Snapshot

The beam of Maglite shines into the Culvert. But with her eyes closed, she can’t see it, so much as sense the powerful light seeping through the water and through her thin-skinned eyelids. The water is foul, and it seeps into her nostrils. She can’t hold her breath forever. She needs oxygen. She can’t help herself. She begins to gag and choke. No choice but to lift her head from out of the water.

“Help me!” she screams.

Brad the cop is startled to hear the voice and see the female body it belongs to.  

“Detective Miller!” he shouts. “You’d better get down here right away!”

43.

For a guy with a bum foot, I swung around fast.

He was standing just outside the door to the master bedroom in the dark.

Detective Miller.

“Hope you don’t mind my intrusion,” he said. “Your wife said I’d find you here. I rang the doorbell, called your cell. No answer either way.”

Once my pulse leveled off, I slid my crutches under my arms, hobbled out of the bathroom, my face and hair still damp.

“You gave me a real start,” I said, wondering how he knew he might find Susan next door. Perhaps he simply deduced it. Or maybe he wanted to check out the gunroom one final time.

He smiled that smile again. The one that wasn’t really human.

“You must be pretty jumpy after this evening’s drama,” he said, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets, the grip on his service automatic visible. Then, “Got anything to drink in this place?”

“Thought cops weren’t supposed to drink on duty.”

He looked at me with that cold, gray-eyed stare.

“Wouldn’t you?” he said.

We sat down across from one another at the dining room table. I set a drinking glass in front of him, and one in front of me. Rather than drag myself up and out of my chair every few minutes, I set the bottle of Jack on the table between the typewriter and the bowl of apples, easy access. Sitting myself down clumsily, I grabbed the bottle by its neck, poured the first round, set the bottle back down, hard.

He said, “Must suck having a leg banged up like that, bleeding all the time. How’d it happen?”

“Blame the mileage,” I said. “The football came back to haunt me. So did all that jogging. I split the plate down in the rainforest doing some research for a script. They put four permanent screws in the plate and removed a portion of the index toe. But they tell me I’ll be as good as new when I heal.”

“Try and stay off it,” he said.

“Thanks for the advice. But you ever gonna tell me what this surprise visit is all about?” I said, after a beat. “I just got through talking to you.”

He drank his shot, went to pour another almost immediately, as if the act of emptying your glass and refilling it were not two separate acts but instead, one single fluid motion.

“You mind?” he said, taking hold of the bottle.

“You’re the cops,” I said. “Why should I mind?”

More of that steely smile.

“I like you, Ethan,” he said. “You’ve got spunk. Wish more of my support staff were like you.”

“We’re back to a first name basis. You must want something from me.”

“Course I do. Me and the great Empire State of New York.” He poured a shot, glanced at my glass, saw that it was full, capped the bottle and set it back down in the same exact spot in which it previously rested. “Why else would I be here?”

We were dancing around one another and he knew it. Feeling one another out, waiting for someone to take the first jab. How did the old saying go? Sometimes in life you’re a hammer and other times you’re the nail. I don’t have to tell you what I felt like sitting there across from him.

I drank some whiskey. Half the shot. The booze sank into me, warm, strong, and good. But the man who sat before me didn’t make me feel so good. Considering the circumstances anyway.

“So what can I help you with, Miller?”

“Ethan,” he said, “how well have you and your wife been getting along as of late?”

I could almost feel my eyes go wide. I was sure he noticed them, since he was no doubt trained to notice such reactions. It was exactly the kind of involuntary response I needed to get under control if I was going to weather what was surly going to be a prolonged storm of police questioning over the course of the next few days and nights. That is, until Miller was convinced without an ounce of a doubt that Cattivo’s death from eating his piece had been an unfortunate accident. Or perhaps a fortunate one, depending upon whom you asked.

“You want the truth?” I posed.

“Like you said, I’m the cops. Downtown, on the State Street hill, the fat guys in the black robes locked inside the white marble building with the big pillars out front, those are the judges.”

I sipped a little more Jack, thought about Susan in bed with Lana right this very second.

“Okay, Miller,” I said. “Have it your way. Susan and I have seen better days. Feel better?”

“And why are the better days behind you? She’s an awfully attractive woman, if you don’t mind my saying.”

Miller, dancing, jabbing, provoking...

“Do I have to tell you this stuff? What’s it got to do with Cattivo?”

“Who said it has to have anything to do with it?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here, interrupting what I hoped would be a week-long coma?”

He nodded. “In part. You see... and you might appreciate this as script writer who’s written a few shoot ‘em-ups for the silver screen... but in order to get at a certain truth, a detective needs to more or less skirt around the issue, kind of like the Indians will circle the wagons, hoping to force someone or something out in the open.”

“In this case, a truth or something directly related to the truth.”

He slapped the table, shocking my system. “Exactly. Only in this case, the truth is not established. The truth is still a question. That question being, did John Cattivo really, truly, kill himself? Or was he somehow coerced or set up?”

“I see,” I said, my beating heart inching its way back up into my throat.

He drank the rest of his drink. I drank mine. He poured us two more.

“Now,” he said, “why are you and the wife not getting on so well lately?”

I stared into the golden brown booze, wishing I could drown in it. Since I had no choice but to sit there and take his jabs, I decided to play a little rope-a-dope and give him what he wanted. I’d stretch the truth just a little to maybe get his mind off me and me alone. Maybe if I spread around a little of the suspicion, all eyes wouldn’t be on me. After all, it was Susan who was sleeping with Lana right now. Not me. Not after what I’d done for the blonde beauty. Not after putting my life on the line. I was getting screwed over while Susan and Lana gladly screwed one another.

“Why else do couples start to fight?” I said. “Money, or the lack of it. House in foreclosure. My work in the crapper. Not much to say to each other anymore that doesn’t end up in an argument. The wife screaming at me, hitting me, clawing at me, telling me I’m no good. Can’t even support her. All washed up. Useless. Telling me she’s gonna find someone else to give her multiple orgasms. You know, the usual shit.”

He nodded like I’d gone all TMI on him.

“My wife died on the operating table,” he said. “I wouldn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. Because you’re not, and that’s okay. Why should you be? You didn’t know her. You don’t know me. You had nothing to do with it.”

“Do I want to know you, Detective Miller?”

“Like they say in law school, the question’s moot, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, I suppose it’s beside the point anyway.”

“Why so broke?” he asked, grinning through his teeth. “I thought writers who make movies do pretty good. I worked a case not long ago that involved a writer lives not far from here. Crime writer by the name of Reece Johnston. He also happens to be a pyromaniac in remission. Maybe you know him. He seems to do okay.”

As a writer, even a script writer, I hated to be compared to other writers, especially when it came to success. I’m sure that as a detective, Miller could see the bitterness painted on my face at the direction this conversation was going. Never mind that I stood the chance of going to prison for John’s murder. When it came to my writing, my skin was thinner than Saran Wrap and just as transparent.

“William Kennedy lives in Albany too. So did Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne. So what? Sometimes writers do great, other times we don’t make squat. I happen to fall into the latter category these days. Satisfied? What’s your point in all this, Miller?”

He sat back, exhaled.

“Just trying to fill in some holes in my line of questioning is all,” he said. “Now then, Ethan, tell me, how long have you known the Cattivo’s exactly?”

“Since they moved in, I guess. Early June. I didn’t get to know them at that time. I just knew of them.”

“Almost two months,” he said. “It’s taken you and your wife all this time to get together with them socially?”

“We bought a fence for a reason. Fences make real good neighbors.”

“Now you didn’t write that line, Ethan, did you?”

“I abide by it nonetheless.”

“That why you’ve been spending your days lately looking over the fence at Mrs. Cattivo while she sunbathes?”

I thought the floor was going to open up like one of those sink holes down in Florida, swallow me whole. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few sheets of standard copy stock that had been folded down the center. He opened it up, set it on the table so I could see it. The top sheet was a digital photograph of me staring out my master bedroom window, crutches planted under my armpits, my eyes staring intently out onto something which we both knew was a topless Lana. I went for the sheet directly underneath it, but then hesitated.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Be my guest.”

Pulling the top sheet aside, I eyed the second image. It was a doozy. Lana and I locked in embrace on her back deck. It must have been taken from directly inside the Cattivo residence. Now I was wishing for the floor to drop out from under me. Laying that page on the typewriter, I checked out the third picture. It was snapped from outside the front living room window in the spot where Susan had eyed Lana and me sexing it up on the dining room table, which made for a damn nice photo. I put that aside and looked at the fourth and final shot. It showed me standing all alone inside John’s gunroom, where I’d just thumbed the clip release on the very same Colt .45 that blew his brains out.

Miller sipped more whiskey.

“Oh, Ethan,” he said, with all the casualness of someone discussing a recipe for apple pie, “and as for that last picture of you standing inside Cattivo’s private firearms collection room just this morning, we have a series of about two dozen pictures that prove you were not only interested in the now late detective’s guns, but interested in one gun in particular. The same Colt .45 Model 1911 that made his brains do spin art on the window behind the desk.”

“The blood stain,” I exhaled.

“I’m guessing that would explain that,” he said. “Seems to me there’s a bit of a contradiction in your testimony. After all, you never mentioned having previously visited the gunroom.”

I stared at the photo hoping it would spontaneously dissolve right there on the table or that maybe I might suddenly wake up in my bed from this nightmare. But it was not to be.

