How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (13 page)

The guy who got out of the truck was in his late twenties or early thirties. “Are you a cop?” I asked him as he walked toward me.

“Yeah,” he said, flashing his open wallet at me. I saw a Bank One card, but no police ID.

“Let me see your ID again,” I said.

“I showed it to you once.”

“Show it to me again.”

“The woman you were with is a known prostitute.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Show me your ID.”

“She’s under surveillance for drugs. Now lean on your car and spread your legs.”

“Blow me.”

“Are you refusing to co-operate?”

“Very good. You must have gone to college.” I smiled at him. “I know who you are, you piece of shit.”

He reached inside his leather jacket. I couldn’t believe how relaxed I was; I let him get the gun most of the way out, then took it out of his hand with a roundhouse kick. I spear-handed him in the throat, then grabbed his hair, stepped behind him and wrenched his head back. I used my other hand to choke him, and, when his breath stopped, I let him fall.

I looked in his wallet. The bank card and driver’s license were in the name of Michael Flatgard. Arizona bank, Arizona license.
So you’re local, you son of a bitch,
I thought. I checked that he was dead, then got in my car and left him there.

I went to a Denny’s and called Laurie and told her that I didn’t want to be alone, but that I definitely wanted to see her too, and that was all I could tell her at the moment.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Just don’t ever fuck me around, Andy.”

“I won’t.”

“Do you want to come over?”

“Yeah,” I said.

As I drove to her place, I saw police helicopters in the sky, shining their searchlights as usual, looking for someone as usual. But they weren’t looking for me, and if they were they didn’t know it. Laurie’s incense smelled good and she smelled better and I was actually happy as I lay beside her.

NINE

I thought something had ended, but it hadn’t yet.

Laurie got up early and went to work. I slept late, then drove to the offices of the
Republic.
Tony came down to reception and led me to the newsroom and Spike’s desk. Knowing they had a paper to put out, I didn’t waste any time; I emptied the contents of his desk into a bag and took it home with me. I also took a copy of the paper with me.

When I got home, I read it. Some details of the previous evening appeared in the “Valley and State” section. And they told me that Michael Flatgard wasn’t the killer. He was a thug and a con artist and had been a burglar in the past, but he wasn’t the killer. He was in the habit of shaking down the customers of hookers for blackmail money, but he didn’t kill anybody. Though somebody had killed him, and the cops had no leads.

Cops and reporters have some things in common, but there is one major difference. Cops follow up all relevant leads. So do reporters. But good reporters also follow up irrelevant leads. I did. I called every phone number Spike had that wasn’t self-explanatory. There was a California number written on a piece of notebook paper. I called it, and talked to the man who answered for ten minutes. And, when I hung up the phone, I knew who the killer was.

I sat with the information for a long time, hours, trying to talk myself out of it. But I didn’t manage to. Talking to myself wouldn’t help. I had to talk to the one person who might understand.

It was late evening. I went outside and got in my car. I drove with the windows rolled down, but the dark air that streamed in felt like it was blowing from a hot fan. The radio was on. The Zone played Green Day, then Natalie Merchant. I’d have turned it off, but I needed some sound.

I headed South on Seventh Street until I reached Osborne, then slowed down, looking for the apartment complex.

I parked the car on the street and went into the complex. It was quite large, and had a scummy swimming pool. The apartment I wanted was on the second floor. I stood outside it and looked at its window. The venetian blind was closed, and no light showed behind it, but I could hear the TV that was playing inside.

I knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Janine called.

“Andy.”

She opened the door. She was wearing red shorts and a blue tank top. Her hair was tied back. “Hi,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Hi. I need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah...Of course.” She moved away from the door and I followed her inside.

It was a studio apartment. She had a bed and a couch and a table and a TV. She hadn’t finished unpacking all her stuff yet; there were some boxes strewn around.

The only light came from the TV. Janine picked up the remote and killed the sound, leaving the picture.

“How’re you settling in?” I asked her.

She sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay, I guess. The guy downstairs is a little creepy. He keeps coming to the door and asking if I want to come down there and have dinner with him. I’ve been polite, but I think I’m going to have to be rude before he gets the message. That’s why I looked weird when I opened the door—I thought it might be him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So, are you doing okay?” she asked me.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want to talk about that? Because I’m not sure it’s me you should be talking to. You need some distance, babe.”

“If the guy downstairs is bothering you, why don’t you just kill him?”

She gave me a puzzled smile, and it was so fake. “What’s that?”

“I said, why don’t you kill him, Rebecca?”

“Why are you calling m— ?”

“Rebecca Dichter.”

When I said that, she stopped talking and just sat there looking at me. The silence went on for so long that I couldn’t take it, so again I said, “Rebecca Dichter.”

Janine closed her eyes and quietly said, “God.” Then she said, “Is there anything I could say to make you believe you’re making a mistake?”

