“You’d give it all back? I thought you were all about billing, billing, billing.” He’d been listening when she’d said that.
“No, I’m all about winning, winning, winning, and I hate people who waste my time.”
“If you let me go, what happens? I can’t afford to hire anyone else. I can’t defend myself.”
“Maybe you can get Legal Aid to do something, but with them, it helps to be female and have kids. It also helps to be on welfare. They do only a limited amount of work and then quit, which is a mercy, since they have a habit of being incompetent at the little they do do.”
“If I fire you, will you let me take you to dinner?”
“Yes, even though you’re a cheater. And since I’m assured by opposing counsel that you won’t be reconciling with your wife, I’ll temporarily suspend my rule about dating married men. We can have a hell of a dinner for $5,000.” She fixed Peter’s eyes with her own, re-crossed her legs and let her skirt ride up a little higher on her thighs. She was daring Peter to look away from her face.
Peter didn’t break eye contact. “I’ll call you when I get a chance to look at my appointment book,” he said, determined not to be “easy.”
Elaine smiled and wrote down two numbers on the back of one of her cards and handed the card to Peter.
Peter took the card without looking at what she had written, stood up and said, “Thank you.”
Elaine stood up too. Still demanding eye contact, she pulled back her shoulders and thrust her unnaturally large breasts into Peter’s peripheral vision. “You’re welcome, Mr. Broviak.”
Peter walked out of Elaine’s office thinking of nothing but her body. He felt like a 16-year-old boy about to go on his first solo date to the drive-in. Sex was Peter’s universal painkiller and he was about to get high again after a long dry spell.
Peter’s high lasted only as long as it took to drop into the Legal Aid clinic on his way home and pick up the required forms. There were nine pages to fill out, and Peter knew he would have to take them home and spend hours finding the necessary documentation. The desk clerk told him that if he filled out the nine pages correctly, it would take three to four weeks to get an appointment for an interview just to review his application in person with the intake clerk. Then it would be a further four to six weeks, if the application was approved, to meet with his lawyer’s assistant. The clerk didn’t give any indication how long it would take to talk to the lawyer in person.
Peter’s mental time horizon never really reached much beyond five days most of his life, so he filed this Legal Aid experience under the category of “things that will probably never happen”.
On the drive home, his cellphone rang. Peter slammed the phone shut after the first word uttered by the muffled female voice, “Sleep …” His car slipped, and Peter had to grab the wheel with both hands to steer it back from the shoulder onto the hard surface of the road. The phone fell to the floor of the car and Peter saw the call display, “Blocked Number.” If it rang again, Peter was planning to crush it with his foot. The phone did not ring again.
Chapter 32
Sometime during the drive home, Peter realized he had no idea what to do for the next five days. He knew he should attend Marty’s funeral. He knew he would not. He couldn’t attend funerals because of the Tourette's-like malady that caused him to grin or laugh inappropriately at stressful times. He couldn’t face the body of a dead friend without laughing, any more than he could look at or touch Rex after he and Gregor had shot him. Peter had no plans for the next five days. An empty calendar. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing but the void …
In that void, Peter’s mind drifted to killing Kathryn. He regained some focus. He felt some direction again. He’d never had much interest in the supernatural, but the supernatural seemed to be taking an interest in him. He saw the supernatural now as some viewable physical thing, much like one of the odd elements in his magic realist paintings - a clown sitting at a boardroom table full of grim middle managers.
One coincidence could be explained away, but two coincidences were the beginning of a pattern. Peter’s writing was killing his friends and not his enemy. But it was the only thing that made him feel good. He was an addict with a joyless addiction. Peter remembered an old Russian aphorism: “What can you do when you have a wolf by the ears?”
