by Eric Beetner
“Not usually. But he decided not to go into work today. He can do that when he wants. He owns his own business. Construction.”
“Heard of it,” Grandpa said. “Cornbluth Construction. Got some big deals lately. Saw it on the news.”
“That’s right,” Cindy said.
“Would you say he’s wealthy?” Grandpa asked. “That the two of you are wealthy?”
“He’s been fortunate,” Cindy said.
“So, tell me the rest of it.”
“I got up this morning, he wasn’t home, and I waited around until noon. Then I called the Sheriff. I was worried by then.”
“Did you think he might have gone into work?”
“No. It didn’t cross my mind.”
Grandpa looked down at Cindy’s feet. “Nice boots.”
“Thanks,” Cindy said, and looked at Jim perplexed. Jim smiled. He knew how Grandpa was, knew he had roundabout ways, provided he was in the mood to help at all.
Grandpa called me over, said, “Get your digital camera, go out to her car—” He paused, looked at Cindy. “I did hear right that you followed Jim over?”
“That’s right,” she said, “but what has that got to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Get photos of the car, all around.”
I found the camera and went out and took photos of the car. When I came back in, I leaned over Grandpa’s shoulder and he looked at the digital photos. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and sighed. He put them back on, glanced at the TV and pointed.
“That’s a black mamba,” Grandpa said.
“What?” Cindy said.
“The snake,” Grandpa said pointing at the silent TV. “Very deadly. Hides in the grass, and then, BAM, it’s got you. You’re dead before you can say, ‘Oh hell, I’m snake bit.’”
Grandpa said to me, “Grandson, turn up the heat.”
I thought it was pretty warm, but I did as instructed.
“So, you two,” Grandpa said to Cindy and Jim, “did you know each other before today?”
“Yes,” Jim said. “In high school.”
“Date?”
“Once or twice,” Jim said. “Just a kid thing. Nothing came of it.”
He looked at Cindy, and she smiled like a woman who knew she was beautiful and was a little ashamed of it, but…not really.
Grandpa nodded. “You know, the dirt around here is white. Except up on Pine Ridge Hill. The oil company did some drilling up there, and it was a bust. I heard about it on the news. They had to close it down. They say the old ground up there is unstable, that it’s shifting, that a lot of it is going down the holes that were meant for oil drilling. It’s like a big sink hole up there, a bunch of them actually. Saw that on the news, too.”
“Okay,” Jim said, “But, Mr. Fine, so what?”
“Here’s the deal. Cindy has a rough place on her hand. Felt it when we shook. But I’ll come back to that. She’s also got red clay on her boots. The left one. I think she may have stomped some of it off, but there’s still a touch on the toe, and a bit she’s tracked in on the floor. So, she’s been out there to the old oil site. I believe that she’s got a bit of pine needle in her hair too, twisted up under the wave there, where it got caught in a tree limb.”
Jim leaned over for a look. I gave it a hard look from where I was standing as well. Didn’t that old codger wear glasses? How in the world had he noticed that?
“I drove up there the other day,” she said. “I was looking for pine cones, to make decorations. I haven’t washed my hair since then. I was hanging around the house, didn’t have anywhere to go.”
“Gonna spray them pine cones gold, silver?” Grandpa asked, not looking away from the TV.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something like that.”
“On your earlobe there’s a dark spot. Noticed it when we shook hands. I’ll come back to that”
Jim gave that a look too, said, “Yeah. I see it.” Then, appearing puzzled, he unfastened his coat, took it off, dropped it over the back of a chair.
Grandpa grinned. “Warm, son?”
“A little,” Jim said.
“Well now, Jim,” Grandpa said. “I’ve known you a long time. Since you were a boy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I believe you’re a good man, but she didn’t call you this morning. She lied and you let her.”
“Now wait a minute,” Jim said.
“When you shook hands with me I smelled her perfume on your coat. A lot of it. I don’t think Sheriffs are in the habit of comforting women with missing husbands with a hug so intense it gets on their coat, and in their hair. And she called you Jimmy.”
