A Long Line of Dead Men

"A couple of men carried you out of the Tierney apartment on a stretcher. They loaded you into the backseat of a limousine. You were driven to a private airport in Westchester County, where they transferred you to a private plane. There's a small landing strip here on Red Hawk Island, and that's where we touched down. That was around noon when we got here, twelve hours or so after you came home from the movie. It's almost five in the afternoon now. You've been kept unconscious with injections while we got everything ready for you."

"And what's this? A cabin?"

I nodded. "There's a main house and several outbuildings. This is one of the outbuildings. The floor's poured concrete, in case you were wondering, and the metal plate you're chained to is anchored solidly in it. In case you were wondering."

"Message: I ain't going nowhere."

"Something like that."

He went back to the bed and sat down on it. "Lot to go through to kill a guy," he said.

"Look who's talking."

"Huh?"

"Look at all you went through," I said, "to kill all those men. Why, Jim?"

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You called me Jim all along. That's the name you met me under, Jim Shorter. It's funny, 'cause that was the one name I stayed away from. For years I'd pick different names, always the same initials, but never Jim, never James. I used Joe a few times, John, Jack. I was Jeremy on one occasion. And Jeffrey, I was Jeffrey when I got Carl Uhl. 'Oh, God, Jeff, what are you doing!' He begged for his life, that cocksucker." His grin was quick and nasty. "All sorts of different names. But I didn't use the name I was born with once in all that time. Then finally I figured why not, what's it gonna hurt? So the name you met me under, it turned out to be my real name. The first name, anyway."

"What got you started?"

"Why the hell should I tell you a fucking thing?"

"It's been a lot of years," I said. "Isn't it about time you told somebody?"

"A lot of years. I got a bunch of 'em, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did."

"I shoulda just disappeared, you know? Time I met you, I already had this place rented."

"This place?"

"Can you believe it? I think I'm still back on Manhattan Avenue. I already had it arranged to sublet Tierney's apartment. I was just waiting for them to get on the plane. Soon as that happened, goodbye Jim Shorter, hello Joel Silverman. He's a nice Jewish boy, Joel is. You know you can trust him to water your plants and not piss on your carpet." He laughed. "Then you turned up. I couldn't disappear right away, not the way I'd planned. I had to wait for you to lose interest. But instead of shining you on and getting rid of you, I let you take me to a fucking AA meeting. Can you believe that?"

"And one meeting changed your life."

"Yeah, right, just like those lamebrains telling their stories. All of a sudden you're calling me on the phone, I'm calling you on the phone, and how do I get you off my back and quit being Jim Shorter? First I went and did Helen in Forest Hills, because that wasn't a load of shit about having an affair with her. Widows are pretty easy targets, you know. She's not the first I got next to after I did the husband. There was a guy named Bayliss you wouldn't even know was one of mine-"

"In a hotel room in Atlanta."

"Yeah, well, I looked up the wife afterward. Same thing with Helen, such a shock discovering your husband's body, blah blah blah, next thing you know she's got her knees up and I'm slippin' her the salami. I don't know if I can explain what a pleasure it was. It's like killing the husband a second time."

"And then you killed Helen."

"I thought I could keep you from finding out. You were talking about going out to see her, so I figured I'd better see her first. Then afterward I thought, shit, even a good accident's suspicious. You got to know I'm good at doing accidents. I realized I had to pull the plug on Jim Shorter and disappear, and the hell with whether or not you figured it out. So I thought let's go out with a bang, let's be dramatic, and I got that fucking clown of a weatherman."

"Gerry Billings."

"Asshole. Chirpy little fucker with his bow ties and his million-dollar smile. The look on his face when I shot him. He bought the scene, you know. Thought it was a traffic accident and he was an innocent bystander who was getting shot for no reason at all. I was praying he'd recognize me and go out knowing, but I didn't have time to waste so I just shot him and got it the fuck over with."

"Why kill them, Jim?"

"You think I need a reason?"

"I think you've got one."

"Why should I tell you?"

"I don't know," I said, "but I think you probably will."

He hated them from the start.

Bunch of self-satisfied bastards. Eating and drinking and running their mouths, and he sat there among them and wondered what he was doing there. Whose idea had it been to invite him? What made anybody think he fit in?