THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (27 page)

“Will you do that? Please bring my car?” He reiterated to Gloria over the phone. “And I have something for you. It’s right here in my hand.” She could visualize him standing before their sacred window. She also, of course, could visualize the money. His annuity must’ve come through. She needed it but she was more concerned about him.

“Will you come?” She thought she didn’t have a car. She’d have to take a bus out to the hospital. She couldn’t afford a cab. It’d be an imposition but she’d do it. She had some papers to get ready for Sylvia. She could claim an emergency though Sylvia didn’t know a thing about the older man. Gloria’d never told her. Like so many youngsters keep their private lives from their elders, so she’d kept hers. She then made her plans.

“So then,” said Hammond, “she was going to do his bidding after all.”

“Yes, she told him she’d leave within the hour and hopefully be there by lunchtime if all went well.”

“You’re sure the keys’re under the seat and the car’s open?”

“I left them that way. Unless someone’s locked it but who’d lock an old car like that, let alone steal it.” Then she said a strange thing after acknowledging she’d come.

“You just be sure you’re there when I get there.”

“You bet,” he said and hung up. It seemed she also knew what she’d find when she got there. After all there had been some sort of communication between them. They’d gotten so they could read one another’s moods pretty well. But where was a man in a condition like that going? I sighed. He couldn’t go anywhere.

“But he did,” said Hammond. “He wasn’t there when she got there, the old codger?” I kept my peace.

“Not exactly. He was there and he wasn’t. If any of us ever truly are anywhere. If we’ve ever been.”

The car he drove you know was an old black Lincoln. Barth’d been the original owner and he’d maintained it well. He’d let himself go to pot but he’d kept it up. It was a gas-guzzler and a long unseemly machine that steered like a boat but it had the invulnerability of a tank. Heaven help you if you got in its way, like our more modern S.UVs. That’s why people drive them, of course. If you don’t survive the crash you’re not going to be driving anything. Pollution slips into the background. It’s just not immediate enough though if everyone had to drive small cars it would seem the advantage of the larger’d be nullified. No one likes to be forced to do anything, however, even if it’s for their own good. Ask the Irish or the Jews. Mutual slaughter’s preferable.

Then a pretty redheaded girl behind the wheel of an old limo like that almost creates an erotic scene. You expect a dominatrix with her charge in tow to pop up in the back seat. At least that was how Gloria drove, so attentive to the traffic and her charge (car) she neglected to glance over the side of that beautiful span as she crossed the bay and almost missed her turnoff when she neared her destination. She hadn’t driven for a while and never had over there. Any time they had gone out and taken the car, the
boss
as she called him had been driving.

“Hmm, driving?” Said Hammond. “That drunk? I thought you said they’d taken his license.”

“Not then,” I said. “I think he still had one. For all the good it did, however, Gloria might just as well have turned right around and gone back home. The old car wouldn’t do anyone any good. Nothing would and she damn well knew it before she’d come over. The old man’d suckered her into something and she’d taken the bait.”

“Bait, what bait?” Said Hammond. “This’ anything but a fishing expedition.”

“But is it really?” I said. “Is all life anything more really? You throw a line in the water, that’s you. If you get a bite it’s a fish. If you hook him properly your line doesn’t break; that’s dinner. Maybe, just maybe that’s all there is to it. No … when she arrived at the old Victorian above the cove the street was lined with cop cars. When she parked and approached the entranceway to the building she found it blocked by a policeman.”

“Can’t come in here, ma’am,” said the blue shirted officer who held up his hands. “There’s been a tragedy. It’s a crime scene now, off limits.” The tenants, in fact, had been confined to their apartments.

“But,” said the young lady, “I have a friend. I’m delivering his car.” She held out the keys.

“Wouldn’t’ve been the old man who lived on the top floor would it?”

“Who?” said Gloria. “It well might’ve been.” The officer turned and yelled up the stairway.

