Angela’s leg. Dillon laughed. Again, Angela was struck by the thought that this had to be a nightmare. She didn’t feel any pain yet, and everything was happening too fast, like it wasn’t real. But then the pain kicked in, like a stick of dynamite exploding in her leg, and Angela knew that in dreams you weren’t supposed to feel pain like this. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and put it over her leg to stop the bleeding. It didn’t help. Her leg was wet and hot. She sat down.
Dillon sat next to her on the bed and held the switchblade against her neck. He said, “Snatch me wallet yah tinker.”
Angela’s mouth was trembling. She couldn’t speak. Dillon was grim-faced now, ordered, “Go for it, go for me cash.”
“No,” Angela said.
Dillon looked like he might slash Angela again. She started to scream as he pushed her down onto the bed. All she had on was a pair of panties; he got one hand in under the waistband, slid the switchblade roughly under the fabric, and sawed through it with two strokes. He yanked the tatters off her body. Holding her down with one hand, he took down his jeans and underwear with the other. Angela cast around desperately for a weapon. Dillon had the switchblade in the hand that was holding her down – she didn’t know what had happened to the gun.
There was a glass on the night table where she’d left it after swallowing a couple of Midols before going to sleep. She grabbed the glass and smashed it against the side of Dillon’s head. He let go of her, brought his hand to his head and brought it away bloody. Angela looked at her hand and saw she was still holding about half the shattered glass, a jagged, splintered wedge dripping water and blood. She slashed the edge across Dillon’s throat.
Dillon tried to scream, but couldn’t make a sound.
Angela freed the blade from Dillon’s fist and managed to slide out from under him. He turned to reach for something, maybe the gun, and Angela lunged forward, sinking the blade in his back till it couldn’t go any further. She tried to pull it out, but the blade was stuck. Angela stood back in horror as Dillon stood up. He stumbled a few steps, looking into her eyes, then he collapsed in the middle of the floor, where the circular throw rug beneath him promptly soaked through.
She couldn’t believe it had been so easy to kill the fucker.
Angela turned on the stereo to some pop station. It was eighties night and Debbie Gibson was singing “Only In My Dreams.”
The pain in Angela’s thigh, which she’d forgotten in the moment, was back now in full force and blood covered her entire leg. Angela stepped over Dillon and went into the bathroom and rinsed her leg in the shower. She knew she should probably get to a hospital, but she also knew there was no way she could do that now. She didn’t have any gauze, so she put some paper towel over the wound and wrapped it up with painting tape.
When she turned off the water, she thought she heard a noise in the other room. She waited, even held her breath, but there was nothing; the sound must’ve come from another apartment. She remembered what always happened in those horror movies, how whenever it seemed like the killer was dead, it turned out he was still alive. Angela wished she had taken the gun or something with her into the bathroom. She opened the bathroom door slowly and peeked her head out. She relaxed when she saw Dillon still lying on the floor in the same position she’d left him in, his wide-open eyes looking up at nothing. It annoyed her that the bastard looked so fucking relaxed, even Zen-like.
Angela had no idea what she was going to do now. With Bobby dead, she had no one left in the world to help her, except Max, and she knew Max would never get involved in something like this. He’d probably go to the police and say the whole thing had been her and Dillon’s idea, that he’d had nothing to do with it. The police would probably believe him too.
Then Angela noticed the white shopping bag that Dillon had left in the bathroom. She looked inside and saw five containers of Drano. She could only think of one thing that Dillon could’ve been planning to do with them. Well, as her mother used to say, waste not, want not.
Holding him by the feet, she dragged Dillon’s body into the bathroom, leaving behind a long streak of blood across the floor. Her arm ached, and it was hard to lift him up to put him into the bathtub. But she forced herself, lifting Dillon’s legs up first then standing in the bathtub and pulling the rest of him up and over.
Next, she put the stopper over the drain and poured a container of Drano over Dillon’s body, saying, “Who’s the tinker now, huh, you prick? Who’s the tinker now?” She added the other four containers and then she pulled the shower curtain closed.
Back in the main part of the apartment, it crossed her mind to throw his Zen book in after him. But she decided not to, thinking it wasn’t worth having to see his face again. Besides, maybe Max might want the book. God knows the guy could use something to help him relax.
Only then did Angela realize how stupid she’d been. How was she supposed to wash up now with Dillon in the bathtub? She could use towels to clean her leg, but she hated washing her hair in the sink.
She had small cuts on her hands from the glass. She poured peroxide all over her wounds, wincing from the pain, and then wrapped the worst of them with more paper towel and painting tape.
Angela was exhausted. She just wanted to get some rest and worry about everything else in the morning. It wasn’t as if she could solve all of her problems tonight anyway. She turned the dial on the stereo to an easy listening station and lowered the volume. There was still a huge bloodstain on the floor, in the middle of the room. She didn’t feel like mopping now, but she felt uncomfortable sleeping next to a pool of blood all night, knowing it had come from Dillon. She pulled the bed out, away from the wall, to cover the blood – that was better. Then she shut off the light and lay back down, listening to the soft rock music. She decided she’d just have to go over to Max’s tomorrow night and take a shower at his place.
Then, as she was falling asleep, she thought she heard faint laughter. It reminded her of a tinker she’d seen in the park when she was a little girl, one who had been laughing his mad head off. But one thing she was sure of – it wasn’t Dillon. At least she had one less nightmare to worry about.
Twenty-Two
He might have tried to hide it by dressing in a smart, well-cut suit and putting an easy smile on his face as soon as he saw me, but I could tell this straight away: Roy Fowler was one of the world’s guilty.
In 1979, when Max needed a lawyer for his business, he had picked Sid Darrow out of the yellow pages, figuring that a guy with the last name Darrow must know something about the law. But it turned out Darrow wasn’t nearly as good as his namesake, bungling a couple of simple contract negotiations that wound up costing Max thousands of dollars. Later, Max found out Darrow’s name had been shortened from Darrowicz, but Max didn’t fire Darrow for this misrepresentation or for his incompetence. Through the years, he had kept Darrow on the payroll, mainly because he was too lazy to look for someone else and because he figured that all lawyers were basically the same anyway.
When Max called Darrow for a reference to a good criminal lawyer Darrow asked Max what the problem was. Max explained how the police had questioned him last night about his wife’s murder.
“If you want my opinion,” Darrow said, “you shouldn’t have answered any of those questions.”
“I don’t want your opinion,” Max said.
Darrow gave Max the name of a criminal lawyer – Andrew McCullough. Max couldn’t think of any famous lawyers named McCullough, but he didn’t have time to be choosy. Once the police played back that security tape and saw him and Angela arriving at the hotel the situation would be way out of control. Max knew that Angela wasn’t bright enough to keep her story straight and it was only a matter of time until she mentioned Popeye and the murders.
McCullough wasn’t in. Max said to his secretary, “Well, can you tell him to call me as soon as he comes in?… Yeah, it’s fucking urgent – the cops’re trying to nail my ass!”
