Orchard Grove Read online

  Locking eyes onto the culvert, she knows she has no choice.

  Crouching, she steps inside the culvert opening, drops down to all fours, crawls into the pitch black, foul smelling opening.

  “Patience,” she whispers to herself. “Chill out, Lana, and it will all be all right.”

  She crawls into the dark unknown.

  She poured more coffee for me, this time adding a shot of whiskey. A concoction my long dead grandfather used to refer to as “Coffee Royals” but which she called, “Killer Coffee.”

  “How appropriate,” I said under my breath. A comment that went ignored.

  While I sipped the coffee, she began to script, in detail, how she planned on killing her husband. The plot centered around his love of guns. What she had in mind was almost too simple to be believable, but at the same time, possessed a kind of beauty in its uncomplicatedness. Like a rose I guess, its core thorn hidden from view until it pokes you. Draws your blood.

  First things first. We would get John drunk at the barbeque. After all, it was a Friday night, and he usually didn’t have to play cop on Saturdays. Apparently, his habit on late Friday afternoons was to stop at a downtown watering hole on his way home. In particular, a bar called Thatcher Street Pub way down off North Broadway where the abandoned steel mills were located. According to Lana, the cops owned the joint and paid “a special price for beer and shots” which in her mind translated into free. A bottomless well of alcohol for well-armed men who craved conflict.

  “I thought you said he and Carl were coming by for a final showdown?”

  “They are. But they'll come here first, before the drinking begins. That will provide the fuel for his alibi, everyone will know he’ll need to get good and loaded this afternoon.”

  “Nothing like a little heartbreak for working up a mean, mean thirst,” I said.

  She sat back in her chair and said, “By the time he’ll arrive back from two hours of nonstop drinking, he’ll already be pretty lit up.”

  “So what, precisely, do you expect of me?” I asked.

  “When he arrives, I want you to insist there’s no hard feelings over last night. You understand some serious swinging when you see it. If you acted upset at all, it’s just because you’re not used to that kind of swinger’s game. The mixing of the dangerous with the erotic.” She inhaled and exhaled once more, as if all this were taking a great effort to explain. And maybe it was. “Then, when that’s over, I want you to praise him for what a great cop he must be. He loves to be buttered up. What kind of pig doesn’t? Finally, once that’s accomplished, you will ask him if you can get a look at his prized gun collection.”

  “Gun collection,” I said, like a question.

  “A gunroom inside a converted bedroom. He has fifty or one hundred or I don’t know how the hell many pistols and rifles, all under glass on display.” She smiled. “It’s what you do when your dick is too small. How you compensate, I guess.”

  “You made that apparent last evening,” I said. Then, “There’s something I want you to know.” She looked me in the eyes. “I’m in love with you or maybe what I’m going through is some sort of intense, over the top hunger. But I will tell you this: I will not kill for you under any circumstance.” I took a second to catch my breath. “But the man put a gun to Susan’s head. A loaded… fucking… gun. He made her do things she might otherwise not do. I might not kill John for you, but I would kill him for that.”

  “Like I told you,” she said. “The way I’ve worked it out, he will kill himself. You just have to help him along a little bit.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  She got up.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  I tailed her into the house, where she led me to a bedroom that was located a few feet beyond the front vestibule. The square room had been painted black, and the windowless wall to my right was covered in floor-to-ceiling glass cases. When Lana flicked on the light switches, the cases lit up with a soft backlighting. The collection was impressive even for a man like me who hardly ever held a real gun in his life, much less owned one. I did however possess some knowledge of both pistols and rifles since I often found myself writing about them in my scripts. So it was no accident that I immediately recognized the collection of Colt .45s.

  Far as I could tell, the cases housed Colt automatics from every era they were manufactured, right down to its birthday in 1911. Besides the automatics, there were some Old West Colt revolvers (also .45 caliber if my memory was correct), and even a couple of flintlock pistols that must have dated back to the early nineteenth century. Positioned vertically on their stocks to the far left of the second case were several machineguns and automatic weapons. There was a Browning Automatic Rifle, a Thompson submachine gun with a round magazine like the kind FBI “G-men” used for killing rumrunners like Al Capone’s gang back in the 1920s and 30s, and an AK47 with duct-taped, piggybacked banana clips that surly would have made a terrorist hard as a rock. The collection was finished off by a mini-M16 and an AR15.

  I turned to Lana, asked her what I was supposed to do once I managed get her husband inside the room.

  “Persuade him to take out one of the guns,” she said.

  “Any gun in particular?”

  “I’m glad you asked that.” She made her way across the short expanse of room to a wood desk positioned in front of the far wall that also contained a picture window. To the left of the desk on the wall opposite the cases were a pair of sliding closet doors. Bending down, she felt underneath the top desk drawer with her fingertips, until she came back out with a key. Making her way back around the desk, she approached the case with key secured in her fingertips.

  “Naturally he’s the only one who has a key to his precious firearms,” she said. “But what he doesn’t know won’t kill him.”

  “Until now,” I said.