“How do you know I was there this morning?” I said. “Maybe those pictures were taken just prior to his committing suicide? At a time when he was willingly showing me his collection.”

“Well for one thing, you’re wearing a different shirt. For two, we’ve already determined the blood on the floor to be more than six or seven hours old, if not more. For three, you can tell by the light coming in through that east-facing window that it’s morning, and for four, you can tell by the digital alarm clock on John’s desk that it’s ten in the morning. On the dottimundo in fact.”

Dottimundo...funny guy.

I sat back in my chair, hard. Just a few minutes ago I was considering placing a call to the very detective who now sat before me, and spilling my guts. But now my defense mechanism was kicking in... my survival of the fittest... and I not only wanted to kick Miller out of my house, I wanted to kick him in his perfect white teeth.

“So do I get to ask who exactly captured these pictures? Or is secrecy just another one the many police privileges?”

“You can ask, Ethan. But I’m not sure what difference it would make. We’ll have the blood tested for DNA and for certain, it will have your blueprint on it.”

Maybe the person I saw standing outside the picture window in my living room was my wife, Susan, but in my head, I suddenly saw a tall, well-built man, with a black goatee, and Ray Ban aviator sunglasses masking his eyes. After all, I’d never known Susan to go around carrying a camera. And I doubt very much that she pulled out her smartphone and started snapping away while Lana and I were locked in embrace on the dining room table. Carl, on the other hand, was trained in the art of surveillance. He was cop after all. A detective. He must have snapped the shot and then hid around the side of the house when Susan pulled onto Orchard Grove.

“Try me,” I said.

“Cattivo’s partner, Carl,” he said.

Bingo...

A slow burn began in my bum foot and quickly spread out throughout my entire body. I decided the time had come to go for broke.

“You aware that your boy, Carl, is sleeping with Lana?” I said. “And that it’s possible John was so angry over it, he threatened Lana’s life?”

“That so?” he said. “She tell you that? Aren’t you the nosy little neighbor. Not getting a lot of writing done these day, I guess.”

“Lana told me she overheard John speaking to someone on the phone. According to John, Lana was going to pay for sleeping with his partner. He was going to wait until nightfall... tonight... to throw her down the basement stairs. Make it look like an accident.”

“Now let me get this straight,” he said. “That’s your story or Lana’s story?”

I stared down at the pics, mind spinning out of control. Had Lana lied to me about John’s threat?

...Of course she did, you dumb son of a bitch... She saw you coming, Ethan, and snagged you hook, line, and fucking sinker...

“Okay, I’m having a bit of an affair with Lana,” I said, raising my voice. “But it turns out I’m one of many, which also includes my wife. There, happy now?”

He cocked his head, pursed his thin lips.

“Happens all the time,” I went on, “all over this great country of ours. Christ, all over the planet. And John was crazy angry over it all. But it doesn’t mean I stood over him and pulled the trigger for him. He did a good job of that all on his own.”

...In my head, I’m grabbing his hair, jamming the barrel into his mouth, breaking his teeth...

“With a Colt .45 that you were interested in.”

“Yes, I took a sneak peek at his guns this morning while having a friendly coffee with Lana. Again, so what? I’m thinking about writing a script about a detective who carries a Colt .45, Model 1911. Of course, I’m interested in it.” Running my hands down my perspiring face. “You know what, Miller? Maybe it’s time I got myself a lawyer.”

He smiled the robotic smile once more, teeth grinding, cheeks concave. “Let’s just say this is one of those situations where we’re still circling the truth, only now, we’re closing in on the truth as it begins to expose its ugly head.” He stood up tall, seemingly unaffected in the least by the drinks. But then, quite suddenly, he trembled, like the frigid ghost of Detective Cattivo passed right through him. “God, sometimes I scare myself I’m so good.”

Positioning my crutches, I pulled myself up, my head spinning. Turns out, I was a lightweight drinker compared to the homicide detective.

“None of this means a thing, Miller,” I said, trying my best not to raise my voice a second time.

“You’re right,” he said. “Doesn’t mean shit. That is, you had no reason not to want to see Cattivo dead.”

...Cattivo, standing over Susan, a gun pointed at her skull...

“As of this point, I don’t speak without a lawyer present.”

“Sure you can afford one?” he said, lifting his glass, draining what was left. He leaned into me, not unlike the way he’d done it outside on the Cattivo back deck when he interviewed me earlier. “You’d have to move quite a bit of that pot back there to afford a damn good attorney, believe you me.” He burst out laughing, reached out and slapped me on the arm like we were old buddies. I nearly fell over onto my side, but managed to plant my hand on the tabletop. For a quick second, I thought he was John’s spirit, having taken over a different body. “Don’t sweat it, Ethan. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, I’m an officer of the law. Who else is there left to tell? Your mom?” He stepped back from the table. “But allow me to pass on a little advice. Go get that lawyer, no matter what the cost, and don’t leave town.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He straightened out the ball knot on his blue tie, then stuffed his hands in jacket pockets.

“What it means, Mr. Forrester,” he said, “is that if you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’re guilty of a homicide, no matter the degree, no matter the motive...” He lifted up his hands, pressed his lips together, eyes wide.  “Well then, due justice will take its course.”

“We through?”

“Thanks for the drink,” he said, turning for the front door. When he got there, he about-faced. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Forrester... Ethan... I’ll say it again. I like you. I really do. But it’s just that I have a job to do and quite possibly a crime to solve. Doesn’t matter that I thought Cattivo was an asshole and a reckless asshole at that who probably would have ended up shooting himself in the end anyway. It’s just that there have been some strange things going on here on Orchard Grove, and I aim to get to the bottom of them. It’s all a part of the serve and protect program you personally pay for with your tax dollars.”

“That what you’re doing, Miller? Serving and protecting?”

Bringing up his right hand, index finger high, he made a twisting motion with it.

“Circling the wagons, my friend... Circling the wagons.”

Opening the front door, the cop let himself out, the same way he’d let himself in.

44.

The whiskey bottle sat on the table, begging me to pour another shot.

I obeyed.

I drank it down fast, then poured another and drank that too. For a brief moment I felt like the entire world was spinning out of control.

...Carl was there, the whole time. He saw everything. He knows everything. Maybe Susan was standing right beside him when he took that picture of Lana and me on the dining room table. Maybe he’s over there right now with Lana and my wife. Maybe he’s in bed with them...

Sitting back in my chair I tried to sort all of this out in my mind. My eyes locked on the full color digital printouts of my image engaged in a whole lot of illicit activity with Lana. The new neighbors move in and my life turns upside down. I fall in love with a woman I don’t know and I can’t even function like a productive human being. That’s how obsessed I’d become. My wife falls for her too and decides to keep it a secret, as if she wants Lana all to herself. But she can’t have her all to herself. They need something from me. They need me to kill John so that the three of us can live happily ever after on the cop’s pension and insurance money. But then, I’m stupid... dumber than a box of rocks. The third man Lana and Susan had in mind isn’t me at all. It’s Carl. I’m along for the ride as the murderer.

The killer.

John wasn’t about to kill Lana. It was all a fabrication. A lie designed to lure me in for good. I’d already wanted John dead for what he did to Susan on our back deck. It wouldn’t take a whole lot more to get me to agree to Lana’s plan. Only the promise of her murder, and quite possibly my own, if I didn’t go through with it.

I sat there shaking, shivering. Maybe from fear, maybe from anger. Maybe from I don’t know what? I wanted to ask myself, Why me? But the little voice inside my empty gut only laughed, lit up a smoke, and said,

“Why not you, asshole? You see, Ethan, it’s like this: Lana, Susan, and Carl... they all needed John dead. That is, they wanted to enjoy a nice life together while you rotted away in prison or worse, faced lethal injection. Lana saw through you. Saw how in love you were with her. Obsessive love. Possessive love. Manic love. The kind of love that hurts worse than a heart attack. The kind of love you cheat and steal for. The kind of love you kill for. How gullible can you be, Ethan? How much of a chump? So yeah, why the hell not use your ass to take the fall for John’s murder? You’re so blind with love you can’t see past your own crooked nose.”

Then, a sound coming from the kitchen.

Water dripping from the leaky faucet into the metal sink.

Drip, drip, drip...

But that wasn’t it.

I turned, saw a face in the picture window. A man standing out on the back deck.

Carl.

I bounded up, my crutches slipping from my grip. I lost my balance, went over hard onto my side.

“You fucker!” I screamed, feeling a shot of pain shoot up my right leg. “I know what you’re doing!”

I cocked my head, saw him in the window, smiling. Lifting up his right hand, he made a pretend pistol, shoved the barrel into his mouth, brought down the thumb, shouted, “Bang! Bang!”

I rolled over onto my stomach, started crawling toward the sliding glass doors. When I came to the steps leading down into the playroom, I tried to pull myself up onto my feet. But my right foot was too tender, too swollen, too raw with pain. I dropped down, rolled down the steps.

When I caught my breath, I once again looked out the window.

Carl was gone.

Tears filled my eyes while I sat myself up. Rolling back onto all fours, I crawled my way up the two steps, and then pulled myself up into my chair. I grabbed hold of the whiskey bottle, didn’t even bother to pour a shot. I just drank from the bottle while droplets of sweat poured from my brow into my eyes and my foot throbbed like a beating heart. What the hell was the temperature outside? A comfortable sixty-eight degrees? Inside this house it was a sweltering two hundred. It felt like hell, and I supposed I’d better get used to the idea.

