A Murder of Crows

by David Rotenberg

  “So accomplice or accomplices,” Mallory said, putting his hands behind his back and pacing.

  To Yslan he looked like Alec Guinness in Smiley’s People—sans the big specs, and Guinness’s obvious intelligence. She stopped herself. Alec Guinness? Smiley’s People? Had she even seen those things or was she somehow seeing from Decker’s eyes? She didn’t know.

  “Check his students. Perhaps he had a cadre.”

  With that Mallory strode to his waiting black Mercedes, where the uniformed driver held a back door open for him.

  Yslan had an odd look on her face.

  “What?” Harrison demanded.

  “Cadre? What’s a cadre?”

  * * *

  Decker looked around Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz’s Spartan dorm room. It occurred to him that the boy’s parents must have cleaned up after they came to retrieve what remained of their son. There were tape marks on the walls where posters must have hung. The bookshelf over the bed was empty, as were the desk drawers, the closet and the armoire

  Decker sat on the bare mattress and tried to understand what this boy could have meant when he said, “So that’s why; Now it makes sense. I should have known. The turd, the damned turdlet.”

  He reminded himself that he taught actors not to work on the meaning of the words but rather on what could have caused the character to say those words. The Roberts Method: work backward—Z to Y to X. So what could have made Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz say, “So that’s why; now it makes sense. I should have known. The turd, the damned turdlet.” Well, clearly he didn’t know something before. But then—at the blast—something came clear. Something about a turd.

  Then he noticed the blue paper-recycle bin tucked under the bed—and a transparent folder. He picked it out and was surprised by the title—“The Science Behind Microwaving Human Fecal Matter with Appendix of Turd Occurrences.”

  47

  A TALE OF TWO MEN—BEFORE

  HE’D BEGUN TO EXPERIMENT WITH HIS TURDS SHORTLY AFTER what he thought of as “the incident” with Marcia.

  What a stuck-up cunt she was!

  Just like all the rest of them. They all claim they’re so liberal, so open, so progressive —Democrats. Not him, he’d be a Republican if he ever got around to voting. Not some fucking communist.

  Well, he was sweeping the men’s basketball court. What a joke. What did these nerds need a basketball court for? They were brainiacs, not athletes. If there was a Division XX they’d be at the bottom of it. Not like Louisville—his team.

  Well, the basketball court was his to clean on alternate Thursdays, and on a Thursday in late January was when he’d heard the music from the small gym next door and went to check it out.

  Well there they were—maybe six of them, in shorts or tights and halter tops, sweating as they worked out to some hip-hop. He carefully tried the door—locked from the inside—so he rested his broom against the wall and watched through the window portal. They were all facing away from the door—what a sight that was!

  But he’d forgotten there was a mirror on the far side of the gym, and one of them must have seen him watching. And they all turned toward him.

  He quickly retreated down the corridor and ran into a broom closet before any of them could find him. And he hid there, like some fucking criminal, for almost a half an hour before he let himself out. But he made a note of the time, and the next day he snuck up into the rafters to watch, but they weren’t there. He thought it might just have been a one-off, but he tried again in a few days and they were back at it. And he’d watched them from the rafters, and . . .

  Slowly he learned their schedule. Mondays and Thursdays and early on Saturdays. And each time he’d watch, some of the girls were different except for the one they called Marcia, who seemed to lead—she certainly led him.

  And she was damned perfect. Like an old Playboy centerfold. Blond and beautiful. And big. He liked big women—or at least he thought he liked big women. His mother had caught him once with an old skin mag in his bedroom. He’d found it in the garbage can and carefully cleaned it and brought it home, and she’d caught him with his . . . and she’d walloped him good with a belt and screamed that he was just like his father. It was the only time she’d ever talked about his father. But hey, like father like son. And when she’d walloped him she’d been in her bathrobe and it had opened enough for him to see, so it didn’t hurt, and when he’d made a mess on the bed she’d screamed at him even more.

  Sometimes at night he heard her screams in his dreams. They would echo and echo and sometimes it woke him up—and it always caused the headaches. Real bad headaches. They’d gotten even worse the day of her funeral. It was snowing. He was freezing and the clothes they made him wear itched and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. So he’d just stood by the grave until some guy who he didn’t even know told him to say good-bye to his mother. So like an idiot he’d stepped forward and at the side of the grave said really loud, “Bye, you old bag.” Someone yanked him back from the edge of the grave. He couldn’t remember who. Maybe the first of the foster parents he’d have. Fifteen sets in the next seven years—some sort of record he guessed—until he was sixteen and got a job at the college, a real job, and a real place of his own, and he’d changed his name, and he’d held his head as the headaches came more and more often. Until he met Marcia.

  It was a full month after he first saw her that he got dressed up real nice and made sure he was outside the field house when the girls finished exercising—and Marcia came out. It was a cold day but she still had on her shorts and only a thin university sweatshirt over her halter top—and a towel around her neck.

