Born Bad Read Free Page A

A light would go on outside, a signal that a cab was needed. When a taxi pulled up, the doorman opened the back door for me. I thanked him and palmed a dollar bill into his hand.
    I told the cab driver where to go. He wrote the destination down on his trip sheet. When he pulled up in front of the club, I thanked him for the ride. I gave him a tip too.
    I walked the rest of the way. It was almost midnight before I arrived at his house, a big house in a fancy neighborhood. I went over the back fence. He didn't have a dog. I knew that from watching. I'd been watching a long time.
    The back door lock wasn't much. I slipped inside. He lived alone. It was easier for him to be himself that way.
    I moved toward the light. He was watching television. On the screen, it showed a little boy. The boy was…It wasn't television he was watching, it was a videotape.
    The same kind of videotape I knew he made of my son. The police had never found it, but I knew.
    I made a little noise so he'd turn around. He saw me then. He sat back in his chair, startled.
    "Wha…?"
    "You know who I am?" I asked him.
    "No. Look, if you want —"
    "It's you I want," I said quietly. "For what you did to my son. My son David. Remember?"
    Sweat broke out all along his hairline, but his voice was calm. "Look, I…I know who you are. I couldn't tell at first…in that bad light. I…don't blame you. Any father would be enraged if that sort of thing happened to his kid. But I was the wrong man. Come on, you remember—you were at the trial, for God's sake! It wasn't me. You know that. It wasn't me. It's a terrible thing, what happened to your boy. But it wasn't me. They all testified. That whole night, I was —"
    "I know where you were," I told him. "I'm there myself. Right now."

Anytime I want
     
     
    S he didn't answer my knock. I used the key she gave me to open the door. When I saw her lying on the bare hardwood floor, I knew he'd finally taken her. Like he always told us he would.
    I went next door, rang the bell. The people there called the police, like I asked. I didn't scare them, didn't panic. I was polite, like I always am.
    Two detectives came. I told them Denise was my sister. My big sister. They were all my big sisters, four of them. Denise was the baby girl, twenty-two years old when he took her.
    The cops asked me a lot of questions. It was okay—I'm used to questions. They asked me where I'd been, before it happened. That was the easy part—I work the night shift, plenty of guys at the plant saw me.
    I gave them the names: Fiona, Rhonda, Evelyn. And Denise. My four sisters. I have one brother, Frankie. He's sixteen. I wasn't worried about an alibi for him—he was in the last month of a one-year jolt with the state. Frankie's a big kid, and he's got a bad temper.
    I'm nineteen. I work nights, go to college in the daytime. Weekends, I'm a thief. A careful, quiet thief.

 
    Denise's face was all swollen, slash marks on her hands, trying to stop the knife before it went in the last time. All her clothes were off, thrown around the room. He left her like that.
    "Did you love her?" one of the detectives asked me.
    "I still love her," I told him.
    I went home, changed my clothes, put on a nice suit. I drove down to Pontiac. The guards like me there. I'm always polite, always respectful.
    They brought Frankie out, left us alone.
    I told him.
    "Don't kill him until I get out," he begged me, looking at me with those big dark eyes.
    "Can I count on you?" I asked him.
    "Count on me? He's dead, Fal. On my honor, he's dead. You just make sure you got yourself a place where you can be seen, first night I come out of here."
    Frankie calls me Fal—short for Falcon. Most of the kids in our club did. Because I was always watching. I leaned over close to him, talking quiet. "You remember, Frankie? Remember how it was…before we got out?"
    His face was chiseled stone, big hands clenched the table. Scars all across his knuckles.
    Our house. A terror zone. No