Authors: Joyce Maynard
It was working too. I almost didn’t even notice when the door starts to open. Then I hear his voice. “Honey,” he says. He sets down his gym bag. Reaches for the light switch. That’s when Russell gets him by the neck.
“What the hell?” he says. And Russell tells him not to move.
He seems like the type that doesn’t want to make trouble. He tells us we should just take what we want and get out of here. He don’t know what we want is him.
Now I know what Russell wants me to do. Now’s when I’m supposed to put the gun up to his head and blow him away. There’s no point having a big discussion. Only I can’t move. It’s like someone pulled the plug on me, and I can’t do nothing but stand there looking at him.
I guess I never really thought about him before. Or if I did I pictured him more like someone’s dad. Some guy in a suit. But basically, this guy looked like he could go to my school. He wouldn’t be the type to hang around with me or nothing. He’d be one of the guys that plays on a team and dates the prettiest girls. But you knew he was an OK guy. Just because you lived over by the clam flats, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t ask you how’s it going when he bumped into you in the hall. He’s the type that’s friends with everyone.
Now Russell’s getting antsy. He says my name. “Now,” he says. And when he says that, you knew the guy understood what he was talking about. So I figure, right. Now’s the time. Here I go. Just like I’m on the basketball court you know. And I’m about to take that foul shot. Just like I’m playing Super Mario Brothers 3, and in one-tenth of a second is the time I’m supposed to push my zapper.
“Wait,” he says. That’s enough to where I miss my opening. I’m off center again, you know. I got to build myself up again.
Russell there, he’s pissed. You knew he’d grab the gun and do it himself, only he’s got to hold the guy down. But he’s giving me this look.
OK, I think. I make myself picture Mrs. Maretto again, and the December
Penthouse
Pet. I’m getting back on the track. I put the gun up against his hair. Russell tells him to hand over his gold chain and his watch. “Now the ring,” says Russ.
“Not my ring,” says Larry. “My wife would kill me.”
Well that shook me. Even Russell, you could tell he wasn’t prepared for the guy to say something like that. Neither one of us can think what to do next, so we just stand there, holding him down. Larry’s on his knees at this point, with his hands in front of him, like he’s praying.
“Hold on,” he says. Man, he’s desperate now, you can smell it. “Just wait a second,” he says. “Don’t do anything.”
Russell says “Now, Jim.” Another minute and I figure he’s going to blow us both away—Larry, and me too. And I’m practically thinking that would be OK. For a second there, I can’t even remember why we’re even doing this.
Larry turns to Russell and looks him right in the eye. “You know my wife?” he says. That’s when it’s like I got a new energy pack. I wake up. All the static goes away. I’m clear again. It’s like I’m just playing Nintendo again, and alls I got to do is push the buttons, nothing else matters. I pull the trigger. He goes limp. Blood everywhere. But what I seen was his mouth, just hanging open like one of them sea gulls. Or like a guy that just finished fucking, came all over the place, and fell asleep. I mean, if you saw a dead person like I did you’d know it too: dying and coming look about the same. Only when you die you don’t wake up again naturally. And there’s the blood.
I
NEVER SAW NOBODY
dead before. I killed a cat one time, back when I was a kid and you did dumb stuff for no particular reason—nobody paid me or nothing. I seen my grandmother’s stump, from where they cut off her foot after she stepped on a clam shell and it got infected. I even seen this guy that didn’t have no eyeball, took out his glass eye and put an olive in the hole, at this club over at Little Paradise. He was plastered at the time but I mean, the rest of us wasn’t exactly ready to walk on no tightrope neither. I never seen no dead person before though.
They don’t look the same as alive people, I’ll tell you that right now. I mean, not just because half the top of his head got blowed off. That’s the obvious part. And not just because there’s blood all over the place, and he’s not moving, except for a second there, when his leg keeps twitching like it hasn’t got the news.
Usually when a person’s mouth is open it’s on account of they’re saying something. That or they’re eating. Him, his mouth was open but he wasn’t making a sound. “You know my wife?” That’s the last thing he said. And then his lips just stayed in that position where they left off, and you kind of wondered what he’d be saying now, if he knew.