  She nodded and unlocked the case that contained the Colt automatics. Reaching inside she pulled out the first in the series of Colt .45 Model 1911s off the wall, and released the clip with her thumb. She held the clip up before me, like Eve offering up the forbidden fruit to Adam.

  “It’s empty,” she said. “Tonight it won’t be. There will be a single round inside it.” She shuffled back to the closet, reached up on the shelf, pulled down a green and yellow box that said Remington Pistol and Revolver Cartridges on it. .45 caliber. She opened the box, revealing the neatly packed ammo. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Help yourself.”

  I reached out, took hold of the one of the cartridges, rolled it around between my fingers. It was surprisingly heavy and solid for a single bullet. After a time, I put it back in its slot in the box, and she returned the package to the closet.

  “So I’m going to somehow load the gun later and shoot him?” I said. “That’s your plan?” I shifted the crutches just a little so that the rubber pads didn’t continue to irritate the skin that surrounded my armpits on what was turning out to be yet another hot summer’s day.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I want you to ask him to demonstrate something. For one of your upcoming movies.”

  “Demonstrate what?”

  “A suicide.”

  Those two words slapped me upside the head. But at the same time, I was beginning to see how her scheme might actually work. I was a scriptwriter after all. Naturally I’d be inquisitive and curious about how things work in Copland. Not only with guns, but also with cops, their dangerous lives, their successes, losses, depressions, and yes, their suicides.

  “You want me to ask him how cops go about eating their piece,” I said, a wave of optimism suddenly filling my lungs like cool, fresh air. “And because he no doubt has a friend or two who has actually succeeded at performing the ultimate desperate deed, he’ll be all too willing to demonstrate.”

  “He’ll cock back the housing just to make sure there’s no round in the chamber. But what he’ll be doing instead is cocking a round into the chamber. And trust me, I’ve seen him eat
his piece on a dozen occasions before with an unloaded gun. Of course, none of the horrified onlookers are supposed to know that it’s unloaded. You could say John goes for the jugular when it comes to shock value.”

  I tried to picture the action of his sliding back the cocking mechanism. I knew that if he were staring at the slide, he might actually see the round enter into the chamber through the evacuation portal. But I knew that if I could somehow keep his eyes diverted, or better yet, if I were to cock the automatic for him, he would never have a clue. The plan was simple but brilliant, as all plans are when they go off without hitch. It made sense to me. And if, in the end, he actually noticed the round inside the chamber or if it popped out, he would chalk that up to his own carelessness. He would live to die another time. But then where would that leave Lana? Dead, at the bottom of the basement steps?

  “The plan’s not half bad,” I said. “But like Adam said to Eve after she got him to bite into the forbidden fruit, What’s in it for me?”

  Loosening her shoulders, she allowed the kimono to fall to the floor, exposing her naked body.

  “How’s this for starters?” she said, kissing me on the mouth.

  But I couldn’t get myself to do it.

  My nerves were frayed and as much as I desired Lana, I couldn’t help but see that gun pressed up against Susan’s skull. I also couldn’t get myself to cheat any longer. Maybe Susan was also falling for Lana, but until we came to some sort of understanding on how exactly we would handle our separate feelings for our new neighbor, I didn’t want to stab Susan in the back any longer. Now, above all else, was the matter of John’s suicide. If I didn’t work with Lana in making it go off without a hitch, there was a good chance the son of a bitch would kill her.

  Christ, I need a drink…

  Sensing my anxiety… my conflicted emotions… Lana slipped back into her robe and began to talk about what I stood to earn should I actually succeed in getting John to kill himself. She spouted off about several life insurance policies, including one biggie from John’s Law Enforcement Union 82 annuity that would pay out in the high six figures, in the event of accidental fatal gunshot wound. All totaled we were looking at more than a million dollars, all of which Lana seemed all too willing to share.

  “But the best part about having my husband dead and buried,” she said with a smile, “is having me all to yourself. When he’s gone, it will just be you, me, and, if you prefer, Susan. We’ll be a threesome. Committed and in love.”

  “I still haven’t told you that I’d do it yet,” I said. “I need some time to think it over. So would Susan.”

  “Don’t take too long,” she said. “By this time tomorrow, I could be dead. And once he finds out for certain about us… you and me… he will kill you too.”

  I nodded while my throat constricted and my mouth went dry. She was right. If John was going to kill Lana, then it was also possible he’d kill me, and his partner Carl. Used to be my world consisted of my scripts and stable life on Orchard Grove. Now my world was spinning out of control.

  “Do you love me, Ethan? Or are you convinced this obsession is purely physical?”

  “That’s the ultimate question, isn’t it?”

  I felt my insides tighten. Like a schoolboy holding the hand of a girl he’d been loving from a distance for a long, long time.

  “Maybe it’s true,” I said. “Maybe I do love you for real.”

  “Then let’s do this thing,” she said. “Let’s rid this world of John Cattivo before he kills us first.”