“Oh, detective. I may have something for you.” A man in a grey suit and felt hat appeared at the top of the stairs; then descended smiling as though he were about to step on stage and receive a reward.

“Oh miss,” the man came up to her. “You … you know the fellow upstairs no doubt. There’s been a tragic accident. Looks like he killed himself unfortunately. Did you know him?”

And she had to stand there and tell the man what she could. As to getting up into the apartment that was impossible yet that’s what she’d come for. Now, of course, she wouldn’t’ve wanted to go up there for she was certain her imagination supplied everything she’d find. She’d seen the rehearsals; now the play, in this case no different except this time she’d arrived too late to take it in. So that’s what “you bet” had been all about? It’s facility had been its warning. When the detective volunteered to drive her to the bus stop, of course, she refused. She’d felt the way he’d looked at her and just wasn’t in an everyday mood.
This
was something to her.

She handed him the keys to the car, walked down the hill and waited. When the bus came she hopped on, now as a total stranger to the little bayside town and the community. On the way back to the city the bus passed through Sausalito as she turned towards the area of maverick contraptions called houseboats, now more as tourist than resident, of course. She thought of Hartwig with tenderness; no longer anger.

“Well,” said Hammond. “Even if the old bugger had to put himself out of the picture maybe that’s one good thing that came out of it, her indifference.”

“That might be true,” I said. “She didn’t even cry, not once.” The article made the local paper and even the city news but there was no memorial in effect no burial for the man had absolutely no connections out here or back east where he came from. He was just a strong character if nothing else, like so many who lived in Sausalito. The county takes care of such cases. You can’t just throw them into a pit and bury them. It inters the body, cremates it and disposes of the ashes. No matter how hard she tried to intervene, I believe, she was willing to take care of the matter on her own and give him a decent send off in the small Lutheran church near where she now lived, but she didn’t even seem to be able to do that though she had inquired.

“Are you a relative?” She was asked on every level and just as like she’d replied. “No I’m not. I’m just a friend.”

With that stature, of course, there was nothing she could do. The impersonal state meant more than a friend in that case. We had totalitarianism right there. There was nothing anybody could do for there was nobody to do anything for. She languished over the matter but she went right back to work. To her Barth was like a star that’d passed through and left the galaxy.

“And her money,” Said Hammond. “That the old geezer claimed to’ve had in his hand. Where was that? Did the detectives put it in their pockets? They can you know when there’s nobody around to perceive the difference and they do.”

She obviously didn’t get it. He was bluffing. He didn’t have any money to give her as it turned out. What he’d held in his hand as he’d talked to her was the deed to his condo. That she did receive. She got it in the mail, for just before he shot himself the man’d had the decency to go downstairs and mail it. The note, or will, or whatever you want to call it assigned the unit to her exclusively.

“Well at least that was nice of him,” said Hammond. “She then made out quite well for those units in that part of the bay (visible from where we were) are worth a small fortune. Hurray for her. At least she got something. The old fart owed it to her at the very least. Taking two thousand dollars from a hard working young woman from a poor family who you’ve used on top of it. Why that’s… I’m glad she did what she did.”

Of course, when she inquired she found the condo mortgaged to the hilt and virtually worthless. Scarcely the value of the paper it was printed on. His estate owed money. She ended up turning the deed over to the receivership omitting anything with her name on it, of course. The will was her own private memento in his handwriting. That was all. That and the ‘Red Badge of Courage’ he’d received in the war, perhaps the only thing of real value to him, his ‘bronze star’. Considering the circumstances she wasn’t angry, she’d loved the man and just hoped he’d achieved what he wanted to in following his own way. She threw herself into her work. Industry as you know can block out a lot of things.

Chapter Twenty

As he sat finishing his sandwich, Brochowitz naturally watched Hartwig drive away in his old clunker. ‘Who’ he must’ve said to himself ‘is a man like who drives an old wreck like that to tell me anything’?

