by Jeff Klima
I stop this clip too. How someone never stumbled across the notion that Andy Sample might be a serial killer is beyond me. Discretion is not exactly his strong suit anyway, but the darkness that oozes from him onstage, plus the fact that he considers those two clips to be “strong material,” gives me the distinct impression that everything he’s shown thus far is nothing compared with what is going on in his head.
—
I drive out to Duane’s after locking the office back up. As far as Harold will know, I’ve spent the afternoon handing out the brochures to interested shopkeepers instead of throwing the lot of them into an Arby’s dumpster, which is where they end up. My parole officer’s place in Woodland Hills is in a small, two-story apartment building that is somehow in worse shape than mine. Up on the second floor, in the back corner of the building, his one-bedroom flat looks out over the loading dock of a closed-down Kmart. Duane’s in the kitchen, and bellows out a hearty “Come in” when I knock.
The apartment bleeds the rich, garlicky aroma of Italian food cooking as I walk in, and I realize his intention is that I am going to stay for dinner. I’m not. Further, my suspicion that he is a bachelor is immediately confirmed upon entry. What furniture the man has does not match, and a large fabric Italian flag is the focal point of his living room wall. Elsewhere around the room, printed photographs of Duane hamming it up with other white LAPD officers are not in frames, but rather pushpinned to the wall as if they are entomology specimens. A large stack of VHS tapes stand waist high beside a small television set on a collapsible TV tray. It is sad to enter this home that is only a lifelong collection of memories arranged haphazardly about the place; all are items selected likely for their emotional and spiritual value, but to the casual observer just seem like a load of fucking junk. I see the innards of houses often in my work, the secret world of the newly dead, and it is mostly always sad. Of course, my place has nothing of any kind, so what does that say about me?
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Duane announces, and there is the sound of a large pot being set aside before my PO emerges from his kitchen nook in a sauce-stained wife-beater to greet me. By way of acknowledgment, I wordlessly extend the collective of letters and photos, but he takes them and drops them on an aging recliner. “Glad you found it okay,” he says with a grin, overly enthusiastic. “Let me give you the tour.”
I already know too much about the man, and what I know, I don’t particularly care for, but I allow myself to be led about the narrow domicile with a look of resigned politeness. I’m stuck with him until he decides otherwise.
His tour wholly seems to be about showing me his collection of guns and daggers, which have been stashed throughout the rooms, never more than an arm’s reach from wherever he might be standing. I suspect this is in preparation for a coming “race war,” a suspicion Duane confirms while, without irony, he shows me his Polish version of an AK-47. “One day,” he says, sliding back the bolt action to reveal a bullet is indeed in the chamber, “the elements of the streets are going to rise up in an attempt to claim what they think is theirs. Trust me, it’s coming. This apartment is going to be ground zero for the resistance, God willing that that day comes while I’m still on this earth.” The more he shows of his arsenal, though, the more I wonder how many women have come back here only to abandon all hope after being given the same tour.
“How’s your assignment going? You got some new information for me?” he asks when we return to the living room, and he gestures for me to take a seat opposite him. I sit, precariously balanced on the lip of his sofa, hopefully indicating my unwillingness to get comfortable and stay long. I have played versions of this moment over in my mind since learning the identity of Andy Sample, and not once do any of those speculative conversations end with me handing over a single iota of useful information. And yet, somehow in those speculations, it was enough to keep me out of prison.
“I’m close,” I assure Duane, leveling my gaze to meet his.
“Meaning?”
“He wants to meet. Soon.”
“You know his name?”
“He calls himself A. Guy. As in capital ‘A,’ period, capital ‘G’ ‘Guy.’ ”
“A. Guy? What is he, a comedian?”
I shrug.
“Where does he want to meet?”
“I don’t know; he’s going to call me.”
Duane ponders this for a bit. “I want you to call me the second after he calls you,” he finally decides. “You will tell me the when and the where of the meeting. I’ll scope this turkey out myself.”
“I’ll try,” I volley back.
“You’ll do better than that.”
“What if he decides to pick me up? And he tells me to leave my cell phone at home?”
“I thought about that…give me one second.” Duane disappears back into his spare bedroom and emerges moments later with a chrome-colored pistol, which he extends to me. “You make sure you always have the upper hand.”
I decline it. “I’m not a gun guy.”
“You just became one. Go ahead, take it; it’s unregistered.”
“All the more reason for me not to. I’m a felon, I can’t be caught with a firearm, much less an unregistered one.”
“Take the fucking gun. I can’t have you dying. Goddamnit, you might need it.”
Deciding, I take the weapon. “Is it loaded?”
“All my weapons are hot.”
I take “hot” to be police lingo for “Yes, it’s loaded.” “How do I take the safety off?”
“See that little button on the side? Just above the trigger? Push it.”
It’s just like the rifles I fired in Scouts after all. I do as I’m told, and, standing, I turn to point the weapon at my parole officer.
“Don’t point it at me, numbnuts. That weapon’s hot!”
