To Die For (25 page)

He said he knew what I meant. He said he could tell I never meant for anybody to get hurt. I just wanted to help my friend. Us being so tight.

“Right,” he said. “That’s what friends are for. To help each other out in rough situations.” I just sat there.

“Incidentally,” he said. “I was talking with your mother today. And she mentioned how glad she is that you and she keep a .38-caliber handgun around the house. Seeing as how there’s a murderer on the loose and all. I said I’d like to bring the gun in for ballistics testing. Just a routine procedure of course. We’ll be sure and get it back to you soon. So you can feel safe.”

All I could think of was, man, I wish I had some ice cream right now. And soon as he let me off at the house, that’s just what I did. Went straight for the freezer and cleaned out a half gallon my ma picked up, just that day, at Friendly’s. Butter crunch.

S
O WE GO PAY A
visit to the Hines family compound. Meaning a trailer over by the beach. Half-dozen junk cars in the yard, and a couple of kids sitting there, throwing junk picture tubes against the wall. They tell me their brother isn’t home. Their father’s down at the clam flats.

This wasn’t our first run-in with the Hines family. Russell himself is only seventeen and he’s been in the boys’ correctional facility twice. Has a cousin doing time in state prison for armed robbery, an uncle in for arson. Quite the family tree. We figure this isn’t a family that’s so shocked by the idea of a criminal in their midst. These people have got to be realistic. They can’t very well expect to see their boy going straight. So maybe they’ll be receptive to a lighter sentence in exchange for him agreeing to jump in first with a confession. Especially knowing if he doesn’t do it, someone else is bound to. It’s like playing chicken, you know? See who swerves first.

We drive out to the clam flats. Wade out in low tide to have a chat. Tell him maybe we can still prosecute the boy as a juvenile. Just because the kid knows how to hot-wire cars and has a two-year-old son, is that any reason to suppose he’s an adult?

Guy doesn’t say much. But I’m thinking we got our point across.

“Prosecute him as an adult and he’s looking at life without parole,” I say. “We’re figuring Jimmy’s the one that pulled the trigger, based on reports he and the Maretto woman were lovers. One kid saw them kissing out behind the dumpsters at the high school. Someone else spotted them at a video arcade at Little Paradise Beach.”

And then there’s that gold chain the boy pawned in the city last week. Is the father aware that that chain belonged to Larry Maretto?

Father says he’ll have a word with his boy. Maybe they’ll be paying us a visit down at the station.

I
WAS OUT AT THE
clam flats having a smoke when they come and get me. I knew it was coming. Didn’t try and run or nothing, when I seen the cop car. I’m not going to walk in. Let them go home to their wives smelling of dead clams I say. But what’s the point of running? Where to?

The one cop says, “You James J. Emmet of Number Ten Foundry Street?” And then he gives me the part about “You have a right to an attorney” and blah blah blah. Slaps the cuffs on me. “Hey man,” I say, “don’t I get to finish my stink-butt?” He guessed not.

They put me in the backseat naturally. Radio’s on, and it’s me they’re talking about. Can you beat that?

I’m thinking, What about Russell? Now do we go get him? And Lydia? Mrs. Maretto, I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen to her. I’m not thinking about jail yet, or the trial. Alls I’m thinking is shit, I don’t get to make love with Mrs. Maretto this week.

But we don’t make no stops to pick up Russell or nobody. Jeez, I’m starting to wonder, they aren’t thinking I done the whole thing by myself are they? Not that I’m going to tell or nothing. You don’t skunk on your buddy. Even if he is an asshole.

There’s photographers and everything at the cop house. TV cameras, you name it. I just duck my head down low as I can. I don’t want my mother seeing this.

They book me. Take my fingerprints and shit. Just like on TV. Then they bring me down this hall—for questioning, is how they put it. “You can have your attorney present,” the cop says to me. My attorney? Yeah, right.

That’s when I seen Russell. Sitting on a bench with his old man and this other guy in a suit, looks like Perry Mason. I’m just about to say something like “They nailed you too huh?” when I finally get it. It ain’t that way at all. Ain’t them that nailed us. It’s Russell nailed me. Asshole cut a deal with the cops to save his own hide. Me, I’m such a dumb jerk. I don’t open my mouth on account of I can’t get Mrs. Maretto in trouble. I’m still thinking she loves me.