How could I have been so blind that I couldn’t see through the ploy?

The sunlight that reflected off a dame like Lana Cattivo was blinding. It also sucked me in like a black hole. I’d been damned from the moment she moved in and I was more damned now that they were all plotting against me. Christ, for all I knew, Miller was in on it too.

Leaning over, I picked up my crutches, but then in a spontaneous burst of anger, tossed them across the room. I could either sit there and wait for Miller to build his case against me or I could do something about this mess right now. I could head back over to Lana’s and demand that she tell the truth about the plot to kill her husband and make it appear to be an innocent suicide. She wasn’t about to willingly confess to Miller about what she cooked up, but if I could somehow record her confession, I’d have the fuel I needed to at least save my tortured ass from frying.

But in order to pull this off, I needed a bit of a convincer.

Looking down at my foot, I saw the fresh blood that stained the sock.

“Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” I said aloud.

Limping into kitchen, I went to the silverware drawer. Pulling it open, I found the big French knife. If Lana, Susan, and Carl wanted to play rough, then so be it. Gripping the blade by the wood handle, I hobbled back down into the family room and, opening the sliding glass doors, made my way back out into the dead of night.

45.

When I got to the Cattivo’s back deck, I heard music playing. Although the lights in front were extinguished to make the place appear locked up for the night, the lights were still burning in the kitchen and the dining room. I could easily make out slices of electric white light as they spilled out through the partially open horizontal slats on the venetian blind that covered the big picture window. I made out the noise of laughter. People enjoying themselves. Partying. I listened for a male voice to cut through the female chatter. I couldn’t make anything out. But that didn’t mean Carl wasn’t in there with them.

The French knife in hand, I limped over to the window, peeked in through the narrow space between the shutter slats. What I saw felt like a quick, unexpected jab to the face. Lana and Susan were dancing in the middle of the kitchen floor. They’d both stripped down to their panties, and they were dirty dancing to some sort of free form jazz that was blaring out of the home speaker system. Lana was stealing a toke off a joint while Susan gripped a long neck beer bottle in her right hand.

This wasn’t the way people acted when death touched a close family member. But then, I guess Lana and John didn’t have any family to speak of, other than each other. Their bond wasn’t blood, but it certainly ended that way. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to find a big rock and shatter the picture window. I wanted to jump on through the window and strangle them both, then use my knife on them.

Whiskey muscles.

The better move would be to head back home, get my shit together, and try to find a way out of this mess. Legally. No more violence. In the morning I’d confront them both, make them admit that they, along with Carl, set me up to take the fall for John’s murder. I’d bring along my cell phone and record Lana’s confession, which I would deliver directly to Detective Miller. No one saw me shove that pistol into John’s mouth. No one saw me press the trigger. Only he saw me. He and God and the Devil.

I wasn’t the least bit aware of it when my grip on the knife loosened and it fell onto the wood deck. As if on cue, Lana and Susan both stopped dancing. They looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word.

“You hear something coming from outside?” Lana said.

“Not sure,” Susan said. “Maybe it’s that Miller cop guy again.”

The jazz was still going strong. Trumpets, bass, and drums. Something from the Fifties or Sixties maybe. Miles Davis or Cliff Brown. Sexy music from a black and white era. For a split second I thought they might both head outside to investigate, or the very least approach the picture window to get a good look out on the deck.

I bent over, clumsily, picked the knife back up, then pulled back and shifted myself away from the line of sight.

“Maybe your husband is spying on us,” I overheard Lana say.

“He’ll be passed out by now,” Susan responded. “He was half drunk when he left here. There’s whiskey at home. He’s no stranger to the bottle. Seems it’s all he’s capable of these days is getting hammered.”

“Maybe we just heard an animal,” Lana said. “A raccoon. Or maybe it’s the asshole’s ghost.”

“I’ll go with the animal,” Susan said. Then, “Let’s go to bed, baby. If the police come back tomorrow to ask more questions, we’ll want to be well rested.”

“Carl said there’d be no more questions,” Lana said. “He’d make sure of that. No more Q and A’s with that pinhead, Miller. But I agree. We should go to bed. But...” Her voice trailed off.

“But what, baby?”

“I’m not sure how much sleep we’re going to get.”

I made out the distinct sound of an ass cheek being slapped. Then I made out more laughter. Susan’s laughter.

“You naughty girl,” my wife said.

Then Lana said, “We did it, didn’t we? We got rid of the bastard and other than Miller, the cops don’t have a clue.”

“Not about us,” Susan said. “Can’t say the same about my husband.”

“He’d be in the way anyway. Did he really think we were going to live as a threesome together? If he did, he’s more insane than John was.”

“What about Carl?”

“We need Carl,” Lana said. “Carl is the cops. He brings something very special to the table.” Then, she said. “By the way, sweetie, I’d like to congratulate you on your acting skills. Ethan truly believes we only really got to know one another just this week.”

“You took a real chance sending me those gifts,” Susan said. “I had to flush the card that came with the panties down the toilet after Ethan found it.”

“But he never would have guessed we’ve been together for weeks now. He’s the blind leading the blind.”

“He’s gullible. Always been gullible. It’s why he bailed out of Hollywood. Some drunk producer would kiss his ass, tell him to write a script that he’d produce no questions asked, and of course it wouldn’t happen. Ethan would be left holding onto a ream of worthless paper. Now he’s broke and unemployable. A loser.”

My head was filling with adrenalin. My veins felt like hot electrical wires. My foot throbbed in thunderous jolts of pain. The voices stopped for a few moments while the jazz kept on playing. I knew they were kissing then. Caressing and holding each other.

Then Susan said, “Let’s go to bed, baby. I can’t wait any longer.”

After a minute, the music stopped, the window closed, the slats on the venetian blinds drawn all the way, the lights in the kitchen and dining room extinguished. The pain in my foot was getting worse, along with the bleeding. But I didn’t care. Right then, pain was the only thing keeping me from breaking into the house and killing the women I loved most in the world.

Loved and hated.

I love you. I hate you...

I felt the knife in my hand, gripped the wood and steel so hard I thought it might melt. Taking a gimpy step or two backwards, I looked over my right shoulder. I saw a light go on in the master bedroom. Like the rest of the windows in the single-story house, the slider window was open, so it was easy to make out the giggling. Giggling that lasted for a few minutes until the light was extinguished and I began to hear the sound of something else.

It was the sound of passion and pleasure. Moans and wails of two people who could not get enough of each other.

All the oxygen in my lungs emptied out. All the blood in my veins spilled out onto the wood deck. I turned for my house, but as I passed by the sliding glass door, I put my hand on the opener. When I yanked on it, I found, much to my surprise, that it hadn’t been locked. Locking up the house at night must have been John’s job. But John was no longer around to keep his wife safe. John was dead, because of me. Me and Lana.

I looked down at the knife gripped in one hand and my other hand gripping the slider.

“Go home,” insisted the voice inside my head. “Go the hell home now.”

“Kiss my parched ass,” I whispered to the voice.

46.

I didn’t bother with checking the time when I got back to the house. I just gravitated toward what was left of the whiskey bottle, and drank it all down. Then I found another bottle and started in on that one. I drank and I cried and I cursed myself for playing the fool. After a time, I began to laugh hysterically, because I was nothing more than a clown. A stinking, filthy drunk clown.

At one point, my eyes connected with the bowl of apples set out on the table. In my alcohol-soaked head, my mind shifted from the apples to the memory of my making love to Lana on the table, back to the apples again. The French knife was set on the table. I took hold of it and began to stab at the apples, feeling the blade slicing through the fruit’s skin and flesh, knowing all along that the sensation could not have been more different than the feel of a blade slicing through human skin and meat.

I didn’t realize it at first, but there was blood all over the knife.

Last I’d heard, apples didn’t bleed.

It had to be my blood. I released the blade and looked at my hand. Somehow, in the process of drunkenly stabbing at the apples, I’d cut it up. Cut my fingers when my sweaty hand slipped from the moist grip and slid along the sharp edge of the blade. I was too drunk to feel any real pain. Tossing the knife against the wall, I limped my way to the master bedroom, where I collapsed onto my back.

In my head I once more felt my finger pushing John’s finger against the trigger, heard the gunshot, saw the brains spatter against the window behind him. Then I heard the jazz music that had been playing inside Lana’s kitchen, and I saw my wife dancing with her new lover. My head did somersaults as I lay prone on the mattress, fully clothed. I felt like I was spinning out of control while dropping at breakneck speed into a bottomless black pit. I dropped and I dropped until sleep overtook my soul, and I found myself in a different place altogether.

I’m walking a city street in the dark of night. It’s cold and the city is empty, entirely devoid of life. The scene is desperate, post-apocalyptic. I’m walking without the aid of my crutches and the pain from the incisions in my foot are shooting up and down my right leg. The colorless atmosphere is black and white, but when I look down at my foot, I can see that I’m leaving a trail of crimson blood on the cracked macadam.

A wind blows and sends a shiver up and down my spine. I feel eyes on me. Multiple sets of eyes. Then, appearing before me in the distance, two women. It’s Susan and Lana. They’re standing in the middle of the empty city street. Although they are far away they begin to approach me at the speed of light. They haven’t moved a muscle but suddenly they’re standing only inches away from me, staring at me. Into me.

