Snitch Jacket

by Christopher Goffard

  Q. Nastahowsky?

  A. Yeah. When Helen turns it on, she can turn it on. (Pause.) I just couldn’t believe any of it was serious . . .

  Q. Or else, being appalled, you would have contacted the authorities.

  A. Absolutely! I wrote her off as hysterical. (Pause.) Look. If anyone deserves the gas chamber for this . . . Is that how they do it these days?

  Q. Let’s not – –

  A. Or is it, what? Lethal injection?

  Q. Try to keep this – –

  A. If anyone deserves it, I mean – you told me if I testified I wouldn’t . . . Because this thing was never my idea anyway.

  (Break in interview.)

  A. Helen had the idea that Cloe was supposed to go to Harvard or Juilliard, some place Helen could brag about to her friends. She’d have them over for hors d’oeuvres, Tiffany Bren or Emma Colby or Sasha Rubelstein – this whole museum charity ball set. And all they’d talk about was their kids. Sasha Rubelstein saying, ‘I flew up to see Sarah at Harvard this weekend, she’s rooming with a senator’s daughter, can you believe it?’ And Tiffany Bren saying, ‘Julie’s on the swim team at Brown, she made the papers!’ And Helen with that smile plastered on her face, gulping down Bloody Marys, waiting for them to ask, ‘So what about Cloe?’

  Q. What did she say?

  A. Some lie or other. That Cloe got into Harvard, but was taking some time off to decide. Traveling in France. These amazing, elaborate lies. Anything but the truth, you know. Which is that she picked Greensward Community College – –

  Q. Which is where?

  A. This rinkydink place up near Castaic. Which didn’t even have a website. We go up there for a tour, and it’s this sad little place where Mexicans and Arabs are trying to learn English. Stucco dorms and wilting flowerbeds – they don’t even have the budget to water them. Helen’s face getting tighter and tighter, and Cloe finding it all delicious. It was payback.

  Q. For . . .?

  A. Private tutors, violin instructors, fencing lessons, riding lessons, ballet, SAT prep courses, summers in Europe, French lessons, Spanish, German. The childhood Helen insisted she have, so that Cloe could compete. (Pause.) Helen’s raving about those flowerbeds for days. How Sasha Rubelstein and Tiffany Bren get to walk under Corinthian columns when they visit their girls, and she gets these sickly flowers and this shitty school with no reputation, and how she’d rather die than admit her daughter goes there.

  Q. What was your feeling?

  A. I told her, ‘Look, she’s baiting you. She picked this place to make you insane, and you’re letting her.’ And it turns out, Cloe dropped out in the first semester. She never planned to stay. Just wanted to make a point. That was the first really ugly thing she did. She calls and says, ‘I was hoping the Hydra would stroke out.’ After that, things got really ugly . . .

  Q. Is this when Nastahowsky enters the picture?

  A. We found out from our private eye she was up in Berkeley doing experimental theater, but we didn’t meet Nastahowsky until we went up there. She invited us to a show at the Andy Gibberstein Theater. An Evening of Performance Art. And that’s when it got extremely ugly.

  Q. How so?

  A. It became clear the only reason she invited us was to humiliate us. Helen likes to pretend she’s hip to the whole bohemian thing, that she’s not stuffy and conventional, but God forbid it’s her daughter . . . The first girl to go on stage builds the Statue of Liberty with Tampax and chicken-wire and sets it on fire. The second girl does a monologue about being molested by her uncle and the postman and a drama coach, and God knows who else. Nastahowsky comes on and does this horrible sex thing. I’m not gonna get into it, but the finale is he shoots hot Lubriderm at the audience from a squirt gun.

  Q. Does Cloe perform?

  A. She comes on with her violin. There’s a projector screen, with a family photo. Of us! Me, Helen, Cloe, with these disgusting labels. Helen’s ‘The Hydra,’ as usual, and I’m ‘The Gelding,’ and Cloe’s ‘The Chattel.’ She’s ripping her violin apart with a pair of pliers and screaming from the stage about how much she hates us. ‘I’m not your property! I hate, hate, hate you!’ It was a big hit.

