Shame

bald, that he could have his hair after the Utah marksmen shot him dead. Volunteer marksmen. Who said citizens shirked their civic responsibilities? There had been no shortageof volunteers for that job. But the shooters had never known if there was a bullet or a blank in their chambers. None of them could have the certain satisfaction of the kill.
    Though death by firing squad seemed like an easy way for a state to kill, it wasn’t a popular form of capital punishment, Utah being one of the last states to practice that art. But then the Beehive State had long exhibited a different kind of sensibility about executing its criminals. In 1857 it had even hanged a horse.
    Warren Drake, a member of the Mormon militia, had been convicted of committing bestiality with a mare. He and his horse were sentenced to be executed, but Drake ended up being excommunicated from the Mormon Church and exiled from the territory.
    The horse wasn’t so fortunate.
    How typical, thought Feral, to punish the innocent. That’s what had happened to him.
    He had never known his mother, but his hired detective had submitted an extremely edifying report. And he was well acquainted with what Queenie had written about her. Neither Queenie nor the detective had offered a very complimentary picture of Mother. If he had been Shame’s son, things might have been very different, but when Mother’s little lie became public knowledge, his fate was sealed. Mother had loved Shame and not him. She had shown her true colors by washing her hands of him, by saying good riddance to her little bastard.
    It was too bad Mother had died before he was old enough to reintroduce himself to her. But there were others deserving of his justice. At the top of the list was Queenie, who had exulted in exposing Mother, who had taunted her in person and castigated her in print. It was Queenie who had graphically described Mother’s willingness to rut in the filth. Queenie’s message was that Mother was worse than a fallen woman; she was a slattern who had paid to be fucked and humiliated and deserved no better treatment than she received.
    Of course she’d had a partner in crime: Gray Parker. Shame and Queenie had conspired to make a laughingstock out of Mother. Shame had been too good to deposit his seed into dear Mother. He was willing to poke but not plant, was happy to humiliate and debase and degrade Mother but not willing to give her his precious seed. Like Onan, he’d preferred to spill it on the floor.
    “I coulda been a contender,” whispered Feral.
    He could have, should have, been the son of Shame. For a few short days he had been the
other
Gray Jr. And then he’d been nothing, nothing at all.
    His hired detective had concluded it was highly unlikely that Feral would ever know who his real father was. He had been fifteen before his adoptive parents had told him he wasn’t their biological child. Deep down he hadn’t really been surprised, for it was hard for him to imagine that those two fossils could have been his parents, but he still felt angry and betrayed. He had been deceived, lied to for years.
    Reason enough, and then some, for him to act as he had when he came of age. He had been Mater and Pater’s sole heir. Their deaths had been
so
tragic, but they’d left behind a considerable amount of money, as well as a small manufacturing company. Not that Feral dirtied his hands at work. That’s what good managers were for. But it pleased him that he was still the boss.
    “How to succeed in business without really trying,” Feral whispered.
    He put his right shoe up on a railing and took his time tying it. Feral never bothered looking at the shoelace. His attention was on the block of rooms overlooking the pool.
    There were three maid carts in sight but no maids. They had to be cleaning the rooms. A door opened, and a man emerged. His briefcase gave him away as a businessman. The man looked at his watch and apparently didn’t like what he saw.
    It had been a long shot thinking he could just run into Queenie. She was probably holed up in her room. Feral wonderedhow he could flush her out. She’d be suspicious of any call. Once burned, twice learned. But maybe he didn’t even need to talk with her. He could use his cell phone to call the hotel and ask for Vera Macauley’s room. If she wasn’t in he might be able to pinpoint where her room was by the ringing of her telephone.
    But if she was in he might make her even more wary than she already