Ask the Dice (13 page)

Except I'd promised you, Gwen girl, I'd do it that night, and a promise made is a promise kept. I nudged the office chair under the desk and on my trip downstairs, I realized he couldn't skate all night without taking a smoke or bathroom break. That's when I'd plant him. So, I waited in a lounge chair just off from the main entry to the ice rink, and he couldn't spot me without knowing where to look.

"W-e-e-e!" he shouted, whipping over the ice.

I shifted in the chair, playing on a Game Boy some absent-minded kid had left there. This was the right spot for me to be. He'd exit through here, the only portal out of the rink. This time I didn't nod off. Adrenaline amped my system, and I trembled like a wind-buffeted suspension bridge does.

Then the lounge door clattered open, and I was hunkering behind the soda machine. He'd removed his skates, and I saw he walked in green-plaid socks. That put us on an equal footing, so to speak. I gripped to the .22 tighter. My leg muscles quivered for me to spring out.

Then, like a hunted animal, he sensed my feral menace before he saw me. When I vaulted up from behind the soda machine, he'd already turned and ran, making for the exit before I could take aim to pop him. I smoked out two caps, and I may've winged him. Our chase was on, and he pumped his stumpy legs and scurried back for the rink. I was seven or eight paces behind him. We bumbled and slid over the ice. No more gunshots blatted out since I wanted to conserve my ammo until the lights out moment came.

"Hey! Who are you?" he shrieked over his shoulder at me.

"Your grim reaper," I replied.

"Huh? Grim reaper. Why?"

"Gwen Ogg."

"That bitch? She's crazy, dude. Psycho-crazy."

"You did her bad."

"What? No. She jumped me."

"Nice speech."

"I tell you, she's crazy. Totally."

At the time, I thought he was just venting hot air. But now, Gwen girl, sitting here in this hearse with you, I'm not as sure. He'd seen my face, and that was the kiss of death if he slipped away and ratted me out to the authorities. I couldn't let him escape. I don't know for how long I gave chase.

I was left sweating and chuffing for breath, and he tired out, too. When he staggered over a stray skate, I almost plowed into his spilled body. Somehow I braked a step away from him, lowered the .22's steel sights, and popped him twice in the skull. He didn't convulse or register a pulse, and it was another carved notch.

I cleaned up whatever evidence might hang me, including my prints, at the ice arena, and I hustled out the same door I'd entered. Nobody lurked in the parking lot, and I melted into the city night. It took me awhile until I got to a public phone outside a billiards parlor to deliver the news. You didn't pick up, and I left you a voice mail.

Still it puzzles me a little why I never heard right back from you. Can you tell me, Gwen girl, why that is? No, I suppose you can't, now can you? You're decked flat out wearing a pale blue dress inside this flame mahogany coffin, and you're dead as lead. Meanwhile, I'm left in the lurch. That can't be. I'm not going to take the weight for murdering you because that's the one I never did.

Irony of ironies, I'm an innocent man this time.

M
y ploy to masquerade as a hearse's wheelman fell flat after my one-sided talk with Gwen ended. It felt satisfying in that I got a lot off of my chest, but I wanted to slap off her Mona Lisa smirk. I lowered the coffin lid, scooted out from the hearse, and left in the coupé. Fresh out of brilliant ideas, I stopped off at a diner I'd used before and ordered a cup of coffee and Danish.

It tasted a notch better than most diner coffee and Danish. The refill coffee tasted better, but I refused the third cup when my cheery server offered it. Why ruin a good streak? I paid my tab plus a twenty percent tip and hit the streets driving again.

I mulled over taking my retirement from the paid assassin ranks. I knew cops and firemen in their high stress jobs took early outs. My chief obstacle was a light wallet. So, I sorted through the different windfalls—lottery, inheritance, gift—but nothing that rich gleamed on my horizon. My most approachable idea to attend a gentleman's charm school and marry a rich widow who then met with a tragic accident was a long shot at best.

Violence had taken its stranglehold on my life early. My birth father
Bradford
had been an ingenious fellow as demonstrated by the manner in which he'd died. I was six. One Wednesday afternoon, he arrived home early from his plumber's job, cleaned his 12-gauge's bore, and chambered it with 00-buckshot. He doffed his work boots and laid down on his left side in the middle of the living room carpet. An acrobatic marvel ensued next. Clutching the 12-gauge perpendicular to him, he steadied its barrel in both hands and braced its muzzle to abut his sternum. He pulled the 12-gauge's trigger by hooking his big toe in it just so and pressing to squeeze away. The booming out 00-buckshot pellets cleaved apart his chest, smashing his heart. It was curtains for Dad.

The local sheriff couldn't determine the reason for
Bradford
's suicide. He wasn't in debt. He wasn't mired in a funk or regarded as unstable. No homewrecker had blackmailed him. He'd done nothing the law frowned on. My stoic mom Nella took it in stride, her chin held up at his funeral and laying him to rest. After the uproar settled down, we slotted back into our respective grooves. I was back at school, while she waited booths at a Tex-Mex joint in
Champagne
's Folly. We'd get along okay, she liked to reassure me. I just shrugged, gouged on a smile. We'd get along okay, sure, I'll second that sentiment, Mom.

That was true until I sidled through the doorway the next Wednesday afternoon. Dangling from the high water pipe, Nella swayed and creaked in front of me like Poe's giant pendulum. Horror mangled up my guts as I stood there transfixed. The fecal and urine reek hit me like acid hurled into my face. As inventive as
Bradford
was, she'd rigged a nifty hangman's noose from her pantyhose, and the nylon held strong during her gravity check. The overturned kitchen chair had served as her trapdoor.