“Well, we know each other,” Jim said. “And I did comfort her.”
“Another thing. There’s what we used to call a hickey on your neck.”
Jim slapped at his neck as if a mosquito had bitten him.
“Not really. Just kidding. But here’s what I think. I think you’ve been having an affair. If she had called the Sheriff’s office to get in touch with you, and the two of you were not an item, you wouldn’t have come to me right away. You were hoping it was simple and I could solve it without involving the Sheriff’s Department. That’s why you had her follow you in her car, so she wouldn’t be in your car.
“And, Mrs. Cornbluth, that smile you gave me, the one that was supposed to make me weak in the knees. That seemed out of place for the situation.”
“People respond in different ways,” she said.
“Yes, they do,” he said. “I give you that much. Would you like to take your coat off?”
“I’m fine.”
“No you’re not. You’re sweating. In fact, it’s too hot in here. Grandson, turn down the heater, will you.”
“But you just told me—”
“Cut it down,” Grandpa said.
I went over and did just that.
“When you and me shook hands,” Grandpa said, “there was a fresh rough spot on your palm. That’s because your hands are delicate, and they held something heavy earlier today, and when you struck out with it, hitting your husband in the head with whatever you were using…A fire poker perhaps? It twisted in your hand and made that minor wound.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cindy said.
“It certainly is,” Jim said, “Okay, Mr. Fine. Me and Cindy had a thing going, but that doesn’t mean she killed her husband.”
Grandpa said. “Jim, you came by her house. Just like you were supposed to. I don’t mean you had anything having to do with Mr. Cornbluth, but Cindy was expecting you. You had a date with her because Bert was supposed to be at work, but when you showed for your date, she told you he had stayed home, and she hadn’t been able to reach you, and now he was missing and she was worried. That it wasn’t like him. Right?”
“How could you know that?” Jim said.
“I guessed a little, but all the other facts line up. After she hit her husband in the head with something or another, she wiped up quick.”
“But why would I kill him?” Cindy said.
“That’s between you and your husband, but if you were having an affair, it might be you weren’t that fond of him, and he found out, and you didn’t want to lose all that money, and thought if the body wasn’t found, you’d get insurance money and no jail time. The murder was quick and spontaneous, done in anger, and afterward, because Jim was coming, you had to do on-the-spot thinking, and it was stupid thinking.
“You drove the body out to the old oil well site this morning, dumped it, drove back and cleaned the car, the house, and maybe you were cleaning yourself when Jim showed up. You had to wipe yourself down quick. But that spot of blood on your ear. You missed that. And one more thing, Mrs. Cornbluth. You’re sweating. A lot. That’s why I turned up the heat. To see if you’d take your coat off on your own. You didn’t. That made me think you had something to hide. Like maybe the blood that splashed on you from the murder
wasn’t just a drop on your ear, and you didn’t have time to change before Jim showed up. So, you threw a coat on over it. Was she wearing it in the house when you showed, Jim?”
Jim nodded, looked at her. He said, “Cindy. Take off your coat.”
“Jim, I don’t want to.”
“Jim isn’t asking. The Sheriff is. Take it off.”
Cindy slowly removed her coat. She was wearing a gray, tight-fitting wool sweater. There were dark patches.
Grandpa said, “Those wet spots on her sweater. I think if you check them, you’ll find they’re blood. And if you check up at the old oil site on Pine Ridge Hill, you’ll find her husband at the bottom of one of those holes. You know, they were supposed to fill those in next week. If they had, good chance that body would never have been found. That’s how you got the pine straw in your hair, wasn’t it? When you were draggin’ Bert from the car, through the pines, to the top of the hill? And, Jim, when it all comes out, that you were dallying with a married woman, while on the job…Well, I hope you keep your job.”
“Yeah, me too,” Jim said taking out a pair of cuffs. “Put your hands behind your back, Cindy.”
“Jim. You don’t have to do this. Bert found out about us—”
“Shut up! Just shut up. Put your hands behind your back. Now.”
