by Ray Garton
I backed around the recliner and fell into it, repeating the amount over and over in a breathless stammer.
“Of course, it’ll have to be soon. Tomorrow afternoon, in fact. Because I’ll have to report this as soon as possible. I can’t wait around. If it’s absolutely impossible, you don’t have to pay all of it at once, but I’ll need something. Maybe half. If you cooperate, the murder will be made to look like a break-in and your tie and knife will disappear, along with the tape. Otherwise… well… “ He chuckled, picking up the suitcase. “Don’t bend over for the soap.” Opening the door, he said, “C’mon, let’s go.”
I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, but forced myself to stand on quaking legs. “I… don’t… have it. That much money. I don’t have it.” My heart was beating so rapidly that my chest ached.
“Oh, sure you do. You can come up with it, can’t you?” What about your wife? Your father-in-law?”
“But I can’t—they wouldn’t—how could I—”
“Yeah, you’re right. Couldn’t just come out and ask them for it, could you? Oh, well. You’ll think of something. You’re a bright guy.” He slapped his thigh and sang out, “C’mon, gotta go.”
I massaged my chest but didn’t move from where I stood. “Whuh-why? Why are you… doing this… to me? How cuh-could you… do that? Kill your wuh-wife? Like thuh-that? Your… your wife?”
He rolled his eyes, sighed with impatience and closed the door, dropping the suitcase. “I have to, okay? I need the money. Desperately. I mean, I’m in a bind, okay? It’s not important what the bind is, but it’s there. I mean, it’s really none of your business.” His fists doubled at his sides. “But I am against a fucking wall, you know what I mean? This is the only thing I could think of to solve my problem. Now you have a problem, but I can’t worry about that because I have to take care of my own problem. Do you see how it works now?”
I walked toward him, avoiding the urge to look back through the bedroom door at the slashed and strangled corpse that lay on the bed. He locked and closed the door behind us.
“We should take the fire escape,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to see us.”
“You don’t think anybody will see us if we take the fire escape?”
“Nobody who matters.”
We took the fire escape.
Once on the sidewalk, he said, “Okay, here’s the deal. Tomorrow afternoon, you meet me at four o’clock at Jeenie’s Weenies on Fourth. You know where it is?”
“I’ve got an idea, yeah.”
“Okay. We meet there. You bring me as much of the money as possible, as long as it’s a third of what I’m asking or more. Well work out everything else later. You got it?”
“But I… I… I can’t—”
“Yes you can.”
“How? I mean, how do you know that? I can’t just come up with one and a half—”
“Sure you can.”
I rolled my eyes, trying to ignore my sick stomach. “How? I mean, what do you think I’m—”
“Just think about what I did.” He grinned. Waved. Said, “See you tomorrow.” Then he was gone.
I was left standing on the sidewalk, trying not to throw up, thinking, suddenly, of Peggy…
I took the rest of the day off work, claiming illness. My appearance supported my claim. Instead of going home, I went, in a daze, to a bar a few blocks from my apartment and tried to drink myself into a different kind of daze, a more preferable numbness. It didn’t work.
Instead, I kept remembering what Larry had said.
Just think about what I did…
… about what I did…
… what I did…
And I got very drunk…
By the time I got home, I had to fight not to stagger. I’d done a lot of thinking—the kind of thinking I could only do while I was drunk, but thinking that I had to do, under the circumstances—and I had come to a conclusion.
As I write this, that conclusion is eating a hole in my gut, gnawing its way through my intestines.
Peggy was still up, reading in the living room, when I got home.
“Are you drunk?” she asked.
“Not really. I had a few drinks.”
“I… I didn’t fix any dinner. I didn’t think you’d be ho—”
“That’s okay. I’m not hungry.” I stood in the middle of the room in my coat, holding my briefcase, waiting for the words to come from my mouth. “How are you?”
