DAVID STUDIED HIS dwindling stack of playing cards. He flipped the topmost card over, revealing an eight of diamonds. Walter countered with a nine of clubs and snatched them both with a small cackle. David rotated his head in a figure-eight motion, working out the kinks in his neck. The front seat of a car was hardly conducive to playing cards, necessitating he hold his head at an awkward angle to observe the action. A pizza box, its contents long since devoured, provided a workable playing surface, albeit one regularly upset by the tectonic shifts of Walter’s hefty thighs.
“This game is so stupid,” David observed.
“You’re just mad ‘cause you’re losing.”
David scratched the back of his neck. “It’s war. Everybody loses.”
“Don’t give me that hippie noise. Turn over your damn card.”
“I wasn’t being poetic,” David said, turning over a seven and scooping up Walter’s five. “I just mean because it’s such a shitty game.”
Walter flipped over a nine, ceded it to David’s jack. “You’re the one who didn’t want to play poker.”
“Never got the knack.” David and Walter put down simultaneous tens. Walter cocked his elbow and circled his forearm in a chug-a-lug motion, chanting “War! War! War! War!” Sighing, David counted out three cards and turned over a fourth. A king. He looked from it to Walter’s four, and with a small smile raked all ten cards into his pile.
Walter’s moustache twitched. “Stupid fuckin’ game.”
David paused to glance out the windshield at Ballaro’s house, visible half a block down the road. They’d camped here since a little before sunset, smoking cigarettes and keeping casual watch. The evening grew cold, and with the engine shut off to conserve gas and the windows rolled down to vent the worst of the smoke, a chill soon crept into the cab, draping its heavy arms over their shoulders in a gesture of presumptuous overfamiliarity. A steady wind rattled the twining branches of the young maples that demarcated the strip of no-man’s-land between street and sidewalk.
David clamped a cigarette between his teeth and lit it, cupping the newborn embers to block the breeze. The cider-sweet smell of autumn mingled with the abrasive tang of burned tobacco. He leaned out the window and exhaled a zephyr of smoke into the mottled black firmament. As he watched his latest breath dissipate, his eyes were drawn from the fading smoke to the full moon hanging overhead. It looked ugly and bloated, an egg sac bulging with the night’s sinister offspring. Christ, David, get a grip.
Walter followed David’s gaze, motioned with his chin towards the Ballaro house. “You really think something’s goin’ down over there tonight?”
David threw one hand open as if tossing an invisible ball. “Beats me. It looks locked up pretty tight. Don’t see how anyone with ill intent could get in and expect to get back out again, but I would have said the same thing about Vincent Ballaro’s place.”
Walter brushed his thumb against his chest, smoothing a crease in his shirt. He tossed down a two, which lost to David’s seven. “Could be the nutjob’s made his point. Or he feels like changing it up, get the old element of surprise.”
“Could be.”
“Shit, look at us,” snorted Walter. “Real fuckin’ detectives.”
“Niagara’s finest.”
Walter shifted in his seat, nearly upsetting the piles of cards stacked atop the pizza box. “Hey, you mind if I put on some tunes?”
Nodding, David turned the ignition one notch to trigger the battery. Walter fished a CD case from the inside pocket of his coat, popped out the disc, and slid it into the car’s sound system. Jaunty piano chords bounced from fifth to root, a syncopated honky-tonk tickled out of yellow-white keys. A crisp baritone orated over the chords, pleasant and on-key in spite of the sprechsang approach.
“Walter, is this ‘Werewolves of London’?”
“Good tune. Why d’you ask?”
“God, you’re such an immature asshole,” David said with affection.
Walter gave David a look of theatrical hurt. “You got something against Warren Zevon?”
David rolled his eyes.
“What, you mean because of this whole full moon thing? Please, Dave, give me a little credit. It’s a coincidence.”
“Right.”
“No, I’m serious.” Walter put a hand to his meaty chest. “Hand to God.”
David was just credulous enough to entertain this as possible. He could even, if in his most charitable frame of mind, write off the second track—“Bad Moon Rising”—as a subliminal or coincidental choice. The first strains of “Clap for the Wolfman” that followed settled any doubt with the subtlety of a ball peen hammer to the temple. Walter’s barely restrained giggling in the passenger seat lent little credence to his proclamations of innocence.
The strains of “I’m a Werewolf, Baby” by the Hip bellowed through the sound system when Walter’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He turned the stereo volume down to silent and answered the call.
“Pulaski here.” The corners of his moustache turned down. “Shit. Really? Where?” He tucked his phone against shoulder and pulled out a notepad. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, that’s not too far from here. We can be there in ten. Get forensics and the coroner down there. Right, yeah. Thanks.” He clicked off the call and flipped his notepad shut. “This shit is seriously getting old.”
The hairs on the nape of David’s neck trembled, stirred by a nonexistent wind. Never had he less enjoyed being right. “Another body?”
“Mincemeat, just like the others.” Walter looked up at the moon and flipped it the middle finger. “You know what you are, you fat bitch? You’re an enabler.”