Small Crimes

by Dave Zeltserman

  She laughed. ‘Where would you want to go first?’

  ‘I don’t know. Italy, France, maybe Spain, it doesn’t much matter.’

  ‘I always wanted to see England,’ she said. ‘I would love to visit their castles, and see the Thames, and London, and the rolling countryside. Of course, Paris would be beautiful, too.’

  ‘Why don’t we do it, Charlotte?’ I said. The idea of the two of us traveling off to Europe overwhelmed me. It didn’t have to be the other way. I didn’t have to force her into killing Manny. We could just go somewhere and leave Bradley far behind. Maybe they’d catch up to me eventually, but I’d get a few good months out of it before they did, and maybe more than a few. There were places where with some luck we could disappear completely. Maybe one of the Baltic states, maybe somewhere in East Asia.

  I felt a dryness in my mouth as I asked her, ‘What about it, Charlotte? We could drive to New York tonight and catch a plane. We’d be gone before morning.’

  It got so quiet. I could hear my heart pounding as I waited for her to say something. She sat staring at me, trying to decide whether I was joking or serious. I guess she decided I was joking. She showed me a little smile as she reached across the table and took hold of my hand.

  ‘That would be so nice, Joe,’ she said. ‘Maybe someday we’ll be able to do something like that. I hope so.’

  I forced myself to smile back. The idea had been nothing but an impulse, and a crazy one at that. Once it passed, I realized it would never have worked. We didn’t have the money to make it work. And even if we did, we wouldn’t have been able to survive together for very long. Not with her being the way she was and me being the way I was. The stresses of running and hiding would’ve been too much. As it was, I knew she was borderline psychotic.

  And there were my daughters. Once I started thinking of them, the idea crumbled into dust around me.

  There was only one way out for me, and as much as I hated the idea of what I was going to do to her, I had no choice.

  We finished dinner, and afterwards Charlotte made coffee and brought out an Italian dessert, tiramisu, that she told me she had prepared during her lunch hour.

  I waited until we had finished the dessert and coffee before asking her, ‘Charlotte, how come you’ve never asked me about my being in jail?’

  She seemed taken aback by that, almost as if she’d been slapped hard across the face. ‘It’s not important,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to tell me about it.’

  ‘It is important, and I do have to tell you about it. I did some pretty bad things years ago when I was cop. Stabbing and maiming Phil Coakley was only one of them.’

  I felt something in my throat, and stopped to drink some water. There was a pleading in Charlotte’s eyes for me not to say anything more, but it was too late. I looked away from her, though. I didn’t want to look at those eyes.

  ‘When I left jail,’ I continued, ‘all I wanted to do was lead a quiet existence and never harm anyone again. The problem is Manny Vassey knows enough to send me back to prison for a long time.’

  ‘He might keep quiet.’

  ‘He’s not going to. I already know that. Phil has worked out a deal with him, and the arrangements are going to be finalized Wednesday.’

  ‘But he’s dying. Why would he make a deal?’

  ‘For a bunch of reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. Partly to protect his son, mostly to try to save his and his son’s immortal souls.’

  I couldn’t help myself. I looked back over at her. Her face had become dead white and her eyes were now nothing but small gray holes. It was almost as if she was wearing some grotesque Japanese kabuki mask – one that was locked in an expression of anguish. I could see her hands were clenched into tight fists as she waited for what she knew was coming.

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘I need you to overdose Manny with morphine,’ I said. ‘If you don’t, I’m going to go away to prison for the rest of my life.’

  She just sat and stared at me.

  ‘Charlotte, do you understand me?’

  Slowly she shook her head. Almost as if she were in a trance, she said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘You don’t want me to go away to prison, do you?’

  ‘I’m not going to do that!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte, but you’re going to have to.’

  ‘I won’t.’ She was shaking her head harder, her face completely bloodless. ‘How could you ask me to do something like this?’

