Harlot's Moon (12 page)

Michael James Grady

Age: 34

Race: Caucasian

Occupation: High School Teacher

Marital Status: M

Military Service: None

G
rady: You're making this a lot worse than it is. I mean, right now there's all this politically correct bullshit on the subject . . . but the fact is, you look at any society you want to name . . . and it happens in every one of them. Now I'll admit, the time I accidentally pushed her down the stairs . . . well, I got carried away. I mean, I certainly didn't plan to break her arm. It just happened. I gave her a little push and . . . and the same for the time she miscarried. I was pretty drunk and I gave her a shove. I meant to shove her shoulder . . . but I guess I must have hit her stomach . . . and hit it pretty hard. I have to admit, it scared the shit out of me. She's been talking about making me see this counselor, but she knows if she pushes that particular line any more, I'm out the door. Teachers have enough grief to contend with these days . . . rumors start spreading that I'm a quote, unquote, wife beater . . . I'll be out of a job. And you can bet your ass on that.

Michael Grady

W
akes up in the morning and of course it's the first thing he remembers. What he did last night.

In the upper bunk, his college roomie is, as usual, snoring his ass off. Roomie is going to flunk out of the university here if he doesn't get his ass in gear.

Puts one foot then the other on the floor and then stands up. The room is a pit. Grady is reasonably clean and neat but McGrath is a pig. God, how can anybody who came from a family as wealthy as McGrath's stand to live this way?

Pizza boxes all over the floor, dirty underwear dangling off the arms of chairs, Pepsi bottles filled with cigarette butts. God.

The hangover hits him now full force.

He feels dehydrated and sick to his stomach.

And the memories keep coming back.

God, did it really happen?

Did he really do it?

He stumbles toward the john, his foot brushing against a piece of cold pizza on the floor. It looks like chunky barf. The sight of it makes him think maybe he's going to barf.

He pisses, rocking on his heels as he does so. He keeps trying to will images of last night from his mind. But they won't go away.

He did it again, didn't he?

After all her warnings.

After all their arguments.

He went and did it again.

If only she hadn't . . .

He stumbles back out of the john to the little refrigerator McGrath keeps in the corner, right under the Saturday Night Fever poster.

They have this running battle, Grady and McGrath. Grady thinks John Travolta is the ultimate nerd. McGrath not only thinks otherwise . . . he even dresses like Travolta . . . the three-piece white suit and everything. It is 1979 and Travolta is God.

The thing is, John Travolta is this tall, skinny, handsome, street-wise guy.

Todd McGrath, on the other hand, is this short (5"5'), round (220 pounds), pimpled farm kid whose parents just happen to be filthy rich.

When he bends over to open the refrigerator door, some invisible somebody stabs a butcher knife right into the middle of his forehead.

The headache is so bad he's literally blinded.

He has to put a hand flat against the wall to keep from falling over.

God Almighty, he really did it last night.

Finally he's able to lean down and grab a can of Pepsi from the refrigerator.

He takes the Pepsi and the phone into the bathroom. The phone has an extra long cord. Whenever they want to talk in private, they take the phone into the john. Nothing like a toilet to inspire romance.

Confirm that it really happened. That's what he needs to do. And if it did really happen, maybe it wasn't as bad as he thinks.

Maybe it was just a little lover's spat and not a big deal at all.

He puts the phone on the edge of the sink and then starts gunning the Pepsi.

As he drinks, he becomes aware of the smell of vomit.

Maybe he barfed last night and doesn't remember. Or maybe McGrath barfed. McGrath always barfs. He mixes beer and wine and, man, that'll make you sicker than anything.

He wishes he'd brought two Pepsis in with him. He's halfway done with this one and he's still dehydrated.

He turns to the phone and dials. His whole right arm is trembling.

Maybe it was worse than he remembers.

What if he really hurt her . . .?

Her bitch roommate answers. Molly and Grady have this mutual loathing for each other. She thinks that Tina should have dumped Grady long ago and Grady thinks somebody should have drowned Molly long ago.

"Is Tina there?"

"It's early."

"That isn't what I asked you. I asked you if she was there."

"You sonofabitch. You did it to her again, didn't you?"

"It's none of your fucking business."

So it really did happen after all . . .

"One of these times she's going to call the police. And if she doesn't, maybe I will."

"Put her on the phone."

"You prick."

She lets the receiver drop to the desk. It bangs hard, the sudden sharp sound only increasing his headache.

Then she's back: "She doesn't want to talk to you."

"Bullshit. That's what you told her to say."

"Look, Michael. She doesn't want to talk to you, all right? Those are her words, not mine."

"Tell her if she doesn't talk to me, then I'll come over."

"You bastard."

Once again, the phone is dropped. Once again, a laser of pain shoots into his ear, and then angles up into the front of his head.

Then: "Hello."

He gets all corny inside. Can't help it. Just hearing her voice after they've had a terrible fight . . . well, her voice just melts him.

"I'm sorry about last night."

"It's over, Michael."

"Oh God, Tina, we just had a little fight."

"That isn't what the doctor told me."

"Doctor? What the hell are you talking about?"

