One the nature of death; or, the world according to Tommy Darlington

I hate nice guys who do stupid things. Really stupid things.

Something sooo stupid that yanks them outta that Nice Guy category and stuffs ’em into Bad Guy territory, a dark place where unforgiving men with silent billions and a dark-adapted soul make one call that trickles down to my cell phone and wakes me up at some odd hour, that doggone mosquito buzzing in my ear. . . .

His house was 150 yards down and I inched along slowly as I could, feeling the heavy motor of TommyTaxi punch the asphalt. I wanted him to feel my sledgehammer roll into his ’hood, down into his lair, and right up into his evil bear-trap grin.

Didn’t want him to feel any fear.

Or run for his life.

Huh-uh, when a man fears you, his body is shot with mind-numbing chemicals that roadblock all pain highways, stopping those outlaw signals from reaching the brain and letting him know he’s about to get dumped into a meat grinder.

Fuck fear.

I wanted Tyreese “DaddyBoy” Glover to fully and completely feel, sense and experience each hammer-punch, elbow, stab and slice, and the thousand ripples of aftereffects and post-traumatic shocks and tremblors.

My final wish to the Universe was that every cylinder in his one-byte brain would be firing at 100% factory efficiency, so he could wholly focus on the full-on suffering, torture and punishment I was about to gift his sorry ass. . . .

Alfred screamed something unholy.

Water at the edge of the lake, in about 10 different places along it, slapped and splashed and churned, and then I noticed a dozen large alligators break free from invisible bonds and stroke out for the middle of the lake.

Bile rose in my throat. I knew exactly what I would see, how it would all go down, and still my eyes wouldn’t pull from the scene.

“Man’s gotta do things he don’t wanna do, Tommy.” Looked in my direction, sizing up my reaction again.

There wasn’t one. Hell, I was just happy he couldn’t slap me on the back again to punctuate his point.

I was a stone in that patch of pine forest out there in the middle of Florida fuckin’ nowhere. Palmettos and sappy trees. A hellhole to me. Jumping up and down inside myself, I steeled my skin and bones to the sight that broke next.

Alfred loosed a loud bellowing sigh and went under for a brief instant, then came up with a guttural yelp and then a long shriek that drove all the wildlife out of the trees, scattered the small birds and ground critters from the palmettos. His head thrashed side to side as one gator tore into an arm and death-rolled it off his torso in one rotation.

Others converged on whatever patch of the one-armed prey they could get into, tore off more flesh until he stopped screaming and gave one last wide-eyed look in our direction before going under the growing circle of crimson and Old Testament damnation. . . .

Cruised to an empty home for a six-pack and what promised to be a scorchin’ sunrise.

Woo-fuckin’-hoo.