by Jeff Orton
And with that internal argument settled, I set out for Stilletto’s.
* * *
And now I sit in the Nova, waiting on Jack, going over in my head how I plan for this to work. Walk up behind him. Cock the hammer. Aim. Pull the trigger. Simple.
I was remembering how immediately after I’d bought the gun, I’d driven a little ways out into the country and fired two test shots, just to make sure it worked. The report had thrown off my aim by a dangerous margin. I didn’t like that. I knew right then that in order for my first shot to hit Jack in the head, I had to be standing at least within six or seven feet of him, or else I’d probably miss.
I’d changed into my ‘poor boy’ disguise after I’d arrived in a parking lot across the street from Jack’s favorite titty bar. I changed in the car. I just laid the driver’s seat down and switched into the outfit right there, figuring no one would see since there were no lights anywhere on my side of the road. And I knew I was alone in this empty lot, parked cater-corner to the single-wide trailer office of a construction company.
I was mulling everything over in the theater of my mind, when a feeling came over me. The only way I can describe it is. . . is that it was just a feeling of
(((now)))
Just then, I looked up and saw a tall, fat middle-aged man in a business suit push through the heavy front doors of Stilletto’s. I couldn’t see too clearly from that distance, but I knew it was him just the same.
I tore open the glove compartment lid and found the little pistol, not much larger than the palm of my hand.
I got out of the vehicle and stood up, suddenly realizing I had been sitting in there for hours and that I really needed to take a piss. On top of that, my legs had fallen asleep and were threatening to give out on me.
Very little time. Jack was already a third of the way to his red Dodge truck. I forced my legs to jog across the street. Stiletto’s sat on a side road just a few hundred yards from the main boulevard where all the traffic was. There were no cars approaching. I tucked my hands deep into my pockets with my right hand holding the loaded gun, the index finger resting on the safe side of the trigger guard. I slowed from a jog to a brisk walk as I crossed into Stiletto’s parking lot.
Jack was standing next to the driver’s door of his truck, fumbling through his keys when I came around the lowered tailgate and pulled the gun out of my pocket. He didn’t even notice me at first. I observed his whole body waver where he stood and realized he was drunk. I leveled the gun, aiming it at the side of his head and cocked the hammer. He glanced at me and did a groggy double-take.
“Shit,” he wheezed in a small voice I could barely hear, and dropped his keys onto the black asphalt, “Here. . . Yuh-you can have my wallet, you can have my wallet, just don’t shoot! Please don’t kill me!”
He didn’t even recognize me, not until I gave myself away. As tears built up in my eyes, I said, “I don’t want your fuckin’ money, Jack. . .”
And in his voice more than his thoughts, I heard him recognize me, “What, WHAT! WHY?”
“I can’t let you hurt him,” I growled, but also hearing a slight pleading tone in my voice, “Not the way you hurt me! I can’t let you! I can’t let you hurt him!”
As tears trickled down my cheeks, an understanding dawned on Jack’s drunken face. He knew who I meant. In his head I heard, Jacob? and saw the beaming innocence of the boy’s face.
Though he said nothing, I answered, “Yes, him. . .”
He began to sob, looking down in shame. Only it was worse than just crying, it was a kind of half-choked blubbering.
“Phillip, please. . . Please don’t. I love you. More than anything, I—“
That was the only time in my life I’d ever heard those words come out of his mouth, with the exception of church when he felt the need to put on a show for others.
“SHUT UPPPPPP!!! YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” I screamed at him belligerently, without any concern that someone might hear.
Then I remembered where I was and why I was here. I lowered my voice, and continued my indignant diatribe.
“You never loved me. Don’t you ever fucking say that to me you cocksuckin’ piece of shit!”
I ranted a slew of other colorful curses through clenched teeth, but I was so angry at the moment I can’t even remember what I said. I only know I was so consumed by emotions, that I’d forgotten what I was holding in my hand.
