Fantastic Metropolis

“She better get back soon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Soon.”

He picked the bottle up again. His eyes closed and I came at him with the knife. I brought it down and it clanked off the bottle, just then lowered. His eyes widened. He grabbed my wrist. “What’s the big idea, kid?”

He squeezed and the knife dropped to the floor.

“I won’t let you,” I said.

“Wh—what?”

“Have her.”

He smiled sloppily. His face ran with whiskey and water. The smell of him made me gag.

“That’s funny. Have her. I just . . . ”

He had let go of my hand. He was doubled over, now. Breathing hard.

“You let me know when she gets back, kid.”

“Where’s my dad?”

“Ha. Where’s yer mom?” he said into his knees.

He stayed that way. Doubled over. I picked the knife up and sat, Indian style, in the hallway. Watching him. This man who had made my parents small. This man who had come to have my mother. I would not let him! But he did not move. He stayed doubled over a while. Finally he slid out of the chair and lay on the floor, a big curled up lump with a fat belly. I did not see the blood beneath his jacket. I did not know it when he stopped breathing and died there, shot through the gut, bleeding to death in our living room.

I waited for dad to come home. This would make dad angry. This man coming in the middle of night to have mom. I imagined my dad coming through the door. Big again. Hard baseball catching hands. Hard no-wince face.

He would set things right.

Now he would be angry.

 

My dad was dead.

He’d broken into a rich man’s house, up in the Northern foothills. He and Harley. Half drunk, doped up on cocaine. The owner, a retired Albuquerque sheriff, a man who wore cowboy hats and wide turquoise-studded belts, woke up to the sound of the two of them crashing around down there. Descending the stairs calmly, in darkness, with his Colt Peacemaker he saw two shadowy men, carrying his television set out through the door. They were laughing, and one of them was saying, “Shh. Shh. Cut it out.”

The man fired two shots.

The first hit my dad in the back of the head, killing him instantly and knocking the sized red baseball cap into the air with a small round hole in its wool front, just above the brim.

The second hit Harley in the back, just to the left of his spine. He ran screaming out of the house. He drove his car swerving through downtown Albuquerque, losing blood, vacating his bowels on the seats. Half a block from our doublewide he drove the car into a ditch. He left a clear trail of blood from the car to our house, where he expired a few hours later, under my watchful eye. Waiting for my mother to come home, so that she could drive him to the hospital.

The warehouse where my dad worked was a front. They shipped stolen property out to points all over the country. Some of it was burgled from houses, but most was stolen from other warehouses and off the backs of trucks. It was a lucrative business, but it was shut down after the police found Harley dead on our indoor-outdoor carpet, and discovered where he and my father worked.

I knew none of this.

I kept expecting dad to come through the door and put an end to my vigil. But it was the cops who came, early in the blue desert morning. I was surprised but it was all right because I liked cops. They were big men who talked loud and who always, always seemed angry. They tousled my hair and told me what a good, brave kid I was. They gave me a small plastic badge to replace my dead dad.

I still have it.

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“Catch” is a new story by Ray Nayler that’s also an extract from Crimewave 7: The Last Sunset. Other contributors include James Sallis, Muriel Gray, Christopher Fowler, Marion Arnott, Steve Mohn, Debbie Moon, Mat Coward, Antony Mann, Tim Casson, John Grant, Gary Couzens, and Stephen Volk.