Dirtbags (9 page)

But the nagging tugged still at his stomach, much as it had earlier. There he was, wiping fingerprints at a murder scene, and yet, he was distracted by his pending ulcer. He rifled through her refrigerator for some milk, through her medicine cabinet for something, anything to soothe his stomach, then, much like earlier in the grocery store, it hit him.

It was done. Just like that, two people were dead. The one they had intended to kill and someone else by his own hand. It had begun. It began, and he was looking to run out, leaving them as they lie. His entire life, he’d imagined this moment, and now, with it staring him in the face, did he really expect to make a run for it? He steadied himself with a hand on the bathroom counter and stared back at the reflection in the mirror. He could never leave them lying there in that room like that.

One day they would look back on his work, and what would they find? A woman with a syringe in her arm and a man shot three times. Who knew? He stood very well aware of what they wouldn’t find: art. No art at all. Not a drop of it. No well-placed clues. No puzzles for inspectors to piece together. Unless he planned every murder from this point forward to feature a woman with a syringe in her arm and a man shot three times, he had absolutely no vision.

He considered that a moment.

He shook it off. No, easier still to do something with the bodies he already had. But what? He closed his eyes. What would Dahmer do? He shook that off as well. There was no way he would entertain eating another human. What about Bundy? John Wayne Gacy?

As he wiped down the rest of the apartment, it nagged at the back of him until he finally came up with it. He went to the kitchenette and opened every drawer until he found what he needed. He collected his tools and stepped into the bedroom for the last time, this time to stage the first of his killings.

8

“Smile, hon. You’re in New Orleans.”

As if Calvin needed reminding. His senses assaulted good and proper, he figured he’d been standing there on Bourbon Street, staring off into space and thinking of god only knows what when the little
jolie fille
sauntered along and roped her arm around his neck. Suddenly aware that his face had contorted into some sort of twisted scowl, he replaced it immediately with the shit-eatingest grin he dared summon.

“You had too much to drink tonight?” she cooed. Brunette, or something like it. Big through the chest and a touch roomier through the hips than he cared for, but he’d been in and out of his fair share of bars since dropping South of the Interstate, into the Big Easy, and he figured beggars could hardly afford to be choosers.

“Too much for me is hardly enough.” He smiled. A hot dog vendor sold wares with one foot in a puddle of piss. Calvin couldn’t remember the last time he ate, although he was far from hungry. Who could think of food in a town like this? “I’m just getting started.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” she yelped. She did a little dance and hurried him into the next bar with her.

This wouldn’t be like the last time, he promised himself. This time, he was prepared.

The girl ordered them something sugary, then waited for him to pay. London’s money was long gone. All he had was what he rousted from Corrina’s purse and some cash in her sock drawer. He’d barely be able to get back to Lake Castor unless . . .

Unless he ran across someone unsuspecting. He pulled a couple dollars from his pocket and slid them across the bar. He smiled and leaned into her.

“This is some city,” he said.

“You like it? It’s the best city on Earth.”

“It was nearly wiped out, huh? By that hurricane.”

“It will take a lot more than a hurricane to wipe this city out!” she said. She touched the rim of her shot glass to his, shrieked some shit that garnered applause from a few dudes milling about, then swallowed it. She did another of those little dances. “A whole lot more.”

He raised two fingers to the bartender, and the shots were replaced.

“At least it cleaned the city up a little,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“It washed out all the shit,” he said. “You know what I mean: the crime. All that spread out across the country, instead of staying in one centralized location. Now look what you have. It’s a fun little city, probably much cleaner. Safer. Folks like you and me can drink freely and stumble about all night long and not have to worry about looking over our shoulder. All thanks to Hurricane Katrina.”

She looked at him. She looked at him a while longer. She seemed to have something to say, but instead opted to order another shot. She eyed him over the top of the glass, then slapped it down to the bar. She did the little dance again, but this time more as a routine, as if to ward away devils. She faced him squarely.

“Where are you from?”

“A little town in Virginia. Just over the Carolina border.”

She nodded. “What brings you to New Orleans?”

