Capture by Roger Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

her shoulder like she’s going to the gym.
    Boogie, still looking hopeful, tries to catch her eye but she ignores him and walks out. Vernon follows, stands on the sidewalk under the dead neon, watching her cross the deserted street, lighting up a smoke as she walks, disappearing into the dark lobby of her apartment block.
    The barman, the cleaner—almost unrecognizable in jeans and a beret—and the last of the girls fade into the night. Boogie comes out last and Costa locks up from inside. The tik -head flaps up his hoodie and takes off down the sidewalk, toward his nasty little Ford Escort rusting under a streetlight.
    “Boogie,” Vernon says.
    The runt stops and turns. “Ja?”
    “Slow down, my brother. You and me gotta have a talk.”
    Vernon sees Boogie tense and knows he’d be no match for him in a footrace. Fixes a smile on his face and holds up a hand. “Relax, man. I wanna talk business.”
    “Ja?”
    “Ja, ja.” Vernon catches up with him, outside a construction site, an apartment block that has been gutted and is being transformed into low-rent offices and stores. “I hear you the man to talk to if I want some good shit?”
    “For sure, Vernon. You know me.”
    “Ja, ja, I know you.” Vernon puts an arm around the skinny man’s shoulders and eases him off the sidewalk, behind a wall of corrugated sheeting. He catches the burnt plastic stink of tik on Boogie’s body as he grabs him by the throat, lifting him onto tiptoe with his left hand. “I know you been selling weed to Dawn.”
    The tik -head tries to speak, can’t find his voice, so he shakes his head. Vernon winds up a right hook, brings it from low down, all his weight behind it, and he feels face bones cracking under the blow.
    Boogie sprawls on his back on the cement floor, like some rags thrown in the trash. Vernon goes straight in with a boot to the guts. Air comes out Boogie’s nostrils, and he holds himself, curling like a worm, too winded to cry out.
    It had been Vernon’s plan to scare him, hurt him just enough to get him honest again, but then he sees his father when he looks down at Boogie, caught in a spill of streetlight: the glazed eyes, the filthy teeth, the prison artwork. Feels that old pain. And righteous fucken anger.
    Channels that anger, as he grabs the hoodie and pulls it up, stretching it tight over Boogie’s head. He smashes the piece of shit’s skull against the graffiti-scarred wall. It makes a muffled thud and he hears the fucker groan. Feeble hands grab at his wrists. Next time he batters the head against the bricks he feels something give way under the cloth, like a rotten melon in a string bag, and the hands sag to the floor.
    Vernon gets a groove going, battering away like he is trying to knock a hole through the wall, till the skull is all spongy beneath his fingers.
    He releases the pulped head and lets it fall to the floor with a moist slap. Puts two fingers to the tik -head’s throat. Nothing.
    Vernon sits a moment, slowing his breathing. Feels something wet and sticky on his hands and his face, realizes the hoodie slipped down while he was doing his percussion thing, and Boogie’s blood has sprayed like a power shower.
    Vernon drags Boogie’s body farther into the construction site, leaves it behind a pile of builder’s sand. He wipes his hands on the dead man’s jeans and stands in the shadows, waiting until a taxi rattles by, then he limps to his car.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
     
     
    Sunny tugs at Exley’s boardshorts, saying something about her boat in the water. Her milky child-smell comes to him before he opens his eyes to the darkness, before his brain allows him to recall what happened the evening before. Instinctively he reaches for her, the feel of her skin already on his fingertips before reality sucker-punches him and he sits up, fighting through panic to find air.
    The room filled with Sunny’s toys and clothes, her scent rising from the pillow, is too much for him to bear and he flees