The Joy of Killing (25 page)

“Like the Professor,” he said.

“Kind of. It would erase a lot of bad memories, balance things out. Leave you free and clear. Happy, in other words.”

“Even if I admitted it, no one would believe you.”

“Why would I tell anyone?”

He gazed out the window for a second.

“Maybe you've got a grudge against me, from the old days.”

I figured he would be worried about this. But, truthfully? I would have told him that whatever happened that day, years ago, I owed him no ill will. “No one wrote their own script” was a favorite line of the Professor's, and I believed it. As for my wife, that never did bother me. I was in neutral on both counts. I was in neutral, period.

“Like you said, we were kids. As for my wife, you got both of us out of a bad situation.”

David thought about that for a second, then stubbed out his cigarette in a black marble ashtray on the end table. He stood up and walked to the window. Turned back to me.

“It had to be done,” he said in a calm, almost flat voice. “Willie wanted money. He had photographs of me, from a long time ago, no one would have cared about anyway. It was just time. He needed to be gone.”

“I get it, but why the alley? Why the knife?”

David took a step back; now I could barely make out his features.

“He wanted to come up here, and I couldn't have that. I suggested the tavern. I got there a few minutes early and waited in the alley next to it.”

“How did you do it?”

“How?” He came forward, toward the table, stopping only a few feet away. I kept my seat. He turned to the counter and picked up an ebony-handled hunting knife with a viciously curved blade. His voice took on a harsh timbre. “With this. I heard him shuffling down the sidewalk with his cane. I let him pass by and then grabbed him from behind.”

David's arm hooked out about neck high.

“I pulled him back into the alley. He didn't struggle, didn't make a noise. ‘Willie,' I said into his ear. ‘It's me, David.' The cane fell from his hand. All he could say was, ‘I know.'”

My host's grip tightened the knife to his quarry's neck.

“I sunk the tip of the knife in the base of his throat and pulled up. I felt him begin to slip, and I held steady, and he fell against the knife which ripped up his throat and into his mouth. He was hanging there, his jawbone hooked on the blade, twitching. I jerked up once or twice, felt him loosen. I turned him around, watched the light in his eyes fade, and jerked the knife back out.”

David was standing over the body, crumpled on the alley floor, with the blood-dripping knife in his hand. He was breathing hard. He looked up at me.

“You looked like . . . you enjoyed it,” I said.

His eyes were bright. “It felt good. Things were straight. I felt nothing toward him, only release in myself.” He carefully laid the hunting knife on the table.

I could see the blood on his hands and shoes, hear the throttled croak of the lump on the floor. The crazily bemused look in David's eye was disturbing. I stood up and told him I needed to use the bathroom. He looked somewhat amazed, like after all that, the beauty of all that, and all you can think of is you have to take a piss?

I
DROP MY
hands to my lap. That's pretty accurate, best as I can remember. Some of the dialogue might be a little off. Hard to think it was only a short time ago. My throat is dry. I need water to make it through the next few hours. I'm reluctant to break the spell. As for Willie's death, it's as I thought; it seemed to have a certain harmony to it, the way it came about. That's not the end of the scene, though. The quiver in my chest tells me that.

“U
SE THE ONE
in the bedroom,” David said, motioning. “The one in the hall is torn up. Workers should have been here by now.”

The bedroom is the size of my apartment. A four-poster bed of a mahogany frame covered by a silk canopy sits in the middle. Turkish rugs are scattered about. A small crystal chandelier hangs over a leather recliner and ottoman by the window. I pause. Walk by a wall of framed photographs on the way to the bathroom in the far corner. Just before I turn, I spot a picture on top of a heavy wood dresser. It looks like David, but without the lock of hair. His father. There is a flash of silver in the corner of my eye as it
passes over the cluttered dresser top. Shiny. Flat, oblong. My eyes swing back to it. My feet freeze on the floor. I study the object in the mirror, from the back. A Zippo.
The
Zippo. I force air into my lungs, and it seems to activate a pulsing, gathering rage.
The bastard stole it from me
. He's had it all these years, sitting here on his dresser, in a ceramic ashtray, along with his gold cufflinks and money clip. I reach for it slowly, as if I'm afraid it might crumble in my touch. My finger brushes the dent on the top corner, then my fingers grasp the metal and hold the object upright. The globe and anchor shine brightly. I needn't turn it over, but I do. All these years, it could have been in my pocket; all the clinks and clunks it could have made. The reassuring touch on my thigh when I walked. I can see it sitting upright on the desk in my office, the sole symbol of sanity in my life, over the years. I feel empty from the life I've lived without it. There were the initials, just as I knew. R.L.M.

The metal grows heavy and hot. I bring it in closer, consumed by the sensation of it in my fingers, when I hear a voice behind me.

“I was going to give it to you,” a face in the mirror says. I knew you would come up here after Willie.”

David's eyes follow my hand as it drops to my side.

“I was always going to give it back.”

He was trying to manage a smirk, and it contorted his features. I grasp the Zippo tightly, then relax, then tighten. My mind is racing back to the last time I saw it.

“The church,” I say. “My wedding.” The robing room in the church. I'm putting my tuxedo on, and my best man convinces me
that the Zippo would look awkward in the tailored trousers. He appears to slip it into my jeans pocket, pats me on the shoulder, urges me to hurry up, we're behind time. The scene had completely dropped out.

“It never seemed the right time,” he said, the twisted smirk now replaced by a look of some concern.

I slipped the Zippo in my pocket, felt the familiar heavy heat on my thigh. I felt strength from it.

“You don't mind if I take it now?”

He tried a nervous smile. “No, fuck no, man, it's yours. I feel really bad about it.”