  The sweat on her face and neck made her shimmer in the bright winter light, and after she said good-bye to the other girls she looked right at him.

  That’s when he did it—he spoke to her.

  And she smiled and spoke back.

  To him!

  And ended by saying, “Gotta shower. Hey, see you around.”

  He sailed home that night, and passed up his usual session of porn on the computer. It just didn’t seem right after he’d spoken to Marcia. No—more than that. She’d spoken to him, and she was looking forward to seeing him around.

  So he’d made sure that he was outside the field house the next time she came out, glistening.

  “Hey,” he’d begun.

  “Hey back at you,” she said, putting her hood up on her sweatshirt.

  “So now’s around,” he’d said, and she’d looked at him funny—very funny. So he quickly said, “I’ve got class to get to. See ya soon.”

  And she’d said, “Sure,” or maybe she’d said “Maybe,” or maybe she hadn’t said anything.

  He’d had an angry porn session that night, and the headache was very bad.

  But three days later he was mopping down the central hallway in one of the older chemistry buildings when he looked up and there she was—staring at him.

  He mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  He looked at the mop and the pail.

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with working your way through school. I admire you for that.”

  Then somehow he’d asked her out—and miraculously she’d agreed.

  * * *

  He’d borrowed a car and went to pick her up in front of the campus bookstore, which everyone called the “Coop” for some reason he couldn’t figure out. Some sort of secret he guessed. As he stood waiting there for her he hoped that no one recognized him, that one of the other campus workers—especially a janitor—didn’t come by and see him just standing there, all dressed up, his hair slicked back and wearing shoes he’d just bought at the Price Right. They hurt his feet, but they were shiny. Everything about him was clean and no body hair—none. But it was fucking cold, and because his winter coat had a rip in it he only had on a spring jacket—and she was already twenty minutes late. Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe she and her friends were watching him from one o
f the dorm room windows and laughing. Yes, that’s what was probably happening. They were laughing. I mean, one of these girls going out with a janitor—I mean, how stupid could he— Then she was there, like a vision. In the car they talked about how his day went, what was his major, which dorm did he lived in, and he answered every question as if he was a student at the college—one of them.

  * * *

  She’d never been to the restaurant he took her to—three towns over. He’d scoped out the place to be sure he knew how to get there and that he could afford it. But the moment he walked in with her he had a bad feeling—she didn’t like it. But he thought they all liked fish places. Actually he hated fish, but he’d taken some Pepto-Bismol before so he wouldn’t gag on the food—or fart. The headwaiter eyed him funny as he led them to a table in the middle of the large, almost empty room, but Marcia called the waiter over and said they would prefer to sit by the window overlooking the lake.

  “Is that okay with you?” she asked after the waiter had made a face and then gone to clear the other table.

  “Yeah. By the lake would be good.” Then he added for no particular reason, “But it’s frozen.”

  “Yeah—duh—it’s winter.”

  Was she making fun of him? He didn’t like the “duh”—the way she said it. But once they were settled at the table he ordered a whole bottle of pink champagne, the most expensive thing he’d ever ordered in a restaurant.

  “It’s pretty great stuff, pink champagne.”

  She looked at him funny again. As if he were pulling her leg. “Pink champagne?”

  Suddenly he wished he hadn’t ordered the champagne. That he’d allowed her to order what she wanted. But the champagne arrived quickly and it was already open so he couldn’t send it back, even if he was brave enough to send it back—which he wasn’t.

  She took a small sip of it and giggled. “It fizzes.”

  “Yeah, the bubbles are the whole point.” He didn’t know why he’d said that, and for a moment he just wanted to get up and leave. But when he looked at her, reading the menu, he felt heat all over his body.

  “You’re staring,” she said. “Not polite.”

  But she wasn’t angry. It occurred to him that she liked to be stared at—and was often stared at.

  She ordered a whole lobster that almost made him gag when it arrived at the table. He ordered halibut fish and chips—and lots of ketchup.

  Several times during dinner she tried to draw him out on where he came from, what he was studying at school and what his goals were.

  When he hesitated she supplied answers to her own questions. She liked talking about herself, her family, her studies (chemistry) and her desire to work in the third world—“To make a difference.” He thought, there’s a third world just around the corner from your damned college—why not make a difference there? Then she was talking about how excited she was by her future—her fucking future.

  And the waiter kept eyeing him. He didn’t fool that guy for a moment—he could smell who Walter really was and looked at him like dirt. Living in a basement apartment, cold as hell in the winter, cooking soup in the can on a hot plate—this guy saw right through his combed hair and his cheap shoes.

  And she saw the waiter see.

  When the bill came the waiter had already added on a hefty tip—which came to more than he made in a week. He’d have to borrow some money to pay his rent. But he paid without complaint—he didn’t dare complain in front of her.

  As he drove her back to campus she looked out her window and didn’t talk to him. He tried a few times. She didn’t answer him. But when he said, “It’s a good restaurant.” She looked back at him, saw through him. She said, “It’s a dump—and you’re not a student at Ancaster, are you?”

