With that in mind, he’d bought the hammer. But when he got there he saw that the door was wide open, a hook securing it. Maybe the air-conditioning wasn’t working, maybe the room was too smoky.
It did make things easier. He walked in the door, stood in the doorway, put his tote bag on the floor at his feet. He drew out one of the cocktails, lit the rag, and hurled it toward the back of the room, where the musicians were playing. There was a loud noise and a burst of flame, but he was too busy repeating the process with a second jar, which he lobbed over the people drinking at the bar so that it exploded against the back bar mirror.
He picked up his tote bag, hurried out the door.
He couldn’t see in the window at Cheek, but neither could they see out. He stepped up next to the window, waited for traffic to die down on the avenue, waited until there was no one around to see what he was doing. He tucked two Molotov cocktails under his left arm, took the hammer in his right hand, and smashed the window.
He ignited both wicks at once, sent them sailing one after another through the opening he’d created. Tossed the hammer in, too, because he didn’t need it anymore. There was no window at Death Row.
His friend with the shaved head and the earring was still on duty, and smiled in recognition when he saw him. “Hiya, Pops,” he said. “A little past your bedtime, isn’t it?”
He came closer, muttering something about being unable to sleep.
“Why I work nights,” the fellow said. “I’ve had trouble sleeping all my life. What’s in the bag? You got something for Buddha?”
“Is that your name?”
“It’s what they call me. You bring me a sandwich?”
“Better,” he said, and held the bag so Buddha could see it, but down low, so that he had to bend down and forward for a good look. The razor was in his free hand, open and ready, and in a single smooth motion he drew it across Buddha’s throat. Blood gushed as from a fountain, and he didn’t draw back quickly enough to keep from getting some on himself, but it couldn’t be helped.
Poor Buddha collapsed onto his knees, trying to raise a hand to hold back the gouting blood, his eyes wide in disbelief. His mouth worked but no sounds came out of it.
That was the hard part. Now it was child’s play to open the unattended door, to walk to the head of the stairs, and to put to use the last two Molotov cocktails, lighting their wicks, hurling them into the void at the bottom of the stairs. He dropped the two Bics into the tote bag — he’d lost the third somewhere, evidently — and tossed it down the stairs.
Shouts, cries, flames leaping...
Outside, he looked for the razor. He’d dropped it earlier, and saw now that Buddha had collapsed upon it. He spotted the tip of the handle protruding from beneath the fellow’s bare shoulder. Blood had pooled around it, and he decided not to bother. The razor couldn’t be tied to him, anyway, because no clerk could remember selling it to him. So he’d done the right thing when he took it without paying.
Back at his hotel, he showered and shaved. He used a disposable razor, made by the same company that produced the disposable lighters. He wondered how men had managed to shave every day with straight razors like the one he had used on Buddha.
He remembered the man’s kindness, the gentle nature lurking beneath the rough macho exterior. Tears welled up, and he had to interrupt his shave because they blurred his vision. He blinked them back, and bowed his head for a moment, honoring Buddha’s sacrifice.
Back in the room, he saw that there was blood on his shirt, blood on the sleeve of his jacket. Probably on his shoes, too. He’d wash off the shoes, and he could sponge the jacket so nothing showed. There’d be traces that would show up if they tested it, but if things got that far it wouldn’t matter, would it?
The shirt wasn’t worth salvaging. He’d get rid of it in the morning. And the two-gallon container of orange plastic, with two quarts of gasoline still in it. Or should he keep the container? He might very well need it again.
No, he could buy another if and when he required one. Better to be rid of it for now.
He got into bed, and immediately regretted the loss of the pillowcase. It had been in the tote bag when he disposed of it. He’d meant to retrieve it, but it had slipped his mind. Probably just as well, because it would very likely have smelled of gasoline, but now he had to sleep on the bare pillow, covered in a rough striped fabric like mattress ticking. And right after he’d shaved, too.
nineteen
In the days after he’d walked in on the leavings of the Curry Hill Carpenter, Jerry Pankow had wanted nothing more than to call his remaining clients and tell them to find someone else. He even found himself considering a return to Hamtramck for the first time since he had the good fortune to leave the place.
“How can I stay here?” he demanded. “People are dying all over the place.”
“Nobody lives forever,” Lois told him. “Not even in Hamtramck, although I grant you it must seem that way. Not counting roaches and waterbugs, have you ever killed anything?”
“No, but—”
“Or spiders. That’s what women need men for, you know. To kill spiders. The day she saw me kill a spider in the kitchen, Jacqui knew we had a chance of making it together. You’ve had some bad luck, Jerry. One of your customers went home with the wrong guy, and another one opened the door to the wrong guy, but they were two different guys. They’re sure the writer killed Marilyn, and they’re just as sure he had nothing to do with the mess at the whorehouse.”
“Mess,” he said, “does not begin to describe it.”
“Don’t quibble, Jerry. Stay with me on this. And bear in mind one of the lessons sobriety teaches us. Your lifelong conviction notwithstanding, you are not actually the piece of shit the world revolves around.”
“Meaning?”
“You tell me.”
He thought about it. “Meaning I’m the only connection between Marilyn and Molly, and that’s just coincidental. They’re not dead because they had the bad luck to hire me.”
“Very good. Now go to a meeting.”
“I just came from a meeting.”
“So?”
“I guess another one couldn’t hurt just now. Lois? Suppose it happens again?”
“Happens again? I don’t... oh, you mean if you walk in on a third dead body?”
“It would be a fifth, actually. A third, what did you call it? A third mess.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If that happens, you can go back to Hamtramck. I’ll even pay your plane fare. But Jerry? No matter how many dead bodies you find, you still can’t drink.”
In the end, he didn’t even take a day off. He couldn’t really afford to; the closing of the whorehouse represented a serious drop in his income. So he got up each morning and took care of the three bars, then serviced whatever residential customers were on his schedule. And went to as many meetings as he could fit in.
This morning, Saturday, the forecast was for near-record levels of heat and humidity, and you could already feel both indicators starting to climb by the time he got outside. Saturdays and Sundays were light days, morning days, with nothing on his schedule but the three bars. They were apt to be grungier than usual on Saturday mornings, after the intensity of Thank-God-It’s-Friday celebrating, and sometimes a bartender, eager to get out of there after an especially late night, would slack off on his part of the deal, leaving the chairs on the floor, say, and unwashed glasses on the bar top.
He walked to Death Row, and long before he got within sight of the place he was breathing in the smell of it, the strong odor of a fire that had been put out with water. He paid no attention, because it was something you smelled a lot in that part of town. The Hudson piers would catch fire, especially on the Jersey side, and the creosote-soaked timbers would send up plumes of black smoke for hours.