“Just visiting,” he said. “I’m treating myself.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed.” He took a sip from his shot glass. “I finally finished a project I been working on for a long while. A lucrative one.” He said the last sentence as if it were coated in molasses.

“Is that so?” Her eyes watched every inch of him. Calvin feared she could smell it. Feared something had gone out on the news or worse, the Internet, and she intended to keep him busy until the authorities arrived. “What kind of project?”

“If I told you—” He smiled. “—I’d have to kill you.”

She rolled her eyes and called over the bartender. She said something that might as well have been French, and he fetched two tall glasses filled with bright, Day-Glo liquid. She put money on the bar.

“This one’s on me,” she said.

“What is it?”

“You seem to like sipping, so this is good for sipping.”

He tasted it. Sugary, syrupy, thick. Tasty. He wiped excess from his lips and thanked her. “Does it have a name?”

“Do you?”

He grinned. “Calvin.”

“Calvin from Virginia,” she said. “I’m Betsy.”

“Betsy from New Orleans.”

“Damn straight.”

They shook hands, and he sipped more of the drink. His head swam. He ought to go easy on the drink. Let her get drunker. Keep things light. Get her alone . . .

“Did you cut yourself?” she asked.

“What?”

She pointed to his shirttail. “You’re bleeding.”

He looked down. The bottom of his shirt was flecked with blood. He touched the spot as if that would do the trick, but it had long dried.

“I reckon so.” He scratched at it with a fingernail. It was Corrina’s blood. Or was it Phillip’s? He had no way of knowing. By the time he’d finished his business back at her apartment, their fluids had bled out and mingled together, and there was little telling who was who and what belonged where. He smiled at the image. There was no telling where or how the blood got on that shirt. When all was said and done, it had gotten everywhere.

But that smile faded.
Corrina. Corrina, Corrina.
Her name still rolled off his tongue like, oddly enough, a dead body. He saw her—flaxen hair, too gaunt and pale, often in need of a meal—in his mind’s eye, and his heart sank, taking with it all of his mighty accomplishments. He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes and saw how her skin gave way, didn’t resist at all as he carved the knife into her chest.

Betsy felt him wandering. She put a hand to his shoulder and shook. “You like dancing?”

A sudden intrusion of energy infected her, and she spread it evenly. She hopped up and down like an expectant puppy.

Calvin shrugged. He hated dancing.

She grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the bar. He lagged behind her, eyed her up and down. She wore pants that ended somewhere between her calf and ankle. Her legs disappeared into little cheap shoes, and she wore no socks. She bounced when she walked, as if unaware of how silly she looked in those ridiculous shoes. He watched her hair bob up and down at her slumping, dumpy shoulders.

They moved through a throng of idiots, hooting and hollering and shaking their business. A few got grabby with Betsy, and he wondered should he defend her honor. She seemed hardly far from her own element. She moved through them like a hot knife, parted them like the Red Sea. In no time, they were off Bourbon and onto one of the side streets. Things got quieter, the din reduced to background noise. She pushed him against a wall.

“We just met,” she giggled. She was an inch from his face.

“Yes we did,” he said.

“I think I’m a little tipsy.”

“So am I.”

Calvin wondered if it was this easy. If honestly it was this goddamn easy and he’d missed it all these years. Suddenly, he felt as if he’d spent his entire life bouncing about like some aimless molecule, ricocheting off every lost cause and false start until only most recently, namely
now . . . 
him hurtling headfirst toward a single trajectory, and for the first time since God knew how long, things felt right. No, things felt
fucking
right, and he knew, more than he knew anything else, that he had to leave this girl dead.

“Can we go somewhere alone?”

She smiled. Crosshatched teeth. “You read my mind, sugar.”

Was it just New Orleans? A city of dalliance and sin? A city where one could get lost in the vice and muck and piss-stained streets and men vomiting on the corner, women reveling in their own filth and desire? Or had his eyes only recently opened? Had they been shut tight and now, with them open and wide, he could see the world for what it was and, better still, himself for what he was. For the entire planet could stop on its axis, and it could little prevent him from what he found himself fated to do.

He led her by the arm, but she stopped him again, leaned him against the wall. Kissed his neck. Ran a hand down his back and across his rump. Brought her hand around front. He leaned his head back and stared up the side of the building.

