Gym Rat & the Murder Club

by Lawrence Block

  Not a word.

  “Right,” I said. “That’s what I figured. With you to point me out, they wouldn’t waste any time picking me up. And they’d probably have me, too, once they knew who to look for, but I could stop all that by not getting picked up in the first place, and that meant not doing the job.

  “But I still wanted the money. It was pulling at me, the same way the idea of killing someone had pulled at me early on.

  “Remember why you balked at paying me the full sum in front? Because that way you wouldn’t have any leverage. Because what was to stop me from taking your money and walking off with it?

  “Remember what I said? Like, am I the sort of person who’s gonna leave a loose end?

  “You know what I did this afternoon? After I got off the train, and before I grabbed you by the shoulder? I took a walk out to your house on Witherspoon Place. I was thinking about waiting for you in the garage, but I didn’t want to smash a window, and then I thought about this mall and its nice big parking lot and I made my choice.

  “But before I came back to the station I rang your doorbell.

  “Because aside from that picture I’d never really laid eyes on your wife, and I wanted to meet her. So I rang the bell and she came to the door. She was wearing jeans and a blouse, sandals on her feet, and she’s a fine-looking woman, but I guess you know that. You may not care, the way the marriage has broken down, but you’re still aware of it, right?

  “We talked through the screen door. I said something about some people in the area reporting a problem with cable reception, and she said hers was working fine, and I said I was sorry to have bothered her.

  “And I turned around and walked back to the train station to wait for you. And take care of a loose end.

  “Jesus, man, even if I did the fucking job, even if I killed your wife and ran her through a fucking woodchipper, you’re still a loose end. You’re the loosest end there is. Go on, let me hear you deny it.”

  But he didn’t say anything. And, really, how could he? Right after he’d put the car in park I’d got hold of him by the throat, and by the time he realized what was happening, well, it had pretty much happened. And we were still parked in the same spot, and all this time I’d been having a conversation with a dead man.

  Better than having him interrupting all the time, going all Denville-Danville on me.

  The parking area around the cinema was starting to fill up, as it got closer to showtime, but we didn’t have any next-door neighbors yet. Even so it was time I got out of there. I could switch places with him, start the engine and get myself a little closer to the train station before we parted company. But I checked the map app on my phone, and saw that I could walk the whole distance in under an hour.

  It seemed simpler that way. I’d been careful what I touched in the car, and wiped off any surfaces my fingers might have brushed, and took a moment to position him so that he looked like a man sitting behind the wheel and waiting for his wife to return to their car.

  It wasn’t a bad walk. Cooler now, with the sun down. Quiet tree-lined suburban streets, not much in the way of auto traffic, and the only pedestrians were out walking their dogs.

  It had been satisfying, killing him. The Denville killing had had sex mixed in, and you’d think that would make it better, but I actually liked it better this way. I’d made money, and I’d tied off a loose end, and the body I left behind was somebody I didn’t like very much. Somebody I actually disliked, come right down to it.

  Wondered if this was something I’d do again. Impossible to say, really. Couldn’t rule it in, couldn’t rule it out.

  A long walk, clear back to the train station. But what I did, same as I’ll do on the treadmill, I synched my breathing to my steps and counted breaths. Something for my mind to do, you know?

  Worked just fine.

  The End

  The Murder Club

  By Matt Plass

  What do you do when nobody’s watching?

  At home, with the curtains drawn, I let the muscles in my face fall slack. I prowl on all fours like a long-legged cat. I lie on my back and pretend that the ceiling’s the floor, and I’m flying above fields of textured plaster, free as the hawk who soars in one unbroken line over our man-made fences. At other times, darker times, I crawl chin-to-stone across the desert of my kitchen tile. I cry out in the small, cool places of my empty home.

  Then I pull myself together, to become more like you.

  I adjust my shirt collars and check for spinach in my teeth before I leave the house. I ensure that I have my Metrocard, and fret about whether to take a raincoat or risk my new fifteen-percent-cashmere sweater. I pat pockets for wallet and keys. Then I exit on time and with haste, lest I be late for my appointment with The Murder Club.

