Come Out Tonight (40 page)

Henry-onscreen’s smile is gone.
 
For the first time he looks scared, really scared.
  
“Fucking shit,” he says.
   
For a minute or so you can see the wheels turning in his - my - head, figuring out the angles.
 
Finally, he leans forward, says, “Yeah.
 
Better death than being locked in that chickenshit’s body forever.”

Sirken looks shell-shocked for a second but recovers quick.
 
“You’re willing to waive your right to counsel?”

“Yeah.
 
Who needs Jerry anyway?
 
I bet he got his law degree on the fucking Internet.”

“Hey!” Jerry shouts to me.
 
“That’s not true!”

Sirken pauses the tape.

“
I
didn’t say it,” I tell him, but he’s still glaring at me.
 
Then it occurs to me what the hell is really happening.
 
Forget Jerry.
 
He’ll get over the insult of being a shitty lawyer. The only reason he’s insulted in the first place is because he
is
a shitty lawyer.
 
Meanwhile, DAMMIT,
  
I’m the guy who’s going to pay.
 
Edward - whoever he is - is selling me out.
 
We’re going down together.
 
He confesses, guess whose body gets the chair?
 
“What the hell!” I shout.
 
“Is he confessing?”

Sirken nods her head.

“But what about me?” I cry.
 
“I didn’t do it!
 
What about me?”

“Oh my God,” Jerry says, finally getting the point.
 
“I’ve never had a case like this.
 
Does Edward’s confession apply to Henry?”
 
He pauses.
 
“Is Edward my client, too?”

“Good question,” Sirken says, pushing play.
 

Onscreen, Sirken turns on the CD player, as if she’s going to record his confession.
 
I guess she didn’t want to alert him - me - to the fact he was already on video.
 
“Okay,” she says.

Edward’s got this faraway look in his eyes.
 
“Henry always wanted to break away from that tight-ass family of his.
 
He wanted to do all these outrageous things, but he’s just too much of a fucking chickenshit for that.
 
He finally moved away to his own apartment, but even then, here he goes and proposes to practically the first woman he sees.
 
He says he wants fucking freedom, but then he goes and ties himself right down again.
 
The guy’s a real screw-up, you know?”

Sirken-onscreen’s nodding, like she agrees.

“Shit!” I say.
 
“Don’t go and agree with him!” but no one’s listening to me.

“But that’s what set the stage for me, I guess,” Edward’s saying.
 
“I’m all the parts of him he couldn’t act on.
 
Somnolux shut the chickenshit parts off, but left the action parts on.
 
Fucking perfect for me.
 
Nine months ago, ten minutes after he takes a shot of scotch on top of the Somnolux, I come out.
 
It was fucking sweet, let me tell you. Suddenly, I have my own dick.
 
I can do anything.
 
Can go anywhere.
 
Of course, I just go hunting pussy big time.
  
Do all the fucking stuff Chickenshit wouldn’t dare do.
  
Fucking freedom for once.”

Sirken doesn’t dare interrupt him.
 
She just lets him run.

“Yeah, well, Sherry was already there by the time I came on the scene, so she became my major fuckbuddy.
 
But Sherry wasn’t really my type.
 
She had this ambition to be a Nobel Prizewinner or something.
 
It really got on my nerves.
 
She thought she was so smart.
 
She was always arguing with me - with Henry really.
 
When I was around, most of the time we weren’t arguing, if you know what I mean.
 
But if Henry had married her, she would have been hell to be around.”

Sirken can’t help herself.
 
“The night of April 30
^th
...,” she says.

“Yeah, well, she came late, after Henry was in bed.
 
I mean, she didn’t want to have to deal with him.
 
She just came for the sex, so she waited until she knew I’d be there.
 
Of course, she thought I was Henry: Henry with two sides.
 
But she was waiting for the moment when Henry was randy, and that happened around midnight.
 

“But that night she was fucking irritable.
 
She’d just come from this fucking birthday dinner with her parents, and her father was on her case again about how she’d screwed up royally at Vandenberg.
 
All she wanted to do was talk about Vandenberg.
 
She kept saying how totally unethical and illegal and sexist it was.
 
How the whole Somnolux thing was her idea, but they never gave her any credit.
 
How she was going to tell the fucking world about what went on behind closed doors, no matter what anyone said.

“Yadayadayada.
 
It just got on my nerves.
 
I guess I wasn’t being fucking supportive like she wanted.
 
What she really wanted that night was Chickenshit, not me.
 
Anyway, so she started accusing me of everything under the fucking sun - that I was a man, and men are clueless and stupid. How her father never loved her.
 
Whatever she did for him was wrong.
 
She went on and on and on like a fucking broken record.
 
It just made me mad.
 
And finally I just grabbed the first thing I could and hit her over the head with it.
 
She looked pretty dead.
 
I didn’t really mean to kill her; I was just trying to shut her up, if that counts for anything. Anyway, I figured there was no rush: she’d still be dead in the morning, so I just wiped the totem pole off where I’d been holding it, messed the room up a little, and went to bed.”

“But she wasn’t dead.”

“Yeah.
 
So when Henry woke up, he went nuts and had to call 911 to save her.”
 
Edward looks up and shrugs.
 
