The blonde hadn't yet screamed. Cookie Boy kept hoping she wouldn't scream. All he wanted to do was get out of this apartment and out the front door and down the steps to the street. But the kid kept swinging as if trying to prove he was Mrs. Cooper's true champion and defender, punching repeatedly at Cookie Boy's face, hurting him now, jabbing at his eyes and his nose, drawing blood from the nose, a torrent of blood, causing Cookie Boy to see red at last, literally. The woman also saw all that blood and panicked. She didn't scream yet, but she panicked.
This was the most dangerous moment, the woman panicking. But Cookie Boy didn't realize this because he was too busy trying to keep the delivery boy out of his face.
Blood was pouring steadily from his nose. Jerry kept jabbing at his eyes, trying to close them. Mrs. Cooper was scrabbling across the bed on her hands and knees now, naked, scooting for the night table beside the bed, but-Cookie Boy didn't see this. He kept trying to defend himself from this little prick with the hard-on, but his left eye was already punched shut, and the kid was working steadily on the right.
There was a phone on the night table, but Mrs. Cooper wasn't going for the phone. Mrs. Cooper was opening the drawer in the night table. She was taking a gun from the night-table drawer. From his still miraculously open right eye, Cookie Boy saw the gun,.
ano now ne panlcKeo, oecauc want waa o,eV,o".”
“ have been a very simple burglary was turning into something quite messy.
"You dumb fuck!" he yelled, and flailed out at the kid, moving inside his punishing fists, getting in close, and bringing his knee up sharp and hard into the kid's balls. Like magic, the erection folded and so did the kid. Doubled over, moaning, he backed away, one hand clutching his groin, the other extended in mute supplication. Cookie Boy turned toward the blonde.
"Put down the piece, lady," he said.
The gun was shaking in her hand.
"Put it down!" he shouted.
"Shoot him!" Jerry yelled, and then began moaning again.
Cookie Boy moved toward the blonde, his hand extended.
"Please," he said. "Give me the gun. Please, lady.
No trouble. Please.”
He wanted to tell her he'd been on television last night.
"No, trouble, please," he said, and the gun went off.
Cookie Boy ducked, though he didn't need to, turning away from the blast at the same time. The shot missed him by a country mile, but it took Jerry in the center of his chest, slamming him back against the dresser, where he knocked over a framed picture of Mrs. Cooper and her dark-eyed, mustached husband before he slid to the floor. This was Cookie Boy's worst nightmare realized, a burglary gone sour, a kid collapsing to the floor with blood spurting from his chest and his eyes rolling back into his head, a fucking felony murder even if he wasn't the one who'd pulled the trigger. He whirled on the woman again, the blonde, Mrs. Cooper, whatever the fuck her name was, and he said, "Give me the gun, lady! Now.t" but the stupid cunt was on her knees in the center of the bed, her eyes wide, the gun shaking in both hands, the gun pointed right at his head, and he knew if she fired again she would kill him for sure.
He made a flying leap for the bed and the blonde and the gun in her hands, grabbing for both hands, the tight hand with her finger inside the trigger guard, the left hand wrapped around it, rolling over onto the bed with his hands coveting both hers, the blonde naked, blood from his nose spattering her and the wall behind the bed, a shot went off, knocking plaster from the ceiling. He was almost crying now. The blonde had been caught in bed with a teenager and he was dead across the room now and she didn't know what to do, she didn't know what to do. He dared not let go of her hands because the gun was between them like an uninvited guest and her finger was still inside the trigger guard and her eyes were wild and her mouth was shaking and she was smeared with blood and crazy with fear, and the gun went off again. He felt her going limp against him. "Lady?" he said.
And rolled her off of him.
"Lady?" he said again.
And looked into her dead blue eyes.
"Oh shit," he said.
He could not leave the apartment looking like this. There were two dead people here in the bedroom with him and his instinct was to get the hell out of here fast, but if he went into the street covered with blood this way, he'd stop traffic. But suppose the shots had been heard? He was trembling.
His nose was still bleeding.
He. cupped his hand under it to keep the blood from spilling onto the sheets, but they were already covered with blood, his and the blonde's, Mrs. Cooper, he had once known a redhead named Connie Cooper, oh Jesus, how had this gone so wrong? He kept waiting for a knock on the front door. Someone surely must have heard the shots. Wasn't there a super in this building? But he couldn't go out looking like this. So he waited.
He could hear a clock ticking someplace in the apartment. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to four. Was that all it had taken? Twenty minutes? All this blood in only twenty minutes? He had to get out of here before people started coming home from work, the husband with the mustache, Jesus, he had to get out of here!
His nose was still bleeding.
He found the bathroom, and wadded some toilet paper inside his upper lip the way his mother had taught him to do whenever he had a nosebleed, and then he took off all his clothes, dripping blood everywhere, and ran a shower. He washed himself clean and toweled himself off, and then he went back into the bedroom and searched the dresser for a pair of the husband's undershorts, and socks, and a shirt. The kid with the freckles was lying on his back on the floor in front of the dresser. His cock looked all shriveled now. Cookie Boy found a pair of jeans in the closet and put those on, too. There was blood all over his Reeboks, so he borrowed a pair of loafers from the husband, which were too big for him, but that was better than too tight. He packed all his own clothes in the suitcase with his tools and the little white box of chocolate chip cookies.
He knew he could not leave the box behind; it would irrevocably link him to a pair of murders. He wasn't an amateur, he never took foolish risks, he wasn't in this for the goddamn glamour and glory. He took a single cookie from the box, and closed the lid. He bit into the cookie, and then snapped the suitcase shut, and picked it up. It seemed suddenly heavy. As he left the room, he felt he was somehow breaking with tradition, and by so doing erasing a part of his past and therefore a part of himself.
In the hallway outside the bedroom, he bit into the cookie again.
Standing there surrounded by family photos recording a past not his own, he munched on the cookie, savoring its texture and flavor, pleased that he had baked it himself, sorry he could not share it. Surrounded by strangers frozen in time, he chewed on the cookie, and finally swallowed the last of it. Without looking back, he walked swiftly to the front door.
His ear to the wood, he listened for several moments. Then he draped the chamois over the knob before opening the door. Pulled the door shut the same way. Wiped the outside knob just for good measure. Went down the stairs, and across the lobby, and into the street. It was beginning to cool off a little.
He wondered if he'd be on television again tonight.
7.
So now there were three of them in the space of five days, which if you averaged them out to something like 219 homicides a year in this precinct alone, This was about right in that some 981 murders were committed in the city the year before, and if the low-crime precincts averaged 15 or 20 a year that was a lot. Which didn't make the boys of the old Eight-Seven any happier.