A Walk Among the Tombstones (38 page)

I nodded.

"I didn't think I could either. I never killed anybody. I've been angry enough to kill, one time or another, but anger passes."

"Yes."

"He was like nothing, you know? A completely insignificant man.

And I thought, how am I going to kill this worm? But I knew I had to do it. So I figured out what I had to do."

"What was that?"

"I got him talking," he said. "I asked him a few questions, and he gave little two-word replies, but I kept at it and I got him talking. He told me what they did to Yuri's kid."

"Oh."

"What they did to her and how scared she was and all. Once he got into it he really wanted to talk. Like it was a way for him to have the experience again. See, it's not like hunting, where after you shoot the deer you get to stuff the head and hang it up on the wall. Once he was done with a woman he was left with nothing but memories, so he welcomed the chance to take them out and dust them off and look at how pretty they are."

"Did he talk about your wife?"

"Yeah, he did. He liked that he was telling it to me, too. Same as he liked giving her back to me in pieces, rubbing my nose in it. I wanted to shut him up, I didn't want to hear that, but fuck it, you know? I mean, she's gone, I fed her to the fucking flames, man. It can't hurt her no more. So I let him talk all he fucking wanted, and then I could do what I had to do."

"And then you killed him."

"No."

I looked at him.

"I never killed nobody. I'm not a killer. I looked at him and I thought, no, you son of a bitch, I am not gonna kill you."

"And?"

"How could I be a killer? I was supposed to be a doctor. I told you about that, right?"

"Your father's idea."

"I was supposed to be a doctor. Petey'd be an architect because he was a dreamer, but I was the practical one, so I'd be a doctor. 'Best thing in the world to be,' he told me. 'You do some good in the world and you make a decent living.' He even decided what kind of doctor I should be.

'Be a surgeon,'

he told me. 'That's where the money is. That's the elite, top of the heap. Be a surgeon.' " He was silent for a long moment. "So all right," he said. "I was a surgeon tonight. I operated."

It had started to rain, but it wasn't coming down hard. I didn't switch on the windshield wipers.

"I took him downstairs," Kenan said. "In the basement, where his friend was, and TJ was right, it stank something awful down there. I guess the bowels let go when you die like that. I thought I was gonna gag, but I didn't, and I guess I got used to it.

"I didn't have any anesthetic, but that was okay because he passed out right away. I had his knife, big jackknife with a blade about six inches long, and there were all sorts of tools on the workbench, anything you could possibly need."

"You don't have to tell me, Kenan."

"No," he said, "you're wrong, that's exactly what I have to do is tell you. If you don't want to listen that's something else, but I gotta tell you."

"All right."

"I cut his eyes out," he said, "so he'd never look at another woman.

And I cut his hands off so he'll never touch one. I used tourniquets so he wouldn't bleed out. I made 'em out of wire. I took his hands off with a cleaver, wicked fucking thing. I suppose it's what they used to, uh--"

He breathed deeply, in and out, in and out.

"To dismember the bodies," he went on. "I opened his pants. I didn't want to touch him but I forced myself, and I cut off his works

'cause he wasn't gonna have any further use for 'em. And then his feet, I chopped his fucking feet off, because where's he got to go? And his ears, because what does he have to listen to? And his tongue, part of his tongue, I couldn't get it all, but I gripped it with a pliers and pulled it out of his mouth and cut off what I could, because who wants to hear him talk? Who wants to listen to that shit? Stop the car."

I braked and pulled over, and he opened the car door and vomited in the gutter. I gave him a handkerchief and he wiped his mouth and dropped it in the street. "Sorry," he said, pulling the door shut.

"I thought I was done doing that. Thought the tank was empty."

"Are you all right, Kenan?"

"Yeah, I think I am. I believe so. You know, I said I didn't kill him but I don't know if that's true. He was alive when I left but he could be dead by now. And if he isn't dead, shit, what's he got left? It was fucking butchery, what I did to him. Why couldn't I just shoot him in the head?

Bang and it's over."

"Why didn't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe I was thinking eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

He gave her back to me in pieces so I'll show him piecework. Some of that, maybe. I don't know." He shrugged. "Fuck it, it's done. He lives or he dies, so what, it's over."

I parked in front of my hotel and we both got out of the car and stood awkwardly on the curb. He

pointed to the flight bag and asked if I wanted some of the money.

I told him his retainer more than covered my time. Was I sure? Yes, I said. I was sure.

"Well," he said. "If you're sure. Give me a call some night, we'll have dinner. Will you do that?"

"Sure."

"Take care now," he said. "Go get some sleep."

But I couldn't sleep.

I took a shower and got in bed, but I couldn't even find a position I was able to stay in for more than ten seconds. I was too restless even to think about sleeping.

I got up and shaved and put on fresh clothes, and I turned on the TV and made a circuit of the channels and switched the set off again. I went outside and walked around until I found a place where I could have a cup of coffee. It was past four and the bars were closed. I didn't feel like drinking, I hadn't even thought of a drink all night long, but I was just as happy the bars were closed.

I finished my coffee and walked around some more. I had a lot on my mind and it was easier to think it through if I was walking.

Eventually I went back to my hotel, and then a little after seven I caught a cab downtown and went to the seven-thirty meeting on Perry Street. It broke at eight-thirty, and I had breakfast at a Greek coffee shop on Greenwich Avenue and wondered if the owner would skim the sales tax, as Peter Khoury had said. I took a cab back to the hotel. Kenan would have been proud of me, I was taking cabs left and right.

I called Elaine when I got back to my room. Her machine picked up and I left a message and sat there waiting for her to call back. It was around ten-thirty when she did.

