Cube Sleuth (30 page)

Keith stares at me. He seems to be in a Zen-like state. I guess he really has a hard-on for giving me the ax.

I giggle inside my mouth for a moment. I rub one of my sore shoulders and breathe deeply.

Keith reaches into an open drawer in front of him. He takes out a photograph and slides it across his desk.

I hold the picture close to my face. It’s of him smiling next to a woman in a wheelchair. A plastic tube from the wheelchair rests in the corner of her mouth. Standing beside Keith is a man who looks about thirty. Two younger women, one who looks a little younger than me, and one who looks barely eighteen, kneel on either side of the woman in the wheelchair. It’s a holiday photo; everyone wears those awful-yet-festive sweaters.

I look up at Keith with a confused smile.

“That’s my family. My son, Elliott. My daughters, Chrissy and Corrine. My wife Linda.”

“Nice looking family.” I slide the picture back to him.

“I don’t love my wife.”

I laugh, thinking he’s kidding. He’s not.

“I haven’t loved her in a long time. Not since Corrine was in pre-school.”

“Why—?”

“Our kids are the only thing keeping us together. Linda was planning to divorce me, and I was fine with it. Happy, really. Before she had the papers drawn up, she went on vacation with some girl friends to get away from me.”

This may be my first firing, but it seems abnormal so far.

“She was in a little boat with friends a half-mile from the shore. She dove into the water from the boat and landed headfirst in a sandbar. Broke her neck. Paralyzed from the chin down.”

“Oh my God. I’m sorry.” I don’t want to let on that Stella already told me his wife was paralyzed. I tap my foot on the leg of his desk. I don’t want to look at him but I don’t dare look away.

“I was stuck taking care of her and the kids. I love my kids a lot. I stayed for them. And you can’t really divorce your quadriplegic wife without being shunned.”

I nod. At least that part makes sense.

“I took care of her for years. Waited for her to die. I knew I could never leave her. I could learn to accept my friends and the rest of my family disowning me. But I couldn’t do it to my kids.

“Then I met someone here at work. Fell in love with her.” He reaches into his desk and pulls out another picture. I grip the arms of my chair and press my aching back into the backrest as hard as I can.

I see that the picture is of Keith and Eve before I pick it up. The picture is of him with his arm around her on a Ferris wheel; Eve is taking the picture. Lights from other rides glint off of Keith’s head, giving him a lopsided halo. The picture makes the knowledge that I slept with someone after Keith did much, much more visceral. If I had anything in my stomach, it would be in the back of my mouth right now.

The headache returns with a vengeance. The lights flare again. My jaw clenches. The acid ball in my brain is now triple the size and erupting instead of melting.

“I know about all this already. I know you’re Mr. Luthor.”

His mouth opens in disbelief. “She told you?”

“No. I figured it out once I heard the nickname.”

“Good for you.” Keith takes the picture, kisses it, and places it in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Something about the way he does this tells me he’s preparing to die. I glance back at the closed door and feel strangled from the inside.

“We had six years together. But she always thought that when Corrine went off to college, I would divorce Linda and marry her. I tried to explain it to her, but she wouldn’t listen.

“So Corrine went off to school and then Eve started refusing to see me. I actually considered drowning my wife in the tub.” He scratches his shiny head. A sick laugh that’s almost a cough escapes from his dry lips.

Mr. Luthor reaches into his desk again. He lifts a wallet-sized picture, holding it away from me. He taps it into his palm, relishing what is apparently his trump card.

“Eve decided to force my hand, make me jealous. She seduced this young guy at work, someone she knew I can’t stand.”

“Keith, I had no way—”

“She knew how jealous I am. She made sure I found out about it eventually. I went to see her. We fought. She went in the bathroom to wash her face. I started looking around her bedroom. She wouldn’t tell me who the guy was, and I had to know. I looked under her bed and found this.”

Keith tosses the tiny picture in my lap. First I see the writing on the back: FOREVER YOURS, RON. My empty stomach crumples. Tears blur my vision. I turn it over and see Ron’s ridiculous gigolo shirt and his matching smile.

