Men of the Mean Streets

by Greg Herren

  I know—I am digressing again, all engaged in my own concerns with how to dispose of Miz Walsh now that she is a body, not just a body of work. You want to know how she became the late Belinda Sondheim Walsh.

  It’s silly really, what happened. But then murder is often the result of something frivolous—an argument in the kitchen where butcher knives are handy. Or an argument in an office where Auden’s letter opener is just lying there demanding to be used even though the mail has already come and gone.

  It was simple: She seduced me. Or tried to. And I said no. Rather harshly. And she refused to take no for an answer and came around the desk and I tried to get away.

  The odd part is, had I been the woman and she the man, I could have called the police post–letter opener, cried (as I actually did do—the crying, I mean, not the calling of the police), and I would have been taken in hand by some lovely and compassionate policewoman who looked like Mariska Hargitay, and no charges would have been filed. A would-be rapist is, after all, a would-be rapist. Irrespective of gender.

  But no one would have perceived Belinda Sondheim Walsh as a threat to me. She was five-three, ratcheted up to five-six in her spiky little Manolos, and she was quite thin. She had a birdlike quality to her that some—those who had never spent five minutes with her—would have deemed fragile. Meanwhile, I was six-two with what is generally described as “swimmer’s build”—that is, strongly muscular but slender without being thin or wiry or, ever, ever fragile.

  Stand the two of us together, Belinda and I, and no one would ever pick me as the potential victim. And of course it was she lying dead on the floor, blood pooling and spreading across her small breasts beneath the silken blouse.

  But as I said early on in this recitation, it was she who was the killer. She brought this on herself—truly. I know most people won’t believe that, because men are always the villains of the piece and women the perpetual victims, but this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, and women have achieved a level of power that allows for them to be the perpetrators now and again. And she was. And I was her victim. And now she’s dead because of it.

  It sounds ludicrous even to me, and I was there.

  But here’s what happened, since I promised to explain. Belinda and I had been working on her latest novel for some months. I say we because her opening volley—and that’s what the leg-crossing event was—was just that: the first in a series of ever more awkward impromptu visits to discuss her work and the state of her attraction to younger men. By which she meant me.

  The book had been due in May, for a December release. Tight scheduling to begin with. Belinda did have critical acclaim. I may not have understood it, but that didn’t matter. She had a retinue and as such got a good billing from us for holiday release, which usually brought with it good sales.

  Except the book hadn’t been done until August and the schedules had been thrown. Utterly. I was under pressure to get the book from her and she was withholding it—I felt purposefully—to get me into bed with her. Which was never going to happen because first of all, I am not a fence jumper, and second of all, I was mad for Cam and I was not going to cheat on him with anyone—certainly not a woman I had grown to despise and even fear.

  So there we were, in increasingly tight quarters together. She would be in my office until late in the hot evenings throughout the summer when publishing grinds to a halt as everyone is fleeing New York for the Hamptons or anyplace with a breeze. Cam and I were spending most of our weekends in Rehoboth with friends. Except when Belinda needed me to hold her hand. And so Belinda had become a bone of contention in my otherwise blissful romance with Cam. My own complaints about her were echoed by Cam in a way that made me fearful that he did in fact suspect that I was fulfilling her fantasies on those late nights in my office.

  Which I most definitely was not.

  *

  A book is never fully finished until it’s on the shelves. And even then, there is a whole new level of concerns, but my part ended when the book was indeed bound and bound for the bookstores. But due to the delays Belinda had caused, we had to go over edits and changes and galleys and proofs right up until the last second.

  Which, regrettably, was when I killed her.

  As I explained early on, Belinda refused to be edited. So she had to be cajoled into thinking any given change was her idea. Which was both maddening and time-consuming and driving me to spend more and more of my evenings downing martinis with Amelia and lamenting the fact that I could not escape this woman. I would call M.J. late at night after Cam was asleep and I was sober again. I told her about how Belinda’s initial mild flirtations had moved into a sexually aggressive stage that made me so uncomfortable that I was drinking too much and was afraid I might either lose my job or lose Cam or both.

  M.J. was a realist of the highest order. “Someone else has to know she’s doing this, Tony,” she told me. “She didn’t just start this with you.”

  I explained about Mr. Godwin, the closet pederast, and how I was sure Belinda was several decades too old for him and how I couldn’t see her dressing up in a schoolgirl uniform. Plus, I knew it was a younger, not older, man she wanted. Everyone wants young. Except the young, who want older. And me—I wanted Cam, who was just a few months younger than me. Not years.

  It was a mess, I told M.J. After all, I had just settled into Godwin’s old job and didn’t want to rock the boat—recession plus the endless mergers in the publishing world meant that no job was secure. I was a valued editor, I knew that. But how valued was anyone, really? Godwin had been there for nearly fifty years and no one seemed to miss him at all.

  I couldn’t confess my fears to Cam. And I was beginning to feel that my comments about Belinda might sound sexist to Amelia and M.J. Which was when I called Natalie. Because she’d been through something similar with an older male author who was always touching her inappropriately. And she had gotten herself out of it without losing her job or her position or even the author.

