"That fat fuck's a decoy!" said Zeno. "Bet you never guessed you were fucking with a bona fide don in la famiglia, huh?"
Jean-Claude snapped his eyes shut and shook his head to try to clear it. When he opened his eyes again, he could see what Zeno was holding.
"So anyway," said Zeno. "Remember that story I told you about the guy who lost his balls?"
A fillet knife. He was holding a fillet knife.
"I forgot to mention," said Zeno, bending over Jean-Claude with the knife in his hand. "It ain't happened yet."
*****
Home Invasion
Listlessly, Bertram Delinsky turned a page of the newspaper and continued reading the sports section. The gray sheets crackled as he dragged them across his lap and straightened them, as he lifted them higher to catch the light from the lamp a little better. He shifted on the Naugahyde upholstery of his recliner, and that crackled, too.
Since Bert wasn't much of a sports fan, the articles and box scores didn't hold much attraction for him. In fact, he didn't retain much of the information slipping past his eyes; he was reading the sports in the same way that he had read all the other sections of the paper--just halfheartedly skimming through the print without paying much attention to it. The words flickered past like cars on a freeway, holding no more meaning than if they had been shapeless blotches of ink.
The newspaper had blurred and faded because Bert's mind was on other things. He was preoccupied, distressed about the current shape of his life. On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, he had made a terrible mistake: Bert had uncorked the bottle which held his fears and insecurities. At first, he had opened that bottle just a bit, just so he could take a quick peek. As we all know, however, the Anxiety Bottle can never be opened just a bit; once it's breached, the cork flies out like a ballistic missile, and the contents spew all over the damn place.
By now, Bert was quite upset, and his brain was flooded with the gremlin goo which he should have left sealed tightly in its container. His worries were sprayed everywhere, like graffiti on the inside of his cranium, and he couldn't seem to think about anything pleasant.
Tomorrow, he would be thirty-five years old. Thirty-five years of life, and what did he have to show for it? Not a whole lot. He still had the same job he'd had ten years ago--selling furniture for a local outlet store. Sure, his title had changed, from "Salesperson" to "Manager," but he was still doing the same work, trying to pawn off sofa-beds and ottomans on unsuspecting newlyweds at ridiculously inflated prices. He wasn't even making enough money to render his job worthwhile; twenty-three thousand dollars a year, plus the occasional bonus, didn't exactly put him in clover. Bertram had a small house on the edge of the suburbs, and he drove a car which was only two years old; he was still paying the mortgage on the house, though, and the car was always giving him trouble. He had a television and a microwave, and something of a coin collection, but none of the coins was really very valuable, and he was considering selling them.
As he thought about it, Bert realized that he'd accomplished very little in his life so far. He'd never been hungry for success, and Lady Luck had never blessed him with the French kiss of Unexpected Prosperity. He'd never been married, and he had no children; though he'd dated a handful of women, he'd always managed to louse up the relationships one way or another. Though he met many casual acquaintances through the furniture store, he didn't have any close friends, either.
All washed up; that was how Bert saw himself at this particular moment. He was thirty-four years old, almost thirty-five, practically forty, and he hadn't so much as dotted an "I" or crossed a "T" in the great story of humanity. In a blink of God's eye, he would be an old man, and then he would die; he feared that he would die without friends or love or wealth, without an undue ripple or even a stir in the curtains of the universe.
Lonely, disappointed, crestfallen, apprehensive, he read the sports section of the newspaper in the living room of his claustrophobic house. He probably shouldn't have been so unsettled, because he was actually much better off than the majority of people on the planet; fear and dissatisfaction are the roots of human nature, however, and Bertram Delinsky was most certainly well-endowed with both qualities. The incipient birthday only served to amplify these annoying traits, strengthen them and thrust them through the mental screens which usually filtered them out.
Bert, who was now thirty-four years, three-hundred and sixty-four days, twenty-one hours, and seventeen minutes old, tossed his paper onto the blue shag carpeting and got out of his recliner.
The doorbell was ringing.
Puzzled, but glad for the distraction, Bert traveled the four yards from his chair to the front door. Since he rarely had visitors, and wasn't expecting any that night, he figured that the person on his doorstep was probably a twelve-year-old practical joker. He'd been through the drill before: a kid would ring the doorbell, then giggle off into the darkness before Bert could catch a glimpse of him.
