by Patti Abbott
“What?” A bruise-like blush spread across her face.
“Peter Rabbit’s Revenge, I think it was called.”
“Say it one more time.”
“I pressed the play button thinking it was Barney and Zelda watched Peter Rabbit fondle a carrot.” The cycle changed on the dishwasher. “It was a lot nastier than it sounds.”
“You think it was Corey’s, don’t you?”
The name cut through the air like a skunk’s stink.
“Seems like something he’d find funny. But, of course, it can’t be his. Or did you run into each other right in our living room?”
She flushed again. “Maybe. But I never saw him with any porn.”
Art was amazed. When had he been out of the house long enough to give Kruse an opening? “Take a look at it anyway. They’re on the closet shelf.”
“Lots of men watch porn.”
“Just take a look,” he told her, easing out the back door.
The cigarette tasted good. He kept an aging pack in the garage and smoked, as always, under the raised garage door, surveying their yard and the small frame house. He was probably going to have to pay to have it painted this summer unless Sam could make the time. Getting off and on ladders was beyond him now— ironically. Too much charging around in his youth, breaking through doors, carrying heavy equipment, running hard in short spurts, breathing in smoke. Add to that the long hours of doing nothing at all, cramped over a dented metal folding table shooting the breeze, playing pinochle, making bad jokes, watching The Price is Right.
How would Lois have handled Corey Kruse? She died eleven years earlier when a van hit her broadside as she was driving home from a PTA meeting. It was before Shannon had her first date, before Sam finished riding the pine in Little League, when Art still had most of his hair and all of his teeth.
“Dad?” Shannon said, stepping outside. “Hey, I didn’t know you still smoked.”
“I don’t,” he said, grinding the butt out in a dead tomato plant.
“I’ve got to work this afternoon.”
“You never work on Saturdays.”
Shannon worked in the City’s recreation department. He’d gotten her the job himself after retiring from the Detroit Fire Department. First time, he’d pulled strings for one of his own, but she’d floundered long enough in a series of low paying jobs.
“Everyone’s down with the flu and the girls’ basketball league has two games scheduled.”
He nodded. “Look, I have a little errand to run before you go. Shouldn’t take long.”
He’d walked past Galaxy Comics a million times, picking up countless cartons of milk at the mom and pop grocery next door. Sam had been a frequent patron in his teens, seeking out rare editions of favorite comics. Art got the feeling that most of Galaxy’s patrons went there to read as much as buy. The rent was probably low enough in its slightly seedy location that the owner tolerated browsing, knowing a sale would eventually come.
Art had heard Galaxy sold other stuff too. Inside, the store had the gluey, mousey smell of every used bookstore. Scanning the inventory, he saw books, magazines, posters and comics—all secondhand. A few racks held used videos and DVDs.
In the back of the store, a person of indeterminate gender and years was sifting through a stack of pulps. The search was punctuated by an occasional grunt of pleasure. The sudden sound of dropping magazines brought a reprimand from the skinny fellow up front.
“Hey, make sure they’re in the right order. If July don’t come after June and before August, I can’t sell it.”
Grunting, the patron swept the pile up and began the task of reordering them, muttering under his or her breath.
“Got any porn?” Art asked.
The skinny guy was listening to a Red Wings game. Art wondered if Gordie Howe still played for the Wings on the vintage radio. Faded pink with several missing knobs, it was propped on a teetering stack of paperbacks. Wordlessly, the guy tipped his head toward the back where a curtain made from old bedspreads marked off the area. A handmade sign advising “18 or older” dangled from a rusted safety pin.
Art pushed the curtain aside and found an assortment of videos that would make any perv go weak at the knees. Girding himself, he shuffled through the stacks, hoping for something. But the stuff looked fairly normal—if such a word could be used to describe porn. The women were clearly over eighteen. He didn’t see a single rabbit. Although there was a video called “School Daze,” none were titled “School Lays.” Apparently, high school was a popular locale.
