THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (29 page)
As he passed the little Oceanview schoolhouse where kiddies were out playing in the yard he stood up once more and blew them kisses. They all thought it was pretty neat seeing this madman Adonis driving along in the fancy car waving to them like a movie hero. They wouldn’t’ve though if they’d known the aftermath of his work, which created a virtual horror show. They might’ve liked it in the movies but it’s another thing to get too close to something like that where it really affects you.
Brochowitz became a little more sedate when he realized the thing he had to do which, of course, was extermination. He stopped before the beach house; noticed the trees as they moved their branches hypnotically in the yard and got out of the car. His dog, which Sandy’d placed outside nearly saved her.
“Shotzee,” called the madman almost in a complete reversion to reality over the only thing he could probably ever really love, an animal, “what’re you doing out here?” The dog whined and barked jumping up on him as if to tell him something. Of course, it couldn’t. Dogs don’t talk though they probably understand a lot more than we give them credit for but one
thinks
they really miss the ability.
Then in another instance the bobbing and weaving figure like some massive lizard went up onto the deck to peer through the sliding glass door. It, naturally, was locked, but as he sheltered his eyes from the glare to peer through the glass whom do you think he saw. None other than the terrified maiden. She, still in her negligee, stood holding the phone and quivering like a persecuted slave at the thought of another encounter with its master and had been ever since the car drove up. The senseless woman had initially called the sheriff merely to report a stolen car. She’d thought nothing about his returning to hound her. Besides, then she hadn’t wanted to confront the police in her state. She was still high as a kite herself. She’d reasoned once they’d found the madman in her car they’d take him in. Now he was back, prowling outside, peeking in the window like a ravenous predator from a Hollywood production, and she couldn’t get anyone on the line. Imagine the frustration, the internal frustration as she slammed down the phone. Ever been so scared out of your wits you’d give anything to relieve the tension, even perhaps accept death. Pee or crap in your britches? That was her.
“What … what do you want?” She called in a shaky voice. You can’t come in here.” That was it you see. Those very words made him, who’d put his deepest trust in her, a virtual stranger. Guess how he felt?
“Do I have to?” said Hammond. “I’d really rather not.”
And also she said this like she was talking to a sane person. In the next instant, of course, the hulk burst through the door covering her with glass and his own blood for he’d cut both arms in the process. And from there the fun began.
“I thought I told you not to call the cops on me.”
He menacingly got right in her face when, in fact, he wasn’t really sure that she had. Would it’ve made any difference at that point any more than a lie she might give that she hadn’t? When you’re beyond all reason, obviously, things don’t make a difference. Nothing does. Even your ineluctable intent. That’s why you’re able to see that through. Though there are gradations a pure reflex goes without thought and that’s where Brochowitz was.
She still held the phone in her hand but so tightly Brochowitz couldn’t wrest it out. Her muscles’d evidently locked on it as her one saving hope, which was static for it wasn’t activated. I mean if he could’ve wrestled the phone away maybe that’d been enough, don’t you see, he might’ve calmed down. But the strength in that resistance of those female tendons constituted defiance, an insult to the madman’s manly strength for even the mad have healthy desires. She stammered something but didn’t resist as he whipped out his Buck knife allowing her to momentarily break away. He then chased her into the bedroom where, screaming bloody murder (a thing that inspires any assassin), he gutted her and I mean literally on the merry queen.
I won’t bore you with too many gory details but they all occurred. Of that much I can assure you. And they happen more than you think though most people read them in the news stories and aren’t personally affected as though that makes those incidences a lesser part of humanity. I can assure you they’re not. We’re all responsible for each and every one of them and they occur every day in many parts of the world under the same trappings of savagery no matter what they’re attributed to. That’s man’s way. Did her last minute thoughts return to her savior? I doubt it this time. She certainly didn’t cry out his name. How can you cry anyone’s name when a five-inch blade’s piercing your heart? He not only jammed the thing in but also sliced turned it around, cutting, actually cutting a plug of flesh right out of her chest cavity. The walls were sprayed with blood and, of course, it wasn’t only hers. His lacerations were sufficient to make it theirs for he too was bleeding profusely from his window debacle. Their blood was at least pure for despite their promiscuous lives neither had contacted the disease we all so greatly fear nowadays. And Brochowitz wasn’t through.