When Bert squinted into the peephole of his door, however, he noticed that his visitor hadn't dashed away into the night. He wasn't twelve years old, either. The visitor was definitely an adult, and appeared to be not much younger than Bertram Delinsky himself.
The guy had short black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a red and white plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he looked fairly muscular. Quickly deciding that he wasn't a door-to-door salesman or a Mormon making the rounds, Bert concluded that the guy probably wanted to use his phone; his car had probably broken down somewhere nearby, and he wanted to call for a tow truck. Bert had been through this drill before, as well.
"Hello?" called Bert through the door, watching the visitor through the fish-eyed lens of the peephole. "Can I help you?"
"I sure hope so," grinned the guy, looking friendly enough. "You Bert Delisky?"
"Yes," answered Bert. "Who are you?"
"Buddy," replied Buddy with a nod. "Geez, I've been lookin' all over for you. I got a little turned around in Wilmar, and ended up lost. Couldn't find this goddamn street, Bert."
"That's too bad," responded Bertram, taken aback by the visitor's tone of familiarity. Though Bert had no idea whom the stranger could be, the guy apparently knew Bert, or at least pretended that he did. "What did you say your name was again?"he asked through the door, searching his memory for a clue to the guy's identity.
"Buddy!" crowed the man, as if he were Bert's closest friend and Bert was silly not to recognize him. "I'm Buddy! You know!"
"Uh, not really," Bert frowned. "I hate to say this, but I really don't remember you. Where do you know me from?" He started to wonder if the guy was perhaps a former customer of his; it was possible, since Bert dealt with so many people at the store, and couldn't hope to remember the face and name of every single one.
"Didn't my wife ever tell you about me?" smiled Buddy.
"Uh...I'm not sure. Who's your wife?"
"Aw, c'mon, Bert!" goaded Buddy, wagging his head. "Debby! I'm talkin' about Debby!"
Bert rifled through his memory as if it was a drawer full of socks, but he couldn't think of a single woman that he knew who was named Debby. "What did you say your last name was?" he asked, though Buddy hadn't revealed his surname to begin with.
"Weems!" declared the guy with playful annoyance. "Bert, don't tell me you don't know Debby Weems! You just saw her yesterday, for Pete's sake!"
Brows furrowed in puzzlement, Bert took a step away from the peephole and reached for the doorknob. He was tired of shouting through the inch-and-a-quarter of wood, and he wanted to get a better look at this Buddy person; maybe a clearer view of the guy would trigger Bert's memory, and he could deduce the purpose of this visit. "Weems?" he hefted quizzically after opening the door, gazing out through a gap of four inches. "I'm sorry, but I really can't remember any Debby Weems."
"Oh, I get it," chuckled Buddy good-naturedly. "It's like a joke, right? She called and told you I was comin' over, didn't she?"
"Uh-uh," Bert negated, still
mystified. Opening the door and taking a closer look at the guy hadn't helped; Bert now noticed that Buddy wore bluejeans and cowboy boots, but he still didn't recognize his face. "Where does your wife know me from, anyway?"
"All right, all right," laughed the bearded enigma. "So you don't know her. I'll play along, Bert. Just let me drop off what I brought over to give you, okay?"
"Huh?" flickered Bertram, more confused than ever.
"It's this," Buddy explained, extending a long white envelope which he had tugged from his back pocket. "She didn't really want me to drive the whole way over here just to give you this, but I said I wanted to. Anything for my little wife, y'know?"
"I, uh...look," Bert stammered. "I'm really sorry here, but I can't for the life of me remember a Debby Weems. Seriously, I don't know her."
"Whatever you say," smiled Buddy obligingly. "You don't know her, she don't know you, I don't know her. Nobody knows nobody, Bert. Just have a look at this, okay? Be a Good Samaritan and do a favor for a stranger." He pushed the white envelope closer to Bertram and shook it a few times.
"Did she go to school with me or something?" grimaced Bert, reaching slowly for the package.
"Oh, I think you two did some homework together," tabbed Buddy chidingly.