They look so beautiful. Angelic in their matching white dresses, their soft, olive-colored skin, and their deep-set eyes. Lana is holding a bright red apple. Bringing it to her mouth, she takes a bite out of it, then hands it to Susan who does the same. I’m trying to speak to them, but it isn’t easy. It’s as if my jaw is partially wired shut.

When finally the words come to me, I say, “Why did you stab me in the back?”

But the women just stand there chewing while a cold wind blows up and down the empty city street. But soon something starts coming out of their mouths. It’s blood. The blood flows dark red against the black and whiteness. It flows out their mouths, down their chins, and onto their chests, staining their white dresses. They’re no longer sharing an apple. Instead, they’re eating John’s severed, bullet-damaged head. The thing is, he isn’t dead. His blue eyes are wide open and he’s smiling that devil grin that I’ve come to abhor.

“You know for a screenwriter,” he says as Lana takes a big bite out of his exposed brains, “you sure are a stupid fuck, Hollywood.”

That’s when I’m startled awake.

I bounded up into sitting position, as if my backbone were a heavy-duty spring. I breathed in heavily, the sweat soaking my face, soaking through my clothing. My head was filled with chunks of concrete and rusted barbed wire, and my foot felt like someone chopped it off while I slept, leaving only a bloody stump. I glanced at the time on my watch. Four in the morning. I’d been out cold for four hours.

My hands felt strange. My fingers stung, and the skin on my palms was sticky, like I’d dipped my hands in a bowl of maple syrup before collapsing onto the bed. Flicking on the light beside the bed stand, I saw that the insides of both hands were nearly covered in dried blood. Then I remembered that I’d cut both hands with the French knife when I was stabbing the apples, and now the cuts had bled out and cauterized themselves while I slept off the booze.

That’s when I began to hear the sirens.

Soft at first, but then louder the closer they came to sleepy Orchard Grove. In all honesty, the sirens were only now registering while surly I’d been hearing them even in my sleep. It must have been the sirens that woke me up in the first place. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard sirens in the middle of the night, but there was that voice inside my gut again, trying to tell me something. It told me the sirens were meant for me. It told me the digital photos Miller laid out on the dining room table were just the start of something bigger and more sinister. Somehow I knew that he had enough evidence by now to take me into custody, and that custody would lead to indictment and an arrest for Murder in the First.

I bounded out of bed then, feeling like my head was split down the center. I went to the bathroom and urinated. Spotting my shirt on the floor, I knelt down without falling down, picked it up and pulled it over my head and shoulders. Limping as fast as possible into the kitchen, I went to the sink, opened up the hot and cold spigots and washed my hands with soap and water until the blood fell off the skin and circled the aluminum drain. The sting from the many cuts was enough to make my eyes water. But they were only surface cuts, and nothing to worry about.

Splashing some water onto my face, I then dried it with the dishrag, which I dropped to the floor. I located the keys to a car I hadn’t driven since my foot had been operated on. For a brief second, I thought about heading down to the pot patch to grab the coffee can I’d buried there weeks ago. A can that contained five thousand in cash. Cash I’d been hiding from Susan. But the sirens were getting louder. There was no time for hobbling down to the tree line. Not with my gimpy foot. I would just have to grab some cash from an ATM.

Snatching my cell phone off the kitchen counter, I shoved it in my jeans pocket. I pulled my Levis jean jacket from the closet, and left the house through the front door. I got into my ten year old, top-down Porsche-Carrera that was parked in the driveway, and turning the key, set my left foot on the gas.

It started up right away. 

Backing out with the headlights off, I shifted the auto-tranny into drive and toe-tapped the gas. I was hooking a left onto the cross street that would take me away from Orchard Grove, just as the blue-and-whites turned into the neighborhood, lighting the joint up in their red, white, and blue LED flashers.

By the time they pulled up into my driveway, I was already gone.

47.

I desperately needed a place to go. A safe house. A friend.  

But who the hell would take me in?

I had no friends. Susan had been my friend. Now she was gone.  

Options.

I might head into the city, hide in my writing studio. But then, that would be the second place the cops would look for me once they’d finished up with the Orchard Grove house. I could hit the northbound highway, head for the Canadian border two hundred fifty miles away. But I’d never make it past the border without getting busted on the spot. Plus I didn’t have my passport on me, or one of those special digitally enhanced new driver’s licenses.

Going south was always an option. Mexico. But that would take two or three days of nonstop driving. By then, my disappearance would be broadcast all over the social media sites. Miller would send out an APB, the Staties and the FBI would grow massive hard-ons that pointed at me, and then the roadblocks would go up. I’d be lucky to make Ohio.

I drove away from the city, knowing that they’d comb every street and alley for me. No choice but to hit the highway until I was beyond the city limits. From there I’d hit a back-country road, maybe find a motel-no-tell where I could hold up for the night until I scripted my next move. It wasn’t much of a plan, but then, I’d never run away from anything before. Never run for my life.

Dead ahead, the entrance ramp to New York State Highway 90.

I swerved into the right lane and drove onto it, then started heading east along a back- country road. The dark of night hung over me like a black shroud. The humidity was so thick; the air that blew against my face as I drove with the top down had little effect. Or maybe my foot was infecting, causing a fever from which I would never recover. Maybe it’s what I deserved for what I’d done to John. Or what the hell, maybe I deserved a medal.

I went as far as the Nassau exit and got off.

To say the place was sparsely populated was saying a lot. It was nothing but wide open farm fields and the occasional farm house. Without a roof over me, the smell of cow shit tainted the every single ounce of oxygen I breathed.

Up ahead on my right, a twenty-four hour gas station/convenience store. My gas tank registered three quarters full, but I was in desperate need of cash. I could have kicked myself in the ass for not digging up my coffee can from out of the pot patch before I split Orchard Grove. It would have taken only a few minutes at most and I’d be five grand richer for it. If only I’d woken up just five minutes earlier, I might have had the time to grab the money and avoid the police. Now I was a prisoner to whatever was left in my joint checking account with Susan. That is, she hadn’t already emptied the sucker out. I also knew that the cops would attempt to trace every credit card transaction I made prior to putting a hold on all my accounts. Which meant speed was of the essence.

Pulling into the convenience store lot, I parked around the back of the small wood building near the dumpster and killed the engine. I exited the car and limped around to the front of the store, entered into it through a front glass door that sported a picture of a giant green bass breaking the water’s surface in a flying leap, the words, “Fresh Night Crawlers for Sale!” printed in big black letters below it. That’s what I was to the Albany cops. A night crawler. A worm. A slimy insect.

There was an old man sitting behind the counter on a stool. The scraggily gray beard he wore made him look old anyway. He was watching a television that was mounted to the wall above the counter, directly beside the overhead cigarette racks. It was still dark out, yet he barely acknowledged me as I stood by the now closed door.

“ATM?” I asked, trying not to look at him directly.

He slowly peeled his eyes away from the tube, nodded.

“Behind you,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I turned, eyed the gray cash machine set up against the exterior wall by the window. Pulling out my wallet, I slid out the red ATM card, entered it into the card slot. When the screen came up asking me for my PIN, I entered it and waited. That’s when the silence was broken by the sounds coming from the old man’s television, as if something he’d just witnessed on the screen caused him to dramatically turn up the audio.

“This is your news on the nines for the top of the five o’clock hour. Police are on the lookout for a North Albany screenwriter suspected of murdering a local APD detective in a bizarre homicide-made-to-look-like-a-suicide plot only Hollywood could cook up.”

My knees grew wobbly, my foot throbbing with my every pulse, the skin that surrounded it feeling too small for the swelled, sutured flesh... feeling as if it was splitting apart. I made the mistake of looking over my right shoulder at the old man who shifted his eyes from the television to my face. I quickly turned back to the machine, hoping against all hope that it would disburse my cash immediately. Instead it asked me if I’d be willing to pay three dollars to access my cash account. I pressed Yes. As if I had a choice in the matter.

Then it asked me how much I wanted to withdraw. The most it offered up was two hundred bucks. But there was another option called “Other.” I chose that one. Meanwhile, the bad news continued to spill out of the television just three or four feet away.

“The body of APD Detective John Cattivo, forty-one, was discovered last evening by his wife immediately after she heard what was described as a gunshot coming from one of the rooms in their North Albany home. Initial reports indicated that Cattivo died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head while alone in the room. Later on, however, it was reported that Cattivo had been accompanied by his next-door neighbor, local screenwriter Ethan Forrester, into the room only moments prior to the suicide. After careful questioning by APD Senior Homicide Detective Nick Miller, it was determined that Forrester either tricked Cattivo into acting out a suicide on behalf of research he was said to be conducting for an upcoming Hollywood production or, Forrester actually pulled the trigger himself. Preliminary ballistics reports indicate that Forrester’s prints were not only discovered on the suicide weapon, but also on the single bullet casing that, by all appearances, had been secretly loaded into the otherwise empty automatic’s nine round magazine.

“A second source for the APD, Sergeant Carl Pressman, who is also reputed to have been the deceased’s partner, reports that Forrester who, it should be noted is on crutches after a recent foot surgery, had been harassing Cattivo’s wife, Lana. According to Pressman, Forrester who lives next door to the Cattivo’s on Orchard Grove, has shown up on numerous occasions to their home uninvited. Mrs. Cattivo has also lodged several complaints with the APD after discovering Forrester spying on her from a window that looks directly out onto their next-door home and backyard.