  The Murder Club meets every first Tuesday of the month, in the back room of The Falling Star. We congregate over jugs of cloudy beer and thin flutes of white wine. We crunch peanuts and take turns to share our tribulations from the month just gone. We take comfort in each other’s company. We talk. We listen. We never judge. We’ve all been judged already.

  Naturally, we’re not exactly murderers. And the club’s official name is the Recovery & Reflection Association, New York Chapter. But our euphemistic moniker is not wholly inappropriate—gallows humor, if you like. To gain admittance to the group, one must be responsible for the taking of a human life. We meet in the spirit of mutual support, comrades in the ongoing war against our own guilt and self-loathing.

  Still not clear to you? Imagine then, a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, but with fewer steps and less Jesus. Oh, and more alcohol. We meet in a bar, after all.

  I’m Henry. The new guy. Barely six months in. I came across the club by accident, a private conversation overheard as I was taking a quiet stroll along the dark corridors of the Internet. When I heard the club name, I knew I had to join.

  Enough reminiscence. It’s almost seven o’ clock. Time to introduce you to my fellow members.

  Tonight, Paula is first to arrive—first after me, of course. Paula is a magician’s wand of a woman. White face and white shoes, folds of sheer black cloth in between. Paula has already been to the bar and clutches a milky Chardonnay. Ashamed to ask for a bottle and just one glass, Paula knows—as we all do—that she’ll consume her bottle’s worth tonight, before exiting on shaky feet.

  “Henry,” she says.

  And I say, “Paula.”

  She sits in silence, but when the other members have arrived, Paula will find her tongue. When we’ve pulled our stools into a horseshoe, Paula will tell us that last week she wept in the supermarket aisle, or behind the wheel at a stoplight, or in the break-room at the museum where she passes time as a docent.

  “I saw his face,” she’ll say. “The way it was that night. Caught in my headlights, eyes wide when he realised what was about to happen. No fear, not even surprise. Just a lift of the eyebrows, as if something wonderful had just occurred to him.”

  And we’ll comfort Paula and tell her it wasn’t her fault. The boy was drunk, not looking where he walked. That night should not—must not—define her. It could have happened to anyone.

  “But why did it happen to me?” she’ll wail, and no one will have an answer.

  Paula and I don’t have to sit in silence for long. Sweaty, heavy-hipped Saul joins us in the back room, holding a pint glass of water, and with one of those ridiculous mechanical cigarettes between his lips. He winks at Paula and shoots me a look that I’ve seen men use before, some kind of common bonding code. I believe it translates roughly thus: As men, we spend significant time considering women we like, and what we would like to do to them. Also we consider men who vex us, and what we would like to do to them. In acknowledgment of these shared masculine impulses, the sexual and the violent, I salute you.

  I raise my hand to mirror Saul’s salute.

  “Hey, Doc,” I say, because Saul, would you believe, used to be a doctor. A surgeon, no less, before his probi
ng fingers found their way into the morphine cabinet. Ah… the perfect marriage of access and appetite, while it lasted. Cloud-surfing one day, Doctor Saul left a rayon sponge in a patient during a gastric bypass operation. The wound became infected. She died. Ergo, no more organ-rummaging for Doctor Saul.

  Never mind. He has a new job, cleaning the fat fryer at Bo’s Chicken Shack.

  Saul puffs faux-smoke as he pulls up a stool. Behind him, Gregor and Madeleine appear at the door, entering the room together without acknowledging one another. I wonder, are they dating in secret?

  “You look tired,” I say to Gregor, and watch the shadow cross his pale equine face. I wonder if I’ve been too obviously cruel and follow up with a quick, “Did you catch Jem on your way in?”