It was mid afternoon the fog had appeared and disappeared like soap bubbles, the perfect beach day. After paying his bill, Brochowitz, blanket in hand, led the tiny hound along the creek trail, which came out just down the beach from Sandy’s. He’d been meaning to look for Simi in the park but instead had dropped acid. Although it hadn’t yet taken effect he had mischief in mind and, of course, the hated image of Hartwig the hero. Hartwig the upright. You know those cases in which the sick person feeds upon its opposite; fully attempting to dispose of it in the same fashion they’re rejected by society. No wonder there’s never a cure for all of those sorts of figures. They justify themselves from the extreme. Their extreme. They make that their God. And there’s your God of evil. There’s really nothing very mysterious about it. It’s just like you’re there and it’s in them like the heart in the chest. You can’t take it out for if you do they expire. They’re no longer.

“So, in effect,” said Hammond “You’re saying there’s no such thing as redemption.”

In the hard cases that’s correct. Of course, at what point are you able to separate the hard from the soft. But the saddest thing of all, it appears the hard, a fortiori, tend to reinforce their stance just because it’s
them
, and who you are, whoever or whatever you are, you tend to be loyal to. That, my friend, is a principle even beyond
survival
. That’s why we as a whole must be careful for even the so-called
good
can overstep their bounds. Do it en masse with modern day technology and phoof, you’re all gone.

“Now wait a minute,” said Hammond. “I’ve heard theories and I’ve heard theories but this one seems to take the cake. It makes no sense whatsoever but the fellow Brochowitz does. The madman’s off his medicine. He’s dropped acid, the worst thing a person in his fragile state should do. Go on…”

“See…!” I said and paused a minute as a wave of horror passed over Hammond’s face. For just a moment I felt he’d seen. I hadn’t, but he had.

Dropped acid I said, that’s what Brochowitz’d done. He’d removed a pill from his tiny vial and taken it with his last swallow of juice, carrot or celery or some other at the restaurant, for he was quite health conscious. That’s one of the reasons he appeared as salubrious as he was. The
stuff
, of course takes a half hour or so before it acts. Knowing Sandy’s habits as he did (he’d lived with her for almost a year) gave him plenty of time and the man had excellent eyes.

From down the beach just above the fence deck enclosure he could see the sliding glass door of her deck was ajar. In all likelihood that meant Sandy was lying hidden on her chaise sunning herself of all things, a habit by the way nowadays everyone’s trying to break themselves of. For the sun’s no longer as good for us as we thought it was. The motorcycle was gone. That meant her son was absent. Her only companion then’d be her old dog, Suzie the hoary golden lab, who’d be inside in the cool of the living room sleeping. Not only did Brochowitz know the place but he’d been casing it ever since he’d been back. That, in fact, is why she hadn’t taken her long lonely beach walks by herself lately. She’d been leery of him and would be until he was gone. He knew that and also she was deathly afraid of him. And when I say deathly I mean deathly. Remember the last time though it’d been months ago, he’d strangled her until she was blue in the face before he let go. She was deathly afraid of him and that’s the way he wanted it because it gave him erotic power, which whether light or dark is what but death? Call it our living death if you like. More likely it’s death itself, and for those special times we all look forward to orgasm as though it’s the only goal in our lives. During it, for all practical purposes you could say we die, ‘we’re dead’. And that we’re living for, i. e., to die. Puts it in a little different context now, doesn’t it?

“This … this story’s affected you. If you’d rather not contin … I … I can accept the fact really.”

“Nonsense,” I said laughingly. “Maybe I’ve had a few too many but it’s you who’s pouring, remember?”

“Me pouring? Yes, but… Continue?”