‘‘I’m… fine. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah. I’m just… “ I shrugged and went down the hall, changed my clothes, washed up and used some mouthwash. Then I went into the bedroom and laid down on the bed, fully clothed, to think.
I still hadn’t recovered from what I’d seen and knew I wouldn’t for a long time. Having watched Larry murder his wife, several things that I’d been able—perhaps willing?—to ignore on Friday night became clear: what Julie had said about Larry—This is what he’s wanted for a long time—and the way she’d looked at him while the three of us were together, tentatively, as if searching for his approval; Larry coming into the room to take my clothes out and search them and, most of all, the way he had so carefully learned all he needed to know about me at the bar. Where had the video camera been? In the closet? In plain sight, maybe in a corner of the room?
Well, it didn’t matter now. Drunk as I was, I wanted a few more drinks. But more than that, I wanted money.
I was by no means poor, but I couldn’t just whip up a million and a half and hand it over to Larry. Not only did I have Peggy to answer to, but her father would step in sooner or later, too; sometimes I think he’s kept as close an eye on our finances as on his own. Oh, I could come up with some of it tomorrow—stocks, bonds, savings, a couple premature CD’s—but the rest of the amount worried me. I’d spent the day going over every imaginable option, only to find them all unacceptable. There was, however, one option… a vile, filthy option that made me ill…
“Is anything wrong?” Peggy asked, standing in the doorway. She wore her robe, but I was sure that, beneath it, she was protectively concealed in her usual throat-to-ankle tan nightgown.
I smiled, shook my head and held out my hand, saying, “Come to bed.”
She seemed cautious as she joined me on the bed. I kissed her, softly at first, then firmly, clutching her tightly.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked, laughing nervously. “Besides a lot of booze?”
I said nothing for a while, just looked at her. The lump had returned to my throat and my eyes felt hot, as if they were about to tear up.
“There’s something I want you to do for me, Peggy. Just… just one more thing. Like… this past weekend.”
She closed her eyes and bowed her head a moment. “I thought we cleared all that up, Arnold. I thought we were through with that.”
“Just one more thing. Please. Then… I swear… no more.”
Her eyes rose slowly to mine and she said, “What do you want me to do, Arnold?”
She shot to her feet and stalked away from the bed the moment I said it and when she spun to face me, her eyes were narrowed and full of hatred.
“What… is… wrong with you, Arnold? What… made you this way? How, after all these years, could you even think of something like this?” She paced the room, fighting her anger; she was actually angry. “How could you dare to—asking me to—thinking that I would—”
“I’m sorry, Peggy, but it’s… just one time. I… need it.”
“You what?”
I began to cry so suddenly I surprised myself. “I… need it. Please. Just once.”
Her anger was gone as quickly as it had come and she sat on the bed and took my hand. “Arnold, I don’t know if I could… I mean, just thinking about it makes me—”
“You have to. Just once. Because… if you don’t… I’ll have to guh-go. Away.”
She sat there for the longest time, not looking at me, then stood and went to the door. When she spoke, she didn’t fa
ce me. “All right,” she whispered finally. “But a part of me will always hate you, Arnold. Always.”
A few hours later, I was in a part of town unfamiliar to me at a bar I’d never gone to before—my third since I’d left the apartment —staring at a man two stools down from me who wore a very expensive looking necktie.
No, I told myself, you won’t do that, you can’t. You’re not like him… a killer… you’ll handle this differently, with no killing…
The man was handsome, almost too handsome, but I didn’t have time to look around for a sexually frustrated Woody Allen type and, besides, he looked perfect. He was about my age, in better shape, and his clothes, jewelry and even his manner—although he seemed embarrassed and self conscious—smelled of a generous income. And best of all, he wore a wedding ring. He sat with his back to the bar, watching the others in the room, and hadn’t noticed me yet.
I cleared my throat loudly and caught the man’s attention and tried to remember Larry’s pleasant smile as I said, “Well… what brings you here?”