“You know what an eviscerated heart looks like don’t you?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one,” said Hammond facetiously.
“A God damned chopped up calamari with its tubes and chambers truncated. Well he took that bloody mess into the living room and threw it up directly at Hartwig’s portrait. Good shot too. Hit it right in the middle spattering it properly. Like those little brush figures we used to make as kiddies. That was before he did something he really shouldn’t have.”
“And what was that?” Said Hammond.
He slit the old lab’s throat. Faithful Suzie who’d been with Sandy since she’d been a pup hadn’t had the sense to flee the house like the Dachshund. Or perhaps she was just too old and tired to move though I believe she had attempted to bite the intruder. She hadn’t been successful. They found her that afternoon in the general mess of the house along with all the other goodies. Shotzee, his dog, the dachshund had gotten away. It ran to where it always ran in critical situations at the beach house, to old Sid the baker’s. This was Sandy’s old friend, who still has it to this day. But that was a long time ago. It’s possible either one of them could’ve died. We all do though this was a favorable alignment of the human’s age with its pet’s for neither dog nor man would have lived much longer.
As to the madman he got off easy in my estimation but how could it’ve been otherwise for the mad. Is their terror real? Can you make them suffer? Or is ours not as real as we think but just enough to make us think we’re sane? It’s a problem if you analyze it. It’s not actually all that clear.
Covered with blood, raving and flashing his knife as he went, this acid freak walked right up through town scattering people like chaff in the wind. No one there’d ever seen a monster like that. They didn’t know what he’d done only that it must’ve been something terrible (and it was) and they just wanted to get out of his way. As he approached the front porch of the store, the hangers on crammed inside and Fred the owner of the superette bolted the glass-plated door, which was reinforced with steel.
“I … I’ve got a firearm in back,” he informed his terrified customers, innocent beach dwellers, kids in bathing suits, mothers in lounge wear. “I’ll go get it just in case but he can’t get in here.”
Fred reappeared with his shotgun. About this time the sheriffs came on the scene, stopped their two cars with their lights blinking, sirens blaring on the highway before the store, got out, pulled their weapons and ordered the now fearful Brochowitz to freeze. He, of course, who was coming down from his trip and didn’t know what he’d done turned and fled up the hill straight through the brush. He … he held out his knife.
“So what,” said Hammond. “With guns behind them what difference does that make to the cops now?”
“Not much, perhaps,” I said, “but it cost Brochowitz his life.”
Not wanting to follow too close in the thick underbrush of that marvelous hill, which rises in all its greenery and splendor above the white sandy beach the sheriffs sent their attack dog to lead the way after Brochowitz. But believe me that hill was thick with Manzanita bushes. Not even a crazed person let alone a machine could make good headway against them. The branches tear at your clothes like barbed wire, they lacerate your skin. The rotten cactus related plant is just damn tough, tougher than you and the man was all but naked to begin with.
When they came upon the creature in a little hollow, of course, the dog had him cornered. All the sheriffs had to do was order the canine back and stabilize the madman. Seeing the officers’ approach, however, Brochowitz parried the knife ineffectively towards them, waving it like a flag of surrender no less. They were fifteen or twenty yards distant and he was on his back. He choked, saliva poured from his mouth.
He
resembled a mad dog if anything. Scared to death. Guns still drawn, though the officers had those other incapacitors also that everyone’s talking about nowadays. I believe they call them tasers. They’re meant to shock the subject into submission though they also sometimes kill.
The dog, however, having been trained to attack didn’t take Brochowitz’s feint lightheartedly. It, in fact, attacked (what do dogs know), grabbing hold of one of his arms as the frightened delirious man in his loincloth or cutoffs shifted his knife and stabbed the thing with his other causing a minor wound but a huge yelp and howl, which resounded through the dampening brush up and down the hillside. Verboten, of course, where cops are concerned for their motto is, you can hurt me but don’t hurt my dog. He, innocent creature, risks his life for me. So anyone who touches it naturally angers them. Especially when it’s a miscreant they’ve had trouble with before and an individual they don’t want around anyhow. Those sorts put law enforcement on edge.
