Panic Attack

by Jason Starr

  Xan moved on top of her, resting on his knees and elbows, looking down directly into her eyes, and said, “Nothing’s happening. You don’t know anything, the police don’t know anything.”

  “I won’t be able to handle this,” she said. “I’m warning you right now, I won’t be able to get through this.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m here,” Xan said. “No matter what, you’ll be okay, I’ll make sure you’re okay. But if it turns out that Tony didn’t do it, I mean he has an alibi, I just want you to be ready for the police to start looking at your father, you know? I don’t want it to be a shock to you.”

  She imagined her father grabbing the knife and sticking it into her mother’s back.

  “Oh, God, no, no, no,” Marissa said as she wrapped her arms and legs around Xan’s warm body as tightly as she could.

  Later, Marissa didn’t want Xan to leave. She was afraid to be home alone with her father.

  “I’ll stay with you as long as you want me to,” Xan said. “But you don’t have any clothes or—”

  “I don’t care. You’re the only thing I care about right now.”

  Xan was blowing her away. He was just so perfect.

  They took turns going to the bathroom, and when Marissa went she heard her father talking downstairs on the phone.

  “You should probably go down,” Xan said.

  “I don’t want to,” Marissa said. “I just want to stay here in bed with you all day.”

  “I’d go down with you, but this is a family thing, and you two should be alone right now, have some time to yourselves.”

  “I don’t want time with him.”

  “I’ll be right here,” Xan said. “If you need me, just call for me and I’ll be right down, okay? You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  Figuring she’d have to face her father eventually, Marissa decided to just go down and get it over with.

  From the staircase, she heard her father talking on the phone in the dining room. She didn’t know how they were ever going to use the kitchen again because she sure as hell wasn’t going in there anytime soon. She’d order in Chinese food for every meal if she had to.

  When she went into the dining room, her father, sitting at the table, made eye contact with her as he finished a phone call. By his tone, she knew he was talking to his friend Stan.

  She stood there, watching him talk, searching for some sign that would tell her whether he was guilty or innocent. He seemed appropriately upset, but did that mean anything? Wouldn’t he be acting upset either way? Either he was upset because her mom had been murdered or he was pretending to be upset to keep the act going. And if he was really crazy, if he was an actual psychopath, he’d be very good at faking his grief.

  After about a minute he ended the call and said to her, “That was Stan. Jesus, this is so hard.”

  For a few moments Marissa couldn’t think of anything to say—it was weird, she was actually scared to be near her father. Then she said, “I can make some calls, too, if you want me too.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. Actually, I’ve almost called everybody I have to. Some friends are calling other friends, and I’ve gotten in touch with most of the relatives, grandma’s coming up tonight. I was afraid to tell her, with her heart condition, but what can you do? Oh, the funeral’s tomorrow morning at ten, by the way.”

  Marissa wasn’t surprised that the funeral would be so soon. Although they were hardly a religious family, they followed some Jewish traditions, like burying the dead as soon as possible. Marissa’s grandfather had also been buried only a couple of days after he’d died.

  Her father went on about how her mother would be buried in the family plot on Long Island and about the arrangements he’d made with the rabbi and the funeral home. “The only relative I’m not inviting is Mom’s brother,” he said. “I don’t think she’d want him here.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so either,” Marissa said.

  Marissa had only met her uncle Mark a few times and hadn’t seen him in years, but apparently Mark had abused her mother when they were kids, and her mother had pretty much cut off all contact with him.

  “This is still so surreal,” her father said. “I’m still expecting her to walk in here any second. When I heard your footsteps on the stairs before, at first I thought it was her.”

  He looked like he was on the verge of tears, straining very hard to maintain his composure. Marissa still didn’t see any sign that this was a put-on, and she was feeling guilty for suspecting him, for losing faith in him, when he said, “Oh, so Clements called before, and unfortunately they haven’t made an arrest in the case yet.”

  “What about Tony?” Marissa asked.

  “He has an alibi, and apparently it’s airtight. I don’t know all the details, but Clements said he was with a friend at the time Mom was . . . Anyway, Clements said it rules him out, but I don’t believe it. If it’s a friend, how do we know the friend isn’t covering for him? But Clements said they’re looking at other possibilities, and what do you think that means? I can’t believe I have to deal with this while I’m in the middle of planning Mom’s funeral. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not talking to him alone again. I’m not saying another word to him without my lawyer sitting right next to me. If I’d been thinking straight last night I would’ve hired a lawyer right away, put an end to this ridiculousness.”

  Marissa was looking at her father closely, focusing on his eyes, trying to figure out if he was lying.

  “And then I’m gonna have to deal with all of that media crap again,” her father continued, “with all of the sensational articles they’re writing.”