Peter’s newest project, writing about “fixing” Kathryn’s car, was going slowly because he had a hard time focusing and lacked mechanical knowledge. Nevertheless, Peter felt compelled to complete the project. It struck him that he’d be driving past his mechanic on the way home. Why not consult him about the subject of “fixing” a car to kill without getting caught? He knew he would have to ask delicately. His mechanic was probably not an Agatha Christie murder mystery fan like the many-cultured pharmacist he had consulted about poison - who had, incidentally, never gotten back to him.
He pulled into the independent garage where he and Kathryn both had their cars serviced. It was a little four-bay shop with two mechanics and no other staff. One of the mechanics, Kevin, was the owner. Kevin and Peter often shot the shit about fishing and other guy stuff, but were not exactly friends.
Peter pulled in and greeted Kevin, who was under a delivery van. “Hey, Kevin, I hope you didn’t buy that hoist second hand. That’s a big ol’ van.”
“Nope, I bought it third hand. Whaddya want?”
“I was passing by and remembered I needed an oil change, and I think my passenger front tire is a slow leaker.”
“Okay, I can probably do that while you wait. It won’t take more than an hour.”
“Where’s Paul? I don’t see his Camero.” Paul was the other mechanic.
“Paul quit to go work on big diesels up in Summerton. He was really a diesel mechanic, anyways. I have a new guy I’m tryin’ out and he’s good, but not quite as customer friendly as Paul. Hey, did you put your Cobra on the road this year?”
“Well no, actually. That’s kind of part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Sure, talk away. Are you going to try to sell me that piece-of-junk Cobra? Good luck.”
“Not exactly. The Cobra was never in my name and the wife is kind of gone, and she took the keys and cancelled the insurance and flattened three tires, so it’s just sitting there. She did a lot worse, too.”
“That’s the shits, Peter. The bitch I divorced took me for everything but this fucking business, and she even tried to get that. I’d like to see her bustin’ her knuckles here twelve hours a day if she woulda got it from me. I never hated anyone so much in my life, and it was her that was fucking around and drinking all day, not me. I was working my ass off here, 75 hours a week.”
“That’s kind of my story, too.” Peter wanted to get Kevin in harmony with his thinking. “So I’m writing this stuff about getting back at Kathryn and thought that maybe you could tell me how to fuck up her car. You know, so she gets in a little accident, maybe.”
“Are you fucking nuts, Peter? You want me to tell you how to get back at your wife and maybe fix her car so it runs into a schoolbus full of kids? Why don’t you just slash her tires and cut her ignition wires or take out her windows with a hammer, if you’re pissed off? You won’t be killing no little kids that way.”
“No, really, I just want to write about how to kill someone by sabotaging a car. I don’t want to actually do it.”
“Fuck off. You’re nuts! She’s still a customer of mine, and believe me, I know what a bitch she is, but I’m not gonna help you murder her. I like you, Peter, and I’ll service your car, but you need to see a shrink. You’ve got a screw loose.”
Just then, the new guy appeared from under the hood of a Ford F-150. He didn’t say anything, but Kevin introduced him to Peter anyway. “Peter, this is my new guy, Jamie.”
Jamie grunted a “Hello,” without looking, and went back under the hood. Jamie was a rough-looking character. His nose looked like it had been broken a few times, and he had a lot of jailhouse i
nk on his arms.
Kevin whispered, “Jamie’s had a rough time of it and he’s not too sociable, but he’ll come around. He’s used to working in a big shop where he don’t meet customers. We’ll get right with you on that oil change.”
Peter sat down in Kevin’s cramped cement-floored waiting room. He was alone. No one else wanted to wait there on the hard orange plastic chairs, forced to read grease-stained trade magazines about wheel bearings and windshield wipers.
Jamie walked by on his way to the can. He stopped in front of Peter and said, “I heard that shit you were saying, about killing your wife by fucking around with the car. That’s really stupid.”
Peter was taken aback, but replied, ”I don’t want to kill anyone, I’m just writing this thing and want to know how to do it. If I wanted to do it …”
“Whatever. I know people who know how to do it proper, but not with a car.”