  Natalie told me to tell Belinda to stop. “Just do it. You’ve put up with this for way too long, Tony. What the fuck were you thinking? She should have been told right from that Sharon Stone bit that she was totally out of line and that you didn’t bat for her team and besides you never mix business and fucking. Ever.”

  Natalie was pissed—for me and at me. It all made sense when she said it, and I realized that I had thought I was protecting myself and keeping Belinda from being embarrassed all this time, but in reality, I had just emboldened her. She thought we were playing some teasing little sex game and that I would, once I got her book done, give her what she wanted. Capitulate.

  I decided to talk to her. We were at what used to be called blue-line stage. The book was done. All that was needed was for her to sit in my office and glance over the final proofs. Most authors weren’t accorded this privilege, but Godwin had set a bad precedent based on the old way of doing things pre-computer and digital typesetting, so there we were, on a chill November evening, going over the final proofs of what we both had agreed was indeed her best book.

  And that’s when she did it. That’s when she crossed the line.

  *

  I had the proofs spread out in signatures before Belinda arrived. It was Thursday night and Cam and I were leaving later that night for the long weekend at M.J.’s, taking advantage of Veteran’s Day—a holiday only celebrated by the veterans themselves, the federal government, schools, and publishing houses. I was stressed beyond imagining and looking forward to the time with Cam, M.J., and her husband, James. We made a good foursome, and now that M.J. was quite pregnant with their first child and working from home, she relished the company as much as we did getting away.

  Belinda arrived at just before four p.m. dressed for an evening on the town, so I assumed that the La Perla lingerie that was supposed to be viewed through the sheerness of her blouse was for someone else, not me.

  I was wrong. Dead wrong, as it turns out.

  We began
to work. At 5:45, my assistant, Alana, stuck her head through the partially opened door to say she was leaving and that everyone else was gone from the floor but me. My expression must have reflected my distress at the ever more oppressive closeness of Belinda, because Alana raised an eyebrow and asked if there was anything else I needed, and shouldn’t I be leaving soon since I was going away for the long weekend? She looked sideways at Belinda, remarking on how lovely her outfit was, never realizing that she had just tossed gas onto an already raging fire.

  I murmured that I would be leaving as soon as the proofs were checked and that I would take them downstairs myself and she needn’t worry about them and I hoped she had a nice long weekend herself, and then she was gone with a click of the door latch behind her and the kind of dead calm that falls over an empty office settled in on me and Belinda Sondheim Walsh and really—could something deadly have ever been far off at that point?

  We finished the proofs within a half hour and then it was time to leave. Or so I said, explaining about my weekend plans, again, because Cam had called just before Alana had left and she had put the call through to me (I think he had called the office phone and not my cell specifically to check if Alana was still there and thus would know I was not alone with Belinda) and I had told him I’d be leaving seven-ish, possibly slightly later, and that I had picked up the rental car at lunch and it was in the garage downstairs so we could be on the road by nine at the latest.

  As I finished up the job, I turned my back on Belinda, who had settled herself in that wildly uncomfortable chair that only she seemed to enjoy. I bent over the desk to put the signatures in order and check once more that each had been initialed and marked for errors. I had just finished scrawling a note to production and was reaching for a rubber band to put around them when I heard a light rustling and before I could turn, Belinda had put her arms around me and slid her hand directly onto my crotch, expertly—or so she believed—seeking out my cock.

  I suddenly understood how women must feel when a man they trust or think they know assaults them. The initial response is to be stunned. And because that takes a few moments, the attacker gains the upper hand.

  Which is what happened with Belinda. I was thrown off guard by her grabbing at me and was unsure what to do next. And what I did next was totally wrong. I removed her hand and turned toward her. The look on my face was one of pure shock and probably a touch of revulsion. Hers, however, had that look of barely controlled passion that I had seen many times, just almost always on the face of someone I was about to fuck. Because I wanted to.

  “Shouldn’t we celebrate the end of a job well done with—well, a job well done?” She had not moved back even an inch when I had turned and now I was pressed back against the desk and I could have just shoved her away and why I didn’t, I have no idea, but this is clearly what happens: One loses one’s bearings altogether. And I did. Because I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: afraid.

  How could a man over six feet tall and a muscular 180 pounds be fearful of a woman as petite and seemingly harmless as Belinda? Well, that is the thing about sexual predation, isn’t it?—there’s no logic in it.

  I feared for Cam, for my job, for myself, for my own identity. It all swam together in my head, making me dizzily unsettled. She had already reached for me again; this time her fingers were on my belt and zipper with a fleetness that would have been disarmingly alluring had the man involved sought the attention. But I began to sweat, despite how chill the room had become, and I knew I had to stop her, but my voice came out a garbled whisper which could easily have been misconstrued for sexual desire by someone desperately seeking just that.

  But then I found my voice at the same time she found my cock, and it was not a good mix. Her fingers were around me at the same time as I said with all the outrage and fear I felt, “Belinda, you have to stop!”