  Gregor shakes his cropped head and sucks on his bottom lip. Tired is a trigger word for Gregor, and well it might be, because, as the road sign says, Tiredness Kills. In Gregor’s case, it annihilated three student nurses on their way to an Irish Ceili dance. Fourteen hours at the wheel of his rig proved too much for Gregor, who allowed his eyelids to fall just long enough to drift across three lanes and dissect the car coming the other way. Gregor remembers the shock of impact. He remembers the world inverted when his rig plowed into a service ditch. He remembers being stretchered horizontal to the ambulance, gliding past long, female limbs lying separated from their owners on the tarmac. Gregor’s thirty-seven now, this occurred when he was twenty-nine. The intervening eight summers were spent in an oblong room, with an uninterrupted view of chain-link and barbed-wire. I’m interested to note that Gregor retains some of his prison etiquette. In the back room of The Falling Star, he elects to sit with his back to the wall, facing the window, nearest to the door. I wonder, when he eats alone at home, does Gregor still protect his plate in the crook of his elbows, in case a fellow con reaches for his chicken leg?

  Madeleine has disappeared from the back room of The Falling Star. No, here she is, carrying a frothy lager for herself and a pint of something black, which she hands to Gregor. They are dating. Madeleine’s edges bleed into the air around her, a woman forever caught in soft-focus. She’d have been beautiful, once. Perhaps ex-doctor Saul thinks about the younger version when he’s lying in bed, holding his penis.

  Madeleine’s story is simple. Madeleine had a baby. The baby cried. Madeleine shook the baby. The baby died.

  I wonder, would that work as verse?

  Madeleine had a baby,

  The baby cried and cried.

  One day she shook the baby,

  She shook it till it died.

  Room for improvement, I admit. The repetition of shook in the second couplet provides a quaint antiquated flavor, but cried and cried in the second line is lazy writing.

  Madeleine takes a seat below the window. I give her my most simpatico smile and ask after her week.

  “So, so,” she says, failing, as she always does, to meet my eye.

  Jem is last to arrive. Three years out of service, he still makes jeans and a polo shirt look like a uniform. Jem’s phone sits on his hip in a leather holster. His ticket into the club came by way of a temporary paralysis of the index finger.

  Poor Jem. We must pity the virgin police marksman on the roof, trying to steady his over-caffeinated eye on the crosshair, finger resting along the guard of a 2½ lb trigger. On Jem’s first live one, a uniformed officer had allowed himself to be disarmed by a naked man wielding a sushi knife. The officer blubbered on his knees outside a Stop-and-Shop as the blade dug into his throat. On the roof of Wal-Greens across the street, Jem had the shot. He had a whole crazy man’s chest to play with—a hairless white canvas begging for a splash of scarlet.

  The calm voice in Jem’s earpiece said, Take the shot.

  Jem’s finger froze.

  The voice came again. Repeat: Take the shot. But Jem’s finger had been set in ice. And while he lay there, willing the ice to thaw, the crazy man opened the uniformed officer’s neck like the zipper on a fancy purse.

  That same day, Jem was removed from active duty. Two weeks later, he quietly and permanently removed himself from service as an officer of the law.

  “Looks like we all have a drink in our hands,” Jem says, pulling up his stool. “Who’s up first?”

  Madeleine raises her hand. Her contribution is predictable. The world swarms with children, it’s no surprise Madeleine struggles daily as young mothers glide past, their smugly-living infants wrapped to their chests. This week Madeleine had to leave a checkout line to vomit up her breakfast bagel. The woman behind her in line—pushing a double-stroller, of course—asked if Madeleine had little ones of her own. Enough to send Madeleine reeling from the store.

  “Thank you for sharing,” we say when Madeleine is done, followed by our club mantra, our rite of peace. “What happened that day does not define you.”

  Gregor describes a dream he had last night, a driving dream, set behind the wheel of his rig on the night of the accident. In the dream, diligent Gregor recognises signs of his own fatigue and pulls into a rest stop as, across the highway, a car packed with chattering nurses speeds by in happy oblivion. Waking this morning, for long delicious moments Gregor’s reality included no three-lane drift, no separated limbs, no howling mothers in the courtroom. Until his sleepy head cleared and the truth fell upon him like a snarling bear.

  “Gregor, what happened that day does not define you.”