Biting into a messy chili dog, Larry said, “So, what’d you come up with?”
My hot dog lay untouched before me as I told him the amount.
He chewed, dabbed his lips, frowned, and shook his head. “Sorry. That’s not quite enough to begin with.”
“Buh-b-but-but it’s the best I can do.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. Hey, you’re not eating. The dogs’re great here, you know.”
“Look, I can get more, that’s not a problem, it’s just that—”
“Yeah, I know, but there’s this: I can’t wait around.”
“Another day. Just one more day.” I knew the chance of coming up with much more in another twenty-four hours was slim, but I had to try.
“But I’m supposed to be out of town. Remember? My answering machine?”
“So you call and leave a message on your machine. Tell Ju… “ The name caught in my throat. “… leave a message that you’ve been delayed, or you’ve decided to take another day, whatever.”
He thought about it a moment.
“Larry, that’s the best I can do. What else do you want me to do?”
He cocked a brow. “Tell you the truth, I don’t care what you do. All I care about is the money. Other than that, you can… go to the police and confess?” he chuckled. “Go to Mexico? Kill yourself? I just don’t care.”
I looked down at the hot dog and couldn’t have been more repulsed had it been a fresh glistening turd in a bowl of steaming piss. I was exhausted to the point of illness; after a sleepless night, I had spent the first half of the day rounding up the money. When I was finished with Larry—providing he agreed to another day—I had to rent some video recording equipment, something with which I was very unfamiliar, made even more difficult by the fact that I didn’t even know exactly what I needed. Derek, the man at the bar the night before, had been more than eager to get together with Peggy and would be coming to the apartment that evening, so I had to be ready for him; I just wasn’t sure how to be ready for him. Blackmail was new to me.
“Please,” I whispered, eyes closed. “One more day.”
He chomped on the chili dog for a while, then asked, smirking, “You going to do it?”
I looked at him. “Do what?”
“What I did?”
My teeth sounded like thunder when I ground them together. “None of your Goddamned business.”
He nodded, finished the dog and sucked his teeth between words as he said, “Okay. One more day. No more.”
That evening, Derek arrived a few minutes early, but I was ready.
Peggy had been cold since I’d gotten home and, as I’d hoped, she’d excused herself to do some shopping for a couple hours. While she was gone, I set up the camera in the closet and propped the door open just enough; I rigged it to a timer and, once it started, it would record for six hours. When Peggy got home, she was even colder, but I’d expected that. I consoled myself with the thought of it all over with; then I would explain the whole thing to her, tell her why I had to do it, beg her forgiveness. But that seemed so far away…
At the end of the evening, I would have to explain things to Derek and impress upon him the gravity of his situation. Peggy would most likely still be in bed and I would take Derek to my office at the opposite end of the apartment, where I had a loaded .38 which I would use to persuade him. I had no intention of shooting him, of course—I was determined to get through it all without any bloodshed—but I needed the extra leverage, just in case the possibility of his wife and three children seeing the videotape wasn’t enough to convince him.
Peggy was in the bedroom when he arrived. Waiting. With a great deal of dread, I’m sure.
I’d had a few drinks—several, actually—to make it all easier to handle. I had some dread of my own.
I offered Derek a drink, too, which he accepted. We sat in the living room for a while, talking. I followed Larry’s plan almost exactly. I told Derek to just talk with Peggy at first, just get to know her a little, get comfortable with her. When he’d finished his drink and refused another, I led him to the bedroom and let him in.
As I waited for them to get started so I could go into the bedroom for his clothes, my stomach burned and flames licked the back of my throat. I had some more to drink; it didn’t help, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Then I heard the first of it.
Peggy made a sound. It came from deep in her chest and frightened me at first because I thought he was hurting her. I went to the bedroom door and listened. It came again, louder this time. But it didn’t sound like pain. I opened the door carefully and looked in.
