Orchard Grove Page 19

  Tears filled my eyes while I sat myself up. Rolling back onto all fours, I crawled my way up the two steps, and then pulled myself up into my chair. I grabbed hold of the whiskey bottle, didn’t even bother to pour a shot. I just drank from the bottle while droplets of sweat poured from my brow into my eyes and my foot throbbed like a beating heart. What the hell was the temperature outside? A comfortable sixty-eight degrees? Inside this house it was a sweltering two hundred. It felt like hell, and I supposed I’d better get used to the idea.

  How could I have been so blind that I couldn’t see through the ploy?

  The sunlight that reflected off a dame like Lana Cattivo was blinding. It also sucked me in like a black hole. I’d been damned from the moment she moved in and I was more damned now that they were all plotting against me. Christ, for all I knew, Miller was in on it too.

  Leaning over, I picked up my crutches, but then in a spontaneous burst of anger, tossed them across the room. I could either sit there and wait for Miller to build his case against me or I could do something about this mess right now. I could head back over to Lana’s and demand that she tell the truth about the plot to kill her husband and make it appear to be an innocent suicide. She wasn’t about to willingly confess to Miller about what she cooked up, but if I could somehow record her confession, I’d have the fuel I needed to at least save my tortured ass from frying.

  But in order to pull this off, I needed a bit of a convincer.

  Looking down at my foot, I saw the fresh blood that stained the sock.

  “Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” I said aloud.

  Limping into kitchen, I went to the silverware drawer. Pulling it open, I found the big French knife. If Lana, Susan, and Carl wanted to play rough, then so be it. Gripping the blade by the wood handle, I hobbled back down into the family room and, opening the sliding glass doors, made my way back out into the dead of night.

  When I got to the Cattivo’s back deck, I heard music playing. Although the lights in front were extinguished to make the place appear locked up for the night, the lights were still burning in the kitchen and the dining room. I could easily make out slices of electric white light as they spilled out through the partially open horizontal slats on the venetian blind that covered the big picture window. I made out the noise of laughter. People enjoying themselves. Partying. I listened for a male voice to cut through the female chatter. I couldn’t make anything out. But that didn’t mean Carl wasn’t in there with them.

  The French knife in hand, I limped over to the window, peeked in through the narrow space between the shutter slats. What I saw felt like a quick, unexpected jab to the face. Lana and Susan were dancing in the middle of the kitchen floor. They’d both stripped down to their panties, and they were dirty dancing to some sort of free form jazz that was blaring out of the home speaker system. Lana was stealing a toke off a joint while Susan gripped a long neck beer bottle in her right hand.

  This wasn’t the way people acted when death touched a close family member. But then, I guess Lana and John didn’t have any family to speak of, other than each other. Their bond wasn’t blood, but it certainly ended that way. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to find a big rock and shatter the picture window. I wanted to jump on through the window and strangle them both, then use my knife on them.

  Whiskey muscles.

  The better move would be to head back home, get my shit together, and try to find a way out of this mess. Legally. No more violence. In the morning I’d confront them both, make them admit that they, along with Carl, set me up to take the fall for John’s murder. I’d bring along my cell phone and record Lana’s confession, which I would deliver directly to Detective Miller. No one saw me shove that pistol into John’s mouth. No one saw me press the trigger. Only he saw me. He and God and the Devil.

  I wasn’t the least bit aware of it when my grip on the knife loosened and it fell onto the wood deck. As if on cue, Lana and Susan both stopped dancing. They looked into each other’s eyes without saying a word.

  “You hear something coming from outside?” Lana said.

  “Not sure,” Susan said. “Maybe it’s that Miller cop guy again.”

  The jazz was still going strong. Trumpets, bass, and drums. Something from the Fifties or Sixties maybe. Miles Davis or Cliff Brown. Sexy music from a black and white era. For a split second I thought they might both head outside to investigate, or the very least approach the picture window to get a good look out on the deck.

  I bent over, clumsily, picked the knife back up, then pulled back and shifted myself away from the line of sight.

  “Maybe your husband is spying on us,” I overheard Lana say.