  “It’s in the papers?” Marissa asked. She hadn’t even thought about this yet. “I only checked the Post, the online edition, and yeah, it’s front page, and I’m

  sure it’s on the front page of all the other papers, too. In the Post story Clements called me a person of interest in the case. I understand why he has to check me out, but it’s so awful to lose your wife and then have to read that crap. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my practice, to my career? I don’t even want to think about that yet or I won’t be able to get through the funeral and everything else. The reporters are still out there, and they can stay out there all day if they want to, but I’m not saying a word to them, and I don’t think you should either. This is total harassment now, and I’m gonna talk to my lawyer about this, too, see if there’s any kind of action I can take. You always hear about the media exploiting people, celebrities. You become immune to it, like it’s part of our culture, because you don’t think it can happen to you. You think it’s only something that happens to other people, that you’re protected, but you’re not. The thing is it can happen to anybody . . . Why’re you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, you’re looking at me . . . strangely.” “I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About how awful all of this is.”

  Her father seemed incredulous, like he wasn’t buying this explanation, but then he said, “Oh, Clements talked to the Millers next door, and JoAnne said their dog was barking like crazy yesterday at around six thirty.”

  “So?” Marissa asked.

  “So,” her father said suddenly agitated, “the other day, before I found the note from Tony, when I came in the house the dog was barking, too. I thought it was a little unusual at the time. I mean, the dog knows us, right? He never barks at us.”

  Marissa, distracted, barely paying attention, said, “I don’t get it.”

  “It means Tony was here again.” Now her father was practically yelling, and Marissa, frightened, backed away a few steps. “The dog was barking both times, and we know Tony was here once, right? Clements said this sounds interesting, but I don’t think he really gets it. This is another thing I’m talking to my lawyer about, though. There have to’ve been other witnesses; somebody must’ve seen Tony coming or going. What’s wrong? W
hy’re you moving away from me?”

  “I’m not,” Marissa said.

  Her father glared at her, something in his eyes reminding her of the way he’d looked when he’d gleefully revealed his affair to her and her mother. Then he said to her, “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I believe you,” she said.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Hey,” Xan said.

  She hadn’t seem him enter the dining room from behind her, and she was so startled she might’ve shrieked.

  “Sorry,” Xan said. “Just wanted to see how you two were doing.”

  Marissa held his hand, relieved he was here. “We were just . . . talking about the funeral,” she said. “It’s tomorrow morning.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to help you out, just let me know,” Xan said to Adam.

  “Thanks, but I think we’re okay,” Adam said, looking at Marissa. “At least I hope we are.”

  Marissa and Xan went upstairs.

  In her room, she whispered to him, “Oh my God, he did it. He really fucking did it.”

  JOHNNY WATCHED the couple get off the Coney Island–bound F train, and then he followed them down the long escalator and out to the street. The couple went past the convenience store at the corner and turned right. Johnny hung back for a block or two, until the couple reached an area that was darker and more deserted, and then he made his move.

  He pulled down his black ski mask and started walking faster, until he was about twenty yards behind them; then, right when the guy looked back over his shoulder, Johnny sprinted toward them, holding his .38. Before the couple could run or yell for help or react at all, Johnny was pointing the gun at the guy’s face, saying, “Gimme the fuckin’ ring.”

  Johnny had spotted the woman’s ring on the subway. It was a sparkly diamond engagement ring, looked like at least one carat. The woman was blond, blue-eyed, and, like most people in this part of Brooklyn nowadays, probably not a native New Yorker. She was probably from the Midwest, Kansas or some shit. No girl who grew up in the city would wear her engagement ring, diamond up, on the subway at eleven o’clock at night.

  “Please . . . don’t shoot him,” the woman said. Yeah, definitely not a New Yorker.

  “Just gimme the fuckin’ ring, bitch,” Johnny said. He hated that he had to be so disrespectful, that he couldn’t talk like the charming woman-lover he normally was, but he knew that in a robbery situation it was a good idea to act as little like your normal self as possible.

  “Take it easy,” the guy said. He was tall and thin and had the same bumpkin accent as the girl. “We don’t want any trouble, yo.”

  Yo. Like he thought he was talking street and that would, what, save him?

  Johnny pressed the gun into the guy’s cheek and said, “Tell the whore to gimme the fuckin’ ring.”

  “Give him the ring,” the guy said to the woman. “I can’t. It’s my grandmother’s.”

  “Give it to him, goddamn it.”

  “Please,” the woman said to Johnny, “take our money. I have two hundred dollars in my purse, and my fiancé has money, too. You can have it all, but please, I can’t give you the—”

  Johnny pistol-whipped the guy across the side of his head. He fell to his knees, and then Johnny hit him with the gun again, on the front of his face, and heard something crunch. The woman started screaming. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with these people? Did they want to die?

  Johnny grabbed the woman’s left hand and started to pull off the ring. Would you believe it, she was still trying to resist? She was screaming in Johnny’s ear, trying to break free. Johnny was ready to shoot her in the head and shut her up, but then the ring slid off.

  “Thanks, guys,” Johnny said.

  He’d got what he wanted. No reason not to be polite now, right?

  He walked away quickly. After he turned the corner he jogged a few blocks, and then continued home at a normal pace.

  He wished he could sell the ring right away. He knew he could get a thousand for it, maybe more, from any pawnshop, and he didn’t like to hold on to the things he stole, especially jewelry. Jewelry, especially rings, was the type of stuff that people wanted back. Sometimes he’d dump stolen jewelry for a fraction of what it was worth just to get rid of it. After all, he wasn’t an idiot. That was the difference between him and every other criminal in the world.

