The Caretaker's Wife

by Vincent Zandri

  “That was just the start of it. They wanted to arrest me for possession of stolen evidence.”

  “The Molly?”

  “Yup. That alone would have put me behind bars for a year or more. And you know what happens to cops behind bars.”

  That might have been the segue into telling her about my little vacation in the iron house. But I decided to let it slide. Besides, just like her, my past wasn’t exactly hidden from public view. I wasn’t the most popular author in the world, not by a long shot. You wouldn’t find my mystery novels placed on the table at the front of Barnes and Nobles along with the Pattersons and Baldaccis. But you could find all my books online, and I still had an audience significant enough that when I was sent down to Sing Sing, I made not only the local news but national news too.

  “Not a good situation,” I said weakly.

  “So, I lawyered up.”

  “Sonny,” I said.

  “He was a powerhouse lawyer, and it was no secret who his family was. I knew it would cost me, but no way in hell was I about to let the cop hating Southern District prosecutors make an example out of me. So, I threw it all into Sonny’s lap, and he destroyed them.”

  “What do you mean by destroyed?”

  “He not only got them to drop the charges about the stolen evidence, he saved my pension. He wasn’t able to save my job, but by then, the very idea of staying a cop made me nauseous.”

  “And for his services? How much did he charge?”

  She drank down her glass of wine, then slipped out of bed, her perfect naked ass staring back at me like heaven itself.

  “He made me have sex with him, of course,” she said while pouring herself more wine. “I saw that one coming from a mile away. But what I didn’t see coming was his proposal of marriage.”

  “He forced you into marrying him?”

  She turned, and I looked at her trimmed pussy, and I wanted it more than I wanted anything else in the world. But not yet. First, I wanted more from her. I wanted her full story.

  “If I didn’t marry him, he said he would make sure his case to save my ass failed. He’s a Torchi. He could make the DA shine his shoes if he wanted.”

  “So, you married him.”

  She nodded and went back to staring into her wine. “I married him, and we bought this place and left New York City for good.”

  “But now he has big plans.”

  “He always has big plans, Kingsley. His family and their syndicate have big plans, and they always revolve around selling heroin to innocent suburban kids.”

  “The sheriff wants him stopped, and he’s offered to pay me to help him.”

  “I guess that makes two of us.”

  “You and the sheriff have something very unique in common. You want to see Sonny Torchi dead.”

  She exhaled again.

  “It sounds horrible when you put it that way.”

  “But it’s the truth, Cora.”

  “You’re right, Kingsley.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll make it happen,” I said. “And then, we don’t see one another for a while. Sheriff Woods is gonna protect me, but that won’t stop the staties—the clean ones, anyway—from sticking their nose in it.”

  “I get it,” she said. “And I love you for it, Kingsley.” She set her wine on the nightstand. Without a word, she shifted herself so that her face was hovering over my cock. She pulled me out and took me in her mouth and started working me slowly and sweetly. She knew how to use her hand, her mouth, and her tongue all at the same time. She was a pro, and she knew it. I was so hard and so filled up with juice that she didn’t have to work for very long before I told her I was about to come. I expected her to free her mouth of my cock but instead, she just worked all the harder. When I came, she swallowed every bit of it, not like she wanted nothing more than to please me, but like she lived on the stuff the same way a junkie lived for the chemical high. It was the best head I’d ever received, hands down.

  But we didn’t stop there. I turned her over onto her back, kissed her titties and suckled her nipples until she couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take the sweet, biting pain. Then I ran my tongue and lips down her flat belly until I came to her pussy. I worked on her clit like I wanted to push myself all the way inside her body…like I wanted to crawl up into her heart and curl my body around the beating, pulsing organ.

