Sociopath? (26 page)

The hard part of all this was that she knew
it would never be any different. Let’s say for the sake of
argument, they had run away together or that they were husband and
wife instead of brother and sister, he’d still be who he was, off
doing his own thing the majority of the time. That 20 percent of
himself was all he was willing, maybe even capable, of giving her
no matter what the circumstances. She thought faithfulness to Rafe
was about as elastic as his definition of truth.

So where did all that leave her and the rest
of her life? She sighed to herself. She couldn’t go much farther
with this line of thought until he left again because when he was
home, reason went out the window.

Last night, for instance. Renny and Magdelene
were at Cape Cod. She heard him come home late, felt every move he
made. Heard the shower come on and off as she lay there in her bed,
tense with anticipation. When she saw his shadow in her doorway and
heard him whisper, “Laney, are you asleep? Why don’t you come on
over here with me,” her heart leaped and she couldn’t get to him
quick enough. In bed, he’d kissed her and murmured, “in the
morning, Honey, I’m really tired tonight. I just wanted to feel you
close to me,” then put his arms around her and fell asleep. Just
feeling that beloved body beside her was enough to fill her with
happiness. And in the morning when he made love to her, she just
decided she wouldn’t think about the rest of it right now.

* *

Tom “Cowboy” Goslin hated Rafe. His loathing
was bone-deep and visceral. Partly, it was based on the natural
resentment of the old bull toward the young challenger. Cowboy had
been the cock of the walk around the MidCoast racing circuit for
several years and he still was, but he felt Rafe breathing down the
back of his neck. In his late 30’s, he was an attractive man in a
rough-hewn kind of way with his lanky frame and a weathered face
that featured a square jaw and ice blue eyes and a shock of
sun-streaked hair (invariably topped by a cowboy hat, hence, the
nickname). In real life, he owned a masonry business. He could
still lay brick or stone with the best of them and had upper arms
as thick as small logs to prove it. He had at one time hoped to
become a full-time driver, making the leap into the fame and
fortune of NASCAR stardom but at some point, he admitted that was
never going to happen and settled into enjoying the limited
notoriety and the women that came along with being the best of the
minor league.

He was realistic enough to know that
eventually some kid would come along and threaten his title and he
didn’t think he would have minded that so much if it had been a
youth much like he had been, a kid who’d had to bust his ass for
every little bit of success life let him have. He might even have
been willing to serve as a mentor for such a youngster.

But then this fucking little aristocrat comes
along who has obviously never had to work a day in his life but had
everything handed to him on a silver platter, not a silver platter,
a gold platter. Cowboy had seen his full name on the registry
records. Rafael Alain Vincennes, for Christ’s sake, what kind of
pussy name was that for a red-blooded American race car driver? And
he’d made a point to learn as much as he could about Rafel Alain
Vincennes, Esquire. Such as that he graduated valedictorian of his
class in high school and currently attended Princeton University,
one of the elite Ivy League colleges. He was familiar with the blue
Corvette, of course, and once he’d even driven down to Benedict and
asked around to find out where Heron Point was located. You
couldn’t see all that much from the road, just a lane of trees with
a gold stone mansion at the end of it and a long stretch of
Chesapeake Bay frontage beyond, the kind of place no one of his
means could ever hope to aspire to, except maybe as an employee
hired to build a wall or something.

And then, there was this situation with his
goddam fan club and the women coming to the track in their “we
‘heart’ Rafe” shirts. When he saw the coverage of the party on
Channel 5, Rafe surrounded by his bevy of worshipful females, it
almost made him want to hurl, both because of the women themselves
and because Rafe could make that kind of extravagant gesture.
Rewarding his faithful followers with a dinner at Brittain’s
Grille, a place Cowboy could barely afford to take even one woman
much less a hundred of’em!

And what frosted his balls absolutely worst
of all was Rafe’s attitude, the way he just accepted it all as if
it was his due. He swaggered around the track like he was the lord
and master and everybody else was his peasant. Well, Cowboy was
here to tell that little cocksucker, he wasn’t anybody’s fucking
peasant!