  But he needed the ring, to give to Marissa when the time was right. Then when she was dead, like her parents, he could pawn it off and make his thousand bucks. Not that a thousand bucks would mean anything to him then.

  Yeah, it would’ve been nice if Adam Bloom had come home on time and Johnny had killed him like he’d planned to, but everything else had gone so well since then that he couldn’t exactly complain. After he left the house on Monday evening, he dumped the stolen car in a supermarket parking lot way out in Flushing and got rid of the backpack and the sweatshirt that had gotten blood on it. Then he washed up in the bathroom of a gas station and hailed a livery cab and had the driver drop him off around the corner from the movie theater on Fifty-ninth at about eight o’clock. He was only about a half hour late, and he told Marissa the subways were running slow and he couldn’t call her from underground. She wasn’t upset, because she’d been running late, too, and had just gotten there. The movie was about to start, so they decided to go in and get something to eat afterward. Not that she seemed interested in actually watching the movie. While they were in the back of the movie theater, making out, he was replaying the murder in his head. Were there any loose ends? He couldn’t think of any. He’d gotten rid of all the evidence, and the cops had probably already arrested Tony. Hopefully Tony would go to jail for the rest of his life or get the death penalty. If Tony had an alibi, the cops might try to pin the murder on Adam. That would work out really well for Johnny, too. Johnny needed to get rid of Adam for the rest of his plan to work, and it didn’t really matter if Adam was rotting in a jail cell or six feet underground as long as he was gone for good. After the movie, Johnny took a leak, and when he met Marissa back in the lobby and saw her looking so upset, talking to somebody on her cell, he knew she’d heard the news. Johnny lived for moments like these. He got to play a role, be another person and, even better, be this great guy everybody loved.

  Johnny knew that Marissa needed him to take charge, and he handled it beautifully, putting her in the cab, telling her all the right things. At the house, Adam was totally buying into his shit, too, and Johnny played it just right, hugging him, literally giving him a shoulder to cry on about three hours after killing his wife. Seriously, did it get any better than that?

  While Adam and Marissa were hugging and slobbering like babies, Johnny was listening in on a conversation between a gray-haired detective—later he’d find out his name was Clements—and some other cop. Although Johnny was only catching bits and pieces, it sounded like they weren’t sold on the idea that Tony had killed Dana Bloom. Johnny didn’t know why this was, but he didn’t waste a second and started working on his backup plan. See, this was what set Johnny apart from the two-bit criminals who were crammed into jails all over the country—he never got complacent; his mind was always working, thinking ahead.

  Naturally Marissa asked him to sit next to her while Clements was questioning her. She needed him so badly now, she couldn’t bear to be without him for even a few minutes. Johnny loved it when Clements asked Adam if he could “wait in the other room;” the look on his face was priceless, like he already knew what was about to go down and how screwed he was and how there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then Clements asked Marissa about Adam, if she’d ever seen him threaten Dana, and it was beautiful how Marissa mentioned Adam had pushed Dana that one time and knocked her down. Now Clements was really starting to believe that Adam was his man.

  When Johnny finally got alone with Marissa in her room, and she was telling him how lucky she was to have him and saying she wa
nted to feel him inside her, Johnny knew she was officially his. He’d hooked her so good, there was no way she was getting away now. He made love to her, slowly and passionately, the way only Johnny Long could, and then he picked up where Clements had left off, trying to get her to believe that her father had killed her mother. He knew he had to handle this carefully, not come on too strong, blaming her father. He had to let her think that it was her idea, that she’d come up with it on her own. It worked, and it was incredible—he felt like he was in total control of this girl, like he could get her to do or think anything he wanted her to. And with Adam’s own daughter believing he was guilty, who would he have to defend him?

  When Adam was gone, Johnny would ask Marissa to marry him, and, come on, at this point how could she not say yes? She was already dependent on him, and when both her parents were gone she’d be desperate to start a new family. When they were married—and the way things were going, that could only be a few months from now—he’d make sure he was in her will, as her sole beneficiary, because who else would there be? She sure as hell wouldn’t want her father, that murderer, to get anything. Then Marissa would die in some “unfortunate accident”—the poor Blooms, they’d had so much tragedy in their lives—and Johnny would have everything he’d ever wanted.

  Marissa was so convinced that her father was guilty, she was afraid to be in the house with him alone. Johnny said he would stay with her for as long as she wanted him to—“forever if I have to”—but then her grandmother, Adam’s mother, arrived, and Johnny wanted out. He got a bad vibe from the old lady from the get-go and knew she wouldn’t be as easy to win over as the other Blooms.

  “I think she hates me,” Johnny had said to Marissa.

  “No, that’s just the way she’s been with all my boyfriends,” Marissa said. “It’s because you’re a shagetz.”

  “A what?”

  “Because you’re not Jewish. My grandmother has always had this stupid thing in her head about me having to marry a Jewish guy someday even though we’re not at all religious.”