THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  All up and down Wharf Road, along which the chapel ground stood, cars parked, people got out, commingled with the throng that had begun to gather in the yard with its tiny gazebo model before its bigger brother church. As people gathered and began their industrious chatter, Frau Eva as she was called, Bosworth’s wife, retreated to the kitchen at the rear of the church where she was cooking up a repast with the help of her little ones.

  Benji and Marcus, the two lads dressed in identical dark suits, which signified they weren’t theirs but rentals, stood to either side of the door like two Chirons guarding the river Styx. They were handing out leaflets to each mourner who entered the chapel to do their circuit and pay their respects.

  “Leaflets at a funeral?” Said Hammond. “Sounds more like a voter’s campaign than a funeral. I mean…”

  “There was, I suppose, some of that too,” I said, “as there must be in all such affairs, but Marcus had gotten the bright idea of having locals express their sentiments for the deceased on paper. Some of them had even written poems about her…”

  “You mean about the fallen woman?”

  Yes, I said. If indeed that’s what she was and not just human, whatever humanness meant to her. Extreme loneliness is my guess. The two boys had had the statements printed up and were handing them out at the door. A more fitting epitaph to my mind than the hackneyed salutation we see on gravestones. Occasionally there’s a dandy, a real self-exposing original saying but not very often. After you passed the small box of ashes (hers) next to a yearbook photo of the deceased on the altar where two oblong candelabras burnt on either side under the wooden hand carved wreath, which resembled enormous wings and reached to the ceiling, one heard Bosworth and his incantations. He greeted each mourner personally with his own sign of the cross and dubious blessing while you gave ‘your own’ remembrances (I’d hate to think what some of them probably were) before making the turn through the corridors on either side of the wall-to-wall pews to once more join the crowd outside.

  And believe me, they were all there. Those who I didn’t recognize, I guessed at. Old Bill, the cook, Sandy’s one friend who truly did love her (probably the only one who ever had) and about whom she claimed he was the only man in the world she’d never sleep with was recognizable by his cook’s hat which tilted to one side like an accordion, and his obviously soiled apron. He must’ve taken a break from his job at the Windjammer to attend though his boss, Monahan was also there. The Irish lunk with the ruddy complexion. Owners, of course, always have more lenience than their help when it comes to making one’s own time. The obnoxious cook had captivated Marcus and Benji by imposing his ideas as to why they were all there.

  “It’s not just to honor someone you knew,” he blathered, “but to the only one you knew. And now she’s gone.” He patted the two kids on the shoulders and made his way out of the crowd leaving the others gathered behind the priest who, incanting all the way, had begun to lead the procession up the hill to the small graveyard nestled there on top among the cypress trees.

  Once there the priest stopped at a hole among the motley assortment of gravestones. A pile of earth surrounded it. Marcus and Benji, who together had been carrying the small ornate box of ashes in a clumsy fashion, stood before the final resting place. This was to be the socialite’s niche or at least what was left of her. The priest issued some more prayers for the dead and Benji was instructed to bury the ashes as they say. He wouldn’t do it.

  “Really,” said Hammond. “What do you mean wouldn’t do it. Why not? That’s where they belonged wasn’t it? You weren’t about to spread them over the lagoon.” He was learning.

  “He,” I said, “was waiting for his friend. He just didn’t want to set the box in alone I don’t know why. Both boys took a hand and set it in together. Benji buried it all right. He didn’t need help with that. But with the depositing. Of course, a few shovels full filled that hole. It wasn’t like you were working on a full sized eight by eight.”

  After that little service the crowd once more filed down the hill to the small yard before the church where by that time the wife had set up tables for the buffet, bottles of wine and all. Though extra chairs had been set out most of us had to eat while standing. A few unlikely souls had filled their plates and returned to the chapel where they sat in the pews and ate much like, I suppose, the homeless did when the priest let them in on cold winter nights and fed them. The true role of any priest to my mind, for what’s a man’s soul if he’s starving to death? You are what you eat as the saying goes and if you’re too hungry you’re a mental wreck.