“No. That’s what I was hoping when I came here. But not now.”

“God. How did you find out?”

“I don’t see why I should tell you a fucking thing. But there’s something I want to know, so let’s trade information. Tell me how Spike got wise to you.”

“You don’t know that?”

“No, I don’t know that.” I was trying not to cry.

“Then how do you know?”

“I’ll tell you that after you tell me about Spike.”

“I guess he talked to Dumb Jerry Voach. Jerry saw me getting in my car about a block from Tim’s house, just before he found Tim’s body. He must have talked to Spike.”

“Why didn’t you kill Jerry?”

“What’s the point? He’s retarded. I didn’t think it would occur to him to mention me to the cops, and they wouldn’t have taken him seriously if he did. Nobody would.”

“Spike obviously did.”

“Yeah.” Pause. “Andy, would it mean anything to you if I said I was really, really sorry?”

I spat on her. It landed on her hair.

“Okay,” she said. “Now will you tell me how you found out?”

“I went through Spike’s things. He had a phone number. For a retired cop in Santa Barbara. He told me what he told Spike. There used to be someone there who had a big rep as a killer. But there was never enough evidence to do anything. Her name was Rebecca Dichter. A couple years ago, she left town. The cops couldn’t keep track, and they didn’t have enough to justify a wide search. They told the FBI about you, and the Feds told them they were crazy.”

She nodded and smiled, trying to reach out to me. “In Santa Barbara, the cops are so bored they cruise around and bust people for jaywalking and not coming to a complete stop.”

“How did you start?” I said.

“Start what?”

“Killing people.”

“What do you think this is, Andy? A pulpy movie? You think the bad guy is now going to confess everything and tell you the story? Come on. I’ll tell you this: I killed somebody when I was very young. Not for money, but because he did something to me. Then I waited to get caught, and I never did. And I thought about how it felt to kill somebody. And it didn’t feel like anything. I thought it would make me different, but I was still the same. And it gets easier after the first time. But you already know that.”

“Where did you learn....how to be a pro?”

“Open your eyes. It’s not rocket science. There’s plenty of places where you can learn. Look at that class you teach. Your own little school for killers.” She shook her head. “And
you
spit on
me
.”

“Did Fallowell hire you to kill Tim?”

“Not directly. But, through my agent, yeah. Fallowell never knew who I was.”

“But you thought he might say who your agent was and lead me to you. That’s why you killed him.”

“Yeah. And because I thought you’d be satisfied then and let it go.”

“And Spike.”

“Yeah. You just wouldn’t back off. You wouldn’t stop. That’s why I left you. I didn’t think you’d find out, but I knew you were never going to get off of it. I couldn’t live with that.”

“How many people have you killed?”

She glowered at me like a sullen child. “Not as many as you, I’ll bet.”

“Why would you kill Tim? My good friend?”

“The money was good. And I never liked him.”

Now I did cry. I just stood there and sobbed, and she sat there and watched me. Snot ran out of my nose. Some sitcom played silently on the TV.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I don’t know. I can’t call the cops on you. I can’t prove anything. Even if they prove you’re Rebecca Dichter, it won’t matter. There was no evidence back when you were her. If they searched this place, would they find the gun?”

She shook her head. “My gun’s somewhere else. I pick it up when I need it.” Pause. “What if I promise to stop?”

“I had my tongue in your ass a few hours after you killed Spike. Jesus Christ.”

She stood up. “You don’t have any fucking right to judge me! You don’t know anything about me. You just thought you did.”

I struck with the heel of my hand. Her nose skidded across her face, stopping somewhere on her left cheek. The impact knocked her over the bed and onto the floor, but she landed in classic judo style, slapping the floor with her forearms. She rolled away from my kick, came to her feet and headed for the kitchen area. She grabbed for a knife on the counter, and I grabbed for her. We both reached our targets, but by the time my hands closed on her, the knife was in my stomach almost all the way to the handle. She drove it in so hard that she lost her grip on it. She was trying to grab the handle and twist it when I smashed my head into her face. She clamped what teeth she had left into my cheek and let herself fall to the floor, taking a piece of my face with her. I kicked her head like it was a football, and that probably broke her neck. But I still put a foot on her throat and crushed it to the bone.

Neither of us had uttered a sound.

I left the knife in me. I went down on my knees, picked up her phone and dialed 911. My voice sounded normal, or I thought it did.

Everything was red and sticky. For a long time I knelt there, staring at her face. I was looking for something, I didn’t know what. I still don’t.

REQUEST FROM THE AUTHOR

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About the Author

Barry Graham is a novelist, reporter, columnist, poet and Zen monk, and the author of more than a dozen books. Originally from Glasgow, Scotland, he lives in Portland, Oregon. Readers are welcome to email him at [email protected].

Read more at
Barry Graham’s site
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