In essence, the lead sheriff took careful aim, a shot rang out and even from fifteen feet away the officer plugged the raving maniac directly through his forehead. He convulsed for a moment and slipped gently away. Not, of course, to a better life than he’d had on earth but to stasis or oblivion, which in effect wasn’t even ‘no life’ at all, certainly not ‘nothing’ for even that has existence and he… For what’s life anyhow but the gathering of the inert into what we call temporary awareness? Death, the slipping out of it, of course, is neither here nor there. I looked at Hammond absurdly…
“Yes, go on,” he drawled facetiously as though he was now playing a game on me and I … couldn’t go on.
“Well,” I said. “The officer certainly didn’t want to get too close did he? Then those powder burns might’ve showed execution style and there’d’ve been an investigation though I doubt Brochowitz’s parents would be coming out from Brooklyn to initiate it.”
“No,” said Hammond with a sigh. “The right thing was done, dog or no dog. Put the poor creature out of his misery though they certainly don’t seem poor when they’re attacking you. Do they?”
“Yes,” I said. “They don’t, do they? They constitute a real threat. That’s their problem. All our problems actually, for we have to be subjected to them.”
“True, how true.” And we both realized there was no easy solution if indeed there was any whatsoever. The authorities, of course, found Sandy’s body with that of
her
dog later and that’d added self-righteous justification to their deed.
One who wasn’t affected by this train of events was Sarah the beautiful. That’s simply because she wasn’t there. Had she been and jumped into the affair who knows what’d happened.
“Oh, yes,” said Hammond. “What did occur to her? All we need is her cut to shreds. Did she find a better situation for herself than the one at the beach?”
“No,” I replied, “not quite. It wasn’t so good. Just at the point she should’ve sought help she gave up and attempted suicide.”
“The … the most beautiful woman in the world attempt suicide? How can that happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “don’t ask me but if you look around at some of our celebrities, who for all one knows at one time or another must’ve been called the same thing, for what else is a major aspect of a ‘star’ who’s chosen a similar escape except ‘most beautiful’, you’ll see it’s not uncommon. The anguish of the heart (mind) can be physically painful enough to want to end it all.”
Her reasons were quite complicated (aren’t they all) and her intent must not’ve been too strong otherwise she’d’ve done a better job than she did. Ever since her boyfriend’d been taken away the second time she’d been going downhill. She began drinking more, alienating the few friends she had among the residents out there until she stayed entirely alone and wouldn’t leave the house. She had Fred send her groceries up with one of his helpers but what were those tantamount to but gin (her drink of choice) and more gin. She didn’t even use mix with it but preferred it over the rocks. So as long as they didn’t shut off her tap water and her electricity that ran her refrigerator she could make plenty of ice cubes.
Then, of course, being on a jag like that can you imagine drinking from the time you awake to the time you crash, alone with your TV set all day, what sort of doldrums you can sink into. Her only warm thought or should’ve been, of course, was her son and he’d become an utter disappointment to her. Remember now who he’d left her for, if not right away, right after staying at her daughter’s place. This was none other than June Enright the domineering realtor, who Sarah’d sincerely despised ever since that woman had adopted her first child who was now living in Salinas and happily married.
To be more precise the two women hated one another. June held Sarah’s drinking and general irresponsibility against the alcoholic while Sarah couldn’t stand what she considered to be June’s opportunistic and self-driving ways. How often do we see two people, who despise one another for opposing attributes? Governments even do that. Often I can assure you. And sometimes they even overlap, which makes the despicableness even more absurd at the same time it sheds light on how just people in general can’t see themselves. Can you see yourself? I can’t. I don’t think any of us truly can. Then as I understand it the alcoholic’s one possible ally in her situation, her phone, turned out to be of no assistance whatsoever.
“How,” Said Hammond, “can a phone not turn out to be an ally? Why that’s absurd in itself. Only a person fits that role generally.”
“That was just it,” I said.
June, you see, who had Sarah’s number, had it restricted from her system in the colonial mansion. In other words from it no call of Sarah’s’d come through and she didn’t have her son’s cell phone number, only June’s. Even when out of sheer frustration from receiving unwonted calls and probably out of spite since she hadn’t been able to contact her son and he hadn’t gotten a hold of her, she’d had her own phone disconnected. She just hadn’t thought enough to try the pay phone at the grocery store that the dropouts used, for what reason did she have to think her phone was restricted while it was working. What do you think? The same result. No contact.
“Damn callous woman,” Hammond said of June.
“Yes and diabolical deceiver that she was, she’d approached Marcus to make sure
he
wouldn’t weaken and call her.”
