These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever

  For the first time—and it would be the last—Paul saw a flash of unmediated emotion in Benton’s face. He collected himself quickly, and the look was gone before Paul could name it.

  “I’m sure we can accommodate that,” he said. “How about you?”

  Paul smiled, very weakly, then decided he shouldn’t have done it. “Just a moment, please,” he heard himself say. “I need to get my coat.” They were all watching him—not as if they expected him to try something, but as if they’d never seen anything like him before.

  The army parka wouldn’t give the right impression, so he settled for a handsome raincoat that was only really warm enough in the fall. It had been a gift from Julian, one of the ones he’d clumsily disguised as hand-me-downs. It didn’t smell like him any longer. Paul wouldn’t have taken much comfort if it had.

  Benton wrapped a firm hand around Paul’s arm. He smelled of electric-green cologne and fresh wool.

  “Good choice,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  One of the officers took Paul’s other arm, and the others parted to allow them to pass. There were more of them than he’d expected, waiting to set to work ripping the house apart. Paul didn’t bother to count them, or to try and place their faces. All he saw was the way they turned to watch him pass, the way their faces shifted. This wasn’t the sort of trouble officers expected of their sons. Their boys were supposed to crash their cars, get caught with drugs, treat girls unspeakably—simple crimes of excess, nothing they couldn’t ignore. Paul watched them search for their own sons in his face and find nothing.

  He felt Benton glance over, so he fixed his gaze straight head. He lifted his chin and straightened his back and wore his face like a mask. Better to be arrogant than afraid.

  His mother was in the living room, still in her dressing gown; Laurie huddled close to her, clinging to the cat. Paul had never thought they looked alike before, not with Laurie’s face so like their father’s, but they were mother and daughter when their expressions were the same.

  “There’s been a mistake,” he said. “I have to sort this out.” His mother made a soft strangled sound into her hands, but his voice remained steady and distant; he couldn’t allow himself to feel anything. “I’m sorry about this.” Benton led him away before either his mother or Laurie could answer, but Paul hadn’t expected them to speak. It would take all their energy to convince themselves of the lie.

  Then there was Audrey, waiting by the front door. There was no fear in her face. If there had been, some other feeling had chased it away. When she met Paul’s eyes, it was as if she were seeing him for the first time. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever wanted to be seen.

  “Paul,” she said quietly. “What the hell did you do?”

  11.

  Nearly two years ago Paul had sat for the last time in the principal’s office, mother at one side and grandparents on the other. His future was pulled from his grasp and reshaped without his permission, but he’d barely heard the conversation over the clamor of the too-tight necktie at his throat. It was a similar room to this one, cold and cheaply furnished, with peeling paint and high ceilings. City funding and century-old buildings always reacted to each other the same way. They were places you only came in order to feel helpless.

  At the places where the wrought-iron grate touched the window frame, the sill was streaked with rust. There was a dent in the surface of the two-way glass; every movement in the room eddied and swirled as it passed.

  “So how does it work?”

  Paul doubted either of the uniformed officers were supposed to speak to him, but one of them couldn’t restrain himself. His companion said nothing, but he chewed his gum a little harder, lips parted, and watched. When Paul didn’t answer, the officer snapped his fingers beside his ear. Paul looked up before he could stop himself. Blond, thickset, hair clipped tight against his scalp—but young, no more than a few years older than Paul. His name was Trumbauer, per the lettering on his shirt. He belonged at the bottom of a river.

  “I’m talking to you,” he said, and smirked. “How’s it work? The Bonnie and Clyde thing—ha, more like Bonnie and Bonnie . . .”

  Paul shut his eyes and summoned the image of a gash erupting across the man’s face. Bone splintering inward, blood shuddering through. When he opened his eyes again, he was nearly able to graft the fantasy over the shape of Trumbauer’s smile.

  “Christ, look at him, he’s shaking.”

  Trumbauer looked to his partner. The other uniform folded his arms and clacked his gum, and his mouth drew slowly into a grin. Paul pressed his hands flat against the table and shut his eyes again.

