The Killing Lessons

by Saul Black

  ‘This has nothing to do with him.’

  ‘OK, OK, but like I said—’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Deerholt said.

  It was Will Fraser. Looking like he didn’t know what the hell he was doing there.

  Deerholt didn’t ask him to sit down. Instead, the captain got to his feet.

  ‘It’s better for you if there’s someone here for this,’ he said to Valerie. ‘I figured Will would be your first choice, but if there’s someone else you’d rather have, now’s the time to say so.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Will said.

  Valerie wanted to get to her feet, but it was as if there was an unseen mass pressing her down into the chair.

  ‘Someone else?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jesus, Val, I’m sorry about this, but my hands are tied. I need to ask you if you’re using.’

  They were police. Despite the pause of apparent incomprehension between Valerie and Will, there was only one thing ‘using’ meant.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Valerie said.

  ‘Sir—’ Will began.

  ‘Yes or no, Val.’

  ‘No. Of course not. This is insane.’

  ‘Would you mind emptying your pockets and your purse?’

  ‘Sir, this is fucking idiotic,’ Valerie said. A tremulous part of her was actually relieved: if this was what it was hanging on, she was in the clear.

  ‘I know it’s fucking idiotic,’ Deerholt said. ‘When I get murdered one of these days I want you on the case, first choice. But there are protocols. Let’s just do this and get it out of the way. I know it’s a formality.’

  With a contempt she wasn’t faking, Valerie stood up and tipped the contents of her purse onto Deerholt’s desk.

  And saw the baggie straight away.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘What the fuck are you trying to do?’ Paulie said. He was holding the shotgun.

  Claudia had stopped kicking and shouting as soon as she’d seen him come down the stairs.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I’m bored.’

  He just gawped at her. Then he said: ‘Bored?’

  ‘Yes. Bored. It’s not much fun down here with no one to talk to.’

  His mouth was open. His face had lost its logic. ‘Are you… Are you fucking insane?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

  He just stood there, circuits jammed.

  Her body was busy with tingling emptiness. Her legs wanted to buckle. She thought she was going to vomit.

  ‘You don’t…’ he began – then faltered. Tried to recalibrate. She could see how shocked he was by this new reality. She thought: He’s not the one in charge. It’s the guy upstairs. The thought was a frail endorsement of what she was doing. It didn’t stop her shaking. She shoved her hands into her jeans pockets to conceal it. An absurd gesture of nonchalance. A deeply wrong gesture against the fear. Her own body was appalled by the dissonance. She almost took them straight out again.

  ‘You don’t get it,’ Paulie said. Then he laughed. The laughter had, she thought, uncertainty in it.

  ‘Of course I get it,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? It’s not as if I think I’m here to talk about Proust.’

  ‘Talk about what? What the fuck is Proost?’

  ‘Not “what”. “Who”. Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust. French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu. Sometimes translated as In Search of Lost Time, sometimes as Remembrance of Things Past. Can you read?’

  Again she watched him stall, try to unpick what was happening, try to get back to the world he knew. He was shaking his head – not in answer to her question, but in denial or disbelief. His impulse to laugh kept half-forming on his mouth – then failing.

  Eventually he said: ‘Yeah I can read. I can fucking read.’

  She didn’t understand the emphasis.

  ‘How’s your friend?’ she said. ‘Still got the flu?’

  His look of incredulity was replaced by a slight frown. She had to be careful.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ he said.

  ‘Well…’ she said. ‘I assume he’s the one calling the shots. I’d like to know how long I’ve got.’

  ‘He don’t… It don’t make no difference. You’re gonna…’ He shook his head again. With irritation this time. She was going the wrong way. (But he hadn’t contradicted her about who called the shots.) ‘You must be fucking crazy,’ he said. ‘You must be fucking stupid.’

  ‘I think you know I’m not stupid,’ she said. ‘Plus I know something you don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. But don’t rush me. It’s embarrassing.’