“You said that already. Now put your hands up real slow.”
“The fuck is this?” he tries, genuine confusion formed across his face.
“No, I mean it, Duane.”
“Tommy, this is my home…”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
He puts his hands up slowly, maybe figuring out that I am serious. “I trusted you.”
“You wanted to use me. To recruit me.”
“No, it was your idea that you’d go to those meetings to get out of going back to jail. I wasn’t going to force you…I only ever put it out there as an idea. Like I said, I think the club and you could benefit from one another. I was boasting about you last night. You and me coulda gone there together, we coulda hung out. I trusted you…”
It suddenly dawns on me that this man with his sad little apartment and all his weapons is more than a recruiter for white supremacy. And me, standing here, in his home, pointing his gun at him, I just fucked up his world.
His eyes glance furtively over toward a small bookshelf set precariously up on a card table as his face hardens. I don’t need “policeman’s intuition” to guess what is behind the single row of pulp detective novels.
“Don’t even consider it,” I warn him.
“You’re fucked,” Duane assures me. “Even if you’re joking, I’m treating this as hard truth.”
“Now, why would you tell me that?” I step cautiously around the furniture and toward the door. “Any way you slice it, I have nothing left to lose. That just makes me more likely to turn this into a murder.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Why would I bluff? I don’t like you. I was wondering how I was going to rid myself of you, and then you gave me the answer. In fact, you forced me to take it.” Each statement makes the older man wince.
“This unregistered gun with your prints all over it, consider it evidence now. You brought me over to your little apartment, showed me around, and gave me a gun with the hopes I’d deliver A. Guy. In fact, I’ve gotten to know him a little better than I’ve let on. And he seems real keen on us teaming up. So here’s what’s going to happen: You’re goi
ng to report to the parole board that I’m a model parolee, and you’re going to continue to do so until I am no longer of interest to them. In exchange, I will never deliver this gun to your boss and tell him how I got it. I trust that this will be the last time we see each other. Because while you know where I live and work, A. Guy now knows where you live and work too. That’s real. Remember Hank Kelly? These days, I’ve got a sort of guardian angel who has my best interests at heart. And I can’t say that I mind.” I carefully pick up the packet of information from the recliner. “You’re not going to be needing this.”
“No one will ever believe you,” he tries.
“I don’t need them to. You’re smart enough to realize you fucked up, and I’m smart enough to know that I will never go back to jail. So, let’s just leave it at that.”
“You stung me bad today, Tommy. I trusted you, but you’re fucking dead.”
“Guess I’m not such a nice white kid after all? If I were you, I’d spend a lot of time here in your apartment watching your TV, surrounded safely by your weapons, so you can’t get into too much trouble. There’s a dangerous man out there who wants to kill you, and I don’t want you to give him the reason to do it.”
“Hell is for traitors.”
“You think I’m going to hell? Over this? No, if I’m going to hell, I bought my ticket there ten years ago. It’s kind of liberating, actually.” Duane swallows, weighing his options, and for a moment I think he might try to draw on me. “We going to do this, gunslinger? I’ve never shot a gun before, but it’s not exactly rocket science, is it?”
“Just get the fuck out of my life,” Duane resignedly decides.
“Good call.” I leave the apartment edging backwards, finger on the trigger, hoping the gun doesn’t go off accidentally. I feel a measure of sadness for the way I’m ending this. Clearly Duane Caruzzi thought more of me than just as a routine parolee. It has to be this way, though. It’s better to shut him down hard now than try and do it softly later. I’m winging it, but that seems like my only option now.
Chapter 22
Ivy waits outside my apartment building, struggling to grip a box overloaded with kitchen supplies. The contents are not neatly packed, but jammed in so that pan handles and kitchen tools are jutting out at odd angles.
“Hey,” I say soberly, coming up from behind her.
“Just open the door already,” she gripes.
I do so, propping it open with my foot, and, as she passes, I reach out and easily pluck the cardboard box from her tired grasp. “Thank you. Fucking Jesus,” she exclaims, allowing me to take it, and then shakes her tingling arms to generate blood flow. “You never offer to carry anything for me; I was starting to wonder if you were a gentleman. What took you so long?”
On our slow, jerking elevator ride up to my floor, I fill her in on all the day’s events, finishing with Duane, whose gun is now tucked beneath the front seat of my car.
“It’s probably all for the best, yeah?”
“Probably.” It scares me how easily she just accepts these terrible things about me.
“Did you learn anything new about Andy Sample?” she asks as the elevator gives a final jolt, denoting its arrival on the fifth floor.
“From the hotel room this morning, I get the feeling that he’s up to something, but I don’t know what.”
The elevator doors slide open, and where there is normally flat, stale air hanging in the hallway, tinged with the stink of mildew, there is something pungent and new in the air, something much, much worse.
“God, something stinks up here. I don’t remember it smelling this bad before.”
“It’s decomp,” I assure her, moving cautiously out into the hallway, still toting the large box. “Either another cat has died in the walls, or…” I don’t bother finishing, noting the increasing foulness of the odor as we approach my apartment.