"Debby Weems," muttered Bert thoughtfully, closing his forefinger and thumb around the end of the envelope. "Debby Weems..."
"Yeah," Buddy smirked. "You sure did a lotta' studying together, all right."
Then, he thrust the long envelope violently forward, and Bert's hand felt like it was on fire.
Screaming, Bert stumbled backward, and Buddy went with him. Bert was too shocked to think of closing the door, but he couldn't if he'd wanted to, because Buddy was in the way. In fact, Buddy had attached himself to Bert; the visitor had a very firm grip on one end of the envelope, and the envelope contained a very sharp knife which was imbedded in Bert's right hand. The knife had pierced Bert's palm, and its blood-reddened tip now protruded about a half-inch from the skin between his second and third knuckles.
Knocked off-balance, Bert scuttled back into his living room, his brain spinning senselessly. The bearded attacker encouraged him to move by pushing the knife forward, causing the brazier of pain in Bert's hand to flare more brightly.
"Yeah, you two sure did your homework," barked Buddy, his friendly grin still misleadingly in place. "Stayed up all night pluggin' away at it, huh?"
Bert cried out as Buddy shoved him roughly against a wall, then continued to drive the knife forward. When the blade pressed its way through his hand and into his stomach, Bert pitched his head back and shrieked like a chimp. His body filled with searing electrical flashes, neural lightning bolts of unbearable pain.
He was no longer worrying about his thirty-fifth birthday.
"You were givin' her some private lessons, right, Bert?" Buddy hissed, pushing the knife through Bert's hand until the hilt stopped it from moving further. "Didn't think I'd ever find out, huh? Thought I was stupid!" While Bert yowled crazily, Buddy grabbed his shoulder and propelled him to the floor. Blood seeped from Bert's wounds like lava, turning the light blue shag carpeting purple. "Well, surprise, you son of a bitch! You turned out to be the stupid one, after all!"
Wincing, weeping, writhing, Bertram gaped upward, saw that Buddy wasn't grinning anymore. He was sneering viciously now, and had a mad gleam in his eyes, a porcelain sparkle which had probably been concealed there all along.
"She wants to leave me 'cause of you, y'know that?" snorted Buddy, walking around to kick Bertram in the crotch. "She says she's sick of me, 'cause I don't treat her as good as you." Glistening silver-dollar eyes leering downward, he thrust his cowboy boot once again into Bert's groin. Bert didn't enjoy it; he wriggled and tried to curl up to protect his sensitive parts, but when he moved, the pain in his hand and gut only got wilder.
"Oh God, oh God!" wailed Bert while Buddy paused and wondered what damage he should do next. "I don't know her! I swear to God--I've never even heard of her!"
Buddy decided to land another strong kick in his victim's crotch, since that was the part of Bert's body which angered him the most. "Bull!" he shouted, plunging the pointed toe of his boot into Bert's soft flesh. "I know you've been makin' her! She told me your name!"
"No...," whimpered Bert as he twisted on the carpet. "Not me! Please...you've gotta' believe me!" Frantically, he tried to think of some way to escape, some way to survive...but he came up with nothing. Buddy was powerful, and he had him cornered; even if Bert hadn't been pudgy and slack, he would have had a hell of a time trying to fight back or get away with one hand skewered to his belly like a hunk of shish kebab.
"Forget it, you moron!" Buddy bellowed. "She named you! Bert Delisky! You're Bert Delisky!"
"God, no!" Bert quivered, shaking his head. "It's not me! I didn't do it!"
"Oh?" Buddy said, lifting his eyebrows and softening his expression inexplicably. "Geez, I'm really sorry I bothered you, then."
Oddly, he turned from Bert and walked out the front door.
Thirty seconds later, just as Bert was beginning to hope that his ordeal was over, Buddy returned. In one hand, he was carrying a pair of scissors with long silver blades. In his other hand, he toted a pick-ax.
When Bert spotted the malicious-looking tools, he wanted to pass out; he knew that he would be much more comfortable from that point on if he was unconscious, or better yet, if he was dead. Unfortunately, he couldn't seem to faint at the moment. Though he was fairly certain that he would be killed in the very near future, his survival instincts kept clamoring for attention, demanding that he stay awake and rescue himself.
