by Joss Cordero
It seemed an insufficient apology for what he’d done to his former boss. But what more could he say? He had to get away before the staff arrived.
He peeled off his gloves and mask and gown, dropped them on the floor, and hurried through the hushed and dignified viewing room, leaving bootie-shaped tracks of blood and embalming fluid in his wake. Only when he got outside did he realize he was still wearing the booties. He flung them on the pavement, mounted his bike, and fled.
As he pedaled off, he experienced the revelation that was to turn his life around.
Aunt Emmy hadn’t sung to him before he choked Mr. Fiorello.
Aunt Emmy hadn’t sung to him at all.
Aunt Emmy’s soul had flown away.
Medical Examiner Singh surveyed Zach’s work in disbelief. “It’s not enough he murders them. Now he’s fucking embalming them.”
“It looks like he used too much juice,” suggested Detective Estrada.
Singh examined the pools of blood and embalming fluid shining on the exploded corpse. The mixture had a quality all its own.
“What are those wires hanging out of the mouth?” asked Estrada.
“That, my friend, is the undertaker’s art revealed.”
Estrada caught sight of the photo on the cupboard. “Hey, they’ve got DeJohn Davis here.”
“It’s a small world.”
Once again Zach put off his trip to the bus station and did what he often did when the enormity of his transgressions became too much for him. He headed toward a little bit of wilderness. The flat terrain of John Prince Park wasn’t like the hills and hollers of Tennessee, but it would have to do.
He pedaled past the open area around Square Lake, skirted the entrance to the campground, and wheeled his bike into the Custard Apple Trail, named for the pond apple trees that grew there. Though the urban madness that he hated had given him opportunities, this little marsh he walked beside told him where he really wanted to be. He longed for the peace of nature, the virtue of the birds and other wild creatures, and he knew it was impossible for him to return to it. To do that, he’d have to be born again, as another type of person, maybe a native in the jungle.
He watched the ducks and moorhens glide among the leaves. That was innocence. He knew, on occasion, an alligator would work its way into the marsh, and that wasn’t so innocent. This lifetime he was fated to be the alligator. And his jungle would have to be another city. New Orleans.
Following the looping trail away from the marsh, he made his way into the cover of the trees and performed the next chore on his agenda.
He opened up his knapsack, and took out a can with a yellow stripe on top and black below, the colors of a tiger.
He removed the lid, turned it upside down, and sprayed repeatedly until all the aerosol was gone. Then he punched a hole in the can, poured the liquid into a jar, and screwed the jar tightly shut.
On his way from the park, he placed the empty John Deere starting fluid can in a trash container.
People who littered drove him crazy.
Janine, in her role of former day care teacher, had the habit of making suggestions for redecorating Smoker’s office and for redecorating him. She’d recently instituted an ergonomic program which involved the two of them performing stretches every hour along with deep-breathing exercises, whose only effect was to make him long for a cigar or cigarette, both of which she’d previously banned from the office. He was lucky she didn’t make him take naps.
But today, thank God, was Saturday, so Janine wasn’t redecorating him. Dottie too was away, delivering a cake to a wedding at the Harriet Himmel Theater, which also hosted mixed martial arts fights, for which no cake was required. In any case it was a quiet day for him, with time to study the activities of Mrs. Vladlena Chalmers, a lady who took regular vacations to obscure places with nothing to recommend them. He picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me, Windsor. What’d you find?”
“I have a very large pill for you to swallow, Bob. Just think of it as a vitamin.”
“Get to the fucking point.”
“Your trusted associate, Vladlena Chalmers, who you’ve had to your house for dinner, who gives your children birthday presents, who goes shopping with your wife, is the one who’s been shopping you.”
“No fucking way,”
“Your auditors are a bunch of useless suits. Nosy, on the other hand—”
“Nosy?”
“Noah Jackson, my auditing guy, has a sixth sense for the disappearing dollar, and he knows how the dollars disappeared from the Windsor chain of golf communities.” Smoker pictured his auditor of choice, who at six foot four and a hundred-twenty pounds resembled a stilt-legged shorebird. All he cared about was numbers. When faced with fishy data, he plunged into the deeps, and emerged with his long neck extended like a snake, a bogus entry impaled on his pointed beak.
“Every weekend,” went on Smoker, “Vladlena’s at a different casino, though she’s cagey enough to avoid obvious places like Vegas or the Seminoles here in Florida.”
“You’re saying she has a habit?”
“Hogback, New Mexico, and Cape Verde, Arizona, aren’t beauty spots, Bob. She has no family there. The only thing these destinations have in common is they’re on Indian reservations. Either Vladlena’s attending Native American tribal conferences, or she’s enjoying the more modern Native American ceremony of invoking the great spirit while feeding dollar bills into slot machines.”
A long silence ensued, which Smoker figured was the large pill going down with some resistance, and then it landed. Windsor spoke. “I hired Vladlena. You wanna know why?”
“Good legs?”
“She and my wife were college roommates. Vladlena was an accounting major.”
“That’s where she learned how to fiddle the books.”
“I’ll rip her fucking heart out.”
