“Can’t.” He doesn’t even begin to argue with what I have said.
Jay glances at the wall, as if he can see through it. I can tell he is wondering what is going on next door, why it is so quiet. My nerves wind tighter. Please God, please God. Please. Or make it quick, at least. Don’t let her suffer.
Jay pushes the lock in and fastens the burglar chain. “Take your clothes off,” he says, no longer using my name. It is easier to kill people you have depersonalized. “Don’t worry,” he bizarrely adds. “I’m not going to do anything. I just have to make it look like something else.”
I glance up at the ceiling. He knows what I am thinking. He is pale and sweating as he opens a dresser drawer and pulls out several eyebolts and a heat gun, a red heat gun.
“Why?” I ask him. “Why them?” I refer to the two men I now believe Jay murdered.
“You’re going to screw these into the ceiling for me,” Jay tells me. “Up there in the crossbeam. Now get on the bed and do it and don’t try anything.”
He places the eyebolts on the bed and nods for me to pick them up and do what he orders. “It’s all about what becomes necessary when people get into something they shouldn’t.” He gets a rag and rope out of the drawer.
I stand where I am, just looking at him. The eyebolts gleam like pewter on the bed.
“Matos came here to find Jean-Baptiste and it took a little coaxing to know exactly what he had in mind and who gave him the order, which wasn’t what you think.” Jay takes off his leather jacket and drapes it over a chair. “Not the family, but a first lieutenant who doesn’t want Jean-Baptiste to start talking and ruin a good thing for a lot of people. One thing about the family…”
“Your family, Jay,” I remind him of his family and that I know him by name.
“Yeah.” He stares at me. “Fuck yeah, my family. We take care of each other. Doesn’t matter what you do, family is family. Jean-Baptiste’s a fuck-up, I mean, anybody can look at him and see that, and understand why he’s got his problem.”
I say nothing.
“Of course we don’t approve,” Jay goes on as if he is talking about a kid who is shooting out streetlights or drinking too much beer. “But he’s blood, our blood, and you don’t touch our blood.”
“Someone touched Thomas,” I reply, and I have not picked up the eyebolts or climbed up on the bed. I have no intention of helping him torment me.
“You want to know the truth? That was an accident. Thomas couldn’t swim. He tripped over a rope and fell off the dock, or something like that,” Jay tells me. “I wasn’t there. He drowned. Jean-Baptiste wanted to get his body a long way from the shipyard, away from other stuff going on there and didn’t want him identified.”
“Bullshit,” 1 reply. “Sorry, but Jean-Baptiste left a note with the body. Bon Voyage Le Loup-Garou. You do that when you don’t want to draw attention to something? I don’t think so. Maybe you better recheck your brother’s story. Maybe your family takes care of family. Maybe Jean-Baptiste’s an exception. Sounds like he doesn’t take care of family at all.”
“Thomas was a cousin.” As if that lessens the crime. “Get up and do what I say.” Jay indicates the eyebolts, and he is beginning to get angry, very angry.
“No,” I refuse. “Do what you’re going to do, Jay,” and I keep saying his name. I know him. I am not going to let him do this to me without my saying his name and looking him in the eye. “I’m not going to help you kill me, Jay.”
A thud sounds next door, as if something has turned over or fallen to the floor, and then an explosion and my heart lurches. Tears choke me and fill my eyes. Jay flinches and then his face is impassive. “Sit down,” he tells me. When I don’t comply, he comes closer and shoves me down on the bed as I cry. I cry for Lucy.