His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  Dawn was still an hour or so away, but the sky was pink in the east with a faint white penumbra around the edges of the silhouetted desert mountains. To the west, where they were headed, the world remained night.

  They had hardly spoken since he’d picked her up from her apartment in Tucson, aside from a few short sentences involving practical matters such as where to pack her luggage in the car. Dave felt guilty about that. He was the elder, and while it was awkward and uncomfortable, he should be the one to break the ice.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Let’s have breakfast.”

  The interior of the restaurant was bright, harshly so, filled with white light that illuminated every square inch of public space and seemed specifically designed to discourage intimacy. They were the restaurant’s first customers, and he was about to tell her to go ahead and order anything she wanted, it was on him, when she strode to the front counter and asked for a Big Breakfast with hot tea, taking a ten-dollar bill out of her pocketbook and handing it to the girl behind the first register.

  She’d received her change and her food and was walking over to a table in the corner by the time Dave decided to get a McMuffin, two hash browns and a coffee.

  He had the feeling she wanted to eat alone, and he was tempted to give her her space, but at the last second he placed his tray on the corner table where she’d sat and took a chair opposite hers. He looked over at the food on her fork. “Sausage,” he said. “Are you preparing yourself?”

  She smiled. Or tried to. It was not much of a smile, more like a grimace, a pained expression of obligation to the social norms of the situation.

  He was instantly sorry that he’d spoken, and, embarrassed, he looked down at his tray, took one of the hash browns from its greasy wrapper, and bit into it. The processed potato patty was so hot it brought tears to his eyes, but he pretended not to notice and took another bite. He glanced up surreptitiously and saw that she was staring down at her food as well.

  He could not remember what she’d looked like as a child. That was the strange thing. In his mind, she’d always looked as she did now. He could recall playing with her, fighting with her inside the house, outside in the yard, at school, at church, but he could not picture the features of her face. His memory of her past seemed almost secondhand; he knew the factual details of former events, but the person to whom they had happened was unknown to him, and a generic girl-child had been supplied by his mind to fill the role.

  She was still not looking up, and for the first time, Dave took the opportunity to study her carefully. He could see the beginnings of lines around her eyes, a coarsening and tightening of the skin around her mouth. She looked familiar yet different, and it was almost as though he could see through her to the elderly woman she would eventually be, as though the young woman before him had become transparent, a ghost, and was gradually fading into the hardened and more corporeal old lady beneath.

  He wondered if he looked as old to her at that moment as she did to him.

  A Hispanic family had walked into the McDonald’s and was standing next to the wood-paneled trash receptacles, reading the menu from this awkward angle, trying to avoid the area directly in front of the cash registers where the teenaged girls in their unflattering uniforms stood waiting with demanding smiles. The parents spoke in Spanish, their children answering in unaccented English. The father wore a dirty blue windbreaker, the mother a ragged shawl, the two kids’ faded T-shirts featuring characters from movies that had been popular several years before.

  Dave felt sad all of a sudden. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be doing this, but he had given his father his word, and of course that could never be broken.

  “It’s because I never gave him grandkids,” his sister said suddenly. He glanced over at her. She still wouldn’t look up. “Father didn’t approve of that, didn’t like that I never married.”

  Dave couldn’t disagree, so he remained silent. He stared across the small table at her hands, clutching the undersized paper teacup. She had hair on her fingers, he saw. He had never noticed that before. Small clumps of fine black hairs grew on the flat segments of skin between each knuckle.

  Their father had had hair on his fingers.

  He watched his sister’s hand as she lifted the cup of tea to her lips, and suddenly her hands looked like miniature versions of their father’s. The thought repulsed him, and at that moment he wanted to back out. Promise or no promise, he didn’t want to go through with it.

  But he forced himself to look away, glancing out the window at the McDonald’s Playland outside, plastic slides and crawl tubes sitting empty and idle and only-half-visible in the early morning dimness.

  He had not wanted to see his father again. He had heard from the doctors and from Jocasta that the old man had been getting worse, that he was so thin his skull was visible, that he was often incoherent when he spoke. Dave’s plan had been to arrive after his father’s death and not to view the body, to convince Jocasta to have a closed-casket funeral. But in a weeklong burst of lucidity, his father had called, via speakerphone, that horrible speakerphone, and had specifically asked him to come. The old man wanted to extract a promise from him before he died, and, as always, he wanted to hear the promise made in person, to be able to look into Dave’s eyes while he agreed.

  There was no way he could refuse, and Dave had flown out to Los Angeles the next morning, renting a car at the airport and driving to Brentwood, to the house—the mansion—his father had bought for his fourth wife. His dad was lying on a hospital bed in the enormous living room, hooked up to oxygen, monitors and IVs, while an overweight woman in a nurse’s uniform sat in a nearby chair reading Us magazine.

