The Hooker: A Reprehensible Acts Story (3 page)

Lance
stamped on the gas and we raced from the alley.
 
He didn’t take me home.
 
He drove
west, out of the city and towards the reservoir.
 
At that time of night, the place was deserted
and unattended by security.
 
Stopping at
the fishermen’s boat launch, he handed me the Club, my murder weapon.
 
I didn’t have to ask what to do next.
 
I took it and ran to the end of the jetty and
hurled the damn thing as far and as high I could.
 
The Club’s weight gave it momentum, carrying
it out sixty or seventy feet before it sunk like a stone.
 
The thing was gone, I knew, but I remained
rooted to the spot to make sure it wasn’t going to make
a
reappearance
.
 
I waited until
circular waves created by the Club crashing through the water, had totally
dissipated before rejoining Lance in the Jeep.
 
Then, I knew it was over.
 
We were
in the clear.

Lance
drove me home.
 
We didn’t say much during
the drive and when we did, I felt the formal stiffness associated with meeting
a stranger, not my best man.
 
Lance
didn’t mention Hope and I guessed that was the way it was going to be.
 
Neither of us was to mention the hooker
again.
 
It was over.
 
In the past.
 
History.
  

Lance’s
silence bothered me.
 
I wasn’t sure if it
was a good thing.
 
In all honesty I
wanted to talk it out, get it off my chest and give Lance an outlet for his
shock and complicity.
 
But we
didn’t.
 
Maybe things would have been
different if we had.
 
Funny, I keep
saying maybe.
 
Crazy, I know, but that
night and nights that followed, I made mistake after mistake, and if I’d really
thought about what I was doing, things might have turned out better.
 
Maybe.

“The
limo service knows the time?” Lance said after a ten-minute silence.

“Huh?”

“For
the wedding.
 
They know to pick us up at
my place at eleven and not to come to your place?”

“Oh,
yeah.
 
Yeah, they know.”

“Just
to make sure, I’ll check tomorrow.
 
Have
you got their number?”

“I’ve
got the guy’s card on me.”
 
I fumbled for
my wallet.
 
I came up with pocket
lint.
 
My wallet was gone.
 
“I’ve lost my wallet.”
  
My mouth was dry when the words crept out.

“Did
you leave it in the strip club?”
 
Lance’s
question sounded like a plea.

“No.
 
I know I had it coming out.”

“Then
where?”

“The
alley.
 
It’s the only place it can be.”

Lance
was silent again.
 
Bile was in my mouth.

I
glanced over at Lance.
 
As the Cherokee
flashed by each streetlight, I caught sight of his red and puffy face around
his eyes where Hope had
Maced
him.
 
“We’ve
gotta
go
back.”

Lance
nodded.

***

We turned into the alley for the
second time that night.
 
It was empty
except for the dumpsters, trash—and Hope’s body.
 
Lance cut the engine but not the lights.
 
We got out.

“Where
do you think you dropped it?” he asked.

I
shook my head.
 
“
Dunno
.
 
It could have fallen out anywhere.”

“Shit.”

“We’ll
just have to look.”

It
was such a benign statement.
 
I suppose I
should have sounded more dramatic under the circumstances.
 
We were searching for the one piece of vital
evidence that could condemn both of us to the chair, after all.
 
But everyone’s different.
  
No one knows how they will react in these
situations unless they’ve been in them.

The
night wind gusted, causing the trash to dance.
 
Urban tumbleweeds clung to our legs as we scoured every square inch of
the alley.
 
We found nothing.
 
Lance cursed again and my stomach dissolved
to liquid.
 
I thought my next meal would
be my last.
 
What do condemned men eat?

“It’s
gotta
be here,” I said, a stammer worming its way
into my speech.
 
“Where else can it be?”

Lance
stared back into the street.
 
“There is
one place we haven’t checked.”

“Where?”

“The
Dumpster.”

My
Adam’s apple caught in my throat.
 
Lance
didn’t mean the Dumpster.
 
He meant
Hope.
 
But he couldn’t bring himself to
say it.
 
That was my first inkling that
Lance wasn’t going to bear up for the long haul.

“I’ll
check.”

Lance
didn’t leap to my rescue to take my place.
 
And I doubt I would have if I were in his shoes.

I
threw open the Dumpster lid.
 
Lance nixed
the Cherokee’s headlights.
 
We didn’t
need an audience and I didn’t want to see my handiwork.
 
I vaulted inside.
 
My foot snagged on a hefty bag and I
collapsed onto Hope, my hands slipping in something sticky and warm.
 
I fought my gag reflex.
 
I unhooked her purse from her shoulder and
rifled through it.
 
My wallet wasn’t
there.
 
I patted down Hope’s still warm
corpse.
 
I discovered a rigid mass in her
bra and it wasn’t a falsie.
 
Tucked
inside were my wallet and the sixty bucks.
 
I yanked them out.

“The
bitch picked my pocket,” I announced.

“Who
cares?” Lance said with both eyes on the street.
 
“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I
didn’t need to be told twice.

