Three Ways to Die

by Lee Goldberg

  "We?"

  "It's a two-man job, Kev. Besides, you want to be able to tell your woman that you did this for her, not that you hired somebody else."

  He had a good point. "But it can't possibly work."

  "Why not?"

  "Because we're going to be out in the open, on the Walk of Fame, making a huge amount of noise."

  He shrugged. "There are crews out here at night all the time working on the sidewalk, especially now with that building being renovated. We'll be in-and-out in twenty or thirty minutes. All it takes is the right tools."

  "You have the tools?"

  "I work for a big construction company," Titus said. "I can get a van with all the stuff we need, no problem. They'll never miss it. Anybody who sees us will think we are a work crew installing cable or something."

  I looked down at Jack's star. Stealing it was a ballsy thing to do. It would make me a ballsy guy. Somebody risky. Edgy. Unpredictable. Willing to risk it all for the woman he loved.

  The star was the ultimate symbolic embodiment of Jack Webb. If Carly had it, she would possess him as no other woman could. Not only that, but the star would be imbued with the danger and allure of crime, which is sexy all by itself. It would be a tantalizing secret that only the two of us shared, drawing us closer together.

  "Let's do it," I said.

  * * * * * *

  Monday was the longest day of my life.

  It's hard to concentrate on reporting crap like the debate over the selection of delegates for the Las Virgenes/Malibu Council of Governments and League of California Cities. It's even harder when you're only a few hours away from pulling off an incredible heist.

  I didn't know exactly how the caper was going to go down, but the plan was already in motion. Titus was picking me up in front of my place at midnight and then he'd tell me what to do.

  Somehow, I made it through the council meeting and wrote my story for The Acorn. When I got home around seven, Carly had already eaten dinner and was sitting in a tank-top and sweats at her vanity in the bedroom, studying her lines for a hemorrhoid commercial and practicing expressions of glorious relief in the mirror.

  She was a natural blonde with blue eyes you could drown in. She had a band of freckles across her nose that gave her face a child-like innocence that sharply contrasted with the sensual delights promised by her curvaceous body.

  I came in behind her and kissed her slender neck. Her pained, cursed-with-hemorrhoids expression returned and she looked at my reflection.

  "How's it going?" I asked.

  "Do you think Jennifer Aniston ever had to portray rectal itch?"

  "She doesn't have your range," I said.

  "I don't have her bank balance."

  "Not everything can be measured with money."

  "Name one thing that can't," she said.

  "My love for you," I replied.

  She rolled her eyes. "Is that the kind of stuff you're writing in your novel?"

  "Read it and find out for yourself."

  "I think I'd rather work on my rectal itch," she said, dropping her gaze back to her script.

  I wanted to tell her what I was going to do for her that night. I wanted to impress her. But I controlled the urge.

  I left, closing the door behind me, and went to the kitchen. I made myself a frozen pizza, read the paper, and swiped the $1000 in emergency cash we kept hidden in the freezer.

  After dinner, I went to my office. The tiny room was filled with books, magazines, DVDs, and about a seven hundred manuscript pages of my unfinished novel, an epic tone-poem about the nature of human existence and two lesbian hit women. I'd been working on it for three years.

  For the next couple of hours, I worked on the novel some more. I was actually on a roll, for the first time in months, when I had to stop writing at midnight. I checked on Carly. She was asleep in bed. I crept out of the house as quietly as I could.

  Titus was parked out front in a Katz Construction company van. I got inside. The van smelled like an ashtray. He was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. I wondered if it reminded him of prison.

  "You up for this?" he asked.

  I nodded.

  "Good, because I need the money and I wasn't leaving here tonight without it."

  I didn't like the violent implications of that remark but it also thrilled me. He was a dangerous guy. I was a dangerous guy. We were going to do a dangerous thing.

  I gave him the cash. He stuffed it in his pocket, reached behind him, and handed me an orange jumpsuit like the one he was wearing and a pair of mud-crusted work boots.