“As an alternative, tell her it’s like Monopoly. Go directly to jail, or she spends the rest of her life paying you back.”
“The only way she could possibly do that is if I keep giving her the exorbitant salary she’s getting now.”
“Is she competent?”
“Obviously. She’s been ripping me off for three years without anybody noticing. Not even the auditors. It took your Nosy guy.”
“Sounds like she’s a valuable employee. Just needs some reorientation.”
“I’ll tell you something about women and friendship. My wife is going to forgive her. They’ll go to lunch, they’ll cry, they’ll leave a big tip. And she’ll still be coming over for dinner.”
“And giving presents to your children. Keep that in mind.”
“What I don’t understand is the appeal of slots. If you put your money in a Coke machine and nothing comes out, you hit it with a hammer.”
On this philosophical note, Windsor said good-bye, and Smoker added up the hours he could now bill the Windsor chain of golf communities. The Windsor website was up on his computer screen. He clicked on the virtual tour, and Music to Golf By guided him from hole to hole, then through a leafy maze of Mediterranean mansions, swimming pools, tennis and shuffleboard courts, seniors listening to lectures, watching entertainment, enjoying happy hours, dancing, singing in unison, painting in the open air, putting bowls in a kiln; the activities were evidently endless. He hoped that the several million Vladlena had been skimming off would in future go toward keeping the greens pristine for all these happy retirees.
An arm like an iron V swung around his neck. His ears plugged up as if he were hurtling through a tunnel. The pressure quickly mounted in his head. I’m not having a stroke, he told himself, it’s just an unfriendly visitor come to call. He dug his thumb into the nerve behind his attacker’s elbow bone, wrapped his fingers around in front, and squeezed.
Having broken the choke hold and crushed his assailant’s elbow, he
proceeded to ram his head beneath the bastard’s chin and drive it up into his sinuses. Or that was the plan . . . but . . . he . . . was . . . proceeding . . . in . . . slow . . . motion . . . because a dripping cloth was covering his nose and mouth, and the smell was the smell of oblivion.
When he came to, groggy from ether, he was seated on the floor, his arms stretched out painfully wide behind him, wrists handcuffed to the legs of Janine’s built-in desk. The whole office had been ransacked, and the killer he’d been tracking was sitting at his computer. Even from behind, Smoker could see he was tightly wrapped with muscle, not an ounce of fat, except for the swollen elbow.
Hearing Smoker stir, Zach swiveled around in his chair. “What does a private eye need with handcuffs? I thought all you snoops did was peek in motel rooms. Which is what you should’ve stuck to, instead of peeking into my life.”
He showed no sign of being aware of his wounded elbow, which Smoker knew must hurt like hell. His voice was as flat and expressionless as a robot’s, and his face wore the same expression as it had in the photo, as if he were undergoing a visionary experience. The contrast between his voice and expression made him stranger in the flesh than anything the camera captured.
“You think you’ve got my number,” he continued. “But you missed everything that matters.”
“What have I missed?”
“How could a normal like you understand me? And you don’t understand her either . . .”
He adjusted the computer so Smoker could see the screen, and Smoker saw the reason for the visionary gaze in Zach’s eyes. The screen was filled with the amazon’s high school yearbook photo, Cinderella goes to the ball, which Smoker had downloaded from the Web and Zach had enlarged.
Smoker knew what was in that file. Everything. Including her address in Flamingo Park. His vulnerable amazon was now more vulnerable than ever because he’d failed to bury her file deep enough in his computer. It should’ve been locked and sealed with a gold key. And how could he keep this maniac from going after her when he was handcuffed to a desk?
The maniac turned back to the computer, and Smoker’s concerns turned to Dottie, due back from the Harriet Himmel. He prayed she didn’t come walking through the door. For twenty-five years he’d walked in her footsteps, and she in his. Let it just be me he kills. Not her.
He looked at his favorite picture of her on the wall, taken at Disney World when the boys were small, her dimples and black cherry eyes reproduced in the laughing little faces of the twins. Beside it was a photo of the boys on the steps of their university, wearing mortar boards and holding diplomas. It seemed to him that the life the four of them had together was the only real thing in his world. In the face of that reality, his fascination for the amazon dwindled to a dream.
But he still had to protect her. Which he couldn’t do if he was dead.
Zach followed his eyes to the wall. “That’s your wife, I suppose, and those are your kids. You got it all.”
“Do I look like I got it all?”
He wondered why Zach had left him alive this long.
“How come you’re just a class C private eye?” Zach pointed to the license hanging on the wall beside the pictures. “Why don’t you rate an A or B?”
Fighting for time Smoker said, “Class C means I work alone.”
“Like me,” said Zach, and Smoker heard the ring of truth. Zach was alone in the way every psychopath is alone, cut off from the world, and because of that, able to quench out life without a second thought.
“I see you were a cop.” Zach indicated the other framed certificates. “Medal of Honor . . . Combat Cross . . . you must think you’re hot shit.”
Again Smoker heard the machinelike quality of Zach’s voice, a voice without inflection. He runs on automatic, Smoker thought. How do you reason with a machine?