A pause. "After you dropped me off last night, Molly had to take me to the emergency room. They did X-rays. You gave me a concussion last night, Michael. When you hit me in the head those times."

Now the silence belongs to him. Then, finally: "God, I didn't hit you that hard."

"Well, you figure it out, Michael. You hit me in the head five times with your fist and now I have a concussion. That sounds pretty hard to me."

"But Tina—"

"None of your bullshit, Michael. It's over." He's never heard her like this. So cold. So self-confident. Usually, after he hits her, what she does is cry and say that maybe they shouldn't see each other anymore but they always go back.

This time, though . . .

"What I should do is go to the police."

"I love you, Tina."

"Molly says I could press charges. She's in pre-law, so she knows what she's talking about."

"I'll never do it again, I promise."

"I wasn't even looking at him. That's what really pisses me off about this whole thing. You kept saying I was flirting with this guy at the bar but I couldn't even see anybody that far away, Michael. I didn't have my glasses on and I hadn't worn my contacts. I couldn't even see this guy you said I was flirting with."

"I'll be better, Tina. I promise. I honest-to-God promise."

"You'll have to be better with somebody else, Michael. I'm not going to see you anymore. I'll have somebody bring all your stuff by."

"Oh, God, Tina, please, please give me another chance." Now to his headache and nausea, add panic. She really sounds serious. She really is dumping me. Forever.

Oh my God.

"Goodbye, Michael."

"But I love you, Tina. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"Yeah, you love me all right. You've hit me six different times in the past six months, Michael. You get these paranoid fantasies that I'm making it with somebody behind your back, and then you think you have the right to beat me up. No more, Michael. No more."

Then she does the worst thing of all: hangs up quietly.

If she'd yelled at him . . . or banged the phone down in his ear . . . that would mean she was mad, and that she'd likely get over it.

But hanging up quietly . . . it has a finality about it that makes his arms break out in goose bumps.

She's gone from him and he knows it . . . gone.

Then there's a sudden and terrible pounding on the door. "Hey, man! I gotta piss!"

And it's the one little thing that pushes Grady over the edge . . .

Oh, he opens the door all right but as soon as he sees Todd 'John Travolta' McGrath . . . Grady goes berserk

In blinding seconds, he smashes a right hook into McGrath's face, then delivers a cracking left to the stomach . . . and then he slams the lard-ass back against the wall and puts two more punches into his face.

McGrath is crying and screaming like a girl, all hunched over in this pathetic posture that he thinks will stop him from being punched again.

But Grady is done with McGrath and turns back to the bathroom and the black telephone resting on the white sink.

He picks up the phone, jerks the cord taut, and then rips the cord from the wall.

Then he takes the phone and hurls it into the shower. Somewhere out there, McGrath is still blubbering like a girl. But Grady doesn't give a shit. All he can think of is how Tina just broke up with him.

All women are bitches. Every fucking one of them. Every fucking one.

Then suddenly he's bending over the toilet bowl and barfing his guts up.

Fucking bitches.

Every fucking one of them.

I
n the last century, we were a nation of boarding houses. Read any literature on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and you'll find that many of the people alleged to be involved lived in urban boarding houses. Such places offered an almost perfectly anonymous place to live. The cities were a maze of such places, and living in one of them under an assumed name, and in a minor disguise, meant that you were difficult for law-enforcement agencies to find.

The equivalent these days is the cheap motel. Right after the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the FBI turned up several good leads from people who lived in surrounding motels. As one reporter put it, "Such places are one step up from homelessness." These days when you see a run-down motel, it's a fair bet that it's mostly inhabited by drifters and people on the run. The saddest thing about all this is that more and more children are being raised in these circumstances, drifting across America with their parents.

In the sunshine, the Palms looked no better than it had in the drab rainy morning of yesterday.

The same woman with the dentures and the too-vivid red hair was behind the desk again.

"You missed him this time, too," she said.

"Missed him?"

"Paul. The night man."

"Ah."

She hugged her brown cardigan sweater tighter to her birdy body. "Wish it'd warm up."

"Do you have regulars who stay here?"

"Renters, you mean."

"Yes. I guess that's what you'd call them."

"They pay a special rate. They come and go," she said. "Sometimes we'll have quite a few of them, sometimes not."

"You had any over the past week?"

"This about that priest?"

"Yes."

"They're really playing it up on TV."

I smiled. "You noticed that, huh?"

Ever since the O. J. Simpson trial, it had become respectable for even the most staid of broadcasters to hype murders. And what could be more incendiary than a priest found murdered in a cheap motel room?

She looked at her log. "We've got one. Tommy Hubbard."

"A renter?"

"Yup."

"How long's he been here?"

"Since Sunday."

The night before the murder.

"He usually around here during the day?"

"Usually. You want his room number?"

"Please."

She gave it to me and I said, "You think he's around?"

"He usually is. You want me to call him?"

"That's all right."

A call like that might warn him off. He could be gone by the time I got there.

"I appreciate the help," I said, and walked outside.

The afternoon was heating up. Seventy-eight, according to the car radio on the way over. Looked as if spring was finally here. Maybe I'd run up and down the street in my boxer shorts or something.