pennies. His ribs were visible above a sunken stomach that hinted of malnourishment. A few blotchy gray tattoos on his chest and arms resembled some flesh-eating disease that had decided after a little while that this guy just wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Oh, Jeez...Jeezus, I’m...sorry,” he stammered. His teeth were crooked and yellow.

He bolted for the doorway.

Nick lunged for him, but his reflexes weren’t what they used to be. Not to mention the fact that he’d just had a fully-stocked fish tank dropped on his dome. He could feel the cuts in his scalp opening and closing with every move he made, like a hundred miniature mouths scolding him for coming here in the first place.

He staggered out of the room, saw a blur of flesh and denim fleeing through the front door.

Concussion or no concussion, no way was he gonna let this crazy fucker out of his sight.

Nick took off after him.

†

He stumbled out the front door and down the porch steps—his bad knee buckled on the last one, but by some miracle he didn’t go down—just in time to see the guy’s bony ass clearing the back corner of the house.

Blood and dirty water dripped from Nick’s earlobes, down his chin. The evening’s cool breeze raised a rash of goosebumps on his wet skin. He fought to keep up, but his sense of balance was off-kilter, and his quarry had gotten a head start of at least a hundred feet.

The guy glanced back over his shoulder before plunging into the woods at the rear of the property.

Nick followed. Low-hanging branches slapped at him like the hands of jilted ex-lovers. Briars tore at his arms.

Then something caught the big man’s eye up ahead. A glint of sunlight off metal.

As he drew closer, he could see what it was: a crooked mobile home in the middle of the woods.

“I just wanna talk to you, fella!” Nick shouted. “Will you hold on a damn second?”

The guy glanced back again, tripped. Ate a faceful of forest floor. He wasted no time getting back to his feet, but in the meantime Nick closed the distance between them by half.

The trees thinned out. Nick followed his quarry onto a plot of red-brown earth adjacent to a corner of that cow pasture he had driven by earlier. In the center of the clearing sat a small green and white singlewide. Looked like it might blow away if someone let loose a powerful sneeze in its vicinity. Its battered aluminum body was speckled all over with patches of rust. Leaning against one side of the trailer was a mud-spattered moped; a dented yellow helmet hung from its handlebars.

Between the east end of the mobile home and the pasture’s barbed-wire fence sat an old doghouse. Judging from the leaf-filled food bowl in its doorway, it had been abandoned for quite some time.

Nick slowed, but continued across the yard. Fought the urge to wince from the pain throbbing through his left knee.

The skinny man paused before a stack of milk crates that were the trailer’s makeshift front steps. He turned to face Nick, and his mouth fell open as if he wanted to say something. But he didn’t.

Nick held one hand out toward him. “Easy, now. I just wanna talk.”

The stranger glanced up at the front door of his trailer. Back at Nick. The door. Nick.

“You just wanna talk?” His sunken chest heaved in and out, in and out. “Promise you’re not gonna hurt me?”

“Make another move like you did at the house, I will defend myself,” said Nick. “Otherwise, I won’t lay a hand on you.”

The man’s bony shoulders slumped. “Hell. Ain’t like I got anywhere to go from here. You might as well come on in.”

He climbed the milk-crate steps, motioned for Nick to follow.

“Welcome to my humble commode, Mr. Bullman. I know it don’t look like much, but it’s home.”

†

The trailer’s foundation creaked and groaned beneath them like some slowly-dying beast. Nick prayed it would hold his weight. Wasn’t too keen on his odds.

The place smelled like mildew, marijuana, cigarettes, and beer. Draped across the back wall of the living room was a massive skull-and-crossbones flag. Beneath the flag sat a babyshit-yellow sofa. Dog-eared
Hustler
and
Heavy Metal
magazines covered the surface of a crooked coffee table, along with several empty beer cans, a pack of rolling papers, and an overflowing ashtray shaped like a steer skull. A short bar constructed of cheap particleboard separated the living room from the kitchen. Leaning against the end of the bar was a stereo system with most of its knobs missing and speakers that looked as if they had been mauled by mountain lions.