Zach fingered a gold medal hanging from a red, white, and blue striped ribbon. “What did you win this for?”
Dottie claimed he kept her gold medal in his office as a joke, and he let her think so, but the fact was he was proud of her. “It’s my wife’s. Her cake won best in show at the American Culinary Federation convention.”
“That’s why you’re fat and slow.”
“Unlock these handcuffs and try me if you think I’m slow.”
Zach held up the handcuff keys, jingled them, and put them in his pocket.
Smoker thought back to occasions when he’d talked men down in domestic hostage situations. But he had nothing to promise here. Even if he had authority, Zach was wanted in too many states for anyone to cut him a break.
Zach’s eyes were fixed once more on the computer screen. “Who’s Zaratzian?”
“Just a friend.”
In his relentlessly pedantic way Zach said, “It says here he hired you. You typed in the date and everything. He’s the one who’s paying you to hunt me down. I knew it wasn’t Tara.”
“That’s right, it wasn’t Tara. She had nothing to do with any of this. You need to kill someone today? Limit it to me.”
“The hero. They’ll put another piece of paper on your wall for your widow to look at. You think you’re brave? I’ve got every agency in the South looking for me. How do you think you’d handle that?”
To keep the conversation going, Smoker said, “Not as well as you.”
Zach took down the boys’ graduation picture. “I taught myself better than a college could. I bet I’ve read more books than they have.” He sounded like he was reading at that very moment, not like someone carrying on a conversation with another person.
“I’m sure you have,” said Smoker. “They goofed off a lot.”
Zach took down the Disney World picture, and smashed the two photos together, shattering the glass. Smoker strained against his handcuffs. Since the desk was attached not only to the wall but also braced to the floor, he’d have to tear the whole house down to get free.
Zach tossed the picture frames at Smoker’s feet, and Smoker thought—Nothing wrong with lying to the bastard. “I’ve still got friends in the police,” he said, “and I’m tight with the DA. If you turn yourself in, I can make things easy for you. I can get you a deal.”
“If I go down, I’m not going down that way.”
Smoker had to admit he would feel the same. He would take his chances on the run. He saw in Zach the mountain boy who could survive in the wilderness. He could fish and he could hunt. The only problem was he also hunted women.
“You think I have nothing to offer,” said Zach. “I’m going to give you something no one else could give you.”
He rose from the chair, turned the radio on full blast, walked out the door, and shut it behind him.
Smoker was left with amplified guitars drilling through his brain and the question: Why am I still alive?
What’s that fucking madman got in mind?
From the top of the brick wall he saw her swimming. Each time she breathed she turned her face away from him. Quietly he dropped down into her yard, behind the trees that screened the wall.
He didn’t move but watched her do another lap, spellbound by her grace and strength. Her hair, wet, was darker than he recalled it.
He had no idea how many laps she swam. Watching her in the sharpness of sunlight made him breathless.
She climbed the stairs and walked around the pool, shaking her head like a dog. Taking long easy strides, she let the sunshine dry the water glittering on her bronzed skin. In her string bikini she was bigger than he’d remembered, commanding and intimidating as the statue of Justice in front of the courthouse of his conscience where he stood condemned for the scars he’d carved on her. He’d never been so clumsy with a woman before. It was against all Aunt Emmy taught him. But no one had ever fought him like this Tara Stevens did. The thought of how she’d fought excited him.
She strode closer, passing by the stand of trees.
> His arm whipped out like a branch torn off in a hurricane.
Her eyes met his, but he’d already fired and she was a puppet dancing at the end of twin electric wires. Spasms ran through her beautiful body. Her arms and legs jerked as she went down, and her head cracked against the tiles.
His heart pounding in his chest, he hurried toward her.
She was unconscious, her limbs convulsing. He dumped his knapsack open on the ground, taped her mouth, and quickly bound her with bungee cords. He didn’t want to keep tasering her. He didn’t want to hurt her. That’s what she had to know.
“I never should’ve cut you,” he said, gently removing the electrodes from her flesh. “That was a big mistake.”
His fingers caressed the necklace his knife had left around her throat. “I’m sorry about this.”
She struggled awake into dizziness to find him straddling her legs. She forced herself to ignore the painful throbbing in her head. She had to think . . .
He was kneeling upright, his arms extended so his palms pressed down against the front of her shoulders. There was that smell of fetal pig, and the smell of ether, and the odor of her own fear-saturated sweat.
“Don’t fight me,” he said. “I’m not your enemy.”
She stared up into the eyes that had been haunting her. All along she’d known she’d be looking into these insane eyes again, and the anger fueling her hatred was swept away in a sickening resignation. This time he would succeed.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated.
She had an impression of even white teeth, dark stubble, and chiseled features, but she didn’t dare move her gaze away from his eyes. Bound and gagged as she was, the one weapon she had to hold him was the look passing between them.
“No one could love you the way I do,” he said. “Only I know you.”
She accepted that this was true, no one would ever love her the way he did; and he did know her intimately, with an intimacy based on him being her murderer. He was the last thing she would see. Her connection with him was the most momentous of her life, wiping from her memory everyone who’d come before him.
