Bust (9 page)

Todd, that was the tinker’s name. Dillon would like to have lots of things in his past changed, and knowing the tinker’s name topped the list. Knowing the name made it, like, personal and shite. You didn’t ever want murder to be personal, you might start to take it serious, think it meant something. He felt the karma would come down the pike and hit him when he least expected it. He never shared this hibby jibby with anyone, but Todd was engraved in whatever passed for his heart forever. Wasn’t that curse enough?

Oh, yeah, and he’d committed one murder in New York. He cracked some guy’s head open against a brick wall because the guy had that plummy Brit accent.

Dillon had only gotten busted for one of his murders — a guy he’d cut for looking at his woman — and did five hard years in Portlaoise, where they kept the Republican prisoners. His first day, he’d found the Zen book on his bunk, left by the previous inmate. He’d picked it up from boredom and got gradually hooked. Hooked up quickly too with the Provo guys and got his arse covered though again, he wasn’t privy to any of their councils. They’d look out for him but didn’t feel any great need to stretch it.

He continued to ransack the downstairs of the townhouse. It was fun turning things over, destroying shite. A rush like when he was in his teens and the Brits came at them with rubber bullets, those suckers bounced off you, you hurt like a pagan for a week. The first time they got an armored car on fire and got the soldiers to crawl out, crying for their mammies, with a sniper picking the fookers off, one by British one. Fook, it got him hard just remembering. Those Brit accents, sounding polite even as they roared. Dillon was convinced then that he was one of the real Boyos. In fact, there was hardly a kid in the city who hadn’t been bounced by a rubber bullet — it came with the territory.

When everything on the ground floor looked good and wrecked, he went upstairs. He found the bedroom Max had told him about, which was filled with more ugly old shite that looked like rubbish his grandmother would buy. Everything was made of wood and they had some fierce gold-colored bed. Dillon imagined what the room was going to look like when he put mirrors on the ceiling, put down some reed mats, like home, get one of them waterbeds, and put a jacuzzi in the bathroom. He broke all the glass stuff from on top of the dresser and night table and dumped all the clothes out of the drawers. Then he found the old lady’s jewelry box and stuck all the diamond- and gold-looking stuff into a plastic bag he found.

On the wall, there were some pictures of a fat old lady — he guessed this was Mrs. Fisher. There was also a picture of Max Fisher standing on a beach somewhere. He looked the same as he did at the pizzeria and in Modell’s, except he had a bit more hair. Dillon couldn’t wait till he got to do Max too. He knew the plan was to wait for him to die but, fook, Dillon wanted to get on with his life. He hated that old bollix, the way he was sitting there in his posh suit. He reminded Dillon of Fr. Malachy, his principal in school. Dillon never understood what the priest was saying but nothing about school made much sense to Dillon. The only reason he went was to keep the Social Services away. But Fr. Malachy was always calling him down to his office for whatever, or suspending him. Malachy thought he was God almighty because he was the principal and could do whatever he wanted. Now Max Fisher was trying to pull that same deal, trying to call all the shots, but this time Dillon named the jig — now he was the man in charge and Max Fisher was the little Irish schoolkid sitting on the other side of the desk. When Dillon had heard that Malachy
died in real agony from cancer Dillon had muttered,
hope he died roaring.

Dillon heard voices and a noise — a key turning in a lock. He took out the .38 he’d gotten from the Boyos’ place down off the Bowery. When he’d showed up there, they’d rolled their eyes, like, here’s this mad annoying fook again. But he had money to pay for the piece and, what the hell, he’d brought some decent bottle of Jameson. They treated him like a younger brother who’s always hanging on but is never, like ever, going to be in the gang.

Heading downstairs, he remembered what the Yanks said and used it now like a prayer, albeit a dark one,
Lock n load
.

Straight to Hell

THE
C
LASH

As Max was feeling for the light switch, he slipped and fell. The way he landed and the way the pain was shooting down his side, he thought he’d broken his hip. When he started to get up he realized he was okay, but wondered what the cold wet stuff on his hands was.

For some reason, this whole time he’d been planning the murder, Max hadn’t thought about what the body would look like. He thought Deirdre would die like people in old westerns died. In those movies you never saw any blood — the cowboys and Indians just fell off their horses and lay there nice and still. In modern movies, they always showed the blood squirting out of people’s heads, gushing from their mouths. Max always thought it was just Hollywood exaggerating things, but now he realized that those movies didn’t show half of the real horror.

If it weren’t for her short, blond hair, Max might not have recognized Deirdre at all. Blood had leaked from her head into a two- or three-foot-wide puddle around her body. Although she lay on her back, Max could barely make out the features of her face. He thought, This can’t be fuckin’ happening. It was part of a dream — soon the alarm clock would ring and he’d wake up. When a ringing actually started, Max thought he really
had
been sleeping. But then he realized that the noise wasn’t an alarm clock, it was the burglar alarm. Shit, it nearly gave
him a coronary and his heart was in bad enough shape.

After he shut off the alarm, he glanced back at the scene, shocked again by all the blood. When he realized that the wormy stuff on the wall was part of Deirdre’s brain he started to throw up. No one told him it was going to be so... gross.

He went into the downstairs bathroom where he took off his blood-covered clothes and washed the blood off his hands. He still couldn’t believe this was happening. What the hell had he been thinking, planning this murder like some kind of lunatic you read about in the tabloids? The
Daily News
today had two twins on the front page, the ones who’d murdered their parents, with the screaming headline,
TWIN KILLING
. Wait till they got hold of this.

