sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  “I had an idea while I was in the kitchen.” Merc held the bucket as it filled with water. “You know how I got into the building tonight?”

  “The doorman let you in.”

  “No. That’s what usually happens. He wasn’t around when I came through, so I went in behind somebody.”

  “I did the same thing. The doormen here are kind of iffy. So what? They’ve got security cameras, so they can easily track who comes and goes.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not a problem. It won’t be odd if we show up on security tapes. You’re one of her writers. I’m doing work on her place. But that’s not what I’m getting at.”

  Merc turned off the faucet and lifted out the bucket.

  “My bad,” said Penn. “Go ahead.”

  “So what if some kids got in here and vandalized a bunch of shit on a few floors, started a fire or two. Fucked this apartment up and a couple more somewhere else in the building. Something that seems entirely random.”

  “I don’t get where you’re going,” Penn said.

  “If there’s a fire, the guys won’t have to repaint and put down new floors. Everything in here will be destroyed. Any traces of blood we might have missed, DNA evidence, fingerprints.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll wait a few days, maybe three, four. There’s a holiday coming up. We can take advantage of it.”

  Penn considered Merc’s words. He closed the lid on the toilet and sat, in awe of such a brilliant suggestion.

  “We could send an e-mail from her computer,” he said.

  “What kind of e-mail?” asked Merc.

  “Something to her boss, her assistant, and her authors saying she had an emergency and needed to take some time off.”

  “When would we send it?”

  “It’s Tuesday. Tomorrow morning, I could send an e-mail from here to her assistant Shecky saying she’s going to be in meetings outside the office. That won’t come as a surprise to anybody. She does it all the time.” Penn leaned his elbows on his knees. “I can do the same thing on Wednesday and Thursday. Everybody will take off early on Friday since it’s Labor Day weekend. Beryl said they do half-days on Friday in the summer, so I imagine most of them will be out of the office anyway, trying to take advantage of the last big weekend.”

  “So that gives us a good time to start the fire. I could get some kids I know in the Heights, some bad muthafuckas who do scandalous shit like this all the time. They can come in here over the weekend with fireworks, matches, gas, maybe graffiti up the floors a little. We’ll make sure Beryl’s place is one of the first ones they hit, so the fire damage’ll be greater.”

  “I like this,” Penn said. “But we don’t want anybody else to get hurt. How can we manage that?”

  “A lot of people will be away. Since the doorman tends to leave his post so often, the tenants won’t find it far-fetched the way the vandals got in. I’ll make sure the kids are careful. As careful as a buncha kids with fireworks, matches, and gas can get.”

  Merc set the bucket on the floor.

  “The kids won’t show up on the tapes,” he said. “Not their faces. They’ll have on the usual shit. Hoodies, clown masks, gloves, shit like that. The kinda stuff you’d expect from vandals.”

  “Perfect,” Penn said, nodding. “So on Friday night I’ll send the e-mail about the emergency and her needing to take some time off.”

  “No one will ever connect the fires here with her disappearance,” Merc said. He smiled. “That’s good, that’s good. I see why your ass writes books.”

  “No shit. This would make a damn good story. Nobody would believe it, though.”

  “Niggas in the Heights would.”

  The ammonia-sweet scent of Mr. Clean wafted from the bucket. Mercury grabbed the three sponges from the counter and threw them in. He sat on the edge of the tub again, took a deep breath, wiped his brow, and turned off the faucets in the tub, now that Beryl’s body was halfway submerged. His eyes were clear and direct as he spoke to Penn.

  “All right, take that bucket and go scrub up that bit of blood and brains on the living room floor.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ll start on Beryl,” Merc said. “I’m gonna cut the veins on her wrists the right way, vertical, all the way down, then I’ll slice her jugular and open up both of those carotid arteries in her neck, and then I’m gonna need your help. We’re gonna grab those bony ankles of hers and let her drain.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re gonna get as much of that blood out of her as we can. And then we’re gonna chop her.”