  When she came, she thrust her hips so violently she scared the living daylights out of me. She was a wild, untamed beast. Orgasms were her drug of choice. I knew just one wouldn’t be enough because she grabbed the back of my head with both hands and made me work on her some more until she came again, this time came like a gusher, and I nearly drowned in her waterfall of wetness. It was something to behold, and it all made me so hard again that I immediately mounted her. I didn’t make love to her. She was beyond something as tame as that. She wanted to get fucked, and she wanted to get fucked as hard as I could thrust my hard, pulsating eight inches into her. She wanted me to stab her with it. She wanted me to make it hurt. She wanted me to impale her. And when I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I pulled it out and exploded all over her bare breasts. Her smile told me she loved every bit of it.

  For a short time, she rested her head on my chest and ran her fingertips over the many scars that mapped it, including the new wound she personally delivered outside in the parking lot earlier. But then, almost abruptly, she got up from the bed, made her way into the little bathroom. I heard the water going and then the toilet flush.

  When she came back in, she started getting dressed. As she put on her black thong panties, I started getting excited again. It had been so long for me, I was convinced I could give it to her again. But I knew she was having no part of it. Not any longer. This was the second time I’d fucked Cora in a single day, and I already knew what kind of woman she was. She was the type who made a sea change after sex. Especially rough sex. Some women wanted to cuddle. Others cried, the tears streaming down their cheeks. Still, others turned stone cold, as if they were pissed off at you for making them undergo multiple orgasms…like it was an insult to their physical and emotional being.

  The last one was the category Cora fell under, and even though I knew it wasn’t the best omen for our relationship, I was still crazy about her, which meant I would just have to find a way to deal with it.

  When she was fully dressed, she made her way to the door. As she put her hands on the knob, she looked at me over her shoulder.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow, it happens.”

  “Yes,” I said. And then I added, “God willing.” Why I felt the need to invoke God in the homicidal proceedings was beyond me, but I did it anyway. Maybe it was the devil doing the talking. A lot of people wanted Torchi dead. But apparently, God and I were the only ones willing to do the dirty work.

  Her laser-like eyes were still cutting into me.

  “Prison,” she said, “was it hard?”

  So, she knew about my past after all. I guess it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out. The internet made everything public.

  “Harder than the war even,” I said.

  “The scars on your chest and back,” she said. “They’re bad.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I survived.”

  “But my husband will not.” She exhaled. “Sorry about scratching you earlier.”

  “I liked it,” I said.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” she said.

  “You just answered your own question,” I said.

  Cora opened the door then and left the cabin without saying goodbye.

  15

  In the dream, we’re standing at the altar. Leslie and I. It’s a bit strange because Erin is there too, standing right beside the priest, even though she’s years away from being born. My daughter is wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that says The Doors. Her shoulder-length black hair is dyed blonde. The priest is bald and fat and dressed in a white robe. He’s speakin
g to us, but his voice sounds tinny and strange. Like a mechanical voice. He’s not breathing through his mouth but instead, through a hole in his neck. He’s a neck breather. He’s got a trach in his neck and every time he takes a breath it sounds like he’s choking on his own air.

  “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?” he asks in his robot voice.

  I gaze at Leslie. She’s lovely in her long black hair, black gown, black eyes, and black heart.

  “I do,” I say.

  “Thank God,” Erin says, “or else I won’t be born.”

  The priest shifts his focus to Leslie.

  “Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” he asks. “Do you promise to fuck him over, to cheat on him, to suck up every penny he makes, and then abandon him when he goes to prison for kicking the shit out of the dickless prick you were boning behind his back?”

  “I do,” she says.

  “Don’t do it, mom,” Erin says. “But then what am I saying? You have to say yes or I won’t be born.”

  The priest is now bleeding through the hole in his throat. The blood is bubbling, and the sound of gurgling is making me sick to my stomach. Soon, the bleeding isn’t only coming from his throat but also from his mouth and nostrils. Erin steals a wide-eyed look at him and takes a couple of steps backward.

  “Gag me, why don’t you,” she says. “See what you did now, Dad?”

  I want to tell her it’s not my fault, but it’s impossible for me to speak. It’s almost like I don’t have a mouth.

