When he was finished, Tow-Truck Eddie returned the vessels to their places, took the cup and knife to the bathroom and washed them seven times each, put everything in its place, and left the room that held the shrine. Still naked and now fully erect, he went down to the basement where he kept his weights and by candlelight he pushed his body to its absolute limit, clanking the barbells, pyramiding the weights so that he lifted heavier weights each time while decreasing the reps, keeping himself in the haze of the burn, loving the bite of lactic acid in his bulging muscles, watching the veins pop and harden, delighting in the shine of sweat on his skin. Twice he ejaculated while lifting, both times while imagining the death of the Beast, the demon in his sham of a child’s body, writhing and twisting in Tow-Truck Eddie’s powerful hands. Each time, at the point where his dreaming mind heard the snap of bones in the Beast’s throat, he came, spurting come in gooey ropes over his belly. Both times he stopped, washed himself, prayed for forgiveness, and did seven Our Fathers before going back to his weights.
At fifty Tow-Truck Eddie had a thirty-two-inch waist and at expansion his chest was sixty-eight inches around. His biceps taped out at twenty-four inches and his wrists at fourteen inches. In his bare feet he stood just over six feet six and on his weakest days he could bench-press 420 pounds in twenty-rep sets. He had always been strong, but never in his life had he been this strong, this blessedly powerful. He jogged upstairs to the second-floor shower and spent a half an hour under the hottest spray he could endure, soaping himself to a high lather, rinsing, soaping, rinsing, until the bathroom was totally fogbound. He toweled himself dry and dressed in clean white underwear, sweat socks, a crisp blue pair of work pants, and a starched work shirt. He pushed a ball cap down over his short blond hair, strapped a Buck folding knife to his belt, tucked a leather slapjack in his back pocket, tucked his feet into work shoes, and then grabbed his keys as he headed for the door.
The wrecker was parked behind his house and it sat there like a sleeping dragon. Eddie unlocked a big corrugated tool chest bolted behind the driver’s seat and removed several flexible magnetic signs that were blank and painted the exact color of the wrecker. Eddie placed the two biggest ones over each of the front doors, obscuring the name Shanahan’s Garage. He took two longer but thinner ones and placed them over the Shanahan clover logo on either side of the tow-truck’s boom. Then he fished in the box and removed a license plate, walked around behind the truck, and pulled off the existing plate, which was held in place by magnets, swapping it for the dummy plate. He knew that he might still be recognized, but with the smoked windows in the cab it wouldn’t be very likely, and if someone did…well, that’s a risk he was willing to take. God would allow him to succeed, or He wouldn’t. Satisfied, he relocked the toolbox and climbed behind the wheel. It was time again to hunt for the Beast.
(2)
Mike Sweeney was crouched behind the hallway railing, listening though the slats as Vic and his mom talked. Vic said that he would be out all day and when his mom asked him where he was going there was a sound that could have been a slap. Mike’s hands closed around the slats and gripped them knuckle-white, but he did not hear his mother crying so it must not have been a hard slap, just one of Vic’s perfunctory shots. Mike listened to his mom apologize for forgetting her place and then prattle on about how she was going to pack him a nice lunch. There was a space of time filled only by distant noises in the kitchen, and then the slam of the door as Vic left. He heard Vic’s car start and drive away. Mike rose from his listening post and went quietly down the stairs, pausing briefly to lean around and peer down the hall. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table pouring gin into her oversized teacup. It was not even noon, but Mike knew she’d be drunk by dinnertime, and passed out by eight.
He moved like a pale ghost down the hall, carefully opened the front door, and slipped out. His bike was around back, beside the garage. Mike had repaired the damage it had sustained when he was nearly run down on the highway. He walked it quickly down the street to the corner before climbing on. The effort of pedaling, even slowly, hurt. His cracked rib were still sore, though he had to admit it did hurt a lot less today than he thought it would, but he had all the bruises that Vic had painted on him with his fists, and every single one of those yelled at him as he started riding the bike up the hill toward the center of town. Except for the big bruise that should have been on his stomach, and wasn’t, but that sliver of awareness was stuck in another part of Mike’s subconscious, hidden away under the label
