The Man Who Loved Women to Death

by David Handler

  So I did. I went for the hand with the gun, groping for it blindly in the dark, grappling with her, wrestling her for it. She fought back savagely, a hissing sound coming from between her teeth. God, she was strong. And then suddenly there was this tremendous explosion and my shoulder, my right shoulder, went completely dead.

  “Now look what you’ve done, Hoagy,” she scolded me.

  “Stupid me,” I said. The sound of the gunshot was still crackling in my ears. My arm felt like I’d been sleeping on it all night. No sensation. None.

  “It’s very important to keep your cool. Come on, we have to scoot. The neighbors. We’ve made a noise.”

  “Stupid us,” I said, the fingers of my right hand turning cold. My ears were ringing. And I felt dizzy. Couldn’t get my bearings in that darkness. Couldn’t tell if I was standing up or lying down or …

  She flicked on the bathroom light again, blinking at me in the brightness. “Oh, dear, look at your shoulder.”

  “I’d really rather not, thank you.”

  “Here.” She pressed a hand towel over it, grabbed my other hand and held it there. “Just keep pressure on it. We’ll take care of it afterward.” She pulled me out into the entry hall, the light from the powder room illuminating our path. There was a light switch on the wall next to the front door. A pair of them actually—one to the entry hall ceiling fixture, one to the dining room chandelier. She flicked them both on. Nothing happened. “What’s wrong with your lights?” she wondered, flicking them on and off repeatedly.

  I just stood there dumbly. I had no idea. I was too busy losing blood.

  “Oh, shit, never mind. Come on, Merilee’s this way.”

  Now we were heading toward the dining room, which meant we were back in the blackness again.

  “Is there a lamp in here, Hoagy?” Tansy sounded very businesslike now. “Turn on a lamp.”

  There was a Frank Lloyd Wright prairie lamp on the sideboard. I staggered blindly over in the direction of it. “It’s okay, Merilee,” I said, raising my voice. “We’ll be okay.” I listened for a muffled moan in response, for the sound of her body straining and heaving against the ropes that bound her to one of the dining chairs. I listened for a sound, any sound. All I heard was my own breathing. I was panting, shallow and quick, like Lulu did on a hot summer day. Lulu … Where was Lulu? Luluuuu …

  I found the prairie lamp. I flicked it on. Nothing.

  “Turn it on, damn it!” Tansy cried, her voice shrill and insistent.

  “I’m trying, Tansy. This one’s dead, too.”

  I heard the floorboards creak under her feet as Tansy moved closer to the dining table. “Where are you, Merilee?” she called out. “Let us know where you are. Give us a signal, dearest.”

  “How’s this, Tansy?” Merilee replied in a loud, clear voice. A voice that was nowhere near the dining table.

  A voice that was behind Tansy.

  Tansy let out a startled yelp and a curse. And then things happened really, really fast. Thrashing in the darkness. Groans of pain. Chairs kicked over. And then a truck ran into me and I went down hard, my head smacking into something sharp. And I thought I heard gunfire but I couldn’t be sure because it might just have been inside my own head and I couldn’t see anything or hear anything and then I was out.

  SOMEONE WAS WAVING ammonia under my nose.

  Merilee. She was crouched over me, looking terribly concerned. Also terribly pale. She had a gash on her forehead and one of her silk sleeves was torn. I could see her quite clearly. All of the lights were on now. I could see Tansy quite clearly, too. She lay in a pool of blood on the floor right next to me, staring at me. In death, she looked like a marionette, her long legs crumpled awkwardly, her neck twisted, her blue eyes frozen and unblinking. All that was missing were the puppet strings. There were no strings. She’d been shot twice—in the neck and in the stomach. Merilee was still gripping the gun, her knuckles white.

  I took the gun from her. She let me take it from her.

  My head was swimming. My right arm was throbbing and not available for use any time soon. But I wanted to stand up. It was extremely important to me to stand up.

  Merilee helped me. “I’m so sorry about that bump on your head, darling. You hit it against the dining table when I shoved you aside. You were terribly in my way, you see.”

