The Wrong Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself in a big wall mirror. I was all wrong here. There was no hazy smile floating on my face, no trickle of noisy, happy nonsense on my lips. My mouth was mashed to a thin line, my nostrils spread, my eyes banged open so the irises were like holes punched in the dough of my face.
    I grimaced, tore my gaze away and scanned the fifteen-odd patrons. The obnoxious thumping and ranting from the corner speakers was black gangsta rap, the partiers were mostly Mexican with a couple of white wannabe gangsters in the mix and a couple of slutty white girls drinking and leering off in a corner. I knew I stood out in this ethnic, urban atmosphere. I looked like I belonged in Del Mar with the surfers and college kids. My heart was kicking like an animal trapped inside my chest cavity and it kicked harder with every step. But something in me had ruled out turning back. I would walk right into enemy fire. It was all I had tonight.
    I recognized Owen’s buzz-cut, evilly shaped cranium from across the room. He had his back to the bar, around its far curve, so his back was toward me when I spotted him. As I approached I saw the side of his face and heard snatches of his nasally voice. He was smirking and jabbering with his outthrust lower jaw, pint of beer in hand, amid the scariest collection of macho, dangerous gangsters you’d ever want to see; belligerent, loud, arrogant Mexican-Americans with thick, powerful builds and huge shirts and baggy pants; young men who had lost their youth, hanging with an air of drug-smoke, marked up with haphazard tattoos barely visible against their muddy skin, their dog-like hair cropped down to close black mats on their sloping skulls.
      I stepped toward them. Nobody was looking at me and I almost stopped, realizing the enemy hadn’t even opened fire yet—I could just sneak away, live to fight another day and all that. But then Owen’s gaze locked with mine as if he had been waiting for me.   Something shifted behind his eyes, utter confusion and surprise, and then the veil of stone-cold killer-cool dropped over his face again and it was like that flash of humanity had never been there.
    I was standing three feet away. My hearing was clouded by blood pressure. The rap music and drunk conversations seemed like something off in the distance, the whole world a TV with the volume turned down. Everything seemed to have fallen away except the battered, malignant face of Owen Ferguson. He was wearing a loose, checkered, button-down shirt that looked right off the rack and he was holding a fresh pint of piss-colored beer at chest level. The Mexicans around him had gone silent, looking at me like they might explode to action and kill me any second.
    “You fucking stupid, Homes, or what?” Owen said in his jaw-sprung, perpetual Brando imitation.
    I found my voice wasn’t quite there. I wasn’t quite angry or high on adrenaline; all I had was the theoretical knowledge that I ought to be angry, that I ought to feel like killing, but I was deep inside my shell.  
    I nodded and said, “Yeah, I’m fucking stupid,” so quiet I could hardly hear myself, and Owen watched, completely dumbfounded as my hand reached out and tipped his pint glass into his chin, washing the amber liquid down the front of his button-down shirt.   I did it with my left hand, and I managed to square off during everyone’s collective gasp and immediately snap a punch into his cheek with my right. I had the satisfaction of seeing him cower against the bar, squinch his face and cover up with his hands for a split second, and I stepped back and elevated my fists in a silly boxer’s pose.
    “Let’s do it, bitch!” I said, so loud that the entire room stopped dead and watched. “Come on, you faggot rapist piece of shit! Bring it, motherfucker!” I heard my speech tinged with the pseudo-black street dialect the gangsters use and I had no idea where it came from. The action had cracked me out of my shell and I was suddenly a stranger