  On the way to Hollywood, he explained how we were going to get the star out. It sounded pretty simple. I started to believe that we were really going to do it.

  * * * * * *

  Titus parked the van at the curb in front of Jack Webb's star on Hollywood Boulevard. We set up saw-horse barriers on either side of the star to keep people away, not that there were any around. The street was cold, dark and deserted. We set up some work lights, powered by a generator in van. When Titus flicked the lights on, it was as if someone was shining a spotlight directly on us.

  "Turn them off," I said. "We can be seen from blocks away."

  "So what?"

  "It's like were standing on a stage," I said.

  "I need to be able to see what I'm cutting."

  "Aren't the street-lights enough?"

  "Use your fucking head. Would a real construction crew work in the dark? No. They'd want to see what they were doing. Besides, it's not the lights that are going to attract attention." He leaned into the van and pulled out the Makita cordless circular tile saw with a diamond blade. "It's this."

  I was starting to have second thought and I think he could see it on my face.

  "Grow some balls," he said. "There's a spigot in the parking lot by the ticket booth. Go hook the hose up to it."

  I took out a hose from the van and walked over to the rusty spigot. I attached the hose, turned on the flow of water, and walked back to the sidewalk.

  "Your job is to keep the concrete and terrazzo wet while I do the cutting," he said. "Think you can handle that?"

  I nodded.

  We both put on goggles and gloves and he got to work. The noise was even louder than I expected, echoing up and down the empty canyon of buildings along Hollywood Boulevard, rousing the bums who'd been sleeping in the alcoves and doorways.

  The bums yelled at us, but I couldn't hear what they were saying over the noise from the saw. After a couple of minutes, they either shuffled away to quieter spots or retreated into the darkness from which they came.

  The cutting didn't take long at all, but even after Titus shut off the saw, the sound still rang in my ears. I washed away the remaining dust from the sidewalk. He'd cut a clean square that left about four inches of terrazzo around the star.

  I set the hose down and Titus leaned into the truck to swap the saw for the hammer and chisel he'd need to chip away at the cut he'd made, get underneath the star and lift it out.

  That's when I saw a black-and-white police car cruising down the boulevard towards us.

  "Ignore'em," Titus said. "Go roll up the hose and bring it back here."

  I turned my back to the street and did as I was told, but I knew the police car would stop, the cops would get out, and they would ask us questions we couldn't answer.

  While I was gathering up the hose, I heard Titus hammering away. The cops had driven right by. I was never more relieved in my life.

  I tossed the hose in the van, got a tire iron, and jammed the teeth into the gap in the cement Titus had made with the hammer and chisel. I jimmied up the star. Titus slipped his glove hands underneath, then I dropped the tire iron and joined him. Together we lifted Jack Webb's star out of the street and set it carefully on the floor of the van.

  The theft took less than half-an-hour.

  * * * * * *

  I didn't sleep that night. I was too keyed up. On Tuesday morning, our fifth anniversary, I wok
e Carly up with a kiss.

  "Go away," she mumbled.

  "It's our anniversary," I said.

  "I'm not in the mood."

  "I have a present for you," I said. "I think you're going to like it."

  She looked at me suspiciously, like she was afraid the present was in my pants.

  "It's in the garage," I said.

  That piqued her curiosity enough for her to throw back the sheets and put on her bathrobe.

  "You're wearing what you wore last night," she said, regarding me with a sideways glance as we padded down the hall to kitchen and the door that led to the garage.

  "Uh-huh," I said.

  "Did you ever come to bed last night?"

  "Nope," I said.

  "Aren't you mysterious," she said.

  "More than you know," I opened the door to the garage, turned on the light, and motioned her inside.

  She looked past me at my old Toyota Corolla and her old Honda Civic.

  "I didn't get you a new car," I said.

  "Obviously," she said.

  "I got you something better," I crouched beside a tarp on the floor.