“Miller, who is presently in charge of the on-going investigation, told Channel Nine that he was able to obtain a bench warrant for Forrester’s arrest only a few hours after the fatal early evening incident. However, when the APD made a raid on Forrester’s Orchard Grove home at approximately three-thirty AM this morning, the screenwriter had already fled the scene, perhaps acting on a tip-off from some unknown party.”

I could feel the old man’s eyes digging into me as I typed in the numbers, 1-0-0-0 into the ATM, pressed Enter. When it spit out an electronic beep and flashed the words, “$500 Maximum Withdrawal,” I was left with no other option but to cancel my request and type in 5-0-0. I bit down on my bottom lip so hard I thought I drew blood, pressed Enter and waited for the ATM to cough up the cash. I tried to turn off the voice on the television and concentrate instead on the mechanical workings of the machine, the bills being electronically counted and collected by the wheels and gears.

“Excuse me,” the old man said. Just the sound of his old, gravelly voice sent a jolt of electric sparks throughout my nervous system.

A stream of cash began dispersing into the gray plastic tray in twenty-dollar denominations. It spilled out like green blood.

“Hey you,” the old man pressed. “That’s you on the television, ain’t it? Ain’t...it?! You’re the killer. ”

I tried to ignore him. But my head was filling with the sound of a thousand blaring trumpets and beating, pulsating bass drums.

“Hey you, killer!” the old man repeated, his voice louder, more insistent, more threatening.

I grabbed my money, shoved it into my jeans pocket. It wouldn’t be enough, but I was on the run from the law. Somehow I would have to find a way to get to that coffee can in the pot patch. But for now I had to stay away or else risk getting snatched by Miller and his blue knights. I was floating alone in a great big wavy ocean, and there were storm clouds overhead, lightning bolts striking all around me. A fugitive from a kind of half-baked justice where a cop gets to wave a loaded gun at my wife’s head while forcing her to get half naked and perform sexual acts with his own wife. Doesn’t matter if it turns out that both women surly enjoyed the act. Right is right and wrong is fucked up. So what if the end result was my helping him kill himself? He had it coming. The only thing I did wrong was not finding a way to kill him when he was still holding a gun on my wife out on my back deck.

I turned, faced the old man.

He was wearing a wife beater that had turned fifty shades of gray. His gray hair was over grown like a patch of weeds, except for the very center of his skull that was egghead bald. His eyes were bloodshot and wet with decades of accumulated rage. Now was the moment he’d been waiting for his entire life. He reached under the counter and came back out with a pump-action shotgun. He pointed the barrel at my chest.

“You don’t want to do that,” I said. “You have me confused for someone else.”

“The hell I do,” he said. “I want you to put them hands over your head, and drop down to your goddamned knees. I’m gonna call the cops and they’re gonna cart your fancy cop killin’ ass to jail. You hear me, movie star?”

“I write film scripts,” I said. “I’m not a movie star. And you’re making a big mistake.”

“You’re making the mistake by opening your mouth. You don’t care about people. You care only about yourself. You put a bullet in that police officer’s gun and you blew his brains out. That’s murder and you die for murder. That’s the law.”

The pulse pounded in my foot and in my brain. Okay, I pulled the trigger on John Cattivo. Sure I wanted him dead, and sure I agreed to arrange his suicide. But I was set up to be the lone murderer.

I began to raise up my hands, like I was surrendering myself when in fact I was stalling. At the same time, I began to lower my body. But that’s when I caught sight of the stack of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup cans over my right shoulder. There was a cardboard sign Scotch-taped to the pyramid-like stack announcing a ninety-nine cent per can sale.

“Get down!” he barked, cocking a fresh shell into the shotgun chamber. The tight mechanical metal-workings of the shotgun filled the store.

Reaching out quick, I snatched up my ninety-nine cents worth of soup, sending the rest of the stack tumbling to the floor, and tossed it at his head. He ducked and triggered the shotgun, blasting away the cigarette rack. Cigarettes rained down onto the floor as I speed-limped the couple of steps to the counter.

Extending both arms, I lunged forward off my good foot, caught the counter with my left hand while grabbing hold of the shotgun barrel with my right. As we struggled, he managed to cock another round into the chamber. He fired again and the blast sent me sliding off the counter and onto my back while a chunk of plaster ceiling came raining down on me. He bounded up onto his feet like a man years younger, and came around front, aiming the barrel down at my head. Pointblank. At that range, he would vaporize my face.

“You attacked me,” he said, cocking his head up toward a video monitor. “I got it on film. You attacked me, and you killed that officer of the law and now I’m gonna blast you away in self-defense.”

The old man meant business. I saw the death in his eyes. It was as plain and despairing as the broken blood vessels that streaked across the wet whites. I recognized his dire need to kill me. His hatred and his lust for what he was about to do. Like he’d waited for this singular moment in time for his entire life, and that once accomplished, he could die without a shred of remorse. He didn’t just want to kill me. He wanted to kill himself, and all of mankind. In a word, he’d had enough already. He cocked a round into the chamber and he smiled the smile of a man who had finally found peace.

“Give my love to the devil, asshole,” he said, as his finger slithered onto the trigger.

But I reached out fast. Grabbed hold of the barrel, pulled it out of his hands. Leaning up, I swung the stock against his knee, dropping him on the spot like a scarecrow made of twigs. Then I swung it in the opposite direction, connecting with his head. I felt the crack of his skull more than I heard it, as its energy travelled from the wood stock along the length of the metal barrel, into my hands and arms. It was no more or less an act of nature than if I’d just cracked open an egg. Surrendering the devil that possessed him, he collapsed, while the blood that tiredly poured from the split in his head made a thick pool on the filthy wooden floor. He was a dead man now, and there was no question in the world about who killed him and why.

I used the shotgun like a crutch to pull myself up off the floor, before I got soaked in blood. My head pounding, the wound sutures in my foot no doubt having split open, I limped over the old man, went around the back of the counter. The register was closed, and I had no idea how to open it. I did the only thing I could think of which was to raise up the shotgun, slam the stock end down on the machine.

The drawer shot open.

I grabbed up what little cash there was, stuffing it into my pocket. Then, peering down under the counter, I located the open box of 12-gauge shells. Grabbing a fist full of them, I filled my jeans pocket. As my final act in the Godforsaken place, I searched the narrow cubby behind the register for the security system tape loop. When I located it, I pulled out the plastic cassette tape, and shoved it into my pant waist.

Making my way back around the counter and the front door, I made sure not to step in any of the old man’s blood. After all, I was leaking plenty of the stuff myself. On my way out the door, my eyes caught sight of wooden hat-rack that was screwed to the wall and that displayed maybe a dozen baseball caps. One that bore the letters NRA on the brim in big white letters caught my attention. The tag attached to it read eight dollars. For a brief second, I thought about digging into my pocket for a ten spot, setting it onto the counter.

“How stupid is that?” I whispered aloud.

I was already a killer who’d just robbed the till. What difference did stealing a cheap baseball cap make? Pushing the door open, I made my way out of the store, a desperado whose time was about to run out.   

48.

It was still dark out. But dawn couldn’t be that far off on the horizon.

I was sure no one had seen me or heard the shotgun blasts. But that could have been wishful thinking, like believing Susan, Lana, and I could have lived together happily ever after. The world was getting smaller. Even in a remote area like this one. For all I knew, the state police had employed a drone to scour the countryside for me. I’d written one into a script once, just to keep up with modern tech. But I’d never really seen one in person. Looking up at the sky, I listened for the buzz and hum of tiny propellers. I didn’t hear any. But that didn’t make me feel any less vulnerable. Peeling the round gold price tag off the cap’s brim, I put it on, yanking it down over my brow. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it would have to do. 

Back at the car, I tossed the shotgun onto the passenger seat, and pulled the security tape out of my pants. I stuck my fingers into the cassette, yanked out the tape, snapped it in two, then tossed the whole thing into the dumpster. Slipping back behind the wheel, I fired up the Porsche and, once more pressing my left foot on the gas, drove out of the lot with the headlights extinguished.

I had no right in the world to pray. Rather, I had no right to pray and believe that Jesus, if he could actually hear me, owed me a solid. And I sure as shit knew that I would never see nor get to know him after the two men I killed in a single day. Correction...two men who might have killed me first given the opportunity. Technicalities. But regardless of how Jesus or God or Buddha felt about the death trail I was leaving behind, praying felt like the right thing to do for a man who was wanted as much by the police as he was Satan.

“Our father who art in heaven,” I said aloud into the wind, “please save my sorry ass.”

Hooking up with Route 9-and-20, the old road that used to connect Albany with New York City before the construction of the New York State Thruway, I drove for another twenty or thirty minutes through the desolate countryside. Other than sleeping off a few hours of a whiskey drunk, I hadn’t had any decent sleep in close to forty-eight hours. I was dead tired. Tired and wired and afraid of what awaited me around the next corner. I knew the right thing to do was to keep going until I at least made it to the Catskill Mountains where I could find a place to hide in the woods. Maybe an old wintertime hunting cabin I could break into. But I was driving with my left foot while my right foot was bleeding badly and my eyes were closing involuntarily. The immediate danger I faced was running off the road due to exhaustion. I’d be lucky to make it another five miles without crashing.

