“Seen her. Know who she is…Do you know who she is?”
“I’ve had coffee with her.”
“You have, have you? Well, her old man, John McGuire, he’s, like, a big dog in the oil business. He’s got more money than a wild dog has fleas. Everybody wants to hump his leg. He owns the golf course where my old man works. He owns a mansion just back of the golf course, through the woods there. It’s huge.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Man, Talia McGuire. You must have been fuckin’ drunk when you met her, to think she’s got anything going for you. She’s a goddamn babe. I seen her wear a pair of pants tighter to her skin than a tattoo. When she walked, it looked like her thing was peelin’ a peach. There ain’t an ounce of fat on her, and all the meat that’s there, it’s sweet, dude. I’d give my left testicle to get a piece of that. So would you, but I wouldn’t be cuttin’ it off, buddy, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ none of that. That stuff, it’s for the fraternity dudes, guys with money and fast cars, not that turd-brown piece of shit you drive.”
“I’m not so bad.”
“Hey, you’re all right. I like you. You’ll go to college, get a job, do okay. Buy a fuckin’ Volvo. Do better than me. But Talia McGuire. Man, she’s outta your fuckin’ league, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. Me and her, I might as well be on Mars, but even if you and her are on the same planet, you’re like, you know, Antarctica, and she’s here. Hear what I’m sayin’? No use jerkin’ you, and you endin’ up all disappointed and shit. She’s like some kind of goddess, and you’re like a fuckin’ goatherd. Hell, compared to her, you’re the Elephant Man. And she’s noted for fucking with people. It’s what she does.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Telling you what I’ve heard…She really had coffee with you?”
“Yes.”
“What were the circumstances? You were in the cafeteria, you were both drinking coffee at the same time, at different tables?”
Harry told him all about it. When he finished, Joey said, “There you are. She felt sorry for you. She was being nice. She knocked you down. Probably didn’t want you to sue. That would mean her daddy might have to shut down one of his about, oh, I don’t know, ten zillion-million oil wells.”
“Fuck you, Joey.”
“Hey, man.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Sure. Whatever you say. Doll like that, and you. Think about it. See what you come up with.”
Harry got up so quick the chair fell over.
“Don’t fuck the furniture up,” Joey said.
“Yeah, it’s so fine. Fuck you.”
“Well, fuck you. Get out of my shithole, be it ever so humble. Get the fuck out.”
Harry stomped out, and when he slammed the door the landing shook and the whole damn apartment vibrated and the light went out, and—
—there were all manner of flashes in his head, sounds, pictures, jump cuts of violence. Joey’s place was full of it, and the place was so flimsy, the slamming of the door activated it all, and it came rushing into his noggin like a flood.
The shotgun under the chin, the guy on the toilet, an explosion, brains and blood and a yellow light, a glimpse of that overlapped with a woman being slapped, a man with a young woman bent over a couch—a different couch than Joey’s—throwing the meat to her anus while she screamed—
A yell at a table, a man standing, grabbing up a plate of food, throwing it—
And the lights flicked inside his head like little atomic explosions, and the sounds grated and scratched and the screams all blended and the colors of violence ran together into a mural of darkness.
And as fast as it came to him, it went away.
Harry was less energetic going down, as the whole porch was starting to shake, and he felt as awkward as a man on wooden legs.
He went to the bar straightaway and started drinking. Some of what he was spending was for the water bill, but right then that seemed a long way off. He needed another kind of liquid refreshment right then.
The scrawny bastard was right, telling it like it was. A girl like Talia, a vision like that. She was taking pity on him. What would she want with him? Maybe she thought it was funny. Her sitting there slumming, and this guy drooling over her, trying to be cool, and her thinking: What a chump, and, isn’t this fun, and, maybe I’ll get close to him, let him smell—
What was it, the way she smelled, what was it?
Vanilla. That was it. She put vanilla behind her ears. He was sure of it. It was nice. It wasn’t overdone like Kayla, and it didn’t smell as good as Kayla, but it was good.
She had to be thinking: He leans toward me, that little hint of vanilla behind my ears, maybe I can get him to wet his pants. Wouldn’t that be funny?
Poor country mouse with about three dollars and fifty cents in his pocket, give or take a nickel, wetting his pants over a girl who never even had to buy groceries, a beautiful girl, a magnificent girl, sitting there inside her fine clothes, laughing inside, thinking, what a loser….
And she didn’t know the half of it.
Didn’t know about his superhearing, his constant blasts from the past, or that he had a bit of a drinking problem, and that right now he was dealing with his drinking problem by drinking, and pretty soon, he thought, I’ll not only be numb to the sounds, I’ll be numb to life.
And so he sat in the bar, all manner of talk going on around him, about this and that, how good a lay so-and-so is, and she’s extra good because she swallows, and what about them damn Cowboys, couldn’t they put together a good team, like the old days, and someone said, “You know, they’re going to reinstate the draft,” and someone said, “Yeah, we ought to just kill them all. We go all the way over there, give them freedom, sons a’ bitches don’t want it, ought to kill them all, just drop the big one,” and someone else says, “Wouldn’t Jesus be against that,” and Harry kind of thinks he hears this guy being hit, puts his head on the table and thinks right before he passes out that it was him who said it.
