“And then?”
“Melanie said to me, ‘I think you’d better go.’ And when I hesitated she said, ‘He won’t hurt me.’ Then ‘Please, Gordo, go.’ So I rolled out of the bed to where my clothes and stuff were lying on the floor.”
“And?”
“And I dressed myself. But I didn’t run and I didn’t hurry, because I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. Melanie invited me there because we had a true connection. And Jack Barton was a grotesque and odious man. I’d seen him pawing other women at the party. Even taking their hands and moving them to touch him down there. You know. Down there. Melanie deserved so much better.”
“So you dressed. And what was Jack doing?”
“Standing there, just looking from me to her and back again. And then he said, ‘This is for Barbara?’ again. And she said, ‘For Barbara, Juanita, Yvonne, and all the others.’ And he said, ‘With a clown? A scruffy little clown?’ ”
“And?”
“And then he started laughing.”
“And then?”
“He kept laughing. And looking me in the eyes.”
“And then?”
“I killed him.”
“How?”
“My adult Gordo jacket is stocked with tricks and implements. I had throwing knives in a pocket. I used one of them.”
“You threw it?”
“I stabbed him. In the heart. Well, where a heart would be in a normal man.”
“And?”
“He died. Pretty quickly, I think. The knife went in up to the hilt.”
How he came to have the knife was important. If he only had it because he thought he might have to perform for Melanie, it wouldn’t constitute premeditation. He’d probably get off with murder two.
“You stabbed Jack and he died.”
“Yes.”
“Though he wasn’t threatening you with anything.”
“No.”
“Not even with his fists or hands or posture? He was a wrestler in college.”
“No, he wasn’t threatening me at all.”
“So he was just standing there.”
Anger rose on Gordo’s face. He sat up in his chair. “He was not just standing there.”
“So what was he doing that provoked you so much.”
“He was saying, ‘With a clown? With a clown?’ ” He glared at me. “Can’t you picture what I’m saying to you? Vile Jack Barton was repeating, ‘With a clown,’ and he was laughing at me. Laughing at me.”
So there it was. A murder that happened because the victim had laughed at a clown.
Hangman’s Rhapsody
by Clark Howard
Some of the most hardboiled of writers have led quiet, uneventful lives. Not so Clark Howard, and now that his highly autobiographical novel Hard City, first published in hardcover in 1990, is available in many e-editions, including Barnes and Noble’s Nook, his fans will be able to see how some of the themes in his fiction developed. Of course, Mr. Howard is not only a fiction writer; he is also a celebrated true-crime writer who has spent a lot of time around prisons, and those experiences have found their way into stories such as this one.
A creature of habit, Martin Sloan walked the same circle every day when he arrived home from work: across the living room to the bedroom to hang up his coat and tie, back across the living room to the refrigerator in the kitchen for a bottle of beer, back into the living room to drop into his favorite chair, slip out of his shoes, plant his feet on an ottoman that matched the chair, put on his glasses, use the remote to turn on the television, and take that first long, cold swallow of beer as the early news came on.
He expected the lead story in the news to be either more service personnel killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the continued exodus of people from the Gulf Coast, where the British Petroleum oil spill had now, like a forest fire, spread for miles in every direction, contaminating hundreds of fishing communities.
To Sloan’s surprise, however, the lead story that evening was a local one.
“In a surprise move at the state prison this afternoon,” the anchorwoman announced, “convicted murderer Roger Kalb, due to be executed on Thursday, chose to be hanged rather them die by lethal injection. Kalb, convicted of killing his wife and her lover twenty-one years ago, is the last remaining death-row inmate who has the option of how to die. Sentenced to death just two months before the state adopted lethal injection as its method of capital punishment, Kalb was condemned while hanging was still the prescribed procedure. The law therefore gives him the option of choosing which way he is to die: by the old method of the rope, or the newer, supposedly more humane method of the needle. Nine other condemned killers have already been given this option, and all nine have chosen lethal injection. Kalb, because of lengthy appeals, remains the only one of death row’s eleven condemned prisoners to still have the right to choose.
“Kalb’s surprising choice was announced by his attorney after a visit with the condemned man earlier today. A formal statement from the Department of Corrections is said to be forthcoming—”
Martin Sloan sat as still as a statue, holding the open bottle of beer, lips parted in silent surprise, eyes staring unblinkingly at the sight of an old news tape of Roger Kalb being led from a courtroom after being sentenced to die for his crime. Sloan slowly shook his head.
Choosing a noose and a trapdoor over simply going to sleep with needles in both arms. What was Kalb thinking?
Sloan was still sitting there when Hazel, his second wife, came home from her job as charge nurse at the local hospital. So accustomed was she to seeing Martin sitting there, in that chair, stocking feet up on the ottoman, bottle of beer in one hand, that she did not even notice the stuporous expression on his face.
“Spaghetti and meatballs okay with you for tonight, hon?” she asked, walking on into the kitchen without waiting for a reply.
Sloan finally took a swallow of beer just as the phone rang. He heard Hazel answer it on the kitchen extension. Then she called in to him.
“Marty, it’s your ex. You’re not late with her alimony, are you?”
Martin picked up a portable handset on the end table next to his chair. “Hello, Vivian.”
“Have you seen the news?” his ex-wife asked without preliminary.
“Yes. Just now.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you just a little upset? I mean, after all this time? To have to go back to — to that?”
“What makes you think I will go back? I quit that years ago.”
“Well, if not you,” Vivian challenged, “then who? I mean, they can’t very well run an ad: ‘Must have a degree in Hanging 101.’ ”
“Vivian, I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Well, why on earth not, Martin?” There was a weighty pause. Then Vivian said, “Oh, I see. You haven’t told her, have you?”
Martin did not reply.
“That’s it, isn’t it, Martin?” she persisted. “You haven’t told the new Mrs. Sloan that you used to kill people for a living.”
Martin still did not reply.
“Hazel doesn’t know, does she, dear? That you used to be a hangman. Well, don’t worry, love, I won’t reveal your embarrassing little secret. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. You know, Marty, even after all we’ve been through, I still have feelings for you...”
Martin quietly turned off the portable phone.
In his office the following day, just before noon, Martin was buzzed by Barbara, his secretary. “There’s a Mr. Lawson on line one. He says it’s personal.”