  “We’re gonna what?”

  “We’re gonna chop her,” said Mercury, cool, even. “We’ll cut her up into chunks, then saw and hammer through the bones. I’ll do it in the tub, that way we can control any flying pieces of meat. Shouldn’t be too hard to break her down, she’s kinda slight. Then we’re gonna bag up the chunks and throw ’em down the garbage chute. You’ll get them out at the other end. Then we’ll take her to a furnace and burn her. I already know a spot.”

  “We’re going to burn her.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. And then the hard part will be over. The vandalisms will be easy.”

  “I doubt they’ll go that easy.”

  “Trust me, buddy,” Merc said. “It will.”

  “I want to keep the ashes,” Penn said.

  Merc looked up at him.

  “Not keep them, per se,” he corrected. “I want to bag them up and spread them around the city. Kind of like a tribute.”

  Merc’s eyes narrowed.

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah. That’s the least we could do, don’t you think, seeing as how she went all out for me. I figure we could make it fun, since she was all about being such a New Yorker. We can flush one down a toilet at the Port Authority. Dump another one into a bathroom sink at a McDonald’s in the Village and rinse it down the drain. Mix some into the soil at Central Park. Spread the Beryl wealth. Uptown, downtown, midtown, West Side Highway, FDR. Columbia. I’ll leave a little bit by CarterHobbs. You know…respect due. Like a tribute.”

  “I thought you said you spent most of the day freaked out.”

  “I did a lot of thinking,” Penn said.

  “Apparently. I thought I could come up with some shit, but you topped me on that one.”

  An hour later and Beryl’s bloodletting was done. The tub was rinsed and she lay at the bottom of it, pallid and clammy. Penn had cleaned up the minor mess in the living room and had cleaned out the bucket. He was sitting on the toilet now, watching Merc.

  “Hand me that electric knife.”

  He gave Mercury the narrow appliance.

  Mercury dried the end of the cord with his pants leg and plugged it into a nearby socket. He hit the power switch and the thing made a buzzing sound like a miniature chain saw. The blade moved back and forth in a sawing motion.

  “Oh, hell yeah,” he said. “This is gonna make it easy.” He turned to Penn. “Wanna watch the first cut?”

  Penn came over and stood next to the tub.

  “Where should I start?” asked Mercury. “You make the call.”

  The hairs on Penn’s arms, legs, nape of his neck, and back were standing at attention. This was thrilling. His very first kill. It was almost operatic. What would Jessye Norman think?

  “I dunno. Do something easy.”

  Mercury gazed up at him. “News flash, dude. None of it’s easy.”

  “All right, all right…do her hand. The wrist. That shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Mercury lowered the humming blade onto Beryl’s left wrist. The serrated edges sawed effortlessly through the skin, then, seconds later, ground down to a halt when the blade met bone. Penn leaned closer to watch.

  “Hmph,” Merc muttered. “Not as easy as I figured.”

  He got up from his knees and grabbed the blade and the hammer from the counter. He knelt back beside the tub.

  “Maybe we’ll just use the ele
ctric knife to cut through the meat. We’ll have to use these to get at the bone.”

  He held the blade in place on Beryl’s wrist with his left hand, then lowered the hammer with his right with one solid, powerful stroke. The blade cut clean, snapping straight through the bone. He leaned down and glanced at the tub. Penn leaned over and peered in. Merc angled his neck and looked up at him. He held up the blade. “This thing is no joke.”

  Penn walked over to the bathroom doorway as Mercury fired up the electric knife and began sawing into thigh. Penn could hear the gentle resistance of metal against flesh as he closed his eyes and considered his life. Beryl was gone. Gone, gone, gone. Soon to be an ash mosaic scattered across the lovely Manhattan landscape.

  But there was Sharlyn, sweet, sexy, helpful Sharlyn. And the New York Times bestseller list. And TRL. and Billboard. And next week, Katie Couric.