Nick couldn’t help what he was thinking as he took in his surroundings. This place made his shithole apartment back in Memphis look like the Taj Mahal.

He turned to see the skinny man rummaging through a mountain of dirty clothes in one corner of the living room.

Any worries he might have had about the guy whirling on him with a weapon in hand vanished from his mind as quickly as they came. Despite the stunt with the fish tank, he was pretty sure this fellow was harmless. He could break the weirdo in half if he wanted. Throw him for a mile with little effort. Besides, the other man was so consumed right now with whatever he was doing, it was as if Nick wasn’t even there.

He picked up a pair of crusty-looking jeans, tossed them aside.

Next a pair of brown-streaked underwear flew through the air, landed atop the porn rags on the coffee table.

Nick crossed his arms, raised one gnarled eyebrow. “You wanna tell me what’s going on? And how the hell do you know my name?”

“Wait, I think this is it!” The guy pulled a black T-shirt from the pile of dirty clothes, turned it inside-out. MOTORHEAD, read the logo on the front. “Shit...I know it’s in here somewhere!”

Yet another unwashed article of clothing landed on the floor at Nick’s feet. He stepped back, so it was no longer touching the toe of his boot. Was that a plus-size
corset
?

“Bingo!”

These days, Nick Bullman went through life with a drooping, lipless mouth that resembled nothing so much as a razor-slit in a piece of raw meat. But he couldn’t help himself: both corners of that slit curled upward into a ghastly grin when he saw what the skinny man had been so eager to show him.

A skull-faced figure leered at him from the front of the shirt. Its hair hung to its waist, and its muscular arms were raised in victory. The demon stood in the middle of a wrestling ring consumed by flames.

The skinny man flipped the shirt around.

THE WIDOWMAKER ATE MY SOUL!!! read the slogan on the back, above a list of cities and tour dates.

“I was
there
, man. Louisville, Kentucky. Front fuckin’ row! I even got some o’ your blood on me when Father Ivan Ruffstuff threw you outta the ring durin’ your Thumbtacks-and-Broken-Glass Brawl! It was the greatest night of my
life!
”

Nick barely stifled the deep chuckle that threatened to slip out of him. “What’s your name, fella?”

“Leon. My name’s Leon.” The guy pointed at Nick with one long, filthy-nailed finger. “And you’re Nick Bullman, A.K.A. the Widowmaker.”

“How about you just call me Nick for now?”

“Nick. Right. You got it.” The guy bounced on his heels like a hyperactive child waiting to climb aboard his favorite amusement park ride. “Melissa said you was her pop, but I thought she was pullin’ my dick. I never woulda th—”

“You know Melissa?” Nick interrupted him.

“I mean, we never talked too much, but I’d see her comin’ and goin’. Man, I sure am sorry for hittin’ you like that. You know your head’s still bleedin’? I wish I had some Band-Aids. But I don’t.”

“I’ll live,” said Nick.

“I’m so stupid! I finally get to meet you, and I fuck it up. I can’t do nothin’ right!”

“Forget it. That’s not important right now. Leon, I need you to tell me—”

“You don’t understand, dude. I was your number one fan! I bought all your videos, owned every action figure. I even had the one they discontinued, with your upside-down-cross makeup? Too bad my dog got hold of it. We had this weiner dog when I was a kid, he died chokin’ on it. That thing’d probably be worth, like, a million dollars now! The toy, I mean, not the dog. One time when I was in junior high, my old man beat me up so bad I had to learn how to write left-handed, after he found out I stole thirty bucks outta his wallet. It was worth the ass-whuppin’, though. I needed the dough so I could join your fan club.”

Nick had reached the limits of his patience. “I’m flattered, Leon. I am. But I need to talk to you about the night Eddie Whiteside was murdered. About what happened to Melissa’s daughter. You were their closest neighbor. Maybe you saw something that night?”

Leon appeared deeply wounded by Nick’s apathy toward hearing more tales of his lifelong Widowmaker worship. But was there something
else
in his expression? Nick was quite sure he saw
fear
in the other man’s eyes as well, at the mention of Eddie’s murder.

