Deceived

by James Scott Bell

  “I don’t know. Colorado Springs was nice. San Diego, too.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Where are you from?” Ted said.

  “Me? I’m from a little town I like to call Chicago.” Bill sat back, crossed his legs. “Live there still. Do you know Chicago, Ted?”

  “Um, not really.”

  “Great history there. Capone. The Cubs. Liz, you about ready with the drinks?”

  “Coming,” Liz said.

  Bill looked back at Ted. “Yes, Chicago. The City of the Big Shoulders. Really sort of forgotten. Everything’s New York or LA these days.”

  “Or San Francisco,” Ted said.

  Bill waved his hand. “Frisco’s had its day. We need to look to the future, don’t we there, Ted?”

  Liz came in with a tray and three glasses with ice and ginger ale. “Here we go,” she said. She brought the tray to Ted, who took a glass. Then Bill took one. She put the tray down on the coffee table and took her own glass.

  “Cheers,” she said.

  They all drank.

  It was almost normal. Ted thought maybe this was going to turn out all right after all. Eventually, Bill would have to leave, go back to where he came from. Chicago. That was far enough away.

  Bill had just put his glass on the table when Ted saw the flash.

  His mind told him instantly that what he saw could not be happening. It was not possible that Liz was holding a large knife in her fist, in plunging position, even less that she was bringing the blade down hard toward the throat of her cousin Bill.

  But when the contact was made, he knew it was happening, really happening, though he could not begin to know why.

  Ted Gillespie screamed.

  11:14 a.m.

  Mac knew something was wrong even before he turned into the church lot. It was like a vibe coming out to meet him in the street. He had a sense about things like that, even back in the Gulf.

  He really honed the instinct in prison, when he could sense a Rambo coming up behind him, some punk who wanted to make trouble. Whenever that happened, his head would start to throb.

  His head warned him like old farmers talked about their joints. They knew when a storm was coming because their joints started acting up.

  Mac’s head was acting up. The lot looked empty from the street, but then he pulled into the drive and saw the back end of a blue car behind the church. Between the church building and the shack euphemistically known as the home of Daniel Patrick MacDonald.

  The door of which was open.

  Mac gunned it to the blue car, stopped, and jumped out.

  Inside, his place was just this side of a hurricane zone.

  Most of his personal items were in a haphazard pile on the floor.

  He heard the sound of a drawer being pulled out, all the way out. In his bedroom.

  Where he found Slezak bent over a dresser drawer on the bed. Slezak was throwing underwear and T-shirts onto the floor. He looked up and saw Mac.

  “Hey there,” Slezak said.

  Mac’s head started pounding.

  “Best thing I can do for you is help you stay clean, huh?” Slezak said. “Make sure you return safe and sound to the streets of our city.”

  The drawer was completely empty now. Slezak tossed the drawer itself on the floor and turned and pulled out another. Pants and a sweater in that one.

  Slezak was smiling.

  You could end this now, Mac heard a voice say. Not exactly a voice, but a part of his brain screaming for relief. Just take the guy out and figure out your story later. It’s just the two of you.

  Slezak emptied the drawer, threw that on the floor as well. “You got to do a better job of washing,” he said. “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

  Godliness. The word came crackling through Mac’s fractured thoughts. He closed his eyes and prayed. He prayed the way Pastor Jon did sometimes. He prayed in the name of Jesus for protection from the Enemy. He prayed for the peace that passes all understanding. He prayed the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd.

  Slezak headed for the bathroom.

  Just like last time.

  He heard Slezak open the medicine cabinet and the metallic shuffling around. “You got any more of that Vicodin?” Slezak said.

  Mac said nothing. The Lord is my shepherd.

  “Hey, I asked you a question,” Slezak said. “You got any drugs in this house?”

  The Lord is my shepherd.

  “MacDonald, I asked you a question.”

  The Lord is my shepherd.

  “You want to go down for non co-op?”

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” Mac said out loud.

  “What did you just say?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  Slezak came to him, almost nose to nose. “Think you can pull the wool, huh? You can’t. You’re gonna slip or you’re gonna crack, and I’ll be there to take it all down and see you back where you came from.”

  In Mac’s head the shrapnel glowed, and he thought he might hit Slezak. He wanted to. He wanted to knock teeth out or worse. But something held his fist back.

  Then Slezak hit him in the gut.

  11:18 a.m.

  Ted shook. He could not stop. His voice was making little burbling sounds. He thought he would faint right there. “What — ”

  Then he felt Liz’s hands on his shoulders and her blue eyes looking straight at him. He fell into her gaze.

  “Ted, stop.”

  “ — did you do? Oh, my — ”

  “Listen to me, Ted, listen!”

  He stopped making sounds.

  “I need your help,” Liz said. “I need you to be strong. I know you are strong. You are the only one who can help me. Please.”

  She put her head into his chest and put her arms around him. He felt the electric charge of desire and male instinct to protect. He did not begin to comprehend why she had stabbed her cousin in the neck with a knife and was now covered with blood just as he was because she was holding him close. The warmth of her body, her breathing against him, calmed him.