I
WAS AS SURPRISED
as everyone else when I heard the police had arrested James and Russell for my husband’s murder. You knew the kind of element they were part of, and of course I was aware of the fact that James had this crush on me. But in my wildest dreams I never believed his jealousy of Larry would lead him to murder. In his perverted brain I guess he actually believed that if Larry were out of the way he’d be able to have me for himself.

Naturally the minute the police had their hands on the boys, they started pointing their fingers at me, saying it was all my idea. I should have guessed they’d do that. The part that shocks me is how the police accepted their assertions as credible. When any idiot could see these boys were troublemakers from the word go.

You’d think it was enough that my husband was brutally murdered, and I had to camp out at my parents’ house like some homeless person, not even able to get my own clothes or my toothbrush. You’d think people would leave you alone after that, or just try and give you a little moral support. Not charge you with being an accomplice to murder.

As for the girl. Lydia. I never mentioned this before, because she’s already got enough problems without adding the embarrassment of this. I mean, I said how she was hung up on James and all. But as a matter of fact, I think the sickness went even deeper for her. I gradually came to understand, from spending time with her, that she had a sexual obsession with me, over and beyond what she felt for him.

Not ever having known someone of that orientation before, it took me a long time to understand. But there was this one day we were at the mall together, when she insisted we go into this store together, Victoria’s Secret, where they sell kinky lingerie. It isn’t exactly the kind of place you bring a woman friend who’s your mentor and big-sister-type friend.

She said she needed to buy some underwear. So she picked out this pair of panties. Red, as I recall. And then later I discovered she’d purchased a present for me there too. A garter belt. She asked me if I’d please put it on sometime, and show her. I just pretended I didn’t understand what she was talking about. But then she tried to kiss me and touch me. After that I decided I simply couldn’t be around her. I don’t have anything against people of that persuasion. It’s just not my cup of tea.

So I told her that. And naturally this made her angry and bitter. So angry she hatched this scheme to try and ruin my life. Which when you get down to it, is pretty pathetic. But then, that’s what pathetic people do, whose own lives are empty and hopeless. They try to go and mess up someone else’s, that isn’t. That guy who shot John Lennon, he’s a perfect example. He thought he’d get to be a big shot himself, just by destroying somebody important. Same thing with Lydia.

A
LL
I
COULD THINK
about after the policeman left was now I got Suzanne in trouble. I didn’t tell about her being in on it, of course. I didn’t tell about her leaving the door unlocked and telling Jimmy and Russell to wear the gloves. I just got so confused, not knowing what Jimmy told them and what he didn’t. I didn’t know what to do.

So I called up Suzanne. “I got to talk to you,” I said. “I think maybe I said the wrong thing to the police and I’m so mixed up, and I couldn’t stand it if you hated me. You’re my one friend in the whole world.”

I was expecting her to say not to worry. We’re friends for life no matter what. Only she didn’t.

“What did you tell them?” she says.

So I told her how it looks like Jimmy told them about them being in love. The police knew that. Shit, half the school knew. But that didn’t mean everybody was going to think she killed Larry or anything. I mean, everybody was going to find out about her and Jimmy anyways, once things quieted down and summer came and we all went to Florida together and stuff. Her and Jimmy’d be going steady and everyone would see us driving around. But plenty of people fall in love that don’t murder their husband. Nobody said anything about her doing that.

Only Suzanne got real mad when I said that. “I should’ve known I couldn’t trust you,” she says. “A person that doesn’t have enough willpower to stop stuffing their face with chocolate when they weigh a hundred and sixty-five and their face is covered with zits, how are they supposed to have enough sense to know when to keep their mouth shut?”

I didn’t know what to say when she said that. I think maybe I’m going to pass out.

“Please—” I say. “You got to understand—”

“Do me a favor?” she says. “Drop dead.”

I just sit there holding the phone. And I even wish I could. Drop dead, I mean. That’s the first thing I think. I’m going to kill myself. I even think about getting my uncle’s gun again. I could leave a note telling everyone I killed Larry. Then she’d be sorry. Then she’d know what kind of a friend I really was.