Apparently Jack sensed this too, and leapt at me with a feeble drunken lunge, a last ditch attempt at survival. Without thinking about it, I pulled the trigger. Pure reflex. A bloody hole popped open in the polyester of his slacks as the report of the revolver deafened my ears, leaving behind a nice ringing sound that would linger for the next few minutes.
I got him in his left thigh, halfway between his waist and knee, straight through all the muscle and flab. Jack fell before he could tackle me, but on his way down he grabbed a handful of the tail of my open flannel shirt.
And as the muffled sound of tearing fabric tunneled its way into my ears through the flat ring of the first gunshot, I was distantly aware of a young woman screaming from about fifty yards behind me.
Then Jack took hold of my loose, denim jeans, and tried in vain to pull me towards him. An outraged cry erupted from his throat, “Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
Despite all the confusion, I knew I had to finish this. As he raised his head up and bellowed his monotonous cry, I planted the nozzle of the gun in his left eye and squeezed the trigger.
I was amazed at how much quieter the report was, just a soft spishhh sound and then a thoonk as the bullet popped out the back of his skull and ricocheted off the quarter panel of a beat-up old corvette parked next to Jack’s truck.
Blood began fountaining out of Jack’s missing eye as his head was smacked backwards by the fatal shot. Again, my mind seemed to take a picture.
Blood was spreading in a pool around his head on the blacktop, legs in a Figure-4 position, and jaw hanging slack like a drugged-up patient in a mental institution. But what really shook me up the most was the twitching. That god-awful twitching. That’s one thing they never show in the movies.
Jack’s right arm and the right side of his neck began having these subtle spasms as his brain slowly died. What really topped it off was when his foot moved with a quick jerk and his scuffed loafer touched my shoe.
I pissed my pants right there. I’m not joking. My full bladder decided to evacuate itself, at least partially, without my permission.
Jack’s blazer had fallen open on his left side and I could see the edge of his wallet sticking out. I reached in with only a thumb and index finger, carefully plucking it out. No cash, but then again I hadn’t expected any. There were no credit cards either. I guess Jack hadn’t seen the point in bringing them since they were all maxed out.
Suddenly I remembered the girl who’d just screamed. There was now a witness to this and she was directly behind me. I almost turned to look at her but realized she would never be able to identify me in a line-up if she never saw my face.
So I ducked down and raced in between all the parked vehicles, turning right, turning left, but steadily making my way back towards the street, only daring to stand up to ease the strain on my back when I was behind a tall SUV or truck.
Then another scream echoed through the parking lot, followed by, “No! Let go of me, you bastard!”
A masculine voice answered her, “So this is what you’ve been doing, huh? You been selling it on the side too?”
What in the holy fuck is this? I thought. I knelt beside an old Ford Bronco and opened my mind, trying to concentrate on what the owners of the two voices were thinking.
From the man I heard whore whore fucking whore, but the woman’s thoughts were wordless. From her I just felt bursts of high emotion like fireworks in a clear night sky. Intense fear, outrage that her boyfriend had followed her here and embarrassment that her occupation as a stripper at a dirty, low-class tit bar had been discovered.
They were so wrapped up in their heated argument I wondered if they’d even heard the gunshots. Hell, in neighborhoods like this I’m sure people heard gunfire at all hours of the night. Maybe they had heard it, but just shrugged it off. Who knows? Who cares? I never found out.
I was confident then that I’d been ducking past vehicles for nothing. So I stood up and casually walked across the street, constantly scanning the area to see if there really was anyone who’d seen what I’d done to Jack. The gun and my hands were in my pockets. My crotch was uncomfortably cold and wet now, as well as my right arm all the way up to my elbow.
Why is my arm wet? I thought. I looked down and gazed at the blood that had saturated the sleeve of my flannel shirt. Even with my hands all the way down in the deep pockets of my baggy jeans, the blood stains still stretched about three to four inches past the rim of the pocket. Jack’s blood had cooled and was starting to get sticky.