I clambered up a stepladder, hacked her down using a Ginsu knife, and phoned it in to the sheriff. Then I shrieked and writhed like a castrated barrow hog on the floor right beside her. The sheriff and his entourage flashed up, and they spiked me with a shot and wrestled me into bed. The sleeping dope triggered the terrible nightmares to boil in me.

The well-intentioned sheriff tried to lay it out for me. Plainly,
Bradford
had lost his battle with depression, and Nella, in a hellish instant, had followed his lead. Man-oh-man, that sort of dark, twisted shit did a number on your head. Ever since, Wednesday became the only day of the week I refused to work. Then I did myself a big favor and shut down my morbid recount of the events from those two days.

Mr. Ogg's dark suits weren't around, and the windows at Esquire's auto upholstery shop were opaque blots. My knocks rattled the door in its frame. The knob wouldn't turn. Where did Hermes and he live? Esquire had said they'd moved to a brick row house on a side street in
South Arlington
.

Arky's cell phone on the dashboard might give up their street address from the Web if I tried searching. Instead, nauseous from looking at the cell phone, I picked it up and flipped it out the window. How was that for an unreconstructed Luddite? Rita was the next person to pay a visit.

Our last phone chat had derailed, but maybe enough time had elapsed and filed off the edge to her scorn, and she'd hear me out. I wasn't Gwen's killer, nor the voodoo doll for Rita to stick with her poison-tipped needles. I tapped into my mental roster and knew of a public phone at a library branch no more than five minutes away.

Its parking lot was crammed full and after my taking one loop, a lady in a red blazer was backing out, and I pulled into her spot. The old saw that
America
was raising a generation of illiterates didn't fly from what I observed here. A trim, young lady with cornrows toted a fifteen-inch stack of picture books while her pre-schooler daughter lugged a smaller load of DVDs in her arms.

The mother had to read aloud to her daughter, and they burned through the books like my winter furnace did the heating oil. My sight landed on the despicable cell phone on the little daughter's belt, and seeing it broke my heart. For 50¢, the public phone by the library entrance scared up a dial tone, and this time I heard less stridency in Rita's greeting.

"Hi, Rita. This is Tommy Mack again."

"So it is. You're still alive and kicking, I hear."

"You bet your sweet bippy I am. I don't go down easy. Pass that fact on, if you like."

"I'll pass on the fact you're living on borrowed time."

"I didn't kill Gwen."

"Liar. I know who you are, Tommy Mack, and I know what you do since it's never been a closely guarded secret in the Ogg clan."

Anger incensed the flames reddening my neck and ears. "Just who do you think I am?"

"You're Uncle Watson's garbage man. When he runs into a disposal need, he keeps you on his payroll to go and tidy it up."

"What if I do? Neither of you ever refused to take his money."

"Why not? He can't seem to enjoy spending it."

"With Gwen gone, you'll get twice as much of it to spend."

She laughed, bitter. "There was already plenty enough for Gwen and me. Why did you call me, Tommy Mack?"

"For one thing, I've got a theory to try on you."

"Why should I care about your harebrained theories?"

"Because this one involves you."

"Does it now?" She laughed again just as bitter. "Go on then."

"You're the one who killed Gwen."

"Nice try but we both know that you did it."

"Oh, I admit I killed
for
Gwen, but I never actually killed her."

"You better explain that assertion."

"The punk son of a diplomat on D.C.'s embassy row got her knocked up. He taunted her. Devastated, she cried for some payback, and reached out to me. Late one night I did him while skating alone on an ice rink over in
Springfield
."

"I never knew that. How much did she pay you?"

"I think you do know it, and I didn't accept any payment but did it as a favor to a friend."

"Then you turned around and killed your friend."

"Sisters kill as much as friends do. What did Gwen have on you? What drives one sister to hate the other one enough to destroy her?"

"Quit trying to pin this murder on me."

"Blackmail."

"What's that?"

"That was the pretense your uncle used to lure me to Gwen's townhouse. Did you know she was being blackmailed?"

"Hey, it's been swell, Tommy Mack."

"Wait—"

But Rita didn't wait. Nothing was more discordant to the ear than when the other party hung up in it. I returned the phone handset, torched a
Blue
Castle
, and cogitated under the sign declaring the first 50 feet from the library was a tobacco-free zone. Her voice had dripped with venom. She could've set it up. She knew how to arrange such ruses. After Gwen kvetched to Mr. Ogg that a creep (actually Rita) was blackmailing her, he sent me over. I broke into Gwen's townhouse where I found her as a naked corpse, two fatal slugs pumped behind the ear, my signature MO. That's how Rita, Gwen's actual killer, stuck me on the meat hook I couldn't get off. I snuffed out the
Blue
Castle
underfoot and stuck its flattened butt into my pocket.

To quiet my caterwauling nerves, I stalked into the public library, bright and airy, where I hailed an ant colony of mothers with their broods scurrying about loaded up with oversized picture books and DVDs. The sap rose in my glands. Was it just me, or had the ladies in suburbia grown more lithe and striking? Two ladies in a row flashed their coy eyes, followed by knowing smiles, at me. I felt better.

The yellow legal pad and ink pen I saw on a wood table belonged to kids who'd finished their homework and rushed off to play soccer or go skateboarding. I was a kid once. Just yesterday it seemed like, and I straddled a chair, drew over the legal pad, and clutched the ink pen.