THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (25 page)
“How could I ever been such a fool,” she babbled to the chanting of the waves as she paced her beach house living room floor in her bare feet staring every now and then up at Hartwig’s painting over the fireplace mantle. She’d actually had Edie Wilson do that of him. One afternoon she’d been able to overcome his resistance and send him up to her friend’s studio. He’d come back with that wrapped in a package.
“See that you remember it,” she’d chided him. “Now I have you just as your mother still has your father. Let’s just hope I come away with more pleasant memories.”
And, of course, she hadn’t. That much was clear. She was not only angry but suicidal for rejection can sometimes put the deepest feelers into that state. I imagine she was thinking of ways to do it. Most people do at one time or another as a mental exercise if nothing else, whether they ever seriously contemplate the actual deed itself. I mean this ordinarily gregarious soul who was known out there as the outgoing idiot, was really down. The mood solidified her personality actually, gave it some balance though no one saw it that way.
She’d begun to shun her neighbors with curt insulting remarks and had all but driven her son out of the house with her recriminations.
“All this sounds well and good,” said Hammond. “But what if Dracula or whatever his name is hadn’t shown up that night? Wouldn’t those two be honeymooning or whatever in Europe, which is all she really wanted anyhow wasn’t it? Even if he’d come with the dame did that mean there was an actual conspiracy afoot? It just doesn’t wash. Why, ever since this story began Hartwig’d been trying to rid himself of the beauty because he didn’t love her. Why he doesn’t love anyone except perhaps his dog if he even loves him.”
“Of course,” I replied, “what you say is all very well true but you try to tell that to a woman who’s just been left in the lurch for no particular reason she can understand.” She’ll make up one as sure as anything and the more complicated the mind, the more sophisticated the reason. Not that I’m giving the socialite a phi beta kappa image. But she had an imagination and she decided to go with it. There was no reason, of course, except that Hartwig was tired of the entire scene. It’d become just irritating enough for him to stay away from her and he had.
Why Christ! She planned all sorts of things. Whether she could get him back or not she wasn’t going to make it easy on him. She even called some of her own legal connections in the city to make sure Gloria was employed properly in the mother’s office. And if not to see to it she was dismissed, sent back to the hick town of her birth, Santa Cruz. I don’t know what substance that had but she also knew people who’d beat the young woman up for a price; force her out of town if need be and she was thinking of contacting them. She really had it bad though the one thing she didn’t want to do was hurt Hartwig.
“You’re kidding,” said Hammond, “I, why I’d hire a hit man on him myself in a minute if I was her. He’d be the one to go.”
“I agree,” I claimed, “but then she’d have nothing, no trophy to hang on her wall and wouldn’t have until she found another.”
The last thing
some
persons want to do is kill the unrequited love object, for then what do you have, though some persons do that too, so no one else’ll have the privilege of gaining their favor. Of course, she might not find someone else right away either for even you’ll have to admit Hartwig was a unique sort of individual with well-rounded talents. At least from a lady’s standpoint.” Hammond sat there shaking his head.
“The good news,” I said, “was that none of her destructive fantasies got a chance to develop or take place. And that, of course, was the bad news. Or the walking entity that prevented this was bad news.”
“Really, what or who was that?” Said Hammond.
None other than Brochowitz, who else. Remember when this whole thing started. I said he had four months until his release, well they were up and he had been set free. Despite Sandy’s consternation over Hartwig don’t think she wasn’t aware of it either. Matter of fact she’d been dreading it and that was one of the reasons she didn’t want to be in the county when he was. She knew he’d come after her. He always did since the madman had built her up as the surrogate mother he could not only wreak his vengeance on but also love if that makes sense. If it doesn’t to you or I it must to a madman like Brochowitz for that’s just the way it was with him and no amount of catharsis could erase it, it had become so deeply etched. And then if he did come looking for her what’d she tell him.
“You mean nothing to me anymore, I can’t even see you standing there the other’s so strong in my mind. I’m in love and it’s not with you.”
“You tell some homicidal nut something like that and if the opportunity’s right, he’ll (or she’ll) kill you.” I stood up.
