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By today’s artificial intelligence standards, her method for attracting victims would never be considered very scientific. It was the 1980s after all. The pre-digital age. There were no personal computers. No Match.com. No Facebook. No Craigslist. You had to do things the old fashioned way, which meant posting want-ads in the “personals” section of the local newspapers and freebie news rags.
Looking for a date? was one headline that could always be counted on to produce.
Another was, Young lady is sooo very lonely.
But the go-to atomic bomb of headlines...the one that always generated the most responses from the sex-starved middle-aged pervert crowd... was Lady looks sixteen!
Of course, she was sixteen at the time, which is why the last ad always proved the most effective, especially when the potential client requested she send along a snapshot. You’d be surprised how easy it was to lure an adult male into a meeting at a strange motel and how easy it was to dispose of him once she was able to Mace them, and/or tie them up to the bedposts (usually at the victim’s request).
But soon she became bored with the middle-aged crowd. How many time could she be expected to enact the ultimate revenge on her step-monster over and over and over again? Not to mention the chances she was taking by leaving the bodies behind for the police to discover. Sure she was careful about prints, but it was only a matter of time until someone at the APD or FBI picked something up off the surface of a chair, a bed sheet, a lamp, or the bathroom toilet.
Now that a young police officer... a tall, slim, Clint Eastwood look-alike detective by the name of Nick Miller... was working the case, she decided to switch gears. From now on, her victims would be much younger. Much stupider, and far more innocent.
They would be teenagers, just like her.
19.
The next night, the Cattivos arrived right on time. I was sure I smelled booze on John’s breath the moment he came through the door. He was wearing a yellow IZOD polo shirt that seemed out of place for a cop who carried a gun on his hip at all times. Because the skin on his thick arms was exposed, I couldn’t help but take notice of a tattoo he sported on his left interior forearm. It was a heart that was dripping or, crying, blood. It matched precisely the tattoo that painted Lana’s ankle, but with one slight difference. Written across John’s heart was the name Lana, in big bold black letters.
He noticed me noticing it, so he lifted up his arm, more to show me his bulging bicep than the tattoo. Or so it seemed.
“I got drunk one night, came home with my heart on my sleeve. The usual story.” He belly laughed.
“Looks like Lana’s,” I observed, but immediately wondered if I should have said it.
“Good of you to notice, Hollywood,” he said. “What else have you noticed about my wife?”
Lana stepped forward as if to intervene, or at least change the subject. She was holding a bottle of wine in each hand. She turned to Susan.
“Red and bloody,” she said, handing my wife the bottles. “Just like you ordered.”
The funny thing was how Susan and Lana were dressed alike, almost like they’d consulted with one another before getting together at the appointed seven o’clock hour. And maybe they had. Both were wearing V-neck T-shirts and short skirts. They were also wearing similar brown leather sandals. Maybe the color of their clothing differed (Lana wore all red and black, while Susan’s skirt was plain yellow, her T-shirt white), but they seemed to complement one another. Both took the time to pick out some nice jewelry for the evening. Susan’s choice for a necklace was a silver broach shaped like an angel over her neck. Lana wore a simple string of pearls, which I guessed were real and very old. Both sported an eclectic assortment of silver bracelets around their wrists.
A smiling, if not beaming Susan began carrying the wine across the living room floor to the dining room and then down the two stairs to the already open slider.
“Who’s having wine?” she asked.
“We all are,” I said, following her with my crutches.
“Let’s get loaded,” John said walking beside me. Then, taking hold of my arm with what felt like a vice grip so that I nearly went over onto my face. “Let’s get the girls drunk,” he said into my ear. “I’m already there. You got any beer, Hollywood? Or don’t screenwriters drink beer? You probably drink something all stuffy and shit, like brandy from out of snifter.”
Somehow I managed to work up a fake laugh. “Plenty of beer on ice out back.”
