“It’s a terrible morning, anyway,” the desk clerk said, taking the key from Washburn and shaking his head. “Real nice fellow named Tom Brice went crazy this morning and killed his wife and his son and a friend of his son’s. Shot them dead.” You could hear the numbed disbelief still in the clerk’s voice. “Just don’t know what to make of a thing like that, do you?”
Washburn frowned. “Nope, guess I don’t, my friend. Guess I don’t.”
Then he pushed out into the sunlight and got in his long black sedan and drove away.
Killing Kate
One night in a bar I watched a semi-tough ad man bully and humiliate his mistress because he had just learned that his wife, the bitch, was having an affair. Hell, he'd only been having one for ten years. She sure had her nerve. Anyway, as I watched the ugliness he was inflicting on his mistress — I knew the couple only by reputation and it was none of my business; I mean, he wasn't punching her, at least not with fists — I thought of how we often use others as surrogates for the people we really long to hurt. Fifteen years later — the ad man long dead in a six-martini car wreck — I recalled that sad, nasty night and came up with this story.
One night, after he learned what was going on, he got into bed with Kate and they made love. Inside, she was cold. Always before, and quite normally, her body temperature inside had been warm. But this night and for many nights after, she was cold inside, cold against his sex, cold even during orgasm.
That’s one of the ways he learned about the man Kate was sleeping with. For the other man, her insides were undoubtedly warm. Juicy. He could imagine her moans.
Shortly after this he actually saw them together. He was eating in the park across from the building where she worked — thinking he might surprise her in the good sense — when he noticed them. Throwing bread on the tranquil surface of the sunny duck pond. The man had his big hand over hers. Up near the playground part of the park, where cute little innocent kids made the swings groan from fervent use, the man took her in his arms and kissed her.
Sitting there watching them — stunned, ashamed for himself and ashamed for Kate, all their plans for a good marriage and children seemingly dashed now, wanting to die but alive in a terrible irrevocable way — he knew then he’d kill her.
Oh, yes; oh yes, he’d kill her.
In the afternoon, he called Myrna.
“Yeah?”
God, he wished she weren’t so crude. Over the past two months, he’d tried to teach her some manners. Little things. Not smacking your gum. Crossing your legs in a ladylike way. And answering the phone by saying, “Yes” instead of the grating “Yeah.”
“This is Robert.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“Wondered if you were busy tonight.”
“Uh, lemme think.” Smacking her gum as she riffled through pages. “Earlier I’m busy. Like five till five-thirty.”
“How about six, then?”
“Yeah. Great.”
But he sensed it wasn’t so great with her. Sensed some reluctance in her voice. Was she getting tired of it?
“Is another time better for you?” he asked.
“Six’s fine.”
“Myrna, I thought we were honest with each other.”
“Well, actually I wish it could be seven.”
“Seven would be fine with me.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Great. Then I won’t have to miss the match.”
He said nothing. What could you say? You tried to help a young woman refine and reform her ways and she spends her time exulting over professional wrestling.
“You’re, uh, still being careful?”
She sighed, suddenly a little girl being chastised by her father. “I always make ’em wear a rubber, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m just trying to be your friend.”
Again, a sigh. “Oh. I got the package.”
“You did?” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.
“Weird stuff.”
“It’s called a Poet’s shirt.”
“It just looks like this weird sleep shirt.”
“It’s real silk.”
“Oh, yeah?”
Grating with the “yeah” again.
“Well, anyway, I got it. You want me to wear it, huh?”
“If you would.”
He could hear the smirk in her voice — it was always there when she addressed this subject — as she said, “We’re gunna do the same stuff, huh?”
“Yes. If you wouldn’t mind, I mean.”
“I’m in the shower again?”
“Yes.”
“So you want me to leave the front door open?”
“Please.”
“And then you come in and—”
“Yes. Then I come in and... yes.”
The sigh again. “You’re the boss.”
God, he hated it when she used that cliché, so dutiful and contemptuous at the same time.
“Seven?” she asked.
“Seven,” he said.
He kept the knife in a drawer of his big mahogany desk in the center of his big mahogany law office where he was the most senior of partners in a resolutely successful firm that specialized in criminal law. It was a chefs knife with an 8" blade and a walnut handle. It had once belonged to a client of his, a gigantic Hispanic who had used it to lob off the ears of six different women, after, that is, he was done strangling them. Somehow, through bureaucratic confusion, the knife had come back to him after the trial and after the Hispanic (a well-heeled drug dealer) had been sent upstate for a minimum of thirty years.
Now the knife — cleaned and stropped carefully with a piece of sharpening steel several times a month — rested in his hand. Ready.
For some reason, he always ate a huge meal before he did his deed. Nothing fancy, usually a McDonald’s or a Hardee’s. Greasy fries and greasy burger and fake milk shake and imitation cherry pie. The staple American repast.
It wasn’t the food that attracted him to such places, it was the suspense. He liked it when mommies and daddies burdened with screaming kids took a moment to glance over at him. The solitary middle-aged male. There was always something vaguely threatening about such a man in a family place (is he queer? does he molest children? is he wife-dumped and lonely?) and he enjoyed their contempt, wondering if in fact they suspected what he was really all about.
Black turtleneck, black jeans, black Reeboks, black gloves and a black hairpiece to cover his balding dome.
Myrna’s apartment house.
Up the back stairs.
Smells of fish, pizza, marijuana.
Sounds of television, heavy metal, domestic argument.
Sight of hallway walls in need of paint, apartment door numbers hanging askew, kid’s red trike sitting unused.
Look left. Look right.
All clear.
He put his gloved hand to the doorknob. Unlocked. He let himself in.
The place, as always, smelled acridly of a vague gas leak she always claimed not to notice. The place, as always, was a mess, cheap merry furniture covered with cigarette burns and stains, and littered with magazines that ran to Soap Opera Stars and True Detective. She claimed she picked the place up frequently. He’d never seen any evidence of that.
He stood in the darkness of the tiny living room, right in front of a plastic crucifix that glowed green when the lights were off, listening to the shower run. Yellow light outlined the bathroom door.
She was inside. Waiting.
The knife came up in his hand from the sheath attached to his belt.
He took four steps to the door. He was beginning to smell the dampness from the shower. The scent of steam.
He opened the door, pushed inside.