  How can one explain the ineffectuality of language when it is all one knows and all one does? Language was my life and yet here it was, failing me utterly. Belinda Sondheim Walsh took my words not as they were meant—a clear and direct imperative to cease and desist—but as a passionate plea for more. She read my “you have to stop!” as “we shouldn’t do this here, but somewhere more private where we can revel in our mutual passion.”

  She told me she couldn’t stop and wouldn’t stop and we both knew I didn’t really want her to stop—not now. And so she slipped her hand into my now-open pants and proceeded to search for what she wanted and seemed bemused to find that I was not excited as she’d expected because of course I was afraid, not turned on. But she thought she had a remedy for this. I leaned away, back farther against the desk, and repeated my whispered “stop,” my regular voice seeming to have left me altogether, and I turned my head away from her as she leaned toward me to kiss me, and that’s when I saw the letter opener.

  *

  I’m not entirely sure what happened next. As I said from the outset, I’m an unreliable narrator. All I know is that I grabbed the letter opener in the same way Grace Kelly grabbed the scissors in Dial M for Murder when she was being strangled by the man Ray Milland had hired to kill her. I felt the same fear she had exhibited on screen—although Belinda was not trying to kill me, but I felt threatened down to the core of my being and all I could think of was escaping. The scent of her—her perfume, her makeup, her hair, her desire—it was overpowering. It was overwhelming me, oppressing me, sickening me. My heart was racing with the adrenaline of fear and I actually thought I might faint.

  But I didn’t. I’m not sure exactly what I did, but suddenly there was a strange sound like a boot in mud—a wet sucking noise that was wholly unpleasant to the point where I thought I might retch, and then there she was—on my rug, the letter opener just below and between her breasts and a look of surprise on her face, her lips just slightly parted, as if she had one more thing to say that had gone unfinished.

  *

  I’m not sure what I did next. I found myself sitting on the floor in front of my desk and next to her body. I was crying, which I rarely do, especially not sober. My pants were still undone and my hair was in my eyes and I could feel sweat running down my back, chilling my body. I was shaking, and on the tips of the fingers of my left hand there was just the slightest trace of blood.

  Now what?

  This was that scene in the murder mystery—novel, play, film, TV show—where the murderer looks around wildly and wonders what to do next. No doubt I had that wild look on my face at that moment when I realized what I had done and that it could not be undone.

  I stood, shaky, my legs like rubber, and looked around for something to wipe my hand on. A small stack of napkins lay on my desk alongside the remains of the Greek salad I had had for lunch. I wiped the blood off, Lady Macbeth coming immediately to mind.

  What next?

  I could not do this by myself. Or so I thought. But who could I ask for help with disposing of a body? And why was I thinking that was the best way to go? I could still call the police, explain, hope for that compassionate Mariska Hargitay character to realize that men get sexually assaulted, too, if not very often. But that seemed a vaguer and vaguer possibility.

  Disposal it was. I would have to do something about the letter opener and the rug. And then there was Cam. Did I dare to involve him in this mess? Was there anyone I could turn to? Anyone who would understand—and forgive me?

  It was right about then that I wished that my mother hadn’t died suddenly the year before. She was always good in a crisis, and somehow I felt she would have had some answers for me. But maybe not. I was on my own here. Murder is definitely a very solitary act.

  *

  And so I began at the beginning, with the letter opener. I went to the men’s room and got a stack of paper towels. The sound the letter opener made when I pulled it from Belinda’s chest was disgusting and my gorge rose, but I did not vomit. I wrapped the letter opener in some of the towels and stanched the blood with the rest. I knew I had to bleach the lette
r opener (I’d learned that from a previous author) to get the blood off just like I knew that the letter opener was such a fixture on my desk that it had to be there when I was there on Monday.

  I looked at my watch. How was it possible that killing someone had taken so little time? It was only 6:45, but it felt like midnight. I knew I had to call Cam. And say what, exactly? “Hi, darling, this book is just murder and it’s taking longer than I expected because it’s just a bloody mess?”

  The car.

  The rental car was in the garage in the basement of our building. Would it be possible for me to put Belinda and the rug in a packing box and take both down in the freight elevator to the luxury SUV I had rented so that we would have enough space for driving M.J. and James around on the weekend, my not wanting her to feel stuffed into the backseat at six months pregnant? Was this even possible?

  I looked at the dead Belinda, so petite and so…foldable. I had to try. How long would it be before rigor mortis set in? I had no idea, but worried it was soon. Then she’d be stiff as a board and I wouldn’t be able to move her. Time was ticking out on me. I had to do something, and fast.

  I shut the door to my office, locked it, and headed for shipping.

  *

  No one ever thinks they will be packing up a dead woman in bubble wrap in a shipping box usually used for books on a cold November night. No one ever thinks—unless one is a sociopath, of course—that one will ever kill anyone. But here I was in the second act of Tony’s First Murder as if I had been packing up dead people all my life.

  I’d been lucky about the rug. There might have been a few spots of blood embedded in the weave that I didn’t discern right away, but considering the amount of blood that pooled on Belinda’s chest, it was amazing that she hadn’t bled onto the carpet. I guess the majority of the bleeding had been internal. I didn’t like to think about that, really.