He wondered if he was insane. He didn’t think he was insane, but what the hell did that mean? Insane people never think they’re insane so how did he know if he was insane or not? He certainly felt fevered and needed a drink — a whole bar of them.

He had to get a grip. He could worry if he was insane or not later — right now he had to do what he was supposed to do or he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail, possibly on death row.

Trying not to look at Deirdre’s body, he walked back out toward the front of the house. He went upstairs to make sure it was ransacked like the downstairs was. He saw that most of Deirdre’s jewelry was gone, then noticed that Popeye had broken the jar that held his kidney stones. Now he’d have to get on his knees later and look for the fucking things. In the center of the room was a turd. Max squinted at it, truly horrified. Somehow it even seemed worse than the murder, that the animal went to the toilet on his carpet. How fucked up was that? Murder was one thing but this, this was a goddamn liberty.

He went back downstairs, just to make sure everything
was right before he called the police. He was about to dial 911 when he saw something that made him freeze. Sticking out from the hallway into the living room was another pair of feet — a woman’s feet in high heels. He thought, Jeez, it’s just like
The Wizard of Oz
. Then nausea returned fast as he inched toward the hallway, shaking, covering his mouth. When he saw the second blood puddle he gagged, coughing up stomach acid. He couldn’t recognize this woman’s face either, but something about her body looked familiar. She was heavyset, wearing jeans and a light blue sweater. Her long curly brown hair looked familiar, too, like...

Fuck, it was Stacy Goldenberg — his niece, on Deirdre’s side. She was living in New York, going to school at Columbia. Sometimes she and Deirdre went shopping together and, for some reason, she must have come home with her tonight.

Max fainted. When he regained consciousness both hips were killing him. He remembered the dead bodies and how he needed to call the police. He thought about confessing — getting a shrink to say he was nuts. They’d medicate him, lock him up for a while, and he’d eventually get out. Or he could pin the murders on Angela — say it was all her idea. It
was
all her idea, wasn’t it?

He shouted, “Get me the fuck out of this!”

Max couldn’t remember anything. Suddenly, his whole life was a fog. Then he heard Popeye saying how he would get to him if he ever went to the cops. This Popeye was a total psycho — there was no doubt about that — and Max had a feeling he meant everything he said.

Max went into the kitchen, chugged some vodka, the booze burning like a son of a bitch. Then he did some deep breathing, pulling himself back together, and dialed 911.

Max was staring through the lace curtains at the red strobe lights outside the townhouse and he didn’t hear the last question Detective Simmons had asked him.

“Sorry,” Max said, “What was that?”

“The alarm,” Simmons said. “Could you please tell me what happened with that again?”

Detective Simmons was a stocky black man, about forty years old. He was wearing a wrinkled white shirt, obviously discount, sweat stains on the armpits, with a tie wound on loosely. Max was wearing the navy sweat suit he’d changed into before the police came. He knew it was stylish and made him look slim and athletic.

Other officers, forensic workers and a crime-scene photographer were gathered in the hallway, creating a din of voices and confusion.

“Like I told that other officer,” Max said. “I tripped it off by accident. I mean I forgot to disarm it.”

“So the alarm definitely wasn’t ringing when you got home?”

“No,” Max said.

Now Simmons was looking in a small notepad, saying, “And what about the other victim — Stacy Goldenberg. Did you know that your wife was going shopping with her today?”

“No,” Max said. He was starting to feel nauseous again, thinking about how he was going to have to face his brother-in-law and sister-in-law — Stacy’s parents. The vodka in his stomach was shouting,
Yo, buddy, how ’bout some more down here?

“When was the last time you spoke to your wife?”

“Like I told the first officer — this morning.”

“You didn’t talk to her at all during the course of the day?”

Max shook his head, trying for that devastated look.

“The past few days, had your wife told you about anything strange that happened around the house while you were gone? For example, did she say any strangers came to the door or rang the bell or anything like that?”

Max, still shaking his head, said, “No. Nothing like that,” acting weighed down with grief.

“So far we haven’t found any sign of forced entry,” Simmons said. “What about keys? Do you keep a spare set with any friends or neighbors?”

“No,” Max said, letting his voice choke a little.

“What about the code to your alarm? Do you share that with anybody?”

“No one knew the code except me, Deirdre, and the alarm company.” Damn, if he could just squeeze a few tears out. How did they do that shit?

“You see what I’m getting at, don’t you, Mr. Fisher? There are only two likely possibilities for how the killer got inside the house. He either broke in before the women arrived, or he forced his way in with them. If he broke in, he would have tripped off the alarm, and if he forced his way in with the women, the alarm would still have gone off unless he forced your wife to disarm it. But even if he did that, it wouldn’t explain how the alarm got set again when he left, and you’re telling me that when you came home the alarm was set. So the only logical conclusion is that the killer — or killers — somehow knew the code to your alarm.”

Simmons gave him a look that seemed to scream,
I know you did it and I’m gonna hang you for it, you schmuck
.

Trying to ignore the look, pretending he was imagining it, Max said, “You know, I’m really not feeling too well. Is it possible we could do this tomorrow?”

He wiped his dry eyes, as if he were on the verge of some hysterical weeping.

“I understand,” Simmons said, “but it’s true what they say, you know — the first twenty-four hours after a crime is committed is when most criminals are apprehended. If we could just clarify a couple of other things, I think it could help us a great deal.”

An officer came over and started talking to Detective Simmons. Max wasn’t paying attention, staring blindly again toward the activity outside the house.

“This is just routine,” Simmons continued, “but can we go over your whereabouts tonight one more time just to make sure we got everything down right?”

He had a little edge in his voice, making it clear that this wasn’t really a request.