“You no longer need your cell phone. I’ll give you one of mine. We’re all on the same link. My business pays for it.” Now she couldn’t call him, but he hadn’t called his mother, which he could’ve done from either phone, so what sense…?”
“Guilt,” said Hammond. “Because the boy knew June didn’t want him to be in contact and with something of hers he’d at least hesitate if in fact he did try at all. That’s the way women try to get to you and believe me it works sometimes. My wife?” I felt that a plausible explanation as any.
Marcus thinking nothing of it obliged her. He knew he could call his mother at any time if he chose and also that she didn’t have his cell phone number. The fact she couldn’t call him on his new one, as much as it consoled June, wasn’t even an inhibition to him. He gave over his own phone, let it lapse and took the free one. As honorable as the kid was he was open to taking anything that was free and of quality. The iPhone was far better than the one he had so, as with the Miata, he took it. He, I believe, at that point really believed he had stepped up in society.
As you know, he was soon to be off to school, he’d pretty much forgotten his mother, who felt he was a lost cause and had let this surrogate gradually take over his mind and shift him in her direction. He could really accept graduating from a first rate college, stepping into real estate and making a million dollars as June’d promised him.
“That is if you want to, and you don’t decide to become a doctor or an attorney,” the dizzy blond told him in all fairness.
And with her, believe me, the million was no dream. As with any of our well-established entrepreneurs, partnership translates into that or more, much more for that’s how our system’s run. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Never was a maxim more true. And it was doubly true then because even the so-called middle class was sinking into the mire of the poor.
Even, and this was hard to believe, when after the socialite’s tragedy Marcus visited his best friend Benji in an attempt to console him and help him get rid of the beach house, he hadn’t inquired about his mother who was at that time in a prevention unit at the crisis center over the hill. June still had him brainwashed into thinking she was an incurably bad person whom it was better, and safer, to shun. Though his old friends at the beach had greeted him none had volunteered to say Marcus’s mother had been taken away’. Perhaps they’d been ashamed and hadn’t wanted to confuse their friend for even kids have their own esprit des corps.
Several days later when Sarah did return from the crisis ward, heard about the tragedy and had begun drinking again, she found her son had come and gone, and now she must’ve thought he’d be gone forever, for he’d be going off to school back east. She knew the very date and the time. She was sad to’ve missed the boy and she’d been sure he’d’ve come and seen her if she’d been there, for evidently she was thinking of doing the suicide bit all over.
The first attempt occurred one morning on a mild day at the beach. Feeling very lonely as only manics can, drink in hand she walked over to her small garage which contained no car … her ex’s old pickup was still in front of the house … but instead had been turned into the carpenter’s tool shed. She’d never had a car and he’d always been content to park his on the street. Opening the door a sparrow flew out and startled her. Nervously she began to remember all his friends from the swamp people, who gathered there on Sundays with their various items that needed repair, as Barney’d work his table saw; one of them might use his drill or lathe. She’d bring them a pot of coffee, sit a bit, listen to their chatter; then go back to the house where she’d sit in the kitchen and have a drink of her own. Need I have to tell you what it was. But she felt good. She’d just socialized. That was her life. At least then she’d had one. Now…
Cobwebs had begun to drape the presses; dust lay thick on the work-table. She … quite frankly, hadn’t been out there since Barney’d been taken away and she hadn’t heard from him. Faces come back, like a gallery of rogues, which, of course, is exactly what they were and still were, most of them, and likely always would be. She waxed nostalgic when her eye caught a simple tool on the bench and the idea came to her.
“What was that?” Said Hammond.
“The idea or the tool?” I caught him. “The idea, of course, was suicide. It was the first time it’d inveighed upon her though she’d thought of it before. The tool, of course, was a razor knife. She’d picked it up and thought how easily then it would have been to slash her wrists. Luckily she didn’t. For that thing was razor sharp; she might not’ve been able to
save
herself. She dropped the thing like it’d shocked her, then abruptly left the garage.”
“So,” said Hammond. “What was the problem?”
