Nineteen

THIS HAD to be some kind of high point of Johnny Long’s life. Maybe other great things would happen to him—hey, he was still young, right?—but it was hard to imagine living to eighty or ninety or whatever and looking back at his life and having a better memory than the time he totally fucked Dr. Adam Bloom and his whole uppity family.

Everything had been going perfectly, even better than Johnny had planned. On Saturday Marissa had come over to his place, and they’d spent the day and night screwing and getting “closer” to each other. They talked a lot, too. He was casual about it, but he picked up some important info about her and her parents and their habits that he hoped he could use later on. Like when she was talking about her father he slipped in questions like, “Does your dad work every day?” and “What time does he usually come home from work?” Not being obvious about it, just acting like he was curious, making small talk. She told him that Adam Bloom usually left for work at “like eight o’clock” and came home “like around seven or eight.” It turned out he’d need this info a lot sooner than he’d thought.

Marissa left his place at around eleven thirty on Sunday morning. After two straight nights together, they were planning to spend the day and night apart to give him “time to paint.” Johnny already knew that Adam was planning to play golf in the morning—the other night during dinner he’d mentioned he had a seven-thirty tee-off time—and Marissa had said that her mom was planning to go shopping at Costco, like she did every other Sunday. So Johnny ﬁgured that today could be the perfect opportunity to make his ﬁrst move.

About twenty minutes after Marissa left, Johnny left. At 12:52 Johnny exited the Forest Hills subway station and headed toward the Blooms’ house. He knew he was taking a risk. He was gambling that Dana had already left for Costco and wasn’t home yet, and that Adam hadn’t ﬁnished playing golf, and that Marissa had beat him to the house. If one of them saw him he’d have to make up an excuse for why he was at the house. If they all believed him, he could go on to plan B, but if they started getting suspicious, his whole plan would be in trouble.

The Blooms’ Merc and SUV weren’t in the driveway—a good sign. Johnny had already written a note from “Tony from the gym,” and he slid it under the Bloom’s front door. He was walking away when he saw Adam Bloom’s Merc coming down the block, heading right toward him.

It was a good thing Johnny was paying attention, because if he’d taken another step or two, Bloom probably would’ve seen him. But Johnny turned quickly and went up the driveway.

Shit, now what? The backyard had tall picket fences on all sides with no real place to hide, and Bloom’s car was going to turn into the driveway in maybe ﬁve seconds.

As a kid, Johnny had learned how to run away from the cops and kids who’d wanted to kick the shit out of him. He’d always been a great climber—fences, trees, he could climb anything. He leaped onto the fence and hoisted himself up. If he’d had more time he could’ve gotten over easily, but he couldn’t ﬁnd any good support for his feet, and the top of the fence had pointy wooden spikes. He could hear the car getting close, probably right about to turn into the driveway. Using all his strength, he pulled himself up and in the same motion managed to lift his legs up and swing them over the top of the fence. Then he let go with his hands, but he wasn’t over yet. His leather jacket got caught on the top of the fence. He reached up, freed himself, and fell down hard on to his ass right as Bloom’s car was heading up the driveway.

His ass and lower back killed, but he was ﬁne. More important, he’d managed to make it over the fence just in time, without Bloom seeing him.

What did see him was a German shepherd in the house next door to the Blooms. The stupid mutt was on its hind legs, clawing at the window, trying to break through the glass. Johnny was going to stay where he was—the dog was in the house; it couldn’t come after him—but, shit, what if somebody was in the house and came over to see why the dog was barking? The person would see Johnny in the backyard, huddled on the ground, in plain view.

Johnny got up, ran to the driveway of the house with the dog, and stayed as close to the house as he could, without moving at all, but the dog, the son of a bitch, had come to the side of the house and was barking, clawing against the window.

Then Johnny heard a woman’s voice inside the house—there must’ve been a screen on the window—saying, “What is it, Blackie?”

Johnny didn’t think the woman would be able to see him, but he wasn’t sure. She would deﬁnitely see him if she opened the screen and looked out. He couldn’t run away, because he didn’t know if Bloom had gone into his house yet, so he had to stay where he was and hope for the best.

“What? Where? I don’t see anything,” the woman said, but the dog was still barking insanely. Then the woman said, “Come on, just stop it . . . I said stop it right now.”