  As he considered all this, his mind was transported several blocks south to Times Square, to the magnificent, gigantic, godlike image of himself nude, holding his book. Each of his abs was five feet across, easy, rippling cords of sinewy muscle. His golden skin, blonde hair and crystal-blue eyes were all vivid, even though the billboard was in classic black and white. His body was beautiful—all six-foot-three of it—particularly when viewed on such an epic scale. He was a work of art, WASP perfection. His body was as flawless as his beautiful mind.

  The left corner of his lip pirouetted into a perfect letter C as he listened to his best friend hack away at Beryl’s femur with the hammer and blade. Mercury was the ideal soldier, he mused. Penn didn’t even have to give him instructions. All he had to do was make the call, and there Merc was, presto, pronto, taking charge, barking orders, chiding, cajoling, encouraging, supportive, organizing everything into seamless science. He didn’t even demand that Penn help with the cutting.

  Penn took a deep breath.

  To Beryl, he toasted in silence. To being number one.

  This was all for the best. Beryl could have never accepted his relationship with Sharlyn. She could have never dealt with the fact that he had no plans to marry, not any time soon, and definitely not her. Her life wouldn’t have been the same knowing what she knew.

  Killing her had been an act of kindness.

  She was better off dead.

  “Bring all the sheets that go with those pillowcases.”

  “Why?”

  “So it won’t draw any attention.”

  Penn stopped drying the chunk of shoulder in his hand.

  “But why would that draw attention?” he asked.

  Mercury kept packing meat.

  “Just take them. We’ll burn them with the rest of her. I just don’t want anything that might draw attention from the right kind of investigator.”

  He grabbed another piece of meat from the tub.

  “Do you think there’ll be an investigation?” Penn said, surveying the squeaky-clean carnage.

  “I don’t know. She was a major editor. It depends on if anybody cares enough to take things further.”

  Penn glanced around at the scope of what they had done. Nothing about it made him nervous. In fact, he was confident things were going exactly his way.

  “Our shit is tight,” Merc was saying, “so don’t sweat it. Everything’ll be cool, as long as we pay attention to all the details.”

  Penn was half-listening, his thoughts still hanging on Mercury’s comment about the sheets and the missing pillowcases drawing the attention of “the right kind of investigator.”

  Excitement palmed the back of his neck like a cold hand. The fine hairs stood on end.

  He realized that it was happening, right now, this very moment. He was no longer just a man.

  He was creating his legend.

  By midnight, Beryl was cooking in a furnace at a meat warehouse in Hoboken owned by Mercury’s Uncle Zezer.

  “Do it with zest,” Penn’s father, once told him. “Do it with zest, or don’t do it at all.”

  This was zest to the nth power. How heady it was.

  “Hey,” Merc said, “why were you whistling when we were first bagging her up?”

  “When?”

  “Back at her apartment. You were whistling some song, it was kinda creepy. I don’t know where I’ve heard it before.”

  “‘Träume’?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Merc said. “It sounded like you were skipping and whistling.”

  “I was trying to catch a beat.”

  Merc laughed.

  Penn began whistling the tune.

  “Yeah, that’s it!” Merc said.

  “It’s Wagner.”

  “Of course. You and your damn Wagner.”

  The two of them sat there, listening to the crackling of the fire and the popping of meat. Penn was surprised at the almost-pleasant aroma of it.

  Beryl Unger was gone. In a puff of smoke.

  “You know I got you, right?”

  “What are you yapping about now?” said Merc.

  “Moneywise, I’m saying. Now that you’re out of a steady gig.”

  “I’m good. My uncle’s always getting new jobs.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Effective right now, you’re on the payroll.”

  “As what?”

  “My crew.”

  Mercury laughed loud and hard.

  “I can have a crew,” Penn said. “Who said it’s gotta be more than one person? Snoop’s got Bishop Don ‘Magic’ Juan. I got you.”