It was like how you feel when you ate a whole pizza, and then a pint of ice cream on top of that. It was like things would never be OK again for the whole rest of my life. Which is probably true. And I even knew I was too much of a coward to kill myself. That’s how bad off I was—not even good enough to kill myself.

I could hear the TV on in the other room and my mom talking to her sister on the phone. I went over to my drawer and took out the silk panties Suzanne bought me that still smelled of the potpourri on account of I never wore them, I was just saving them. I can hear Oprah talking about this woman that was so afraid of dust she couldn’t leave her house, and she had to wear this special suit all the time, and a face mask and everything. I mean she used to be normal, and now she’s totally crazy. Just to come on the show they had to bring in this whole special cleaning crew and have the carpet shampooed or something. I look at the picture of Suzanne and me I keep next to my bed, and the Gap outfit I know isn’t ever going to fit, and I can just feel the waistband of my jeans cutting into my stomach from all the crap I’ve been eating. I think about going back to school in the fall, and how it will be now that Suzanne hates me, and even Jimmy will be gone, that used to talk to me. I think about how I’ll probably never get to Disney World now. I certainly won’t be Suzanne’s personal assistant, answering her fan mail.

When we were friends was the first time in my whole life I felt important. Just being around a person like her made me feel like there must be something good about me after all, you know? And then all of a sudden there wasn’t anything important about me anymore.

F
ROM WHEN
J
IMMY WAS
a real little boy—we’re talking three, four years old—I always said there was no sense him ever telling me a lie, because I’d always know. He has this kind of face, he just can’t pull it off, you know? You’d ask him, “Did you take the money that was laying on the dinette?” “Did you lift that candy from the store?” He’d get this look like he was about to throw up. He couldn’t even answer you. “Look me in the eye,” I’d say. “Just tell me you didn’t do it, and I won’t ask any more questions.” I’m not saying he didn’t get mixed up in plenty of trouble, because he did. But he was an open book. I’ve seen kids, they could stand there with your wallet in their hand and tell you, “Money? What money? I didn’t take any money.” Kids that could steal the pope’s rosary and show up the next day in church. But not Jimmy. It was like he figured he’d get struck by lightning or something, if he one time told me something that wasn’t true. He might say nothing. But he wouldn’t lie.

After Larry Maretto was killed, of course I got to thinking. Him being the husband of this teacher Jimmy’d been spending so much time with, and Jimmy taking all these showers and everything, always in a huddle with Russell and that girl Lydia, talking about who knew what. And then when that detective started coming around. You’d be a fool not to wonder.

But I never sat him down and asked, “You have anything to do with this murder?” I could say it was just that I never dreamed he could. But thinking back, I got to say, I knew Jimmy wouldn’t tell me a lie. And I was scared to hear the truth.

After they took him away though, and I was sitting here alone, I knew what I had to do. One minute you’re sitting there, reading some article in a magazine all about Tom Selleck or someone, the next thing you know they’re putting handcuffs on your son and taking him away, like some juvenile delinquent in a show. It doesn’t feel like your real life, you know? It feels like you’re on a show too. Only there’s no commercials. And it doesn’t end.

So I had to ask myself then, could it be he did it? And even though I knew this was a boy that cried when you’d pass a dead raccoon on the highway, I knew it was a possibility. He couldn’t of killed anybody for money, and he couldn’t kill for hate. But love? That could be a different story.

I went down to the police station. They brought him out into this room, just a table and a couple of chairs, the smell of sweat hanging over everything. They sit Jimmy down across from me, and I see his hand can’t stop shaking. You want to put your arms around him, but it’s not possible, on account of the glass.

So I just sit there, looking at him. I suppose some people, if they saw my boy, all they’d notice would be that crazy tattoo and that Guns ’N Roses shirt. But what I see is his sweet face. He’s got his father’s eyes, those dark lashes, that blue. He hasn’t been shaving long, so the hair on his upper lip is still that fine, soft kind. I’m looking at his pierced ear, that he never wore an earring in, on account of after he did it he found out he had them put the hole in the wrong ear, and he’s got the one that means you’re gay. That’s when he started wearing his hair long. To cover it up.