Earth Angel (42 page)

I ate the swordfish and it was delicious as promised. I found myself wolfing it down.

“Good, huh?” he said without arrogance or pride. He grabbed the chair from the desk and rolled it over and sat about five
feet away from me.

I gobbled down a few more bites. “So, what lecture were you expecting from me?”

“The one where you tell me about all the pain I’ve caused those poor girls. How I’ve got the whole town too frightened to
go out. How I need help, psychiatric specialists.”

“Oh,” I said, chewing vigorously, “that lecture.”

“I figure you’ll end up summarizing my symptoms and diagnose me as someone born without a conscience—a sociopath.”

I stuffed an asparagus in my mouth. “Actually, sociopath is outdated. It’s now called ‘antisocial personality disorder’ and
it includes a broader spectrum of activity. For example, to qualify, the onset of your antisocial behavior must have started
before you were fifteen and it can’t be the result of mental illness. Does that apply?”

“Afraid not. I was a perfect angel until, oh, well past twenty-five, I think. That’s when I became an artist.” He grimaced,
rubbed his stomach. “Hmmm, those corn dogs didn’t quite agree with me.”

The arsenic was working. Yet, I didn’t feel hopeful as I thought I would. I felt kind of sneaky and sleazy. I knew it was
stupid, I knew he deserved whatever he got, but there was something magnificently compelling about him. Nevertheless, I picked
up the iced tea and jiggled it so the ice cubes knocked enticingly against the glass. “Here. Maybe this will help.”

He stood up, clutched his stomach with a wince, and took the glass from me. “Thank you. I guess you could say
this is just what the doctor ordered.” He smiled, gulped down the rest of the tea.

I wanted to keep him talking, give the poison time to take hold. Make him too sick to do to me whatever he had in mind. “So,
you’re an artist. A professional?”

“A professional,” he said sarcastically. He looked angry. “You mean do I get paid? Are you wondering if I’m some kind of frustrated
writer or painter, some melancholy
artiste
angry at the world for rejecting my works of genius? You think that’s why I’m doing all this?”

“I don’t think anything, Carson. You got any dessert?”

“Indeed. Just desserts.”

“Is that wit or irony? You writers are so clever.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, you got me on that one. Truth is, Season, I never send my work out. Never have,
never will. I learn a form—be it sitcom, movie, play, opera, short story, poem, symphony, whatever—and I write a few pieces
to amuse myself. For example…” And suddenly he was singing opera in Italian. His voice started deep and powerful as he boomed
and bellowed like horses galloping through a canyon—and in an instant he shifted to a soaring pitch that seemed to swirl around
my head and tug me straighter in the chair. I found myself leaning toward him to catch the notes sooner.

Abruptly, he stopped.

“Well, that was shit,” he said with a sour face, “but you get the idea. It’s from an opera I’ve written. My Italian sucks
but it’s the only language that fits with the music.” He shrugged as if suddenly embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t come off dopey
like Tom Hanks in
Philadelphia
, twirling around the room like he’s just bitten into a hot chili pepper and can’t find the water. They really blew that scene,
I think. What do you think?”

“Okay,” I said, “so you’re not a frustrated artist. What are you then? Other than kidnapper, child molester, and rapist.”

“I’m rich, that’s mostly what I am. I’m talking filthy rich. Rich enough to produce my own movie if I wanted, publish my own
books, mount my own plays and pay the finest actors to act in them. And after that, if each project failed, I have enough
money to start all over again.”

“Congratulations. You’re a rich kidnapper, child molester, and rapist.”

“I hate to take credit. After all, I inherited most of it. I come from a long line of overachievers.”

“Ford. The car people?”

He laughed. “No, no. Our name used to be unpronounceable, something very Slavic. Granddad thought it would be better for business
if we sounded more American, so he named himself after his car. His English was so bad he probably didn’t even know there
was a real Ford family already. Guess it was a good thing he didn’t own an Oldsmobile.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done the name proud. Does the family know about your little hobby as a rapist?”

He grabbed his stomach. “Jesus!” He took several deep breaths. Thick tears dripped from his eyes like candle wax. “Man, that
smarts. Like something’s crawled into my stomach and just won’t die.”