  He stared straight ahead and thought about driving the car off the road and slamming into a telephone pole. It would serve her right, he thought. But he didn’t drive off the road. Nor did he say another word—all the way back to campus.

  She got out of the car without even looking at him and disappeared back into the protection and privilege of her dorm.

  He sat in the car in the dark for hours just smelling her perfume.

  And the rage came upon him, and ideas—awful ideas began to find their way deep into his head and lodged there—and grew. They bloomed as the headache struck him with such force that he put his head against the cold of the window. He woke up hours later when a cop tapped his nightstick on the outside of the window, and the fucker made him take a breath analysis test right there and then. He’d never have done that to one of the students at the college. No, they get to drink all night although they’re underage—and no one does anything.

  This whole country’s set up for them to have a good time while the Walters of the world serve them and cops like this one who are closer to Walter than to them go out of their way to protect them.

  Like that waiter at the restaurant. He’d never have eyed one of them the way he’d eyed Walter. Never put such a big tip on the bill. Never have opened the champagne in the kitchen then brought it to the table. Never treated one of them with the disrespect he treated Walter.

  * * *

  Two days later he found out which was her dorm room, and the night after that he spied on her as she necked with one of the boys from her dorm. He even arranged to switch with Fat Juanita so he could clean that stretch of dorms.

  That’s when he microwaved his first turd and put it in that boy’s bathroom in Lyndon Dorm.

  A week later he discovered how to unlock Marcia’s door and stood there—in her private place—and did his private thing, and felt strong and alive and the better for it.

  He found her schedule online and when she was in class he was in her room, on her bed, in her dresser drawers—in her life.

  Then he’d made the mistake. He’d been dreaming—really dreaming—of her and had fallen asleep on her bed, where she found him and screamed like his mother had and he’d made a mess in his pants.

  * * *

  Neil Frost hated committees. Like most professors he did his level best not to live up to either his contractual research requirement or his assigned administrative duties. Even in the sciences, if you knew the right people it was easy enough to get published. You have a contact on a journal’s board, he published your crap, then you sat on the board and you published his crap. You both kept your cushy jobs—taught maybe four hours a week, took four- or five-month vacations—then bitched and moaned about the difficulty of the job. Yeah, sure, there were real research papers in those journals from real researchers. But Neil had given up on that after he had juried a set of articles by Gerald Vincent Bull, a Canadian engineer who had developed a supergun that could launch a satellite into space or throw a missile hundreds of miles—like from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to, oh say, Israel. Dr. Bull had called it Project Babylon. And from Neil’s calculations, the thing actually could work. He thought of Bull as a genius and was going to say as much in his report. He also submitted an article to the journal in enthusiastic support of Bull’s work. In fact he’d set up a meeting with Gerald and was going to use his article as a way of getting in on the ground level with this genius. Finally a horse to ride, an idea that had real legs, and cash and all the things that cash could buy. Then the Canadian was assassinated outside his apartment in Brussels. It was speculated that the Mossad was behind the assassination. Then the fucking Jews who controlled everything in America rejected his article, and his contact at the Pentagon had refused to return his phone calls and the university denied his application for promotion to full professor.

  And now he didn’t even have the seniority to choose which committee he had to sit on and he actually had to do the committee work like some fucking slave.

  He was assigned several committees like a damned lecturer, not the assistant professor he was. One of them was Student Complaints. It dealt with housing complaints and anything having to do with the staff of the university. Not the faculty—just the staff
.

  That’s where he met big-boned, big-busted Marcia and first heard the complaint about a janitor named Walter Jones.

  And he’d liked the scrawny janitor from the moment he’d set eyes on the kid’s pimply face. Something chemical seemed to reach out from him. Neil found the young man’s rage refreshing, clean—useful.

  So he’d stick-handled around bouncy Marcia’s complaint—sent it to committee, the academic form of deep-sixing something—then called Mr. Walter Jones to his office.

  “So, you owe me, Mr. Jones.”

  “For what?”

  “For what, sir.”

  “For what . . . sir?”

  “I solved your little misunderstanding with the lovely Marcia.”

  Walter thought about that and put what he thought of as his “Spidey senses” on full alert. Finally he asked, “How did you—”

  “I told her to fuck herself.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Not in so many words. I did it metaphorically.”

  Walter didn’t know what that meant, but he decided it was best not to say anything.

  Neil saw the open confusion on the young janitor’s face, and he liked it. He liked it a lot.

  “How’s about I buy you a beer, Mr. Jones?”

  * * *

  And so the dance began. Two men angry at a world that had rejected them—one with access to the basic compounds that could make explosives, one with the rage to plant and detonate them.

  One who thought he was smarter than the world, and one who knew he was cleverer than a failed professor named Neil.

  It surprised Neil to learn that young Mr. Jones had access to so many parts of the campus. But as Walter so simply put it, “Everywhere gets dirty and needs to be cleaned, don’t it?”