Coagulation, gotta love it!
Behind me, the couple continued their fight, “Fuck you! Fuck you! It’s over! Get the fuck away from me you psychotic asshole!”
“Over?” the man yelled, “I’ll tell you when it’s fucking over you whoring little bitch!”
As I opened the door of my car, I glanced back and observed the man shove his girlfriend against the door of her SUV. Part of me wanted to step in just then, but I knew I had problems of my own to deal with.
I got in the driver’s seat and quickly wiped the blood from my hands and the gun with a black towel I always kept in the Nova to cover up my portable CD player. It was the only thing I had worth stealing in that beat-to-shit car.
With the keys still hanging in the ignition, I tried to start the Nova and heard a protesting rurr ur ur ur ur. . .
“Oh fuck, fuck no, fuck no!” I wheezed. A gaping hole formed in my stomach, burning with panic.
In those few seconds I saw my future unfold before me. . .
Police eye a conspicuous vehicle parked across the street while someone is drawing a line of chalk around Jack’s limp body. After running a tag trace, they discover this vehicle is registered in Jack’s name. They start asking why two of his vehicles were at the crime scene and I see myself on the run, not being able to return home, living homeless in the back alleys of Fort Worth until the cops finally find me and haul my ass off to prison.
Even though I was an atheist back then I silently thanked God when the engine turned over on the second try. I put the gear in drive and accidentally squealed the tires a bit in my anxiousness to get out of the parking lot. As I turned right onto the street, I glanced left and saw the boyfriend brace the girl against her vehicle with his forearm, pushing up against her neck. He used his free arm to deliver an uppercut punch to her stomach, hard enough to make her feet leave the ground for a second.
I braked, screeching to a stop in the middle of the street, uncertain if I wanted to risk getting caught so I could help this girl. My decision was made easier for me when a half-dozen bouncers in black t-shirts marked “STAFF” erupted from the front doors of Stiletto’s.
Satisfied the girl would be saved in approximately two seconds, and confident the asshole who administered her beating would be receiving the worst ass-kicking of his life thereafter, I drove on. Watauga or bust, and all that good shit.
As I turned the corner from that little side street onto Ridglea Avenue, though, I saw a man dressed all in black. Black trench coat, black pants and boots. His shoulder-length hair could have also been black maybe, or perhaps dark brown. He was leaning against a light pole, but as I approached he stood up straight, snapping to attention as if he recognized my car.
I knew there was no way he could see me clearly inside my car but he locked eyes with me just the same. A ghostly smile formed on his face, gleaming white teeth beneath a hook nose. He appeared maybe ten years older than me, taller and certainly more broad-shouldered.
When I turned the corner he turned his body with me, watching me intently. His lips were moving as if he was trying to tell me something. I listened with my mind, but heard nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Now some people do have strong minds that are difficult to break into, but I’d never met someone, not in all my life, who could block me out so completely.
And in the silence of my night drive to Watauga, I thought little of the murder. I thought little of my strategy for not getting caught. I thought mostly of that black figure, with that hideous grin.
Chapter 4
The night air was chilly with a light breeze as I stripped off the Salvation Army clothes in front of the open hole I’d dug only a few hours before. I used the flannel and the gray t-shirt both to wipe Jack’s blood off the gun, being careful that my naked hands didn’t touch the pistol; not an easy task since the congealed blood had adhered to it like wet taffy to a child’s fingers.
Confident that none of my prints were left on it, I dropped the gun into the hole first before anything else. I then used the other articles of clothing to clean the blood from my hands and face. Again I thought of how it would have been easier if I’d just brought some damn water with me. I wiped vigorously, feeling my skin become raw.
I stood there in the silence of the night, wearing nothing but my briefs, throwing the bloody clothes down the hole like a pile of dirty laundry, then stepping on them to push them further into the earth.