  One of those, whose grief I never would’ve depicted, was the contractor’s. This was Stich whose tears rolled down his wide cheeks. He was there with his wife minus the tot. It was all they could do to keep Sarah in tow. She wore a very tight print dress all-Hawaiian. She really did look beautiful. Hartwig was right. No wonder… To the surprise of the visitors she’d waited until the last minute until she’d broken down and they (Marcus and his girlfriend) had to bodily help her to the car.

  “She … you mean she was even there,” said Hammond. “That surprises me. The way she and Sandy’d gone at it. If anything she should’ve been rejoicing that one who thought she was so superior to her in every way was no longer. If fact, wasn’t it at the christening at that very same church that the grandmother of the child watched the christening procession of her own grandson from the bar window as it passed. Afraid out of guilt over her depressing life that she’d never been ‘good enough’ to join in such a celebration; thinking she’d run into June who she envied and abominated.”

  “Yes,” I said. “This time you can be sure June was far away.”

  She wanted no part of Sandy’s debacle though the two had grown up as childhood friends in the plush district of our city. Sarah was there. She hugged her daughter with an emotional desperation that almost wrestled her from her own body. Though there’s no such thing as redemption per se as the church likes to sell wherein man saves himself and reaches out to heights sublime, sometimes good things do happen to people who aren’t so bad. And sometimes they also unfortunately occur to those who are. We don’t make Karma, remember, Karma makes us.

  Why right after the celebration Stich whisked her and the two boys up to his scenic modern home on the mesa that he’d built. Sarah was flattered; she’d never been there. As I said it was a cheery day all around and she didn’t drink. She was happy and so were some of the others whose futures were looking up. There was even some exegesis by those who’d remained.

  Mort, the cynic scriptwriter from Hollywood was there with his companion, Vera the single woman with a lot of money who had a weight problem. Reverend Bosworth had just turned away from the buffet table where as the true suffragist he liked to play he was encouraging the others.

  “Eat all you like,” he said, “there’s plenty more where that came from. The worst scenario would be that any food goes to waste.” Of course it wouldn’t have. The Salinas free store volunteers, who handed out food as well as clothing to the homeless, were standing by and would’ve taken it in a jiffy, served it that night and by tomorrow morning it’d all be gone. Matter of fact a group of homeless some of whom Sandy’d known and given handouts to had gathered themselves in one corner and were stuffing what they couldn’t eat into their pockets for snacks later on.

  “So, in essence this was a charitable exercise as well,” said Hammond.

  “Call it what you like,” I replied, “the mother (Sandy’s) was paying for it even though she wouldn’t deign to attend.”

  The priest too charged for his services. I won’t say how much the sum was, but plenty. Enough for Bosworth and his family to live comfortably off of for several months. No, everything in life you seem to have to pay for even funerals. There’s no free ride anymore. Grave plots have become affordable only to the ultra-rich. But what’s one crime among others. Like a horse with blinders you look only straight ahead. Day by day.

  When I saw Mort call th
e priest aside to express himself I deliberately put myself in a position to eavesdrop. Mort, whose freckled face was redder yet from the wine he’d been putting away, had been burrowing through the crowd with his own sense of injustice at the turn of events that had led to the tragedy He wanted an answer. He launched right into Bosworth who in his shroud like cassock looked down upon the director with his beatific expression. Mort’s dark red eyes seemed to pierce the priest’s light blue orbs.

  “What I want to know is,” said the writer. “Why did any of this have to happen?” In his own way he’d loved Sandy, she’d provided him with no little sincere amusement and she was someone he sincerely missed. Grievously missed.

  “Why yes,” said Bosworth, “in his typical querying manner. “Why did this have to happen? God’s ways are mysterious.”

  “Really,” said Mort turning to me a total stranger but apparently sensing I was on his side. “To hell with all that God stuff. The man (Brochowitz) was in your care. You saw what he was. Why didn’t you have him locked up, forever’d’ve been preferable.”