  Saul lightens the mood. He’s had an unusually good month. No shakes, no shivers. And no relapses, which means no alcohol—he raises his water with a grin—and no trips down to the underpass, shuffling up to groups of young black men with hoods over their heads. Saul finishes his announcement with a victorious air grab. He’s proud of himself. We’re proud of him, too.

  And Paula? Yes, yes, as foreseen, Paula flashed back to the face of the young man she detonated with her Ford Explorer. This week her panic attack occurred at the dry-cleaners not the supermarket, so I was only half-right. Jem places a hand on Paula’s shoulder. She swallows the remaining third of her wine and I know her thoughts have already fled to the bar.

  It’s my turn.

  “I was doing so well,” I say, taking a sip of beer to steady my voice. “No night terrors. No crying jags. Then—the dumbest thing—last Sunday I was crossing the street where Greene Avenue meets Bedford and a minivan slowed to let me pass. I glanced down at the plate and saw the silhouette of a cowboy riding a bucking horse, and suddenly I was back there. Back in the godforsaken state of Wyoming, back at ranch as they say, the childhood home, my head filled with eighth-grade algebra as I slammed into the kitchen that day and found my father at my mother’s throat, his hands closing on her windpipe, her face the color of an over-ripe pomegranate, and something in my father’s eyes that only a wild dog would understand. And me reaching for the first thing that came to hand, the heavy copper pot that made a sound like a thousand breaking eggs when I brought it down onto the base of my father’s neck.

  “One moment, I was there, in that kitchen standing over his body. And the next, I was back on the street, watching the minivan shake its tail as it turned onto Lafayette, wiping tears from my eyes and wondering what circumstances could possibly induce someone to drive a minivan all the way from Wyoming to New York.”

  I glance up to see how my semi-humorous sign-off has been received. Saul is staring at his fat paddle hands. Madeleine has her eyes closed, breathing through her nose the way athletes breathe to slow their heart after the action. Paula’s white face tilts to the side—her sympathy pose. Gregor watches me, as if confused by what he’s heard.

  I make a mental note to keep an eye on Gregor.

  Only Jem—friendly, honest, solid Jem—is prepared to hold my gaze. “Thank you,” he says with an encouraging smile. “Thank you, Henry, for sharing.”

  They all intone, “What happened that day does not define you.”

  I effect a shy dip of the head.

  I’ll never tell them my secret. My real secret.

/>   But I’ll tell you.

  Naturally, I’ve never lived in Wyoming—heaven forbid! Never dealt death with a copper pot. My parents are alive, to the best of my knowledge. Outside of my imagination, I never killed a man, let alone my pathetic excuse for a father.

  But I needed something, didn’t I? Or they wouldn’t have let me in.

  Don’t think I take this lightly. Lying is hard. I worry constantly about my status within The Murder Club. I fear I lack authenticity. I fear they’ll smell it on me—the absence of death. I worry that my story is too prosaic, and I crave those tiny obscure details that build credibility. Last month, Jem told us that he’d wept at his kitchen counter as he followed a recipe for meatloaf, measuring exactly 2½ lbs of ground beef—a trigger-pull of beef he called it—into the mix. The words just felt right. I want that.

  Which is why I’ve decided I must join the club for real. It’s why I followed Madeleine home tonight, after we left The Falling Star. It’s why I’m outside her house right now, peeking through the slats of her kitchen door as she transitions glassware from the dishwasher to the cupboard. This isn’t the first time I’ve followed Madeleine home. You could call it a third date. And you know what they say about third dates.

  Tonight may be the night.

  Why Madeleine, you ask? Why anyone from the club? Why not some unmissable homeless derelict? Three reasons. Firstly, Madeleine is… Well, you’ve seen her! The woman’s a walking suicide risk. Your average New York cop won’t look any further than a lost child for motive. Second, Madeleine is pretty, or she was, and pretty women have not always been kind to me. Lastly, and I admit this is extremely subjective, Madeleine’s demise would bring The Murder Club from six members down to five. Aesthetically, I prefer an odd number.