  Leslie stares me down with I-hate-your-guts eyes.

  “You’re a real asshole, Kingsley,” she says. “I want a divorce.”

  A man steps up onto the altar. He’s the big carpenter. His face is all cut up from my tossing him through the plate glass window. His head is bleeding, and a portion of his pink brain is exposed. He proceeds to make out with Leslie right on the altar. They’re really going at it with their pink tongues. I look past the priest to Christ hanging from the wooden cross.

  “Can you believe this shit, Lord?” I pose. “The nerve of these two.”

  “Humans are truly screwed up,” he says. “You’re all better off just killing yourselves sooner than later.”

  Someone’s knocking on the door. Correction. Not knocking, but pounding. I sat up straight, gazed at my watch. Five in the morning. Jesus H, when did I fall to sleep? I fumbled for the bedside lamp, turned it on.

  “Just a minute!” I barked.

  “Come on, Kingsley,” came the voice through the wood door. “Time to rise and shine. We got work to do today.”

  He was trying to open the door, but I must have locked it after Cora left last night. There’s an empty wine bottle set on the nightstand and five beer cans. I had way too much to drink and passed out. It’s not the first time I’d drank too much since coming to this lake, but it’s the first time I’d been on a mini-bender in a long, long time and my body wasn’t used to that much alcohol all at once. I knew I’d better taper it off or my liver was going to explode.

  Slipping out of bed, I felt the pounding in my head and the cotton in my mouth and all I wanted to do was go back to bed. But I had a job to do today. No, scratch that, I had more than a job to do today, and the sooner I got it done, the better. I went to the door, fumbled with the deadbolt until it released, and opened the door.

  Sonny was standing there dressed in a long-sleeve khaki shirt, his belly protruding against it. He was wearing an old New York Yankees baseball cap on his head, and, as usual, his face was scruffy. I could smell his sour breath, which didn’t do a hell of a lot for my weak stomach. I looked for any sign that he might be packing his semi-automatic. I didn’t see any. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t carrying it. For all I knew, it was strapped to his ankle. For all I knew, he was going to get me all the way out in the woods and shoot me in the head as payback for messing with his wife.

  “Tie one on last night, buddy?” he said. “What’s with writers and drinking? You all think you’re Hemingway or something.” He barged his way inside. “Come on, put some pants on. We got trails to clear. This place ain’t no freebie. Chop, chop.”

  Here’s what I was thinking: Maybe I should just kill the son of a bitch right now. Maybe I should slip into the kitchen, grab a steak knife, and jab it into his throat a hundred times and allow him to bleed out all over the floor. I could go back to bed, and only when I was ready to wake up, would I wrap his body up with rope and cement blocks and toss him in the lake.

  But if that wasn’t a stupid-ass idea, then I didn’t know what the hell was. I pulled my jeans off the bed, slipped into them while he watched. I then slipped on my boots and threw on my work shirt.

  “Mind if I wash my face and make a cup of coffee?” I said.

  “Go ahead and wash up,” he said. “Coffee can wait till we take a break.”

  “I can hardly wait, boss,” I said, my voice filled with acid.

  I went to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water. While I put my head under the steady stream of freezing cold water, I could hear him walking around the place.

  “You wanna know something, Kingsley?” he said. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this place smells like pussy.”

  His comment sent a shock up and down my backbone. It was almost better than downing a cup of black coffee—in terms of sobering me up, that is. I allowed the cold water to drown me while he went on pacing.

  “And you know what, Kingsley? The pussy…the fragrance…it smells real familiar. Shit, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re fucking my wife.”

  That did it. It woke me right up. I didn’t even need coffee by that point. Pulling my head out from under the water, I dried myself with the dishrag that hung over the spigot.

  “If you’re smelling pussy, boss,” I said, “it must be coming from you, because the only action this place has seen is me and Rosy Palm.”