  He smoothed her hair with his hand, even though there was blood in her hair. He said, “I’m here. I’ll help you. I’ll help you.”

  She said nothing, but her hot breath lit a fire on his chest and in his chest and it spread all over him. He couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back and pushed his mouth on hers before she could protest.

  She didn’t protest but let him kiss her for what seemed like a whole minute. It must have been only a second.

  Then she pulled away from him and said, “No, not now. Soon. But not now. We have to think.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  There was blood on the floor, lots of it, and Bill was facedown in it. The bloody knife was on the floor next to him. Ted was still shaking, but the reaction was now a mix of desire and longing and some weird sort of excitement. He was intoxicated.

  “Why’d you do it?” Ted said.

  “Because he’s a criminal. He came here to try to get money out of me. My life insurance. He knew about me.”

  “But he’s your cousin.”

  “Of course he’s not!”

  She was angry with him now. You stupid, stupid . . .

  “Listen to me,” she said. “I had to kill him. He was going to kill me. He was probably going to kill you. Now we have to get rid of him.”

  “But how?”

  “I know how we can do it,” she said.

  “But the blood . . .”

  “We can do this. We can do this together. Why don’t you come with me?”

  Did she really ask him that? “Where?”

  “I’m going to get out of here. I’m going to go away and start my life over again. Will you be part of that with me?”

  This had to be a dream, an extreme dream, like the ones he had about jumping out of a plane with a snowboard and landing on the side of a snowy mountain, even though he had never been snowboardin
g in his life. He always thought it was a dream of something that would happen to him someday, and now he knew it had happened, only it was not a snowboard or mountain, it was a woman and a dead body and the chance to go away with her and feel alive.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

  “Then listen to me and do what I tell you.”

  “Yes.”

  “First thing, go in the garage, through the door in the kitchen. In the corner there’s a big blue tarp rolled up with yellow rope. Go get that. We’re going to put the body in it.”

  “Right.” Easy, he told himself. Don’t sound like you’re a Cub Scout going off to get marshmallows for the campfire. Just do this thing and help her, and she’ll give herself to you.

  He kept telling himself that. He went to the garage and found the tarp. It was the kind somebody would put under a tent. He hauled it back into the living room where Liz was waiting.

  “Now untie it and lay it out flat,” she ordered. He didn’t mind that she ordered. Still, he hesitated.

  “You can do this for me,” she said. “For us.”

  He felt her strength enter him like a river of liquid fire. As he untied the rope from the tarp, he was amazed at how easy it was to cooperate in a crime. This was a bad man she had killed, and she must have had a very good reason. But it was still a crime, and they were going to get away with it. He was going to help her get away with it.

  For us.

  He laid the tarp on the floor next to the body. Then he helped Liz roll the body onto it. Then they wrapped it up. Like we’re about to take out the trash, Ted thought. Not so far off the mark.

  “We’ve got to clean up the blood,” Liz said.

  “Yes,” Ted said.

  “You holding up?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  She smiled at him. He drank it in.

  “I can do anything,” he said.

  Liz nodded, then put her hands behind his neck, pulled, and kissed him full on the mouth.

  11:29 a.m.

  Don’t get up, Mac told himself. Stay on the ground.

  It had been several minutes since Slezak hit him. In that time he heard Slezak rifling through his things again, throwing drawers on the floor.

  Baiting him.

  He wants you to get up, Mac thought. That’s just what he wants. For you to get up and take a swing at him. He wants you to take this to the next level.

  He wants you back in prison. Or dead. Or anything in between.

  The Lord is my shepherd.

  The Lord is my shepherd.

  Slezak did not say another word. He did not hit Mac again. Instead, he walked out, slamming the door.

  Mac waited until he heard the car drive off.

  How close he had come to defending himself. Thank you, God, that I didn’t.

  He thought of Jesus. Jesus got a whole lot more than a punch in the stomach and didn’t rise up to defend himself.

  Yeah, well, that was Jesus. Son of God. Not an ex-con with a head injury.

  What did God want of him?

  Anything?

  Please, be something.

  11:31 a.m.

  “Does anybody know you’re here?” Liz asked.

  “Nobody,” Ted said. His body, his nerves, his muscles, everything in him was alive. It amazed him that this was happening all at once — that she had killed a man, that she had kissed him, that she wanted him.

  That this was a crime, that he was helping her in a crime, that he was helping her.

  “Are you sure?” Liz said. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “I live alone in an apartment,” he said. “It’s a big complex. Nobody really looks out after anybody else.”

  “Good,” she said. “What kind of car do you drive?”

  “It’s a Mercury,” he said. “A Mercury Cougar.”

  “That’ll do. I want you to look out the window and wait until nobody is around. No cars passing by. My next-door neighbor isn’t here. She’s in Europe or something. Her house is all closed up. The people across the street can’t really see over here unless they’re at the end of their driveway. So wait until you think it’s all clear, then walk calmly to your car and bring it around to the back. We’re up against the hill, there’s nobody back there.”

