by Jason Starr
“If you’re still upset about the things I said to Nelson, I’m really sorry about that. You were right – I should’ve gone to you first.”
“It has nothing to do with that. Just get out of here. I don’t want to see your face in this office anymore.”
“What did I do?” I said. “You can’t just fire me without a reason.”
“I have a reason all right, a very good reason. I know something about you, something that you’ve been trying to hide from all of us.”
Immediately, I thought of the prostitute. Could someone have seen us talking on the street that night and told Ed about it? It seemed unlikely, yet what else was I trying to hide?
“I can explain,” I said. “I mean it’s not like I do things like that all the time.”
“Things like what?”
“Whatever you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the resume you gave us. I decided to look into a few things, out of curiosity, on the chance that we might have overlooked something. Well, my detective work paid off. I found out something about you, Bill – something that you were obviously trying very hard to hide.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I should refresh your memory. On your job application you said that you resigned from your old job at that ad agency. But it turns out you were fired.”
“I wasn’t fired, I –”
“There’s no use denying it. I called up the Personnel Department over there and they gave me the whole story.”
“So what difference does it make? That was two years ago. That has nothing to do with my performance here.”
“They also gave me the reason why you were fired. Apparently there was an incident between you and your secretary and she filed a sexual harassment suit against you.”
“It was all blown way out of proportion,” I said. “And it wasn’t the reason I left there anyway.”
“According to the woman I spoke to in the Personnel Department today it was. I believe her name was Ms. Daniels. She remembers you well and she gave me a full account of the whole incident. She said you were having an argument with your secretary and you called her ‘a whore.’ There were witnesses there and everything, and apparently it wasn’t the first time you’d used that kind of language with her. You called her degrading names all the time.”
“The comments were taken out of context,” I said. “My secretary had a long psychiatric history. If you don’t believe me you can do some more research. She started arguments with everyone in the office and a few times I just got carried away.”
“It’s not my job to try you,” Ed said. “To be honest, I couldn’t care less whether you harassed her or not. The problem is you lied to us on your job application and you signed a statement swearing that all the information you had given us was truthful. I have no choice but to terminate you.”
“This isn’t fair,” I said. “You just want me out of here. You think I’m after your job.”
“I want you out of here because you violated company rules, not to mention the law.”
Ed started to leave. I stood up.
“You can’t fire me, only Nelson can.”
“Wrong. I’m your boss, not Nelson. Besides, I’m sure Nelson will want you out of here too once he finds out what you did.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I said, almost crying. “What did I ever do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter what you did to me. The fact is you don’t deserve to work at this company.”
That’s when it hit me what was really happening. I was about to be unemployed again, back in the same place I was two years ago.
I could forget about my dreams of finding another job in advertising, of starting a family and moving to the suburbs. I was going to be a loser again.
Then I stopped thinking. I tackled him from behind and went right for his throat. I squeezed hard, watching his face turn pink, then red, then blue. It happened that quickly. At first I was thrilled to see Ed’s limp body collapsed on the floor because I felt like I had won something. Then I realized exactly what had happened. I had ruined the rest of my life.
10
I shut the lights in my office and closed the door. Part of Ed’s body was blocking the entrance so I had to force back his head and one of his arms with my foot. One of his fingers got caught in the crack and I heard it snap when the weight of the door closed against it.
I walked around the office to make sure no one was around. It was empty, even at the other end of the hallway where the executives worked. And I knew there were no security cameras in the office because I’d heard Ed and Nelson discussing the possibility of installing them a couple of weeks ago. I decided that I had to get Ed out of my office as fast as possible, the question was where would I take him? Should I put him in his office or should I carry him to the street and try to get rid of him somewhere? I still didn’t see or hear anyone around, but that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t appear at any moment. Sometimes the executives went out for dinner, then returned to the office to work late. A building custodian could also show up, since the custodians seemed to have no set schedules and they often cleaned in the early evening.
Trying to move as quickly and quietly as possible, I dragged Ed’s two hundred-plus-pound body to the office men’s room. It wasn’t easy for me, a guy who weighed about one-seventy. I don’t know exactly why I decided to take his body to the men’s room, but perhaps I wanted a place where the body would have the least chance of being discovered quickly. As I’ve mentioned, Ed’s office had glass walls facing the telemarketing floor so the body would have been discovered there by anyone who happened to pass by. There were more secluded places in the office than the men’s room, like the storage closets or a space in the back of the mailroom, yet it’s easy to talk now about the things I could have done differently to cover my tracks. Believe me, there were plenty of things I could have done. But at the time I was nervous and I probably wasn’t thinking as clearly as I was capable of and I just wanted to get out of the office as fast as I could.