I pulled my arm away from him, rebalanced myself on my crutches. I knew in my heart that I already hated his guts. But I had to get through the night without showing it. I’d worked in Hollywood for a lot of years. I knew how to play the game. How to suck up to people I hated. People whose egos surrounded them like a thick, plastic, translucent bubble.
He took pulled his hand back, slapped me on the shoulder. Just a little too hard.
“You be a good man, Hollywood,” he said. “Crack me one of those beers and maybe I’ll let you hold my gun.”
20.
We ate the usual summertime fare. Burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, corn on the cob. For desert, Susan put out a bowl of ripe apples and a red Jell-O mold, neither of which anyone touched. Mostly, we drank. We drank a lot, as if seeking our own separate escapes. When the two bottles of red that Lana brought over were finished, she went back to her house to retrieve two more. When those were gone, the girls started in on gin and tonics. Meanwhile, I drank beer. One for every two that John was chugging. When he pulled out a plastic baggy of weed, I thought I might be seeing things.
“You know what they say?” he said, while proceeding to roll a big fat bomber of a joint. “Cops always have the best dope.” He refocused his eyes so they were aimed at the fence at the far end of the perimeter. “That shit you’re growing down there is for teeny boppers, Hollywood.”
“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, a cold chill shooting up and down my spine at the thought of him snooping around my property.
When he smiled, the edges of his thin mouth went vertical, making his presence even more sinister. The scruff that surrounded his mouth made him look like a pipe cleaner with big arms, big legs, and a big gun. I could not understand for the life of me what a hot woman like Lana was doing with him. Why she would have agreed to marry him and follow him all the way across the country to the very place she left decades ago, vowing never to return. He lit the joint with a Bic lighter he kept in his pocket, took a big toke off of it, and handed it to me.
I took a drag, but not too deep. I was trying to pace myself, stay in control. Only reason I took a hit off it at all was to keep him from giving me a tongue-lashing. Handing him back the joint, he then passed it on to Susan who, at this point, was sitting so close to Lana she was practically on top of her. They were obviously hitting it off, and in some ways, they were enjoying their own private party. It was as if they’d known one another not just a matter of hours, but weeks, or months, and not just as acquaintances who shared the same P90X class.
At one point, I decided I’d been holding in way too much beer for too long, so I grabbed my crutches and limped my way into the bathroom to relieve myself. By the time I got out, Lana was barking at John, calling him a “dickless wonder.” She was so stoned, she laughed when she said it. Even Susan started to laugh, although I could tell she was doing her absolute best to hold back the chuckles. But then, she too was stoned out of her gourd. Susan was no stranger to my pot patch out back (she’d already shredded and bagged the pot I left out on the counter to dry the previous day), but she was not a regular pot smoker, preferring the buzz of alcohol and the occasional pharmaceutical instead.
Lana was relentless.
She kept jabbing her husband, calling him “dickless.” And as I hobbled back onto the deck and sat down hard in the chair, I could see his round, hairy face begin to turn red, even in the candlelight. I could see a purple vein popping out on his forehead. The vein throbbed. I could see his hands opening and closing into tight fists, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. As Lana handed me what was left of the joint, I thanked her, and went to pass it right on to John without my taking another hit.
But he ignored me and did something entirely different.
Instead of taking hold of the joint, he pulled out his gun.
21.
He aimed the piece at both girls. By that, I mean he planted the metallic green laser site on Susan’s forehead, then shifted it the few inches to Lana’s and back again.
“Hey John,” I said, my heart jumping into my throat, “take it easy, man. They’re just joking around.”
Any semblance of a buzz running through my veins quickly disappeared with the rush of adrenalin.
“You shut the fuck up, Hollywood,” he said, his voice low, gravely, mean. “This doesn’t concern you.” Then, bursting out with laughter. “Well, okay, it’s your wife, so yeah, it concerns you.”
Lana paused for a moment while she bit down on her bottom lip. But then, just as quickly, her face lit up again. Suddenly it was her turn to bust out laughing.