“Keep any of the racier stuff?” he asked, pushing the curtain aside and sticking his head out.
The clerk shrugged, paused a minute, and then threw a catalog down on the counter. Art walked over to the counter and thumbed through it, but after a minute realized he didn’t even know what he was looking for. What was it he expected to find here? If Corey Kruse was buying porn, it wouldn’t be on his corner.
He felt like burning the whole stinking smut shop down. He wondered if Sam had ever sneaked behind the curtain. Why mix products appealing to children with those intended for lonely adult males? And, most importantly, how could he deal with his daughter’s enduring lust for a dim-witted, ambitionless cretin? He couldn’t bear thinking about Kruse’s hands on either of his girls.
“I know a place if you want to buy something special,” the skinny clerk said in a low voice.
The high-pitched voice of the Red Wings announcer pierced the area suddenly and they both flinched.
“Something special?”
The guy’s eyes fluttered. “Kind of stuff we can’t sell here.” He motioned toward a younger kid who had just come in. The boy was knee-deep in superhero comics, a batting glove peeking out of his pocket.
“I see,” Art said. And he did. “That place you mentioned? Any videos with little kids in ‘em?”
“Boys or girls?” The clerk’s tone was casual, non-judgmental.
Art stepped forward and gave him a good shove. The guy collapsed onto a stack of comics three feet high. Art hadn’t known it was coming till it did and really didn’t give a damn if someone called the cops. He felt good—better than he had in weeks.
After Shannon left for work, Art went into to his bedroom to pick up the dirty sheets from that morning. Zelda followed, going straight for the photo album. She opened it to the same page every time, or maybe the album just fell open there: it was a photo of Shannon dressed for her senior prom.
“Pitty,” Zelda announced, trying to hold up the heavy album. “Momma’s pitty.”
Art nodded, looking at the photograph.
“Find Zelda,” his granddaughter ordered. He thumbed through the album until the pictures of Zelda began. The album, of course, held no wedding pictures, no photos of a pregnant Shannon. It would probably make Zelda sad ten years from now when she realized her birth had not been a wholly joyous occasion. Would she find out her grandfather campaigned for an abortion, even insisting Shannon go to a family planning center, shoving newspaper statistics about single mothers under her nose.
“I thought you believed in the right to choose,” he said, as tears streamed down his daughter’s face.
“And I thought you didn’t,” she shot back.
Would someone tell Zelda about the night he showed up on Corey Kruse’s porch and took a swing at the guy? Carleen Kruse had stepped between them, nearly catching Art’s airborne fist in her face.
“They’re both just babies,” she said defensively, sheltering her son behind the half-open screen door.
Back in his car, he saw the sneer on Corey’s face as he pulled away. Carleen had tried to push her son into the house, but Corey shook her off, remaining on the porch with his feet propped defiantly on the unpainted rail. Art could never forgive a guy who thought a foot on a rail made him a man.
He hadn’t forgiven him a few weeks later when he caught up with Kruse outside a bar and beat the crap out of him. He’d discovered Kruse favored the pool table in the
backroom at Hambone’s and waited him out. The run-in had the facade of a fair fight: he hadn’t sneaked up on him or attacked him in the dark lot behind the bar; he hadn’t used more than bare fists. But Corey was a runt and half-drunk; he dropped like a stone. It took all of Art’s resolve not to add a few kicks to his kidneys or his head; but the kid was completely unconscious so Art crept away, momentarily satisfied. Corey was too cocky to tell Shannon about it. Since that night, Art had kept his distance, afraid he might kill the little fucker next time.
With Zelda down for her nap, Art’s mind began to wander. It was certain from what Shannon said that Corey Kruse was wheedling his way back into their—her—life. Art wouldn’t mind Shannon taking off—truly he wouldn’t— if Corey were a different sort of guy. His initial hope that they’d marry had been replaced by a desire for Kruse’s immediate removal from the planet. There was Zelda to consider now.