  “He’ll be passed out by now,” Susan responded. “He was half drunk when he left here. There’s whiskey at home. He’s no stranger to the bottle. Seems it’s all he’s capable of these days is getting hammered.”

  “Maybe we just heard an animal,” Lana said. “A raccoon. Or maybe it’s the asshole’s ghost.”

  “I’ll go with the animal,” Susan said. Then, “Let’s go to bed, baby. If the police come back tomorrow to ask more questions, we’ll want to be well rested.”

  “Carl said there’d be no more questions,” Lana said. “He’d make sure of that. No more Q and A’s with that pinhead, Miller. But I agree. We should go to bed. But…” Her voice trailed off.

  “But what, baby?”

  “I’m not sure how much sleep we’re going to get.”

  I made out the distinct sound of an ass cheek being slapped. Then I made out more laughter. Susan’s laughter.

  “You naughty girl,” my wife said.

  Then Lana said, “We did it, didn’t we? We got rid of the bastard and other than Miller, the cops don’t have a clue.”

  “Not about us,” Susan said. “Can’t say the same about my husband.”

  “He’d be in the way anyway. Did he really think we were going to live as a threesome together? If he did, he’s more insane than John was.”

  “What about Carl?”

  “We need Carl,” Lana said. “Carl is the cops. He brings something very special to the table.” Then, she said. “By the way, sweetie, I’d like to congratulate you on your acting skills. Ethan truly believes we only really got to know one another just this week.”

  “You took a real chance sending me those gifts,” Susan said. “I had to flush the card that came with the panties down the toilet after Ethan found it.”

  “But he never would have guessed we’ve been together for weeks now. He’s the blind leading the blind.”

  “He’s gullible. Always been gullible. It’s why he bailed out of Hollywood. Some drunk producer would kiss his ass, tell him to write a script that he’d produce no questions asked, and of course it wouldn’t happen. Ethan would be left holding onto a ream of worthless paper. Now he’s broke and unemployable. A loser.”

  My head was filling with adrenalin. My veins felt like hot electrical wires. My foot throbbed in thunderous jolts of pain. The voices stopped for a few moments while the jazz kept on playing. I knew they were kissing then. Caressing and holding each other.

  Then Susan said, “Let’s go to bed, baby. I can’t wait any longer.”

  After a minute, the music stopped, the window closed, the slats on the venetian blinds drawn all the way, the lights in the kitchen and dining room extinguished. The pain in my foot was getting worse, along with the bleeding. But I didn’t care. Right then, pain was the only thing keeping me from breaking into the house and killing the women I loved most in the world.

  Loved and hated.

  I love you. I hate you…

  I felt the knife in my hand, gripped the wood and steel so hard I thought it might melt. Taking a gimpy step or two backwards, I looked over my right shoulder. I saw a light go on in the master bedroom. Like the rest of the windows in the single-story house, the slider window was open, so it was easy to make out the giggling. Giggling that lasted for a few minutes until the light
was extinguished and I began to hear the sound of something else.

  It was the sound of passion and pleasure. Moans and wails of two people who could not get enough of each other.

  All the oxygen in my lungs emptied out. All the blood in my veins spilled out onto the wood deck. I turned for my house, but as I passed by the sliding glass door, I put my hand on the opener. When I yanked on it, I found, much to my surprise, that it hadn’t been locked. Locking up the house at night must have been John’s job. But John was no longer around to keep his wife safe. John was dead, because of me. Me and Lana.

  I looked down at the knife gripped in one hand and my other hand gripping the slider.

  “Go home,” insisted the voice inside my head. “Go the hell home now.”

  “Kiss my parched ass,” I whispered to the voice.

  I didn’t bother with checking the time when I got back to the house. I just gravitated toward what was left of the whiskey bottle, and drank it all down. Then I found another bottle and started in on that one. I drank and I cried and I cursed myself for playing the fool. After a time, I began to laugh hysterically, because I was nothing more than a clown. A stinking, filthy drunk clown.