20
Tad woke up certain that during the night a cat had shit in his mouth, but not owning any cats, he decided that, unless he left a window open somewhere, this wasn’t likely.
He sat up in his bed, only to discover he wasn’t in his bed.
He was under the dining room table, him and some empty glass and aluminum soldiers lying this way and that.
He managed to bump his head on the table bottom, as well as rattle his noggin by disturbing the cans and bottles around him. The sound of them being touched, moved, was loud in his head, and in that moment he thought:
What if that kid is telling the truth?
Maybe he does hear sounds.
And maybe, like me, he’s just a drunk.
Either way, he’s fucked-up. And if the sounds are real, he’s double-screwed.
Tad crawled out from under the table, got to his feet, which only seemed to take about a week, made a quick wobble to the bathroom, got down on his knees, dunked his head over the toilet bowl and let it fly.
It was like his insides were going to come up with it, not to mention his balls.
Goddamn, he thought. I been drinking quite professionally for a long time, but I must have tied a good one on last night.
He vomited repeatedly.
When he finished, he noted there were drops of blood in the vomit.
Rawness from his throat.
That was it.
God, he hoped that was it.
He reached up, flushed, then fell back against the wall.
He sat that way until his brain came back down from outer space, bringing along with it an anvil that dropped right on top of his head. Using the toilet bowl as an aid, he got to his feet, wandered into the kitchen, got a beer out of the fridge, and sipped it.
Hair of the dog that bit him.
He stood by the refrigerator for a while, stumbled into the dining room, sat at the table.
In front of him was the note Harry h
ad dropped off.
He read it.
“Shit,” he said.
21
As Tad got out of his car, a light rain was falling, pushed about by a chill, brisk wind.
He stood a moment by the car and lifted his face into it. The air smelled fresh, and he knew when the rain passed the world would smell like a crisp starched shirt. Somewhere a police car made with a whoop-whoop sound.
Tad looked at the stairs to Harry’s apartment, noticed that since he had been here last the railing on the right side of the stairway had been broken, a couple of slats knocked asunder.
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door, lightly at first, then, when no one answered, harder.
Still nothing.
He took a notepad from his shirt pocket, a pen, wrote: Got your note. Come see me. Tad
As he started down the stairs, through the gap in the railing, in the shrubs that surrounded the stairs on that side, lying there like a big bird that had fallen, he saw Harry, his shirt ripped, one shoe missing. His pants were torn and there were blood spots on his face.
Tad went down quickly and pushed into the shrubs, squatted, and held Harry’s head up.
“Kid, you all right?”
Harry made a strained noise that sounded a bit like someone trying to pass a stubborn fart.
“Hey, kid. It’s me, Tad.”
Harry opened one sticky, bloodshot eye; the other eyelid quivered, but the curtain did not go up. It was black under the bloodshot eye. Harry had taken quite a lick there.
Tad tried again. “It’s Tad. You know, the drunk you helped?”
Harry smacked his lips, said, “I had some beer.”
“Yeah, I can smell it. Think you had something besides beer, maybe some whiskey, some hair tonic, maybe an ass whippin’. You’re lookin’ rough, Harry.”
“I fell.”
“Figured as much, part of the reason you look rough.”
Harry contemplated this, finally got his other eye open.
“Think it’s rough out there on the surface, ought to see inside my head.”
“I’m only a few hours and two pots of coffee ahead of you, kid.”
“Coffee. My kingdom for a pot.”
“Come on, kid, let me help you up.”
“You got a car?” Harry said. “Told me you walked everywhere.”
Tad leaned over and fastened Harry’s seat belt for him.
“Said I walked when I drank. Tonight I’m coffee’d up after a drunk, and I’m your designated driver.”
“Cool. What kind of car is this?”
“Mercedes,” Tad said, buckling himself in.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“If there actually was a hell, we all would be.”
“That’s the goddamn truth. Hey. Karate guy. Ain’t you supposed to be monklike or something? Got this car, that house. That ain’t no fuckin’ monk stuff.”
“Actually, what I do is not, strictly speaking, karate. Or jujitsu. It’s a cousin. And, to make another fine point that will most likely go in one drunk ear and out the other, I’m a capitalist who is too often too drunk to work. Thank goodness for all my money. If the Republicans knew I broke ranks and voted Democrat, they’d probably take away my tax cuts. But if it makes you feel any better, the car is not new, the house is inherited, and me, I’m too lazy to work.”
“Damn right it makes me feel better. That’s more monkish.”
Harry laid his head against the door as Tad pulled away from the curb, and was asleep and snoring before they had gone twenty feet.
When they were almost to Tad’s place, Harry suddenly awoke, sat up straight in his seat, said as if in midconversation, “I ran me a tab. Problem was, I didn’t have enough to cover it. Offered an IOU, signed and everything. Bartender offered me a fist in the eye, then took a hammer handle to my head. I got more bumps on it than bubble wrap. Tried to do what you did, you know, that loose fighting. Just made me fall down.”