She said, "I was hoping you would call. I've been wondering what happened. After that phone call--"

"A lot happened," I said. "I want to tell you about it. Can I come over?"

"Now?"

"Unless you have something planned."

"Not a thing."

I went downstairs and took my third cab of the morning. When she let me in her eyes searched my face and she looked troubled by what she found there. "Come in," she said. "Sit down, I made coffee. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said. "I didn't get to sleep last night, that's all."

"Again? You're not going to make a habit of this, are you?"

"I don't think so," I said.

She brought me a cup of coffee and we sat in her living room, she on the couch and I in a chair, and I started with my first conversation the previous day with Kenan Khoury and went all the way through to our last talk, when he dropped me at the Northwestern. She didn't interrupt, nor did her attention wander. I took a long time telling it, not leaving anything out, and reporting occasional conversations essentially verbatim. She hung on every word.

When I was done she said, "I'm overwhelmed, I think. That's quite a story."

"Just another night in Brooklyn."

"Uh-huh. I'm surprised you told me all of it."

"I am, too, in a way. It's not what I came here to tell you."

"Oh?"

"But I didn't want to leave it untold," I said, "because I don't want to have things I don't tell you. And that is what I came here to tell you.

I've been going to meetings and saying things to a roomful of strangers that I don't let myself say to you, and that doesn't make sense to me."

"I think I'm scared."

"You're not the only one."

"Do you want more coffee? I can--"

"No. I watched Kenan drive off this morning and I went upstairs and went to bed, and all I could think about was things I haven't said to you. You'd think what Kenan told me might keep a person awake, but it didn't even enter my mind. There was no room for it, it was too full of a conversation with you, except it was a very one-sided conversation because you weren't there."

"Sometimes it's easier that way. You can write the other person's lines for them." She frowned. "For him.

For her. For me?"

"Somebody had better write your lines, if that's how they come out when you make them up yourself.

Oh, Jesus, the only way to say it is to say it. I don't like what you do for a living."

"Oh."

"I didn't know it bothered me," I said, "and early on it probably didn't, I probably got a kick out of it, if you go all the way back to the beginning. Our beginning. And then there was a period when I didn't think it bothered me, and then a stage where I knew it did but tried to tell myself it didn't.

"Besides, what right did I have to say anything? It's not as though I didn't know what I was getting into.

Your occupation was part of the package. Where did I get off telling you to keep this and change that?"

I went to her window and looked across at Queens. Queens is the borough of cemeteries, it overflows with them, while Brooklyn has only Green-Wood.

I turned to face her and said, "Besides, I was scared to say anything. Maybe it would lead to an ultimatum, choose one or the other, quit turning tricks or I'm out of here. And suppose you didn't pick me?

"Or suppose you did? Then what does that commit me to? Does it give you the right to tell me what you don't like about the way I live my life?

"If you stop going to bed with clients, does that mean I can't go to bed with other women? As it happens I haven't been with anybody else since we started keeping company again, but I've always felt I had the right. It hasn't happened, and once or twice I made a conscious choice to keep it from happening, but I didn't feel committed to that course. Or if I did it was a secret commitment. I wasn't about to let either of us know about it.

"What happens to our relationship? Does it mean we have to get married? I don't know that I want to. I was married once and I didn't much like it. I wasn't very good at it, either.

"Does it mean we have to live together? I don't know that I want that, either. I haven't lived with anybody since I left Anita and the boys, and that was a long time ago. There are things I like about living alone. I don't know that I want to give it up.

"But it eats at me, knowing you're with other guys. I know there's no love in it, I know there's precious little sex in it, I know it has more in common with massage than with lovemaking. Knowing this doesn't seem to matter.

"And it gets in the way. I called you this morning and you called back an hour later. And I wondered where you were when I called, but I didn't ask because you might say you were with a john. Or you might not say it, and I'd wonder what you weren't saying."

"I was getting my hair done," she said.

"Oh. It looks nice."

"Thanks."

"It's different, isn't it? It does look nice. I didn't notice, I never notice, but I like it."

"Thank you."

"I don't know where I'm going with this," I said. "But I figured I had to tell you how I felt, and what's been going on with me. I love you.

I know that's a word we don't speak, and one reason I have trouble with it is I don't know what the hell it means. But whatever it means, it's how I feel about you. Our relationship is important to me. In fact its importance is part of the problem, because I've been so afraid it would change into something I won't like that I've been withholding myself from you." I stopped for breath. "I guess that's it. I didn't know I was going to say that much and I don't know if it came out right, but I guess that's it."

She was looking at me. It was hard to meet her gaze.

"You're a very brave man," she said.

"Oh, please."

" 'Oh, please.' You weren't scared? I was scared, and I wasn't even talking."

"Yes, I was scared."

"That's what brave is, doing what scares you. Walking into those guns at the cemetery must have been a piece of cake in comparison."

"The funny thing is," I said, "I wasn't that fearful at the cemetery.

One thought that came to me was that I've lived long enough so that I don't have to worry about dying young."

"That must have been comforting."

"Well, it was, oddly enough. My biggest fear was that something would happen to the girl and that it would be my fault, for doing something wrong or not taking some useful action. Once she was back with her father I relaxed. I guess I didn't really believe anything was going to happen to me."

"Thank God you're all right."

"What's the matter?"

"Just a few tears."

"I didn't mean to--"

"To what, to reach me emotionally? Don't apologize."

"All right."

"So my mascara runs. So what." She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "Oh, God," she said. "This is so embarrassing. I feel so stupid."

"Because of a few tears?"

"No, because of what I have to say next. My turn now, okay?"

"Okay."

"Don't interrupt, huh? There's something I haven't told you, and I feel really stupid about it, and I don't know where to start. All right, I'll blurt it out. I quit."