“I’m surprised no one has called the police yet…it even smells like you’d think a rotting body would.”
“Breathe through your mouth,” I say, and steady the box against the wall to pull out my keys. “It’s going to get a whole lot worse.”
The swamp scent of putrefying gas spills into the hallway like a tidal surge, overwhelming Ivy, who puts her hands over her mouth and nose to stymie the bile invading her throat. “Yeah, that’s the stuff,” I say, but don’t grin.
Setting the box beside the door, I glance around the barren room, taking short shallow inhales through my nostrils to gauge the source of the stench. Making my way slowly through the living room and into the kitchen, I find the smell is less concentrated and backtrack out toward the bathroom. The shower curtain is stretched across the expanse of what passes for a bathtub in this building, concealing the minty green tile interior. In this part of the apartment, the air is so dense with the perfume of rot I can’t pinpoint its origin. Ivy is right behind me, staying close out of bravery or fear, hands still masking the lower half of her face.
I yank the shower curtain back, all at once, quickly revealing the same empty space I’d left upon last using it, my water-thinned bar of soap dry in its ceramic cubby, the store-brand generic shampoo bottle teetering in its familiar place on the lip of the tub. “The bedroom,” I say, and Ivy flattens herself against the wall, allowing me to pass in her determination to not go first.
Flies have sprung from a seeming nothingness to populate the sparse drapery of my modest bedroom. Ivy sounds her displeasure behind me as I march to the closet and noisily slide open the double door on its chintzy little track. Aside from the collective of dark shirts hanging from dark hangers, my closet is as barren as my shower. For some reason, I’m embarrassed that Ivy can see the sparseness of my closet, and I shut the door, the little wheel whining as it makes its way back across the metal. The bed. The covers are definitely raised in the middle; a swell in the blanket gives the indication that it is hiding something. I yank it away from the mattress, expecting a human head.
Ivy’s yelp outpaces the dry, hollow rattle as a banded snake, coiled in the center of my bed, rears up its head and tail simultaneously. A black, forked tongue flicks out from the front of its shoveled snout, testing the scent of the intruders.
“Stand back,” I warn Ivy, and step back as well, but the snake is adamant about staying put, continually shaking its rattle in fair warning. Keeping my eyes locked on the greenish-hued snake, I can see that there is something in the center of it, something surrounded by the thick body of the rattler. It’s a hot water bottle, I realize, put there to keep the snake attracted to the warmth. There’s something else too, though…a note.
“Is this how rattlesnakes smell?” Ivy asks through her hand, and, impressively, she does not seem scared by the reptile’s presence, though she keeps her distance.
“No, it isn’t,” I admit, too concerned about everything to mock her. I move slowly around to the side of the mattress, and the rattlesnake keeps pace, the twin pits by its mouth shifting around, following my heat signature.
“What are you doing?” Ivy whispers as if the snake is sensitive to noise. I step closer to the bed and it lunges, its hinged fangs seeking my hand. I pull back once, but then reach quickly down and flip the entirety of the bed over, box spring and all. “Aggh!” Ivy shrieks, caving, and runs out of the room as the snake tumbles with the mattress onto the floor and out of sight against the far wall. I, however, am now more concerned about the occupied black body bag lying on my floor, and the fact that it is leaking.
“Why would you do that?” Ivy yells from the living room.
“So this is what you were up to,” I murmur, though it is no kind of answer.
“What is it?”
I squat, zipping open the bag to look, and more putrescent brown slime leaches from one of several long incisions intentionally slashed down the length of the bag. I grimace—it’s a smell you get used to, but never enjoy.
The body within is in a state of extreme decomposition; a few weeks’ worth of bacterial buildup are breakin
g down the tissue and consuming their host from the inside out. It’s a male, adult, and though its face has become blistered and black, and one of the cheeks has rotted in, I recognize the general facial form of Tony Brahma.
“I wondered what happened to you,” I confess to the waxy corpse that, in a sense, has suffered from a lack of insect infestation. The bloating from his bile ducts and stomach has torn the skin apart in patches, and a tightening of the derma from the departure of moisture has given his corpse a badly mummified appearance. Had he been exposed to the presence of blowfly maggots and the summer heat, he would otherwise mostly be a skeleton by now. He’s instead spent his days in the black plastic sack, festering and swelling, the gases threatening to rupture the sides of the bag until Andy had released the pressure with the serrated edge of a long knife.
“Where the fuck is the snake?” Ivy asks, making her way into the bedroom and momentarily uninterested in the presence of a rotting body.
“It’s not going to bother you,” I snap, and then realize I am going to need her help. “Sorry—it isn’t interested in us, it’s over beneath the mattress. It’ll wanna stay over there in the dark.”
“Who is that?”
“It’s my old drug dealer.”
“What are we going to do about him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Is that your next test?”
It reminds me that over by the snake there is a note. “I’m gonna have to kill the snake.”