Twisted City

by Jason Starr

  I stared at her, then said, “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It’ll save you a lot of trouble,” she said, “and you won’t go to jail.”

  “Why would I go to jail?” I said. “It was an accident—you saw the whole thing, the way he came in here like a maniac. I’ll just tell the cops the truth.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” she said. “You went crazy and killed him.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “It was self-defense. He tried to stab me in the face. If I let him go he would’ve gone for the switchblade again.”

  “You know how hard you rammed his head into that door?” she said. “Then all those times you kicked him, probably busting his ribs? That doesn’t sound like self-defense to me.”

  “But you’ll be here,” I said. “You can tell them what really happened, how he was still coming after me, how . . .” I stopped myself, knowing it was pointless. I couldn’t count on her to back up my story, especially when I wasn’t even sure about the story myself.

  “Trust me, it’ll be a lot easier if I say I did it,” she said. “Ricky used to beat on me all the time—he even busted my jaw once. I’ve called the cops on him tons of times—they know all about us. I’ll say I snapped—I couldn’t take it anymore. He came after me and I just grabbed him and went crazy on him.”

  I stared at the body—on its side, facing away from me. I knew the logical thing to do was call the police, but I wasn’t thinking logically. I was sweating and shaking and I couldn’t concentrate. Like a hit-and-run driver, I just wanted to get away.

  Don’t be an idiot, I thought. Call the cops.

  I input the 9 in 911 when Sue said, “Stop,” in a way that told me that she meant it. I stopped dialing.

  “Call the cops, I’ll lie my ass off,” she said. “I’ll tell them I picked you up in the park and brought you back here. We were gonna fuck, but you didn’t have enough money, so you had to go to the bank. See, it all fits. Then, when you came back here, Ricky walked in on us. You two started fighting; then you flipped out and killed him.”

  “They won’t believe you,” I said.

  “Bullshit they won’t,” she said. “Besides, it’s against the law to go to hookers. You want that getting out?”

  I looked at the cell phone, then at the door, then back toward Sue.

  “I’m calling the cops,” I said, “and I don’t care what you tell them.”

  “If you call the cops you’re going to jail,” she said, “but do whatever you want.”

  I dialed the first 1.

  “I’ll say you were fucking me,” she said. “I’ll swear my ass up and down till they believe it. Go ahead—make the call. I dare you.”

  I waited a few seconds, my thumb on the 1 button, thinking that the police could easily believe Sue’s story over mine.

  I pressed end and stood there for a while, trying to think it through some more, but my thoughts were jumbled.

  “A thousand’s nuts,” I finally said.

  “That’s the price.”

  “Five hundred.”

  “A thousand.”

  I shook my head, glancing at the body briefly and feeling nauseous.

  “What if somebody heard something?” I said. “Your neighbors. What if somebody heard us fighting, or heard my voice—”

  “People in this building never hear anything,” Sue said.

  “But why should I trust you?” I said. “How do I know you’ll really tell the cops you did it?”

  “Because I want my money, that’s why.”

  “But how do I know you’ll keep your story straight?”

  “I can’t change my story,” she said. “Once I tell the cops I did it, that’s it.”

  I hesitated again. Everything was blurry and my hand holding the cell phone was sweating. Then a voice inside me screamed, Leave! and I said, “Fine,” and headed toward the door.

  “Meet me with the money tomorrow night at seven,” Sue said. “Starbucks on Astor. You’re not there, I’m turning you in. I’m not fucking around.”

  I stepped by her and around the body and left the apartment.

  The relief of being back outside, breathing in the cool, Manhattan air, was even greater than before. I walked up the block as fast as I could, at a pace equal to jogging. At the intersection of Avenue A and Seventh Street, there was a Don’t Walk sign; rather than waiting for it to change, I walked alongside the traffic, then jaywalked diagonally across A, telling myself that I had to keep moving no matter what.

  At Tenth Street, I cut over a couple of blocks to Second Avenue and headed uptown. People were giving me funny looks, and I realized that, in addition to my lower lip, which was still bleeding, my shirt was torn below the shoulder and some blood was seeping through. A few minutes later, as I continued up Second, I feared that I’d made a huge mistake. Ricky wasn’t much taller than Sue, but he was stronger and had to weigh at least fifty pounds more than her; the police would never believe that she’d overpowered him.

  In the crosswalk of Second and Fourteenth, I stopped, ready to turn back, but I decided it was too late. Sue had probably called the police already. They could be at her apartment right now, questioning her. She wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure; she’d break down and tell them that I’d killed Ricky. I’d try to explain that I’d acted in self-defense, but after leaving the apartment that would be even harder to prove.

  I leaned against a lamppost to steady myself, feeling helpless and stupid, when I had an epiphany.

  Maybe it didn’t happen.

  I hadn’t checked for Ricky’s pulse or heartbeat. He’d looked dead, but it could have all been staged. I knew I’d banged his head pretty hard, but was it hard enough to kill him? They could all have been working together—Sue, Ricky, and Eddie Lomack, the drunk from the bar. Maybe this was how they operated—pick a guy’s wallet, then see how far they could take it. If they could get the guy to think he killed somebody, they’d soak him for even more.

