Urge to Kill

Marty turned from his task and saw his mother, Alma.

Of course he hadn’t been able to clean his arms and hands completely of blood. Not that Alma wouldn’t have found blood, anyway. She always found something wrong.

That night, after Marty was in bed, she sighed and put down the Bible she’d been reading. He heard the faint squeaking of her chair’s wooden rockers stop as she stood up from it.

She didn’t delay. She came into the bedroom and yanked the T-shirt Marty slept in off him so hard that it tore. Then she took one of Carl’s belts to Marty, and, as usual, Carl did nothing to stop her.

“You want the blood of the beast on you?” she asked, over and over as she lashed Marty, who was now wearing only his jockey shorts.

“No’m,” he said, each time she asked, but she continued to strike with the belt, skillfully turning it at the end of some of the strokes so the edge of the leather cut flesh.

“I’ll give you blood!” she said. “The Lord saith to give them that sins plenty of blood. I’ll beat an’ beat till you’re washed in the blood of the lamb, and you’ll be pure!”

When she was exhausted, she dropped the belt and staggered out of the bedroom, leaving behind Marty’s lasting memory of his mother, a hunched, glum figure seen from the back, topped with a tangled mass of hair, trudging away from him.

Carl brought in the bottle of bourbon he’d been sipping from and used some of the liquor for antiseptic, which he applied with what was left of the T-shirt Alma had ripped off Marty.

“Woman’s got her scripture kinda misspoken,” Carl said, dabbing with the saturated cloth as Marty gritted his teeth in pain.

“All in all,” Marty said, “I like your religion better.”

“Our religion,” his father said, making sure there was plenty of alcohol on the welts he was treating. “Gonna kill us both, what she’s gonna do. I think she’s puttin’ roach poison in my whiskey. It don’t taste right. Hasn’t for a while. An’ it appears there’s some poison missin’ from the bottle out in the barn.”

“No call for roach poison in the winter,” Marty said.

His father nodded. “An’ my gut most times feels like it’s on fire.”

Marty said nothing, trying not to whine as the alcohol contacted the welts.

“Woman’s crazy,” Carl muttered as he applied aid. “Somethin’s gotta be done, is what. Somethin’s gotta be done.”

Marty knew there was no need to answer. It wasn’t the first time for this. It was something he’d gotten used to, as much as you could say anyone ever got used to serious whalings with a belt. Marty could absorb pain without complaint, when he knew he must. And he knew this was one of those times, and that it would happen again.

This was family ritual.

44

New York, the present

Quinn and Zoe had just left D’Zello’s Ristorante and were walking slowly along Broadway in the heat. He hadn’t tried to talk to her at lunch about what was bothering him. If it led to an argument, he didn’t want it to be where everyone could hear them.

They were moving faster than the traffic, which was backed up because one lane was closed for construction. Wooden sawhorses and yellow caution tape were everywhere, but it was impossible to tell what exactly was being done. Whatever it was involved a lot of digging, though no one could be seen at present doing work of any sort. Now and then a frustrated driver would lean hard on his horn. A siren yowled deafeningly and quickly faded, as if an emergency vehicle was going like hell a block over. Quinn knew it was probably bogged down in traffic and the driver was venting his frustration.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” he asked, as he strolled beside Zoe toward where his car was parked illegally with an NYPD placard on the lowered sun visor. A warm breeze kicked up, and he could feel the grit of construction dust on his teeth.

“About lunch?” she asked.

“You’re the psychoanalyst,” he said. “You think that’s what I’m asking about?” Immediately he regretted the tone of his own voice; it was almost as if he were interrogating a suspect.

But damn it, she asked for it.

Or had she? Maybe he’d misinterpreted her words and facial expression.

After four more, slightly slower steps, she said, “What are you asking?”

“When we were together this morning and I joked about how I tended to get a phone call about a murder after we’ve had sex, the look on your face suggested something had crossed your mind.”

“I’m that transparent?”

He smiled. “ ’Fraid so.”

They walked silently for a while. A hybrid bus accelerated away from a stop in the street alongside them, leaving a strong scent of environmentally proper exhaust. A new smell for the olfactory stew of New York.

“I hesitated mentioning what I thought,” Zoe said, “because it’s probably meaningless, and if I told you about it there might be unnecessary trouble.”

“Should you be the judge of that?”

“Maybe. There’s also a professional obligation.”