I recognized the area as a once popular tourist destination back in the Forties and Fifties for the World War II generation who returned from the battleground looking for cheap getaways. No one used the area for vacationing anymore now that Cape Cod and the New Jersey boardwalk were all the rage, but the old motels still remained, mostly as overnight beds for sleepy truckers.

Forcing my eyes to stay open, I drove until I came to the first roadside motel I could find that looked somehow inviting. The one I found had a few pickups and a couple of semis parked outside in the gravel lot. There was a big, vertical neon sign that said Motel in descending letters, only half the red and green neon in working order. But the lights were on in some of the rooms. Rooms that belonged to truckers looking to get an early start on the day.

I pulled up outside the front office and turned the car off. Before I got out, I laid my jean jacket over the shotgun. Last thing I needed was someone spotting the weapon used to kill a man, even if that killing were conducted in self-defense.

Standing outside the car, I looked to the east and made out the vague hint of sunlight as it was starting to rise over the mountains. A quick glance at my watch told me it was going on six o’clock in the morning. In a few minutes, daylight and humid summer heat would wash over this motel like a filthy, cum-stained bed sheet. When it came, I wanted to be secured behind the dead-bolted door of an anonymous room, the blinds closed, the air conditioning unit blasting cold, manufactured air.

I needed time to think.

To plan.

To figure a way out of this mess or at the very least, expose Lana for who she truly was. Whatever the case, I was starting to think that turning myself into Miller before somebody else got killed might not be the stupidest of ideas. At the very least, I’d be able to get my foot looked at. At this rate, I was risking the onset of gangrene. Once that happened, the foot was as good as gone.

The sound of two or three electric jolts filled the air, and the neon sign went dead for yet another day. Must be on a timer. I wondered if that’s what an electric chair sounded like. Turning, I limped up onto the concrete sidewalk and approached the glass door, the words OFFICE stamped on it at eye level in white paint that was chipped and browned with age and over exposure to the sun. Opening the door, I approached the empty Formica-covered counter. Maybe we were living in the digital age, but there was a good old fashioned bell set out on the counter. I slapped it, the ring so surprisingly loud, it took me by surprise.

After a slow couple of beats, a woman stepped through a door-sized opening that was partially covered by a brown curtain. She was old, and she looked even older in her baggy housedress, worn slippers, and head of dyed black hair that had been put up in curlers. Her face was covered in a mask of translucent crème that belonged to the bedtime routine of a woman who, many decades ago, might have been as pretty as a movie poster. Now she seemed as aged and broken as the sign out front. Maybe as aged as the motel itself, her wrinkled body a worn casualty of the greatest generation that was now mostly dead.

“Can I help you?” she said, forcing the words from the back of her throat along with a generous chunk of phlegm.

“Sorry to wake you,” I said, knowing full well that the day would soon come when she wouldn’t wake up at all.

“I was just about to get up anyway. You look like you need a room.”

“That good, huh?”

“Would you prefer an ocean front view?”

I just looked at her, perplexed.

“That’s just a joke. What’s the matter, mister? Too tired for a sense of humor?” She looked down at my feet. “Take a step back,” she added.

I did it. Her eyes went wide.

“That foot looks like hell. You’re not bleeding on my floor I hope.”

“It stopped,” I said, hoping that it had. I was leaving a blood trail all over upstate New York.

I pulled the baseball hat farther down my brow so that my eyes were entirely hidden.

“You should be on crutches.”

“I forgot them.”

She looked up, cracked a sly grin.

“Booze will do that,” she said. “Or is that Jack Daniel’s toothpaste I smell on your breath?”

I tried to work up a smile, but my face felt like I was wearing a mask of concrete. I also felt relieved. If she’d only just woken up, then she wasn’t yet aware of the cop I helped kill in Albany or that old man I put down thirty miles back in Nassau. To her, my face was just another face in a lifetime of faces. No more or less important than a manikin.

“Been on the road all night. Need some sleep. You have a corner room available? A quiet room?”

Mounted to the wall behind the desk was a square unit that had been divided up into about thirty or so separate six-inch-by-six-inch cubbies. She gazed at the boxes until she found the key she wanted. Pulling it from the cubby she then slapped it down onto the desk.

“You got some plastic for me?” she said, digging into the pocket on her housecoat for a pair of reading glasses. The fifteen-dollar jobs you can buy without a prescription in the drug store. She slipped them on and stared uncomfortably at the screen on her computer.

Without thinking, I dug out my Amex, handed it to her. It took a few beats, but it wasn’t until she had the card in hand that I realized what I’d done. I felt my stomach tighten up and my pulse take on an added velocity. The one thing I didn’t need was for her to get suspicious, so I let it go and hoped the card wouldn’t be traced. At least, right away.

She swiped the card in the little credit card machine and waited, her eyes glued to its small digital screen. After a few long seconds she shook her head, whispered, “Declined.”

A truck started up in the lot, startling me. From the sound of it, a big semi.  

“Jumpy this morning, aren’t we?” the woman said without ever looking up from the little credit card machine.

She ran the card again.

“Just not your day,” she said. “Declined again.” She pulled off her glasses, peered up at me. “Got anymore plastic that’s willing to cut you some slack?”

“How do you feel about cash?”

She smirked, handed me back my card.

“Your ball cap says NRA, but you don’t by chance work for the IRS, do you?”

I shook my head, returned the card to my wallet.

“Cash is fine as wine,” she said. “Forty for the room. Ten extra for towels and maid service. Daily tip is up to you. You pay for the entire stay in advance.” Reaching under the desk, she pulled out a white index-sized card that had some black print on it. “Fill this out, if you please,” she added, setting a Bic ballpoint on top of the card.

My eyes peering down at the black space where the word NAME was printed, I made the split second decision to go with the first fake name that came to mind. Jim Summers. After all, it was summertime. I wrote down a fake license plate number and a fake phone number in the spaces provided, and simply didn’t bother with an email. When I was done, I slid the card back toward her. She picked it up, read it.

“How long will you be staying with us... Mr. Summers?”

I figured I wouldn’t be using the motel for more than a few hours. Four hours at most, depending upon how close the police were to picking up my trail. Just enough time to get some rest, maybe eat some takeout, catch a shower, clean my foot, and figure out my next move.

“Just a day and a night,” I lied, reaching into my pocket, shaving off two twenties and a ten, handing the bills to her. She didn’t store the cash in the register, but instead stuffed them in her housecoat pocket.

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Summers,” she said. Then, “Oh, and before I forget.” Once more she reached under the desk, came back out with a business card that she set out onto the desktop. The printing on the card said, “Catskill Escort Service” in big block letters. Under that it said “Discreet and Affordable.” A phone number was printed below that.

“Listen,” she said, “I know how all you guys on the road get lonely, and since I don’t want no strangers coming and going at all hours, I only allow one escort service to operate here. Understand, Mr. Summers?”

I took the card, slid it into my pants pocket with my cell phone.

“Gotcha,” I said, nodding. I added, “What, no bellman to assist me with my luggage?”

“So you do have a sense of humor after all,” she said. “I’ll have you know the bellman was my husband and the son of a bitch took off ten years ago with a cocktail waitress and never came back.”

“Men are jerks.”

“He wasn’t very well endowed anyway. And even if he was, he had no idea how to use it.”

“Maybe you’re better off.”

“You’re right. Just look around you. I live in Camelot now.”

She exhaled, turned, then disappeared back behind the curtain to be alone with her memories of far better days.

49.

I got back in the Porsche and drove it the short distance across the lot to room 30 which, it turns out, was the far corner room, just like I’d requested. I wasn’t sure how good an idea it was to park directly outside the room, so I drove around the side of the motel and parked it behind the blue dumpster, entirely out of sight. There was a good-sized patch of second growth woods directly beside my room which would come in handy if the state cops or local sheriff made a visit. I could only hope that I’d had enough of a head start on them to earn me at least a few hours peace. Picking up the shotgun along with the jacket that concealed it, I got out of the car, and headed for room 30.

Slipping the key into the lock, I opened the door and closed it behind me, engaging the deadbolt. I flicked on the air-conditioning unit, which was installed in the wall directly beneath the curtain-covered picture window and laid the shotgun out onto an easy chair that was positioned immediately to the left of the door. While the big cooling unit spit out red/orange sparks along with something that smelled more like an oil slick than air, I hobbled on past a kitchenette efficiency unit that contained a small gas-fired stove, and stole a peek inside the bathroom. There was a sink, a toilet, and a shower stall that was covered in a bone-colored curtain that had green and brown mildew stains on its bottom. A narrow slider window was installed over the toilet. It was too small to push myself through if I were to suddenly require a second means of escape, which meant I was leaving this place through the front door, one way or another.

Coming out of the bathroom, I went around the side of the bed and took a painful load off. To my right, at the end of the bed sat a television. The old kind with the big tube in it. I could turn it on, check the news, but it was the last thing I wanted to do right now. What’s the saying? Ignorance is bliss. Well, I don’t know if what I was experiencing was blissful, but it seemed somehow better than knowing precisely how screwed I was at the moment.