***

The wedding was a nightmare.
 
Lance’s face was an embarrassment.
 
It was all jacked up from the Mace.
 
The area around his eyes was swollen and red
raw as if he'd been sunburned.
 
When the
photographer snapped the photos, Jane insisted he wear foundation to hide the
purple and blue bruising.
 
I fared little
better.
 
I seemed to have changed
shape.
 
My wedding suit didn’t fit
me.
 
The jacket hung lopsided.
 
My tie kept unraveling.
 
I kept tripping over my own feet.
 
It was obvious we were guilty, but of what,
we weren’t letting on.
 
Not even the
blank expressions we carried, gave us away.
 
Dreams of the perfect wedding went down the crapper.
 
Jane hasn’t forgiven me.
 
Neither have her parents.
  

But
Hawaii was good for me.
 
I was three
thousand miles away from the city, my crime—and Lance.
 
Although I hated to admit it, I relaxed,
becoming myself again.
 
Jane softened,
willing to cut me a little slack for the wedding shambles.
 
I loved my honeymoon and I couldn’t stop
grinning.

Lance
wiped that grin off my face within hours of returning home.
 
The son of a bitch managed it with a simple
phone call.

“It’s
for you,” Jane said, covering the mouthpiece.
 
“I think it’s Lance.”

I
nodded,
matching her confused expression, and took the
phone.
 
“Lance?”

“Mark,
we need to talk.”

“How
about a welcome back, man?”

Jane
hung around in the hallway with a worried look on her face.
 
I shooed her away with a hand and smile.
 
I mouthed, “It’s okay.
 
I won’t be long.”
   

“I
don’t have time for small talk.
 
We need
to meet now.
 
We’re in big shit.”

Jane
left reluctantly for the living room.

My
smile dropped.
 
“What’s up?”

“Just
meet me at my place.
 
Now.”

I
hung up.
 
“
Janey
,
I’ve
gotta
go out for a while.
 
I’ll be back soon.”

She
darted back into the hallway as I slipped on a coat.
 
“Where are you going with Lance?
 
You two got mixed up in something before the
wedding.”

I
took her in my arms and rocked her and played down the situation.
 
“Don’t worry so much.
 
We had a little trouble on my bachelor
night.”

“I
knew it.”
 
She stiffened and backed away
from me.

“It
was nothing heavy.
 
Lance, as usual,
mouthed off to the wrong guy and got his answer in fist form.
 
But that’s dead and buried.”
 
Unfortunate choice of
words.
 
“He wants my advice on
something.
 
I think he and Katie have
been fighting again.”

“You
two worry me sometimes.”

I
kissed her on the nose.
 
“I wouldn’t
worry.
 
I think he gets lonely now that
I’m a married man.”

“At
least one of you is a grownup.”

***

When Lance opened the door, he was
grim-faced.
 
Dark circles ringed his
eyes, making his pale complexion even paler.
 
He looked as if he had the flu.
 
But fear wasn’t a symptom of the flu and that was what I saw in his
eyes.
 
Something had happened, something
serious.
 
That scared me.
 
He’d been the strong one, not me.
 
I was the one who lost his shit, not him.

“Hey,
bud,” I said, keeping things light.

“Come
in,” he said, scanning the street behind me.
 
Taking my arm, he pulled me through the doorway and guided me into his
den.
 
“We’re in big trouble,” he said,
closing the door.

“What
kind?”
 
It was a stupid thing to
say.
 
I knew what the trouble was.
 
Correction, I thought I knew.

“I’ve
been sitting on this while you were on your honeymoon.”

Lance
unlocked a wall cabinet and rifled through it, retrieving a newspaper.
 
He jammed the paper in my hands.
 
I scanned the front page.
 
I saw nothing that affected us.
 

“Page
three,” Lance urged.

I
turned to page three and there it was.
 
Transgender Murdered and Stashed in Dumpster, the headline blazed.
 
I scanned the article.
 
Hope’s real name was Kenneth Meany and he was
thirty-eight.
 
The story described Meany
as transgender and well-known prostitute before descending into the grisly
details of which I was all too fully aware.
 
The story finished with the obligatory request for witnesses to come
forward.
 
The newspaper was dated the day
of my flight to Maui.

“This
is two weeks old.
 
What’s happened
since?”

“Lots.”

“Have
the police approached you?”

“No.”

“What’s
been in the papers?”

“Nothing.”

“Then
I don’t know what you’ve been worrying about.
 
We didn’t think that Hope would go unnoticed forever.”

“Mark.”

“We
knew someone would find her.
 
And when
someone did, it would end up in the news.”

“Mark,
listen.”

“The
newspaper story is normal, something to expect.
 
There’s nothing I can see that should be a cause for concern.”

I
went to carry on, but Lance’s third interruption silenced me.
 

“Mark,
we were seen.”

Lance
transferred his fear to me, a killer transfusion in a lethal dose.
 
I took a life-sapping jolt of the stuff and
understood the chronic change in my friend.
 
I couldn’t breathe.
 
I couldn’t
speak.