  “I’ll try to be more careful next time.” I put my good arm around her to steady myself. My legs were made of Silly Putty.

  “She got here when you were in the shower, Hoagy,” Merilee informed me. She herself seemed quite steady. It amazed me how steady Merilee seemed after killing her oldest friend.

  “I know that, Merilee, but—”

  “She tied me up to a chair at gunpoint and gagged me.”

  “I know that, too, but—”

  “I kicked over Tracy’s high chair,” she went on. “That was the thud you heard. I heard you call out my name. I heard you come looking for me. I tried to warn you, darling. Oh, how I tried. But I couldn’t. It was like in a nightmare when you’re trying to yell and you’re trying and you can’t … and then she intercepted you in the dark and dragged you away. She told me you were in on the whole thing with her. That you two planned it together as a way of getting rid of Tuttle.”

  “Merilee?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “How did you get loose?”

  “Oh, that was easy. Tansy was never very clever with knots. Not like I am. I used to sail with Father in Maine every summer, remember?”

  “Okay, but then what?”

  “I did precisely what I’ve been training myself to do for the past six weeks. Thanks to Susy I am ten times more resourceful in the dark than I ever was. I know where every doorway and stick of furniture in this apartment is. I simply did what Susy would do.”

  “You leveled the playing field.”

  “I had to move fast,” Merilee explained. “I didn’t know how much time I had. I went straight for the fuse box in the kitchen. Pulled out all the fuses except the one that runs the powder room—I didn’t want her to suspect anything. When you two came looking for me in the dark, you had no way of knowing where I was. But I knew precisely where you were. I could hear you, smell you, sense you. That’s how I was able to sneak up behind her. I jumped her. We fought. The gun went off by accident.… And now you know the whole story.”

  I thought about this a moment: “You’ll have to do better than that, Merilee.”

  She gazed at me, puzzled. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”

  “I mean, the police won’t buy it if you tell it to them that way. When a gun goes off by accident, it goes off once, not twice. Never twice. Tansy has two bullets in her. That means it wasn’t an accident. Lieutenant Very will know it the second he walks in.” I looked deeply into her eyes. Or at least I tried to. She wouldn’t look at me. I reached for her chin with my good hand and turned it toward me. “Merilee, you don’t have to hide anything. No one will prosecute you. No one will think less of you. I know I won’t.”

  Her mouth tightened, her chest rising and falling. I thought the tears would come now, but they didn’t. She remained calm and strong. “You’re absolutely right, of course. I took the gun away from her and I shot her the way you’d shoot a rabid animal. She came into my home. She was going to kill me, take my baby away, take my man away … I wasn’t going to stand for that. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” I said, stroking her high forehead. It was a nasty gash she had there. I wondered if it would leave a scar. I wondered if the camera would see it.

  Now Merilee was gazing down at her friend. “Poor Tansy. I’ve known her since we were fifteen and she had Jim Morrison posters in her room and …” She trailed off, shuddering. “My God, Hoagy. Who was she? What was she?”

  “She was the mess that Tuttle Cash left behind. Are you going to be all right, Merilee?”

  “Of course, darling. I’m fine.”

  Because it still didn’t seem real to h
er. She was still into her performance, still into being strong, being resourceful, being Susy. Later, when the reality hit her, she would sob and tremble and hold on to me tight. For right now, I was the one who was holding on to her.

  “Merilee?”

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Where’s our daughter?”

  “Oh, I hid her—somewhere Tansy wouldn’t find her. She’s, um, she’s in the kitchen.”

  “Good Lord, Merilee, you didn’t stuff her in the oven, did you?”

  “I did not.”

  Actually, Tracy was in the broom closet. Seemed quite merry in there, too, curled up on the floor playing with a rubber glove. Merilee picked her up and hugged her to her chest and cooed and laughed and started singing her favorite lullaby to her, which happens to be “Eve of Destruction.” As for Lulu, she was still standing guard there outside the closet door. Her mommy had told her to stay put there, even though it had been terribly, terribly dark. And she had stayed put there. Although now she was whimpering and snuffling, tail going thumpety-thump-thumpety. Maybe just the teensiest bit happy to find me semi-alive and well. I told her she was a very brave girl. She stood on my foot and let out a war whoop and allowed as how she wouldn’t mind an anchovy. I managed to get the refrigerator open. I found her jar. I gave her one.

