don't suppose that happens as often in New York.'
'It happens,' I said, 'but probably not as often.'
'When you think of New York,' he said, 'you think of people getting murdered. Although the actual murder rate's not particularly high there compared with the rest of the country, is it?'
'Not that high, no.'
'It's much higher in New Orleans,' he said, and went on to name a couple of other cities. 'But in the public mind,' he said, 'New York's streets are the most dangerous in the nation. In the world, even.'
'We have the reputation,' I agreed.
'So I imagined that happening to him. A knife or a gun, something swift and surgical. And do you know what I thought?'
'What?'
'I thought what a blessing it would be. To both of us.'
'Both you and Byron Leopold?'
'Yes.'
'How did you figure that?'
'A quick death.'
'Almost a mercy killing,' I said.
'You're being ironic, but is it less merciful than the disease?
Nibbling away at your life, leaving you with less and less, finally taking away the will to live before it finally takes your life? Do you know what it's like to watch that happen to someone you love?'
'No.'
'Then you should be grateful.'
'I am.'
He took off his glasses again, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 'She died by inches,' he said.
I didn't say anything.
'My wife. It took her years to die. It put her on crutches and it put her in a wheekhair. It would take a bite of her life, and we would adjust to that and become accustomed to that. And then it would take another bite. And it never got better. And it always got worse.'
'It must have been very hard for you.'
'I suppose it was,' he said, as if that aspect hadn't occurred to him before. 'It was awful for her. I used to pray that she would die. I felt conflicted about that. How can you pray for the death of someone you love? You can pray for relief, but can you pray for death? 'God, ease her pain,' I would say. 'God, give her the strength to bear her burden.' And then I would find myself praying, 'God, let it be over.' ' He sighed, straightened up. 'Not that it made the slightest bit of difference. The disease had its own schedule, its own pace. Prayer wouldn't slow it down or speed it up. It tortured her for as long as it wanted to, and then it killed her. And then it was over.'
* * *
The tape recorder had a sense of theater. It picked that moment to get to the end of side one. You want to open it up and turn the cassette over and start it recording again with as little fuss as possible, to keep from breaking the mood. So of course my fingers sabotaged the process, fumbling with the catch,
fumbling with the cassette.
Maybe it was just as well. Maybe the mood needed breaking.
When he resumed talking, he returned to the subject of Byron Leopold. 'At first I just thought that someone might kill him,' he said.
'Some burglar breaking into his house, some mugger on the street.
Anything, a stray bullet from a war between drug dealers, anything I'd read about in the newspaper or see on television. I'd recast it in my mind and imagine it happening to him. There was a program, I think it was based on a real case, this male nurse was smothering patients. They weren't all terminal, either, so I don't suppose it was strictly a case of mercy killing. I thought that might happen, and I realized if it did the death would probably be misdiagnosed and recorded as natural.'
'And you'd be cheated.'
'Yes, and never know it. For all I knew some thoughtful nurse had smothered Harlan Phillips on his deathbed. There was a double-indemnity clause in that policy, too. So for all I knew—'
'Yes.'
'If Byron Leopold was going to be murdered, it couldn't look as though he'd died in his sleep, or succumbed to his disease. It wouldn't have to be disguised as an accident. I checked, and homicide fits the definition of accident for insurance purposes. By now, you see, I was contemplating doing it myself. I don't know when that happened, that the idea entered my mind, but once it was there it was always there. I couldn't think of anything else.'
He had never thought of taking an active part in ending his wife's agony. Even when he prayed for her death, it never occurred to him to do anything to bring it about. When he had reached the point that he was actively considering ways to kill Byron Leopold, it struck him that a knife or a bullet would have spared his wife a great deal of suffering.
'But I could never have done it,' he said.