An old fireman immediately thought of the possibility of a fire when he heard about an unlicensed handyman—if you could even call Corey that— playing around with electricity. It would be simple for Art to stage such a fire. He’d investigated enough suspicious fires for insurance companies—an easy way to pick up some extra cash for his retirement—to know just what to do. He could be in and out of that house in minutes—another trick he’d learned was how to get through a door cleanly. He prided himself on not taking doors down with a fire ax if at all possible. Quiet would be called for: stealth. And, of course, he’d make sure Carleen hadn’t come back early, that no one else was inside.
The two hours Shannon promised came and went. Right now they were probably rolling around together in Kruse’s house. Making another baby perhaps—another baby for Kruse to ignore. The phone rang and he jumped.
“Art?”
The voice was unexpected but familiar. “How are you, Stan?” Stan was his oldest friend.
“Hey, boyo,” Stan said. “I saw you walking down Mack Avenue, looking like you meant business. I nearly stopped but the light turned. Made me wonder if you’d want to roll a few frames tonight?”
“You haven’t heard about my bum back?”
“That’s what happens when you become a grandfather, I guess. Take on the aches and pains of the job. Ever get out of that house, man?”
“Sure. How about a movie?”
“Shit! I knew there was something. Did I leave those tapes over there?”
“What?” An elevator rapidly descended in Art’s stomach.
“Porn I brought over last fall. Remember? We were going to watch one or two, but found a Pistons pre-season game.” Stan giggled. “Whoa, those babies were hardcore if I remember right.”
Art wondered how Stan would feel if he told him Zelda had caught a few minutes. “I forgot all about them.”
“Well, how about watching them tonight?”
“I’d better pass, Stan, but I’ll drop them off in the next day or two.”
Agreeing with Stan’s observation that he was turning into an old lady, Art hung up. Did this news really change anything, he wondered, after several minutes of a sort of fleeting relief. Perhaps Kruse hadn’t brought the porn inside his house, but he was putting something worse inside his daughter. Shannon came in looking exhausted ten minutes later.
“I had to ref and then clean up the locker rooms.”
“Want a Coke?” She nodded, and he pulled one out of the fridge.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a swig. “Look, Dad. I don’t have the stomach to watch those tapes. Could you just get rid of them?”
“Sure, sure. You know I’ll take care of things—like always.” That settled it; maybe it was time to admit his mistake. She looked so damned down. “Look, Shannon, funny thing. Stan just called and—guess what?”
“I was fooling myself thinking Corey had changed,” she interrupted. “How could he bring those videos into his own kid’s house?” She shook her head. “The fact that he just doesn’t get it is pitiful. I thought….”
Art felt a kind of throbbing somewhere behind his eyes, a pulsing beat that was red and hot. “Don’t make a big deal out of it with him, baby,” he finally said. He was only letting it happen, right? “Corey probably wouldn’t even remember.” He swallowed hard. “You know men. What means a lot to a woman, might not….”
She nodded, the color slowly returning to her face. He watched as she drained the bottle and set it down on the table with a thump. “Some men anyway. He’d never be able to put Zelda first. Not like you do.”
Later that night, after both his girls were in bed, he was only able to enjoy only a fleeting satisfaction from Shannon’s words. Soon, she’d bring the porn up with Corey and he’d deny bringing them into the house, and ultimately, she’d believe or excuse him. Love did that, made you ignore things you’d normally see. Little fucker would blink his big cow eyes at her and she’d go limp. Shannon was just like him at heart, unable to move on. Bound to that one soul-mate for life. But she hadn’t chosen well. Not at all. Didn’t really matter that he hadn’t brought the tapes here. There were other things he’d brought in.
It turned out that killing Corey Kruise was fairly easy; Art snuffed Corey out in his narrow, childhood bed with a feather pillow smelling faintly of mold, pressing down mercilessly with the strength of the righteous. Hadn’t expected it to be so simple, but the acrid odor of booze as he bent over the corpse explained the lack of fight.