If he knew, he’d be saying what a cunt she was. If he knew, man, he’d be pissed. Jimmy had this theory we was kind of doing the guy a good deed on account of how he loved her so much if he knew she didn’t love him no more he’d want to be dead. “Get real,” I told him. “The guy just wanted nookie same as you, and if she left him he’d do the same as you’ll be doing, a week, two weeks from now. Sniffing down some more.”
But the thing is, he never did know. He had this blank look on his face like he’s around five years old, watching “Sesame Street,” and alls he wants is a bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes. His eyes—he was like a deer I hit one time in the Pontiac—that’s where the big dent in my front fender came from if you wondered. Second before I hit her, I seen her face in my headlights, plain as a target. She don’t know she’s about to be dead. She don’t even know what dead is. She just don’t know, period. Don’t know what’s happening. Don’t know what it’s all about. Don’t know twelve hours from now I’ll be roasting her butt over the coals down by the clam flats. Man, you should’ve tasted that venison. She don’t know her heart’s about to stop beating, but then she don’t know she got a heart.
That was him. Utterly clueless.
M
Y WIFE AND
I were just lying in bed watching “LA Law” when I heard the screaming. You hear this voice outside yelling, “My husband’s been murdered!” well believe me, you get up pretty quick and go see what’s the matter. Of course I put on my bathrobe first. When I heard her I was just wearing my skivvies.
It was her, Suzanne Maretto, standing out in the cul-de-sac, running back and forth yelling, “Help, someone help me,” and so forth. Don’t ask me why I remember this but she had high heels on, and she was wobbling when she ran.
“Whoa, there!” I say when I get up close. I put my hands on her shoulders. “What’s going on?” I say.
“I’ve got to use your phone,” she says. “There’s been a murder. My husband’s dead.”
Situation like this, you’re hoping she’s just gone crazy, PMS or some such. You should see my wife at that time of the month. You never know. Only in Suzanne Maretto’s case I could kind of tell it wasn’t some drug trip or what have you. Even though she’s saying these terrible things, and she’s obviously upset, she’s also what you might call under control. She introduces herself. “I’m Suzanne Maretto from number six,” she says. “The one with the Lhasa apso?”
Now I remember, because she was always out walking that dog.
“If only he’d been here tonight this might never have happened,” she said. “He’s off at the kennel being groomed.”
By now my wife’s out there with us. “Come on in the house,” she says. “You can wait over at our place while Dick calls the police.”
So we do. And of course it doesn’t take long—a minute, maybe three at the most. Cynthia pours her a shot of whiskey, but she doesn’t take it. “I was auditioning for a big television job,” she says. “That’s why I’m wearing these clothes. It was for arts and entertainment reporter.”
What’s her husband’s name? Cynthia wants to know. “Larry,” she tells her. “Oh no,” says Cynthia. I guess he used to come over and kid around with Matthew sometimes, when Cynthia’d have him out on his tricycle. “Such a nice guy.”
“He managed his parents’ restaurant,” she says. “Maretto’s. We just got married last June.”
“Tragic,” I say. “Who’d do such a thing?”
I wasn’t really expecting an answer from her at a time like that but she gave me one. How she figured there must have been burglars broke in their place. The TV was disconnected from the cable when she came in, and her jewelry all over the place. “I figure it was a case of Larry just coming in to the wrong place at the wrong time,” she says. “He must’ve surprised them.” She said maybe they were on drugs or something. It was probably kids that are always listening to tapes of that 2 Live Crew type of junk. It gives them ideas. The younger generation has no respect for human life anymore.
This is when the cops come in. Two cars, blue lights everywhere. Now half the development is up too, everybody out in the street in their bathrobes and stuff, trying to find out what happened. A little later on, after the cops were in there a while, I see this little crowd form near their front door, so I think maybe there’s a detective that found some clues, and I try to move in to hear better.
And you know who’s in the middle of the crowd, answering the questions? It’s no cop after all. It’s her. You’d think she was the White House press secretary to hear her talk.