  Q. And you meet Nastahowsky?

  A. He has this weird energy about him, and this grin. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘You shouldn’t take it personally. That wasn’t really you guys she was talking about. It was “mom” and “dad.” Understand? With quotes. It was characters. It was important for her to do it. It was catharsis. You’ll get along on more honest terms, now.’ And then we knew he’d put her up to it, that she’d never conceive of such a cruel stunt on her own. ‘You’re the kind of people who don’t care at all about art,’ he says. ‘It’s just some status badge to you. A Picasso or a Lexus: which will impress my idiot friends more?’ Helen refused to look at him. She wouldn’t acknowledge him. She’s shaking. She can barely stand. Her hair’s full of Lubriderm. She tells Cloe she’s coming home with us, and that was the worst thing to do, the worst possible thing, that just starts a shouting match . . . He starts going off on Helen’s jewelry. She’s wearing these pearls, and this little crucifix necklace, and he starts quoting the Bible about the eye of the needle and calling her a hypocrite, and how Africans were dying over those pearls . . . Finally Helen says, ‘How much do we have to pay you to leave our daughter alone?’ But she still won’t look at him. ‘Name your amount! Name your amount!’ she keeps saying. And he says, ‘If you want to bribe me, you can at least look at me.’ But she won’t. She says, ‘Dean, pay him. Have him name his amount.’ What does the kid do? He takes out his checkbook. ‘How much do I have to pay you to get out of her life?’ Winning points with Cloe up and down. I could tell, she absolutely loved it . . .

  Q. So ill feelings are in the air.

  A. My thinking was, ‘It’s just a phase, let’s lie low, let’s ride it out.’ Because Cloe had been through phases before. In high school she was a Marxist, and you know, behaved like, I’m sorry, but, promiscuously. With our pool men and gardeners. To make some point about God knows what. Colonialism. Helen got them deported, which only made Cloe angrier. (Pause.) I remember, she learned about homelessness when she was ten or eleven, and for a week she slept on the floor. To empathize. That was Cloe. She took meals to bums. She brought all kinds of misfits home. Paraded them before Helen and made her insane.

  Q. Misfits?

  A. In junior high, high school. Skinny guys who were into Dungeons and Dragons and, you know, robot books. Guys who had harelips, guys with terrible zits. The guy she took to the prom – Helen didn’t approve of this at all – he was missing a few fingers. Nice enough kid. But they always broke her heart, you know. And then Nastahowsky came along.

  Q. Being in her twenties, legally she could live with whomever she chose.

  A. Helen was convinced he had her under some kind of evil spell. So we got deprogrammers. Three guys in Encino. Supposedly experts. That cost us twenty grand.

  Q. They abducted her?

  A. Yes. They locked her in a cabin outside Merced, and we could hear them screaming at her – we’re in the next room, and we’re listening to them scream at her, trying to break this spell. Shock treatment. ‘Your name is Cloe June Langley. You’ve been brainwashed. Nastahowsky isn’t your family. Your parents are your family. You come from a wonderful, loving home. You’re a citizen of freedom-loving democracy. Your name is Cloe June Langley.’

  Q. Did she respond?

  A. She went into herself.

  Q. I’m sorry?

  A. She just – disappeared into herself. Like she always did when . . . when what was around her . . . was . . . you know . . .

  Q. Was too much?

  A. Helen, she . . . with all the pills, you know, and the drinking . . . and everything she wanted Cloe to be that she hadn’t been because she married me . . . Cloe liked that Beatles song, ‘Octopus’s Garden,’ and she’d pretend to be the octopus, you know. When it got rough. Safe down there in her little stone garden she’d made at
the bottom of the sea, where no one could get in to hurt her. She told me that’s where she went...

  Q. And in this cabin – –

  A. I had to stop it. I couldn’t stand to hear her voice. They’d been screaming at her for five, six hours, and I came through the door and I said, ‘Stop it! Christ, enough!’ And I hugged Cloe, and she didn’t seem to recognize me at first, and then she said, ‘Hi, Daddy.’ And she said, ‘I have to get back to Matthew. He’s going to be missing me.’ And then she saw Helen through the door, and she started shaking. She’s in my arms, and she’s shaking like she’s in a nightmare . . .

  Q. And after that?

  A. She went back to him.

  Q. Where’s your daughter now?

  A. In a facility. I see her every day. She’s getting better, thank God. She’ll be coming home soon. We’re going to rebuild our relationship. It’s my top priority – my only priority.