  “Someone’s got to be the girl,” said Trumbauer leeringly. “Is it you? I bet it’s you, it’s always these uptight buttoned-up little faggots you find bent over in the bushes—”

  The impact sent searing currents through his fists and up his arms. He should have smashed Trumbauer’s face against the table instead of his own hands, but he was too much of a coward. His pain was a relief—too easy, but it would have to do. He thrummed with untapped adrenaline, and nothing outside his body could reach him.

  “Whoa, easy, easy.” Trumbauer tried to grab his shoulders as if to wrest him back under control, but Paul recoiled.

  Something was happening at the door behind him. Paul didn’t bother to look. He sat up straight and lifted his hands to examine them. He held one hand in the other and clasped them tight.

  When he finally looked up both of the uniformed officers were gone. Where Trumbauer’s partner had stood, there was now only an empty stretch of white plaster and the caged face of a wall clock. The presence behind him was slow to approach, but Paul didn’t turn around. Detective Benton sidled past the table and sat in the second tarnished folding chair. He had unusually lithe hands for an adult man, long-fingered and thin, nails trimmed in straight lines. He’d come in alone. Paul didn’t need to wonder where Marinetti was.

  “Anything broken?”

  When Paul shook his head, Benton smiled, a calculated operation that moved his mouth like clockwork but didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Sorry about that.” Benton pushed up his cuff to glance at his watch, then folded his hands on the tabletop. “I can’t pretend we recruit these guys from charm school.” Paul gingerly pressed his palms to the table and said nothing. Benton kept talking, as if they were chatting over the punch bowl at a dull party. “Truth is, every department needs them—ex-Army and football burnouts who won’t ever pass the detective exam, but who are good for a couple decades of corralling speed freaks and knocking down doors. You know the type. Kind of guy who isn’t going to ask a lot of questions.”

  Paul knew what came next, and he held his face still. It wouldn’t quite pass for blankness.

  “Sort of like our friend Charlie Stepanek.”

  Benton had already decided not to believe him. Paul didn’t even try to make it convincing. “I don’t know any Charlie Stepanek.”

  Benton looked mildly surprised, as if Paul had forgotten the name of a mutual acquaintance. “Sure you do,” he said. “Light brown hair, cute little dog named Lucy. A year and a half in Vietnam, doing god-knows-what. Big guy, bigger than I think you estimated, since you didn’t get the dosage quite right. That Charlie.”

  Paul looked at the stretch of table between their hands and mapped every dimple and scratch in the paint. He pictured rust fanning outward from each defect, spreading like an algae bloom.

  “Look up,” said Benton quietly. “We already know what happened, Paul. That’s not why you’re here. We don’t need a confession, not with everything we have. I’m trying to help you.”

  Benton’s every word and gesture was so measured and deliberate that there was nothing to distinguish the truth from the lies. Paul wasn’t afraid he would fall into the trap of believing him. Benton was a different kind of liar than Julian was, and didn’t even seem to care whether he was believed. The real weapon was uncertainty; the lies themselves were just a by-product.
/>   “You played baseball in school, didn’t you?” Benton was saying. “Lefty pitcher with a mean swing—jurors love it when we tell them the killer was left-handed, it makes them feel like they’re on TV. Any idea where your old bat might be?”

  He promised himself there was no chance they’d found it, but he knew he couldn’t trust himself to tell the truth.

  “I don’t play anymore. I gave it to Goodwill.”

  “When?”

  Paul didn’t look up. “Who on earth,” he said tonelessly, “would remember something like that?”

  Benton gave him a long, unblinking look. “Ice cold,” he said, with the barest pause between each word. “That’s what the prosecutor is going to tell the jury. You’re not doing yourself any favors—it’s better, a lot better, more sympathetic, if you let us see you’re as scared as I know you are.

  “The bat,” Benton added, as if it were an afterthought. “It was green, wasn’t it? School colors.”

