The Parallel Apartments (65 page)

That was a week ago. Today, the Reviewers were back.

          
Lone “Reviewer” Strikes Den of Iniquity

          
AUSTIN (AP)

          
by Binny Bake and Lofer Hagosiab

          
Austin American-Statesman
Staff

          
In an act of vandalism the police are suggesting was committed by the gang of vandals known as the Reviewers, an Austin woman's home was invaded late Thursday night.

             
“Due to the nature of the act, the thing that got acted on, and the implement found at the scene,” said Sgt. Towel, who is in charge of the investigation, “it is being thought by us the police that the perpetrator is a radical breakaway from the Reviewers, a loner with worse occurrences in his plans. Like murder.”

             
The police are not naming the woman, as she might be a victim of a sexual crime.

             
“We are on the side of caution so we're keeping her name anonymous,” said Sgt. Towel. “At the present moment in time we are focusing our ongoing investigation on finding a person of interest, who is identified only by the name ‘Mr. Brady.'”

Murphy stopped chewing.

          
“But we believe this name to be an alias,” added Sgt. Towel.

             
It is the policy of the
Austin American-Statesman
not to reveal the names of victims of sexual crimes, but we're going to do it anyway, because we found out who it was, and everybody else does it, anyway. It's Marcia Brodsky, of East Thirty-First Street. (Cont'd A5)

Murphy quickly turned to page A5. A5 discovered no continuation. Neither did A6 or A4 or A14 or C1 or D9 or
Parade
or the weather or the rest of the goddam paper. Murphy ticker-taped the entire issue and turned on
Fox News,
where the reporter Pamela DisGorges was speaking to the camera, a small white house in the background.

          
…erview Miss Brodsky this morning at the scene of last night's alleged attack.

The camera zoomed out, revealing a very attractive young woman standing next to Pamela and speaking into the microphone the reporter offered her. The wad of sandwich Murphy had been working on seemed to expand in his mouth.

          
MB: I can't believe this. I just can't believe this. I just cannot believe it. This
is unbelievable. Oh god. Oh, I was afraid this would happen.

No
way
could she be alive.

          
PD: Miss Brodsky, the police seem to suspect a Reviewer is responsible for this. Do you agree?

          
MB: He seemed like such a nice man on the phone. I can't comprehend why he—anyone—would do such a thing. He didn't even, uh, experience Rance before he… slew…

Brodsky sneezed and began to weep, tears glistening in the morning sun.

          
PD: Are we to understand that it—

          
MB: Rance.
His
name was… Rance.

          
PD: …that Rance was a doll?

The sandwich wad was now bullying its way down Murphy's esophagus.

          
MB: Rance was more a human being than Mr. Brady will ever be, more than you or I will ever be.

          
PD: Discounting the Reviewers, is there anyone else who might have targeted your business? Possibly a dissatisfied client?

          
MB: I. Have. No. Dissatisfied. Clients.

          
PD: Do you believe that perhaps the Reviewers targeted you because your home is not zoned for business?

          
MB: That's not immoral. Plus, I don't have to be zoned; I don't advertise on the property, so I'm totally law-abiding.

          
PD: Do you believe that perhaps the Reviewers targeted you because of your
immoral status as a major-league abuser of unsecured credit?

          
MB: How do you know about that? I paid every single penny back and wrote apology notes to all the card-company presidents and I go to DA twice a week and just last night I dreamed that Daddy was proud of me and no longer spins in his grave. Rance was making us rich.

          
PD: Do you believe the Reviewers targeted you because of your immoral and illegal occupation as a madam?

          
MB: I'm not a madam. What I do isn't immoral or illegal.

          
PD: Selling sex? I believe it is both.

          
MB: I do not sell sex. I rent out self-pleasuring opportunities. Rance was simply a highly refined marital aid. If you went over to your friend's house and said to her, “Hey, Jenny, mind if I use your vibrator for a minute?” and you said, “Sure, just leave a dime on the bureau when you're done,” that'd be just the same, right? And that's not illegal. As long as you pay tax on the dime. No one is being exploited. The only differences are that Rance simply has more settings than your basic off-the-rack vibrator, and more than a dime is being made per opportunity. And it's perfectly moral, too. You show me where in the Bible it says no self-pleasuring.

          
PD: Leviticus 25:5, “Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines.”

          
MB: Oh. Well. Hm. That could be interpreted in a bunch of different ways, I guess.

          
PD: Please answer my original question. Do you believe the Reviewers are responsible for your predicament?

          
MB: Predicament? Go look inside. Rance is in pieces. His ichor is all over the walls. That's not a predicament, Little Miss Scoop Reporter, that's murder.

The air around Murphy grew hot and bright. The futon beneath him grew moist. It was the first time he'd ever wet the bed from pure rage. Murphy uttered a grand tantrum. He threw his television at his iMac, powdering the screens of both and setting off a small pyrotechnic show; he opened up and tipped over his refrigerator, scattering the contents; he tried to rend a paperback, but it remained unified, further infuriating him.

A soothing voice in his head:

Murphy Lee Crockett, you will bathe now. You will hone and strop your bayonet. You will dress in black. You will put on your fake beard and Oakleys and Red Man mullet cap. You will go out into the world. And you, Murphy Lee Crockett, will murder the first person you see.

XXVIII

January 2005

Okay, so Murphy Lee Crockett had not been able to kill the first person he saw. He'd come close, though, and there was still a chance: he had left the woman tied up in her own apartment. Very securely tied. Hog-tied. Murphy then decided he would drop by the big crime convention, where he would browse and mull while his victim suffered.