  As I continued walking up Second Avenue, I became even more convinced that the whole thing was a scam. I felt like a real sucker and I decided I’d never tell anyone what had happened.

  At the next corner, I stopped walking and took out my wallet. The picture of Barbara was still there, tucked in the window behind my driver’s license. I slid it out and stared at it for a while, then replaced it behind the license and hailed a cab to midtown.

  5

  WHEN I ARRIVED at work, I went right to the bathroom and washed up at the sink. My face looked worse than I’d thought. My lower lip was swollen to about twice the size of the upper, and there was a small cut in it, making me resemble a boxer during a post-fight interview. The cut on my upper arm was superficial, though, barely piercing my skin. I cleaned up the best I could, then headed toward my office. Along the way I passed Amy Shumsky, who worked in Payroll, and Jenny Shaw, the personnel director. They asked me what happened, and I told them that I’d fallen but that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. I purposely kept walking so they couldn’t ask me any more questions, and then I turned along the corridor leading to the editorial department.

  I sat at my desk and got right to work on my story. I always seemed to work best under deadline, and I started writing as fast as my fingers could press the keys. After everything that had happened at Sue’s apartment, I was very pissed off, and it came out in my writing. I blasted Byron Technologies’ management, calling them “deceitful,” and characterizing their accounting practices as “Enronesque.” In reality, the company’s management had been up-front with investors, and a minor accounting error regarding the reporting of last quarter’s pro forma earnings had been quickly and publicly corrected. But I was on a roll, and the negative ideas kept flowing. I used a portion of a quote—taken out of context—from Kevin DuBois, an analyst who covered Byron’s stock. DuBois had told me that “I wouldn’t be surprised if the company has to raise cash later in the year, perhaps with a secondary offering, but they have a great product and outstanding mana
gement and I’m still quite bullish on the future.” In my story, I wrote a paragraph, stating that Byron Technologies had “an alarming cash-burn rate” that could lead to bankruptcy by year’s end, and I’d ended the paragraph with DuBois stating, “The company has to raise cash.”

  In about fifteen minutes, I’d finished a rough draft of the article; then I went back through it, rearranging sentences, changing words, correcting typos, inserting quips. As I was working, I saw Angie enter my office in my peripheral vision. She waited for me to pause from typing, then said, “Where’ve you been?”

  “The bank,” I said.

  “All day?”

  “I had some other errands to run too.”

  “I thought you had to work on your story.”

  “I do.”

  I stayed facing the computer monitor, partly because I wanted to finish my story and partly because I didn’t want Angie to see my fat lip.

  “Hey, what’s that?” she said.

  She came up alongside me to my right and reached onto my desk for a copy of People with Tom Cruise on the cover. As she turned pages of the magazine, it was hard to keep facing away from her without raising suspicion. I noticed she was wearing the same perfume she always wore, the one that I’d never liked on other women, but that always smelled great on her.

  “I didn’t see this issue yet,” she said. “Mind if I borrow it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks . . . God, what happened to you?”

  She had turned to look at my face.

  “I tripped,” I said.

  “Tripped?” she said. “Where?”

  “Outside the bank.”

  “How?”

  “Shoelace. It was pretty embarrassing. I fell right on my face on the sidewalk. I felt like a total idiot.”

  “You should sue.”

  The word sue made me cringe.

  Angie must’ve noticed, because she said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Your shirt’s ripped.”

  I looked down at the tear in my shirt, as if noticing it for the first time.

  “Huh,” I said, acting dumbfounded. “I guess it must’ve ripped when I fell.”

  Angie was squinting at my shirt, looking unconvinced.

  “It’s nothing—really,” I said.

  Now she was staring at my face again.

  “You look like you were in a fight,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

  “You want me to get you some ice or something?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks. I just have to finish this story.”

  “No problem,” she said. “Stop by later and say hi.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I returned to work on the article and finished it at a few minutes after two o’clock. After proofreading it quickly on the monitor, I sent the file to Peter Lyons. He’d fuck it up with Britishisms, then send it back to me; then I’d forward it to Jeff for some final idiotic input before it went to Copyediting.

  Relieved to get my article out of the way, I ordered in a smoked turkey on rye for lunch, and then I spent most of the rest of the afternoon on the phone, setting up interviews for my next story. At around four-thirty, I went down the corridor to Angie’s office. She was laughing, sitting across from Mike O’Hara, a recent college grad, who worked in the marketing department.

  “How’s it going?” I said.

  They both gave me looks, as if I were intruding. Then Mike said, “Dude, what happened to your face?”

  “Fell,” I said. “It’s no big deal. I guess I’ll come by later.”

  “That’s okay, dude,” Mike said. “I gotta take off anyway. I’ll call you tonight, Ang, okay?”

  “Okay,” Angie said.

  Mike put his hand on Angie’s shoulder and she put hers over it for a second or two, and then he left the office.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Angie said, blushing.

  “So what’s the deal with you guys? Are you a couple now or what?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “No reason. You know me—I just like to get the latest dish.”