I contemplated tossing Jack’s wallet in there, but then I thought if someone did discover this buried treasure, they would only be able to determine this was hidden evidence of a murder, one out of hundreds that have taken place in the Fort Worth area in recent years. But if I threw in the wallet with all the rest of the evidence…
So I filled in the hole with a nearby mound of dirt, kicking it in with my feet and spreading it around with my hands since I had stupidly forgotten to bring the shovel back with me. I cursed myself for that as I stomped on the dirt to compact it and then spread the rest around so there were no visible lumps anywhere.
I walked around the area collecting fallen leaves and twigs, and scattered them over the mound to better hide the difference between the freshly sifted dirt and the settled earth. After brushing all the crap off my body, I changed into my regular clothes and headed home, all the while scanning the area for people that might be watching me. There was one old man in a nearby second-story apartment watching pro wrestling on cable when he heard my car start up. He took a glance out the window at me, but I could feel that he only saw the Nova, not the driver inside it. He thought it a bit unusual for one of the other tenants to be going out this late but thought little of it. He didn’t care.
For the first two minutes or so of driving I was okay. I was feeling the jittery after-effects of the adrenaline rush from the night’s escapades, but other than that I was really okay.
But then it all just hit me. All at once. What I’d done. It was the strangest mixture of emotions I’d ever felt, like some weird alcoholic concoction invented by some wacked-out bartender, full of various exotic liquors that tasted both sweet and bitter at the same time, harsh and smooth.
I’d murdered the only man I’d known to be my father. I still can’t bring myself even now to call him my dad. I guess that’s a defense mechanism, to detach the role of FATHER from the man I’d killed.
The twenty minutes it took to get home gave me too much time to think about it. I committed murder, worse yet I committed patricide. I felt sick inside. Acid ate away at my empty stomach while cold shivers gave way to full bodyquakes, the kind you get the morning after a night of binge drinking.
Tears welled up in my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry, not for him. I tried to force myself not to, but I couldn’t stop it. My chin started to quiver and that was it. I lost the battle.
The song Black by Pearl Jam was playing on the radio and that didn’t help. It was 1993, so it was still a fairly new song, slow and sad.
I began singing along in a raspy whisper towards the end, “Doo-duh-doo-doo, doo-duh-doo. . .
About a block away from my house a sudden jolt zapped my mind out of its sad reverie. Doris is wide awake. She’s crying—she’s crying because she knows.
As I rounded the corner, my house became visible and the premonition grew stronger. I could see as I approached that the living room light was on.
Am I caught? I silently asked myself, Has she already talked to the police?
A cold fountain of fear sprang up within me. I knew whatever had happened, the police were not there now and I didn’t sense anyone else inside.
I pulled in the driveway and killed the headlights. I left the engine running just in case I had to get away fast and jogged to the front door. I reached in my pocket to find my keys and realized, like an idiot, they were still in the ignition of the idling Nova. I felt like such a scatterbrained jackass.
Somewhere far away the gods were snickering at me.
I was turning around to retrieve the keys from the car when Doris opened the door. There was a wide-eyed frantic look about her as she spoke to me in rapid hyperspeech, “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t choo in bed? What’ve you been out doing?”
“Mom, I was jus—“
“Oh God, Phillip, never mind! The police called—“
My stomach dropped.
“—They want me to come identify a body. Some man was mugged and shot outside a strip tease club and they think it’s your father. I know he’d never go to one those kinds of places but he still hasn’t come home from work and...”
It was then that I committed fuck-up number one by asking, “Did you tell the police I wasn’t home?”
I hate to admit it, but I asked that question with a very distinct level of paranoia, which all but confessed my guilt. She’d been shaking pretty badly when she opened the door, but then her trembling stopped for a few seconds as she gazed at the side of my head.
And through her eyes I saw the blood in my hair. Instinctively, my arm reflexed and my hand touched the small mat of hair held together by Jack’s congealed blood. It felt like I’d hairsprayed just a small patch of my blonde locks.