The dog wouldn’t shut up, but the barking sounded farther away, like the woman was pulling the dog away from the window.

Johnny stayed there for a couple of minutes longer, just to make sure Bloom had gone into the house, and then he went to the sidewalk and turned left, away from the Blooms’ house, and went back toward the commercial area of Forest Hills.

All in all, Johnny was happy with the way things had gone. He’d accomplished what he’d wanted to, anyway, and now it was just a matter of going back home and seeing how it played out.

And it played out all right.

At around two o’clock, as he was getting off the subway in Brooklyn, Marissa called him, sounding like a mess, saying that when she came home her parents were in the middle of a big ﬁght. Johnny acted confused, saying, “A ﬁght? What about?” Marissa said that her father had found out that her mother had been screwing her trainer and—get this—it turned out her father had been screwing somebody, too, the mother of Marissa’s best friend. Johnny thought, Man, what a fucked-up family. The parents were cheating on each other, and the daughter was an unhappy spoiled brat. It was like they were all just begging for somebody to come along and put them out of their misery.

Johnny insisted that Marissa come back to his place to “get away from all of that craziness.” Ah, was this beautiful or what? She was already so dependent on him, and they’d only known each other about a week. Johnny had pulled off some great hustles, but this time he was outdoing himself.

When Marissa arrived she hugged him tightly, like she never wanted to let go, and said, “I’m only happy when I’m with you.”

Later, after screwing a couple of times, Marissa was sleeping, resting her head on Johnny’s chest. But he was hyped up, wide awake, thinking about his plan, trying to work out every detail. This was so great, with Dana and Adam; now he had to make his big move, as soon as he could.

In the morning—it was Monday—Johnny suggested meeting Marissa later in Manhattan.

Johnny could tell Marissa loved the idea, but she said, “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want you to get sick of me.”

“How could I possibly get sick of you?” he asked.

She blushed, then said, “Seriously, maybe it’s not such a great idea.”

“I want to see you again,” he said, “and I think it’s a good idea to give your parents some space, you know?”

This line had been unrehearsed, but it was so perfect.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, “and I’d like to be around them as little as possible myself, but I just don’t want to impose on you.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I want to spend as much time around you as I can. I’d spend every second with you if I could.”

She loved this. After they kissed for a while, she said, “But I have to go home and shower and change and take care of some stuff ﬁrst. I can meet you back here at around ﬁve.”

He knew she’d want to go home ﬁrst. He said, “I have an idea. Let’s meet in the city at six thirty. We can grab a bite to eat, then go to a movie.”

She said this sounded great, and they arranged to meet outside the subway station at Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue.

Marissa left Johnny’s at a little before one o’clock. He wanted to make his move today, but he needed to ﬁnd out her parents’ schedule. He didn’t want to do this half-assed. He wanted to take care of every last detail.

He went to a phone booth about ten blocks away—he didn’t want to make the calls from too close to his apartment—and called information and got the number of Dr. Adam Bloom, Ph.D., in Manhattan. He called and asked the woman who answered if he could speak with Dr. Bloom. The woman said that Dr. Bloom couldn’t come to the phone, he was with a patient. Of course Johnny would’ve hung up if Adam had been available; he said, “That’s okay, I’ll call him later. What time will he be there till tonight?”

“His last patient’s at ﬁve.”

Shit, that was too early. That meant Bloom might leave at six and be home at seven.

“Okay, thanks,” Johnny said.

The woman was saying, “If you want to leave a number I’ll—” as Johnny hung up.

Later, back at his apartment, Johnny called Marissa and asked if they could meet at seven thirty instead of six thirty.

“That’s totally ﬁne,” Marissa said. “I was just about to call you. My friend Hillary wants to meet me for drinks at ﬁve thirty, and I thought six thirty was cutting it too close.”

This was so perfect. She was pushing back the plans.

“Cool,” Johnny said. “There’s an eight thirty movie so that’s no problem at all.”

Actually, he had no idea what the movie schedule was, but he ﬁgured he could cover for this later if he had to.

“Great,” she said. “Oh, God, I can’t wait to see you. It’s been another nightmare day here.”

She told him that she’d found out her parents were getting divorced—more great news as far as Johnny was concerned.