  ‘Charlotte, please—’

  ‘Get out of here. Get out now or I’ll scream.’

  ‘You’re not going to scream and you are going to make sure Manny dies of a morphine overdose.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘No, not me. And please, quit this act. I know about you, Charlotte. I talked with Dr Henri Bouchaire. He told me about what you did in Montreal.’

  Her mouth fell open. I watched the transformation as her face turned more into a mask of death.

  She said, ‘He lied to you. If he said I hurt anyone, he lied to you. They investigated those deaths. They checked the levels on the IV bags and saw that the machines hadn’t been tampered with.’

  ‘He didn’t lie to me,’ I said. ‘He told me how you probably used a syringe to inject a fatal dose of morphine into the patient’s IV tubing. I don’t know if you were told this, but he marked the IV tubing on your last victim, and he knows you replaced it after the guy died.’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘He’s not lying, and even if he’s somehow mistaken, it wouldn’t matter. If he talked to Bradley Memorial, you’d be finished here, and I guarantee you, no hospital in the States would touch you. And if any of your patients at Bradley Memorial died of respiratory failure, their cases will be reopened, and you’ll be looking at murder charges.’

  She started sobbing then. It was noiseless. Other than the tears and a slight heaving in her chest, I wouldn’t have been able to tell she was crying. It got so quiet. As I watched, my stomach tightened into knots. I felt sick about what I was doing. I found myself wanting to comfort her. I leaned forward and tried to take hold of her hands, but she pulled them away from me.

  ‘This is no big deal,’ I tried to explain. ‘You’ve done it before, you can do it one more time. And trust me, Manny Vassey is the most rotten sonofabitch you’ll ever meet. He’s not worth wasting any tears over. If anything, it’s a shame you’ll be putting him out of his misery.’

  Through her sobbing, she forced out, ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The only reason you wanted to see me was because of this.’

  The knots in my stomach pulled tighter. ‘Maybe at first,’ I admitted. ‘But Charlotte, I’m being honest now, most of what I’ve told you has been the truth. I have felt good being with you, better than I’ve felt in years. I don’t know if you’ll ever want to see me again after this, but if we can get past this, I think we could be good for each other. When this is all over, I’d like to keep seeing you. I promise you, everything I’m telling you now is the truth.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get the morphine? The hospital doesn’t leave narcotics lying around. You have to sign them out.’

  ‘I figure you can siphon morphine from other patients.’

  From the look that flashed across her face, I knew that’s what she had done in Montreal. Then her eyes and mouth opened and her hands went to the sides of her face, and for a moment she was a spitting image of Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream. She sat frozen like that for a horrible few seconds, and then she started sobbing again. Still noiseless, but more violent than before. Her whole body convulsed with it. Her face seemed to fold up into a mass of creases, her mouth now nothing more than a large gaping black hole.

  ‘Don’t make me do this,’ she pleaded through her sobs. ‘Don’t make me do this.’

  Her hands clenched again into tiny fists and she started punching her legs.
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  I got up and held her, trying to keep her from hitting herself. She didn’t pull away or try to fight me this time. Instead, her head buried itself hard in my stomach while her tears and saliva soaked my shirt. Still she begged me, her voice muffled by my body.

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ I tried asking her. ‘He’s going to be dead in a few weeks anyway.’

  But I knew what the big deal was. For years I had promised myself that when I got out of jail I’d never cause any more harm. Somehow I knew she had made the same promise to herself. That when she left Montreal, she’d never do anything like that again. In my case, it didn’t take me long to break my promise, but I was forced to. I had no other choice. And now I was doing the same to her.

  Her body felt so warm and moist as I held her. I tried holding her harder. I tried to slow down her sobbing. At that moment I felt so empty inside. So rotten. As I looked at her, I realized I had no choice either. I told her I wasn’t going to make her overdose Manny.

  ‘I’ll figure something else out,’ I said.