“Wait a minute.”

Her lips lingered near his earlobe. “What’s the problem, hon?”

“No problem.” He looked up and down the dark, gas-lit street. “Where are we?”

“New Orleans. The Quarter.”

“What street?”

“Royal.” She took a step back. “You got a bus to catch or something?”

“Is this . . . ” He stepped into the cobblestoned street and looked up the facade of the building. “Holy shit. It is.” He slapped his own forehead. “I don’t believe it.”

“What gives?”

He rushed to her, took her in his arms. “Oh my god, do you know what this is?” He pointed up to the top of the three-story, terraced facade. She had no idea. “This is Madame LaLaurie’s house. Her mansion!”

“I don’t get it.” She toyed with the ends of her hair. Faraway, folks were leaving the bars and headed back to their hotels or their homes, but somewhere else, out of her reach. “Who the hell is Madame LaLaurie?”

“Who the hell is Madame LaLaurie?” He shook his head, but by now, he was used to it. Nobody cared about the important things anymore. “Madame Delphine LaLaurie is one of the few female serial killers. Oh, she’s a bit of a mystery. Something of a treat. You see, she had a bunch of slaves . .  .”

“Slaves?”

“It was before the Civil War. Anyway, one night a fire breaks out and when they come to evacuate everyone from the house, they find a bunch of slaves inside, each tortured and bound and mutilated. One is chained by the ankle to the oven. They think she’s the one who started it. Setting herself on fire, anything to get free from this house. Others, chained by the neck and spread out in the basement. Others still on the third floor, right up there. Pieces of slaves here and there. She’d been doing it for years.” Calvin walked the length of the Royal Street facade. His eyes brimmed with awe and wonder. “Who knows how many slaves Madame LaLaurie killed before the fire.”

“That’s awful,” Betsy said. She looked toward Bourbon Street. She looked the other way.

“Isn’t it? You want to know the best part?”

“I don’t think so.”

“They never caught her.” Calvin stepped closer. He put his mouth on her neck. Charged. “She ran away to Paris. France. She got away with it.”

Betsy squirmed. Calvin kept working up and down her neck. He pushed her to the wall.

“Hey sugar,” she said weakly, “what do you say we go back to my place?”

He reached for his back pocket. “I got a better idea,” he said. He felt the knife. He brought that hand around and led her into the shadows of the LaLaurie house. There he ran his mouth up and down her and felt her tension ease, felt her hands and body and the tiny gooseflesh across her skin give him the green light. His mouth to work, his ears chugged overtime, listening for any passersby or witnesses or anyone wandering along when he needed them least. He ran a hand up and down her front and sides and, satisfied she was trembling enough, slipped into her britches and took to fiddling with her undercarriage.

“Jesus,” she whispered. Her breathing shortened. “Oh . . . Jesus.”

“You like that?” he whispered. One hand did all the work while the other reached around behind him, into his back pocket. His finger was on the tip of the knife handle when everything went black.

He came to rather sudden and felt hands all about him. This way, that. Nothing too salacious, but they searched him for anything and everything, whoever
they
were.

“His wallet’s in his back pocket,” said Betsy’s voice. The hands rolled him over and went for his back pocket.

“Piece of shit doesn’t have anything.” Man’s voice. The wallet hit Calvin in his back. “Wait a second. What’s this?” The hands went for and found the knife. “Honey, he’s got a knife.”

It hurt to open his eyes. Calvin reached back into the darkness to stop the removal of his blade, but it was out of his pocket and into the stratosphere, gone like a light. He rolled over and felt a foot in his ribs.
Oof
. He rolled and the foot kept kicking, he kept rolling. He kept rolling across the cobblestoned street until he sailed into a garbage can, knocking it and its contents over and scattering them into the street. He opened his eyes.

The guy wasn’t that big. He didn’t have much to compare him to, but if he had to open his eyes to a guy beating the shit out of him and holding his own knife, he could do much worse. Calvin rolled and, fearing for his life, turned up the gas a bit. He grabbed the trashcan and pushed it toward his attacker, clipping him in the shins. The guy went down.