The big ad in the
Chronicle
a couple of days earlier had not mentioned that if one presented notarized proof of a felony arrest the box-office people would let you into the True Crime Convention for half price, or else Murphy would've brought the paperwork surrounding his conviction for the gasoline-filled-light-bulb bomb he'd detonated in a men's room when he was eleven. Though now that the whole matter had been expunged from the official juridical memory, he'd held on to the paperwork so that some future biographer might come across it in the official archives (to, of course, be acquired by Harvard following an ugly bidding war between all the Ivies, not to mention Oxford, John Rylands, and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) and thus enrich the “Early Years” chapter of the biographer's official
Life
of the era's greatest taker of them.

“So I have to pay full price?” Murphy challenged the lady running the box office at the Palmer Auditorium. “Even though I'm a convicted felon with god knows how many other capital crimes in his past and future? Just because I forgot the proof? Just because I don't
look
evil?”

The lady, somehow moonfaced and gaunt at the same time, evidently considered the question rhetorical and so offered no response except to pop a fresh square of Nicorette and light a Misty 120. Someone farther back in line said, “Pick up the pace a little, buddy.” That person added, “Or I'll kill ya,” to the macabre delight of all those in the long line.

Murphy was a little tired of being everyone's mockingstock. After he'd cautiously snuck out of the woman's apartment after failing to kill her, he had gone home, taken off his disguise, and showered. He was planning to shave—the fake beard had been uncomfortable over his messy whiskers—but he was out of razors. He went next door to Porifiro's to borrow one. Porifiro had answered the door, Tom Mix in one hand, an electronic game of some kind or other. He immediately started to giggle. He did that every time he saw Murphy, lately.

“I heard,” said Porifiro, “that you had your date, man.”

“What?” he said, panicking. “How'd you know?”

“I didn't,” he said, falling into a vortex of giggles. “I just said that to see if you
had
gone.”

“Asshole. Well, yeah, I did have it, Marcia's a great piece of ass. What're you laughing at, you psycho?”

Porifiro fell to the floor and began to writhe in silent laughter. Tom Mix ran around the apartment, barking and barking. Porifiro eventually caught his breath.

“Brother, I used to work for that bitch, and I know the look on a man's face after an hour with that robot, and you've got that look, brother.”

“You—”

“You look down between his legs and see that ole robot kielbasa, and you figure why not, right, no one'll know.”

“I'll kill you.”

“How's the old cornhole, Murphy Lee! All loose and stretchy? Wooo! You had that coming, you closet case. You really thought I'd set you up with a woman? Why would I do that? And no, you can't have a fucking safety razor.”

Porifiro slammed the door. Murphy, unshorn, took a bus to the convention.

After Moonface informed him that there was no way he was gonna get any kind of discount, Murphy considered going back home for the paperwork, but on the way over, the bus had had to wait twenty minutes for a break in the stupid Fourth Annual Shin-Splints Awareness Day Double Marathon, which seemed to clog every single major thoroughfare and cross-street in the city with gimpy half-wits, most of whom carried a six-foot Styrofoam shin-on-a-stick which they waved and whipped and poked at the sky in order to draw attention to their cause. So Murphy handed Moonface two twenties that he desperately wished he'd soaked in blood before he came. These clowns would pony up a little respect if they thought he'd dredged money through blood freshly liberated from an unstoppable killer's most recent slaughter.

If. Maybe he'd change his middle name from Lee to If. He couldn't believe he'd been unable to kill that bitch. His second failure in two days. He hadn't even drawn blood, barely even touched her with Granddad's bayonet, one little poke to the back of her head. He'd probably scared her, at least, though he admitted she hadn't seemed all that terrified. She'd seemed almost like she'd been expecting someone to accost and threaten to kill her. She'd been more upset when he'd barfed while binding her up with packing tape.

He'd done a pretty good job of incapacitating her, though, so if he could just build up a little game face here at the convention, he'd go back and stick his bayonet in the crazy, disrespectful bitch's eyeball. He would not barf. He would not be seen. He would never be caught. He would begin plans for his second murder, his second for-real serial killing: Porifiro Mirrin. Murphy If Crockett.

Moonface slipped a ticket under the glass and a turnstile attendant rubber-stamped his hand with a radio-luminescent pigment. “Good morning,” said the attendant, who bowed her head, and with a faultless curtsey and a wide sweep of arm welcomed him in as though it were a Roald Dahlian fantasy-land painted in hard-candy colors instead of the world's largest celebration of criminal wrongs. Roald Dahl himself, a Nazi sympathizer who as a child had accidentally sliced off his own nose and who liked to dispatch his fictional characters in merrily repugnant ways, would have been quite at home here,
either as attendee, exhibitor, or subject. Murphy, who wanted more than anything to be a part of the world before him, gasped like a Little Leaguer in the Cooperstown foyer for the first time.

How many other uncaught killers were here, browsing the grisly booths? Would Murphy, by propinquity, recognize a brother? Would he, in turn, recognize Murphy? Would Murphy feel camaraderie, veneration, competition, love? Hatred? Would Murphy want to kill him?

He looked around at the crowds but saw no one with an aura that betrayed a past of ritual tort. In order to signal to any brothers (or sisters—loads of ladies in the profession), Murphy tried to flare his own serial-killer aura with a bearing-down and full-body clench, but this provoked only meteorism.