Simply remembering, dredging up all those times with Vincent, was like a shitstorm of painful memories. “Like he walked life on the edge. He drank too much. He was a pig when it came to women. He objectified them, leered at them, made remarks about my college girlfriends all the time, but he never lacked for one wrapped around him like some big bow. He was essentially a total scumbag. He defended the lowest scum of the earth, too—murderers, rapists, a pedophile or two. Yeah, I realize someone has to represent filth like that, but these defendants were prominent members of the community, most of them so guilty they may as well have had it written on their foreheads with a black Magic Marker, and all with buttloads of cash. Yet, Vincent didn’t see it as such a big deal—not when he boldly told us about one guy he’d gotten off for murdering his wife even though he knew he was guilty. He prided himself on the strings he could pull with the cops. Then once, after we’d all been out to dinner together, we were pulled over. Vincent had definitely had too much to drink, and Kellen and I knew it. I know I should have taken the keys from him, but I don’t know that I got just how trashed he was until the officer made him get out and walk in a straight line. I figured we’re screwed. But nope. He hands the cop something, mentions a name or two, and it’s over as fast as it started.”
Clyde’s lips thinned in distaste. “A bribe, no doubt.”
“Exactly. Stuff like that happened all the time with Vincent. He greased palms and his were equally as greased. He had connections out the wazoo, and he wasn’t afraid to use them or flaunt them to the point of uncomfortable. From having someone removed from his preferred table at his favorite restaurant to once demanding a poor woman’s station wagon be towed because she’d taken his spot in his cushy law firm parking lot. Vincent loved showing off. His father was well known in the community and some kind of Supreme Court judge or something. Vincent told us how important his father had been all the fucking time, and when it became clear he was gunning for the same spot his father once held, I wanted to warn everyone I could get my hands on. I was sick at the thought that he might have the power to do something crazy.”
“So you were between the proverbial rock and a hard place.”
Delaney hung her head to fight the shame that even remotely knowing Vincent still brought her. “Yeah. We both were. He held the strings to Mom’s care—and he knew it. If we cut all ties with him, he’d cut my mother’s care off and he didn’t mind telling us he would in his oh so subtle way. We were in deep and getting in deeper. It came to the point where I’d decided to leave college and get a job, and screw Vincent and his money.”
But then came the day when it all exploded.
That day. She’d never, ever forget that day.
“I was at my breaking point. I had a boyfriend at the time. Gary. Gary hated Vincent, and Vincent hated him, but things had begun to unravel between us, compounded further by Vincent’s appearance. Gary and I had been fighting a lot at about the time things started coming to a head with Vincent. We really needed to talk, so I showed up unannounced at his apartment one day and caught him with my roommate—in what I thought was our ‘spe cial’ spot. The roof of his apartment building. We hung out there all the time because you could see the lights of the city. It was romantic. We’d sit up there for hours with a six-pack of beer and whatever our meager allowances afforded us to eat. So color me surprised when I found out our spot was anything but special.
“Now you’d think it would end there—poor Delaney gets cheated on, boo-hoo. But Vincent found me later that night in my dorm room; I was crying and doing all the stuff you do when you’ve been dumped in such an ugly way. You know, cursing his very existence, hoping his love shank dried up and fell off, making plans to sew a voodoo doll out of his underwear with the dental floss he used—”
“You can do that?”
“No, Clyde. It’s just an exaggerated example. Anyway, I was a wreck and when Vincent showed up, I was at the height of a good freak and he was infuriated when he found out why. I ranted and raved, but Vincent said all those horrible things I was wishing on Gary really could happen if I wanted it badly enough. That stopped me cold. I didn’t get it at first, and then he told me something that to this day, I might never have believed if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.”
“A contract. He had a contract with Satan,” Clyde said with the certainty of his own name.
She pressed the heel of her hand to her head. “Jesus, did he. One that had been handed down to him from his father, Richard, was what he said. At the time, I thought he was nuts, completely nuts, and I threw him out, but not before he told me that he wanted Kellen and me to join him. He told us we could have whatever we wanted, money to take care of our mother, power—anything. When I told him to fuck off that’s when he spewed some pretty crazy shit I wasn’t sure I believed until . . . until I saw . . . He said little by little, whether do-gooders like us wanted it or not, believers like him would be in all places of power, sort of as a payment for doing Satan’s bidding. He said he’d prove it. And that’s when I got worried. Really worried about what he might do to Gary. Damn it, Clyde, if I’d just been a couple of minutes earlier. If I’d called Gary first, done something to warn him, he’d still be alive.”