“And,” said Hammond, “that’s exactly what happened wasn’t it? She got done in by the madman. You told me that at the beginning of this story and I remembered it.”
Let’s just say after a knock on the door one afternoon she soon had plenty of reason to drop Hartwig as her first priority and it turned out to be not of her choice either, a very unpleasant state of affairs the like of which, however, as human beings we seem to be thrust into with enough frightening regularity as if to make out
fate,
or whatever it is, to be definitely against us. An argument nonetheless that the pundits have been equivocal about for centuries as they tend to favor the more positive sorts of experience to the neglect of the more prominent one. And you can’t blame them. We all want what’s best. For us, for life, for the world. It’s just that this wasn’t very pleasant.
And by the time Brochowitz got around to Sandy to ask her for the real love in his life, his little Dachshund, Shotzee, Brochowitz was no happy camper himself. Though he’d been in a halfway house, a minimum security facility, which treated the
troubled
like he was, and where Sandy, his one real (I won’t say normal) link to life visited him ritually by the week, which kept his hopes (for something); sanity (whatever that was, a return to
normalcy
?) alive. Naturally, as her relation with Hartwig developed she stopped those visits, which in effect put a damper on the curative effect of his therapy right there.
Though she did phone him several times, the neglect led him to doubt the one person in life, who he’d relied on the most. And believe me when you’re
out there
that’s really something. You or I wouldn’t have any problem with it but we’d never let ourselves depend on one person so thoroughly so that their withdrawal would appear like the end of our life. Imagine you or I losing a daughter or son. It’d be difficult but not impossible to get over. For Brochowitz, never, and Sandy was merely his lover confidante.
He’d been
schooled
on
a new way to focus on life, drilled into him during those four months I’m sure. But what were they trying to convince him of. Go out, get a job, take a wife, have children, go to war, defend your country? Why this man’s entire life had been nothing more than one large psychotic episode. He took that drug that the Swiss so fortuitously discovered almost like it was water. His inner core was so raw almost any other male he encountered that he couldn’t completely dominate he wanted to kill. Any woman too who might not want him. Those that did he beat up as objects of abuse. No, Hammond normal to him just wasn’t normal to us. The Manicheans were right, if there’s any God at all; there are two not just one, a God of light and a God of darkness. Brochowitz was just born under the dark star. The magnetism of his personality pulled him that way.
Why in the nuthouse itself, a lovely facility with an outdoor pool, gourmet meals served three times a day, your own unpadded room with bathroom facilities and TV, a complete fitness center, you’d’ve thought the inmate could do nothing else but be happy; get along. But Brochowitz couldn’t. He picked fights. He dressed his fellows down with his evil stares. He, why even in there they were afraid of him. While about Hartwig’s height, this man was far more muscular, a virtual mesomorph from lifting weights all day and working on his abs, you know, U.S.T.V? Do your abs every morning. Well this kid overdid them believe me. He came out of there with the physique of Charles Atlas and the same dark tan as him too, from sunning himself at the pool every day. I mean he emerged from there as every American wants to be, a virtual God. Except for that one damn thing, his brain. You couldn’t unwire that evidently and consequently you couldn’t rewire it.
“So,” said Hammond. “How’d they control him if he was so intractable?”
“Lithium, generics, whatever the current drug they treated those sorts with to calm them down.”
Unfortunately in most cases that’s all they do, calm them down. Once the patient stops, of course, they’re off and running, trying to reach the wire of their twisted destinies. You know we all don’t have benign ones. You only have to look at history to make that observation. It should tell us something Sometimes it doesn’t seem to. No, most of the time it doesn’t.
Why when Brochowitz was released with his one bag of clothes he’d come in with, and stood at the bus stop waiting it’s a wonder a producer didn’t drive by in a Cadillac, stop and say,
“Son, you should be in the movies. Come with me I can make you a star. Hop in.”