  At one point, my eyes connected with the bowl of apples set out on the table. In my alcohol-soaked head, my mind shifted from the apples to the memory of my making love to Lana on the table, back to the apples again. The French knife was set on the table. I took hold of it and began to stab at the apples, feeling the blade slicing through the fruit’s skin and flesh, knowing all along that the sensation could not have been more different than the feel of a blade slicing through human skin and meat.

  I didn’t realize it at first, but there was blood all over the knife.

  Last I’d heard, apples didn’t bleed.

  It had to be my blood. I released the blade and looked at my hand. Somehow, in the process of drunkenly stabbing at the apples, I’d cut it up. Cut my fingers when my sweaty hand slipped from the moist grip and slid along the sharp edge of the blade. I was too drunk to feel any real pain. Tossing the knife against the wall, I limped my way to the master bedroom, where I collapsed onto my back.

  In my head I once more felt my finger pushing John’s finger against the trigger, heard the gunshot, saw the brains spatter against the window behind him. Then I heard the jazz music that had been playing inside Lana’s kitchen, and I saw my wife dancing with her new lover. My head did somersaults as I lay prone on the mattress, fully clothed. I felt like I was spinning out of control while dropping at breakneck speed into a bottomless black pit. I dropped and I dropped until sleep overtook my soul, and I found myself in a different place altogether.

  I’m walking a city street in the dark of night. It’s cold and the city is empty, entirely devoid of life. The scene is desperate, post-apocalyptic. I’m walking without the aid of my crutches and the pain from the incisions in my foot are shooting up and down my right leg. The colorless atmosphere is black and white, but when I look down at my foot, I can see that I’m leaving a trail of crimson blood on the cracked macadam.

  A wind blows and sends a shiver up and down my spine. I feel eyes on me. Multiple sets of eyes. Then, appearing before me in the distance, two women. It’s Susan and Lana. They’re standing in the middle of the empty city street. Although they are far away they begin to approach me at the speed of light. They haven’t moved a muscle but suddenly they’re standing only inches away from me, staring at me. Into me.

  They look so beautiful. Angelic in their matching white dresses, their soft, olive-colored skin, and their deep-set eyes. Lana is holding a bright red apple. Bringing it to her mouth, she takes a bite out of it, then hands it to Susan who does the same. I’m trying to speak to them, but it isn’t easy. It’s as if my jaw is partially wired shut.

  When finally the words come to me, I say, “Why did you stab me in the back?”

  But the women just stand there chewing while a cold wind blows up and down the empty city street. But soon something starts coming out of their mouths. It’s blood. The blood flows dark red against the black and whiteness. It flows out their mouths, down their chins, and onto their chests, staining their white dresses. They’re no longer sharing an apple. Instead, they’re eating John’s severed, bullet-damaged head. The thing is, he isn’t dead. His blue eyes are wide open and he’s smiling that devil grin that I’ve come to abhor.

  “You know for a screenwriter,” he says as Lana takes a big bite out of his exposed brains, “you sure are a stupid fuck, Hollywood.”

  That’s when I’m startled awake.

  I bounded up into sitting position, as if my backbone were a heavy-duty spring. I breathed in heavily, the sweat soaking my face, soaking through my clothing. My head was filled with chunks of concrete and rusted barbed wire, and my foot felt like someone chopped it off while I slept, leaving only a bloody stump. I glanced at the time on my watch. Four in the morning. I’d been out cold for four hours.

  My hands felt strange. My fingers stung, and the skin on my palms was sticky, like I’d dipped my hands in a bowl of maple syrup before collapsing onto the bed. Flicking on the light beside the bed stand, I saw that the insides of both hands were nearly covered in dried blood. Then I remembered that I’d cut both hands with the French knife when I was stabbing the apples, and now the cuts had bled out and cauterized themselves while I slept off the booze.

  That’s when I began to hear the sirens.

  Soft at first, but then louder the closer they came to sleepy Orchard Grove. In all honesty, the sirens were only now registering while surly I’d been hearing them even in my sleep. It must have been the sirens that woke me up in the first place. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard sirens in the middle of the night, but there was that voice inside my gut again, trying to tell me something. It told me the sirens were meant for me. It told me the digital photos Miller laid out on the dining room table were just the start of something bigger and more sinister. Somehow I knew that he had enough evidence by now to take me into custody, and that custody would lead to indictment and an arrest for Murder in the First.