  It took all Paul’s strength to keep his face from moving.

  “There was a bit of paint transfer,” said Benton. “He wasn’t in the water long enough for it to wash away. Very distinctive shade of kelly green.”

  That was a lie. Paul took hold of the certainty with both hands. The paint could never have made contact at all—Paul had foreseen the problem and had taped over it meticulously, without so much as an open seam. It was a lie. Everything Benton told him was a lie.

  “I gave it away,” Paul said again. “Months ago, I don’t remember when. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  Paul fixed his eyes on Benton’s face and listened to the small sounds that cut through the silence. The click of the second hand on the wall clock, the tinny trill of Benton’s wristwatch breaking each second into tenths. Benton’s breathing, and his own. The barely perceptible pressure of someone’s presence behind the glass.

  “You’ve got to help me out here, Paul,” Benton said. “Because the story they’re telling out there is the kind that could keep you from ever seeing the light of day again. They’re saying the two of you just wanted to see if you were smart enough to get away with it. And—they think I’m crazy,” he added, glancing toward the two-way glass, “but I don’t think that makes sense. Maybe for some entitled rich kid, but not for you. I knew your father, and I know the kind of son he would raise, and I don’t think for a second that they’re right about why you did this.”

  When Paul’s eyes fell, Benton leaned forward to catch them again; it was something Julian had done countless times.

  “Maybe you can explain to me,” said Benton, “what exactly the arrangement was between the two of you.”

  His whole body flared hot. “Thank you for tidying that up,” he said acidly. “I almost couldn’t tell it was the same question that meathead asked before you came in.”

  Benton pulled a fleeting smile—more of a wince. Paul felt a savage impulse to lay out every detail, to drag Benton’s distaste out into the open so neither of them could pretend it wasn’t there.

  “Hardly,” said Benton delicately. “No, this is about what you expected of each other—specifically what he expected of you. Because your feelings on the matter are obviously sincere, and I’m sure he found that very useful.” Paul fixed his eyes unseeingly on the wall. “He’s of a type, too, I hate to tell you.” Benton spoke with patient, calculated compassion. “My mother used to give piano lessons out in Bradford Woods, she could tell you some stories. These people are like children. The whole world revolves around them, so they think they can take whatever they want from it. And they know if they get in any real trouble Mom and Dad will come bail them out. So he knows how wrapped up you are in him, and how much you want him to feel the same way . . . and then one day he gets bored, because no one tolerates boredom worse than the idle rich, and he decides he wants to try something new . . .”

  “You don’t know anything about him.” Stop talking, he pleaded, please stop talking, but the words guttered out like a free bleed. “His parents don’t care about him, he’s nothing like them—they made him choose and he chose me, it isn’t like you’re saying it is, it isn’t vulgar, we understand each other better than anyone else ever has and you’re making it sound like we’re just using each other—”

  “Well, you were a hell of an efficient way to piss off his parents.” Benton didn’t even blink. “Like I said—I think you’re sincere, which is part of your problem. But I also think you’ve probably noticed the same thing I have, even if you don’t want to. Sooner or later,” he said, enunciating every word, “his parents are going to show up with some hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer they pried out of the wheel well of an ambulance. And you’ve given them everything they’ll need to pin this entire thing on you.”

  Paul bit his tongue.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time,” said Benton slowly. “People like him don’t go to jail. People like you do. You’re supposed to be in this together, right? He’s probably told you as much. So why does all the concrete evidence only point to you?”

  Paul felt a tear slide down his cheek, but brushing it away would mean trusting himself to move. Benton leaned forward and set his hand on his forearm, the way his father might have done.

  “I know you didn’t want to do this.” Benton’s sympathy almost sounded sincere. “I know you didn’t. Sure, you’ve got a bit of a temper, but that’s just self-defense—against guys like Charlie Stepanek, which maybe you thought would make this easier. But you’re not cold-blooded. You’re a smart kid from a good family, and you’d never do something like this on your own. This was always about him, and what he made you feel like you had to do.”

