USK | Prose | Laidlaw | USK | Prose | Laidlaw

America's Most Wanted

They were just a few wholesome young kids, I figured nine, ten, or eleven, the kind of numbers you'd double down on unless the dealer was showing an ace. So there they were, wearing cut-offs and swinging from a big old rope which was tied to a bigger and older tree, and if they happened to let go at just the right time they could get some of that old pendulum effect and after a considerable flight, sink softly out of this world for a while and into the bath-water warm lake, eyeball to eyeball with the fish, toes gently stirring up the muck... and for about ninety seconds I felt good, really good, I was there, only worried about the girls seeing the outline of my shrivelled pee-pee against my wet cut-offs, clinging to my body as I came out of the water, and that really was my only worry...

Suddenly, rudely, almost criminally, they slipped in the Country Time Lemonade plug and I remembered that I am three days short of thirty and watching t.v. commercials in a dive bar and although I still happen to be worried about my pee-pee, it's far from my only concern. You see, my brothers and sisters, I'm in a world of hurt right about now and if you'll bear with me for a few more lines, I'll tell you all about it. If not, well, go drink some fuckin' lemonade and don't let that big old rope hit you in the ass on the way out.

Well, you had your out, dear readers, and maybe you should have taken it, because from now on, things get pretty hairy. As I looked up from my scotch and snapped out of my childhood memory, the t.v. was at it again, only this time I saw myself swinging from a rope. There I was, yours truly, Tommy Ray Lester, starring in an episode of America's Most Wanted. Not as an actor, mind you, but as a genuine criminal, mug shot and all. The mug shot had been taken a few years back from a lousy drunk driving pinch, so the picture, thank god, was a little out of date. But it was me, all right. A little younger, more hair, less bloat, but me. I've always been pretty good in a crisis; in fact, that's when I operate best. I looked again at the picture they'd flashed on the tube, and then again in what showed of the mirror behind the bar. I pulled the brim down on my plain black baseball cap, slowly reached for my shades, thought better of it, and left them off. It was too damned dark in here already and I didn't want to bring any undue suspicion upon myself.

I took a long slow glance around the bar, again trying not to tip myself off, trying to see if any of the old-timers and that one whore and the sailor on leave had seen what I had just seen. So far, so good. The bartender, he had his face buried in the Racing Form; he hadn't seen anything. The sailor had his face buried in the whore's chest, and the whore, she had her eyes on the pile of money in front of their drinks on the bar. And the old-timers? Well, they didn't much go in for that t.v. shit anyway, probably couldn't see that far. They were too busy staring down their drinks like a matador stares down a bull. So, basically, I was good in the bar. Some luck, if you can call it that. But what about the flops upstairs? How many of those rooms had t.v.'s? How many of the drunks in the rooms were watching the t.v.'s? How many of them were lambsters themselves? No way to be sure. I guessed I'd better make a move, but where? If I ever needed a drink, it was now.

"Fuck it," I told myself, I'd had some luck and now I was gonna push it.

"Another scotch when you get a chance, Harry. Make it a double."

Harry took his time pouring the drink, as he always did, and I tipped him a buck, as I always did.

"Thanks, Rick," he mumbled, and without looking at me, he got right back to the Racing Form.

You see, as I have already mentioned, I was in a world of hurt. I'd never expected the America's Most Wanted bit, but of course I hadn't been using my real name. No one down here ever does. "Here" was a section of Chicago known as "Uptown", which consisted of tenements filled with the descendants of hillbillies who had come north for jobs, what was left of them, and crack whores selling their wares for ten dollars a pop, and crack dealers selling their wares for ten dollars a pop, and the almost-innocent mentally-ill homeless walking aimlessly all over the fucking neighborhood. Sometimes I'd see the same guy walk by no less than fifteen times in an hour of drinks from the safety of my corner stool at the Wooden Nickel.

So I had to think, and I had to think fast. Fast thinking was what had gotten me into the Wooden Nickel and the sanctuary of the eight dollar flop upstairs in the first place. I'd come in to Chicago's Loop on a Greyhound from Boston three days before. I'd lugged my hastily-packed duffel onto a city bus, paid an extra quarter for a transfer, and gotten off at Broadway and Wilson. Just one short block from where I sit now, wringing the scotch for all it's worth and chain-smoking my Marlboro Light 100's. I smoke 100's because they last longer and they taste the same as the Marlboro Lights anyway, but I digress. I promised to tell you all about it, didn't I? And I always keep a promise...