  Bosworth thought for a minute. “I helped the boy (as he referred to Brochowitz). He seemed all right. One never knows about such things and how they occur. That’s why we pray to the Lord that they don’t.”

  Thinking he’d given a satisfactory answer Bosworth shifted his little blue eyes to me, seeking my confirmation, I suppose. I noticed a group of children playing with their dog on the little hill we’d just left. Then Mort launched into him again as Vera held one of his arms.

  “The only way to appraise someone like that,” said Mort, “is behavioristically through science. When they’re that screwed up you don’t pray they’re going to reform. You assume they’re not and you lock them up permanently. Sacrifice the maniac’s freedom for the well-being of the rest of us. Case closed.” The little man stood up to the priest.

  “But how can you know?” Said Bosworth. “No one knows. Why God, of course, but who knows his will?”

  “I do,” said Mort angrily. “One look at the freak tells you that. Tests aren’t needed. Certainly not prayers.” It was as though he wanted to break the clergyman in two, an enormous task for the tiny writer to undertake with a large man like that, priest or no priest.

  As Bosworth turned to the others of his flock I told Mort I thoroughly agreed with him.

  “After they’ve shown their hand those sorts should either be locked up or supervised to the point they can’t do anyone else harm. In this case you don’t let the man run free with no wherewithal, no place to go and no supervisor to make sure he takes his medicine. A madman can’t understand a simple prohibition let alone ingest a moral cue from prayer that’ll lead him to do good. He wants his hard-core hallucinogen and to follow the wild dictates of his nature. Why he doesn’t even know what good is. If, of course, any of us do.” I waited for a response. You’ll never believe what it was.

  “What?” said Hammond.

  The tiny freckle faced man with the curly red hair looked at me and said,

  “What do you do?” Then. “Ah, yes, but think of the story it’ll make.” He … he, evidently, was all ready to begin writing the script or screenplay of the incident. Being caught off guard and not knowing what to say, I remarked,

  “Be sure if you do it to make it a good one.”

  And I realized I’d lost a grip on the situation myself. It was like through media contrast you hear (or see) what’s going on around you in the world but you have no idea of what it realistically entails. Therefore you content yourself by letting it continue and consider it beyond your responsibility. That was exactly how I felt.

  As the crowd in the little church yard began to thin in the late afternoon, the five of us walked down the road and across the street to the bar leaving the double hatched cross on the small chapel behind us to face the wind. Our greatest concern or rather question of interest at that point was, ‘where was Hartwig’ and ‘why hadn’t he shown’, although upon retrospect one could easily see why he’d chosen not to. Who, in fact, would have wanted to see him there after what’d happened? Whether he was actually at fault by then wasn’t even the point. Like ‘The Stranger’ he’d be condemned as though he had been. There are some test situations in life, which we are better to avoid entirely. This was one of them, at least for him.

  “Yes, said Hammond. “That tells me what I’ve been suspecting about him all the time. Courageless. Tries to appear tough but when it comes right down to it he’s the first to walk out.”

  “Not only walk out,” I said. “It’s lucky we ended up celebrating only one funeral that day instead of two. The other’s was damn near Hartwig’s.”

  ‘”You’re kidding,” said Hammond preposterously. “What’d he do, kill himself mourning over his loved one? Like Romeo now. He and Sandy, Romeo and Juliet. I’m starting to think it’s you who’re going a little crazy. Ha, ha, ha…”

  “No,” I said. “You may think it’s funny but listen.”

  After having had quite a few drinks at the bar among the more hearty revelers, who’d been at the funeral, the conversations just became more and more heated about revenge, what else. They (a number of them) wanted to kill a man that was already dead.

  “I seen the freak around town. If I’d’ve known anything like that would’ve happened to the little lady,” the man, a vet who was wearing a beret and must’ve known Sandy, sniffled. “I’d’ve whacked him.”