“Wasn’t worth it.
 
Now she’s a half-wit.”

“Half-wit?
 
You piece of shit!” I shout.
 
What the hell.
 
I’m arguing with myself.

“So, that was Sherry.
 
Jessica.
 
Yeah, well, I told you how we met at Ryan’s.
 
Jessica was a good fuck.
 
She liked to try new things, too.
 
Like we tried some sadomasochist shit, and she liked it.
 
She said she never had had such a fucking orgasm like she had when I cut off her windpipe like that.
 
Except sometime in July...”

“July 6.”

“Yeah, don’t interrupt me.
 
July 6.
 
I must have gone too far.
 
She was struggling, but hey she always did that.
 
I mean, your body can’t help fighting if someone cuts off your air supply.
 
It’s fucking natural.
 
So, I didn’t realize it meant she was really trying to tell me something.
 
When I finished banging her, she just lay there.
  
I wiped off every fucking thing in her apartment that night.
 
Took the sheets with me so they couldn’t get me on my DNA.
 
Tiptoed downstairs and out the door.”

“Damn!” I shout.
 
“That’s where those sheets came from.”

Sirken pauses the machine and turns to me.
 
“You still have them?”

“Yeah, but I washed them,” I say.
 

Sirken sighs, presses play, and the figures on the screen go on talking.

“Arlene must have seen me coming in,” Edward says, “but she didn’t fucking see me coming out.
 
Anyway, that was Jessica.
 
What else?
 
Oh, yeah.
 
Diego.”

Sirken-onscreen is sitting there rapt.
 
She can’t believe what she’s hearing.
 
It’s a perfect, CLASSIC confession.
 
She’s going to make Detective First Grade.

“Yeah, well, I met Alicia one night when I stayed at Henry’s parent’s house overnight.”

“
Henry’s
parents’ house?” I say.
 
“Aren’t they
his
parents, too?”
  
Jerry, watching the screen, waves at me to shut up.

“...Yeah, he had some Manischevitz wine or something and then the Somnolux, and I popped out in
Queens
.”
 
He laughs, Sirken’s eyes widening.
 
“So, I snuck out of the house and walked around the neighborhood.
  
What a stupid place.
  
It’s all fucking immigrants.
 
So, I see this woman smoking a cigarette in front of this house.
 
She’s fucking hot, in a Latin way, you know?
 
She’s got on these gold hoop earrings, and this tight skirt and a bodice that pushes her booties up.
 
Those Latinas fucking know how to dress.
 
Anyway, so I go closer.
 
She has a black eye; I can see that right away.
 
She’s crying a little.
 
I come over, and right away she backs off.
 
But I come on sweet and after a little while she comes around.
 
She ends up going home with me, and I fuck her up, down, and sideways.
 
She leaves me her panties to remember her by.”

“Diego found out?” Sirken asks.

“Yeah.
 
Alicia said she was going to fucking leave him, anyway, so she must have told him.
 
But Diego always had that Latino machismo thing.
 
He couldn’t let her leave.
 
He didn’t really want her, but when she said she’d found someone else, he fucking wanted her again.
 
Go figure.

“And he kept getting in my face whenever we were together.
 
I mean, he wasn’t worth bothering about, but he’d start shit with me all the time.
 
One time he threw a punch at me in a bar, and I had to fucking break his arm.
  
I told Alicia to leave him, but he told her not to leave the fucking house or else.
 
So, half the time we’d do it in Diego’s house when he wasn’t there.
 
Just a matter of time until he fucking came in and found us in bed.
 
He went for the gun in the bed table, but I got there first.
 
End of Diego.”

“We talked to Alicia.
 
She said she wasn’t even there.”

“Yeah, right.
 
Alicia’s a lying
Latina
bitch.
 
Don’t believe a fucking word she says.”

“I don’t know.
 
I didn’t get that sense from her...”

“Hey, a little respect, woman.
 
I just fucking confessed to two murders and you don’t believe me?
 
Well, fuck you.”
 
He’s got the evil-dude smile back on.

“Okay, but...”

“I’m done,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Shut off the recorder.”
 

Sirken pushes stop, and the recorder stops.
  
“Like we fucking needed that,” he says, standing up.
 
He saunters over to the mirror and starts to talk to it.
 
“Henry,” he says.
 
Shit, he’s talking to me.

“Hey man, sorry that I got you in this jam, but you gotta understand.
 
No way am I gonna rot away in your sorry body for life.
 
No way.
 
It’s just not gonna fucking happen.
 
Anyway, if I have to die, you might as well, too.
 
Too bad, Chickenshit.”
 
He looks at Sirken, laughs an evil-dude laugh and says, “Got what you wanted, Bitch?”

She glares at him one long second, goes to say something, but doesn’t.
 
The video ends.
 
We never get to hear if she tells him off.

DONNA

The phone was ringing.
  
In the dark I could just make out the empty side of the bed, blanket uncreased, pillow plumped – no one there.
 
I groped for the phone and picked it up.

“Sirken here,” I barked, half asleep.

“Detective,” Koslowski was saying.
 
“We’ve got him!”

“Who?” I asked, still out of it.

“Jackman, that’s who!
 
We caught him in the act of trying to smother the daylights out of his girlfriend.”