31

Peter chewed the inside of his cheeks raw. It was better than grinding his teeth, he didn’t have strong teeth, plus it was an obvious sign. He sat back on Adam’s couch with his feet spread way out, drinking glass after glass of tap water, trying to stop his hands shaking from anger released adrenaline.

“Really?” Eunice said, with gleeful fascination.

“Oh yeah,” said Fargas, “I’ve been all over. Everywhere I go it always happens.”

“Well, uh,” she said, quickly glancing up and down at him, “you ought to lock yourself up.”

“It ain’t me, babe,” Fargas said, smiling.

Peter chewed the inside of his lip.

“These things happen,” Fargas continued. “They always happen. It happens to everybody and it’ll happen to you.”

“Yeah, but not soon I hope.”

“Aren’t you curious what’s on the other side?”

“I’ve always been fascinated by death, but I never wanted to get too close up to it. Not until I’m a feeble old hag.”

“Me? I’m pretty eager to find out what’s waiting after death, even if it’s nothing, you know? To know! … but, uh, I’m not that eager.”

They laughed. Peter chewed, then sipped.

“So death follows you around, huh?” Eunice said.

“In a way. Seen a lot of it. I used to think if I got away from the big city, hid out in the small towns I could escape it. Or at least most of it. Nothing doing. You go to some small town in Iowa to get away from big city life, big city death and BANG! First murder in twenty years.”

She leaned in and put a hand on his chest, “are you a serial killer, Mr. Fargas?”

He laughed, uneasily, but only from the flirtatious placement of the hand, not the accusation.

“Maybe,” he said, “maybe I have a double life I don’t know about. Better not spend the night with me, I kill in my sleep.”

CLANG!

Eunice and Peter exchanged death-ray stares. “Sorry,” Peter said, “glass slipped.”

“Yeah,” Fargas continued, “ain’t never seen a dead body though. They’re just always off in the background.”

***

Justin knew where they had gone. He could pinpoint from years of experience the exact alley the video had been shot in. He knew downtown exceptionally well, better than most. He thought about it the whole way down on the metro bus. If the man was not there, in the alley, he could most likely determine the area and route the man would most likely be found.

It took knowledge. Knowledge would win the day again. This was the lesson he was continually learning. Knowledge of downtown.

The busiest corners in the general vicinity of the alley, the busiest corners with the highest ratio of younger people. This was useful because on average, young people, and especially teenagers, were more likely to give away loose change to a bum, than say, the stressed out looking woman with her hair in a too tight bun in a brand-new ‘power outfit.’ He didn’t need a university study to tell him this, he knew from experience. He had street smarts.

Which were the busiest corners on the way to New Brixton park, otherwise known as ‘Krakhed Sentral,’ as the graffiti on the park sign attested.

Which way did the streets slope up and down.

The only thing that would throw off his careful calculation was if the man had a bicycle. That would throw the whole thing off.
But since he had accounted for it, Life’s Little Ironies ignored that speck of chance. The man was sitting against a wall right where Justin’s friends had left him in the alley.