I guess I dropped it while I was at Eve’s. It’s my fault that Ron died. That recurring dream I had was much more accurate than I thought. Life can be funny in a very unfunny way.

The detective in me tells me to get out of the room
right now
, because Keith is about to kill me. Keith wouldn’t tell me all this unless he was planning to kill me. He doesn’t care about getting caught because he’s killing himself right after me. He’s telling me all this so that when I die, I’m tortured by guilt.

I wipe my eyes and see the gun in Keith’s hand. For a moment I think it’s the gun he killed Ron with, but then I remember that he had to leave that one in the Jeep.

Pressing my palms into my eye sockets to relieve the pressure of my migraine, I picture Ron re-enacting his kiss with Helen, picture him alive and happy, and am overcome with rage. “You fucking idiot! You’re such a meticulous, anal-retentive cocksucker when you’re at work. Every little detail has to be perfect. But when you’re gonna—when you decide to—when you—when you’re gonna blow someone’s fucking head off, you don’t take the time to—you don’t make sure you have the right fucking head. Idiot!” I throw the picture in his face.

“I wasn’t in the right state of mind, Bobby. I took the picture. I left before she came out of the bathroom. I didn’t give her a chance to explain.”

I wonder if I can stall long enough for Capillo to bust in here and save me. Or if he’ll wait in the lobby for me until he hears gunshots. I remember Capillo in his office telling me “No one wanted to kill your friend. If it were you I found dead, I’m sure I could round up half a dozen suspects in a day.”

Keith taps the barrel of his gun against his desk. “I was at least meticulous in planning it out. It was perfect. But when I did it, the next time I saw Eve, she knew it was me. She looked at my face and just started to cry. She never talked to me again.”

Even if I run for the door, he can shoot me five times in the back before I open it.

“Funny thing is, I never would’ve known I killed the wrong guy if you didn’t come in here and tell me Ron was in love with a girl from college. But I didn’t know it was
you
until I saw you holding Eve in the river.”

“You’re gonna kill yourself, right? Nothing to live for without her. Kill me, then yourself, right?” Adrenaline heals my aching muscles. I feel like I’m at a race where the starting pistol is going to be fired directly into my face.

“Exactly.”

“What about your kids?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“You’re gonna ruin your family forever.”

“Shut up.”

“Probably ruin their lives. ‘Yeah, my dad cheated on my paralyzed mom. Killed an innocent guy, drove a woman to suicide, killed another guy, then killed himself.’”

“I don’t have a choice now, because of you. You poked around and dredged up things that were none of your business. I know you were talking to people here. Asking questions. Keeping Ron’s death fresh in their minds. I don’t know what you took from HR, but I knew sooner or later you would find me. And obviously, I was right.

“I go to jail, long trial, death row, that’s a decade of my kids’ lives. This way, it’s over before they have to get involved.” He points the gun at me for the first time.

I wonder how much it hurts when a bullet hits you. “Turn yourself in. Go to jail. Find Jesus. Accept the punishment like a man, and your kids will learn to cope. Plead guilty; you might just get life.” I think about how the Muslims think the Romans killed the wrong Jesus-Barabbas.

Keith laughs. “You really think you’re going to talk me out of this? I’ve made my peace. We both die today.”

I picture the door behind me. I don’t turn to look, afraid he’ll shoot me if I do. I need to stall him. My head throbs, my pulse chugs in my ears.

“You ready, Bobby?” Keith cocks the gun.

“Let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“You learned how to angle the gun just right to make it look like Ron shot himself, correct?”

“I filmed myself pulling the trigger on my own temple, then practiced on a mannequin head.”
So smart and so stupid
. How could he not know that picture of Ron was a joke? Because he has no sense of humor, that’s how.

“And you fired a second shot for the powder burns. Fired it at yourself. You were wearing a bullet-proof vest.”

A look of astonishment on Keith’s smooth face. “How the hell did—”

I leap across the desk, arms forward, lunging for the gun.

Halfway there, I crash into an invisible brick wall. I fall backwards, toppling the chair behind me. I hear thunder.