  "What is it?"

  "Something no one else on earth has but you," I said. "Something as special and unique as you are to me."

  She groaned. Before she had a chance to say something cutting that she'd regret later, I whipped off the tarp to reveal Jack Webb's star.

  I'd buffed it up, so the star practically glowed in the dim light.

  The look on Carly's face was priceless. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened in shock.

  "Is that-" she began.

  "Uh-huh," I said, rising to my feet.

  She started to smile. It was devious and delightful. "How did you get it?"

  "I stole it from the Walk of Fame," I said. "For you."

  She ran into my arms and mashed her lips against mine in a furiously hungry kiss. I lost my footing and we tumbled onto the star.

  * * * * * *

  Carly had a thirst that couldn't be slaked. She fucked me three times, right there in the garage, on top of Jack Webb's star, and then we went back into the bedroom for more.

  We didn't talk until hours later, laying in bed, bruised and scratched from rolling over the rough edges of the star and the hard, concrete floor of the garage. We were dirty and sweaty and exhausted.

  "I want to know how you did it," she said, her voice raw from her moans and squeals and shrieks.

  I told her. Of course I embellished the story a lot. I built it up into a elaborate scheme that took weeks for me to meticulously plan and execute, that involved recruiting expert drivers, stone masons, and electronics experts. The heist itself was a carefully choreographed operation that required clock-work precision, special tools, and cutting-edge technology.

  And I did it all for her.

  It was the most imaginative writing I had done in years. Already, Jack Webb's star was having an unexpectedly positive influence in other areas of our lives.

  When I was done with the story, she gave me another deep kiss.

  "It's the best gift anyone has ever given me," she said.

  Me too, I thought.

  * * * * * *

  The big question was what to do with the star now that we had it. Carly wanted to put it the shower floor in our master bathroom. That way, she could see the star every day and it would be out of sight of any visitors we might have. But I knew there was another reason she wanted it there. We had a hand-held shower head that she occasionally used for wicked purposes.

  But installing the star in the shower was beyond our home improvement skills, even though we had the Home & Garden channel on our cable line-up. Of course, we couldn't just call someone out of the phonebook to do the job, not unless we wanted to risk getting reported to the police.

  I told Carly not to worry about it, to leave everything in my capable hands. If I could assemble a top-notch team of criminal talent to steal the star, I could certainly find the right person to remodel our shower and keep our secret.

  "Sure, I can do it," Titus told me over the phone. "No problemo."

  "What will it cost me?"

  "Another grand," he said.

  This was becoming a very expensive present. I'd have to work a lot of over-time at The Acorn to sustain our cash flow, but it was worth it.

  "Okay," I said. "But if my wife asks how we met, tell her you were part of the talent I recruited for the score."

  "The score?"

  "Make sure she understands that I was the mastermind of the operation."

  "Sure," he said. "You're a criminal genius."

  * * * * * *

  It took three days for Titus to put the star in the bottom of the shower. I was very pleased with his work. So was Carly.

  We spent hours in the shower, making love in positions I'd only dreamed about. We were re-consummating our marriage on the altar of Jack Webb.

  Two weeks after the caper, I was still working long hours at The Acorn to make up for the two grand I'd spent on Carly's anniversary present. On that particular day, I'd volunteered to cover the Calabasas Planning Commission hearings on a controversial new building complex. The debate was likely to stretch into the wee hours, so I talked my editor into letting me go home and take a shower.

  I immediately sped home, imagining the carnal delights that awaited me.

  When I rounded the corner onto my street, the first thing I saw was a Katz Construction van parked in front of my house.

  The only thing I could figure was that all of our furious coupling had shaken loose some tiles around the star and Carly had called Titus to come fix it.

  I opened the front door and was about to announce myself when I felt the humidity in the air, the kind that comes from running a hot shower for a very long time. Carly couldn't get enough of Jack.

  And then I heard the bed-springs squeaking. Rhythmically.