She did. He handcuffed her. She looked at Grandpa. “I hate you, you old bastard.”
As they went out the front door, which I held open for them, Grandpa said, “Lots do.”
Grandpa turned up the sound on the TV. Just in time. The countdown of the world’s most poisonous snakes was just about to begin.
Back to TOC
BABY PIGEONS
Reed Farrel Coleman
Fuckup: He’s such a fuckup.
Fuck up: Please don’t fuck up.
Look either of ’em up in Webster’s and you’d understand Tommy Dushane. Tommy, as they liked to say in the Gravesend neighborhood he’d grown up in, was a royal fucking fuckup. With him it went beyond the anatomical, biological, or psychological. It was downright metaphysical, though he would have been hard pressed to pronounce the word let alone define it. He was a buffoon wrapped in a flag. His neck was red, his collar blue, and his skin a trashy white. These days he lived in a place that gave shitholes a bad name: a rickety firetrap of an illegal apartment in Central Islip that began its existence as a tool shed. Not even the illegals who had fairly overrun CI, Brentwood, and North Bay Shore would’ve lived in that shitbox.
To be a real fuckup, though, was to understand highs and lows. Fuckups weren’t losers. Losers go down for the count and never get up off the mat. They live out their lives, such as they were, below the radar screen. That wasn’t Tommy. Nuh uh. Tommy knew highs, several of them, a countless number. Whether it was a bad choice, an ill-timed word, or a stupid bet, he always self-destructed. Always. One of his old friends used to say that Tommy Douchebag could fuck up finding a genie bottle. When Tommy went down, he went down in flames. It got so he developed a sixth sense about it, like how animals know when an earthquake is coming. As Tommy stumbled down the aisles of the 3:14 to Ronkonkoma, blue hard hat in hand, he got that feeling. The big fuckup was at hand.
It was odd how you never saw the Tommy Dushanes of the world on their way into Manhattan, only on the trains back to Long Island from Penn Station. It was like how you never see baby pigeons. It was kinda like those fuckers just appeared whole, all grown up and ready to shit on your head. The trick was that the construction guys took the pre-dawn trains into the city, so it left the stockbrokers to ponder the baby pigeon problem of where the construction workers had come from. Although their wardrobe was strictly, Dickie and Carhartt, their shoes steel-toed Red Wings, they did not lack for quiet desperation. Some sat wondering where the money for their kids’ college tuition would come from. Some would fall off scaffolds tomorrow or the tomorrow after that or…Some would die of cancer. And some would happily hold their great grandchildren in their arms.
Tommy didn’t believe in silent despair. Good thing, too. He might’ve drowned in it. No, he was one of those guys who put his faith in Budweiser. In Anheuser-Busch he trusted. He had finished a six pack by the time the train had reached Bethpage and had bummed a seventh off a fellow hardhat. Never much for introspection, he didn’t bother ascribing today’s accelerated consumption of alcohol to that gnawing fuck up feeling in his belly. Nah, it was nothing a hot shower—his landlord let him use the basement bathroom for an extra ten bucks a month—and a few cups of coffee wouldn’t fix. But right at the moment all he was worried about was finding a place to unload the seven cans worth of excess fluid.
“For fuck’s sake!” he screamed loud enough for the whole car to hear. Tommy slammed a wind-chapped hand into the locked bathroom door. “What the fuck you lookin’ at?” he slurred, pointing at a Wall Street type who had turned to see what the commotion was about. “Fuck you and fuck this!”
Tommy stepped into the next car and the car after that one. The handle to the bathroom in that car had been removed and replaced with a steel plate.
“How the fuck am I s’pposed to get in there?”
“Use a can opener, ya prick!”
Tommy didn’t exactly recognize the voice, but it had a vague familiarity. The vagueness only enhanced by the seven beers and the distraction of a bursting bladder. But he smiled at the man who had just called him a prick, showing his chipped front teeth
“Hey, man,” Tommy said as if the guy was his favorite uncle. He didn’t have a favorite uncle, but if he had one, he would have greeted him like this. “What’s the good word?”