“It’ll happen, kid.”
“And some guy, he poked me for saying something about Jesus. I don’t remember if it was good or bad, what I said. Tell you this though, that fucking place isn’t getting any more of my business.”
“Just lean back and be quiet, kid.”
Harry leaned back and closed his eyes. “Where we going?”
“My place.”
“What for?”
“To start over.”
22
He sat in the dark and smoked and drank and thought about things, came to a solid and firm conclusion. It wasn’t that he had to really consider it. He knew it. Though he did think about it from time to time, and it was this: He wasn’t a serial killer. He was Code Name: William. That’s who he was when he killed, and he did it because he wanted to. But he didn’t have to. He had the power and the control and he could stop at any time, and because of that, he wasn’t a serial killer.
Murderer. Not serial killer. That was a horrible thing. Someone driven by some inner demon, and he wasn’t that way. Not in the least. He didn’t mind murder, but he loathed any kind of loss of control.
He often went months without killing. Sometimes years.
He had been more active in the last two years than before, but it wasn’t a frenzy, as serial killers often ended up doing. He wasn’t driven, and he was being careful. Real careful. And he was making sure Code Name James was being careful as well.
He’d have to watch James, but so far, no big deal.
There hadn’t even been anything much in the news. And over the years not one of the crimes had been connected. He’d have thought there would at least be that. Someone saying, “Maybe these are linked, because…” Well, not because he and James—and he liked to think of his partner as James and himself as William when he considered the murders—had done anything to give them that lead, but because the authorities might just put together the fact that in the East Texas area there had been a half dozen unexplained murders in the last eight years.
Of course, there were a few others the authorities didn’t know about.
He remembered the first time. Couldn’t believe he did it. A young girl, and he was twelve. She was in the park, and he came there, and there were just the two of them. She must have been nine, maybe ten. He was sporting a black eye from where his old man had corrected him.
It really pissed him, that black eye. He hadn’t done anything. Not really. Nothing for his old man to get mad like that. Had put his hand down on his cigarette pack, crushing some smokes. That was it, and his old man had beaten him like a tambourine.
And there he was, banged up, and there was the little girl, looking clean in her dress and smiling, her hair back in a bow, and she looked so goddamn happy out there on the merry-go-round, pushing it with her foot, going around and around, laughing, not thinking about any kind of punch in the eye, just maybe birthday parties and hugs and presents and a fine future.
He watched her for a while.
No one else was in the park. He walked down there and grabbed at the merry-go-round, and ended up on it, dragging a foot, slowing it down.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’m playing.”
Playtime was over pretty quick after that. He stopped the merry-go-round and dragged her off of it and down to the creek, her screaming like a wildcat, and there he hit her with a rock, tried to do some things to her, but wasn’t sure how. He got her panties off and left her, and when they found her the same day, just before nightfall, he saw her father on the television, blank eyed and lost, and it made him feel…odd. Not sad. Kind of good inside. He had managed to kill someone and wound someone else, as if by ricochet.
A week later he read the mother hanged herself.
Two for him. None for the other guys, and there was still one wounded as well. Out of commission for the human race team.
So he was actually at two and half.
No one ever suspected him.
He went fo
r years not killing again.
Thought about it, but didn’t do it. Even then, as a kid, he was cautious. When he was sixteen he caught his old man not looking, out in the carport, bent over a dismantled motor he had on some greasy cardboad. He picked up a wrench, said, “Hey, Pops.”
When his father turned, he hit him across the mouth with the wrench, making blood and teeth fly. The old man went down and tried to get up, and he hit him again. When he ran away, the old man was holding the back of his head with one hand, cursing at him, spitting blood and teeth. And the curses were like the joyful song the sirens sang.
It made him happy. He laughed as he ran. Never looked back.
He got out of his chair, went to the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled back his socks and underwear. There was a little box back there. It was a watchcase. He opened the case. The watch, which had been given to him long ago by a girlfriend he dumped shortly thereafter, was still in the case. It was fastened to a cardboard slide, and he slipped that out. Behind it was a single pearl earring.
He had taken it when James wasn’t looking. He told James not to take souvenirs, and that was right. You shouldn’t. James shouldn’t because he might get sloppy. But this one pearl earring from long ago, what could it matter now? Who would look here and find it? He had taken it off a young woman whose body had yet to be found, her and her boyfriend. Out there in the wild, eaten by ants and the like. Sometimes he thought about going out there to see what might remain. But it had been so long ago and he had been so strong, not going out there, it was best to hold to the plan.
Don’t get sloppy.
He took the earring out of the box and ran his thumb and forefinger over it. He thought about the ear it had been fastened to. Small, with the aroma of cheap perfume.
He sniffed the pearl. The perfume was long gone, of course. He put it in his mouth and rolled his tongue around it, then took it out and let it lie in the palm of his hand so that he could stare at it, think of her ear. A small, delicate thing.
After a moment he replaced the earring in the box, returned the cardboard and the watch, closed the box, put it in the drawer, and closed it up.