Princely Bastard (6 page)

Almost against my will, I stepped inside the room and came up to her, and I noticed a wedding album on the coffee table—along with lots of photographs. Photographs of a wild-looking punk rock girl marrying a boy much like the one whose picture I saw on the hallway wall—even if this boy was dying.

Strangely, I started to cry. I don’t even know why. I also sat next to Rudi on the couch and took off her headphones, which were playing an old romantic song—one I would learn was from the late 1930s and called “Moonlight Serenade.”

I knew then I had been right—that what Rudi had told me on the plane was bullshit. She didn’t adopt me because she was paying a debt. She adopted me because she needed love. She needed all the love she could get.

She needed me.

For the first time in my life someone not only wanted me but needed me, and it felt good. It felt so good that I leaned down and gently kissed my mother’s forehead. And I forgot all about running away.

I WEEP A bit as I think back to that day—the day I became human. But I quickly rub the tears away, as they aren’t gonna help me get out of this mess. And neither can my mother.

I have to help myself.

So, I think about my options, over and over—and finally decide I really have only one. So, I return up the fire escape, which is even creakier than before. It’s also shakier. It’s so shaky that I wonder if it could collapse.

This thought alone sends me shooting up the stairs and into Mark’s bedroom, where immediately I hear a conversation taking place outside the door—between Mark and someone who has a foreign accent I can’t quite place.

“The news has just been too distressing, Mark,” the man calmly says. “Your whole world has been shattered—and this along with all the jail time you’re facing is way too much for you to bear.”

“No one will believe it,” Mark retorts.

“People will believe anything. They’re nothing but sheep.”

Right then, I exit the bedroom and see a graying middle-aged man in an expensive suit holding a gun on Mark—a gun that looks as if it has a silencer attached to it.

At once the two turn to me, and—while pointing backward with my thumb—with lots of embarrassment I explain: “There, there are reporters in the alley.”

The gray-haired man responds to this by lifting his gun toward me—causing my jaw to unhinge. Which unhinges even more when he pulls the trigger.

Fortunately, Mark knocks his arm upward with his left wrist—and the gun fires into the ceiling, prior to flying across the room. Then, in the same motion, Mark flings his huge right fist into the man’s face—tossing him backward, first into a wall and afterward onto the floor. And I think that’s the end of him for sure, as Mark is way bigger and younger and obviously knows how to throw a punch. But the man jumps up as if nothing had happened, and he marches over to Mark—and knocks him off his feet with a roundabout kick to his face. He further pummels Mark’s head and stomach with his arms and legs, which are moving so fast that it looks like one of those bad kung fu movies—the kind where they speed up the camera.

Mark’s just staggering from the blows—blows he can’t return, and he finally falls to his knees. At the same time, I realize I should be doing something, especially after all those years of training I got from my mom. But I’m just too scared. I’m too scared to do anything.

“Are you ready now for your suicide, sir?” the man smilingly asks Mark, who looks as if he were about to keel over.

But he doesn’t. Instead he thrusts his right hand up into the man’s groin—and the man loudly gasps, just as Mark lifts him into the air and rushes into the kitchen screeching.

Unable to take my eyes off this, I take a few quick steps forward and watch Mark slam the man into a cabinet—splitting the wood apart, along with lots of dishes.

But Mark doesn’t stop there. He swings the man around headfirst into a wall. He swings him so hard that his head goes right through the plaster. He also drops the man, who collapses onto the floor unconscious. Actually, he looks dead. Worse than dead.

“What, what’s going on?” I mumble, as I nod toward the motionless man, while feeling strangely excited. Not a frightened excited, either—but a good excited. For some reason I like what I just saw.

“I don’t know,” Mark growls.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know! The whole fucking world’s gone crazy!”

“Mark?”

“Those people out there,” he says, after pointing out the window—“they’re not after you. They’re after me. They think I’m some fucking prince. This idiot, too.”

“A prince?”

Mark doesn’t answer. He just takes a phone from his pants pocket and dials a number, and I walk up to him while it rings.

“Yes,” he then says into the device, “I want to report an assault.”

Suddenly, fright crosses Mark’s face, and he utters, “What do you mean, you’re on your way? I haven’t told you where I live!”

Mark listens to the response, but he doesn’t like it—and he howls, “Fuck you! You hear me—fuck you!”

He subsequently chucks the phone into the wall, smashing it into pieces—which reminds me of something I really don’t want to be reminded of. He also tells me: “We gotta get out of here.”

“What?” I mutter.

“Now!” he yells as he grabs my hand and drags me toward the bedroom. Then, once inside it, he yanks a shirt out from the dresser—and, as he hurriedly puts it on, we head toward both the window and the shaky fire escape I never wanted to see again.

chapter six

Mark

I DRAG AIMEE out the bedroom window and onto the fire escape, while wondering if I should just leave her in the apartment, thinking she might be safer without me—even with the police on the way.

But I don’t leave her. And I’m not sure why—or at least I try to believe I’m not sure. Instead I take her hand and quickly lead her down the stairs, trying to ignore the faint sounds of police sirens, which are getting less faint with each step I take.

“You sure this thing will hold?” Aimee asks, with lots of fear in her voice.

“What thing?” I ask back.

“The fire escape—it’s creaking and shaking!”

“All fire escapes do that.”

Of course, just as I say this, the fire escape breaks off from the building wall in some places, and the whole thing starts teetering.

“Fuck!” I scream.

“I thought you said—” she utters.

“—Just move!”