  Q. Did your wife ever tell you she had actually put out a contract on Nastahowsky’s life?

  A. Not directly. She knew I’d call the authorities. (Pause.) And yet I can’t help feeling guilty, because I was the link. Because I’m like my daughter. I feel sorry for people. And I wanted to give this vet a hand. Is that a crime?

  Q. I’m not aware of any crime you’ve committed.

  A. A man loses his wife and gets his daughter back. That’s some trade. (Pause.) You know Helen had the family dog’s throat cut open? The barking made her jittery.

  CHAPTER 31

  A letter comes from my wife.

  She writes that she cried every night the first few days I was gone. Eventually she went looking for me. Nobody at the bars around town would tell her anything; neither would the cops. One day a lady at the drugstore saw her weeping and said, ‘Girl, you need to get on with your life. He no good.’

  Finally someone told her my name had been in the paper and she found out I was locked up and probably wouldn’t be getting out. She was sorry she missed my court appearances, she said, but she didn’t have a car, and it wasn’t as if I’d left her any fucking bus fare. She burned all my comics and moved to Ocono Falls, Wisconsin, to live on her aunt’s farm. There were no barking dogs there, thank God, and she guessed it was alright, though the goddamn pollen was making her sneeze.

  ‘At first I thought you’d gone gay, but I bet whatever you did, you did for pussy, if I know my Benny,’ she writes. ‘I guess you decided you didn’t love me anymore. Maybe I was not the world’s best wife, but maybe you weren’t the world’s best husband, either. I don’t know what to say except it definitely sucks and I think I hate you. Please don’t try to contact me. I don’t want my heart broken any more or any worse. I mean it. Please.’

  Six weeks later another letter arrives.

  ‘I can’t believe you haven’t written, after me pouring out my heart to you! FUCK YOURSELF AND GO TO HELL, YOU CRIMINAL! YOU JEFFREY DAHMER CHARLES MANSON FREDDY KRUEGER PREPARATION H FAGGOT MOTHERFUCKER!!! WE’RE DONE, DONE!!! KILLER!!!!!’

  CHAPTER 32

  Another letter arrives, this one from a ‘crime journalist’ named Chuck Boyle Rivett. He wants to visit me. I’m wary, but excited. This might be my chance to tell my story.

  ‘Despite the horrible and horrific crimes of which you have been convicted, I believe there is a core of humanity in you, Mr. Bunt,’ his letter goes. ‘I want to give you the opportunity to show the world that you are not the monster you have been painted and portrayed as. Give me that opportunity, Mr. Pfister!’

  The Pfister name puzzles me until I realize it’s probably a form letter. The box of his books Boyle sends along confirms it. The most recent is Call Me Og: Og Pfister, the Nation’s Most Prolific Claw-Hammer Killer Discusses His Shocking Crimes. Others are Shanked! The True Story of a Prison Murder; Sisters on Ice: The Grisly Meatlocker Murders at the Sacred Heart Convent; Bucket of Guts: The Shocking True Story of a Ritual Disemboweling. They’re full of gory photos. The bio says Boyle used to be a private eye. The author photos show a stocky, balding man with a tough-guy scowl and a big bad-ass eye-patch.

  ‘Billy, hello,’ Boyle says on the day he visits. His face is fleshy. No eye-patch. I study him through the windowpane of the visiting pod, looking for signs that one of his eyes is fucked up. It doesn’t seem so.

  ‘I’m Benny,’ I say.

  He looks harried and sweaty. He explains that he doesn’t have much time, he’s got just three weeks to finish this book – he has most of it written already – plus two other books due next month.

  ‘I’d like the chance to put on the record that I’m a decent guy,’ I say. ‘I feel terrible Nastahowsky died. I never should’ve been there. But he came at me.’

  ‘I’ve interviewed dozens of killers – hundreds. I’m not afraid of looking into the eyes of evil. I can look right into the lamps of a guy like you and not flinch at all.’

  He gazes at me hard through the glass, unblinking, barely breathing, his nostrils flared. He holds it for a good 10 seconds, then exhales slowly and sticks a piece of gum in his mouth.

  ‘You see?’ he says. ‘I don’t even blink. So don’t try to con me. I can’t be taken in. Now, talk to me. Your ex-wife says she was always afraid of you.’

  ‘Donna?’

