Cutter (60 page)

I could hear grinding coming from the guts of the automobile. This beautiful ex-sports car was about to give up its ghost and I was still too far from home to run for it.

Third gear gave out, and I was chugging along at a greatly reduced speed. I tried ramming it into second gear, and it worked, but I couldn’t get it going past 40 m.p.h.

Yet one more hillbilly with a pickup pulled out from a comer and cut me off. I thought they must have had some kind of obligation not to know about right of way, but I had no time to change myself into a traffic copper.

When I tried to pull around this latest stumpjumper and his Ford pickup, the driver, with full beard and John Deere ballcap, looked over at me with a brown smile full of fixings from a mouthful of chewing tobacco — and proceeded to try and run me into oncoming traffic in the lane to the left of mine. He brought his much-dented truck over and made a hit on my passenger’s door. I couldn’t believe this asshole was trying to push me into a head-on collision!

Reflex kicked in and I pulled the Nine from its resting place on the seat next to me. I aimed it at the billy-boy in the beater Ford. We were both doing forty-five, and it was fortunate the street was clear ahead of us. When he saw the aimed piece, he literally stood up in his cab and jammed on the brakes. So I sped away from him.

Now second gear was grinding away, just blocks from my house. More smoke billowed up in front of me and it was becoming more difficult to see anything. I had to hang my head out the window to get any kind of decent visibility.

Second gear gave out, and I downshifted into first. The best I could get out of the damn’ thing was twenty m.p.h. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, as though the car was trapped in amber.

Then I tried third again, bypassing second, and the car lurched up to speed once more. It was a miracle. I thought maybe these toys really were worth their high price tags, after all.

I got it up to fifty-five in this thirty-five m.p.h. speed zone and again I hit traffic. There was no way around or between this gaggle of cars, however — until I saw that the sidewalk was unobstructed with pedestrians. So I swerved over to the right and tried to jerk my way onto the sidewalk. As I did, something went loony with the steering. I felt the steering wheel give just slightly, and suddenly the Vette had tipped to the right and I was driving on two wheels — the right front and back. It was like in one of those Demolition Derby stunt shows. But I had never performed in an automobile before, and I thought my bowels had finally loosened sufficiently for me to dirty my underwear. I sped down that unoccupied sidewalk, tilted precariously on those two wheels for the better part of a block. Then I decided I was going to be killed or kill some unwary pedestrians anyway, so I rammed my shoulder toward the driver’s door and I was able to bring the Corvette back down on all four pegs.

I was beyond the logjam on the street now, so I veered the car off the sidewalk just as three women appeared in front of me. They screamed as I screeched the red, boiling-over Vette back onto the street surface. I had missed the three middle-aged females by about twenty feet, I reckoned.

Third gear was grinding again and I understood my luck was about to vanish like the smoke in front of me that was swept aside by the slipstream of the Vette’s motion. Amazingly, there were no police cars in pursuit of this maniac in a stolen red Corvette that was accordioned on both sides, flattened front and back, and driven by a gun-waving lunatic who’d aimed his handgun at a civilian in a pickup truck.

Don’
t
ope
n
th
e
doo
r,
Natali
e.
Don’
t
ope
n
th
e
doo
r
.

As this vehicle lurched and shuddered toward my home I thought about my wife being pregnant. I thought about her finally recognizing Karrios as she opened the door for him. She would think it was just a blonde woman selling perfume. Just a summer day with a door-to-door female peddling her wares.

The road was open ahead of me. People weren’t on the streets. They were at jobs, at their workplaces. Life was going on in a normal way for everyone but Natalie and me. No one else had a mad savage waiting at his or her front door. Just me. Just Natalie. If I were in any other profession, I’d be biding my time until my vacation at the Wisconsin Dells. You spent two weeks in the water and watched the waterskiers perform.

I thought I saw a flame erupt from the hood.

It was just a matter of blocks now. Just feet and inches.

Don’
t
ope
n
th
e
doo
r,
Natali
e
.

My beautiful red-headed wife. This would make three losses consecutively for me. Then I thought what a selfish notion that was, coming at that moment.

He would hit her with a mouthful of ether. That was how The Farmer operated. He would neutralize her with a cloth soaked in the stuff, and then he would strip her and ...

When he was through, when he was spent, if indeed he could have an orgasm ...

Jesu
s,
Natali
e,
don’
t
ope
n
th
e
doo
r
!

He would take his time with her. There would be no rush. She would be unconscious, so he would begin to do the things he did with all of his victims. Yes, he would work slowly.

I slammed my hands three times on the steering wheel. I could muster no more speed out of the red car, but my luck was holding with the still-empty street before me.

Then I definitely saw a slight flame from beneath the crumpled hood. This ride was about to explode. And then The Farmer would have an open field ahead of him. I wondered if he sensed I was onto him. He probably hoped I was, just so I could speed home as I was, just so I could see his signature and Natalie’s mutilated body. 

That beautiful body that had lain with me just hours ago. That body that contained my seed and my offspring too, I thought. That would be the final coup for Karrios. To kill our child.

My street’s comer finally appeared ahead of me. An old man in a large Crown Victoria was in front of me just before I turned onto our street. He was dragging his ass, so I swerved around him and passed him.

‘You stupid bastard!’ the Second World War-vintage geezer shouted at me.

There were clouds of black smoke rising in front of me as I made toward my house. This was my street now. Karrios had invaded my home.