The nightstand contained a phone and a laminated card that advertised local services like twenty-four-hour pizza delivery and a Chinese food takeout joint. I realized that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast of toast and butter. Without having to look at it, I knew my cell phone still had power, but something told me not to use it unless it was absolutely necessary. Cell phone calls could be tracked. I also knew the phone itself could be tracked with GPS, but I was betting on the APD not being sophisticated enough to sport that kind of high tech.

FBI would be a different story, however. I would need my phone later on down the road so hanging on to it was a chance I had to take.

In the meantime, I’d turn it off to conserve power. But before powering down, I’d check it for any texts or messages. There were none, telling me two things. First, that Lana and Susan were avoiding me like the plague. And two, Miller wasn’t ready to make direct contact with me for whatever reason. Maybe he assumed I’d do something even more stupid than killing a convenience store clerk. Maybe he thought that by calling me, he’d scare me off even more. Make me run faster and farther. Who knows? Maybe Miller who was waiting for me to call him. What did the cops call that? A passive/aggressive apprehension tactic? Now I was back to being the scriptwriter, making shit up as I went along.

I did know this: When the time was right, I would call Miller and make a few demands. That is, he wanted me to turn myself in. But just when that time was and what precise demands I would make had yet to reveal themselves. They would have to wait while I sorted things out and gave my head and bad foot a rest.

Depressing the small narrow button on the side of the phone, I powered it down. Then, I picked up the receiver on the room phone, dialed the pizza place and waited for an answer. When someone picked up, I told him I wanted a delivery.

“This early?” the kid said. A young man. A boy from the sounds of it. “It’s not even seven.”

“Says on your advertisement you’re open twenty-four hours a day.”

“We just say that shit because it sounds good.”

“Tell you what I’m gonna say because it sounds good,” I said. “You bring me a cheese pizza and a pint of Jack Daniels and a can of Flex Seal, I’ll make sure your wallet is glad it got up with you today.”

“Did you say Flex Seal?”

“Yup, as seen on TV. The twenty-four-hour chain drug stores should have it in stock.”

“Okay. Might take a while. I gotta heat up the ovens and then I gotta find the nearest CVS.”

I told him my address at the motel. He said he knew the place better than the back of his hand.

“Who really knows what the back of their hand looks like?” I said.

He hung up.

I stood up, heavy on the good foot, light on the bad, shoved the cell phone in the pocket opposite the one that held three or four shotgun shells. When I pulled my hand back out, something fell out onto the floor. The card for the escort service. Ever since the woman at the front desk had given it to me, it had been burning a hole in my pocket.

I peered down at the card where it rested on the floor, read the words Escort Service yet again. No matter how many times I read them they didn’t change. Some people’s bodies shut down under severe stress. But I was one of those rare men who needed a stress release.

Committing the phone number to memory, I picked up the landline again and punched it in. A woman answered. I told her who I was and where I was.

“What did you have in mind?” she said. The raspy voice was young, but not that of a child. More like a woman in her thirties or forties who was no stranger to cigarettes.

“I didn’t know I had a choice,” I said.

“You always have a choice,” she said.

In my head, I pictured precisely who I wanted, but could no longer have.

“Do you have anyone who’s blonde? Naturally blonde? Well built, but doesn’t look like one of those female bodybuilder types? I want someone who’s feminine and proud of it.”

“I think we can do that for you,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Can she wear a red robe?” I said. “Like a Japanese kimono.”

She giggled. “That’s pretty specific. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Then she told me the woman I requested would be there within the hour.

I suddenly felt happy. Lana was coming to see me.

Sort of.

Her company would do me good before I had to resume running for my life.

When I hung up, I laid back on the bed and put my feet up. One good foot, one bad foot ... a foot bloodied and throbbing and soon to be smelling of gangrene. Or so I was convinced. It desperately needed cleaning. Correction... It desperately needed an emergency room. But I was too tired and too wanted by the cops to even think about cleaning it right now, much less risk exposing myself to the medical staff of an emergency room. The second I walked in through the sliding glass doors of a hospital ER, it would be game over.

Silence seemed to surround the motel. It was almost unnatural. A serene quiet where there should be sirens and the locking and loading of firearms, all of them pointed at me. Maybe I was already dead and didn’t even realize it.

Looking around the motel room, at the TV, at the old, clunky AC unit, and the kitchenette, I was reminded of the week long sea-side summer vacations my family would take on Cape Cod, back when I was a little kid. How much I looked forward to digging in the sand, swimming in the sea and the hotel pool. Going to bed at night to the ocean breeze and being lulled to sleep by the ocean waves that steadily slapped the shoreline. I remembered how as a skinny, undersized seven-year-old, I stepped into the ocean one morning and immediately felt something stab my foot. It was like a pair of heavy-duty scissors sliced my big toe off. My dad picked me up by the waist, only to discover that a crab had clutched me in its claw. I screamed and cried, more filled with fear than actual pain. A million years had passed since that bright summer morning, but somehow it all seemed like moments ago. 

Soon I began to doze off. I tried like hell to think about nothing. But as soon as the lights went out in my brain, I thought about Lana. When I thought about Lana I automatically thought about Susan. Thought about the two of them together. I saw them naked and I saw them making love to one another in the heat of the long night. I saw myself making love to them at the same time. Even though they were dozens of miles away from me, I could feel their presence inside my chest and my sex as if the two of them were somehow crawling around inside my flesh and bone.

It was the strangest thing, but now that they’d set me up to take the fall for John’s killing, I wanted them both more than ever. Rather, I wanted Lana. Have you ever wished you could open up your skull, extract the piece of brain that holds the memory of a woman who controls you more than you control yourself? That’s precisely what I would have done, if only it were possible. But thus far, the only one who’d made out fine as red wine in this mess was John Cattivo. He might be dead, his brains blasted all over his gunroom wall, but at least he was free of Lana.

As sleep began to take over, the events of the past couple of days took on a new clarity. It was as if I had a tumor growing on my liver and somehow I could see the big pink lump like my skin had turned translucent as glass. The world loved to see a big man fall. But then, I wasn’t a big man in any sense of the word. Sure, I was a screenwriter who’d had some films produced. Sure, I once had a name and reputation. I had friends and was invited to parties in LA that other screenwriters and movie stars also attended.

Here’s one for you: I once got high with Brad Pitt back in ‘90 or ‘91 out in the turnaround of the Avalon Hotel in West Hollywood. I did shots with George Clooney in his trailer on the Universal Studios set of Out of Sight for which I was the show runner. I even hitched a ride with Johnny Depp to a 7-Eleven on the corner of Olympic and Reeves when he needed a pack of cigarettes and I needed a sixer of beer. On the way back to a mutual friend’s townhouse on Santa Monica Boulevard, he stole one of my beers and I stole one of his butts. We blared Nirvana and laughed at the stupidest shit.

Now I’m not sure Johnny Depp or George Clooney would have the slightest clue who I was. That’s how long gone I’d become. How positively yesterday I was. Like an old T-shirt that had been ripped and shredded and tossed into the corner of the garage to collect dust and spider webs.

But I was still a writer.

No son of a bitch could ever take that away from me. But what if I turned myself in? Would the cops believe me when I told them I just wanted to see what it looked like when a man ate his piece? That I was conducting research at the time? That I had no idea his wife had planted a bullet inside the gun? That John insisted on demonstrating how it was done. So what if his teeth were broken. Maybe he did that by mistake when he shoved the barrel inside his mouth on his own. Just because his teeth were broken didn’t mean I shoved the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.  

It’s how I would explain it to Miller. But chances are, he wouldn’t believe me. Or maybe believing me would be beside the point. A man was dead and it was my fault. There was also no getting around the fact that it was my prints on the bullet casing and no one else’s.

But John Cattivo was just the first in what would become two dead bodies in less than twelve hours.

Would Miller believe me when I said I was defending myself against a raging convenience store clerk? It wasn’t likely. Even when forensics scoured the place and discovered he shot at me first, they’d come up with a scenario that proved I was physically threatening the old man. In the end, they’d work it out so that he was the one acting in self-defense. Not the other way around. After all, I’d already killed a cop.

The future looked black and bleak.

And now here I was lying on my back inside some roadside motel, filled with fear and exhaustion so deep, I could feel it in my teeth and in the core of my bones. What I should have been doing was heading south to New York City where I could ditch the Porsche in the East River and then blend into the crowd. At the first chance I got, I could either steal away on a cargo ship bound for South America, or I could somehow figure out a way to pay off some Chinese smuggler for safe passage to Asia where I’d disappear forever under a false ID.

Maybe, just maybe, if I had even an ounce of luck left inside me, I would end up in Burma or maybe Vietnam where I could tend bar and write novels under a pen name, open up a Swiss bank account where I’d receive my royalties. It wasn’t a likely outcome for a man who’d fallen off the bitched-for-life tree and hit every branch on the way down, but just the thought of it offered me a smidgeon of hope.

Hope... Hope floats like a bloated carcass...

I closed my eyes, felt myself drifting off, sinking down and down until the world turned black.

50.

Then a knock on the door.

I shot up, sweat dripping off my forehead into my eyes. Damned A/C didn’t work any better than my luck. How long was I out? Ten, twenty minutes at the most. I slid off the bed, limped the few steps to the door.

“Who’s there?” I said.

“You called the escort service,” spoke the voice, which was clearly female.