“So is your mom home now?” Johnny asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “She was just in here asking me if I was okay with the divorce, if I was going to be traumatized by it.” She laughed, then asked, “Why?”

He didn’t think she was suspicious, she was just asking.

“Just curious,” he said, but he needed some explanation, so he added, “I mean, do you think she and the trainer are still . . . getting together?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t look like she was going anywhere today. She looked like shit actually.”

“So you think she’s staying in today?” “Yeah, why?”

Now there was a little suspicion, and Johnny had to be careful. He didn’t want this to be something that Marissa would look back on later and wonder about.

“I was just saying,” Johnny said. “It would be bad if your father caught her and the trainer together.”

“Yeah, bad for my father,” Marissa said. “But honestly I don’t see how things could get any worse between them. It’s about as worse as it can get right now.”

Yeah, right, Johnny thought, but he said, “You’ve done a great job handling all of this so far. I’m so proud of you.”

At about four o’clock, Johnny left his apartment. He had everything he needed in his black backpack. He hunted around a while and ﬁnally found an older Saturn with no LoJack or alarm. He broke in, hot-wired it, and was on his way.

The drive to Forest Hills took longer than he expected because of rush hour trafﬁc, but he was still doing okay on time. He parked in the closest spot he could ﬁnd, about half a block away from the Blooms’ house. From the car, he called Marissa to conﬁrm that she was actually in the city with her friend Hillary, but he told her it was because he missed her and just wanted to hear her voice. He looked around carefully, and when he was pretty sure that no one was watching, he got out of the car and headed toward the Blooms’.

It was 6:22, and Adam was probably on the subway on his way home. Adding on ﬁfteen minutes for rush hour and assuming he didn’t stop off anywhere, he should arrive at the house in Forest Hills around seven o’clock. Johnny wanted Adam to come home after he killed Dana. If for some reason he came home much earlier it could be problematic.

Johnny was wearing black leather gloves and a black wool cap. It wasn’t exactly hat-and-glove-wearing weather—it was in the ﬁfties—but he wanted to disguise his appearance as much as possible. Besides, he knew Dana would be too distracted by his good looks and charm to notice anything else.

Nearing the house, he was especially careful to make sure no one was noticing him. A man at the far end of the block was leaving his car and heading into his house, but the man wasn’t looking in Johnny’s direction. Still, Johnny hesitated, walking at a slower pace, until the man went into his house, and then Johnny continued toward the Blooms’.

The SUV and the Merc were in the driveway—Johnny hoped this meant that Dana was home. He didn’t want to ring the front doorbell and risk someone seeing her letting him into the house, so he went down the driveway toward the backyard. Johnny wouldn’t have done this if he’d remembered about the dog. That crazy mutt must’ve heard him or sensed him or something, because when he was about halfway up the driveway the barking started. Johnny didn’t see the point in turning back and ringing the front doorbell, and he wasn’t concerned with the barking itself—he was worried about someone next door looking out the window and seeing him, then remembering this later and telling the police.

Going as fast as he could, he went to the Blooms’ backyard, then up onto the small deck. From this position he was out of view from the house next door, and he didn’t think he’d been seen.

He rang the doorbell, and several seconds later he saw Dana looking out. Baby, he thought, as he smiled wildly and gave her a little wave. But she held up one ﬁnger, like she’d be back in a second, and before he had time to say anything she was gone.

Shit, this was a complication Johnny didn’t need. The dog was barking even louder, and although he was out of view of the house with the dog, he was in clear view of the backyard of the house of the Blooms’ other next-door neighbor. If someone in that house heard the fuss the dog was making and came out onto the back porch, the person would see Johnny standing there.

What the hell was taking Dana so long? He knew she was probably changing, putting on makeup or something. It seemed like she’d been gone for ten minutes, but it probably hadn’t been nearly that long.

He told her he was supposed to meet Marissa at the house. Of course she said Marissa wasn’t there, but he didn’t know if Marissa had told her mother about her plans to go into the city. If she had, Johnny was going to say they’d changed their plans, but Dana seemed totally clueless and invited Johnny in to wait.

He was glad to be inside the house, and the damn dog’s barking was ﬁnally dying down. He turned on the charm so she wouldn’t notice his gloves or that he looked like, well, like someone who was going to kill her. The way she was looking at him, acting all ﬂirty, he knew she wanted him, and he could’ve seduced her. He would’ve loved to have added her to his long list of conquests. Man, would that have been a trip, to screw Adam Bloom’s wife before he killed her? But Johnny wasn’t an idiot. He knew that banging her would get him into all kinds of trouble with DNA, and he wanted to play this thing right.

