JASON STARR - Panic Attack

“Please… don’t shoot him,” the woman said.

Yeah, definitely not a New Yorker.

“Just gimme the fuckin’ ring, bitch,” Johnny said. He hated that he had to be so disrespectful, that he couldn’t talk like the charming woman- lover he normally was, but he knew that in a robbery situation it was a good idea to act as little like your normal self as possible.

“Take it easy,” the guy said. He was tall and thin and had the same bumpkin accent as the girl. “We don’t want any trouble, yo.”

Yo. Like he thought he was talking street and that would, what, save him?

Johnny pressed the gun into the guy’s cheek and said, “Tell the whore to gimme the fuckin’ ring.”

“Give him the ring,” the guy said to the woman.

“I can’t. It’s my grandmother’s.”

“Give it to him, goddamn it.”

“Please,” the woman said to Johnny, “take our money. I have two hundred dollars in my purse, and my fiancй has money, too. You can have it all, but please, I can’t give you the-”

Johnny pistol- whipped the guy across the side of his head. He fell to his knees, and then Johnny hit him with the gun again, on the front of his face, and heard something crunch. The woman started screaming. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with these people? Did they want to die?

Johnny grabbed the woman’s left hand and started to pull off the ring. Would you believe it, she was still trying to resist? She was screaming in Johnny’s ear, trying to break free. Johnny was ready to shoot her in the head and shut her up, but then the ring slid off.

“Thanks, guys,” Johnny said.

He’d got what he wanted. No reason not to be polite now, right?

He walked away quickly. After he turned the corner he jogged a few blocks, and then continued home at a normal pace.

He wished he could sell the ring right away. He knew he could get a thousand for it, maybe more, from any pawnshop, and he didn’t like to hold on to the things he stole, especially jewelry. Jewelry, especially rings, was the type of stuff that people wanted back. Sometimes he’d dump stolen jewelry for a fraction of what it was worth just to get rid of it. After all, he wasn’t an idiot. That was the difference between him and every other criminal in the world.

But he needed the ring, to give to Marissa when the time was right. Then when she was dead, like her parents, he could pawn it off and make his thousand bucks. Not that a thousand bucks would mean anything to him then.

Yeah, it would’ve been nice if Adam Bloom had come home on time and Johnny had killed him like he’d planned to, but everything else had gone so well since then that he couldn’t exactly complain. After he left the house on Monday evening, he dumped the stolen car in a supermarket parking lot way out in Flushing and got rid of the backpack and the sweatshirt that had gotten blood on it. Then he washed up in the bathroom of a gas station and hailed a livery cab and had the driver drop him off around the corner from the movie theater on Fifty- ninth at about eight o’clock. He was only about a half hour late, and he told Marissa the subways were running slow and he couldn’t call her from underground. She wasn’t upset, because she’d been running late, too, and had just gotten there. The movie was about to start, so they decided to go in and get something to eat afterward. Not that she seemed interested in actually watching the movie. While they were in the back of the movie theater, making out, he was replaying the murder in his head. Were there any loose ends? He couldn’t think of any. He’d gotten rid of all the evidence, and the cops had probably already arrested Tony. Hopefully Tony would go to jail for the rest of his life or get the death penalty. If Tony had an alibi, the cops might try to pin the murder on Adam. That would work out really well for Johnny, too. Johnny needed to get rid of Adam for the rest of his plan to work, and it didn’t really matter if Adam was rotting in a jail cell or six feet underground as long as he was gone for good.

After the movie, Johnny took a leak, and when he met Marissa back in the lobby and saw her looking so upset, talking to somebody on her cell, he knew she’d heard the news. Johnny lived for moments like these. He got to play a role, be another person and, even better, be this great guy everybody loved.

Johnny knew that Marissa needed him to take charge, and he handled it beautifully, putting her in the cab, telling her all the right things. At the house, Adam was totally buying into his shit, too, and Johnny played it just right, hugging him, literally giving him a shoulder to cry on about three hours after killing his wife. Seriously, did it get any better than that?

While Adam and Marissa were hugging and slobbering like babies, Johnny was listening in on a conversation between a gray- haired detective- later he’d find out his name was Clements- and some other cop. Although Johnny was only catching bits and pieces, it sounded like they weren’t sold on the idea that Tony had killed Dana Bloom. Johnny didn’t know why this was, but he didn’t waste a second and started working on his backup plan. See, this was what set Johnny apart from the two- bit criminals who were crammed into jails all over the country- he never got complacent; his mind was always working, thinking ahead.

Naturally Marissa asked him to sit next to her while Clements was questioning her. She needed him so badly now, she couldn’t bear to be without him for even a few minutes. Johnny loved it when Clements asked Adam if he could “wait in the other room;” the look on his face was priceless, like he already knew what was about to go down and how screwed he was and how there was nothing he could do to stop it. Then Clements asked Marissa about Adam, if she’d ever seen him threaten Dana, and it was beautiful how Marissa mentioned Adam had pushed Dana that one time and knocked her down. Now Clements was really starting to believe that Adam was his man.

When Johnny finally got alone with Marissa in her room, and she was telling him how lucky she was to have him and saying she wanted to feel him inside her, Johnny knew she was officially his. He’d hooked her so good, there was no way she was getting away now. He made love to her, slowly and passionately, the way only Johnny Long could, and then he picked up where Clements had left off, trying to get her to believe that her father had killed her mother. He knew he had to handle this carefully, not come on too strong, blaming her father. He had to let her think that it was her idea, that she’d come up with it on her own. It worked, and it was incredible- he felt like he was in total control of this girl, like he could get her to do or think anything he wanted her to. And with Adam’s own daughter believing he was guilty, who would he have to defend him?

When Adam was gone, Johnny would ask Marissa to marry him, and, come on, at this point how could she not say yes? She was already dependent on him, and when both her parents were gone she’d be desperate to start a new family. When they were married- and the way things were going, that could only be a few months from now- he’d make sure he was in her will, as her sole beneficiary, because who else would there be? She sure as hell wouldn’t want her father, that murderer, to get anything. Then Marissa would die in some “unfortunate accident”- the poor Blooms, they’d had so much tragedy in their lives- and Johnny would have everything he’d ever wanted.

Marissa was so convinced that her father was guilty, she was afraid to be in the house with him alone. Johnny said he would stay with her for as long she wanted him to-“forever if I have to”- but then her grandmother, Adam’s mother, arrived, and Johnny wanted out. He got a bad vibe from the old lady from the get- go and knew she wouldn’t be as easy to win over as the other Blooms.