Alan Cook - Catch a Falling Knife

She knelt on the ground, not looking at me. She reached into a pocket of her jeans. At first I thought she might have another gun, but then I realized her pocket wasn’t large enough to hold a gun. She pulled out a small plastic container and removed the cap. Before I understood what she was doing she dumped a pill into her hand and popped it into her mouth.

Somehow I knew that I couldn’t let her swallow the pill. I hit her hard in the mouth with the cane. She screamed and blood spurted. I dropped the cane, grabbed her head and tried to pry her mouth open, but she bit me and twisted away.

I heard running footsteps approaching. Sandra and Lefty raced up. I said, “She’s got a pill in her mouth. Don’t let her swallow it.”

Lefty tackled Donna while Sandra bent over Mark, saying his name. Somebody should call 911. I had dropped my purse beside my car. I found it and fumbled for my cell phone.

Mark was conscious, lying on his back. He had been hit near his shoulder, apparently only once. Sandra had ripped part of his shirt off with the strength of desperation and used it to stanch the blood. I stood by her, ready to help, but I didn’t want to get in her way.

“I owe you another one, Lillian,” Mark said, slowly. “If you hadn’t yelled…”

“Don’t talk, Sweetheart,” Sandra said. “Help will be here soon.”

After a brief fight, Lefty had extracted the pill from Donna’s bloody mouth. He held her down and kept her subdued. Both of them sat on the asphalt as I explained what she had done.

Eric was sitting up, obviously hurting. He had some scrapes and he required more help than I could give him to get to his feet. I returned his cane.

He said, “I never should have lent her that gun. She said she needed it for self-defense.”

“Defense from whom?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe Mark.”

“You knew she had killed Elise, didn’t you?” I said. “You must have caught her in the act.”

Eric cringed. I had never seen a man look so beaten.

“I don’t know what got into me,” he said. “When I arrived at the apartment I heard screams. The door was locked so I broke the window with my cane to get in. It was a struggle for me to get through the window. By the time I got inside Elise was dead. My first impulse was to attack Donna, but that wouldn’t have brought Elise back.”

“You would have killed her if I hadn’t,” Donna said, from where she sat in Lefty’s grasp, her mouth dripping blood onto Lefty’s beautiful tie. She slurred her words. “Your own guilt stopped you from doing anything to me. That and knowing you could get sexual favors from me in return for your silence.”

Lefty shook his head and said, “Neither one of you can hold a candle to the Star. For two cents I’d do you both in. Maybe I should have let you swallow that pill. What is it, cyanide?” He opened his hand and examined it.

For answer, Donna grabbed the capsule out of Lefty’s hand and threw it backward over the wall that bounded the parking lot. Lefty, who had instinctively clapped his other hand over Donna’s mouth to prevent her from swallowing it, tensed his muscles and appeared to want to do her bodily harm. His body vibrated. Then he slowly relaxed and the tension seemed to drain out of him.

As the only mobile member of the group I made a move to go after the capsule, but Lefty said, “Leave that for the police. It’s their job. You’d never find it in the weeds, anyway.”

“That was the ending Donna wrote to her story,” Sandra said, still pressing the makeshift bandage to Mark’s shoulder. “Kill Mark and then kill herself. That way, she wouldn’t have to face the consequences. She’s a romantic and a pathological liar. With that combination, she can’t stand too much reality.”

Donna dabbed at the blood dripping from her mouth with her bare hand as sirens wailed in the distance, coming steadily closer.

By Sunday, Mark felt well enough to attend the family brunch at Albert’s farm. Sandra brought him from her condo, where he was recuperating from his wound. That was where he belonged-with Sandra. I would do everything in my power to keep him there. And I was determined to crush any evil forces that might pull them apart, such as gossip about Mark and Elise.

Medically, Mark’s prognosis was good. The damage to bone and muscle was reparable and no organs had been hit. He was somewhat stiff, but the doctor said he would regain full movement of his arm and fingers. Except for a scar, he would be as good as new.

For the first time in the history of the Sunday brunch we had a stripper and the owner of a strip club present. I had invited them, with Sandra’s concurrence. The stripper, or exotic dancer as she preferred to be called, was Cherub, and of course Lefty was the owner. They were on their best behavior. Lefty wore one of his beautiful ties and carried on an intelligent, high-level conversation. Cherub wore more clothes than some of the women Albert had invited to past brunches and talked about cars with Winston.

Mark had been carried off in an ambulance from Club Cavalier without answering any questions. I had talked to him several times since, but not about Donna because he needed peace and rest. Now that he felt better, I debated whether it was a good idea to bring up the subject. Albert beat me to it.

“I thought you were more intelligent than to go on a date with a murderer,” Albert said to Mark, half seriously.

Mark smiled, ruefully. “I didn’t know she was a murderer then. I had bought into the theory that Eric killed Elise. She called me at the restaurant and said she had more information for me. She pushed the right button and I jumped.”

“And it was logical for you to have your meeting at Club Cavalier.”

“Lots of business meetings are held at Club Cavalier,” Lefty said.

“We take good care of businessmen,” Cherub added.

Mark looked uncomfortable and would have welcomed further interruption, but he couldn’t get out of answering.

“Donna said the Club was important. I guess I shouldn’t have let her call all the shots, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“She was trying to convince you that she was good and Elise was bad,” Sandra said, putting a protective arm around Mark. “Before she killed you and then killed herself, which was her idea of a tragic but poetic solution to the mess she was in.”

We had to go through some sort of a catharsis to rid ourselves of our association with Elise’s murder, just as I had had to rid myself of the smell of the garbage I had played in at Club Cavalier. Talking about the murder was perhaps the best way to do that, as long as it didn’t cause any new problems between Sandra and Mark. But Albert, who had been the least involved in the investigation, asked a lot of questions.

He knew about Donna’s poem, but he wanted a more logical and less poetic explanation about why Donna had killed Elise and how Eric fit into the picture. I drew the short straw and had to answer.

“The whole thing is rather complicated,” I said, trying to come up with a reasonable answer. “Donna and Eric had some sort of a relationship before the murder. Donna cultivated Eric, hoping that Eric would convince Elise that she needed Donna’s help to succeed as a singer. Donna worshipped Elise on one level, while at the same time she hated her success with singing and with men such as Mark-remember, this is Donna’s view-because Donna had a crush on Mark.”

“But Elise charged Mark with harassment,” Albert said, puzzled.

I was getting close to things I shouldn’t talk about. “Donna filtered that to fit her own theory, which was that Elise made a play for Mark, something that Donna could never have done, at least at that time. I don’t know what Donna thinks Elise and Mark did together, but I’m sure she thinks that Elise filed the harassment charge because she saw it as a way to explain to her boyfriend, Ted, why she wasn’t a virgin. In reality, Elise had had a previous lover. Donna’s imaginings were probably not that far from the truth, except that of course Mark fended Elise off.” I was glad I wouldn’t have to testify to that in court.