I
WAS IN
C
INCINNATI
that night. Just as we’re all coming off the ice after this big final number we do. Pat, one of our stage managers, calls me over and says there’s some kind of emergency, and I’m supposed to call home right away. So I run right over to a phone with my skate guards still on and my show outfit. I mean, when they call you on the road like that you know something terrible’s happened.
It was my uncle that answered. My parents were down at the police station already. When he said it was Larry I just let out this scream. All these other skaters nearby who were taking off their costumes came running over naturally. But I couldn’t even talk. All I could say was “my little brother.”
Crazy things pop into your head at a moment like that. There was this Halloween one time when I dressed up like a witch. Larry couldn’t have been more than three. When I came out of my room to show him how I looked he didn’t even know it was me. He wouldn’t stop crying until I washed off all the makeup. “See,” said Mom. “It’s just Janice.”
Sometimes I’d hang around with him and his friends, back when they had this little rock group in junior high. He was a really terrible drummer, but he loved it and nobody had the heart to tell him.
I never liked Suzanne. Even back when they were first engaged and everyone was saying how great it was that he’d found a girl like her, how pretty she was and what great places she was headed. You see girls like that at the rink. They’ll kick their blade into your shin and pretend it was an accident. Cut you off in a jump and make it look like it was your mistake. I mean, some people would skate in the middle of a deserted lake, just for the feeling of sweeping across the ice. And then there are the ones that would just shrivel up and die if there wasn’t someone out there cheering for them every second, telling them how great they are. That was her.
The next morning, when my flight got in, my uncle told me how they’d found all her jewelry and stuff disturbed, and it looked like burglars did it. But I never really bought that. My first thought, when I heard the news, was Suzanne. I can’t say I ever would’ve pictured some other guy involved. I mean, there was just no reason to want to kill a guy like Larry.
But I had to figure, one way or another, he must’ve gotten in her way. And like I said in skating, there’s people who’d sooner knock you over and leave you flat than move themselves over half an inch. People like that, you just don’t want to get in their way. I figure one way or another, my brother must’ve gotten in hers.
I
T WAS A NIGHTMARE
, pure and simple. From the minute we got the call, Earl and I barely slept or ate. The first thing we had to do was get to Susie, naturally, knowing what a state she’d be in. Imagine losing your husband to a vicious murderer when you’re a newlywed, just twenty-five years old. All I can say is, life can be very cruel. And that’s how it seemed even before they began trying to tie her in to the crime.
She was being very brave. That’s our Susie. And now, just because she’s strong enough as an individual that she doesn’t just fall apart, people say she doesn’t have any feelings or something. When they don’t know her like we do. They don’t know how she’s dying inside.
So she kept her chin up. That first night they had her on the news, it broke your heart. Her sitting there in my living room, holding on to that little dog. “If anybody out there has any information whatsoever that might assist us in finding the criminals who committed this heinous crime, I beg of them to contact the police,” she said. Her broadcasting training really came in handy, the way she knew to look right into the camera and all. She didn’t break down or anything. Just kept her dignity. Like I always used to tell her, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Strangers were calling us up, offering prayers, sympathy cards, and so forth. Flowers? We had so many flowers I used up every vase in the house and had to start putting them in Tupperware. I mean you could just feel it, everybody’s prayers were with Susie. “It’s a weird feeling, Mom,” she said to me. “Knowing that wherever I go now, people know who I am. They recognize me.” There was this one little boy that saw her in the supermarket who even asked her for her autograph. He said she was the first famous person he ever met. In spite of the tragedy, you had to get a kick out of that.
Those first couple days after the murder it was like we were going around in a fog, there was so much to do. People to contact. Media crawling all over the place. Susie said a lot of people in that situation resent the media for interfering in their grief, but being in that line herself she understood their point of view and she always tried to cooperate. I remember the day we were getting ready for Larry’s service, she even pointed out to Angela, his mom, how the striped blouse she was wearing was going to make these vibrating lines on people’s TV screens, and maybe something else would be better.