Page 4 of Brewster

Sitting down, he tried to think if he had any cash on him, not wanting to move again for breaking out in a sweat. He did remember having about two hundred dollars on him but he’d gone out last night and had him a big meal. My god, it was wonderful to be waited on and have a steak dinner, too. That’s when he realized that he had about a fiver on him and nothing more. The good kind of beers were eight bucks a bottle nowadays, and he didn’t have that much. If he had to drink that nasty shit again, he was going to puke on himself. But he needed a drink, and that was going to have to do.

After getting back with his beer, glad when a twenty had been in his pocket so that he could have the better stuff, he did think about the fact that if he’d bought the cheap beer, he could have had four to just being able to have two but it was a no brainer, and to him, it was the principle of the thing.

There had been no one stirring at Calla’s apartment now for three days. Usually, she was up and around, going to that job she had by now. If she didn’t come out of there tomorrow, he was going to have to go up to her place and wrestle her out. He had things to do, and her sitting around on her lazy ass healing wasn’t working for him. She owed him money.

Calla didn’t really owe him shit. When his mother had died about six months ago now, everything had been left to his brother’s kid. Charles had been dead for about ten years now, which meant that it went directly to her rather than probate like it did. He could contest things then, but with her directly getting the money and house and the will mentioning that he didn’t get squat because of his dealings with a bad group of people, he couldn’t lie his way around that either. He finally pulled out the letter to read. No one was going to make him read anything on their time if he could get by with it. Stupid shithole more than likely was going to spell his name wrong too.

“Mr. Marshall.” The handwriting looked elegant. Not a word that he used all that much. But it looked like someone with a fancy hand had written. “More than likely from some old queer.”

“Mr. Marshall, I’m writing you to warn you—giving you full notice—that if you bother my wife, Calla Lily Marshall Smith, at any time going forward, I will hunt you down. Calla Lily has given me permission to harm you should you hurt her again, and that will hold me from killing you. But if she is hurt and unconscious, I will assume that once again you wished to kill her, and I will make you suffer in ways that will make you wish for death.

“I’m a very wealthy man who has nothing to do but to pamper my Calla Lily, and by that, I mean that keeping her safe is a priority to me. If you harm a single hair on her head, cause her any undue pain, I will kill you. If she tells me that you have stressed her in any way, I will kill you. I’m sure that you see a pattern emerging here. Leave her alone, or I shall not hesitate in making you nothing but fertilizer for someone’s yard.”

Then it was signed Brewster Smith with Calla’s signature under his. Wadding the paper up, he dug it out of the trash can to use it as proof when he had to kill the man himself. He had threatened him no less than four times, and he wasn’t going to put up with that. Crossing the street, he made his way to Calla’s place and went upstairs to her apartment. Pounding on the door, he would wait until she opened it, his fist curled up, and his anger just as hot as he could get it. He might think of himself doing a favor for the other man and kill her for him. He knew Calla and she wasn’t that big of a prize for anyone. Momma had always said that she was ugly. By god, he was going to make her less attractive with his—

“What the hell are you pounding on that door for?” He told the neighbor that he was looking for his niece. “Nobody lives there no more. Movers came in and helped them Goodwill people load up all her stuff and take it away.”

“She does, too, live here. Go back into your house and leave me be. Stupid cunt. I know where she lives.” She told him that she was going to get her ball bat and she’d show him what a cunt could do. When she went into her house, closing the door behind her, he pounded on the door again. “Calla, get your fucking ass here and open the door. I’m about as pissed off as I’ve ever been before. And what makes you think you can sic someone on me when I’m just trying to get what you owe me.”

“She don’t live here.” Another neighbor was yelling at him. “Damn it all to hell. If you wake my baby, you’re going to get anice ear ringing from me. You’ve been told twice now that she don’t live here no more.”

He heard the sirens then and was happy to be able to have someone else arrested. Just as he was turning to talk to the second neighbor, he was hit from behind with something hard. The second time it hit him in the back, he saw stars and hit the floor. Somebody was hurting him, and he didn’t like it.

When he woke up, he was in the emergency department on one of those hard-as-ass beds that weren’t nearly wide enough for a man his size. Not that he was fat, he told himself, but he wasn’t narrow either. Mother fuck. Someone was going to—lifting his arm to call a nurse, he couldn’t believe it when he figured out he was chained to the bed. This shit was getting old, and he was going to make sure someone paid for this. Instead of calling one of the nurses on the call button, he started yelling for someone to get their asses in there and undo him. His head was hurting. He was so pissed off.