  “We went out a couple of nights ago,” she said.

  “Really?” I said, surprised by how jealous I felt.

  “I had a pretty good time,” she said smugly. “We went to this little Italian place in the Village; then we went to a bar and had a few drinks. It was fun.”

  “Isn’t he a little young for you?”

  “He’s twenty-two.”

  “Exactly. You’re what, four years older than him?”

  “Jesus, who’re you, my father?”

  I could tell she was enjoying making me jealous.

  “Sorry,” I said. “He seems like a nice guy. You two make a great couple.”

  “I don’t know if I’d consider us a couple.”

  “Whatever you want to call it.”

  I hung out with Angie for a while, talking about office minutiae—Mitchell in Accounting’s ugly shirts, rumors about looming staff cuts, speculation about who kept leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen—but there was tension between us and I felt awkward. Eventually I made an excuse and left.

  Walking home rather than taking the subway, I decided that tonight I was going to really break up with Rebecca. I belonged in a normal relationship with someone like Angie, and as soon as I dumped Rebecca I could get my life back on track.

  Passing the Time Warner buildings at Columbus Circle, I rehearsed possible breakup lines. I could use the standard, “It’s not you, it’s me,” or “I think we should start seeing other people.” Or, taking the self-deprecating angle, I could say, “I’m not good enough for you—you deserve someone better.” But I knew those stock lines wouldn’t work with Rebecca. She’d think I wasn’t serious, and then she’d come on to me, and before I knew it, I’d be back in bed with her.

  Maybe I didn’t have to say anything—just give her the silent treatment. Or maybe I should take the opposite tactic—barge into the apartment like a total psycho, screaming, “Pack your things and get the fuck out, you crazy bitch!” Maybe to get through to a psycho, you had to become psycho.

  I shuddered, remembering bashing Ricky’s head into the steel door.

  Continuing up Broadway, I managed to forget about Ricky but was suddenly bombarded by memories of Barbara on practically every block. I remembered reading magazines at Barnes & Noble, eating shrimp dumplings at Ollie’s, arguing about the ending of some movie while having spicy tuna rolls at Dan.

  Then I veered over to Columbus, passing Banana Republic.

  “So do I look like a rock star?”

  I was outside the dressing room, modeling a red leather jacket and a pair of black jeans.

  “You look gay,” Barbara said.

  “Gay, rock star, what’s the difference?” I said.

  Looking into the mirror, I squinted, furrowing my eyebrows, trying to look hip.

  “Eh, I guess you’re right,” I said. “Guess I’ll just buy the jeans and those two sweaters. You think I should just get the blue one, or the gray and the blue?”

  “I’m moving in with Jay,” she said.

  I turned around toward her, half smiling, hoping she was joking. “Yeah, right.”

  “I wanted to tell you before; I was just waiting for the right time.”

  “And this is the right time?”

  “See? I knew you’d get like this.”

  “Jay’s such a dick.”

  “I love him.”

  “You don’t love him.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Come on, Barb, you can do so much better than that loser. I mean, the guy’s so fuckin’ pompous. And he puts you down all the time, makes all those passive-aggressive comments. . . .”

  “I shouldn’t’ve told you.”

  “I’m not letting you do this.”

  “You don’t own me.”

  On the corner of Columbu
s and Seventieth, I bumped into an old woman pushing a wagon filled with groceries.

  “Watch it,” she said, but I kept walking.

  When I arrived at my apartment building I tried to get psyched again for breaking up with Rebecca, but I’d lost my edge. I didn’t think I could pull off the psycho act, so I decided I’d be Mr. Sensitive Guy instead. Maybe if she saw how much pain she was causing me, and if I even shed a few tears, she would get the point.

  In the hallway outside my apartment I heard rap music blasting and I smelled pot, so I figured Rebecca was having a party. She often had parties—without bothering to tell me in advance, of course—inviting ten or so friends over to the apartment to eat, smoke, drink, and do drugs, and they wouldn’t leave until the middle of the night, or sometimes the next day. It wasn’t unusual for me to encounter a few bodies sprawled on the couch or on the living room floor as I was leaving for work in the morning.

  I went into the apartment, surprised to see no one around. Maybe the party hadn’t started yet.

  I turned down the pulsing music.

  “What up, yo!” Rebecca called from the kitchen.

  I left the foyer and saw Rebecca by the stove, stirring a pot of spaghetti. She looked incredible, almost elegant, in a strapless black dress, high heels, her hair up, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t let anything sway me.

  “I thought you’d be home later,” she said. “I wanted to have everything ready. What happened to your face?”

  “Tripped,” I said, sick of hearing myself say it.

  “Shut up! Where?”

  “Outside a bank.”

  “What bank?”

  “Chase.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “You wanna put frozen peas on it?”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “You sure?”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I jutted my chin toward the stove.

  “Oh, just cooking you up some dinner,” she said. “Why don’t you go chill, change into the outfit I laid out for you—that sexy Johnny Blaze shirt I bought you and those tight jeans that show off your package?”

  I stood there for several seconds, unable to come up with the words I wanted to say, and then I continued down the hallway.