  Better. Better. The novelty of being talked to in this way was infiltrating him, however slightly. He looked around the room. Checking, vaguely, to make sure the rest of reality hadn’t gone similarly mad.

  ‘You don’t know nothing,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a double negative. It means the opposite of what you think it means.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘What you mean is that I know nothing – right?’

  He stared at her.

  ‘But if I don’t know nothing, that means I know something. Do you see? It’s a common mistake.’

  The extraordinary thing was that she could see him, awkwardly, getting it, in spite of himself, double… negative… a bud of understanding all but visibly opening in his brain. The way the truth did that. No matter what. The truth was the truth. It hurt her and made the fear surge again, because it was leftover currency from the world she’d lost. She thought of the woman in the video. She almost reverted, almost dropped to her knees and screamed please please please don’t do this to me please please please. She lost her balance, slightly, felt one foot in danger of coming off the floor. Forced herself to regain it. The woman’s face with all its dignity gone. Their dense concentration. His hands holding the camera, full of excitement. It brought the reality of what she was going to have to do and she thought again: I can’t. I can’t do that. Tears tightened her throat. She swallowed them. To do what she had to do she had to let herself go insane. She had to leave herself behind. She had to become someone else.

  ‘You’re name’s Paulie,’ she said. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘You think I’m gonna make friends with you, cunt?’ he said.

  The word nicked her. With the reality of that part of her body. With the reality of what would happen to it.

  Invert it. Invert everything. Insanity is the only way out.

  ‘You think the word “cunt” bothers me?’ she said.

  It threw him. Again. He was afraid and fascinated. He opened his mouth to say something, but there was nothing there. She had to be careful. Careful and insane.

  ‘Who are you, the fucking Queen of England?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. Pause. A genuine memory. ‘But I’ve met her.’

  ‘Get the fuck.’

  ‘It’s true. In 2002, when I was fourteen. There was a parade in Cornwall for her Golden Jubilee.’ She saw him not understanding. ‘“Golden Jubilee”,’ she said, ‘is a celebration for when a king or queen has been on the throne for fifty years. It’s like wedding anniversaries. You know, twenty-five years is silver, fifty years is gold, sixty years is diamond. Anyway, I was on holiday in Cornwall with my mum and dad, and the Queen did a walkabout in the street, with bodyguards and whatnot. I was face to face with her for a few seconds. She said: “Hello, dear.”’

  ‘Get the fuck,’ Paulie repeated. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told her I liked her hat.’

  Paulie laughed.

  ‘Which was a lie,’ Claudia said. ‘The Queen’s got shocking taste in hats. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say.’

  It caught up with him that he was laughing. He stopped. There was fear and mistrust ready to rush back in
when he caught himself. She had to watch that. Don’t give him time to catch himself.

  ‘Anyway, your name is Paulie, obviously,’ she said. ‘I’m Claudia, not that I imagine you’re remotely interested. It’s just that if I’m going to be murdered I’d like to know by whom. Do you have a cigarette, by the way?’

  ‘Why the fuck would I give you a cigarette?’ he said.

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘You’re something. I’ll give you that.’

  ‘I quit smoking, actually, but if I’m going to die, what does it matter? Come on, don’t be an ass. Give me a cigarette. What difference could it possibly make to you?’

  He thought about it for a long time. She could see him trying to decide whether it would decrease him. He laughed, once, through his nose. His face was thin. The long coppery hair and medieval beard. He could play the lousy traitor in Robin Hood’s band. He reached into his right combat jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of Marlboro reds. He set the shotgun down on one of the cardboard boxes.

  He’s going to come towards you and hand you the cigarette through the links and you’re going to take it and you’re not going to shake or flinch. Because you’re insane. Because you’re calm and insane. Because you’re exactly what you need to be.

