Savage Sins

by Vincent Zandri

  My head began spinning, burning.

  “Are you going to get him to kill for you, Stel?” I said. “Is he also a Handyman?”

  She rolled her eyes. “There’s only one Handyman, Vic,” she said along with one of her winks. “Mackey has different needs.”

  “Then why do you want him dead, if you also want to help him?”

  “Look at it like this, Vic,” she said, exhaling a breath. “Isn’t it better that I keep him happy until the time is right for his accident to happen? What good does it do anyone to put him on the defensive?”

  She had a point. This was her game. I was just the hired help. The Handyman.

  “And when exactly will this accident take place?”

  “You’ll know when I tell you,” she said. “And not before.” She grinned, her eyes wide. “The Handyman is about to kill for his art again. This time, it’s going to be really something. Glorious even. You just wait to see what I’ve got planned for you both.”

  I picked up the mail, but I set it back down again. Anxiety filled my throat and sternum like heavy, wet cement. In my mind, the events of last night. Me going down on Stella while she sat on the edge of the bed in her black garters and silk black panties, her video feed of Mackey in her hand while I worked on her. A digital threesome that felt all too real because it was real. Now standing in the kitchen, knowing she was about to meet up with him alone, I felt more than anxious. I also felt out of balance and more than a little nauseous. There wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.

  She leaned into me, took hold of a piece of mail. It was from a real estate agent, and it was personally addressed to Stella in stylish handwriting. Handwriting in black Sharpie that just oozed of money. Money that would inevitably come from my accounts. But there was one glimmer of hope. We weren’t married, Stella and I. Legally she couldn’t get at my money.

  She opened the envelope, pulled out a stack of full-color glossy sheets that contained photos of homes for sale along with their vital stats, including price, square footage, number of bedrooms and baths. Stuff like that. I’d never owned a home in my life, so it was all foreign to me. Not to mention, frightening somehow.

  “See if there’s something in there that strikes your fancy, darling,” she said, grabbing hold of her car keys. Then, heading for the back door off the garage. “This is Albany. We can afford just about anything we wish.”

  She opened the door.

  “Stella,” I said, feeling the blood burning in my veins, “what if I don’t want to buy a house? What if I choose to stay here? You can’t just take my money and buy a house.”

  She pursed her lips, shook her head slowly.

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Vic,” she said. “I’m legally entitled to it, you see.”

  I laughed. It wasn’t a happy sort of laugh. It was more of fuck you laugh.

  “No, baby,” I said. “You’re not.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Oh my,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, Vic?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “We’re getting married this evening. Once that happens, I will be legally entitled to half your money. You know, that money I arranged for you to earn. I think that’s a fair deal, don’t you?”

  The burn was so bad, I could hardly open my mouth, much less say anything in response. Until, finally, I uttered. “I . . . am not . . . getting married. You got that?”

  “Oh but, Vic,” she said. “Yes, you are. You can’t afford to disobey me. You know that now, don’t you?”

  She pressed her hand against her mouth, blew me a kiss.

  “And don’t forget to put on a suit,” she said. “After it’s done, we will enjoy a lovely dinner with Allison and Tara. Who knows, you might even get lucky.”

  She winked, opened the door, and entered the garage, closing the door behind her.

  I slammed my fist down on the counter. The noise and the concussion shocked even me. There was a time I would have cut off my left leg to be published. I thought, if only I can seal a major book deal in New York, I would be the happiest man alive. All my dreams would come true.

  Instead, the opposite has happened.

  I’ve got the deal, the money, the movie options, the fans . . . I’m the toast of New York. But at what cost? I’m a slave to Stella, and a criminal just waiting for an arrest and a one-way ticket to the lethal injection chamber. I’d sold my soul for something that isn’t real. The books, the money, the contracts . . . they are fleeting. Mackey was evidence of that. That is, it will all be fleeting once Stella decides to leave me. And she will leave me just like she left Mackey. When it happens, she will have emptied my accounts and left me to rot on the side of the road like roadkill. Maybe she won’t even bother to leave me. Maybe she’ll make sure I have an accident that I don’t recover from.

  Or, I could handle things another way.

  I could bide my time, and when the opportunity presented itself, make sure it was Stella who suffered a horrible accident she couldn’t possibly recover from. I would have to swallow my obsession for her. But then, what a book it would make in the end. Her death would provide me with the material for my very best work. Wouldn’t matter what I wrote after that because it would be the novel that would plant my permanent mark on the industry.

  But not yet.

  There were other deeds to tend to first. Like Mackey’s accident. Maybe Stella was demanding that The Handyman take care of him, but I was not entirely opposed to the idea. Fact was, knowing he was about to meet up with her, and that the meeting might very well include sexual favors, I would be only too happy to see him die.

  It was not only a dangerous world I was living in right now, it was also a complicated world. At the very least, Mackey’s death would simplify things.

  Pouring myself a stiff drink, I sat down at my typewriter, filled the spool with a sheet of clean paper. I was already into my second book. This one based on Allison and Andrew Craig. It was almost finished. I was calling it Savage Skin. It was the story of a man who becomes his wife’s sex slave. The plot would revolve around the same antagonist as Savage Sins, Vance McKenna, the man who would eventually be called upon to murder Andrew while making it look like a suicide.