  “’long as you don’t expect me to wear no money-green suits and carry gilded goblets, we cool.”

  “Don’t knock Bishop. He’s the most well known pimp in the world.”

  “I don’t know,” Mercury said. “I’m starting to think right now, that might be you.”

  Penn smiled.

  The two men let their conversation fall off as they listened to the last of Beryl snap, crackle, and pop.

  They remained at the warehouse another three hours, emptying out the cool ashes in the middle of the night. When they left Hoboken, Penn had the best of Beryl poured into an emptied Ocean Spray Cran-Apple bottle. He got Merc to stop at a store on the Jersey side so he could grab a box of Ziploc bags.

  A few hours later, around eight A.M., he sent the first e-mail from Beryl’s computer.

  By late that afternoon, he had spread most of Beryl around the city. He paid great attention to each spot where he left some of her ashes so that he could record it in his journal later.

  A few hours later, he was deep in the throes of an apology fuck, making amends for having shirked Sharlyn two nights before.

  “What’d you do while I was out?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Got drunk, a little high. Fell asleep. I dreamt I called you and left a bunch of rambling messages on your machine.”

  There it was. The thing that had set Beryl off.

  He wasn’t upset about it. Sharlyn had inadvertently done him a favor. He would have had to deal with marriage demands from Beryl eventually. She wanted to quit the business, have kids, be a family.

  Sharlyn had saved him from something that would have been more disastrous than what had occurred. He would miss Shar when he headed out for the tour next week. Oh well. He’d just have to find other warm bodies to tide him over until he got back.

  He looked down at her adoringly, pounding her with renewed, appreciative vigor.

  Five random units caught fire at Beryl’s building the following Saturday night. Two of them, one of which was Beryl’s unit, were gutted by the time the fire department arrived. Everyone got out safely. Two-thirds of the residents were out of town.

  The fire would have made bigger news in the papers if it weren’t for other fires that weekend in Harlem, Canarsie, and Dumbo, each competing for their fifteen minutes. A fire in Riverdale claimed unanimous first place when a restaurant burned to the ground, taking several lives.

  Summer went out in a few blazes of glory.

  New York City was hot, hot, hot.

  Shecky h
ad stared at the e-mail, her heart daring to dance.

  Beryl needed to take some time off?

  She glanced around, watching people buzz about the halls, fresh from the long weekend.

  So was Beryl leaving? Was that what this meant?

  Shecky rejoiced inside. This could be her chance.

  She knew how to do everything. She was familiar with everyone’s manuscripts. She’d even found a promising tale among the slush pile ruins and Beryl had been considering buying it. This could be her moment in the sun. Wasn’t that how things had happened for Beryl? Her editor at PaleFire had decided to leave and Beryl was given a chance at the job.

  Shecky stared at the e-mail. Beryl might have to leave. Or take leave. Whatever. Same difference, maybe. No matter.

  This could be a good thing.

  Her window of opportunity was finally opening up.

  “Any news?”

  Kitty Ellerman was standing in front of Shecky Lehman’s desk.

  “No, Ms. Ellerman. She hasn’t called or anything.”

  “Just that e-mail.”

  “Yes, Ms. Ellerman.”

  “This is so not like her. Beryl’s always been such a professional. I’m really worried for her now. Perhaps someone in her family is very ill. Do you have her parents’ contact information? Someone who might know how to reach her?”

  “No, Ms. Ellerman. She never talks about her family. Beryl’s very private. I don’t know much about her other than what I see here at work.”

  Ellerman stood at the desk, thinking.

  “The authors are fine, Ms. Ellerman. I’ve been following up with all of them, going over their edits. Penn’s on tour and everything is going great. I check in with him every day at his hotels to make sure he’s aware he has our utmost support.”

  Kitty Ellerman smiled.

  “Good job, Shecky. I really appreciate it. I know this has been a tremendous burden on you.”

  “Not at all, Ms. Ellerman. I love my job. I think publishing is the greatest business in the world.”