Still, he wanted to have a little fun with this thing—if he couldn’t actually screw her, at least he could make her think he was going to. Meanwhile, when she went to get him some iced tea, he grabbed a chef ’s knife, one that had about an eight-inch blade, from the knife rack on the counter. This was part of his plan, as he’d seen the knives when he was in the kitchen the other night. When she asked him to sit down he didn’t, but she didn’t seem to notice that he had the knife there behind his back. Then, what the hell, he told her how attracted he was to her, and he could tell she wanted him so badly, even if she was acting like she didn’t. But he didn’t want her to ﬂip out, start screaming, so he decided to just get it over with.

He’d never killed with a knife before, but he’d killed with a switchblade and once with a shank that time at Rikers. He knew that the key to killing with any type of blade was to not be half-assed about it. Anybody could stick a knife a few inches into a body—hell, a weak old lady could probably give you a nice little wound. But to do serious damage you had to go all the way with it. You had to ﬁght through that next inch or two of muscle and maybe bone so you could cut up the major arteries and organs. So when Johnny stabbed her in the middle of the back, he made sure he did it hard enough to get most of the blade in; then he pushed even harder, feeling it cut through something, and it went in easier. When he’d gotten about ﬁve or six inches of the blade in and it wouldn’t go any farther, he let go of her.

He backed away, watching her squirm around in her blood on the kitchen ﬂoor. He hated watching her suffer. He would’ve loved to yank the knife out of her back and slit her throat or stab her right in the heart, get it over with, but he didn’t want blood to splatter everywhere, especially on him. From what he could tell, he only had a little blood on his gloves and on the edge of the right sleeve of his sweatshirt, and he wanted to keep it that way.

The important thing was that although Dana was still alive and moaning and trying to crawl away, she wasn’t actually screaming in pain, maybe because she was too weak and couldn’t get the air into her lungs. The knife had probably gone into one of her lungs—or maybe there was too much blood coming up out of her mouth. So Johnny just stood back, waiting for her to bleed out, trying to make her feel better by saying things like “Just let it go” and “Stop ﬁghting it.”

It really sucked that it was taking her so long to die. Eventually she stopped moaning, but she was still squirming. The suffering was hard to watch, but there was something about the blood that Johnny found, well, beautiful. Maybe he was starting to take this art shit too seriously, but the, what was that word, contract? No, contrast. Yeah, he loved the contrast of the bright red blood on the white tiled ﬂoor. Also, he loved the way the blood was spreading away from the body, the puddles expanding very slowly but keeping their perfect rounded shape. When he got home later he was going to try to re-create this scene, try to get this same shade of red. He’d probably have to mix a little white into the red, and he’d use oils, not acrylics. Maybe he’d do a whole series of paintings, call them his Bloodworks. Oh, man, was he a genius or what? He could see his paintings hanging at the Met—or what was that one across the street, the Prick?—and all the uppity art lovers going on and on about what a genius he was. Yeah, they would all be talking in big words about the “message” of the paintings. He could hear them saying they were a comment on society, on“our times.” They’d probably invite him to all their parties, all the rich people tripping over themselves, wanting to talk to the man who’d painted the Bloodworks.

Finally she stopped moving. He went up to her, getting as close as he could without stepping in the blood puddle, and looked at her face and saw her wideopen eyes and thought, Yeah, she’s dead. Finally.

He left the knife right where it was, in her back, and then he took another knife from the rack. This one had a bigger blade—maybe closer to ten inches— and he stood back, waiting for Adam to show up.

It was 6:52 according to the clock on the stove. Hopefully Adam had left work at six after his last patient. If he came right home by subway he would be here any minute. When Johnny heard him coming in through the front door, he’d stay off to the side, in the nook between the table and the entrance to the dining room. Adam would see his wife on the ﬂoor and be distracted, and then Johnny would attack him. He would try to stab him as few times as possible, though he knew this would be harder with Adam because he’d ﬁght back and it might be hard to get the blade deep enough into the heart or lungs. The key would be to kill him as fast as possible, before he had a chance to scream too much. If Johnny had to stab him three, four, ﬁve times or more to get this done, then so be it. The bottom line was he needed Dana and Adam to both be discovered dead, slashed to death, on their kitchen ﬂoor. Then the police would look to the obvious suspect—“Tony from the gym.” Johnny felt sorry for fucking up the poor sucker’s life, but what could you do?