  He came towards her, poked the filter end through the links. His jacket smelled of damp canvas. She thought soldiers must be wearily contemptuous of civilians wearing such gear. She felt a momentary kinship with soldiers. For their passage into the extreme. For their nearness to death. For having to live with the ways it changed them.

  ‘Obviously I don’t have a light,’ she said.

  Keep still. Keep still.

  She took the cigarette, slotted it between her lips. For a split second she was getting a light from a stranger at a bus stop or in a nightclub booth.

  Until she actually got the light. Until she had to lean close enough so that the cigarette reached the lighter’s flame, her face almost touching the metal links of the grille. The Zippo’s reek of fuel and the innocent magic of conjured fire was familiar, yes (in spite of herself the mix of odours brought the cramped tents of music festivals, socks, tobacco, sweat, sex) but the nearness of his face and dirty-fingernailed hands and the greasy smell of his skin almost wrecked her. Her right hand guided the cigarette but her left was out of its pocket too, fist clenched. The intimacy of closeness to him was an obscene dream. It took everything she had to keep her movements calm, slow, normal.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, stepping back from the grille. Just one pace. The smoking stance: left hand in right armpit, right arm bent at the elbow, wrist slightly limp, holding the cigarette. Millions of people all over the world standing in just that way on their doorsteps, mulling over their lives. It was a tiny help, gave her body something familiar to hold onto.

  He watched her. Then she saw him catching himself again. The shotgun. His lapse. He took three paces back quicker than her one, picked it up from the box.

  Careful. Careful. So easy for him to tip into hating her for fucking with him. Don’t give him time to think.

  ‘How many times have you done this?’ she said.

  ‘You’re not fooling me,’ he said. Then added: ‘Cunt.’ She saw the word not coming out right for him.

  ‘Well don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but I’m curious.’

  ‘Enough times to know how to do it.’

  ‘Always the two of you?’

  ‘I’m done talking.’

  ‘Oh come on, don’t be like that.’

  ‘You think you’re some hot shit?’ He laughed. Not entirely forced, she thought. She was losing him. ‘You think you’re any different?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what I know that you don’t?’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think you know. You don’t know shit.’

  ‘OK, but it’s pretty extraordinary.’

  He was breathing through his nostrils, lips clamped.

  She forced herself to take another drag of the cigarette. The first in six months, it was making her dizzy. The body just carried on reporting its sensations, regardless of your situation. The body didn’t have any choice. The body of the woman in the video. Oh God. I can’t. I can’t.

  Insanity was a trick of concentration, or rather anti-concentration, like those Magic Eye pictures you had to simultaneously focus on and blur to see the image they concealed. She mustn’t give herself time to think, either.

  ‘Why don’t you show me the videos?’ she said. ‘Show me the rest of them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to see the rest of the videos. The other women.’

  She had him again. There had been nothing new in his life for a long time. His microclimate suffocated him, his life was a handful of repetitions. He was susceptible.

  He looked at her again for a long time. It made her afraid to finish the cigarette. Finishing it would break what was in the room.

  ‘You’re full of shit,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to see them.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You freaked out.’

  ‘I know I did, but it’s complicated.’

  ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I can’t put it any other way. I told you: it’s embarrassing.’

  ‘You’re full of shit,’ he repeated.

  The cigarette was almost done.

  ‘Show me the videos,’ she said, very calmly. ‘You’ll find something out. Something you never knew before.’

  He shook his head, slowly, not quite looking at her. He was laughing to himself but it wasn’t genuine. He turned and walked to the foot of the stairs. With his back to her, he said, ‘You’re one dumb crazy cunt. Maybe the dumbest, craziest cunt I ever saw.’

  But when she said, ‘Hey,’ he stopped, three steps up.

  Her insanity balanced. Almost tipped her back into herself. She knew what she was going to say. She knew it could destroy her.

  ‘What?’ he said, with exaggerated impatience.

  The cigarette was down to the filter’s cork. Her head was heavy with blood.