Seeing none of the neighbors around Brochowitz tied little Shotzee in the front yard where he couldn’t serve as a warning signal and with his porno mags in hand, which along with his actual
hands
were his accessories, for among other things he considered himself a message specialist, Adonis or Tarzan of the apes, … remember him in his loincloth … he now, wearing cutoffs along with his buck knife in its sheath hanging from his belt – the weapon or
tool
he always wore –in his wide bare feet crept along the fence deck where he could now peek through a crack to get a real view of what was inside. Guess what this peeping Tom saw.

“What’d he see?” Said Hammond.

Nothing else but the naked Venus in the raw in a supine position, not only sound asleep but with her mouth wide open her outstretched arms alongside her body with the palms upwards like she was on knockout drops herself. Now how do you think a sight like that affected a maniac like Brochowitz? I’m sure it left his mouth drooling literally to say nothing of that thing between his legs, which was beginning to stir. The magic wand that brings everything into existence or at least did until modern science was able to dictate otherwise.

And the man was a cat, exactly like one anyhow. With one quiet hand he reached over, unlatched the gate, managed to shut it, with mouse like steps pull up a chair beside the sleeping beauty … so as not to block her sun, of course … and sit there admiring her from head to toe. I mean really ingesting the body; not something Leonardo’d do. The real thing. Just, of course, as the
acid
began to take effect. You know what happens then, don’t you?

“Who me?” Said Hammond. “You’re asking the wrong person. About that I don’t know. I never took it.”

“Really,” I said. “You don’t know what you missed. Where were you when …? But that’s not really here nor there. Let’s just say reality’s enhanced. Things aren’t like they were before nor how you ever thought they could be and whether for good or bad perhaps that’s a reason for imbibing it, as long as you do no harm to yourself or anyone else. If you do you’re in for a living nightmare.”

After his lascivious, sadistic
staring
, and noticing the safely distant bathers who resembled Leviathans or Brobdingnagians as they walked up and down the beach, Brochowitz smoothly began to rub his hands along her thighs, feeling each shaved hair like it was a stump in the forest he was somehow touching with his now God like feelers. And she, still asleep, actually began to subtly groan like a part of the collective unconscious’d been touched or suddenly sprung to life, or if that’s too big a word, her past. She’d lived it even before she awakened. At least that’s what I believe. And if so, really, what chance did she have? Even if she didn’t submit voluntarily what chance did she have? We’re hedonists, all of us, each and every one and there’s no other way to look at it. Like the paramecium’s we have to eat.

When the large grey eyes opened and the look of utter astonishment (and horror) swept her countenance, naturally, her body jerked in a reflex action, (possibly that’s the only one we basically have) and just as reflexively the madman’s hands gripped tighter at each increment of her struggle. It was like the gazelle in the tiger’s mouth, trying to wiggle, its bowels venting. Each wiggle brings a tighter clamp of the jaws. And believe me after awakening to something like that with a hand over your mouth to prevent you from screaming or yelling, how erotic can you get? Remember, this wasn’t the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ you were looking at. This was Adonis, Zeus himself from on high if you must, and know what it said?

“No,” Hammond inquired formally. “How could I? I wasn’t there.”

“It said, ‘Hi Sandy, it’s only me.’ And you know what the response was. Nothing more than, ‘it’s you’, a comfortable now, ‘it’s you.’ Home at last. Words of love if I’ve ever heard them. At least for a few days or so before… But why get ahead in the story. You can’t in life can you, live the future before it’s occurred. Well you can’t here either I maintain. That’s not the way life goes though to read most authors and their minute descriptions you’d be led to think otherwise.

After a few more hand strokes and calming words to get her to relax, evidently, Brochowitz didn’t even need the lowly porno mags to get her aroused. The two were soon necking; the madman lifted her bodily and carried her into the bedroom. All her good (and honest) intentions to steer clear of the maniac’d been overturned in a matter of minutes by a few soothing words and a well-placed bout of petting.