From the sound of her, I expected to see them writhing on the bed, but he wasn’t even inside her yet. Both bedside lamps were on. Derek was on his knees, straddling Peggy, his back straight, head tilted back, eyes closed; she was on her back, propped up on pillows, holding his cock in both fists, licking and sucking it as she moaned and murmured.
“Huge,” she said huskily. “It’s huge.”
It was. I stood in the doorway, my stomach twisting itself into knots, watching my wife give a blow job to a man with an enormous cock… and enjoying it. She never did it to me unless I asked, and then she did it with great reluctance and both eyes clenched shut. Now she uttered deep laughter, grinning like a child as she licked and sucked him, her eyes staring at his erection with wide amazement.
I wanted to throw up. To scream. To cry.
I remembered Larry’s words: One more day. No more… no more… no more…
I moved quietly into the room, picked up the heap of clothes on the floor and went back to the door as Peggy gasped, “Fuck my tits. Stick it between my tits and fuck them. Come on them.”
I froze. She never used that word. She never used that voice. And she never ever did anything but roll her eyes when I asked if I could slide my cock between her tits.
I stepped outside the room and dropped the clothes, but turned back and peered through the cracked door.
Peggy squeezed her breasts together as he moved above her. “God, your cock is so big,” she slurred, craning her head forward to watch it, “so… fucking… huge!”
It was huge, Peggy had told me of her friend years ago, her eyes brightening, he was huge.
When Derek came, it splattered her face and she grabbed his cock and stuffed it into her mouth as far as she could, slurping the fluid off of it, sliding her mouth up and down the length of it.
Peggy hated semen. Mine, anyway. She always grimaced when she had to touch it and could never bring herself to look at it.
Now she wiped it off her face and licked her hand, staring in awe at the enormous organ in front of her face. She squeezed his cock hard in her fist, looked up at him and, through clenched teeth, growled, “Stick it in me. Stuff me with it. Hurt my cunt!”
He moved down, lifted her legs high and plunged into her. Hard.
She cried out, “Yeah! Oh! Yes! Fuck! Me! Fuck! Me!”
The woman on my bed was not my wife. She was a stranger. I had never known her… never met her.
Time is wasting, I thought, backing away from the door and pulling it closed. I bent down to retrieve Derek’s clothes so I could take out his wallet, find his driver’s license and get his home address—anything that might help him see things my way—when the room tilted and spun around me, throwing me to the floor. My vision blurred. My throat clenched for a moment.
The sounds in the bedroom grew louder; Peggy became more ecstatic, screaming as she’d never screamed for me, not even in our most passionate moments.
I got on my knees, fished for Derek’s wallet, but my hands were numb, my fingers stiff and my vision was shattered. I struggled to my feet again, leaned against the wall and eased the bedroom door back open.
Peggy was on her hands and knees now, her head pressed into a pillow as Derek slammed into her from behind. He was grunting. She was screaming incoherently.
I had to get away from the sound, from them. I staggered quickly through the apartment to my office at the other end, shut the door and fell into my chair. I realized then that I was crying. Sobbing. And I could hear them still. I could hear the thump-thump-thump-thump of the bed and Peggy’s muffled cries. With my head in my hands, I blubbered as images flashed through my mind and remembered words were whispered into my ears: our first few times together… so passionate and loving; later—and not much later—when the frequency of our lovemaking dropped; all the reassurances she gave me… all the excuses; all the times she brought him up, all the things she said about him… about that guy… I couldn’t even remember his fucking name… and the many times she laughed sweetly and kissed me when I asked her if she missed him because, as she’d told me so many times, he had such a huge cock…
You’re just tired, I thought as I opened my top desk drawer. You just need sleep, I thought as I reached into the drawer. You’ve just had too much to drink, I thought as I brought something cold and heavy from the drawer. Don’t take any of this too seriously and just do what you have to do…
I flinched when I saw the gun in my hand. I wasn’t aware I’d been reaching for it.