  He pointed at me with an extended index finger. “Now that’s an image I can do without, Kingsley,” he said. Then, looking at his watch, “You ready? It will be daylight in a few minutes, and I want to already be on the trail.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m ready.”

  He went for the door.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” he went on. “Unless you’ve already taken your morning constitutional, I’d strongly suggest you take a toilet paper roll. You never know when last night’s meal is gonna wanna escape.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Suit yourself. I gotta warn you, however, shitting in the woods can be real uncomfortable without some TP.”

  But by then, shitting in the forest was the last thing on my mind.

  We hiked the narrow path, then made our way across the lawn past the main cabins until we came to the back of the tavern where Sonny had already set out an older model chainsaw along with a plastic jug of gasoline and another one that was filled with motor oil.

  “I’ll run the chainsaw,” he said, nodding at the stuff, “and you carry the gas and oil. You’ll also clear away the branches and twigs as I cut them. Be prepared to sweat that booze out of your system, Kingsley. Hope you can handle it.”

  I grabbed the two cans by their handles, felt their weight, and the toxic liquid sloshing around inside them.

  “Don’t worry about me, boss,” I said.

  He smiled. “Who said I was worried, Kingsley?”

  I still didn’t have a clue how I was going to make Sonny’s accident happen. Only that I wanted to make it happen. Anything could happen in the deep woods. A man could trip on a root, and he might fall face first onto a rock. Or maybe he could get torn apart by a wild animal. Like Sonny told me at breakfast yesterday, there was an angry black bear roaming the woods. Shit, maybe Sonny might slip into the lake and drown. I was open to anything.

  He led me down to the beach where the Loon Lake trailhead was located. The opening was so narrow and covered over in vegetative grow
th, you wouldn’t even know it existed if not for the wood sign nailed to a big birch tree, the words Loon Lake Trail embossed on it in big, bold white letters. Sonny stood at the trailhead and, holding the chainsaw in his right hand, yanked on the starter with his left. The saw came to life, its fat body spitting gas and oil, its chain trembling. Now holding the saw in both hands, he pressed the trigger, and the rapidly spinning chain came roaring to life. Raising the saw, he began to cut away the overgrown branches and twigs that concealed the trailhead. When he was done, he turned to me, his brow already beaded with sweat.

  “Well, don’t just stand there like a useless bump on a log, Oil and Gas Man,” he said. “Pick that shit up.”

  He was, of course, referring to the pile of fresh lumber that now littered the beach.

  “And do what with it exactly, boss?” I said, playing dumb.

  “Jesus, you sure you’re a writer?” he said over the sputtering noise of the idling saw. “’Cause you sure do come out with some dumb-ass questions.”

  “Sorry,” I said, not without a smile. “City boy.”

  “Maybe that explains it,” he said. Then, “Pick up the damned branches and toss them into the woods. Get it?”

  The sun was coming up over the lake then, and now I could really make out his round face, along with the salt and pepper stubble and sweat that coated it. It seemed to glow in the early morning sunlight like a yellow lightbulb. The kind of lightbulb that attracted all sorts of flying insects. In fact, he looked like an insect to me. A big, hairy beetle with green goop for blood.

  He stepped into the trees, began trudging along the trail, and I followed, the new morning sun now shaded by the foliage. Quickly, we came upon a tree that had come down over the winter, and he immediately started cutting it up.

  I stood there holding the gas and oil cans and prayed that he would somehow lose control of the chainsaw on his own and it would cut into his leg, severing the femoral artery. I’d once seen a man die in Iraq after taking a bullet to the thigh. He bled out in just a few minutes. In the prison yard, I witnessed a repeat performance, only the poor bastard in this scenario was shanked in the thigh by another inmate. The cut was delivered so quickly and so deep, that the femoral artery had been sliced open and the poor bastard died within three minutes. By the time help arrived, he was lying in a pool of his own dark red blood, his eyes wide open, his soul having already departed his mortal remains.