  As I followed her out of the gunroom, down the hall, and back into the kitchen I started to think how strange and utterly bizarre life could be. Just a few days ago I was struggling with the pain that came from a foot that had been surgically reconstructed with four screws and a six inch steel pin that stuck out of the index toe like the sword on a billfish. I was drinking too much, smoking the green weed that came from my backyard pot patch, and staring at the blank page on my typewriter. Now I was contemplating a plot to coerce a man into committing suicide. Doing it along with a woman who’d managed somehow to bewitch not only myself but, quite possibly, my wife. And the most bizarre thing of all? A big part of me was looking forward to seeing her husband blow his brains out.

  “You sure that gunroom isn’t bugged?” I said.

  “I’ve thought of that, believe me,” she said. “But we’re in the clear. John believes that I would never dare enter into his private sanctum.”

  “Until now,” I said. “I guess we’ve officially defiled the place merely with our presence.”

  But then I recalled Lana’s and John’s argument outside on the back deck two morning’s ago when he accused her of once more playing with the next door neighbor while the cat was away.

  “Have you had a lot of boyfriends, Lana?” I asked. “Extramarital boyfriends? Girlfriends?”

  “I do what I want, when I want,” she said, heading for the open door.

  “Why have you stayed with him this long?”

  “Like I said. I have no career of my own, no money, no family. I have only John and he’s a cop. The police network is vast. He could make things very miserable for me if I were to pack a bag right now and slip out the back, Jack. You could say I’m trapped.”

  “But should he accidentally die,” I said, “you’d have a bright future.”

  “Correction,” she said. “We’ll have a bright future.”

  “What about Carl? He in love with you too?”

  She bit down on her bottom lip.

  “I despise that man,” she said. “Yes, if you need to know. Listen, it was a mistake sleeping with him, even if it did only happen once. Just once. And once was enough. Now he will not leave me alone.”

  I pictured the big, goateed man, felt his cold, soft handshake, his even colder stare.

  “I know he’s coming here this afternoon. But what if he gets belligerent and happens to show up later tonight? What if he decides to join us for dinner, regardless of what John feels about him?”

  “He won’t. He has a wife and a little baby girl at home. The protectors of Albany place family first. Even before illicit lays like myself.”

  She took a step, as if about to head back outside.

  “Wait,” I said. “If we do this tonight. If we pull it off, what’s to stop you from sleeping with all the people you want to sleep with? What’s to stop you from cutting me out altogether?”

  She grinned and stared into me with blue eyes that stabbed through me like a blade through rotten fruit. But in this case, flesh and blood.

  “There isn’t anything to stop me,” she said through a sly smirk. “Chance you gotta take. Does that bother you?”

  A rock settled itself inside my sternum. I felt my heart struggling to pump blood far faster than it needed to be pumped, like my brain had nothing to do with controlling my functions anymore, having given over to a greater power. Surrounding me on all sides was the home of a cop. A gunroom filled with guns of all shapes and sizes and killing capacities. On the other side, a photographic essay of the cop’s career thus far. Standing directly before me, the young blonde trophy wife who wanted the cop dead.

  I had to ask myself, Why was I helpless in the face of Lana’s evil? Why did I still want her more than anything in the world? Why was I so willing to do almost anything for her if only it meant I could have her all to myself? If only I’d had some bullets to go with the guns, I might have shot her on the spot and ended the source of my obsession right there and then. That’s how much I hated her at that very moment. Or maybe it’s more true to say that I hated myself for becoming her slave.

  The strength in her was enormous as it was deeply rooted, like that apple tree outback that had survived its own murder, only to grow back distorted and poisoned. That strength was matched only by my weakness. We are prisoners to our most basic desires to varying degrees. But I was a prisoner more than most. Perhaps John’s partner Carl was as well. My guess is that John became a slave a long time a
go, and over the years his soul became sick and crippled, changing him forever. I could only wonder how many slaves there had been along the way. I wondered how many of them had survived the experience, and how many of them now resided six feet under, smiles on their stiff, cold, rotting faces, forever happy to be rid of the shackles called Lana.

  “You coming… Killer?” she said, making her way through the kitchen, into the living room, and down the two steps to the sliding glass doors.

  Killer… that’s me…

  “Yes,” I said, gripping my crutch handles. “The killer is right behind you.”

  I left Lana standing on the back deck, sunglasses covering her eyes, arms wrapped around her chest. I hobbled back to my house where I immediately poured myself a late morning shot of Jack Daniels. Sitting myself down before my typewriter, I stared at my pages of notes. But all I could see was Lana. And when I saw Lana I began to see John, and how he would look with a bullet having barreled through his brains. Saw the blood even before it began to spray out of his skull along with his brains.

  What the hell was I about to do?

  Reaching out with both hands, I typed those very words.

  What the hell am I about to do?

  What the hell am I about to do?

  What the hell am I about to do?

  The sudden bang and motorized noise of the ceiling-mounted chain pulling open the overhead garage door nearly shot me out of my chair and through the roof. Susan was home early. When she came through the door, I immediately turned to see that her tight face bore the expression of a determined woman. She never spoke a word when she took hold of my hand and assisted me with standing up. Then, pulling down her jeans and panties, she bent herself over the table in the space between my typewriter and the bowl of apples. In the same exact place where I had Lana two days before.