Most of his buds thought he was making too
much of it. They almost seemed to admire Rafe for his wins and his
women and that rankled too.

*

Rafe knew how Cowboy felt about him. How
could he not when Cowboy’s intense dislike practically radiated off
of him in waves? But he’d have known even if the man had made an
effort to keep it under wraps because paying attention to people
was a large part of how he got along in the world. Rafe tried to
simply avoid Cowboy as much as he could because he didn’t want any
trouble but he figured that trouble would eventually come his way
whether he wanted it or not. Cowboy would be forced by his own rage
to act. Rafe wondered what form it would take.

*

Rafe still didn’t drink but he liked bars,
especially the funky, country bars that race drivers and their fans
frequented. (Besides that, he just didn’t like being told by
society that he wasn’t allowed to do something). Sometimes, he and
some of the fan club girls went out dancing after the races. So, in
addition to the dinner, Rafe had spent another substantial chunk of
his savings on a primo set of alternate identification papers. The
driver’s license and the birth certificate and the passport were
exact duplicates of his real ones only with his birthdate changed
to reflect his age as 22.

*

On this particular night, he and Chester had
gone into the Overlook (due to its location overlooking the track)
after the races. As soon as they walked in the door, they saw
Cowboy with a few of his pals clustered around the pool table.

“Could be a bad situation, Rafe,” Chet
muttered.

“Yep, we’ll see, I guess.”

Chet ordered his usual Johnnie Walker Black
and water. Rafe ordered a Scotch too with water on the side, then
passed the Scotch to Chet and drank the water.

They’d been there maybe 15 minutes when
Cowboy ambled over and asked Rafe if he wanted to put his name down
to play the winner of the next game of pool. Chances were very good
that would be Cowboy because he was a killer pool player.

“Sure, put me down and let me know when I’m
up.”

“I don’t know if that was very smart,”
Chester told him.

“What else could I do? It would piss him off
if I refused.”

“You any good at playing pool, Kid?”

A smile flashed across Rafe’s face. “I’m
unbeatable at pool, Chet.”

“Maybe you ought to let him win?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t do that. It’d be against my
principles. Besides, we may as well get this over with.”

“Okay, Hotshot, you’re up,” Cowboy called
over.

Cowboy had his own pool cue, with his name on
it, carried it in a black leather carrying case, also with his name
on it. He chalked the tip, broke the table, got the five ball in
the pocket, then missed his next shot, leaving the rest of the
balls scattered across the green felt. He stood back satisfied that
he’d left Rafe in an untenable position.

Rafe balanced a couple of the house cues,
selected the second one he tried and ran the table. No muss, no
fuss. Not spending a lot of time pondering his shots, just doing
it, one ball right after another. One of the men watching
whistled.

The next guy listed next on the board came
forward, ready to play Rafe.

“No!” Cowboy motioned him off, teeth
clenched. “Get back! This is between us.”

He racked the balls. “Winner’s choice.”

Rafe broke and ran the table in the same no
nonsense style as before.

Cowboy’s always weather-reddened face was the
shade of Georgia clay by then. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth
twisted.

“Again.”

They were standing close together as Cowboy
prepared to remove the rack from the balls while Rafe stood
waiting.

“I’ll warn you,” Rafe told him. “You can play
me all night long and you’ll never win, so you decide how much time
you want to waste.”

He sensed the punch coming but decided to eat
it. He wanted everyone watching to know exactly who had started
this fight and how, not by calling him out fair and square, but
with a blindside attack. Could be a mistake to play it that way.
Cowboy had some powerful arms and fists. If he hit Rafe hard enough
to incapacitate him, it was game over. But Rafe had instantly
calculated the odds and figured from the position Cowboy was in, he
couldn’t put that much force behind his punch. Rafe moved his head
so the glancing blow struck him at the side of his eye. Not even
hard enough to knock him down but he pretended to drop anyway. On
his way down, he gathered himself and lunged, driving his head
straight into Cowboy’s balls. He wasn’t in a stable enough position
to make the most of it anymore than Cowboy had been, but it did the
trick. The bigger man fell, clutching his testicles.