  I bounded out of bed then, feeling like my head was split down the center. I went to the bathroom and urinated. Spotting my shirt on the floor, I knelt down without falling down, picked it up and pulled it over my head and shoulders. Limping as fast as possible into the kitchen, I went to the sink, opened up the hot and cold spigots and washed my hands with soap and water until the blood fell off the skin and circled the aluminum drain. The sting from the many cuts was enough to make my eyes water. But they were only surface cuts, and nothing to worry about.

  Splashing some water onto my face, I then dried it with the dishrag, which I dropped to the floor. I located the keys to a car I hadn’t driven since my foot had been operated on. For a brief second, I thought about heading down to the pot patch to grab the coffee can I’d buried there weeks ago. A can that contained five thousand in cash. Cash I’d been hiding from Susan. But the sirens were getting louder. There was no time for hobbling down to the tree line. Not with my gimpy foot. I would just have to grab some cash from an ATM.

  Snatching my cell phone off the kitchen counter, I shoved it in my jeans pocket. I pulled my Levis jean jacket from the closet, and left the house through the front door. I got into my ten year old, top-down Porsche-Carrera that was parked in the driveway, and turning the key, set my left foot on the gas.

  It started up right away.

  Backing out with the headlights off, I shifted the auto-tranny into drive and toe-tapped the gas. I was hooking a left onto the cross street that would take me away from Orchard Grove, just as the blue-and-whites turned into the neighborhood, lighting the joint up in their red, white, and blue LED flashers.

  By the time they pulled up into my driveway, I was already gone.

  I desperately needed a place to go. A safe house. A friend.

  But who the hell would take me in?

  I had no friends. Susan had been my friend. Now she was gone.
/>
  Options.

  I might head into the city, hide in my writing studio. But then, that would be the second place the cops would look for me once they’d finished up with the Orchard Grove house. I could hit the northbound highway, head for the Canadian border two hundred fifty miles away. But I’d never make it past the border without getting busted on the spot. Plus I didn’t have my passport on me, or one of those special digitally enhanced new driver’s licenses.

  Going south was always an option. Mexico. But that would take two or three days of nonstop driving. By then, my disappearance would be broadcast all over the social media sites. Miller would send out an APB, the Staties and the FBI would grow massive hard-ons that pointed at me, and then the roadblocks would go up. I’d be lucky to make Ohio.

  I drove away from the city, knowing that they’d comb every street and alley for me. No choice but to hit the highway until I was beyond the city limits. From there I’d hit a back-country road, maybe find a motel-no-tell where I could hold up for the night until I scripted my next move. It wasn’t much of a plan, but then, I’d never run away from anything before. Never run for my life.

  Dead ahead, the entrance ramp to New York State Highway 90.

  I swerved into the right lane and drove onto it, then started heading east along a back- country road. The dark of night hung over me like a black shroud. The humidity was so thick; the air that blew against my face as I drove with the top down had little effect. Or maybe my foot was infecting, causing a fever from which I would never recover. Maybe it’s what I deserved for what I’d done to John. Or what the hell, maybe I deserved a medal.

  I went as far as the Nassau exit and got off.

  To say the place was sparsely populated was saying a lot. It was nothing but wide open farm fields and the occasional farm house. Without a roof over me, the smell of cow shit tainted the every single ounce of oxygen I breathed.

  Up ahead on my right, a twenty-four hour gas station/convenience store. My gas tank registered three quarters full, but I was in desperate need of cash. I could have kicked myself in the ass for not digging up my coffee can from out of the pot patch before I split Orchard Grove. It would have taken only a few minutes at most and I’d be five grand richer for it. If only I’d woken up just five minutes earlier, I might have had the time to grab the money and avoid the police. Now I was a prisoner to whatever was left in my joint checking account with Susan. That is, she hadn’t already emptied the sucker out. I also knew that the cops would attempt to trace every credit card transaction I made prior to putting a hold on all my accounts. Which meant speed was of the essence.