Her drinking mainly, I said, and her loneliness as far as I could tell. She’d simply held too many meaningless relations in her life. Some women are like that. They go from man to man. She was one of them. While sitting at her kitchen table this time she began to entertain the idea again. But now it was a bread knife that sat there, fortunately a dull one for since Barney’d left she never sharpened it but had used it to cut everything. After staring at that ‘still life’ for an hour or so in sheer terror and stasis, upon a sudden impulse she grabbed the thing, drew it across one wrist then another, so lightly, of course, the moves barely caused two scratches though they bled like hell. In her panic she quickly wrapped towels around both arms and ran to the firehouse, which was several blocks away. She burst in on the resident.
“I … I’ve cut myself,” she blathered and held out her arms.
“Sarah,” said the fireman, for everyone there knew her. As I said someone that attractive was hard not to know. “What have you done to yourself?”
“I cut my…” She got out before bursting into tears and the hulk’s arms opened wide to receive her. He, of course, exposed the cuts, which weren’t bleeding badly by that time and bandaged them. Then he sat her down and began talking to her, which was the procedure in shock cases. Seems even if the patient can’t respond the sound of another’s voice soothes them. It’s like a mother coos or sings lullabies to her child. He naturally called the ambulance and that’s when they’d taken her away.
This time, however, she’d learned a better method (don’t all miscreants from their associates in jail) from those ‘like her’ she’d met in the crisis center. In innocent discussion no less. Nembutal and booze was a concoction hard to beat. It was a pleasant high and she’d been assured it’d work. She’d gotten the pills over the hill when she’d been released. The booze was in her cupboard. She didn’t have much to wait around for, estranged as she was from both her children – one of whom’d been adopted. Another who was about to be, for evidently one of June’s conditions for her benevolent sponsorship had recently become that Marcus was to change his name to hers. The legal work’d already been taken care of. She’d imposed it as a condition, not that she’d spelled it right out and said he’d forfeit his good fortune if he didn’t comply. Still the threat with her was always tacit. It loomed over you. You knew it was there a fortiori.
But I guess by that time after living several months with his sponsor Marcus’d been exposed to her darker side. He’d witnessed the anguish June’d put Jennifer her pianist daughter through and had balked at that. The name change, however, was a little too much. It also brought him to the boiling point. And he, quite frankly, decided to call his mother. To at least say goodbye to her. He was in fact to leave in a week. His travel itinerary’d been taken care of. His matriculation at school prepared and everything he’d need including a flashy new laptop he’d never been able to afford was ready to travel.
While it wasn’t so strange he hadn’t been able to get hold of his mother for her phone’d been disconnected, he found it odd she hadn’t been able to get hold of him since now that the miscreant’d gone, he felt she surely would have. That’s when he sat down one day when June was at work and began delving into her computer.
“And,” said Hammond, “he found the call block?”
“Did he ever?” I said. “It showed up like the seven genies on a dollar slot machine. Believe me he was pissed. Excited and pissed. He decided to confront his stepmother as he’d come to call her right then and there, for who knew who’d been trying to get hold of him. Just the thought of his poor mother’s frustration if it existed put him in a tailspin far more than merely blasting June. What do they say, ‘blood’s thicker than water’. Meaningless, yet…?”
“So, did he?” Said Hammond. “Blast her.”
Not before talking to Sarah. He called the payphone at the grocery store; got someone on it, evidently one of the locals who hung around there all the time and he got him to leave the phone off the hook and to go call his mother who was all of two blocks away. She in her inebriated state was helped down the hill by the Samaritan whereas chance would have it the phone still hung off the hook. She picked it up and her son was on the other end. She, of course, could scarcely believe it.
“Mom!”
“Marcus, son, is this you, where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get you forever.” He knew how drunk she was by her slurred voice and her reaction level. After all, how many years of her states had he endured? He, of course, was aggrieved. Sometimes distance’ll do that to you and believe me with a hound like June on your back the distance doesn’t have to be very much. Seventeen miles over the hill in this case.
“So,” said Hammond “What’d the two say (conclude)?”
Not much. Though she leveled with him and told him nearly everything. About her attempt and all. Though not about her
new
considerations
. That I’m sure didn’t sit too well with the kid nor at that point I imagine did the owner of the house he was sitting in, whose car he was driving and whose phone he was using. At least it set him to thinking. What was the point of it all? Of anything perhaps for that matter. For as I told you the kid was highly philosophical for his age. Sensitive and endowed with no little Weltschmerz. He and Hartwig used to have torturous conversations over Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger and the like, to mention a few of the ‘big names’.