“Jamie, do you think these people you know would talk to me?”
“No.”
“Then why tell me about them?”
“What’s in it for me? I spent a lot of time earning my rep with these people and I don’t need some jerk like you fucking up my relationship.”
“So you want me to pay you to get your criminal friends to talk to me about something I don’t even want to do? Is that it?”
“They ain’t criminals; criminals get caught. These are business people. And so am I.”
“Jamie, just forget what you overheard, okay? I was just pissed off at my wife for stealing me blind and threatening me. I’m just writing my anger down on paper. I don’t want to meet your friends, okay?”
“Anything you say, boss. I gotta get back to work.”
Peter sat in the waiting room staring at a trade mag, but he wasn’t reading it any longer. He was thinking about what a good story it would make to actually meet some shady friends of Jamie’s and ask them about doing a hit. It would be better than writing the stuff about using a sniper rifle or poison or sabotaging a car. It would be like writing an episode of The Sopranos.
When Peter’s car was done, Jamie backed it out of the shop. He chirped the tires and left it running with the door open. Peter caught Jamie before he walked back inside.
“Here’s my card. Call me after work sometime and I’ll buy you a beer.”
Jamie looked at the card without looking at Peter. He slipped it into the top pocket of his overalls without saying anything, and walked back into the shop. Peter was no wiser about how to “fix” a car, but he did have fresh oil.
Chapter 33
When Peter got home, he had only one call on his voicemail: “Zoom. Boom. Tomb.” The “nut” had phoned again with her three words of wisdom for the day. The voice was still muffled and distorted. It must be Kathryn. No one else had her motivation to drive him mad.
Peter sat on what he now thought of as Rex’s sofa and stared out the front window at the growing darkness. He thought he saw Kathryn go by on the street in her black Mercedes Coupe. He ran to the window but the retreating tail lights were not enough to confirm or deny his fears. The streetlights came on and the surface of the road shimmered and danced. Peter was mesmerized. As he stared at the pattern, it coalesced into a vision, hazy at fist then suddenly clear and sharp. All of his senses joined in.
The underside of Kathryn’s Mercedes is remarkably clean. It barely smells of oil; it smells more strongly of carwash detergent. As I work on the “modifications” to her braking system, I am shocked that it only takes a slash of the box cutter, a snip of the wire cutter and a turn of a bolt to “fix” the brakes. I guess the German engineers who built it never anticipated that a hydraulic failure would be accompanied by an electrical failure, as well as a mechanical one. I know the hydraulic failure won’t happen until braking has taken place a number of times and has pressurized the system. The electronics won’t sense it. The bolt on the backup system won’t hold. A perfect storm, of my making …
I am sitting in my car with the lights off, about a hundred yards from Kathryn’s car. It is in the parking lot of an expensive sushi restaurant. She is inside eating, but also drinking to excess, with her girlfriends. She is telling them about “Peter and his whores.” She is telling them how she is going to break me financially with legal fees and then take the house away from me. Her friends hang onto her every word. She is very popular with them now that she has left me.
When dinner is done, I see her almost lose her balance as she leaves the restaurant. She has the sake staggers … She air kisses her friends goodbye and they gabble a little more. Kathryn then gets behind the wheel after fumbling for her keys. It is raining lightly tonight and the streets are slick. There are halos of mist around the street lamps. She pulls out onto the street.
I follow her car at a safe distance and monitor her progress. She is a bad driver, but the anti-lock brakes, traction and stability control of the Mercedes usually keep her safe despite her speeding and inattentiveness.
I see she is heading home. She is easy to follow on the deserted two-lane blacktop that leads to her fancy new condo just past the city limits. There are a lot of curves on this road, but she has not missed one yet. Her brake lights tell me she is going into the curves too fast and is slowing down too late, but the Mercedes is doing its job. On the last curve before her condo, she hits the brakes again but only the left-side tires stop. The other tires forge ahead. My snipping and cutting have done their job. The car runs off the road at high speed and jumps right over the guardrail. The little coupe lands hard but stays upright. A low-hanging oak branch has skewered the windshield.