“See what happens when you’re dickless like Dick Tracy here?” she said. “You carry around a spare dick.”
Susan didn’t think a gun being pointed at her face was any too funny. She wasn’t laughing anymore, nor was she about to resume laughing. Her face turned pale white in the candlelight.
That black automatic in his hand, the barrel moving from one woman to the other, John grabbed hold of his beer with his free hand, downed what remained.
“Let’s play a different game,” he said, slapping down the empty can.
“What kind of game, dickless?” Lana said. She was unrelenting, gun or no gun.
He turned to me, shooting me a quick look with his glazed eyes and disturbing pipe cleaner face. “How about we play your wife kisses my wife? Whaddaya say, Hollywood. You game?”
I shot Susan a look. She caught my glance and didn’t have to say a word for me to know what she was thinking. Her eyes said, Let’s just play this stupid game and get him the hell out of our house.
“Sure thing, John,” I said, pulse banging like tympani in my temples. “But maybe you should put the gun down.”
“Nonsense,” he laughed, thumbing back the hammer. “Lana likes to play with my guns. Isn’t that right, Lana?” Then, waving the barrel at the women with the laser sight no longer engaged. “Come on girls, what’ll it be? On my count. Five, four, three...”
When he got to one, Lana closed her eyes, lifted her left hand and gently took hold of Susan’s lower jaw, aiming her mouth for her hers. When she kissed my wife, she did so as passionately and as truly as she had when she first kissed me the morning before. At first I could only assume that she was as much into girls as she was boys. But then I began to sense this wasn’t the first time she’d played a dangerous game with her husband and she knew better than not to be believable in her performance.
He watched them, that evil grin painted on his face, thin lips growing tighter and tighter. When he rubbed his now hard self through his pants with his free hand, I thought I might be sick.
“Now Susan,” he whispered from somewhere down deep in his throat, “this is where the fun begins.”
Lana pulled away from my wife, locked eyes on her husband.
“We kissed already, John,” she said. “Now leave it alone. These are good people.”
“We’re just getting started, sweetheart,” he said. Standing, he aimed the automatic at my wife’s chest. If he pulled the trigger at that close range, he’d blow out the entirety of her respiratory system. “Come on Suzy Q, pull off your shirt.”
Again, she looked at me. My heart now in my mouth, I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe I could stab him in the hand with a plastic knife or fork, but even that would take some strength and agility on my part. Strength and agility were something I simply did not have with my mangled foot. Susan knew it too, because without an argument, she stood up, pulled off her top. She did it, not with a look of excitement or lust on her face, but one of defiance, while she glared at John’s eyes. Into them, and through them, like white-hot lasers.
She stood there, in her black bra, not at all sure about what was coming next, but waiting to hear it from the mouth of the devil.
“The bra,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat, waving the pistol in the air as if saying, And be quick about it.
Without a word, her brown eyes never veering from his, she reached around her back with both hands, unclasped the bra, set it onto the chair.
Maybe it was the pot or the drinking, or a combination of the two. But sitting at the table, unable to do anything about the creep who was holding a gun on both my wife and his, I felt as though trapped in a dream. This wasn’t happening for real. It was happening inside my head, like a vivid nightmare. At the very least, the whole thing was like something I might write for one of my film noir treatments. Things like this just didn’t happen in real life. Only in the movies, or in pulp fiction.
“I gotta hand it to you, Hollywood,” John said out the corner of his mouth while leaning into me, “you sure know how to pick ‘em. Your woman is a primo piece of ass.” Then, straightening back up. “Now beautiful, I want you to take my wife’s shirt off.”
For the first time, Susan seemed rattled, like the game hadn’t already gone far enough.
“Do it,” he demanded, waving the gun yet again, his shooting finger sliding from the trigger guard to the trigger.
Silently, my wife turned to Lana, began the process of pulling off her shirt. When she was down to only her white bra, Susan unclasped it, and allowed it to fall away.
John exhaled a sour, rancid breath.