“First things first, I need to know what you were doing over there. That house is private property. Not to mention a crime scene, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Leon said nothing for the next minute or so. He just stood there, gnawing at his dirty fingernails. His jittery gaze shot toward the door as if he was considering making another run for it.

Finally, he pulled the Widowmaker shirt over his bony torso and gave a defeated sigh.

“I need a smoke. How about we take a load off, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

To which Nick replied, “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

†

The kitchen’s linoleum floor might have once been white; now it was piss-colored, scuffed and sticky. A small card table sat in the middle of the room, two folding chairs on either side of it. The tabletop was littered with old fast-food wrappers, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans.

Leon plucked a pack of cigarettes off the bar. Slid a Zippo lighter from the ass pocket of his shorts, lit up. “Can I get you a cold beer?”

He said “cold beer” as if it were one word—
coldbeer
.

“Why not,” said Nick.

The refrigerator rattled and quaked as Leon opened it up. He scrounged around in there so long Nick started to wonder if he had climbed inside of it to hide. Taped to the fridge’s door was a wrinkled centerfold: a red-headed woman with a lazy eye lay spread-eagle on the floor of an auto-repair shop; with one pink-nailed hand she was inserting a small wrench into a place normally reserved for tools of a more sterile nature.

At last, Leon tossed his hero a can of Milwaukee’s Best.

He plopped down into one of the dented metal chairs at the table.

Nick sat across from him.

They sipped at their coldbeers for a minute or two.

Suddenly, Leon erupted with a shrill noise that was part lunatic giggle, part whooping redneck cheer. “Pinch me, ’cause I gotta be dreamin’. The Widowmaker is sittin’ in my kitchen!”

He knocked over his beer. It foamed out on the table. He blushed, set the can upright in time to salvage half of it.

Nick said, “You know those days are long gone, right? I’m not the Widowmaker anymore.”

“You’ll always be ’Maker to me, man. The greatest grappler who ever lived!”

“I appreciate that. But—”

“I coulda killed them sons-a-bitches for what they did to you. I followed your recovery in the rasslin’ mags. Kept up with the trial too, after you choked out McDouchebag. Man, that was awesome!”

“It wasn’t as ‘awesome’ as you think,” said Nick. “I lost my cool. It cost me everything.”

Leon puffed on his cigarette, waved one skinny arm around his home. “Yeah, well. It can’t be worse than this, can it?”

Nick finished off his beer. Crushed the can in one hand. “You wanna tell me what you were looking for back at the house?”

Leon made a face like he had bitten into something sour. His bloodshot eyes looked larger than ever behind his glasses. Nick could hear him grinding his teeth.

“No more bullshit, Leon. Time to start talking. Now.”

“It’s kinda embarrassin’.”

“I won’t judge.”

“I got this problem, see. A monkey on my back.”

“You were looking for drugs,” said Nick.

Leon hung his head, exhaled smoke through his nose.

Nick sat back, allowed him to tell his story even when he wanted to put the guy in a full-nelson headlock and roar:
Would you get to the fucking point?

“Two years ago, my old lady walked out on me. I was a wreck. We’d been together for six years. I was workin’ for this septic tank company, always came home smellin’ like other people’s shit. Vonda hated it, said there had to be something better out there. I guess she found him. Last time I seen her, she’d hooked up with this Mexican fixes lawnmowers for a livin’.

“Wasn’t long after she dumped my ass I started messin’ around with meth. I ain’t proud of it, but it’s true. I quit the shit-tank gig, started workin’ graveyard over at the plastics plant. I was pullin’ double shifts, thought maybe I could save up some money and buy Vonda back. I tried to tell myself at first that I was just snortin’ the stuff to stay awake on the job—one time I didn’t sleep for
twelve days straight
, hoss—but the truth is, when I was tweakin’ I didn’t have a care in the world. Nothin’ mattered anymore except where that next bag o’ buzzard dust was comin’ from.”