  Her sobbing slowly subsided. I held her and ran my hand through her hair and kissed the top of her head, and told her not to worry about anything. After a while she pulled away from me – not in a harsh way, but so she could look up at me.

  ‘You’re not going to make me do it?’ she asked

  ‘No, I won’t. I’m sorry that I put you through this.’ I took one of her linen napkins and used it to wipe her tears. ‘I didn’t think it would be that big a deal to you,’ I lied.

  ‘I never did what Dr Bouchaire told you I did. I don’t know why he has to tell people I did those things.’

  It was her turn to lie, but that was okay. I smiled and told her I believed her.

  ‘I don’t want you going to prison, but I can’t do something like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to prison. I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t say anything about you.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She took hold of my hand and kissed it, and then held my hand against the side of her face. I stood there feeling a mix of relief and panic. I had no idea what I was going to do next.

  ‘Look at me,’ she said, showing a sad clown’s smile. ‘I must be a mess.’

  That was putting it mildly. Her crying had left black smudges under her eyes and streaks of makeup running down her face. Somehow, even strands of her hair had gotten drenched, and were now knotted up and looking like something that might’ve been pulled out of a drain.

  I reached down and kissed her. Awkwardly, she tried to kiss back.

  ‘I’m sorry all this happened,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up.’

  ‘Will you stay and wait for me?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I better get going.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You can stay if you’d like.’

  ‘I’d like to, but I got to get some rest and figure stuff out.’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘Of course you will. As soon as this is over, we’ll get together.’

  I turned to leave and I heard her call out to me. When I looked back, she was blushing. ‘Joe, if you go to prison we could still marry.’

  I had to bite my tongue to keep from bursting out laughing. It was so damn funny and sad at the same time. There was no question she wasn’t all there, but I smiled as sweetly as I could and told her that was exactly what we would do. And the saddest part was knowing everything that I did about her, I still found myself attracted to her.

  When I got out to the parking lot, I saw that Hal Wheely was gone. I guess he decided I wasn’t worth losing sleep over.

  Chapter 16

  I drove aimlessly. At first I was numb, no thoughts, nothing, and then a raw, cold panic overtook me. I knew Dan was serious about his ultimatum, and I knew if I was still alive by Wednesday it wouldn’t much matter anyway. After Manny signed his deal and gave his deathbed confession, it would be as good as over for me.

  I tried to think of some way out, but all I could come up with were nutty ideas; like sneaking into the hospital and overdosing Manny myself, or using the sixty-three hundred dollars I had left to bribe an orderly to do the job for me. As I said, they were nutty ideas, and they would’ve sent me straight to prison, but that was all I could come up with. After a while I started thinking of Phil, of whether there was a chance I could get away with hiding somewhere near his front door with a hunting rifle.

  The panic hit me hard, harder than the other day at Kelley’s. It got to the point where I could barely breathe. As I drove, a numbness spread through my legs and arms. I felt as if my limbs were dead and no longer a part of me. And the coldness, Jesus; it was like ice cubes were being pushed into my skull. Then all at once I knew I was going to black out. The world started tilting sideways on me and it was all I could do to pull over, crawl out of my car, and curl up on the side of the road.

  I didn’t black out. I came close, but I was able to fight through it. After a while I pushed myself up into a sitting position, grabbed my knees, and rocked back and forth until I felt I could stand. Then I got to my feet.

  My clothes were drenched through with sweat. It took about all the strength I had, but I hobbled to the trunk, opened it, and pulled out my duffel bag. I found some clean clothes and changed there by the side of the road. I had to rest for a while, and then after dumping the duffel bag back into the trunk, I got into the driver’s seat, and just sort of collapsed.

  For a long time all I could do was hold my head in my hands. I felt so lousy. I started to think how a few lines of coke would make me feel so much better, how it would help clear out the cobwebs clouding my head. After a while that was all I could think of. It got to the point where I could almost taste cocaine in the back of my throat.