“Sit down, Lana,” he said.
Doing as she was told, Lana sat down in the chair immediately beside Susan.
“Now,” he said, running his tongue over dry lips, “spread your legs.”
Slowly, Lana spread her legs and cocked her hips forward, and slightly upward. While under the circumstances, I should not have been turned on in the least, I found myself aroused and hating myself for it. Maybe the reason behind my excitement had little to do with Lana spreading her legs, but had everything to do with the way she did it. From where I was sitting, she didn’t open her thighs because a gun was pointed at her. She did it because she wanted too. Because this was a crucial part of the game. This was how it was played.
This also was how the game was played: Detective John Cattivo pressed the barrel of his service weapon against the back my wife’s head.
“You know what I want you to do, Suzey Q, now don’t you?”
Her unblinking eyes locked on Lana’s face, Susan bit down on her bottom lip. For a brief moment, I thought she might bite right through it. John gave the pistol a slight push against her head. The fire that erupted inside my stomach made me want to kill him on the spot. If I could have, I would have torn his head off and shoved it down his throat, scalp first. But I was helpless and hopeless.
“Do it, Susan,” he ordered. “Kiss Lana. Feel her up. Do it now.”
Leaning into Lana, my wife kissed her and touched her while John stood over them and watched, his automatic forever aimed for their heads, as if the act they performed had better be good, or the consequences were life or death.
“Lower, Suzey Q,” he demanded, his index finger brushing the trigger. “On your knees. Go lower.”
Susan knelt down so that her torso was between Lana’s legs.
“Now feel for my wife’s panties,” John said.
Susan reached between Lana’s legs, slipped her fingers inside Lana’s black panties.
“Push them aside, Suzey Q,” he said, his Adams apple bobbing up and down in his throat. “Tease my girl.”
Brushing back her hair with her free hand, Susan, pulled the panties aside, revealing Lana’s perfectly groomed sex. We all focused on her sex, and Lana was anything but repulsed. Rather, she seemed to enjoy the teasing. But I was not enjoying it. Yet a part of me was loving it. What the hell can I say, because what the hell could I do?
“Come on, Suze baby,” John pushed. “Kiss the girl.”
Lana leaned forward, wrapped her hands around the back of Susan’s head, and began kissing her passionately.
My heart pounded and my head began to fill with adrenalin. The noise in my skull was like a jet plane that had suddenly blown its engines mid-flight, and now the whole thing was taking a nosedive, the wind screaming across the wings, the passengers screaming, crying, wailing.
But my misery was compounded one hundred fold by the fact that I was as hard as a rock, and I despised myself for it. Screw biology, I chanted to myself. Screw the fact that I am an animal as much as John Cattivo. My not having a gun pointed at the two women didn’t make me any less savage, any less cowardly. It just meant that I didn’t have a gun.
The situation was treacherous. Deadly. Yet, after a full minute had passed, both women were still kissing... kissing passionately, despite the weapon pointed at them. Was it possible that they were enjoying this? This game that really wasn’t a game at all? Or perhaps “enjoying” wasn’t the right word. Maybe they were simply surviving. Doing what they were told in the interest of saving their skin.
The pregnant robin that lived in the eaves flew out of its nest then, startling me. It flew out into the darkness until it returned a couple of seconds later, perching itself on the deck rail. Her protruding brown belly pulsed with every frantic beat of her heart.
“What have we here?” John said eyeing the bird, while the women separated and the robin chirped, as if screaming at us all to get away from her home. “Bird hunting season.”
When he aimed the automatic at the bird and fired, the dark of night flashed brilliant white and the robin evaporated into so much blood, bone, and feathers. The girls shrieked while I grew dizzy and sick. I swallowed something cold and bitter when an apparently satisfied John returned the automatic to his hip holster.
“You can all get dressed now,” he said, that evil grin still plastered on his face. “Show’s over.” Then, turning to me. “Was it good for you too, Hollywood? Maybe now you got something to write about.”