“Shut up.” He eyed the woman who had come into the room where he was. “You beller like that again, and I’m going to make sure that the hits that you had coming to you were nothing. Shut your ever-loving mouth.”

“You can’t talk to me like that. I want you to take these off of me right now.” She said she wasn’t a cop, and they were the ones that put it on him. “Well? Get off your ass and get me one. I don’t like being chained like an animal.”

“Yet you act like one. Mr. Strouse is the one who called us when you started yelling at a closed door. Didn’t they tell you a bunch of times that she wasn’t there? I know they did. Then you went and woke up his baby girl. They’ve got enough going on there without you adding to it. Ms. Tailor is the one that hit you, and if’n I’d been here, I would have bashed in your empty skull had I been there.” She got close enough to him that he could count her nose hairs. That had him backing away from her. “Youmake one more peep before you’re released, then I’m going to find me a big male nurse and have them do a rectal probe on you. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He was terrified that she’d do just what she said, so he kept his tone down. “Where are the police that locked me down? If you don’t mind me asking you to find them for me, I’d appreciate it, please?”

He’d never groveled in his life, yet here he was, a grown assed man working the women in front of him like she was going to pull out a gun and shoot him in the nuts. And that was what he felt like, too, that she had his nuts in one of those fancy nutcrackers he would see at Christmas time.

~*~

Brew watched the man in the small bed. He’d been here since he woke up and bitching about things and didn’t think that he liked the man any better than he had before meeting him. He was repulsively fat, weighing in at he’d bet four hundred pounds. He dressed like a man who was half his weight, and that made him think that the man had no qualms about eating too much at every meal. He knew there was nothing wrong with the man that would have him being that heavy other than he just didn’t care.

He’d gotten a taste of the man when he’d heard about the incident at the apartment complex. Leaving word that someone would call him if he returned had been a good investment. Now all he had to do was to wait for him to screw up again, and he’d be out of his love’s hair. And he did love Calla Lily, too.

She’d been at his home for four days now. After making sure it was all right with her if he were to close out her other place, he donated all the things in the apartment to the Goodwill Store. Calla Lily had told him that there was nothing there but terrible memories, and she wanted to make new ones. He was fine with that and told her as much.

“Your house is very stiff, isn’t it?” He told her that was theproblem; it was just a place where he rested. “I’ve noticed that you have most of the house shut off. Is there a reason for that, too?”

“None. Other than the staff doesn’t need to clean those rooms and I had them close them off to avoid them. It’s worked out well for us.” She told him that other than Landon, his butler and man’s man, the other staff were useless. “They’ve been with me for so long that they are more than likely taking advantage of me. Yes, I’ll agree. But as I said, they’ve been with me for so long they’ve become a part of the house.”

“They’re a part of something all right. Did you know that Mary comes in and clocks in, then leaves only to return at five to clock out? She does this daily, I’m told.” He asked her what she did if not working for him. “As far as I’ve been able to see, she goes home and works there. Getting double the paycheck is putting a great deal of money in her pockets. The same goes for Olivia, who was trained by Mary and does the same thing. Only she doesn’t bother coming in at all but gets paid like the others.”

“I didn’t know that.” She nodded, he remembered, then pulled out a notebook and told him what all the staff was doing. The cook, she told him, was dead, and he’d been paying her family her wages for the last twenty-five years. “They’ve been collecting it because she was killed in some way that I would have been responsible?”

“No. She was robbing a church with her sister, who was also killed and was caught stealing. She only got about forty-five dollars and a bullet in her head when she thought it would be easy money like she’d been getting from you.” He sat down, thinking that he should do what she said and pay attention to his money. “Four months ago, you gave her a raise.”

“I’m guessing that Landon has told you all this.” She told him that he’d not wanted to, but she’d asked him. Thinking that there should have been more people working here. “He’s a good man.I’m assuming that he’s tried to tell me this before.”

“On several occasions.” Calla Lily sat down at the table with him, but not close enough for him to touch her. “You should be more careful with your money, Brew. I know that I have no room to talk about money, but mine was being stolen from me by a man who beat me up. Yours is being stolen right under your nose.”

“Are you planning to take me to the—never mind. That was a cruel question, and I don’t believe you have any interest in my money other than for me to keep it in my vault and bank.” She said that she was bored and needed something to occupy her mind. “I’m assuming that you went to Landon and asked him about the people working here. Thank you for that.”

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