While all this was transpiring in the bedroom, the boy, Benji, came innocently driving up on his motorcycle, parked, shut the thing off and hung his helmet over the handlebars as he always did. Opening the front door in a jubilant mood for he’d been over ‘racing’ on the track and done quite well, he was surprised to discover Shotzee in the house. The tiny creature jumped up upon him and wanted to play, obviously, or did the dog really want comfort from someone he recognized who wasn’t as crazy as his master. Shotzee, of course, had been given back to its master and he wasn’t supposed to be there anymore unless… The second cause of alarm was the group of porno mags, which’d been strewn over the coffee table in the living room by the madman in his haste to get his subject into the bedroom. Those, of course, were stimuli only to be used when needed. And they weren’t the boy’s. He had his stashed in his room and he would’ve recognized them intimately for most people nowadays in Christian countries use them, even the kids. That’s why they’re on the stands. Among other things we’ve become a porno society so it’s claimed.

The boy passed the mother’s bedroom on the way to his own. The noises coming from ‘in there’ told him the entire story for he’d heard them before for almost a year. He paused long enough, of course, to confirm his sensation and without another thought proceeded to his room where he packed a bag with things he needed and took the roundabout way across the deck to the parking lot. Know why?

“No,” said Hammond. “He was afraid he might become aroused?”

“Never,” I said.

He was so disgusted by the whole thing he didn’t want to hear them again. And while he was fearful for his mother and felt something wasn’t quite right, that he should’ve stayed and perhaps intervened or just … called the sheriffs he didn’t. He’d warned his mother if she let the
creep
back in he’d leave and that was just what he was doing. She was an adult who conducted her affairs the way she saw fit. And, quite frankly, she’d done the same thing before with the lout, kicked him out and taken him back in before, of course, that last catastrophe. Naturally the boy was worried about his mother. He was worried sick, but he felt he had no other choice so he took off. He gunned and revved the bike leaving the mother in a cloud of dust.

“Where to?” Said Hammond. “A young kid who’s living with his mother can’t just go out on his own with nothing.”

“This one could,” I said.

He headed towards his grandmother’s over the hill, the rich woman who lived in Redwood Grove. Despite their cultural disparity the two got along quite well. Then the boy had something he wanted to see her about let alone discuss his mother’s situation. At least he got away. Who knows what’d occurred if he’d burst in on
them
. The madman certainly would’ve killed him or at least tried to though that hadn’t been his main concern for leaving.

Like everything else the human body undergoes, obviously, it eventually tires and has to rest. We’re not like electrons, who can whirl about their orbits indefinitely or at least until they’re displaced. We’re flesh and blood. We can’t stay awake forever and we can’t urinate forever. Sex as well requires rest no matter what some of our Casanovas maintain.

Sandy had to come out of her bedroom and so did Brochowitz. This time for her, of course, it hadn’t been love. It’d only been lust if an evil one at that. Brochowitz, who was a sensitive man, didn’t call her the ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ for nothing. He was on to her, or at least that part of her yearnings. After that session, of course, he expected to stay there permanently is my guess. That was his homecoming. He’d come down from the
acid
he’d taken but had plenty more and could think of no better place to do it in.

The first thing Sandy did in the morning when she got up was put on her negligee and pad on down to her son’s room in her bare feet. When she found him missing and his bed unslept in she rushed towards the living room to check the parking lot. His motorcycle was gone. She’d been so
involved
; evidently, she hadn’t even heard it drive away. She was about to leave herself when she felt the two hands on her shoulders from behind. She turned and the devil’s face was upon her.

“Sandy,” said Brochowitz. “Where’re you going? You can’t leave.”

This evidently brought
her
back to life.

“What do you mean I can’t leave?” She said. “My son’s gone. I have to find him.” She tried for the door again.

“Don’t worry about him,” the voice became more sinister now. “He can take care of himself. I don’t want you to leave the house.” And he slammed the door shut behind her. Approaching the couch Sandy sat down. She was emotionally distraught. Almost in hysterics. She … she couldn’t believe what’d just happened herself. That it was she who’d
done it
?