I watched as both girls stood up, in all their perspiration-glistening semi-nakedness. A glistening made all the more radiant from the candlelight. When Lana whispered something into Susan’s ear, my wife nodded, and wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand. She then quickly gathered up all her discarded shirt and bra, and walked past John without giving him even a cursory glance. She escaped back into the house, closing the sliding door behind her. I tried to get up to follow her... go to her, but Lana stopped me.
“Don’t,” she said. “Leave her alone for a while.”
“Yeah, she needs to gargle,” John said with a gravelly laugh.
I pulled myself up anyway, shoved the crutches under my armpits.
“This night’s over,” I said, my wide eyes locking onto John’s, my bottom lip trembling with an anger so profound it was bleeding from my pores. “You son of a bitch.”
“Calm yourself, Hollywood,” he said. “We were just having a little adult fun. Besides, judging from that bulge in your pants, you weren’t having an entirely crappy time either.”
A sheen of red passed by my eyes. “You could have killed my wife. I can have your badge for this.”
He took a step forward so that his meaty thighs where pressed up against the table. He squinted his eyes and glared at me.
“You’re not thinking of calling the cops are you, Hollywood? Cause I am the cops. Don’t forget, I can ruin your life at any time.” He once more drew his automatic from its holster, thumbed the clip release, and held it up into the candlelight. “Oh, and sorry about the bird. I know you’re like Mister Audubon Society.” He laughed, slapped the clip back home, re-holstered the weapon. “Dangerous fucking world out there. For people and birds.”
“Come on,” Lana said, as she threw her top over her exposed breasts. “Let’s go, John.”
The Albany detective began to sing “I fought the law and the law won... I fought the law, and the law won...” He grabbed hold of an apple from the dish, took a big bite out of it, then tossed it like a baseball out into the darkness. Together they stepped off the deck and out of the light. They made their way through my gate and eventually through their gate and into their yard, which, at this point, seemed so close but also a million miles away. When I heard their back sliding glass door open and slam shut behind them, I knew that as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I was going to find a gun and shoot Detective John Cattivo dead.
22.
Moments later, after hobbling my way indoors, I found Susan inside the bedroom.
She was tucked under the summer-weight blanket, lying on her side, already asleep. Or maybe she was just pretending. Without undressing, I leaned the crutches against the wall, laid down on my back, looked up into a darkness that seemed infinite, absolute and so very cold. I listened to the sounds of the summer night. A dog barking incessantly in a distant yard. A train hauling freight cars on the tracks that paralleled the river, its horn blowing loud and lonely. Cicadas buzzing in the trees.
After a time, I could make out the sound of sobs.
I rolled over, rested my hand on Susan’s bare arm.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice low and pained. “There was nothing any of us could do.”
I felt my insides drop. “I could have stopped him. I could have put up a fight.”
“And got yourself shot in the process.”
“He wouldn’t have shot me. He’s a cop. A bluffing asshole cop who put a gun to my wife’s head and made her perform a sexual act with his wife.”
“He’s crazy. I think he would have shot you and made it look like self-defense. Christ, you saw what he did to that little bird.” She wiped her eyes, sniffled.
My mind began to spin out of control. I pictured John, his holding her at gunpoint. I felt like a coward for not peeling myself out of my chair and going after him with my bare hands. So what if I had a bum foot? I should have done something. Anything.
But Susan was right. What good would it have done? I would have only managed to get myself shot. Or maybe there was another reason I didn’t do anything about it. Maybe a part of me ...a big part of me... was just plain yellow.
My eyes wide open, they remained focused on the back of Susan’s head. At her black hair, still somewhat visible in the darkness.
“That man just might be the most evil person I have ever met in my life,” I whispered after a time.
“I don’t know how Lana can stand living with him,” she said. She cried a little more, wiped her eyes again. Then, “We should rescue her from him.”