  “So what do you intend to do with me, Merilee?”

  “Do with you, darling?”

  “You’ve saved my life. In some cultures, that means you own me.”

  “I’ve always owned you, mister. It’s just that now you know it.”

  “I see,” I said. At least I think I said it. I can’t be sure. That ringing in my ears was back. And Merilee seemed uncommonly tall all of a sudden. And the kitchen had a peculiar tilt to it. “Would you mind doing one more thing for me?”

  “Of course, darling. What is it?”

  “Could you call 911?”

  I didn’t hear her answer. I was out cold on the floor by then.

  Sixteen

  A PARK AVENUE ORTHOPEDIC surgeon spent four hours putting the blown shreds of my old javelin shoulder back together again. Afterward, he told me he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun. It was just like building a model airplane, is what he said. Surgeons are weird people. Necessary but weird. After it healed, there would be three visits a week with a no-nonsense sadist who called herself a physical therapist. For the time being I had to carry my right arm around in a sling, my coat thrown over my shoulders like one of those pieces of Eurotrash you see floating around town.

  When I felt up to it I went out looking for Malachi Medvedev. Found him holed up with Coochie in his roost on East Fifty-eighth Street. It was a newish high-rise. They had a one-bedroom on the eighteenth floor with a terrace overlooking the Roosevelt Island tram. The decor was from straight out of the Mr. Goodbar days. Lots of kidney-shaped chrome and glass. A fake leopard skin on the floor. There was even a mirror ball on the ceiling. Malachi greeted me wearing a caftan and bedroom slippers. Coochie had on a sleeveless terry-cloth top, black leather hot pants and way too much eye makeup. And if she was more than thirteen years old, then I’m T. Coraghessan Boyle. But that was Mal’s business.

  Besides, she got on well with Tracy, who happened to be in my care that day. They played on the living-room floor together while Lulu shopped around in vain for a comfortable place to lie down. Malachi fixed him and me hot tea with lemon and honey and brandy, conversing with me over the counter while he waddled around in the kitchen, forever a bartender.

  “How’s the flipper?” he asked, slicing up a lemon.

  “Better than new. In fact, I’m thinking about making a comeback.”

  “Oh, yeah? What as?”

  “And you, Mal?” I growled. “How are you?”

  “Place may not reopen, is how I am. Partners may just shut it, now that The King’s gone.”

  “What will you do, Mal?”

  “A good bartender can always find himself a spot.”

  “I’m well aware of that, but what will you do?”

  “Always the kidder, huh?” he said, grinning at me. “I’ve had a million calls from the newspapers and the TV shows. A book publisher even. But between you and me, I ain’t up for it. Man’s dead, you know what I’m saying? I dunno, I may just give it up. Got my other business interests, three apartment houses in Queens earning me rentals, the condo down in Boca … I’ll be fine.” He ran a hand over his face, his doughy features scrunching up in sorrow. “About that gun, Hoagy. The one he used on himself. I hid it good, just like you told me to. Only, he found it. I-I don’t know how. I just don’t.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Mal. He wanted to go. If he hadn’t found that gun he would have just bought himself another one. Or thrown himself off the top of the Empire State Building. It wasn’t your fault.” Although I must admit that part of me did wonder whether Malachi Medvedev had performed his own little random act of kindness—by leaving that Smith & Wesson lying around for Tuttle to find and to use. But I would leave that one alone, I decided. Like he said, the man was dead.

  He pushed my hot tea over the counter to me and took a noisy slurp of his. From the living room came cascades of juvenile laughter, Tracy and her new playmate.

  “Exactly how old is she, Mal?”

  “What difference does that make? She’s fan-fucking-tastic.”

  “And Muriel?”

  “I love my wife,” he said, simply and sincerely.

  “I envy you, Mal.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Because you have an answer for everything. And you believe those answers. That must be a wonderful way to go through life.”