Now I was just a couple of blocks from home. The tires screamed in agony. I was going so fast I almost flipped the car as I swerved. But I got back on all four wheels, and I could see my house down the block. The violet-colored ‘Katie Ann Kosmetics’ car was parked right next to my driveway, on the street. I was coming on so hurriedly that I couldn’t stop the car fast enough, and I crashed the front end of the Corvette into the ass end of Karrios’s vehicle.

I charged on out of the Vette with my nine-millimeter in hand. I got to the door and I could hear loud music from inside the house. I started looking for my keys, but I remembered I’d left the goddamned things in the ignition of the Ford. They were on a ring with my car keys
.
So
n
o
f
a
bitc
h—I
couldn’
t
ge
t
int
o
m
y
ow
n
hous
e
!

I raised my foot to crash in the door. The music was blaring so loud that I could feel the vibrations out here on the stoop. Just as I was about to kick my way into my own home I heard the explosion of a single round of gunfire.

I shattered the door handle with one kick from my right heel. The door flew open and I saw a tall, golden-haired woman standing in the middle of my living room. She had a scarlet hole in the dead center of her back. Somehow she was able to turn to me. It was then that I saw the nine-inch blade in her right hand. Natalie had clipped her just above the waistline. The blonde was gut-shot. A lethal hit.

But I saw also that the tall woman still had the strength to lift that knife and lurch toward me. As soon as she raised the blade, I aimed the nine-millimeter and let loose with two rounds. The shots were audible above the noise of the Rolling Stones CD that my wife had blaring on the stereo — the song was ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. The impact of my two shots jerked the blonde backwards violently onto our couch. There were two holes in the tall woman’s throat, and then the blood began to cascade out of the wounds. Again, she tried to rise. I heard the same kind of explosion I’d heard just before I burst in. I looked over and saw the smoke coming out of the barrel of the Bulldog that my red-headed wife still had in her hand, aimed at the chest of Marco Karrios in drag. The slug had torn through him and our new couch. The guts of the pillows were floating in the air behind the couch right now.

Karrios made no further attempt to rise. His eyes went dead. His blood began to ooze lazily down onto his summer dress.

*

The army of cops I’d called out was inside the house just a few minutes after Marco stopped breathing. The first thing I had done was to remove the knife from his grip. It was not really a knife. More like a scalpel for epic-scale surgery. I dropped it on the coffee table, and then I carefully approached Karrios and took his pulse. There was none. The ME would make it official, but I was glad anyway when my backups arrived and watched Marco so he wouldn’t somehow rise up off that couch.

I went over to my wife. She still had the .44 Bulldog firmly clamped in her grip. The hand, however, dangled at her right side.

I took her into the kitchen after one of the uniforms removed the wig from Karrios. When he took the golden hair away, we all saw the face that’d been plastered on the new renditions of the Marco Karrios posters. Here was the face that Dr Richmond — the late doctor — had created.

I sat Natalie down at the table and I was finally able to extricate the pistol from her grip.

‘You ... you forgot it this morning, Jimmy.’

‘I know ... Are you all right, baby?’

She nodded slowly.

‘How ... how did you know it was him?’ I asked.

She looked up at me slowly.

‘He ... she ... Karrios must have rung the bell. The dog started barking like crazy, loud enough for me to hear it over the stereo, so I knew there was someone out there ... I looked through the peephole in the front door, and I saw this very tall, muscular blonde woman outside. I was just about to open the door when I saw something else.’

‘What, Natalie?’

‘I saw an Adam’s apple.’

‘An Adam’s apple?’ I asked.

‘Yes. A pronounced goddamned Adam’s apple. It was jiggling in his throat when he said “Katie Ann Kosmetics”. Then I knew who it was. His arms were a little too well defined, too.’

‘Why the hell’d you let him in?’

‘It’s what we prepared for, wasn’t it, Jimmy? I’m a cop, aren’t I?’

Now her tears began. She started to shake.

‘He was dead, Jimmy. I couldn’t let him come back to life, could I?’

I came around to her side of the table. It was then that Doc entered our kitchen.

‘Well, it’s the Fighting Parisis,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll come back later.’

I stopped him.

‘You can stay. We need the good company.’

‘I apologize,’ Doc said. ‘I should’ve listened to your intuition, guinea.’ 

He patted my shoulder and then sat in the chair I had just got up from.

‘So Officer Natalie Parisi got her man.’

‘She knew who he was when she let him in,’ I explained.

‘Christ, Natalie. The hell you do that for?’ Doc grinned.

My wife started weeping again.

‘Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,’ Gibron apologized.

‘It’s okay, Doc. It’s okay. It’s my first shoot and I’m just a little unnerved.’

‘She recognized his Adam’s apple,’ I told my partner.

‘No shit. Really? Oh ... oh yeah. The Adam’s apple. That was very astute, Officer Parisi, ma’am.’

My wife smiled weakly.

‘Listen, I better get out with the crew ... You know, he didn’t make a bad version of his mommy. Maybe a little too much dark hair on his forearms ... You gonna be okay, Natalie?’

Doc’s face turned serious.

‘I think so. Give me a minute,’ she sniffled.

Doc walked out of the kitchen and into the living room.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked again.

‘I’ll be all right. I’ll have to talk to our people, won’t I?’

‘Yeah. And me, too.’

‘You forgot your .44. I’d just picked it up and was going to lock it up back in the hall closet when ... when that son of a bitch rang our doorbell. I put the piece in the front pocket of my robe. You know, the gray robe that I wear when I clean?’