Although Johnny didn’t think he’d gotten any blood on his shoes, he didn’t want to risk walking around the house. He looked at the body for a while, still loving that shade of red; then he looked over toward the blackboard where someone—probably Adam—had written I want you to move out.

This was almost too perfect. It was like the Blooms were helping, not only to get themselves killed but to give Johnny the perfect alibi. Their marriage was such a mess that the cops would go right to that Tony guy and arrest his ass. Johnny wanted to stay cool and in control, but it was hard not to feel excited. He was so close to the big prize, to getting everything he’d ever wanted, that he didn’t feel like he was in the Blooms’ house anymore. It was his house, and he couldn’t wait to get rid of all the Blooms’ stuff and then go on a spending spree, spend ﬁfty grand—hell, why not a hundred or two hundred?—and ﬁll it up with everything he’d ever wanted.

The only problem was that Johnny needed Adam dead and Adam wasn’t showing up. Johnny ﬁgured Adam must’ve left his ofﬁce at about six, and even if he walked very slowly to the subway, the trip to Forest Hills wouldn’t take him more than an hour. He hoped nothing was wrong with the subways and that Adam didn’t have other plans this evening. Johnny had done everything he could to make this plan go as smoothly as possible, but some things were beyond his control.

At seven o’clock, about ﬁfteen minutes since Dana had died, there was still no sign of Adam. To keep his alibi, Johnny had to meet Marissa at seven thirty. He could be a few minutes late, but he didn’t want to arrive any later than seven forty, seven forty-ﬁve the absolute latest. If he was too late, it could be something Marissa would wonder about, and he didn’t want any complications.

Johnny was staring at his watch, telling himself that he’d give it another ten minutes, till ten after seven, and then he’d take off, when the phone rang. The noise startled him, and for a second he even thought that the house’s alarm had gone off. After four rings, either the caller hung up or the answering machine answered. Johnny waited till seven ten, then gave it another ﬁve minutes, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He decided to look at the bright side—the day hadn’t been a total bust; at least he’d gotten rid of one of the Blooms. One down, two to go.

Johnny had brought a full change of clothes in his backpack, including another pair of shoes, his leather jacket, and another pair of leather gloves. But since he didn’t think he’d gotten any blood anywhere except on his sweatshirt, all he needed was the jacket.

He put the unused knife back in the rack. As he took off his sweatshirt, pulling it up over his head, he thought about hairs and ﬁbers from his hat and DNA evidence. He tried to be as careful as possible, but even if a piece of hair fell out onto the ﬂoor he didn’t see why this would be any big deal. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been in the house before. Why couldn’t the hair have fallen out the other day?

Just in case, when he had the sweatshirt off he crouched down and looked around. Nope, no hairs.

He put on his leather jacket and leather gloves and then put the sweatshirt away in the backpack. Walking around the body and the blood, he left the kitchen and went through the house toward the front entrance. It sucked that he couldn’t leave through the back, where he was much less likely to be noticed, but he didn’t want to risk the dog making a racket again.

Outside it had gotten totally dark. He opened the front door cautiously. If Bloom was there, Johnny would have to do something to get rid of him. He’d have to strangle him, crack his head open, something like that. He had his gun with him, but he didn’t want to shoot him. If the cops found Dana with a knife in her back and Adam with a bullet in his head, they might not focus on Tony as the suspect. Johnny needed the cops to think that Tony had taken the knife and impulsively stabbed Dana. But if Adam got shot the cops might think, Why didn’t Tony use the gun on Dana? See, Johnny was always thinking, he was always one step ahead.

When Johnny looked out toward the street, Adam wasn’t in sight. The coast seemed clear in both directions, and he didn’t hear any cars coming, so he calmly left the house and then turned right and headed down the block to the Saturn. He pulled out and turned onto the main street and, son of a bitch, there was Adam, walking along the sidewalk, holding two bags of groceries.

Johnny hoped the asshole knew how lucky he was.