  The cancer had taken its toll; his father appeared more corpse than man. Blue veins could be seen beneath the nearly transluscent skin covering his bald head, and his wizened face was so emaciated that his teeth protruded in a decidedly skull-like manner. Still, for all of that, he retained the aura of power that had always been his, and while the nurse had all of the disinterested attributes typical of a babysitter for the terminally ill, there was something in the stiffness of her posture that told Dave she would snap to at the slightest word from his father.

  He had been afraid of that—it was why he hadn’t wanted to return until the old man was dead—and he felt all of the familiar fear and intimidation as he stepped forward into his dad’s sight line. “Hello,” he said. “How are you?”

  His father looked him over, saying nothing.

  “I came as fast as I could,” Dave said, a trifle nervously.

  His father spoke slowly and with great difficulty. “Are . . . you . . . still . . . with . . . that . . . bitch?”

  “No,” Dave said. “Pam and I broke up, remember?”

  Even with the weakened voice, his father’s tone grew steely at the hint of condescension. “Of . . . course . . . I . . . remember. I . . . was . . . just . . . wondering . . . if . . . you . . . were . . . spineless . . . enough . . . to . . . go . . . back . . . to . . . her.”

  Dave tried to smile, though his heart was pounding.

  “How . . . is . . . your . . . sister . . . doing?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her in a while.” Years, he thought.

  “I . . . know . . . how . . . she’s . . . doing. Not . . . well.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  His father beckoned him closer. “I . . . need . . . you . . . to . . . do . . . me . . . a . . . favor.”

  Dave’s muscles tensed. This was why he was here. This was why he had been summoned. He knew he wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was, but he was powerless to object. If he’d had any balls at all, he would have walked away right at that second and not looked back. But instead he leaned even closer and said, “What do you want, Daddy?”

  What his father asked him to do went against every instinct that he had, everything he knew to be right and good. It was
a sick and twisted request, exactly the sort of thing he should have expected, and what he wanted to do was kick over his father’s bed, yank the IVs out of his arm and yell, Die, you evil old fuck! But he was still a cowed little boy in his father’s presence, and he nodded his acquiescence, and when that wasn’t enough, promised aloud that he would do his father’s bidding.

  “Do you want me to call—”

  “Jocasta . . . will . . . call . . . your . . . sister . . . and . . . explain. . . .”

  “What if she won’t—”

  “She . . . will,” his father said, and laughed, a dry, coughing cackle that sent chills down Dave’s spine.

  He had not wanted to remain after that, had not wanted to catch up on old times or say good-bye or spend another second in that house. He’d walked out, driven back to the airport, and exchanged his ticket for one on an earlier flight.

  By the time he arrived home several hours later, his father was dead.

  Dave merely nodded when he heard the news. “Good,” he said.

  He thought now about reneging on his promise, not going through with it, but that sort of strength was not in him, and he knew he could not back out now. Maybe she will, he thought hopefully, but one look at his sister told him that she was as locked into this as he was.

  He dropped the last bit of hash brown on his tray and picked up his coffee cup, drinking the final bitter dregs. His sister, he saw, was almost done too. Pretty soon it would be time for them to go. A bright sliver of white light from the rising sun cut through the smoked glass and shone into his eye, causing it to tear up. He shifted in his seat, turned his body away.

  He reached across the table, took his sister’s hands in his. She started, but did not pull back. There was a look of resignation on her face.

  “It’s the last thing he can ever make us do,” Dave told her. “This is it. He can never push us around again.”

  She smiled, really smiled, for the first time since he’d picked her up, and for a moment she looked happy.

  He remembered now what she’d looked like as a child. He could see in his mind her long blond hair, her little pinafore dress, her miniature black purse and small plastic pearl necklace. She’d been almost pretty, he realized.

  He smiled back at her.

  She’d been almost pretty.

  Eighteen

  “Do you have something to tell me?” Gina asked, leaning against his desk. She was facing him, her rear end pressed against the top edge above the drawers, her crotch purposely pushed outward. Her pants were thin and tight, exposing more than they should have.

  He looked away.

  “I know you broke into my home.”

  Steve’s heart felt as though it had been slammed against the inside of his rib cage. His mouth, suddenly devoid of saliva, was so dry he did not trust himself to speak. How could she know?

  She answered the question without his even asking it. “I have nanny cams in every room. Just in case. There are a lot of things I need to protect, and I don’t want anyone snooping through my stuff.” She leaned closer, lowered her voice. “I even have one in the bathroom.”

  Steve was concentrating hard on breathing regularly and not having an expression, but he still wasn’t ready to respond.

  “It’s okay,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing lightly, playfully. “I know you didn’t mean any harm. To tell you the truth, I was kind of flattered. I knew you were interested, and I was wondering when you were going to make your move.” She laughed. “You sure made it last night.”

  “I . . .” he began, but didn’t know where to go from there.

  “You liked my collages, didn’t you? I could tell you did.” She lowered her voice again. “You could be in one, if you wanted.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed to say.

  “I have four high-def tapes that say otherwise. But if you want to play it that way . . .”

  He decided to try a different tack. “It’s illegal to appropriate AlumniMedia property. That’s theft. And punishable by jail time.”