  Like Savage Sins, I was playing it close to the truth, if not recounting the story as it happened, scene for scene. I even wrote the bit about the fight they had in the house the night I watched them from the driveway and how it led to an S & M session inside the living room with Andrew being hung by the rafter with a remote control operated harness. Like they say, you can’t make this shit up. Or could you? In this case, Allison and Andrew Craig had already made it up for me. I wasn’t a writer, so much as a transcriptionist, writing it all down as it happened.

  I wanted to get a few more pages in before the afternoon was out. But it wasn’t happening for me. The muse wasn’t singing to me. It had walked out the door with Stella and her hold over me. My mind was clouded with too many distractions—Mackey invading my book signing and my sex life; Stella insisting on my buying her a house . . . insisting we get married, this very afternoon; Stella insisting I kill Mackey, knowing that one day she would kill me.

  I sat there staring at the blank paper.

  “Maybe I should just pack a bag, empty out the bank account, and split town,” I whispered aloud. “Maybe I should just hop out the back Jack, make a new plan Stan.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at my choice of words. But then, I knew running wasn’t the answer. Stella would find a way to implicate me in the two murders. Mackey would back her up. I had to stick around. Long enough to do away with Mackey and Stella. It was the only answer. But there was something I could do to clear my mind and my soul before I said “I do” to Stella later on in the day.

  I could go meet my maker.

  Driving north toward the church where I once served mass as a boy, the memories flooded my brain—me as a bespectacled boy standing in the back sacristy of the red brick house of God. I was wearing a roomy white altar bo
y server over blue jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt with Paul McCartney and Wings stenciled on the front. The square room was four-sided with shelves and cabinets filled with church junk—gold chalices, gold plates, staffs, crosses, and cups. There were racks of black and white cassocks and robes for the priests along with strange looking headgear. As often as I had been exposed to the stuff, it never ceased to seem so foreign to me.

  I remember a small refrigerator where the mass wine was stored. If I timed it right, I could sneak a drink or two from straight out of the bottle before the priest came in and dressed for the mass. He was usually drunk himself, so I never worried about him smelling anything on my breath. Several priests came and went during the few years I was an altar boy, and none of them were bad people. I don’t recall any abuses like people bitch about now.

  One priest in particular, an older guy named Walsh, he was good to me. He’d invite me in back to his apartment, and we’d make sandwiches and eat bowls of potato chips. He drank beer with whiskey chasers, and he always had a cold root beer for me. He’d get me talking about my home life. Were things good with my parents? Were they fighting too much? Did it make me nervous? Was I happy? Did I miss my brother? You see, my oldest brother died in a motorcycle accident when I was only eleven. As for my folks, I was surprised they hadn’t killed each other by then. Our house wasn’t a refuge, it was more like a battleground with my mother drinking and smoking herself to death and my father, a musician, always arriving home in the middle of the night, his liver pickled and his fists flying.

  I guess I didn’t know it then, but Father Walsh was acting as my shrink and doing a pretty damn good job of it. He never made me get down on my knees and pray. He never forced me to get down on my knees for anything else either. He never made a pass at me. He never touched me with anything other than a friendly pat on the back or maybe a jab to the arm if I wasn’t paying enough attention to what he was saying.

  I think all that stuff about priests abusing kids is bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, it happens, and when it does, it’s not good. Not good by a long shot. But too many people—screwed up adults—like to invent bad childhood memories to make up for bad decisions they made as adults. Most priests have gotten a bad rap, and that’s too bad.

  I pulled into the parking lot of the St. Ambrose Church.

  It was empty, so I was able to pull up front. I killed the engine and got out. For a moment, I gazed at the old school attached to the church. I saw myself dressed in my little blue uniform and tie, seated in a classroom, bored out of my skull, staring out the window while a nun, clad from head to toe in a navy-blue habit, tried in vain to teach me math. I never was much of a student, even when it came to the subject of English. I was too much of a daydreamer for that.

  Stepping onto the sidewalk, I made my way to the front doors of the church, and for the first time in nearly four decades, I stepped inside.

  Nothing much had changed. It was just the way I remembered it, only smaller. It wasn’t like I’d grown up since I last occupied this spot. More like the place had somehow shrunk over the years. It smelled vaguely of burning incense, and not a single person occupied its cold stone walls. But somehow it felt like a thousand dead souls were walking all around me, the largest and most unstained of which belonged to the bloodied and battered body that hung on the cross at the opposite side of the building.

  Once more, I saw myself, the altar boy, seated on the altar in a brown wood chair, a little boy whose feet barely touched the floor, big brown eyes glued to the crucified Jesus. It held such fascination for me. How is it that one man could live through the torture of the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails pounded into his hands and feet? I still shivered at the thought of a man’s bodyweight hanging by nails. The excruciating pain that he must have endured. I’d always admired Jesus for what he willingly did to himself for the good of all mankind. Despite my work as The Handyman, I still believed in Him. Still believed I would see Him one day. One grave reality I had to accept was this: Jesus might not like what he sees when that time comes.