  “Me too, brother. They’d’ve found him floating face up in the lagoon. Up or down it wouldn’t matter.”

  As they continued to comfort themselves by thoughts of violence I realized we’d better leave. While the wake’d been one thing for Hartwig to’ve attended this’d certainly be another. No good’d come of it. So we left feeling we’d run into him on the road and warn him of the Martian atmosphere.

  It was a peaceful night as we emerged from the stuffy bar. Its smoky mass expanded momentarily as we opened the door. The cloud cover of the afternoon had vanished and the autumn stars were out in full splendor as the five of us piled into Dracula’s old black diesel sedan and began the tortuous journey home. I sat in front beside the driver while our companions had the back seat.

  After winding around the lagoon and going through Ocean View I noticed Harper took the coast rather than the mountain route back. I said nothing as he remarked.

  “It’s a nice night. The moon’s coming up. The view’ll do all of us good after what we’ve just seen.”

  I didn’t know exactly what he was referring to except perhaps the general malaise of a funeral that could’ve been anyone’s. I did note, however, that he might’ve equally chosen the other route. And by the flip of a coin, no more, we were on this one for the three drunken souls in back had already nodded off and couldn’t’ve appreciated anything. One of them was snoring.

  Although the road directly follows the long coast ridge, from Ocean View it climbs and follows numerous switchbacks that veer into dark tree-lined defiles then out so that one had the pleasant feeling of an amusement park ride. I was trying hard to keep awake myself to talk to Harper so as to keep him alert for one misstep up there or a drowsy spell could wreak ruination on the shoreline rocks two hundred feet or so below. I was saying absurd things such as,

  “We can stop for coffee once we get over the hill,” to induce the prospects of sobriety as perhaps a desirable state of the moment only to receive no answer. I’d glare over at Harper who appeared to be doing all right. He was the sort who didn’t like suggestions as to his integrity and he considered ‘testing you’ to be his reward. I had no problem with that.

  I looked to my right. The rising moon, which was behind us had made a streak across the water. When suddenly as we rounded a turn the car screeched to a halt, my head hit the windshield and our rear passengers became momentarily glued to the front seat.

  “What the f…?” Said an angry voice, but there before us on the road a man stood in the headlights waving. It was Hartwig and his dog. He didn’t a
ppear to be shaken up but of all the unexpected places. Then what was he doing out here at this time of night all alone? Walking his dog? Hitchhiking?

  “Christ,” said Harper. “We’d better get out and see,” which we proceeded to do as I rubbed my forehead from the bump I’d just received.

  “Hartwig.” It was Harper who’d gone up and hugged him in the glow of the headlights.

  “I knew you guys’d come along. I was certain of it but it certainly took long enough. Seems no one takes this road at night,” he said without hesitation, a statement I felt out of place for we might easily have taken the mountain road and missed him. As the coin’s toss, our chances had been fifty-fifty.

  The dog had begun to bark and dance in circles as it often did when it became excited. It, evidently, was glad to see us too. I then took a turn in giving my friend a hug as the other three had just piled out of our car, which was parked on the shoulder. The man was steely calm as though it was the normal state of things for him to be out there like that. I couldn’t believe it.

  As I stepped away, however, I noticed two things. Firstly, it wasn’t a man I’d greeted, it was more like a snowman for Hartwig stood there white as one, as though he’d just seen his maker. You couldn’t tell it from his voice or demean, however, just his pall. It was as though he hadn’t changed but something in him had flip-flopped that’d made him different. There was a sensitive spot in his nature after all if one could just peel off the layers. At least that was my interpretation, my moral judgment. Perhaps it didn’t apply to him.

  The other thing I noticed was his car. My eyes had become used to the light. His red Volkswagen was lying on its side with its nose actually touching the edge of the cliff. A few feet more and it’d been over. As the others came over to greet our hero, Harper and I walked cliffside to inspect the old Beetle. Its motor had been turned off. It lay there as though dead. There was no dent we could see for the scraped side lay underneath.