I slow my car down and drive it down a dirt lane leading to a crop field and park. I walk to the crash site. I see the airbags have been deployed. The oak branch has pierced the driver’s airbag. Kathryn is behind the bag. She is alive. I see pink foam bubbling out of her mouth. She is bleeding out from a lung puncture. She looks at me and tries to speak, but can do nothing but gurgle. Her airways are filled with blood and she is drowning. She knows that I did this to her. Her eyes bore into mine like laser weapons, filled with a terrible mixture of terror and hate. I cannot take my eyes from hers.
I ask her, “Are you going to kill me?”
“No, I’m going to make you kill yourself, Peter.” She talks without words.
“I don’t want to die.”
“Neither do I.” She speaks again, without words.
The light behind her eyes winks out and the gurgling stops. Kathryn is dead.
“She will kill you, you know ,” an unfamiliar voice says.
“How can you know?”
“ Because I am you.” I recognize the “unfamiliar voice” as my own dream voice.
Chapter 34
Peter’s phone rang some time later. Peter was confused and didn’t know where he was, although he couldn’t remember sleeping. He was sitting on Rex’s sofa by his rain-streaked front window. His “hallucination,” if one could call it that, was slipping fast from his mind the way dreams do when the alarm goes off in the morning.
“Hi, hi … Frannie? Frannie, what’s wrong? You sound scared.” Peter shook his head to clear it. Peter heard a tone in her voice he had never heard before. The hallucination vanished completely from his mind as he focused on her voice.
Frannie tried to sound reassuring. She failed. “Don’t get upset, Peter. I’ve just had a little car accident. I’ve been in the hospital for over an hour now but they’re pretty sure I’m not going to die. I’m in Room 2644. Stop by if you have some time; I’m getting bored in here.”
Peter asked, “When do you get out?”
“They won’t let me out until they run six zillion more tests and they can’t do those, apparently, until Monday when there are more staff in whatever department does these tests. Peter, please come.”
“Sure.”
“You’re the only person I’d let see me in this condition. My hair is a mess and they washed off all my makeup - something about wanting to watch my color. What a loa
d of shit! Uh oh, here comes the old witch with the thermometer and stethoscope. Gotta go. Peter, you know you’re my best friend. I love you.”
Peter almost said, “I love you, too,” but he censored himself. He had said that to her once before and she had not appreciated it one bit. Peter said a simple “goodbye” instead. He deeply regretted the trouble he got into with Frannie the last time he told her that he loved her. You can say almost anything to a pro, but that is not one of the “anythings” you are permitted - even if the escort is a friend, or perhaps especially if she is a friend.
Peter’s hand shook when he put down the phone, but it wasn’t caused by the hangover. Frannie was like catnip to Peter. She had said that she loved him. He had heard it with his own ears! Peter had no idea what it meant when an escort said that to a client. Maybe she meant she loved him like a brother? Maybe it meant that she had sustained a severe head injury in the accident. He had to see her right away.
Chapter 35
Arriving at Frannie’s hospital room, Peter stated, “You look worse than I’ve ever seen you, and you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, Peter, you’re so sweet. Put those flowers on my bed so I can smell them. I’ll call the nurse for a vase.”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“I was driving a friend’s car in town and all of a sudden it swerved into oncoming traffic and that’s all I remember. The cop who was here told me that I might not be charged, since they’re pretty sure that it was some kind of mechanical problem, the steering thingy - whatever. They aren’t done with the investigation yet. Thank heavens no one else was hurt.”
Peter blurted out, “Oh shit, I’m sorry.” His voice was so loud that it startled him. His hallucination about killing Kathryn in her car had come back in a blinding flash and forced the shouted words of apology from his throat.
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