And the man’d go off to stardom. But this wasn’t the movies and those weren’t the way things happen in real life. No, Brochowitz had all of two hundred dollars in his pocket, payoff money, a host of prescriptions for the free drugs he’d been schooled to take, probably his only real schooling for the four months. The gates, actually a classic oaken door, had been shut behind him. The maple tree above him that had showered the road with its fall leaves signified his freedom and he boarded the bus only to receive the hostile looks of twenty-four or five people on board simply because they were strangers to him, people he’d never seen before and his own paranoia defined them as enemies. Not potential enemies, enemies fair and square. Nothing now, of course, because of his medication. Mere zips in a world of zips. And so he rides off, not into the sunset, but through the gates of hell.
“Well yes,” said Hammond. “Once he stops taking his medicine.”
“But that’s the whole point,” I claimed, “how can you let someone like that out who you know is bonkers and rely upon them to keep taking their medicine. Why any
street
distraction like a dose or two of acid will prevent that. Your tranquilizers go up in smoke alongside the mysterious world of hallucinations, which for all anyone knows are quite possibly man’s only real nirvana. Some certainly think that way. Some of the saints in fact.”
And the first thing Brochowitz did actually wasn’t too bad and might’ve been in the right direction if there is any for those sorts outside of permanent housing, prolonged rehab and vocational training none of which the state decides it can afford. After reaching Sausalito, a place Brochowitz knew he wasn’t wanted he caught the bus directly to Salinas where he figured he could hook up with the reverend Bosworth, who let the homeless sleep in the pews at night. At least he’d have a place to stay. He was very aware of that and that a motel cost a hundred dollars a night, the fee for which he had all of two nights in his pocket. Yes, it’d be there for a week or two to become integrated back into the area, then off to Oceanview to see Sandy and pick up his dog. A mere hop, step and a jump across the lagoon. Then, perhaps, off to Santa Monica where there was a facility for people like him.
Of course the man was so sociopathic his reentry into society lasted no more than several days rather than two weeks. Bosworth’d received him all right, said several prayers for him in his actual presence … do priests really do anything more for their worshippers … and gave him some stern guidance, Bosworth guidance if you like.
“What do you think about love towards your fellow man?” He’d said to the psychopathic waif. “Isn’t it the right path to follow? Far better than despising him? You’ll be far happier and more at peace with yourself, won’t you?”
Brochowitz, naturally, looked at the blond haired priest with diabolic self-righteousness before answering in his own Machiavellian fashion.
“You’re right, reverend,” he’d glossed the advice over. “If anyone’s in a position to know it’s you. No one else takes the homeless in out there.”
In other words he’d discounted the advice (who wouldn’t the interrogative mode) and managed to change the subject. As Brochowitz built up all the good things the priest was doing for the community the priest actually gained confidence from his most needy subject hence coming to feel better about himself as the spotless easily do upon compliments from the most blameworthy. The two even took a walk along the beach where they talked about old times when the sand spit had virtually been a tent community of the displaced before the more affluent townspeople had declared them too much trouble and put a moratorium on camping.
“Yes,” said Bosworth. “People believe things are getting tighter but I still have the building.” It was never he believed things were getting tighter, just someone did. The building he was referring to, naturally, was the little chapel.
“And your wife Tilda makes the best apple pie around.”
“Do you like it?” Bosworth, the doubter, looked at the harsh countenance of his adversary, wasn’t it, for what else are worshippers when compared to priests who are competing to see who can be the most sanctimonious before someone they look upon as God? A figure no normal person has ever seen or touched.
The two walked back to the little chapel of St. Aidan’s and Brochowitz, bare chested, wearing cut offs and sandals, Adonis, returned to the beach where he sat by himself, naturally, for he was a loner if there ever had been and still was. Several groups of the homeless sat fifty yards or so from him. They’d broken out a case of beer and were drinking and cheering the oncoming waves.
“I … I would’ve thought Brochowitz’d been right there on that account,” said Hammond.
“To the contrary,” I told him. “Brochowitz didn’t drink a sip of alcohol and although he did indulge in the more potent stimulants such as hash or acid he considered drinking a common man’s habit. He, in other words, as he sat in the sand reading the porno mags he’d bought before he’d come over the hill, considered himself an elitist compared to those who shared his plight. He was extremely sensitive about anything you said to him that might be considered derogatory.
He
did not possess the shield most people put up to brush off ridicule.