“Could be food poisoning. Corn dogs aren’t created in the most hygienic of circumstances. You might want to go to a hospital.”

He shook his head. “Can’t. Got a timetable. I told you.” He looked at his watch, studied it as if having trouble focusing.
“I’m already behind. We’d better move on to the next phase. I’m afraid it won’t be as pleasant as this one has been.” He stood
up, took a step toward me. He faltered, stumbled, grabbed his stomach again, and pitched forward to the floor. “Damn,” he
moaned, “I think I shit my pants.” Then his eyes closed and he didn’t move.

I ran over to him, dug one hand into his pants for the keys. With the other hand I felt at his throat for a pulse.
He shouldn’t be dead yet, he probably just passed out. As my fingers closed around his keys, a hand jumped up and grabbed
my wrist hard, twisting it sharply until I was on the ground. He snatched the keys from my hand and stood up, brushing off
his pants. Then he took a deep bow and blew a kiss to the imaginary audience. “Add acting to my artistic achievements. I do
a pretty good Jack Nicholson. Want to hear?” He contorted his mouth into a Nicholson grin: “I have given a name to my pain,
and it is Batman.” He sounded just like Nicholson.

I stood up, holding my wounded hand, which had scraped the ground when I went down. I sat back on the chair. “What was it?”

“In the ant can? Mostly sugar.” He stuck out his tongue and made a bitter face. “I can’t believe how much of that stuff you
put in my iced tea. My best acting was not reacting when I drank it, it was so damn sweet. You must really want me dead.”

I didn’t say anything. I was too tired, too defeated, too hopeless. I couldn’t decide which of us I wanted dead more.

He sat back in his chair, facing me like an interviewer on PBS. “You asked me before about my art. I think of myself as a
performance artist. You know what that is?”

“Yeah. Guys who lock themselves in lockers for two days or shoot themselves in the arm while on stage or women who stand in
front of the Veterans Administration building and shave their pubic hair into the silhouette of Cuba.”

He frowned. “Well, yes, in its primitive form. I’m talking about something a little more sophisticated. An art form that involves
real people, but they don’t know they’re involved. See what I mean?”

“You are seriously fucked up, Carson. You see what I mean?”

He laughed. “Come on, Season, don’t get cranky with
me. I’m sorry about that ant poison thing, but I thought a little demonstration would help you understand the art form better.”

“I understand. You’re telling me that all these kidnappings, these molestations, the rape of that seventeen-year-old girl,
all that was part of your art. These girls were merely unwitting actors in your script.”

“Just as you were, Season. Why did you come looking for me? How did I know you would?” He leaned forward, his eyes fierce
with passion. “It wasn’t hard to figure out what you would do once I knew who you were, what you’d been doing since your fiancé
acted out his final curtain call. You
had
to come. You
wanted
me to take you.”

I remembered a voice in my head that night when I’d fallen/thrown myself down David’s stairs:
Give yourself
. Hadn’t I created a little theater in David’s house, scripting everybody’s role? I broke off a piece of sourdough roll and
chewed on it.

He smiled, not in victory but in sympathy. “See, that’s where we’re connected. You wanted to
do
something, even if it was something stupid. You wanted to help people, so you did something. Genius isn’t just in seeing
what others can’t imagine, it’s in
doing
what other’s can’t imagine. Like Gandhi or Martin Luther King.”

“You’re comparing yourself to them? Come on, Carson, even you aren’t that crazy.”

“Why not compare myself to them? I’m doing what they did. I’m forcing the world to act differently. I’m making it better.
They were like artists—they each had a vision, then made it real. That’s what I’m doing, making the world see what people
are capable of by doing it. In a way, I’m actually saving kids. How many kids are being watched more closely now, how many
are being chauffeured by their parents to school and everywhere else? I’ll bet there are fewer molestations of children since
I arrived, because those perverts are afraid they might be mistaken for me
and shot on sight. All those cops on the street, driving up and down all the time, I’ll bet crime in the city is way down.
All because of me. For every girl I’ve made a part of my art, probably a dozen other kids weren’t harmed because of all those
extra precautions. Don’t you agree?”