The guy smiled back at Tommy, but not like an imaginary favorite uncle. No, it was more the smile of a shark. He knew Tommy didn’t quite remember him and that was all to the good…Well, except for Tommy.
“Come on, I’ll show you a car where the bathroom’s working.”
Riding the elevator up to the 27th floor of the Carillion Park West, Picassa—her “stage” name—stared intently at the cleanly shaven nape of the elevator operator’s neck. For his part, the elevator operator stared at her ample cleavage reflected in the mirror-lined car. As she stared she wondered about the night ahead, what preliminaries the client had in store before the matter at hand. A show? Christ, she hoped not. She’d already sat through that inane Finding Neverland and the incomprehensible The Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime so often she knew the stage blocking better than the understudies. She never understood why they insisted on Broadway. Half of her clients didn’t understand six words of English. And the words they knew other than hello were usually: fuck, blow job, tits, and anal.
Would dinner ensue at Masa or Eleven Madison Park followed by drinks at the Algonquin or some hot rooftop bar where they could behold the skyline? Or would the client skip the prelims and go for the old suck, hump, and run? Sometimes she could tell what the night ahead held in store by what she was told to wear. Not tonight, though. Tonight could go either way. The instructions were to dress for an evening out, but not in anything with too many buttons or clasps.
The elevator slowed. A quaint, old fashioned bell chimed.
“Twenty-seven. Your floor, ma’am,” the operator said, turning to have a direct view of her cleavage. He was unable to hide the smile at the corner of his mouth.
Although it was just the two of them in the large elevator car, she brushed her breasts against him as she exited. His smile grew wider still.
Stepping out of the car, the doors closing behind her, Picassa turned left as she had been instructed to do. She was now to walk down two flights and go to room 2512. Clients, she thought, could be such children. Some were just desperate to be seen with beautiful Anglo women. Some were so fearful about blackmail, about their business rivals using proof of their dalliances against them. It was bad enough she had to fuck some of them, but she especially disliked it when they made her jump through hoops to do it.
Presumably, she could have been h
orse-faced and dressed like a char woman as long as she could follow instructions and had breasts, lips, and a functional vagina. Checking her makeup in the hall mirror and smoothing her strapless indigo gown, she decided she more than met those prerequisites. She added a spray of perfume to her cleavage, blew herself a kiss, and walked to the stairwell door. She pushed it open.
Clients my ass! From the day she had gone into the life, she had been schooled to think of these men as clients. Never johns. Never.
If you think of them as johns, then you will think of yourself as a whore. We do not employ whores.
Those words went round and round in her head as the stairwell door slammed shut at her back. But playing pretend, regardless of profitability, had a limited shelf life. Just lately they were all johns to her, these little Asian men with their big bankrolls and eager yellow cocks. She kept telling herself she could make it a few more months, that just a few thousand more was all she needed to stake her. She could get Tommy Jr. back from her mom and get the fuck out. Out of the business. Out of New York. Out of the same atmosphere as that jerk-off who’d knocked her up and fucked up her life.
“Shit!” she whispered to no one, noticing the light was out on the landing below. Stairs of any kind were treacherous enough, decked out as she was in a form fitting gown and nosebleed stilettos. Picassa hitched up her gown with her left hand, the same hand that held her matching clutch, and took a firm hold on the cool banister with her right.
Almost fully to the dark landing, she heard a man’s breathing. She froze. She let go of her gown and the rail in order to reach for the canister of pepper spray she carried in her clutch. She stumbled forward to the landing and in reaching reflexively back for the railing to catch herself, the clutch and spray vanished into the vacuum of the dark stairwell. The man in the shadows seemed to sense her fear and to reassure her, jingled his room key. She exhaled and an audible sigh of relief escaped her lips. She noticed she was panting and felt the sting of sweat against her freshly shaven underarms.
“Konichi wa, Ichiro-san,” she said in perfect Japanese. It hadn’t been easy for a girl from Gravesend, Brooklyn to master the proper inflection. She waited for Ichiro-san’s reply.