And even though at that juncture he was still taking his medicine and acted lambishly (for him). He wasn’t cut out to be a wanderer with no real place to stay or roof over his head among a throng of bums who only talked of their shallow self interests and where their next fix was going to come from. And what more natural for a man like that who feels so out of place in his surroundings, to dream of better ones he’s had before.
So after an argument he’d had with one of the Salinas hangers on, Brochowitz picked up his bag from the priest’s unlocked storage room and without saying a thing to him or his wife (or anyone else) he simply hit the road for Oceanview where, of course, whether he approached his earth mother Sandy or not, he knew he’d at least feel comfortable in her vicinity much like a fledgling in its nest. It’s always nice knowing someone who has money and might be sympathetic to your situation.
And though having spent far more time in the sophisticated beach town than in Salinas, Brochowitz was obviously better known there. His reappearance like the gadfly Barney’s had stirred the residents with open alarm. One thought of Paul Revere riding his horse as the news spread from the grocery store where he’d stopped to buy some of his favorite food, yogurt, to the fire station to the bar crowd, which he never intermingled with but that knew him, the shops along the highway and even to the little grade school, which had finally hired the carpenter. His arrival hovered over the beach like the buzz of the many-eyed rumor as she spread her earthly gossip.
The sloth or swamp people as they were called, would have nothing to do with Brochowitz and matter of fact had threatened him if he didn’t give them a clear berth which, of course, he did, for like all bullies or people who make their way by brute force, he was a coward at heart. And that’s true whether those characters are willing to die unflinchingly for their peculiar characteristics or not for dominance by fear implies the notion even if they don’t invariably back down before a superior force. You don’t have to be a begging, quailing fool to be a coward. All tyrants in fact are.
Brochowitz, of course, knew exactly where he was, what he was doing and how to make an approach. He wasn’t unfriendly, just horrifying in his Godlike fashion. He knew he wasn’t popular. It flattered his vanity. He wasn’t anyplace he went for his inbuilt aggression gave him the appearance of a wounded animal that has nothing to lose so he charges. Fear turns to violence almost automatically like in fact they’re one and the same thing.
That afternoon Brochowitz found the one friend he could count on. This was Simi the Hawaiian a beach bum, who drank most of the time between his
odd jobs
, lay on the beach and swam the rest. Simi was another loner by choice. It wasn’t that he hated people like Brochowitz. Matter of fact he loved them. He was lonely for the islands, ‘his islands’ as he called them, and the constant longing to get back to them. He just could never put together the fare. Every time he got a start he drank up the money.
He’d met Brochowitz some time ago at the beach and he also knew Sandy whom he liked. He really hadn’t known anything about her and Brochowitz’s quarrel only that Brochowitz’d been put away. And … here he was again walking down the beach with his suitcase.
Simi jumped up smiling his wide moon face lit up like a pumpkin’s, for he didn’t have many real friends and this was someone he’d gotten close to. Who knows why they got along?
“Jeff,” he said as the two hugged. “How’ve you been?’ The two men broke apart and stood looking one another over.
“Pretty good,” said Brochowitz. “Just passing through.” He knew Simi’d be good for a night or two in his trailer. You didn’t want to say to him, ‘I’m here to stay. Back from the honor farm, moved to paradise forever’. Then Simi might not offer a bed for a couple of nights.
“Obviously not,” said Hammond who didn’t know a thing about it. “For that’s not what he came for. He was out after the rich girl.”
“He was and he wasn’t,” I said.
Brochowitz was also pretty well known in the beach town of Santa Monica way further south where he’d found residence in a large apartment complex there for the mentally disturbed right on the beach. He liked the beach, the beach and the sun. I believe that was his ultimate destination. He just meant to stop by the socialite’s to retrieve his dog before moving on. Simi’s little trailer, which was parked on a side street near the swamp was the perfect hideaway en passant so to speak. And the man was calm, deathly calm, for he was still on his medication and hopefully’d never go off it. But still, what sort of justice system lets a person like that out on the loose with the trust he’ll take his medicine. No sane one I can assure you, that administers its justice by the amount of money available to do so.