  I forced my head up and looked in my rearview mirror. I looked as bad as I felt. My skin was so damn pale and my eyes so damn red. I steeled myself, and then started the car and pulled back onto the road. My hands shook as I drove. I decided I’d make a quick trip to Kelley’s. And, as I told myself, I wanted to see Earl anyway and let him know there were no hard feelings about his affidavit.

  Kelley’s was more crowded than the other night. I ended up having to create a makeshift parking spot next to the dumpster. Before going in, I read over the copy of Earl’s affidavit that Junior had given me, and then folded it into my jacket’s inside pocket.

  The same biker type from the other night looked me over at the door. Inside, the place was jammed. Every seat around the stage was filled and every table was taken. Springsteen’s ‘My Hometown’ blasted over the speakers, and I glanced in the direction of the stage and saw a dark brunette slip out of her G-string. The way I was feeling it made no impact. I headed towards the bar, spotted Earl pouring some draft beers, and nodded at him. He noticed me and gave me a cold eye back in return. The bar was mostly empty. I pulled up a stool so I could sit across from him.

  ‘How’ya doing, Earl,’ I said.

  He lifted his eyes towards me. ‘Man, you look like shit.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m feeling kind of crappy.’

  ‘So you had to come here to spread the wealth, huh? Infect me and my girls and my customers?’

  ‘I don’t think I have anything contagious. Probably just suffering from allergies.’ I lowered my voice. ‘I could really use a few lines. Whatever it costs.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re asking.’

  I took twenty dollars out of my wallet and placed it on the bar. ‘Come on, Earl, my head’s a mess right now. Three lines. That’s all.’

  ‘Wait a second. You trying to buy coke from me? That’s illegal, man.’

  I stared at him and he gave me a dead-eyed stare right back.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Make it a beer and a shot of whiskey.’

  He took the twenty bucks off the bar. When he came back, he brought me my drinks and twelve bucks change.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if this
is about the affidavit, I have no hard feelings about it.’

  ‘Why should you? I swore on the Bible before I filled that out. You think I perjured myself?’

  ‘Cut the crap, okay, I know you made a deal with Junior.’

  ‘You calling me a liar?’

  A vein along his neck was twitching and the muscles in his arms and shoulders had bunched up. He had a look in his eyes that I had seen a couple of times in the past. Once, right before he cracked this guy’s skull who was shooting off his mouth about different crap. Another time before he nearly beat two guys to death for harassing one of his girls. On a good day, I’d be able to hold my own against him, but as weak as I was feeling I knew he’d kill me.

  I took the whiskey in one swallow and then followed that up with a healthy drink of beer. Earl stood frozen in malice, his vein still twitching away. I held the beer bottle so I could use it if I had to, although I didn’t think it would do me much good.

  ‘I swear, Earl, I don’t have a clue what this is about.’

  ‘One of my girls died today.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. You know, that’s why we’re so crowded tonight. Everyone wants to pay their last respects. Is that why you’re here, Joe?’

  I didn’t say anything. I just kept watching his vein, watching as it beat faster than a rabbit’s heart.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘I never knew about Susie and that DA until today, but what I’ve been hearing since is that this had been going on for six months. Funny thing is Rooster doesn’t get a call till you’ve been out of jail for… how many days? Three?’

  ‘Four,’ I said.

  His lips separated from his teeth, revealing a thin, bare-fanged smile. ‘Yeah, four days. Why do you think that is?’

  ‘I swear, Earl, I had nothing to do with this.’

  ‘Why don’t you guess anyway?’

  I shook my head and gave a half-hearted shrug.

  ‘No guess, huh?’ He edged closer towards me. ‘Hey, man, you want to know something else that’s funny? Whoever called Rooster left his name as Joe.’

  That sonofabitch. That was all I could think. That sonofabitch. I could just picture Dan chuckling to himself over that one.