  ‘He doesn’t need to know about it,’ she said.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Valerie sat in the Taurus parked opposite the station lot’s exit on Vallejo Street, smoking. Which was what she’d been doing for the last two hours. The Conways’ attorneys were a small local firm in Fresno – closed for the holidays. Valerie had left messages on the cell phones of each of the three partners, so far with zero response. Teresa Conway had been virtually useless, too, when the woman had eventually answered her landline. She’d sounded half asleep, or stoned, certainly not all there. Lloyd didn’t leave any money to Leon in his will. It had all gone to Teresa. A lot of her talk had been about God was never supposed to give you more than you could bear, but she couldn’t bear it. Did Lloyd give Leon money when he sold the company? She didn’t know. Lloyd handled the finances. Lloyd had taken care of her. Lloyd had taken care of everyone except himself. Lloyd had loved that boy. They both had.

  Lloyd had been too good for this world, but the world was no good without him.

  It was a quarter after seven, dark, cold. Skirls of wind lifted scraps of litter, looped and arabesqued them, dropped them. The after-work traffic had thinned. A few yards away to Valerie’s left two uniforms were on the sidewalk chatting with the owner of the Chef Bowl Inc. Chinese cash & carry. Every pedestrian who passed her car was talking or texting on a cell phone. She caught snippets of their lives:

  ‘… yeah but Stevie says that’s total ass-crap…’

  ‘… only if we can get the suede for the same price…’

  ‘… she says she’s a vegetarian but I know for a fact she ate lamb at Chrissie’s…’

  ‘… that’s what I’m saying. I said to him: that’s what I’m saying…’

  All the details that hung together in a secure mass until crime showed up. Break-in. Assault. Rape. Murder. Then the mass exploded. Cops entered a stranger’s life in the afterma
th of wreckage. All the things taken for granted now blown apart, with the victim stranded at the centre like a kid in a bomb crater. You started as a cop and at first it was a thrill. Then a learning curve. Then, if you were unlucky, an obsession. She knew police – homicide police – who’d passed through that into what she thought of as the Mature Stage: the calm, the efficiency, the ability to do the work without the work getting under your psychic skin, the manageable addiction to the drug. She’d always assumed she was headed there. Maybe the next case. Or the one after that.

  But here she was. Still nowhere near it.

  She, Deerholt and Will had just stood there staring at the baggie (which Deerholt’s eventual tip-of-the-tongue-taste revealed to be cocaine) in absurd silence. Valerie had found her purse’s minimal contents embarrassing: cigarettes, disposable lighter, lipstick, scrunchies, phone, gum, keys, a Milky Way that had been in there for God knows how long. It was as if the items themselves were appalled at the little bag of white powder that had been keeping them company in the dark.

  Then Will had said: ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Do you seriously think—’ Valerie had begun, but Deerholt had raised his hand to cut her off.

  ‘No, I don’t seriously think that if you were using you’d be dumb enough to be carrying it around in your purse.’

  ‘This is horseshit,’ Will said.

  ‘York put it there,’ Valerie said.

  ‘Val—’

  ‘Maybe at Leon’s apartment. I put my purse down when we did the search. I want a drug test right now.’ Which, given the booze most likely still in her bloodstream, she regretted saying as soon as she’d said it.

  ‘OK,’ Deerholt had said, after the test – clear for coke, but blood alcohol way over the limit – after another meeting with Carla York, after summoning Valerie back to his office, ‘this is what’s going to happen. As far as York knows you’re on suspension. She’s going to go over my head if I don’t do something, and if she does that, you’re fucked.’

  ‘This is insane,’ Valerie had said, quietly. ‘You know this is insane.’

  ‘Let me finish. As far as York knows you’re on suspension. As far as the paperwork goes, you’re on sick leave. Make an appointment to see your doctor. Stay away from the shop. Fraser’ll keep you in the loop.’