I take a step toward him, he tenses, steps back.

“I've got to go,” I say.

“Hey,” he says. “We're all right?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Good to see you.”

“Whatever happened to Judy Pauling?” I ask, as he moves aside and I angle toward the door. I pause and await his response.

He looks at me nervously. “She teaches at Irving Elementary.”

I smiled. “By the way, I brought something for you. A signed copy of
The Joy of Killing
. It's in the car.”

“That's OK, man.”

“You should have a signed copy. You and he . . .”

“That's all right,” he said.

I reached for the door handle, twisted it, and stepped out onto the porch.

W
HAT STRIKES ME
here, as I lay out the scene, is how clearly and cleanly everything is flowing. The protagonist is reflecting very little on what he's seen or found, or what he's going to do about it. He's moving with clarity and an easy sense of purpose. There is no doubt or hesitation; he knows what to do, and he's going to do it. He is not ruffled or hysterical, or red-faced, or laced with anger or a need for revenge or payback. Impressive. Doing what comes natural, as they say. As for David, you can see the relief on his face. He's never known his friend as a violent man, although he did wonder somewhat after reading his books. He has considerable hope that his friend will just drive off. He still has the aftermath of killing Willie to deal with.

W
ALKING TO THE
car, I felt the cool heat of a Midwest autumn breeze on my forehead. The leaf-covered stream twisting through the grounds has caught the light through the trees. You could ride a bike over the gentle hills of Iowa for hours on a day like this and only get stronger as you went. I opened the passenger's door, reached in, and grabbed my briefcase from the seat. I turned back to the stone house. David was not in sight. The door was closed. I smiled slightly. The days of him calling the shots were gone for good.

I pushed the front door open and stepped in through the front hall. David was sitting on the couch, where he was earlier, apparently waiting for me. “I'll have that beer now,” I told him. He nodded somewhat glumly, as if the whole thing was foretold, and while he was in the kitchen fetching it, I set the briefcase down on
a long side table. I reached in and pulled out a signed hard copy of the Professor's memoir and laid it on the table. I scribbled a note on one of the inside pages, as I was often asked to do.

I'd closed the book by the time he returned. He handed me the beer, an Old Style, as I remember. The neck was remarkably cold to my touch. I set it on the table.

“Take a look,” I said, pointing to the book, startled for a moment by the gentle look on the Professor's face.

David flipped open the front cover, past a page or two, until he came to the title page and the Professor's signature: “To my dear friend David,” it read, and then a space and the signature. He looked up at me, and I motioned for him to turn another page. He did, and on it is my handwriting: “To David, who taught me the ways of the world” and my signature.

He bent over the page, then flipped back to the previous page.

“It's the same handwriting,” he said.

At that, I reached around to my back pocket and touched the handle of the kitchen knife. I drew it out slowly. I slipped the blade around and under his neck. I pressed in slightly and pulled until I felt it slip into the flesh. David turned his head toward me. His face was draining. His right arm jerked out.

“The Zippo was the only thing I ever cared about,” I said. A weak smirk crossed his face, and his head turned back down. I jerked the knife again, this time more gently, until it gave way into the throat. Blood pumped in huge spurts across the table, strange gurgling, grating sounds rose from beneath my hand, then a blustering noise from my own throat. Everything—the Professor's face,
my hands, even the weed still hanging from David's mouth—was a bright crimson. Red liquid far and wide.

I
FEEL A
cold draft. It means someone has opened the downstairs door. Which means someone is on the stairs. I rise and walk to the door, slide the little bolt, and jerk it open. Nothing, just as before. Still, I feel the cool air. The outside door, I think. Someone is downstairs. I walk to the rear window and look out. No sign of anything, or anyone. I relax.

The stars have settled over the trees. Clouds are shimmering slightly in the reflected moonlight. How many scenes in your life like this have you missed? I think. The unseen beauty of nature. Like today.

It hits me: I am a murderer, after all. Like the Professor, I now know the feeling of taking a human life. Although it didn't happen the way I would have wanted. Clean and clear without emotion or need or hate or guilt was how it should have been. But I had slipped out of neutral. The remnants of the rage reverberate through me, now. Poison left behind, as I said earlier. And that is, I guess, an unfortunate byproduct of clarity. If you wipe the screen clean, you must accept the truth of what then appears. And I will, I'll adjust and move on. There's been so much progress already tonight, and yet more to come. I sense that if—
when
, I mean—the rest of the road is run, adjustments in the emotional content will occur as naturally as the quiet after the storm.

I have no recollection of what happened after the killing; how I got cleaned up—I must have been splattered in blood—or when
I left the place. The knife: I must have taken the time to wash it and put it back in the briefcase. Driving away from the house, out of the city, turning onto the road up here—I don't remember any of it.

Given the track of my life, I must wonder if the story of the killing is true, in whole or in part. For images to spring like that fully formed from nothing and in perfect sequence is quite stunning. To sit here in this room for hours without the slightest hint of the killing scene in the living room of David's house. The recall of it in such exquisite detail should heighten its veracity, I would think. I can't help but smile at the thought that the smirk is finally once and for all wiped from David's face.

But how did it get so out of control? I hadn't gone up there with violent purpose. None at all. I had gone there with some questions, to be sure, some questions about the Aqua Velva Man's violent demise, although I doubt I intended to stir up that nest of devils for the simple reason that David, untrustworthy to begin with, would tell a story that would only make him look good and me weak. If you care about nothing, then you can move through life a free man, unencumbered by mordant emotions, embracing all things, all people; if you quit
trying
to care about something, that is, and yes, I was there, close to there, thanks to my second wife, and I was happier for it. Today was unfortunate from that point of view.