The Killer in My Eyes Read Free Page A

personally couldn’t stand, but for which the public had an insatiable appetite. Jerry’s work had given rise to a new interest in contemporary art, especially the work of young artists. People were collecting again, money was circulating. It was almost like the good old days of Andy Warhol. And LaFayette had bagged one of the winning horses for his stable. That meant he had to take care of him, pamper him and feed him, just like a thoroughbred. It didn’t bother the dealer that Jerry’s ideas were fuelled by almost every kind of drug on the market. LaFayette was shrewd enough to be devoid of scruples, and Jerry adult enough to choose his own means of destruction. It seemed like a fair exchange. He would supply Jerry with whatever he wanted to put in his body, and as a reward, he would receive 50 per cent of everything that came out of his fucked-up head.
    LaFayette Johnson slipped the package into the pocket of the tracksuit he was wearing and turned right onto Water Street.
    The section of Brooklyn Bridge straight ahead of him was lit by the sun, but there wasn’t quite enough light yet to rescue Water Street from shadow. There were already cars on the bridge, and the low hum of morning traffic.
    Johnson turned to look back at his shiny new car, and thought of the distance he had put between himself and his poverty-stricken upbringing. Now he could finally afford all the toys he should have had as a kid.
    He was only seventeen when he had run away from the little town in Louisiana where he was born – a sleepy place where waiting seemed to be part of the inhabitants’ DNA. You waited for everything. Summer, winter, rain, sun, the passing of the train, the arrival of the buses. You waited for the only thing that would never arrive: life. The community of Three Farmers consisted of a few tumbledown houses around a crossroads, where the mosquitoes ruled and the only aspiration of the locals was a jug of cold lemonade out on the porch.
    There was his mother, grown old before her time, surrounded by the strong smell of Cajun cooking, and with stretchmarks even on the calves behind her knees. And there was his father, who conceived of the family only as something on which to vent his frustration and anger when he had been drinking. LaFayette Johnson had grown tired of fried potatoes and blows, and one evening when his father had once again raised his hand to him, he had broken the old man’s teeth with a baseball bat and run away, grabbing all the money he could find in that stinking hovel he’d never managed to call home.
    Farewell, Louisiana.
    It had been a long slow journey, but at the end of the road,
Hello, New York
.
    If he’d had a licence, he might have become a cab driver. Instead, he had been forced to do whatever he could, until he had struck gold. He had found work as an errand boy in a Chelsea gallery owned by an art dealer named Jeffrey McEwan – a middle-aged man, snobbish and slightly effeminate, always dressed in Savile Row suits.
    Christ, what a hypocrite you were, Jeffrey McEwan
.
    Although he was married, that faggot Jeff had an ass you could have driven an electric train-set through and flabby white skin the boy had never managed to touch without repressing a shudder of disgust. But Jeffrey was rich and he liked good-looking young men with dark skin. Although LaFayette preferred women, he had immediately understood that this could be a crucial turning-point in his life. It was a great opportunity and he had to be careful not to waste it. And so the game had commenced, a game of glances and silences, sudden advances and tactical retreats. After a few months of that, old Jeffrey McEwan was cooked and ready to serve. The climax had come when LaFayette had been caught naked in the shower in the bathroom of the gallery – just by chance, of course. The old queen had literally gone crazy. He had gone down on his knees in front of him, embraced his legs, and declared his love.
    LaFayette had lifted the