I reached the bathroom safely, unseen and unheard by anyone as far as I could tell. Dragging the body behind me, I backed into a stall. I managed to maneuver Ed onto the toilet bowl. It wasn’t exactly like putting a baby on his potty. I had to grab him below his knees and use all my might to get him up there. I was out of breath and sweat covered my face and neck when I was done. Then I thought I heard someone in the hallway. I closed the stall door and went outside to check. No one was there, but I stayed for a couple of minutes listening just in case. Then I heard the noise again; it was someone walking along the hallway in the office upstairs. I took a deep breath and prayed to God that everything would turn out all right. But this only frightened me even more. I didn’t believe in God, I realized, and even if I did believe in God, He probably wouldn’t want to help me. He was probably mad at me for deciding to become a Jew. Perhaps this was proof that God did exist, I thought – as punishment for deserting Catholicism, He had turned me into a murderer. It made perfect sense to me at the time, but now I realize how obviously ridiculous and irrational I was being.
I went back to Ed’s body and loosened the belt of his pants and unzipped the fly. I hoped that the police would think that Ed was about to go to the bathroom when he was attacked by someone who wanted to rob him. To make this look more legitimate, I took his wallet out of his back pocket and put it in my own pocket. Then I beat him in the face with the back of my fist. This was a mistake. I didn’t realize how easy it is to hurt your knuckles by punching someone bare-handed. I didn’t think I’d broken anything, but the pain was excruciating. I took off the shoe I was wearing which had a metal heel. I swung the shoe, heel first, against Ed’s nose, as hard as I could until I was certain I had broken the bone. I wasn’t very worried about fingerprints. Since I worked in the office, my fingerprints were as likely to be found in the bathroom as any other guy’s in the office. Just to be safe, however,
I scrubbed the part of the stall door I thought I had touched and the back of the toilet with a piece of toilet paper and threw it out before I left the bathroom.
Back in my office, I took a couple of seconds to look around and make sure nothing looked unusual or out of place. Except for a chair which I had turned over while I was attacking Ed, there was no indication that a struggle had ever taken place in my office. I put the chair in place, logged out of my computer, then left my office, like I’d do on any normal evening.
Fortunately, as a routine, I clocked out on the time clock at five o’clock no matter how late I stayed, so the police would have no way of determining the actual time I had left.
But my trouble was far from over. I knew I couldn’t be seen leaving the premises or the person who saw me could easily remember it. Since the elevators were often crowded with people from other offices, and I wasn’t sure whether the elevators had security cameras or not, I decided it would be much safer to take the stairs.
I walked along the back of the telemarketing floor, past the time clock and bulletin boards. About to turn left in to the corridor that led to the stairwell, I heard someone walking toward me. A thousand thoughts must have gone through my mind at once. The person was very close, only a few feet away, so it was too late to turn back and hide. I had to stand there and confront the person face to face and then the police would show up at my apartment as soon as the body was discovered. Although this all happened in only a few seconds, they were the longest, most terrifying seconds of my life.
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that God existed and that a miracle would happen. It did. The noise of the footsteps had suddenly stopped. At first I thought that the person was playing a cruel joke on me and was hiding around the corner, waiting for me to appear. Staying as close to the wall as I could, I peaked around the corner and saw that no one was standing there. There was only a vacuum cleaner next to a door that led to a storage room. I didn’t waste a second. I backtracked across the telemarketing floor and took the back hallway to approach the stairwell from another direction. This time there were no mishaps. I sprinted down the stairs as fast as I could – there were no security cameras on the stairwell – and a few seconds later I was outside, heading toward Eighth Avenue. I felt like how a prisoner on death row must feel when he’s pardoned by the governor. My life was over and now, suddenly, I was alive. It made me think that maybe there was a God after all.
Walking east through midtown, I was so excited about escaping the office without being seen, it didn’t even occur to me what potential danger lay ahead for me. I had forgotten that I had murdered my boss and that his body was waiting to be discovered, perhaps by that same janitor who had gone into the storage room. I also forgot that this janitor may have seen me, perhaps when I was leaving the bathroom or when I was straightening up inside my office. Then, as I was heading up Lexington Avenue in the East Fifties, a heavy weight dropped in my stomach and I felt like I was going to faint. It all suddenly hit me. I stopped for a moment, catching my breath. There was going to be an investigation tomorrow morning, or perhaps sooner, and the police would certainly make me a prime suspect. So what if that janitor didn’t notice me? Everyone from the office was going to be questioned and when the police found out I didn’t have an alibi for that time, well, they weren’t going to forget about it. They’d take me to the station house, grill me over and over again, and eventually they’d find a hole in my story. Maybe I wasn’t as careful as I’d thought. Maybe I’d left something in the office, some kind of evidence that could prove that I committed the murder. If I wanted to murder Ed, why the hell didn’t I plan it more carefully? I could have killed him on Long Island, in a dark parking lot at a train station or a shopping center. I could have made sure there was no evidence linking me to the crime. Instead I –
Enough, I thought. There was no use thinking about should’ves, could’ves and would’ves. If I didn’t kill Ed I’d be unemployed, back sending out resumes and going to job interviews. No ad agency would hire me after being out of work for so long, and what if someone called up Smythe & O’Greeley and found out the real reason why I’d left like Ed had done? But by working at A.C.A., maybe even running the whole Telemarketing Department some day, my references would be updated and new employers would be less likely to find out about the harassment incident. The way I saw things, it was the difference between the end of my career and a new beginning. Killing Ed was definitely the right thing to do – it was the only thing to do under the circumstances – and now I had to live with it.