Lying on the ground, dazed, I see blood bubbling out of my chest. I hear someone scream outside the office, hear people running. My ears vibrate with the horrible echo of the shot.

Keith steps around the desk and stands over me. I feel the excruciating pain in my chest and cover the bullet hole with my trembling hands. It feels like someone hit me with a hammer so hard the head went though my ribs and into my lungs.

He points the gun right between my eyes. The sun cutting through the blinds shines on his head and his white teeth. He looks huge from where I lie. As he cocks the gun again, I picture Capillo bursting in and shooting him in the chest three times. Keith tumbles over his desk, dead. Capillo helps me up and walks me to a waiting ambulance. My last fantasy.

“Anything you wanna say?” Keith moves the gun forward until my eyes cross looking at the barrel.

I lift my hand and give him the finger.

My breath comes out in wheezes, one of my lungs filling with blood. The feeling of drowning terrifies me, and I wait for the next bullet to end it.

My last thoughts:

It’s three days before my date with Nancy. Ten days before my big performance. If I was trying to be Ron, I succeeded.

My parents will never get over this. I’ve ruined the rest of their lives and I’m sorry.

If I’d had the guts to just kill myself the right way instead of trying to slowly destroy my life, only one person would be dead instead of four.

The old Bobby Pinker deserves this, but the new one is an innocent bystander. Who knows which version of me would’ve been in charge for the rest of my life.

I’m glad my brother will have enough money to pay my debts, pay for my funeral, and hopefully start a trust fund for the baby.

I’m glad Theo won’t get a chance to take a bat to my head.

I wish I could see how beautiful Nancy looks when she’s an old lady.

I wish I could sit and talk to the baby when he’s a grown man, find out what he thinks about the world.

Just before Keith pulls the trigger, I see Ron out of the corner of my eye. He stands beside Keith, dressed in his work khakis, picking his nose. When he realizes that I can see him, his eyes widen and he hides his booger-finger behind his back. I giggle and close my eyes.

Seriously, my boss kills me.

When God whispers a secret in my ear, He uses my voice.

If you’ve ever heard a recording of your voice—you know it’s you but it sounds like someone else—you know what this sounds like. It’s probably how a schizophrenic would describe the voice in her head, only my voice tells the truth. But it’s not that I hear Him; He’s like the voice in my head sounding out words when I read a book.

I hate the rain. I want it to be sunny and 68 degrees all year round, but any place with weather like that always has earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis. These DC winters aren’t unbearable; they remind me a lot of Philly winters.

I walk up 25
^th
Street on my way to Trader Joe’s. The wind blows the rain down at an angle and I tilt my umbrella over my eyes to keep dry. I watch the sidewalk to avoid walking into someone.

Three bony fingers tap my right hand like they’re rapping on a table. I don’t see them; I can barely feel them. My South Philly survival instinct tells me to whip around and slap this person in his nuts to buy me enough time to dig out my pepper spray. But then He whispers in my ear
He needs your help
.

The words come not as sounds and not as images, just as knowledge. A radio transmission from outer space with layers of coded messages buried in the static. Electric blips. Random bits of cryptic information.

The frail fingers belong to an old man.

He was feeling around to keep from walking into people.

He can’t see.

He dropped his glasses in the rain and the woman behind him stepped on them. In his mind, he heard Burgess Meredith in
The Twilight Zone
say “It’s not fair.”

His world has become a dripping blur. His heart pounds. He has no idea if he’s walking in the right direction anymore. He won’t ask for help. If he admits he can’t see, some punk will mug him and leave him on the sidewalk.

He couldn’t find his umbrella before he left the house. Roberta had always known where his things were. Now he’ll probably catch pneumonia and die. This is how it is at his age. You fall down and die. You catch pneumonia and die. You have a heart attack and die. You get cancer and die. It’s fine, really. He misses Roberta, and his kids and grandkids don’t make time for him anymore.

Aw, this is someone’s pop-pop.

I turn around and pull back my umbrella to see the old man. Rain gushes into my face like I’m standing under a frigging gutter. He’s moving so slowly he’s barely an inch past where he was when he touched me. He sways like a newspaper sailboat.