We rush faster, and I can both hear and feel the escape breaking in more and more places.

Eventually, we get to the last level, and I tell Aimee: “Jump!” But she pulls her hand away and leans against the wall, with her eyes closed and her head and just about everything else shaking.

“What’s wrong?” I cry out.

“I’m scared!” she screams. “I’m fucking scared!”

Again, I think about leaving her—but I pick her up in my arms, right as the fire escape starts to fall. And I jump.

Then, with lots of pain—the very last thing I needed—I land hard on the street, at about the same time the fire escape crashes—partially onto the hood of my Camaro.

“Fuck!” I holler. “What else can fucking happen?”

“It’s the prince!” some guy replies, from not far away—and I turn around and see a bunch of reporters running toward us, snapping pictures and taking video.

“Come on!” I yell at Aimee, as I drop her onto her feet. “Get in the car!”

She does, and so do I—and I hurriedly start the engine, with a dozen idiots in front of us, screaming all sorts of stupid questions at me.

Ignoring them, I shift into reverse and floor the gas. But we don’t go anywhere—not with the weight of the escape holding us down.

“Fuck!” I howl.

Though this doesn’t help at all—and, to make matters worse, the police sirens now sound as if they are no more than a few blocks away.

Trying not to panic, I put the car into first and drive forward—and the heavy iron budges just a bit. And, while it does, I quickly go back into reverse and slam the accelerator.

The metal is still holding us, but not as much as before—and I keep my foot down.

“Come on,” I beg—“Come on!”

Suddenly, we’re out from underneath the fire escape, and I speed backward toward Sunset Boulevard, from which come another bunch of reporters, who head toward us like zombies, unconcerned that I’m just about to run them over.

“Move, you fuckheads!” I scream. “Move!”

But they don’t. So, I honk my horn furiously and often—and they just jump out of the way as we enter the road. Which is just before a car smacks into Aimee’s door and almost through it—causing her to scream and jump into my lap.

“It’s okay,” I tell her without meaning it, and—once she’s mostly back in her seat—I turn the car around and fly up the street toward Santa Monica Boulevard, swerving through traffic—with two police cars behind us and gaining.

“They’re following!” Aimee screeches.

“I can fucking see! And hear!”

It doesn’t take us long to reach Santa Monica, and I make a sharp left onto it, just as another cop comes from the opposite direction—a cop who blocks the road with the body of his vehicle.

“Now what?” Aimee demands, with her hands in front of her face.

I don’t reply. Instead I head onto the wrong side of the road—and now I really have to swerve around traffic.

This causes Aimee to really freak out, and me, too. Fortunately, we quickly reach another intersection, and I hang a left onto the correct side of the road. I also let up on the gas just a bit when I notice no one is chasing us.

Finally, I take a big deep breath—one that’s not nearly big or deep enough.

I DON’T KNOW how long I’ve been driving or even where I am, especially as most of the streets in Los Angeles look exactly the same to me. Though, to be honest, my mind is on everything but the road.

Could I have really killed someone? I ask myself—and without knowing it?

I shake my head, not because I don’t believe it’s possible, but because I don’t want to believe it. I also know that it’s just way too much of a coincidence that I’m finding out about these charges on the same day I discover I’m supposedly a prince.

Prince
.

The word is so ridiculous to me that I want to laugh. I’m the last person who could ever be a prince. I’m nothing but a poor shit from South Boston—a shit who’s never even graduated high school. What’s more, I know who my parents are—and neither one is fucking Prince Charles. My mother, her name is Angela—and my father was named Donald, and he was in the Marines.

I repeat these facts over and over in my head, trying to cement them there—trying to make them so solid that nothing can shake them out.

There’s no such person as Donald Stuart.

It’s not true! I yell at myself. I’ve seen pictures of him. I’ve seen the medals he got—and my Uncle Billy has told me shitloads of stories about him. It can’t all be a lie. It just can’t!

“Where we going?” Aimee asks, and I just now remember she’s in the car with me.

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“You must have some idea.”

“Do I look like I have some idea?”

“Maybe—”

“—Listen, maybe this is a good time for us to part ways. I’ll drop you off wherever you want.”

“I’ve got no place to go!”

“That’s not my fault!”

“Fine! Just drop me off at the corner.”

“Here?”

“I’ll even give you back your fucking shirt!”

“I don’t want . . .”

I can’t finish my thought. I can’t because it’s interrupted by the sound of a helicopter—and I glance up and see that it’s following us.

Angrily, I slam my fist against the steering wheel. Actually, I slam both of them.

“Now what?” Aimee cries out, and I point upward. She then looks out the window and says, “How do we get away from that?”

“We don’t,” I reply.

Still I pound my foot on the gas, and we speed forward, and I again start swerving through traffic, just as I begin hearing the sounds of sirens in the near distance.

I try to ignore them—and I also run a red light, which leads to a car fishtailing into my door as it tries to not crash into us. But I keep moving, though now without a side-view mirror.

However, I don’t have long to think about this, because something smashes through the rear window—a bullet—one that takes a small piece of my shoulder with it before shattering the windshield.

Uncontrollably, Aimee screams over and over, and I want to scream with her just as uncontrollably, especially as I really didn’t need any more pain. But instead—after checking the police car behind us—I make a hard right, which is difficult because I’m not exactly in the right lane. I have to cutoff the car next to me, which in turn rips apart one of my taillights.

“They’re shooting at us!” Aimee hysterically hollers.

“I can see that!” I hysterically holler back.