It was a promise that got me in this fix in the first place, a promise she must have broken. Now, for clarity, I guess I'd better back up a little bit.

"Baby, turn it up while you're in there will ya?"

She had turned up Bryan Ferry in much the same way she had brought out the chicken, and the wine and the ashtray, and had combed her hair, and had lit my cigarette, and yes, had sucked my cock, and I'd called her "Baby" and she'd liked it. And she had said, "If we're not gonna play cards anymore, can't we go in and you type on the computer?" And I'd calmly but firmly said, "No, we're going to stay out here as if we have to and rough it." To this she'd said, "We do have to, in a way, to preserve our sanity." It is then that I'd realized I loved her and how hard it was going to be... to leave. You see, I had to leave, the sooner the better. I'd already been playing gin rummy on the balcony for hours since leaving his body twisted and bloodied on the kitchen floor upstairs... I knew it was too soon but I swear I could smell him, the upstairs neighbor, rotting as I'd plotted which suit to discard. Small troubles like the battery in the laptop being uncharged and her finding the extension cord kept our minds off the murder until either of us could manage a clear and rational thought.

It was Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads" that we were listening to then, impressed with ourselves for retaining our sense of irony under the circumstances. The card game had been suspended while wine was savored like a good childhood memory or a pleasant dream, and we had allowed ourselves to be lost temporarily in the music. The yellow tulips had cast a shadow against the dirty gray tin shingles, back-lit by the citronella candle in its mock-silver pail. To this she had added a series of finger animals in a crude and beautiful projection. I'd resisted the temptation to add the finger to interrupt her silent, primitive puppet show as she had slowly slipped in the silhouette of a gun...

That's what had snapped me out of it. The shock, I mean. What the fuck was I doing there, playing cards on the balcony, burying my head in the sand? There was work to be done, details to be worked out, best-laid plans to be made.

"Baby? You know I have to leave, and I can't take you with me." I'd been able to see, feel, taste her heart breaking as I'd spoken each word. The look of resignation, defeat, no - dignity in defeat - is what had made her one of the great ones and what had made it so fucking hard to go. She hadn't said anything, and I'd pretty much understood why, and again, I'd loved her for it.

"I'll need money. This is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna pack up as much as I can carry in the duffel and you're going to drive to the bank. I want you to take out every fucking cent - I don't give a shit about the service charge or the account balance or any of that shit, okay?" She had nodded slowly, still unable to speak.

"Go NOW, Honey! And hurry back. But don't speed or anything. And be careful. Just act natural. If they give you any shit about why you're clearing out your account, smile and tell them it's none of their business. No, fuck that, tell them you found a better bank. And don't take 'No' for an answer."

I'd waited on the balcony as I watched her pull away. I'd thrown some clothes, my shaving kit, three Bukowski books, and some of my own writing in the duffel. I took enough time to smoke a cigarette, yeah, you guessed it, a Marloboro Light 100. Then I had to face the face, his face, the stiff, the stinking stiff. I'd already put on the yellow rubber gloves which only yesterday I'd used more innocently to wash dishes, and now was using to avoid leaving fingerprints as I dragged his body from his kitchen into his bedroom. I'd hoisted him up onto his bed, stripped off all of his clothes, and pulled a pair of her panties from my back pocket. I'd slid the panties up past his ankles, knees, thighs, and mercifully hiked them up far enough to cover his puny little dick. I'd planned to make it look like a sex crime gone awry, you know, like he'd been offed by a hooker or something.

Now, I know what you're thinking, not very well-thought out, using her panties and all, but I had been pretty shook up and I didn't have a lot of time. I had a lot of ground to cover, wiping prints from the door knobs, the door frames, the hot and cold handles on the sink, the railing on the stairs leading to his apartment, and as much of the walls as I could reach. I'd stuffed his bloodied clothes into a pillow case, I'd taken his wallet, I'd spread some of his Hustler magazines about the bedroom, again, not clearly thinking, but hoping some dumb Boston coppers might bite on the "sex crime gone awry" shtick. On the way out, I'd grabbed his VCR, ripped his phone out of the wall, and just for the hell of it, looked in his refrigerator to see what he had to drink. As luck would have it, my luck, I mean, all he'd had was a few cans of Coors Cutter, you know, the non-alcoholic kind.