Covering his tracks would be the harder task. After it—after standing over Corey with a sourish mixture of regret and satisfaction churning in his stomach—he moved through the dark house with his dim beam on, looking for the electric drill that had to be there. Corey was a surprisingly tidy handyman; all his tools had been cleaned and returned to their proper case. But there is was finally, tucked away in a kitchen cabinet.
Art had given some thought to using a typical accelerant for the fire, but it was hard to get away with it nowadays. Insurance and police investigators knew every variation, the precise look of an accelerant-set fire, the residue of chemicals left in the ash. It had to appear electrical, something related to Corey’s weekend work for his mother. In the past, Art would’ve tampered with Corey’s drill, making it into a lethal weapon with aluminum foil or nails that would go undetected. No more. Police work had gotten too sophisticated for a stunt like that.
The drill Art brought, had been expertly redesigned but never used, by a professional arsonist on an investigation Art was in on six or seven years ago. A string of fires, each brilliantly conceived and imaginatively executed, had led to the creation of a special task force. He found the drill himself when he went through the arsonist’s tool shed, a place that looked like it had been designed by California Closet’s resident pyromaniac. He took the tool home as a souvenir after the man’s incarceration when it was no longer needed as evidence, never imagining he would use it himself.
The drill burst into life in a small but lethal explosion on the floor by the dead boy’s bed. Art used his cell from outside the house to make it detonate. Several cans of paint sat nearby, fostering the fire’s growth. There was still the chance it’d be judged arson, but a better one it wouldn’t once the investigators learned of the home improvement project, once they saw the dingy row of poorly maintained firetraps on the block. He eased down the street feeling surprisingly peaceful as flames rushed across the small house.
When he got home, he could hear Zelda moving about in her crib. She was making that keening sound she used when she was frightened and trying to soothe herself. Soon she’d be shaking her crib rail, making her bed move as she tried to reach him. Then she would call out his name. His name! He made his inexorable way toward her.
SLEEP, CREEP, LEAP
Lillian Gillespie’s downstairs’ lights had burned for at least seventy-two hours when her neighbor, Bob Mason, walked up to her front door. The cat’s eyes glittered hostilely and it hissed when he put his eyes up to the mail slot. Bob stuck out his tongue, inadvertently allowing the metal door to slam on it.
There was snow on the ground, and his shoes and pants’ bottoms got soaked circling the house. He finally peered in through the one window he could see in from the back porch. Nothing. They’d been neighbors for more than ten years, but he didn’t know Lillian’s phone number. He’d agreed to keep a spare key after she locked herself out once, but couldn’t warm up to the idea of using it now. Who knew what he’d find inside?
Reluctantly, he called the cops, returning to Lillian’s door to wait for them. The two officers, neither seeming much more eager than Bob to enter the house, found Lillian sitting in front of the TV, a moldering salad on her lap tray. She was sixty-one according to the driver’s license in her purse, over a decade younger than Bob. Standing outside in the dark, his wet pants’ legs icing up, he answered questions as tersely as possible, wanting only to return home.
“Did you know her at all?” the female officer finally asked, slapping her notebook shut and shining a flashlight straight into his eyes. “Ten years next door and you don’t know where she worked? Where her children live?”
“Her pacemaker malfunctioned,” Lillian’s daughter in from Cleveland told him a day later. “You probably guessed it.”
He nodded, although he’d no idea Lillian had heart trouble. She’d seemed active enough, zipping in and out of her garage in her little Cruiser.
“You’ll probably see a realtor and some painters and plumbers around here in a few days.” She smiled uneasily at his silence. “Just so you don’t think the place is being robbed. Mother appreciated your neighborliness, Mr. Mason,” she said at last.
He was doubtful of this. Lillian and he had barely had a conversation beyond exchanging pleasantries, wrongly delivered mail, and that key over the years. The daughter handed him a card with her phone number and email address before she left. He considered tossing it in the trash but placed it in his “Miscellaneous” file folder instead. His involvement with the Gillespie women was over as far as he was concerned.