His friends came over to help him up.

“Jesus, Cowboy, what the hell was that all
about? All he did was beat you fair and square. You had no call to
hit him.”

“You.” He pointed at Rafe. “This isn’t over.
Let’s go outside.”

“No, come on, Cowboy, let it go. Leave the
kid alone.”

“Yeah, Man, you’re so much older and bigger,
it won’t even be a fair fight.”

He shook them off and motioned again to Rafe,
who shrugged and headed for the door. Chester came up behind him,
“how do you want to play this, Rafe?”

“I think it will be all right, Chet.”

As soon as they were out the door, Cowboy
went for him, wading in with his fists pumping. Rafe figured that
would be his style because he was furious and fury made men stupid.
He had little difficulty avoiding the other man’s attack. Rafe
wasn’t the hardest puncher in the world. His advantage was
blistering speed that allowed him to hit the other man and move
away so fast, Cowboy couldn’t keep up with his position. By the
time, he realized where Rafe was and targeted him, he was gone.
Meanwhile, Rafe kept up his own series of relentless strikes - in
the kidneys, on the jaw, in the nose. Rafe didn’t believe in
fighting fair. You fought to win - period. Within a few minutes, it
was over. For the second, time Cowboy was on the ground. Instantly,
as he fell, Rafe pulled the switchblade from his boot. They all
heard it snick open.

He pressed the point into Cowboy’s
crotch.

“Just listen for a minute, Cowboy,” he said
in an even voice. “I’ve tried the best I could to stay out of your
way because I didn’t want a hassle with you.” He pressed the knife
point a little harder. “But I’m not going to do that anymore. Now I
think you need to stay out of my way because, if you don’t, so help
me God, you’ll spend the rest of your life sitting down to
piss.”

The blade disappeared.

*

Chet and Rafe returned to the bar. Cowboy and
his crew didn’t come back in.

“I gotta’ say, Kid, you are always just a
bundle of surprises. Where’d you learn to play pool like that?”

“We have a pool table at home. I watched my
brothers when I was young and then I practiced until I got so I
could figure the angles and and where one ball had to hit another
to make it go where I wanted it and the speed it needed to be
going. I got so I could run the table almost every time.”

“And what about fighting, Rafe?”

“Fighting is just commonsense, Chet.”

“Commonsense, huh?”

“Yep, minimizing your opponent’s strength and
maximizing your own. Like brute force is Cowboy’s strong point and
speed is mine so I had to make that work for me.”

“He never even laid a hand on you and you
must have hit him at least ten times.”

A smile flickered across Rafe’s face.
“Exactly ten times, Chet.”

“Rafe?”

“What?”

“Would you have cut him if he’d come at
you.”

Chet thought the dark eyes turned to him were
the coldest he’d ever seen.

“In a heartbeat, Chet.”

* *

“Well, you’re halfway through, Rafe, what do
you think by now?”

“I hate it, Dad. It feels like prison but you
know I’ll do it, for you, if for no other reason.”

Rafe’s feelings for Renny resembled love and
it was love in a way, although not love in the traditional sense.
It was more like he acknowledged Renny as the alpha male. He
admired, respected and even feared his father’s power. He sought
Renny’s approval as any subordinate wants the approval of its
superior and because of that, he willingly submitted to his
father’s domination. It would remain that way as long as Renny was
strong enough to assert his leadership.

*

“I can make it a little easier for you these
next two years. If you think it would help, I’m willing to pay for
you to rent an apartment in or near Princeton so you can get out of
the dorm. I assume that’s the part you dislike the most?”

“Yes! If I could just have more privacy, it
would make all the difference, Dad. I feel so exposed in the
dorm.”

“Well, you might want to reconnoiter the area
before school starts and see what you can find. I think housing is
at a premium around Princeton. If you wait too long, you might have
a hard time finding anything close. Why don’t you take your sister
with you? Getting away for a couple days would probably do her
good. She’s been down in the dumps since her boyfriend moved.”