His survival instincts weren't functioning very sensibly, as far as Bert's mental health was concerned.
Buddy tossed the pick-ax aside, and it thumped heavily onto the carpet. "Y'know what?" he laughed, walking slowly around Bert's thundering skull. "You're a real hound, man. I mean it, Bert." He sneered down at the pitiful wretch for a second, then knelt at Bert's left side. "You got a way with the ladies," he chuckled blithely, grabbing Bert's last remaining uninjured arm. "If you were doin' any other woman, I'd say 'Way to go, pal.' Heck, I'd prob'ly buy you a beer!"
"Please," gasped Bertram as Buddy rolled him over. "Please, don't..."
"Aw, relax," snickered Buddy, pinning Bert's arm to the floor beneath his knee. "Like I was sayin', if it had been anybody else except my wife, I'd've congratulated you. Problem is," he said, clamping a hand against Bert's forehead, "my wife is off-limits. 'No Trespassing,' know what I mean?"
"I didn't do it!" Bertram whined, his eyes ballooning fearfully.
"See, if you're a hound, and you come sniffin' around my woman, well..." Buddy snipped the blades of the scissors together twice, then lowered them toward Bert's sweaty face. "Let's just say you're liable to get your sniffer taken off!"
Bert screamed and tried to twist his face away from the instrument, but Buddy held his skull firmly against the carpeting. The scissors were very, very sharp, and Buddy was very, very strong, so it only took a few minutes for most of Bert's nose to be removed from his face.
Though Bertram shrieked and kicked and lost control of his bladder, Buddy seemed to relish the event. When he finished, he tossed the scissors away and gazed at the mass of skin and cartilage which he had cut from his victim's face. "Looks a lot different like this, huh?" he mused appraisingly, as if he expected Bert to grin up at him and say 'Boy, it sure does!'
Then, he got an idea, and his face lit mischievously. He turned the severed proboscis around in his hand, then pushed the tip of it between his index finger and middle finger, made a loose fist.
"Got yer' nose!" he hooted loopily, roaring with delight.
It was a macabre imitation of an ancient trick which adults sometimes played on children; the adults would stick a thumb between two fingers like that, trying to fool young children into thinking that their noses had been stolen. Bertram recognized the trick, but didn't appreciate the new variation w
hich Buddy had invented.
As a matter of fact, Bert didn't appreciate much of anything right now. He was too busy thinking about Buddy's pick-ax, and praying for death.
"Let's see now," Buddy said when he finally stopped laughing. "Where can I put this?" Rising, he gazed around the room and caught sight of the brown maple mantel over Bertram's fireplace. Stepping over Bert, he marched to the mantel and placed the severed nose atop an antique clock which perched there. "Perfect!" he crowed, smiling at Bert. "Now you'll always nose what time it is!"
He laughed some more and started tromping back over, presumably to punish Bertram with additional tortures. He stopped in his tracks, though, and headed for the end-table by Bert's recliner instead. "Hey, what's this?" he piped giddily, reaching for the wallet which Bert had left on the table. "Y'know, I bet you got a picture of my sweetie in here! Wouldn't that be somethin'!"
Weakly, Bert squirmed and clutched at the wound in his hand and his stomach. He felt no desire to touch the place on his face where his nose had once been.
"Well, damn!" Buddy shouted. "No pictures of Debby!" He flipped through the plastic pages which held Bert's credit cards, then stopped and laughed again. "Y'know, Bert, you sure don't look much like the picture on your driver's license anymore! I think you better get a new one taken!"
Bert didn't hear a word that Buddy said; he was crying like a starving infant, and his brain was turning to sludge.
"Hey, wait a minute," Buddy mumbled suddenly, lifting the wallet closer to his eyes. "Damnit," he muttered, his jocular madness strangely dissipated. "This is how you spell your name? D-E-L-I-N-S-K-Y?"
"I didn't do it...," burbled Bertram. "I didn't do it..."
"D-E-L-I-N?" read Buddy once more. "Oh God." Closing the wallet, he tilted his head backward and took a deep breath. "Oh my God. You're Bertram Delinsky. I thought you were Albert Delisky."
Six Crime Stories Page 5