So I'd closed his apartment door behind me, heaving a sigh of relief as I descended one stair at a time back to the relative safety of our own digs. As I'd walked down the stairs, something he'd once said to me gave me a moment's pause. "L'esprit d'escalier. That means 'the ghost of the stairs'," he'd said. I had tried to tell him then, the pretentious fop, that my understanding was that it was actually "the spirit of the stairs". But just as he hadn't listened back then, he certainly couldn't hear me now as I said it out loud, just for the hell of it, three times, fast: "L'esprit d'escalier, l'esprit d'escalier, the SPIRIT! of the stairs!!!"

So what had I been thinking about as I descended the stairs? My pea coat and how I might need it in Chicago. And I'm sure I don't have to tell you, my brothers and sisters, how polar bear cold it gets there in the winter. Cuz you see, that's where I was headed - Chicago. Chicago. That toddlin' town. The only place I knew of where I could disappear and still exist.

So there I was, packed and ready to go; I had my duffel and the pillow case full of bloody clothes and a cheap old VCR with the rewind broken, couldn't even pawn it if I had to (but of course, I didn't intend to.) What the fuck was taking her so long? Had she sold me out? Had she slipped up at the bank? My god, had she gone and gotten in a wreck? Just then, she pulled up. I'd heard the car before I saw it. We'd been meaning to change the oil for some time. So I'd heard the car pull up and without looking, I'd known it was her. The way a mother cat might recognize her litter in a dark alleyway after foraging for scraps of food. Anyway, she was back and it was time to bring her up to spec...

"All right, Baby, here's the drill." I'd known she was listening. She always did. But she wasn't exactly looking at me; she was more looking past me. And how could I blame her? After all, in a few minutes, I'd be gone. And there she'd be, devastated, scared, and alone, with a rotting corpse just a few feet above her. Now, I'd have handled the rest of the details myself, but being the gallant sort, I figured I'd give her a few things to do, you know, to keep her mind off things. So I laid it out.

"First. The minute I leave, you take every possible trace that I ever existed, bundle it up in a sheet, and put it by the door. Next. You get that big gray bucket from under the sink, fill it up with Pine-Sol and water and give this place a thorough, and I mean thorough going-over. I want you to scrub the walls, the floors, the fucking toilet, anything I might possibly have touched - look at it like you're a painter and you need to paint every single solitary surface in the whole fucking place. Do you understand, Baby?" Again, she simply nodded. I couldn't take the chance. I hated to do it, but I couldn't be sure if she was getting me. So I slapped her twice, once with the front and once with the back of my hand. Then I shook her up a bit, like a parent shakes a kid who just crossed the street without looking both ways, not to hurt him, but to make sure the kid understood. And I guessed she did, because now she was looking at me. I ignored her silent tears and went on.

And if you're thinking right about now, my brothers and sisters, that yours truly is a cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch, well, what fucking choice did I have? Stick around? Play cozy wozy and get pinched? Or beat it the fuck outta there, making sure I'd done all I could to cover my tracks. Sure, I might turn myself in later, once I had a chance to think it over, get a lawyer, figure out an angle. But for now, it was time to make like sheep and get the flock outta there.

Now that I'd had her full attention... well, you fill in the blanks. I can tell you this much - I had her promise, and I knew she would do the right thing, just as I had told her. I soon found myself on a Greyhound headed for Chi-town, $1100 in my pocket and my duffel under the bus. And her, she did what good women used to do. She stayed home. To do the housework, as it were.

I don't need to bore you, my friends, with the trifling details of the murder. How many murders are committed in this country each day? If you want those kinds of details, read the paper, watch the news, or put down the book, switch on the idiot box, and watch America's Most Wanted for yourself. This tale concerns itself with the shadows cast by a murder. With the aftermath, et cetera, et cetera. Know what I mean?

Anyhow, the second shifters were coming in from the daily pay van to cash their checks and raise just as much hell as their $28 bucks would allow. I knew I didn't have to worry about them; they had gotten used to me by now, and anyway, they don't watch t.v. in the factories. And cops? forget it, the only cops that come in here are looking for two bit junkies that made them run three blocks, or, looking to talk to Mike Segal, the big shot who owns not only this fine establishment, but the day labor outfit, too. As to why the cops would want to talk to Mike, I'll assume if you're still with me you pretty much understand how that works.

So that's it, period, punto, end of story, even with Adam Walsh's father breathing down my neck and my girl probably all broken up back in Boston being tailed by the man and feeling guilty for whatever slip she might have made, here in this bar with the rest of the degenerate non- voting 'public' I am safe, as safe as anyone I used to know. Tomorrow I'll shave my head, get some tacky tattoos, and, I don't know, maybe take up an instrument and play the open mic's 'till I get good or find another broad. After that...your guess is as good as mine.

Fade to black...

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