  “Then what?” Ted asked.

  “We put the body in, of course.”

  “My car?”

  “If this ever gets out and the police come calling, they’ll want to search my car. We’ll have enough trouble getting rid of the blood in the house. I don’t want it all over the trunk of my car. You’ll be safe, because nobody is going to suspect you in this.”

  “All right,” he said, willing to do anything she asked. She was smart. She was street smart. However she got that way, it was a complete turn-on.

  The next ten minutes sped by. He got the car around the house to the back where the big curving driveway led him. Looking around, he could see there was no way for people to observe what was going on unless they were on top of the hill, looking down. No one was there.

  They got the tarp-covered body into the trunk, slammed it shut.

  “Now what?” he said. Now what? He knew what he wanted. He wanted to melt and stay with her always. He didn’t care what that meant, he didn’t even care if that meant his soul was damned forever.

  “Inside,” she said.

  He followed her into the house. He would have followed her into the flames if she wanted him to.

  “We have to wait,” she said. “Until tonight.”

  Wait? With her? All day? Yes, yes, yes.

  “I need a drink,” she said.

  “I’ll get you some ginger ale,” Ted said, starting for the kitchen.

  “No,” she said. “I want a real drink.”

  “Do you have something?”

  “I do. You like bourbon?”

  He smiled. “I’m more of a vodka guy.”

  “If I said bourbon is all I have and that I want you to have a drink with me, what would you say?”

  His heart was running a one-hundred-yard dash. “I’d say that I was a bourbon guy.”

  “All right, then we’ve got some work to do. There’s a bucket and bleach by the washing machine. And some rags. Bring them.”

  1:23 p.m.

  Mac knew he could kill Slezak. His head wanted him to. The hate was building up inside like water against a dam. It was going to burst, just like it always had since he was a kid. Since his father died, in fact. He could trace it back that far.

  He could barely remember his father’s face. The man had brown hair, Mac remembered that much. And his voice. He thought, at odd times during the night, he could hear his father’s voice, telling him what it was like to work maintenance on the MTA.

  “You have to feel the vibration of the tracks. You have to listen to the rumble to know what direction that big old train is coming. You know what it’s like? It’s like walking around here at night.”

  “Around here” was a two-room apartment about ten minutes from downtown Newark. You just didn’t go out at night, that’s all there was to it.

  Mac did remember his father had a laugh that seemed forced. It was like he knew life had delivered a bag of day-old bread to him, and that was going to be it. That’s what he’d have to go on, but he didn’t want his son or wife to know about it.

  He died when Mac was eight. His dad was working repairs in the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in Brooklyn. He and another guy were carrying a dolly across the G track toward the A and C. How they misjudged the G train no one ever knew, because both of them were killed instantly.

  Mac remembered the funeral. A lot of people turned out. A lot of hands touched Mac’s head and told him what a great guy his father was. He didn’t know when it happened, but somewhere in there, sometime at the funeral, he started hating everybody. It came on him like a black fog. He didn’t have a father, and all those people were all part of a world that took fathers away. No explanation, it just happ
ened.

  He lived in that fog until he was eighteen years old. He busted a lot of heads, bloodied a lot of faces. Once, when he was sixteen, he almost killed a kid from Great Neck who was visiting his grandmother. He just looked like a Great Neck kid, and that was all. That little episode got him busted into medium-security juvie at Burlington.

  And that’s where he might have graduated into the hard stuff if it weren’t for the judge who told him he could choose between the Marines and more time.

  Mac chose the Marines.

  It did the trick for a while. All the hate got channeled into the places the corps wanted it to go. And after the Gulf, he thought he had it turned around.

  But the headaches kept coming, and the VA kept jerking him around. He learned to hate again, this time the bureaucrats. He did manage to work in a couple of garages, got fired both times. Most of the nineties were lost to him.

  Then he met a beautiful woman named Athena in Oceanside and that very night conceived a child. Three months later they got married. The child came. A daughter, Aurora.

  Mac felt the promise of new life. It lasted about a month, which was when the money started running out. When fights with Athena started to get louder and made the baby cry.

  One night he pushed Athena to the floor and ran out, got five bottles of tequila, and holed up in the Aku Aku Motor Inn for two days.

  When he sobered up, he used a gun to hold up a liquor store.

  2:05 p.m.

  Geena was chattering away while Rocky tapped on her laptop. Trying to search and gather when Geena was around was like trying to do a crossword at a rave. A little distracting.

  “ — of the four harmonies,” she was saying, just as Rocky was accessing the archives of the Pack Canyon Herald, such as they were. “They are actually the four humors the ancient Greeks found, only now we know what to do with them.”

  I’ll tell you what you can do with them, Rocky thought.

  “I can’t remember what the guy’s name was — ”

  “Hippocrates,” Rocky said.

  “What he said was, all of us have humor. There are four kinds of humor.”

  “Funny and unfunny,” Rock said, reading the screen.

  “Hmm?”

  “Clean and dirty.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The four humors.”