  He stood there across the counter studying my face a moment with those moist brown eyes of his. “Something you want to spill, Hoagy?”

  I reached for my mug with my good hand and took a sip. “Not today.”

  “Sure, sure. Anytime. You know where to find me.” He took another slurp. “I’ll miss the action, Hoagy.”

  “You’ll miss Tuttle.”

  “He was like a son to me,” Malachi conceded, shoving his wet lower lip in and out. “Fathers ain’t supposed to bury their sons. Violates the laws of nature. Leaves me feeling kind of empty.” He paused, pondering this. “How does it leave you feeling?”

  I smiled and said, “Like celebrating.”

  SO I WENT TO the Oyster Bar for some bluepoints. Not a dozen, not six, nine. Seemed like the thing to do. This was where I had been on that crisp early December afternoon when the first chapter arrived. Besides which, a bowl of Tony’s pan roast seemed like the least I could do for Lulu. I’d put her through a lot, and now that Tuttle was gone she was my best friend in the whole world. Please don’t tell her I said that.

  I asked Tony to mix me a Bloody Mary for openers, extra spicy. When he brought it I raised it in silent tribute to my gallant, departed friend and my gallant, departed youth. I was about to take my first sip when someone slid onto the stool next to mine.

  It was Detective Lieutenant Romaine Very. He knows my haunts.

  “How’s the shoulder, dude?” he asked, patting Lulu hello. Tracy got a goofy face.

  “Better than new. In fact, I’m thinking about making a comeback.”

  “Oh, yeah? What as?”

  “Where’s the Human Hemorrhoid?” I growled. “Shooting and smoothing in seclusion?”

  “Say what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Check it out, we found traces of blood from the first victim in one of Miss Smollet’s vans.”

  “Diane, Lieutenant. Her name was Diane.”

  “Also fibers from a coat of Miss Smollet’s match fibers we found on the second … on Laurie’s sofa. And, dig, I got a message for you from the inspector.” Very’s knee was starting to quake under the bar, rattling the bowls and silver that were on it. “Said to tell you he would have caught up with her eventually.”

  I sipped my Bloody Mary in silence.

  “He’s ultrasure of it, dud
e. Man believes in his system.”

  “That’s nice, Lieutenant. Only, what if Tansy Smollet hadn’t come after Merilee? What if she’d simply resumed her so-called normal life and never killed anyone ever again—what then? Would Feldman have known what really happened? Would he have even suspected?”

  “Man believes in his system,” Very said again.

  “Well, tell the man from me I’m just pleased as punch that he does. Someone ought to believe in something. It may as well be him.” I drained my Bloody Mary and signaled Tony for another. “May I offer you one, Lieutenant?”

  “Make mine a virgin.”

  “By all means.”

  “At least you found out your boy wasn’t no killer,” Very pointed out. “By trying to do right by him you didn’t cause Cassandra’s death. Or anyone else’s. It wasn’t your fault. That’s something you can put in the bank, and it ain’t no chump change.”

  “You’re right, Lieutenant. That’s no chump change.”

  Our drinks came. He took a swig of his. He sat there. He seemed terribly depressed all of a sudden.

  I said, “Look, if you’d like I’ll see if I know anybody who knows somebody who knows her, okay?”

  Very frowned. “Knows who, dude?”

  “Cokie Roberts, who else?”

  He brightened considerably. “You’d do that for me?”

  “I would.”

  “Check it out—does that mean we’re friends?”

  “Lieutenant, I don’t know what we are.” I clinked his glass with mine. “Until next time.”

  “Dude?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Does there have to be a next time?”

  “It would seem so. I’m sorry.”

  I AGREED TO GO ahead and write the definitive, the authorized, the one-and-only true story of the answer man. I donated most of my whopping advance and all of my royalties to a fund that I set up for the families of the victims. And I would only sign with a publisher that was willing to do the same with its share of the proceeds. The contract turned out to be a nightmare. For one thing, the publisher now had to come to terms with Tansy’s estate, not Tuttle’s. And she left behind many relatives and they all had lawyers who were expensive and annoying. Or am I being redundant?