  Paul shut his eyes tight. He would doom them both if he allowed himself to move. He could feel Benton pitying him, reading shame and despair into his face, casting him as a lovesick child who barely questioned his orders before acquiescing. How dare you, he said silently. How dare you tell me I couldn’t have chosen this.

  “You deserve to have a life after this, Paul,” said Benton. “He’s taken so much from you already. Don’t let him take that, too.”

  He’d never once said Julian’s name. When Paul noticed the omission, it echoed through him like a chord, and at last there was no doubt left inside him. Benton was telling himself stories about two strangers Paul had never met. Julian would protect him. Paul owed it to him not to fall apart.

  He lifted his chin, folded his aching hands, and looked straight into Benton’s eyes.

  “I’m invoking my right to counsel. That’s the last thing I’m going to say.”

  Benton was grim. He exhaled; it was nearly a laugh.

  “Have it your way,” he said.

  12.

  Julian was on his third cigarette. He smoked one-handed, elbow propped against the table. He’d laced their fingers together so tightly that Paul could feel the way their heartbeats moved almost in rhythm. Now and then Julian pressed his side against Paul’s arm, and Paul shut his eyes and tried to synchronize their breathing. Then Julian would squirm and sigh and rake his thumbnail over his eyebrow, and Paul fell out of sync with him again.

  They’d had the same thought, Paul could tell, because even by his standards Julian had dressed for the day with exceptional care. But he carried a keen lingering smell of spearmint. In the hallway Paul heard two uniforms laughing about Julian being sick at the sight of an autopsy photograph; Marinetti, at least, had taken pity on him and found him a toothbrush. Almost none of the stress was still visible in Julian’s face, but the effort was. Whenever he forgot to look away, Paul’s eyes landed on the mirror—its ruthless portrait of two suicides tethered together at the throat.

  “. . . No eyewitnesses, no getaway car, no motive for god’s sake. Am I missing something, or are you trying to get an indictment for murder because your detective saw a teenager going for a walk?”

  At Paul’s other side, his mother brought one hand to her face, wedding rings glinting, and shut her eyes. Paul touched her arm, and she refle
xively clasped his hand in hers, but she didn’t look at him.

  There was no sign of the Frommes, nor the sleek expensive lawyer Benton had promised. There was only this crooked-tied old friend of Paul’s father whose white eyebrows feathered outward like venomous caterpillars, and whose good, sensible questions had demanded good, sensible lies. Paul was trying his best to ignore him now. He had command of the situation, or so he’d promised Paul’s mother once she was allowed back in the room. Paul could only hold himself together if he pretended not to notice the one-act play unfolding at the far end of the table.

  Piece by tedious piece, the lawyer and his unsmiling counterpart sparred over every detail. Benton stood in the corner with his arms folded, frown deepening the longer he listened. His partner, feigning indifference, leaned against the door and examined his nailbeds. Marinetti wore his sidearm in a shoulder holster like Steve McQueen; something in the affectation reminded Paul of Julian, and it occurred to him how neatly each detective had paired off with the suspect he could more easily pretend to understand.

  “. . . One of only a few people with access to the drug and knowledge of how it is used.”

  “Whoever-it-is made a hash of it, Sal, are you sure you’re looking for someone with ‘knowledge’?”

  So softly that Paul almost didn’t hear him, Julian started humming. He’d been doing it off and on all day, never quite long enough for Paul to place the tune. This time he glanced sideways at Paul, nearly smiling, so Paul closed his eyes and hummed along a quarter-note behind. He abruptly recognized it as “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” and he had to lurch forward and cover his face to keep from collapsing into hysterics. Benton gave them a long, sharp look that Paul forced himself not to see.

  It was sick what a comfort it was to be together again—for all the long desperate days that had separated them, and how little hope they had for the future to be any better. It was a comfort that Julian would still want to tease him; it was a comfort that he had taken Paul’s hand first, and that even hours later neither of them was willing to let go.