Richard Montanari: The Echo Man

On one of the tables rests a figure, supine beneath a white plastic sheet pulled up to the neck.

When Beckman sees the corpse, and recognizes it for what it is, his knees trick.

I turn to the wall, unpin a photograph, a clipping from a newspaper. It is the only adornment in the room. 'She was pretty,' I say. 'Not beautiful, not in the Grace Kelly sense, but pretty beneath the coarseness of all this paint.'' I hold up the picture. 'Don't you think?'

In the pitiless fluorescent light Beckman's face contorts with fear.

'Tell me what happened,' I say. 'Don't you think it's time?'

Beckman retreats, waving a forefinger in the air. 'You're fucking nuts, man. Fucking psycho. I'm outta here.' He turns and tries the knob on the door. Locked. He pulls and pushes, pulls and pushes. It is a mounting frenzy, with no success. 'Open the goddamn door!'

Instead of unlocking the door, I step forward, remove the sheet from the figure on the table. The body underneath has begun to decompose, its eyes now descended into their sockets, its skin fallen sallow, the color of overripe corn. The form is still recognizable as human, albeit emaciated and on the precipice of putrefaction. The hands are gray and shriveled, fingers stiff in supplication. I do not gag at the sick-sweet smell. In fact, I have begun to anticipate it with some measure of desire.

I pry back the index finger on the corpse's left hand. There is a small tattoo of a swan. I look at Kenneth Beckman, and say, in my best broken Italian:

'Benvenuto al carnevale!'

Welcome to the carnival.

Beckman staggers against the wall, horrified by the sight, the fresh surge of decay in the air. He tries to speak, but the words bottleneck in his throat.

I lift the Taser and place it to the side of Beckman's chest. Blue lightning strikes. The man folds to the floor.

For a moment the room is silent.

As silent as a womb.

I take the three killing instruments out of their sheaths, lay them on the table, next to the salon-quality hair trimmer. I open the hidden cabinet concealed behind a door that has a touch latch, revealing the recording equipment. The sight of the matte-black finish on the six components, free of dust and static, fills me with an almost sexual sensation. The warmth coming off the components — I always warm everything up at least an hour before a session — coats me in a thin layer of perspiration. Or maybe that is just anticipation.

Beckman is shackled to the table with tape over his mouth. His head is held in place by a neurosurgical clamp, a precision device used to fix a patient's head to a table during stereotactic procedures for the placement of electrodes, an operation requiring rigid immobilization. A year ago I ordered the apparatus from a German firm, paying by international money order, receiving the product through a series of remailers.

I slip on a surgical gown, stand next to the table, open the straight razor. With the index finger of my left hand I probe the soft skin on the man's forehead. Beckman howls into his gag, but the sound is muffled.

That is about to change.

With a steady hand I make the first cut across the forehead, just beneath the hairline, taking my time. I watch the skin bisect slowly, revealing the glossy pink tissue beneath. The surgical clamp does its job well. The man cannot move his head at all. With a foot pedal I press Record, then remove the gag.

The man gulps air, pink foam leaking from the corners of his mouth, lie has severed the tip of his tongue.

He begins to scream.

I monitor the sound levels, make a few adjustments. Beckman continues to shriek, blood running down both sides of his face now, onto the polished stainless steel of the table, onto the dry enamel of the floor.

A few minutes later I blot the blood on Beckman's forehead, clean it with an alcohol pad. I go to work on the man's right ear. When I am finished I take out a measuring tape, measure down from the ait on the forehead, mark the spot with a red felt-tip pen, then take the second killing instrument in hand, hold it to the light. The carbon tip is a dark, lustrous blue.

One final check of the sound levels and I set about my penultimate task. Slowly, deliberately — largo, one might say — I proceed, knowing that just a few feet away, on the other side of the outside wall, the city of Philadelphia is passing by, oblivious to the symphony being composed inside this common looking building.

Then again, has not the greatest art in history come from humble surroundings?

Zig, zig, zag.

I am Death in cadence.

When the power drill reaches its full RPM, and the razor-sharp bit nears the skin covering the frontal bone, in an area just above the right eye, Kenneth Arnold Beckman's screams reach a majestic volume, a second octave. The voice is off key, but that can be fixed later. For now, there is no need to hurry. No need at all.

In fact, we have all day.

Sophie Balzano sat at one end of the long couch, looking even smaller than usual.

Jessica stepped into the outer office, talked to the secretary, then entered the main office, where she chatted with one of Sophie's Sunday- school teachers. Jessica soon returned, sat next to her daughter. Sophie did not take her stare off her own shoes.

'Want to tell me what happened?' Jessica asked.

Sophie shrugged, looked out the window. Her hair was long, pulled back into a cat's-eye barrette. At seven, she was a little smaller than her friends, but she was fast and smart. Jessica was five-eight in her stocking feet, and had grown to that height somewhere during the summer between sixth and seventh grade. She wondered if the same would happen for her daughter.

'Honey? You have to tell Mommy what happened. We'll make it better, but I have to know what happened. Your teacher said you were in a fight. Is that true?'

Sophie nodded.

'Are you okay?'

Sophie nodded again, although this time a little more slowly. 'I'm all right.'

'We'll talk in the car?'

'Okay.'

As they walked out of the school, Jessica saw some of the other kids whispering to each other. Even in this day and age, it seemed, a playground fight still generated gossip.

They left the school grounds, headed down Academy Road. When they made the turn onto Grant Avenue and the traffic halted for some construction works, Jessica asked, 'Can you tell me what the fight was about?'

'It was about Brendan.'

'Brendan Hurley?'

'Yes.'

Brendan Hurley was a boy in Sophie's class. Thin and quiet and bespectacled, Brendan was bully-bait if Jessica had ever seen it. Beyond that, Jessica didn't know a lot about him. Except that on the previous Valentine's Day Brendan had given Sophie a card. A big glittery card.

'What about Brendan?' Jessica asked.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I think he might be…'

Traffic began to move. They pulled off the boulevard, onto Torresdale Avenue.

'What, sweetie? You think Brendan might be what?'

Sophie looked out the window, then at her mother. 'I think he might be G-A-E.'

Oh boy, Jessica thought. She had been prepared for a lot of things. The talk about sharing, the talk about race and class, the talk about money, even the talk about religion. Jessica was woefully unprepared for the talk about gender identity. The fact that Sophie spelled the word out instead of saying it — indicating that, to Sophie, and her classmates, the word belonged in that special classification of profanities not to be uttered — spoke volumes. 'I see,' was all that Jessica could come up with at that moment. She decided not to correct her daughter's spelling at this time. 'What makes you say that?'

Sophie straightened her skirt. This was clearly difficult for her. 'He kind of runs like a girl,' she said. 'And throws like a girl.'