  He fishes out a notebook and pen. ‘She told me about the bed-wetting, the arson, and how you killed slugs as a kid. Care to confirm or deny that you set your apartment on fire?’

  ‘I was trying to light a joint! Maybe I did it in a stupid way, touching a newspaper to the stove, but it was still an accident.’

  ‘And the bed-wetting?’

  ‘It doesn’t count when you’re drunk.’

  ‘The slugs?’

  ‘I was a kid, dude.’

  ‘Sure, I understand. But stack it up, we have a classic pattern. Looking back on your life, it seems pretty obvious you were headed toward this. How long did you feel this hunger, this irresistible compulsion, to kill?’

  His pen hovers above his notebook, and it becomes clear to me that any details I give him are going to wind up in print as ammunition against me, twisted beyond recognition as further confirmation of my loathsomeness.

  ‘So how does it feel,’ he continues, ‘to take another human being’s life?’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything. You’ve made up your mind.’

  ‘Look, I don’t have time to listen to some I-got-railroaded sob story. You pled guilty. That closes that. I’m lawsuit-proof on you. I don’t even have to worry about calling you “alleged” killer, alright? The facts are in. I’m here mainly because I wanted to get a read on you. A feel. A vibe. I always go on gut. My readers trust that.’

  ‘Your readers? The ones who think you took a knife in the eye?’

  He crosses his arms over his chest, moving his jaw truculently around his gum. ‘That photo was taken two days after retinal surgery. That’s what the patch was for. I never pretended otherwise,’ he says. He licks his lips. ‘Look, your wife gave me the skinny on you. At least tell me this: who was the pitcher, and who was the catcher?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and Finkel. Who wore the choke-collar, and who gave the reach-around?’

  CHAPTER 33

  From Murder on the Edge! The Shocking True Story of Sex and Death in the Mojave Desert by Chuck Boyle Rivett (Knife-Kill Publishers, 232 pgs):

  When the human eye soaked in fabled Orange County, California, when not dining in its ritzy 5-star dining establishments or enjoying world-famous attractions such as Disneyland, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace, or the gigantic brass likeness of John Wayne at the airport bearing his immortal name, it bounced eagerly along the sparkling beaches – a Shangri-La of perfect 10s soaking up golden daydream sunsets with dental-floss bikinis and world-class breast jobs from the finest surgeons money could buy (not to mention a plethora of eye-catching 9s, 8s, and 7s). Ironically, the orange orchards that gave the county its name were nowhere in sight, though the delectable bosoms gleaming with quality tanning cre
ams on its miles of scenic coast line put one in mind of oversize versions of that delicious citrus commodity, as well as other produce, including casaba melons, honeydews, cantaloupes, and many exotic varieties.

  Hidden beneath the heaving, heaven-sent bodies, there was another Orange County – a back-alley world of crime, depravity, prostitution, drugs, seedy nicknames, lethal back-stabbing danger, degenerate perversions, and egg-sucking moral scumbags waiting to prey on law-abiding citizens, though equally without oranges.

  Benny Bunt and Gerry Finkel were losers who had never ‘fit in.’ They always seemed to be together, literally glued to each other like Siamese twins, from soon after they met. Most nights, they were seen getting three sheets to the wind while tying one on and burning the midnight oil at both ends at a Costa Mesa bar on Harbor Boulevard.

  They made a kinky and dangerous pair. Finkel was the big one. He had a disgusting beer gut, with hands the size of Major League Baseball catchers’ mitts made of pre-oiled premium steer hide and treated with Glovolium Glove Treatment™, or honey-glazed Christmas hams, or perhaps long-shank hickory-smoked Smithfield hams suitable for any occasion, plus forearms the size of Harley Davidson mufflers that shattered the silence of serene law-abiding suburbia for miles. With his big beard, he looked much like Santa Claus, though Saint Nick never was a substance abuser with a terrifying array of tattoos. Nor had the real Father Christmas spent a third of his life behind prison bars for violent felony acts. Finally, no storybook ever alleged that the actual beloved holiday icon possessed a ‘sex dungeon.’ Finkel lived in the room behind the bar, and some regulars suspected they heard sounds of sadistic pleasure and sick masochistic ‘kicks’ coming from behind the door – flesh being slapped, oiled, lathered, leather-whipped, lashed, spanked, scarred, and burned.