  Our bedroom was at the end a short hall. The door was wide open. As I approached, I saw Titus' naked back, my wife's hands clutching his pale, white buttocks as he pounded into her with animalist grunts.

  I stood there for a good minute or two before Carly noticed me. I met Carly's gaze, which was defiant and unapologetic. She didn't give a damn. She was jump-starting her life.

  "I always knew stealing the star wasn't your idea," she said. "You aren't man enough."

  Titus looked over his shoulder at me and sneered. A muscle flexed in his arm and the tattoo woman's boobs seemed to jiggle.

  "I want a divorce," she said.

  This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. I stole Jack Webb's star for her. I'd been betrayed by her. By Titus. By life.

  I turned and walked away. The bedsprings immediately started rocking again. Carly moaned. Titus grunted. Something snapped in me.

  I picked up the brass table lamp by the couch, marched back into the bedroom, and whacked Titus on the head with it as hard as I could. Blood spattered on Carly's chest and she screamed.

  I dropped the lamp, grabbed the pillow beside her and covered her face with it. I placed all my weight against the pillow, smothering her. Divorce granted.

  When Carly finally stopped moving, I placed Titus' limp hands on the pillow, picked up the bedside phone and called 911.

  "Oh my God, you've got to help me!" I wailed.

  "Calm down, sir," said the female operator in a robot monotone.

  "He was raping her," I wailed some more.

  "Are you in any danger?"

  "No, I don't think so," I said. "He was on top of my wife, he had a pillow over her face and he—"

  "The police are on the way sir," she said. Her monotone was comforting. Familiar. Almost arousing. "They will be there in four minutes."

  "He was attacking my wife and I hit him, I hit him hard. There's blood everywhere."

  "I understand," she said. I knew why it was familiar. She sounded like Jack Webb.

  "I can't talk anymore," I said. "I can't breathe."

  That was true. It was beginni
ng to dawn on me that I'd just murdered two people, one of whom was my wife. My chest felt tight.

  "Please stay on the line," she said.

  I hung up because I had one more thing to do, and I couldn't take a chance that I might be sidelined by a heart attack before I got to it. I went into the bathroom, put the sticky-plastic mat over Jack Webb's star and closed the shower curtain.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, clutched my chest, and waited.

  * * * * * *

  It was a simple case, really. I came home and surprised an intruder in my house who was holding a pillow over my wife's face and raping her. I smashed the bastard over the head with a lamp but I was too late to save my poor, sweet wife.

  Everyone knew I loved my wife, that we were happily married, and that we'd just celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. My co-workers, my neighbors, and even my wife's family stood solidly behind me. Not that they needed to, because the cops never doubted my story. Nobody did.

  Why should they?

  All anybody had to do was look at Titus, an ex-con with a big-boobed woman tattooed on his arm, and then look at me, a law-abiding citizen and devoted husband.

  There was always the remote possibility that the police would discover that Titus and I were in the same traffic school class together, but I wasn't concerned about that. It would have looked like Titus was a deranged sicko who followed me home and then stalked my wife before he raped and murdered her.

  The only thing that worried me was what would happen if the cops stumbled on Jack Webb's star in my shower. But they didn't. All the action was in the bedroom and that's what they concentrated on.

  The tightness I felt in my chest right after I murdered my wife and Titus passed before the cops showed up. I think it was stress or maybe acid reflux. In any other circumstance, I would have taken a Pepsid and not given it a second thought

  The homicide investigation lasted two, maybe three days and that was it.

  I felt no remorse. I was certain that the only reason Titus helped me steal the star was so he could fuck my wife. He used the erotic power of Jack Webb against me. That made it justifiable homicide as far as I was concerned.

  Carly wasn't any better. She knew what she was doing when she invited Titus into bed. She wanted to humiliate me and she succeeded. There are some cultures where women who commit adultery are stoned to death. Looking at it that way, things could have ended a lot worse for her.