At a deli, I bought a bottle of water and saved the paper bag. I went down a side street to an alley between two buildings. I took out Ed’s wallet and opened it. There was about forty dollars – a twenty and a bunch of small bills. I put the money in my pocket and wrapped the wallet up in the paper bag. In a garbage can near Hunter College, I dropped the wallet in the garbage and continued uptown. I was about forty blocks away from my office and I doubted that the police would look farther than the immediate area for the wallet. Of course someone could find the wallet and bring it to the police, but even if this did happen, it would fit well with the theory that someone had robbed Ed and dumped the wallet in a city garbage can. Crooks did that all the time.
When I got home, I had a lucky break. Julie wasn’t home from work yet and there was a message on the tape from her saying that she wouldn’t be home until about eight o’clock. It was ten after already so I didn’t have much time. I hurried out of my work clothes into sweat pants and a T-shirt. Then I went into the bathroom and wet my hair enough to make it look like I had taken a shower within the past hour. Finally, I lay on the couch and flicked on the Yankee game. I couldn’t concentrate on the game much and I never found out the score. However, I remember sensing a general feeling of gloom coming from the T.V. set so I assumed the Yankees were losing.
The sound of a key wiggling the lock in the front door jolted me off the couch. Julie came in, looking as exhausted as she always did. I flicked off the T.V. and went to kiss her.
“I had the biggest fight with my boss today,” she said. “I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“I missed you too, sweetheart.”
“Where were you before?”
“Before?” I said innocently.
“I called at about seven. Were you working late tonight?”
“No,” I said, “I’ve been home since about six-thirty. I must’ve been in the shower when you called.”
“Oh,” she said, obviously believing me. “I called you at your office too. I was afraid you’d be worried if you called home and I wasn’t here.”
“Did you leave a message for me at work?”
“I think so. Why?”
“No reason. I had some problem with my phone and I wasn’t sure I got all my messages.”
“Actually, I did leave a message at about seven o’clock. I have to get out of my work clothes. I’m sweating like a pig.”
I’d had my second lucky break. The voice mail system at work recorded the day and time of all incoming calls. If the police were curious enough to check, they’d discover that the message from Julie was left at a time close enough to the time that Ed was murdered to suggest that I hadn’t been involved. In reality, I was probably in the bathroom bruising Ed’s body when Julie had called, but unless that janitor had seen me – and I was feeling more and more sure that he hadn’t – the police wouldn’t be able to prove that I was in the office at that time. After all, why would I have left the office without playing my phone messages?
Even if I was in denial, I didn’t care. For the rest of the night, I forgot all about the murder and had a normal night at home with Julie. I didn’t have to act normal, I was normal, and for this reason Julie had no idea that anything was wrong.
As we cooked spaghetti and tomato sauce for dinner, Julie told me about the fight she’d had with her boss. Her boss had yelled at her for misplacing a file and she didn’t yell back at him. I consoled her, convin
cing her that she did the right thing. I told her that fighting with a boss is no way to advance at the company and that sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and roll with the punches. At the time, I didn’t see the irony in any of this.
Later, she asked me how things were going at my job.
“Great,” I said. “Ed was in meetings all day, but when I passed him in the hallway he smiled at me so I assume everything’s back to normal again. I realized there are more important things in life than a stupid job.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Like you,” I said.
It was the right thing to say. Smiling, she turned off the light on the spaghetti, got on her knees, and unzipped my fly. As I ran my fingers through her hair, I let my hands slide gently down to her neck. It was strange to think that just a couple of hours earlier, the same hands were strangling a man. It was so easy to kill, much easier than I’d ever thought. All I had to do was squeeze.
“Hey!” Julie screeched.
“Sorry,” I said.
I’d accidentally pulled on a few strands of her hair and I apologized a couple of more times.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Just enjoy yourself.”
Afterwards, I felt very relaxed. I was also starving. The spaghetti came out over-cooked, but I ate three or four bowls of it anyway. Afterwards, I watched the ten o’clock news, flipping between channels five and eleven. Neither station mentioned anything about a body being discovered in an office building in Hell’s Kitchen. At eleven o’clock, I watched the other news programs and there was still no mention of it. So I decided to forget about it. Whether the body was discovered or not didn’t really affect me, I thought. I still had to go to work tomorrow and act as surprised and upset as everyone else in the office. Not knowing anything might make my reaction seem more legitimate.
When I got into bed, Julie was already sleeping, a bridal magazine spread over her chest. I didn’t want to wake her, so I shut off the light and got into bed quietly. I slept well most of the night, but toward morning I started having nightmares. Although they were about a lot of different things, the only one I remembered clearly in the morning was a recurring dream I’d been having since I moved to New York. In it, I was preparing for high school graduation when I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to attend a chemistry class the entire year. I couldn’t graduate without passing the class and I’d have to spend another year in high school. It was a typical anxiety dream, I guess, like everyone has from time to time. When I woke up, I was certain that the dream was real, that I was seventeen years old. Then reality set in when I saw Julie sleeping soundly next to me. I thanked God that it was all a nightmare and that everything was fine. It didn’t even occur to me that the dream might have had something to do with the murder and that things were far from fine.