I nodded, as if she could see me through the wood door. Side stepping to the window, I peeked out through the slim separation between the glass and the filthy fabric. I made out a slim, woman dressed in cut-off shorts and a tight T-shirt that ended half way down her slightly soft belly. She sported ample breasts and her smooth, straight blonde hair was thick and trimmed maybe an inch or so above her shoulders, just like Lana. From where I was standing, she didn’t look any older than nineteen or twenty, but I could have been mistaken. The important thing was that she was here now, hadn’t brought any cops along with her, and that she reminded me of Lana.

Tossing my jacket back over the shotgun, I unlatched the chain, unlocked the deadbolt, opened the door just enough to show my face.

“Good morning.” She smiled. “Or is it still good evening?”

I just looked at her, at her blue eyes and her beautiful young face veiled by blonde hair. She wasn’t Lana but she was my Lana for now. She held a plastic shopping bag in her hand. The bag was stuffed with something.

I opened the door wide enough to allow her to slip on through. When she was in, I took a quick look around outside and saw that the coast was clear. For now anyway. Closing the door, I put the chain back on and reengaged the deadbolt.

She turned to me, held out her free hand, like we were meeting for the first time at a fundraiser.

“I’m Casy,” she said, all smiles. “Casy without an E before the Y.”

I tried to picture in my head how I might spell Casy. I would have put an e before the Y, as in “The Great Casey at Bat.” A silly poem my dad would recite every time he’d get plastered on Genesee Cream Ale while watching a Yankee game on TV. Seemed to me the name should be pronounced Casy with a hard a, as in Lassie.  

I pulled my hand away.

“Your name is Lana for now,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said, holding up the shopping bag. “They told me what you want.” Then, turning for the bathroom. “Do you mind if I slip into this?”

“How old are you?” I said.

“Old enough,” she said, unbuttoning her shorts, allowing them to fall to the carpet.

“You in a rush?” I said. “How much time do I have?”

She stepped into the bathroom, out of sight.

“I go to the community college around the corner,” she said. “I have a class in an hour. Hope that’s okay?”

“You asking or telling?”

“Neither silly.” She came back out, wearing a red kimono, and not much else. It wasn’t exactly like the one Lana wore. And it was acrylic rather than satin. But it would do. “You’re aware of the pricing?” she added.

“Remind me,” I said.

“One hundred for the initial hour. Fifty dollars more for each additional hour. But that won’t be a problem since I have to skedaddle.”

My eyes were struck by her young blue eyes and pert breasts, which for now were covered by the kimono. She reached underneath with both her hands, went to pull down her thong panties.

“Don’t,” I said.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Leave them on,” I said. “And turn around.”

She did it. “I have to ask you to pay in advance.”

Digging into the pocket, which also housed my cell phone, I peeled off the correct bills.

“Would you mind being a doll and put the money in the left-hand pocket on my jean shorts? Say, what did you do to your foot?”

“I had it operated on a few weeks ago. Taking a while to heal.”

“Ouch,” she said. “People should learn to take care of their feet. You’re bleeding.”

Reaching down, I grabbed her shorts, stuffed the money into the left pocket as requested, then tossed them onto the easy chair by the door. She shuffled over to the television, turned it on. The tube just happened to be tuned into the local channel 9 news. The picture was clear and bright but the sound was muted.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I like to work with the TV on. Makes me feel more secure. You know, protected. Like someone is watching out for me.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “Sit down in the desk chair. Face the back wall. Lift your face up a little, like you’re sunning yourself outside on a deck.”

Pulling out the desk chair, she positioned it, and sat down, facing the back wall of the room. “Like this?” she posed. “To be honest, I’m not entirely crazy about turning my back on you. And I don’t mean any disrespect. It’s just that a girl has to be careful.”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, feeling myself grow rock hard. I was looking at Casy, but in my head, I was seeing Lana sunning herself on her back deck. “You can trust me.”

“Lots of nut cases out there these days. Killers. Did you know somebody killed a convenience store owner just last night out in Nassau? Crushed his skull with his own gun. I got friends live in Nassau. Scary shit.”

I felt a slight start in my heart.

“You just never know when your time is up,” I said, watching the back of her head, the way her hair draped the red kimono. “Now,” I went on. “Slowly take off the robe.”

She did it, slowly peeling it away from her shoulders and arms. I shifted myself so I could see her breasts, which were plump, the nipples erect, and pale.

“Do you want me to touch myself?” she said in a randy, sing song-like voice.

“No,” I said, maybe a little too forcefully. “Just pretend you’re sunning yourself.”

“It’s okay, mister. No problemo.”

“You don’t happen to have any sunglasses,” I said, picturing the big rectangular ones Lana wore.

“I don’t,” she said. “Was I supposed to bring some?”

“It’s okay,” I said, knowing that I couldn’t produce a pair of sunglasses for her any more than I could make her sport a red crying heart tattoo on her ankle. Still, she was doing the trick for me, fooling my brain into thinking I was looking at Lana. I was so hard I thought I might bust out of my pants. For the moment, I just wanted to watch her. I just wanted her to be Lana, even if only for a few peaceful moments. I wanted it to be like it had been before Lana and I met one another in person. Back when I would watch her from the window in the bedroom, and she appeared to have no clue about me. That was nature of our relationship then, and it was pure, and real, and lovely. Even if we didn’t know one another physically, we shared an erotic and intimate relationship nonetheless. And it was beautiful.

After a time, my eyes filled, and the tears started to roll down my face.

“Are you crying, mister?” she said after a time. “Are you okay?”

I sniffled, wiped my face with the backs of my hands.

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

I watched her like that for ten more minutes, until I told her to get up and come to bed. I remembered my dream of Lana and the bed we shared in the forest. That was back when I had no idea about who the real Lana was. The evil Lana. For just a little while longer, I wanted to experience the good Lana. The Lana of my imagination. Of my fantasies.

With my eyes closed, I made love to the woman of my dreams.

51.

A knock at the door. I got up, pulled on my pants as gingerly as possible over my impossibly swelled foot. I went to the chair, pulled the jean jacket off the shotgun, and grabbed hold of it.

“What the hell is that?” Casy barked.

“Relax,” I said. “It’s just that I’m not expecting anyone.”

“I don’t like guns,” she said, wrapping her arms around her breasts. I recalled her telling me about the convenience store clerk. When she made the connection, she would naturally assume I was the killer.

I thought quick. “I’m in town for a trap shooting contest at the rod n’ gun club. I’m a professional shooter. You can look me up on the web if you want.”

Snatching up the baseball cap, I showed her the NRA logo stitched into the fabric. Setting it back down again, I peeked out the window, saw that it was the pizza I’d ordered. I’d forgotten all about it. The young man who was delivering it wasn’t much older than Casy. Setting the shotgun back onto the chair, I covered it back up with my jacket.

“You might want to get under the covers,” I said.

“Company?” Casy said, sliding under the white sheet.

“Pizza,” I said. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“You sure are a strange one, mister,” she said. “But kind of sweet too.”

Unlocking the door, I let the young man in.

“Thirty-five fifty,” he said, handing me the large, white-boxed pizza along with a plastic shopping bag which I assumed contained the whiskey and the sealant. I set it all on the round table.

“That flexy sealant shit is pretty expensive,” the kid said.

Digging into my pocket, I pulled out a fifty, handed it to him.

“Keep the rest,” I said.

“Sweet,” he said, craning his neck to get a look at the girl.

“Mind your own business,” I said.

He shot me a wink and left.

We sat back against the headboard and shared my pizza and my bottle. I’d almost forgotten that the television was on, until something slashed across the screen that captured my attention. It was a videotaped shot of the convenience store where I’d killed the clerk. There was a reporter standing outside the front door of the store beside the gas pumps, and she was talking into a hand-held microphone. With the sound muted I couldn’t exactly make out what she was reporting.

The scene shifted to the interior of the store.

There was a black rubber sheet covering clerk’s corpse. A few close-ups followed. One in particular of the now empty cash register. Another of the antiquated security monitoring system that was missing the cassette tape. Another shot followed that nearly sent me through the ceiling. It was portrait of me. A professional portrait snapped for me back in LA for my inclusion in the Screen Writers Guild.

I shot out of the bed, bad foot and all, hopping over to the television where I killed the power.

“What gives, Summers?” Casy said.

I inhaled, exhaled. By sheer luck or Providence, she hadn’t noticed my picture on the screen.

“Gotta break up the party,” I said.

She slid off the bed, glanced at her watch. “Oh my God, I should have been on campus a half hour ago. Well, looks like I’m missing my first class.” She smiled. “But that was fun. Just hanging out in my birthday suit, eating pizza and doing shots. Ain’t life grand.” Looking at me thoughtfully. “Who exactly is Lana? And why aren’t you with her if you love her so much?”

My sternum tightened.

“It’s a long story,” I said, pulling out an extra fifty, handing it to her.

She looked at the money in my hand, took it. I knew she thought I was crazy, and maybe I was. But I didn’t care anymore. I might as well have had terminal cancer. It was just a matter of time until I was finished. Just a matter of when and how.

Casy got dressed, packed up the kimono.

“Listen, Summers,” she said, “let me know next time you’re in town for a... whatcha-ma-call-it... trap shooting contest.” She leaned into me, planted a kiss on my cheek.

I’m not sure why, but I felt a pleasant wave of warmth wash over me then. It’s the way I would have wanted to feel if I’d just spent the past hour with the real Lana. The Lana I dreamed about once upon a time.

But that hour would never come.