I didn’t say anything but there was some strange logic to what he was saying. In a way, he actually had accomplished what
I’d set out to do. He had improved lives. “What about those girls you hurt?” I reminded him.

“How many people died or were hurt because of what Gandhi or King envisioned? They were beaten or shot or hanged. But that’s
the price for the Big Picture. When an artist creates something, he destroys something else. If I sculpt a beautiful woman,
I have to destroy what was a perfectly innocent block of marble. To cook a delicious meal, I have to kill something living.
So, looking at the Big Picture here, I’m actually good for this town. I’ve lowered crime, saved their children, brought families
closer together. It’s God’s dirty work. Hell, they should probably throw me a parade and give me the fucking key to the city.”

I looked at him in the eyes. He looked away. He might have believed what he was saying, but he still felt the shame of a soldier
who kills an enemy he doesn’t know. I think that’s how he really saw himself, as a soldier of some kind, not an artist at
all. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you? These kidnappings, rapes. Murder.”

“It’s a work-in-progress. This is my fourth town. I always leave clues. In one place it was sketches, in another references
to art works. Adds drama, don’t you think?”

“And you’ve killed before.”

He shrugged. “An artist must suffer. Even if you don’t know you’re being an artist. At least you know your role. You understand
it. You’re the first person to get this close.”

Was that supposed to be some kind of honor, that somehow he and I were on a similar wavelength?

He smiled. “You’re confused, right? I’m not behaving the way you’d like. You expect me to froth at the mouth or cackle. Do
something violent, psychotic, start ranting like Dennis Hopper or James Woods, justify my actions while spraying saliva all
over the place. You want something cinematic—predictably unpredictable. Kick a dog or something villainous. That way you can
dismiss everything I just told you as crazy talk. Am I right?”

We looked at each other for what seemed like minutes. I didn’t hate him. I didn’t feel sorry for him, either. I had no feeling
about him.

He walked over to me and punched me solidly in the face. I was lifted off the chair and seemed to be airborne forever before
landing hard on my shoulder. I tried to sit up but was unsure which way up was. Nausea kept me hugging the ground for a while.
My cheek ached and when I brought my fingers to my face I felt the large knob already swelling there. Clumsily I righted myself,
stood, picked up the chair, and sat down. He had already returned to his chair.

“Happy now? Your little world is back in order.” He sighed, disappointed in me.

“Are you going to rape me?” I asked.

He looked offended. “Good heavens, no! What I did to those other girls, that wasn’t personal. I didn’t get any pleasure from
it.” He made a disgusted face. “It was part of the show, the threat, that’s why I never personally touched them. Americans
fear the threat to their innocence more than they fear death itself. Innocence is their excuse for every abominable act.”

“If we can just put aside your artistic philosophy for a moment. You are going to kill me, right? That is your grand finale.”

He stood up, went to the desk, pulled all his scripts and music and drawings from the drawers and tore the pages from each
book. He threw the pages around the room,
not in a crazy fashion, but almost strategically. When he was done, he went over to the door, knelt to the carpet, and pulled
up several strings that had been matted down in the shag. “These each run through the carpeting, kind of like fuses,” he said.
“This room was some half-assed attempt at a bomb shelter by the former owners, who died when hubby got bombed on shooters
and drove himself and his wife into a train.” He shrugged. “Now
that’s
irony and wit. Only I wasn’t the artist.”

He took out his lighter and thumbed it to a flame. “Don’t worry, you’ll probably die of smoke inhalation before the flames
get to you. But by the time they find the remains of your body, they’ll think the mad rapist did his worst to you. The streets
will be safe for another six months. So, in death you will finally have achieved what you set out to do, improve people’s
lives.”

He lit the fuses and six flames raced across the carpet in all directions like an outline of the circulatory system. They
all veered around the chair where I was sitting leaving a three-foot circle around me unsinged. He unlocked the door and went
out, closing it tightly behind him. The dead bolt clinked into place.

I ran to the door, hopping over the lines of flames which were still only about six inches high, but rapidly growing. I yanked
on the door, kicked at it, but it didn’t budge. When I turned around, the flames had already tripled in size. I tried to stamp
some out, but my pant leg caught on fire. I pulled off my sweatshirt and smothered the flames, but the skin on my ankle had
already blistered.