  Gina looked impressed. “Touché!”

  Rod Zindel, one of the PR guys, stopped by Steve’s desk. “Can I have a minute of your time? I need a little help.”

  Steve’s heart was pounding crazily in his chest and his mind was racing a mile a minute, but outwardly he remained calm, and he turned coolly to Gina. “Excuse us, will you?” Swiveling his chair dismissively away from her, he smiled at Rod. “Anything you need.”

  The secretary walked away, and he didn’t look at her, so he had no idea what expression was on her face. He listened as Rod asked about integrating an alumni newsletter into an online promotion, but his brain was multitasking, and even as he offered advice on which newsletter to feature, he was thinking that Gina could not be allowed to live much longer. If she was not taken care of quickly, his window of opportunity would be lost and he would not be able to kill her without becoming a suspect.

  For he had no doubt that if he murdered her now, no one would even consider the possibility of his involvement. It had to be done smartly, though. It had to be done well. He was going to follow his father’s example and plan this one out, know ahead of time what he was going to do rather than improvise on the spot. As he saw it, the problem with most killings was that the people committing them panicked. As with a political scandal, it was the cover-up that caused most of the difficulties: trying to hide or dispose of the body, trying to come up with an alibi. He hadn’t done that with Lyman Fischer, and he was going to make sure that he did not do it with Gina. The best way to guard against that, in fact, would be to work out in advance the specific details of the secretary’s death.

  Steve successfully avoided her for the rest of the day, and after work headed straight to Sherry’s place, making sure he was not followed. Even if Gina didn’t know where he lived, she had access to that information, and he didn’t want her showing up on his doorstep uninvited, establishing for the outside world more of a connection to each other than the casual coworker status they shared right now.

  The best thing would be to do it tonight, but that was not feasible. He needed time to think things through, to figure out the best way to get rid of her.

  He could probably hold her off at work for a few more days, maybe even a week, stringing her along with a little false hope and some empty promises. But such a ruse wouldn’t work indefinitely and would be tricky to pull off, since he had to make her believe he was interested in her while not allowing anyone else to get that impression. The challenge appealed to him, though, and he was smiling to himself, happy, as he pulled into Sherry’s driveway.

  She was not home from work yet, and he took the opportunity to snoop around the apartment. She wasn’t expecting him today, so this was one of those rare chances to catch her unawares. A quick survey showed no dead animals in any wastepaper baskets; no blood in the tub, toilet or sinks; no recently washed knives, hatchets or sharp tools.

  He’d decided he liked the fact that Sherry hated dogs.

  He liked the fact that she killed them.

  It made them almost a team, in a weird way, although she did not know that. It also made him feel as though they were kindred spirits, two of a kind, and that if she eventually found out about him or he one day told her about himself, she would be able to deal with it.

  On impulse, he opened her hamper, sorted through her dirty clothes. He was looking for bloodstains or fur, ripped sleeves or torn cuffs, anything that would indicate she’d had an . . . encounter with a pet this week. He found nothing, though, and quickly piled the clothes back in the hamper in the order in which he’d taken them out. Seeing a pair of her panties, he tried sniffing them—he’d always heard jokes about that, though he’d never done it himself—but the silk smelled like cloth rather than sex, and he tossed them back into the white plastic basket along with everything else.

  Sherry arrived home soon after, happy to see him, and they went out for dinner at on
e of their favorite Mexican restaurants. He kept an eye out for Gina, just in case they’d been followed, but saw no sign of her, and on the way home they stopped by a Borders so Sherry could buy Northanger Abbey, the only Jane Austen novel she had not yet read. In the store, Steve went over to the DVD section while Sherry looked for her book. He spotted on the New Releases shelf a recent suspense film. The cover of the DVD showed the shadow of a man behind a closed window shade placing a noose around the neck of a seated woman.

  That was how he would kill Gina.

  It came to him just like that.

  Steve made no effort to pick up the DVD, and even as he was studying the artwork pretended to be looking at a movie on the shelf above it. He knew he was being paranoid, but it never hurt to be too careful. He couldn’t afford to have anyone connect him in any way with anything remotely similar to what would soon happen.

  The DVD’s artwork was not a still from the film but a stylized depiction of something that illustrated the tone and subject matter of the movie. It was impossible to tell from the silhouettes whether the woman in the chair was restrained, but Steve thought it would be best to tie Gina up before hanging her. He liked the idea that she would know who was doing it, and he imagined the look on her face as she sat there, unable to move, and watched him slip the noose around her neck.

  If he tied her up, he would have to gag her as well, so she wouldn’t scream for help, and Steve started thinking about the supplies he would need for this operation: rope, duct tape—

  “I’m done.”

  Sherry tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped, startled. Recovering quickly, he smiled at her and turned away from the DVDs. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The next day, he nodded at Gina as he passed by her desk, and she gave him a cutesy finger-wiggling wave. He imagined those fingers clutching desperately at a noose tightening around her neck and smiled. She smiled back.