  A tap on my shoulder.

  I turned quickly.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The voice belonged to a priest. A young priest. Slim build, thick black hair parted neatly on the side. He was clean-shaven, and his black suit was impeccably pressed, the white tab attached to his collarbone white.

  He smiled, held out his hand.

  “I’m Father Bill Duffy,” he said. “I’m the pastor at St. Ambrose.”

  In my brain, I saw Father Walsh, my pastor, the man I served for countless masses, the beer-gutted man who always smelled like booze and who fed me dozens of lunches and gave of me his time and advice. Walsh was long dead, my memory of him as old as the stone floor beneath my feet. This guy, Duffy, he was the new man.

  “Irish,” I said, taking his hand in mine, squeezing it. “Bit of a cliché isn’t it? An Irish priest?”

  He laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t say anything to my mother about that,” he said. “But there’s been more than one Duffy who’s given his life over to the Lord if that’s what you mean.”

  I shook my head. “It was a stupid thing to say, Father.”

  “So, what brings you to St. Ambrose, Mr. . . .?”

  “Smith,” I said automatically, instinctually. I’m not sure why I used the name. It just felt like the right thing to do.

  “Mr. Smith,” he repeated, a sly grin forming.

  “I used to belong to this church many years ago,” I said, looking out on the sea of empty wooden pews and the empty altar. “I was an altar boy, probably before you were even born.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Did you attend school as well, Mr. Smith?”

  I nodded.

  I’m not sure what came over me then, but my eyes filled with tears. Maybe going there turned out to be more overwhelming than I thought. The memories stabbed at me like nine-inch nails. I saw my family seated in the pew, my parents seated on either side of my brothers and me. Now they were all gone, my mother, father, and two big brothers. I was the only one still alive, but somehow, I didn’t feel very alive. Rather, I felt alive all right. I just wasn’t sure that the life I was living was worth the air that passed in and out of my lungs. It was a life of mortal sin, I guess. My blackened soul was proof of that. If I even had a soul left at all.

  “Would you like to tour the school?” Father Duffy asked. “There’s no school on a Saturday, obviously.”

  A chill ran up and down my spine. Somehow, the thought of going back to those sterile halls and lonely classrooms still scared the shit out of me all these years later. I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

  “Maybe another time,” I said.

  I started to turn. I even took a step in the direction of the door. But then I turned back around.

  “There is something you can do for me, Father,” I said.

  “What is it, Mr. Smith?”

  “Could you listen to my confession?” I said, wiping the tear from my face.

  His expression went south. Suddenly, he didn’t seem like such a jovial young man of God anymore. He seemed to be a man who possessed the all the power of judgment.

  “Give me a minute to gather my Bible and my cassock,” he said. “Stay here.”

  I watched him make his way along the aisle toward the altar where he genuflected and made the sign of the cross before disappearing into the back sacristy. The sacristy I knew so well. I heard him in the back, opening and closing a closet, then his footsteps on the linoleum tile as he was making his way back out to the altar.

  Another tear fell from my eye. Making an about-face, I made my way to the front doors and walked out.

  For a while, I just drove around the old neighborhood, past the old two-story raised ranch which I grew up in. Like the church, it seemed so much smaller than I remembered it. So much rattier. Looking out onto the place from where I parked by the curb, I saw myself and my brothers mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges. But then I also
heard voices. The old man and the old lady battling it out. It all took a terrible toll on my brother, Ted, who was the middle child. He wouldn’t make it out of high school.

  It was my mother who’d found him hanging by a leather belt in the closet of his upstairs bedroom. Wracked with guilt and lungs filled with tumors, my mother wouldn’t last another five years after that. Not long after that, the oldest, Terry, died in a motorcycle accident, my father just took off. I never heard from him again. I spent six months living with friends until I somehow managed to get myself into a state college, then into writing school. It all seemed like a big blur to me now, my childhood. But the fact is, we are all gifted with a past whether we like it or not. We are all connected to a family. Unfortunately, my family was tragic.

  I needed to get back in the car.

  It was time to run away again.

  This time for good.

  Knowing Stella would be home soon and expecting me to be dressed for our wedding, I drove back toward north Albany. But instead of heading straight home, I stopped at Lanies Bar for a quick drink. I needed one badly after an afternoon of reminiscing with my past, with a God who surely hated me by now. A God who had forsaken me. Or was it me who had forsaken him.

  As luck would have it, the bar was mostly empty, occupied with just a few stragglers who crawled in after working double-time for a weekend work crew. Possibly linemen. More likely a road crew, judging from the black asphalt stains on their t-shirts. I took a stool in the corner, and the girl behind the bar smiled at me. She was young, maybe a year out of college, and tall. She wore a short flowery dress and tall leather boots. The dress was so short, I could practically make out her mound of bush that pressed against the bottom of her panties. Or maybe that was just my imagination. One thing for sure was that her creamy thighs were exposed and that alone was enough to brighten my day.

  She brushed back her shoulder length dirty blonde hair, looked into my eyes, asked me what I was drinking.

  “Jameson,” I said. “Double. Neat.”