Once more I was reminded about my desire to see him dead. I thought about the gun he pressed against Susan’s head. I saw the gun, once more heard the mechanical noise of the hammer being cocked. I saw the pregnant robin disintegrating into the night, felt the concussion of the gunshot. I wondered if any of the neighbors were alarmed by the sound of a gun discharging in the neighborhood. Or perhaps they chalked it up to leftover fireworks?
“I agree with you, Susan,” I whispered.
“Good,” she said. “Now let’s not talk anymore.”
“There’s something else I need to know first.”
“What is it?”
“Yesterday afternoon when you came home from the nursery school... did you see what we...” My voice trailed off, my throat constricting. I just couldn’t get myself to say it.
She inhaled deeply, as if requiring more than the usual strength to respond. “Yes, I saw you. You know I saw you. You looked directly at me through the plate glass.”
Pulse picked up in my temples. “But you weren’t angry.” It’s a question. “It’s unbelievable you didn’t claw my eyes out.”
“I was angry and hurt at first. But then something happened as I watched you... I can’t really explain it right now. It’s possible I went into immediate denial. I haven’t slept with you in a year. I should have expected something like this.”
I thought about my obsession with Lana. About the power she had over me. To be honest, I wasn’t shocked that I’d been right all along... that Susan had seen Lana and I through the plate glass window. What shocked me was her reaction. It wasn’t a normal reaction in any sense of the word. People are people and people get jealous. People kill one another while overcome with jealous rage.
I should have expected something like this...
Actually, no, she should not have expected anything like she saw when she peered through the living room window. Didn’t matter how long it’d been since we last slept together.
There was no excuse.
Susan’s strange reaction to my naked infidelity set off not a red flag, but an alarm inside of me. I thought about Lana’s phone. The WhatsApp voice message sent to a woman named Susan. A woman with long brunette hair. My Susan. I thought about the lavender-scented perfume on her dressing table. Thought about the silk panties. The alarm inside of me sounded off, and it told me that Lana and Susan had more of a history together than I wanted to believe. And maybe it was because of a secret history she shared with Lana that she wasn’t shocked or infuriated when she saw me making love to the blonde devil on the dining room table. She was simply indifferent.
“You don’t have to explain it,” I said, after a time, not wanting to confront the true nature of her relationship with Lana Cattivo. Not yet, anyway. “But I am sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Ethan?”
“For straying from our marriage. For stabbing you in the back.”
She began to laugh then. Not loud, but softly. “We haven’t touched each other all year,” she said. “I’d say that at this point, considering what just happened outside on the deck tonight, we’ve both strayed a little. And with the same woman. So that makes us even. Now go to sleep.”
For a long time I laid there listening to my wife’s breathing, until I too fell into a dreamless sleep.
23.
I woke up early the next morning only to find Susan lying on her back beside me, staring up at the ceiling. It was first light, and the unrelenting sun was only beginning to show itself through the thin shades, hot and unpleasant. Like it had put in for a day off weeks ago and was denied by God himself.
Turning silently away from her, I slid out of bed and grabbed hold of my crutches. I shuffled my way into the kitchen and made the coffee while Susan peeled herself away from the bed and showered. When she came back out she was still quiet. Her dark hair was wet and clean and glistening in the rays of sun that poured in through the kitchen windows. She drank some coffee, black, and tried to work up a smile that took terrific effort.
“No P90X?” I said.
“I’m quitting the class,” she said. “And I wish not to talk about it further.”
Balancing myself on my crutches, my body felt electric with a nervousness I’d never before known. Maybe I’d changed since Lana moved in two months ago, but what I was now witnessing was a profound sea change in my wife, and it was an unnerving experience.
“Don’t you want to talk about anything?” I said. “I mean, later on. When you come home?”
She sipped more coffee, pursed her lips.
“Let’s not talk about anything anymore,” she said. “We talked it all out last night. Right now, I have a kid’s summer program to run.”
And with that, she set her coffee cup down on the counter, grabbed her car keys, and left for work without a goodbye.