Read Online The Wrong Man by Matthew Louis - Free Book Online Page B

of real sleep and every minor irritation was sending me into a spiral of violent impulses.   Maybe if I had seen Owen’s mother first I would have found a way to rationalize skulking up behind her and kicking her in the center of the back, sending her sprawling on the sidewalk and then spitting on her, cursing her for coupling with lowlifes and spawning a rapist like Owen Ferguson.
    I stood out of my car and felt the sunlight on my back and the heat rising off the street. I took off my shades and threw them on the seat and gently closed the driver’s door. The sky was a clear, blinding blue and plants and lawns were deep green. The springtime weather made even this street pretty. There was a murmur of activity in the neighborhood, kids shouting, cars giving prolonged exhales as they passed, but nobody noticed me.
    I felt strange. Not afraid anymore, but high. Exhilarated. Almost in a dream state. I now could see what made these thugs tick, how they did the unthinkable without a moment of hesitation, and how it could become addictive. I wiggled my fingers in the metal holes and closed my fist on the knife-handle grip of the brass knuckles. I lifted my eyes to Ramón’s back as he ascended the tall, sun-bleached staircase of the chipped Victorian, and I started after him.
    He was just pushing the heavy, wide front door open when he became aware of my footsteps clomping up behind him and deigned to turn around. He managed to look bored as he faced me, and if, when I raised my fist, his eyes widened behind his black sunglasses, I’ll never know.
    I hurled the knuckles into his cheek, harder than I had planned, and his face seemed to pucker around the point of impact. Blood was already gooping from his skin as he toppled. He turned a little and landed on top of his plastic grocery bag halfway into the relatively dark room, where I could now hear a TV going.
    He was starting to rise and I kicked him viciously in the seat of his factory-faded jeans, scooting him forward a foot. My voice came out as a growl. “Did you rape her, you fucking piece of shit?!?” One part of my mind stood in judgment, observing quietly, telling me that I was unhinged and I had better be careful. I tried to listen to it, even as I leered like a madman and my muscles twitched with the impulse to kill a wounded thing.
    I bent, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the light inside the house, and took Ramón’s shirt collar in my left hand. I had the knuckles elevated and I felt like I could collapse his skull with one punch. As my pupils dilated I saw that Ramón’s cheek was torn wide open and the blood was coursing steadily with his pounding heart, washing down his face like water over a rock in a creek. His shades were off and his green eyes were fixed on me with an expression of utter stupidity, like a run-over dog flopped onto the hot roadside, taking its last rapid breaths with its intestines glistening in front of it.
    “Answer me you little punk! Cocksucker! Answer me! You go to my apartment a couple nights ago? Huh? You and Owen?”
    I became aware of whimpering and glanced up at a little Mexican girl staring at me from the couch. She was wearing a white nightgown and had bright green eyes. She had been watching Jerry Springer and the man’s smug, asinine fucking repartee and his perverted good humor made me want to projectile vomit.
    “Dude!” Ramón finally said from the floor, his eyes alive again, dazzled by recognition. “Sam! Hey! Schuler! What the fuck, Sam?” He squirmed but made no real effort to get his shirtfront free of my grip.
    And then the mother came in and raised a scream that made me want to leap over Ramón and knock her cold. “WHAT’S GOING ON! OH MY GOD! WHAT IS THIS?” She was worse than the picture of her I carried in my head, because she had obviously been asleep in some musty corner of the house. She wore no pants, just a huge purple T-shirt with some grotesque sparkled design on it. Her legs were skinny, paper