David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“First, make sure he’s awake. He sleeps a lot. You put the gun in his hand. You put his finger on the trigger. You step out here into the hall. You wait ten minutes. If he hasn’t done it by then, you go back in there and help him out. Help him squeeze the trigger. That’s what I’m paying you for. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sounds okay. Let’s do it.”

Rick hands Junior a sealed envelope. “Here’s the suicide note. Leave it in there where somebody can find it.”

Junior pockets the envelope. He and Lorna pad gingerly into the room. Muffled party sounds can still be heard. The band plays an instrumental version of “Hey Jude.”

In the dimly lit bedroom, the dying man lies in a king-size bed, pale and corpselike, eyes closed. Breathing shallowly, he appears to be asleep. Junior approaches the bed slowly. “He’s asleep.”

Lorna investigates the room. She finds photos of the man as a young, handsome, Korean War-era fighter pilot. In one he runs from a crashed, burning plane. In another he hugs a beautiful young woman. She finds dozens of medals and ribbons mounted on black velvet and framed, and others of him in a variety of sports uniforms.

Junior pulls on a pair of latex gloves, opens the dresser drawer, removes the gun, a nickel-plated 9mm. “Jesus Christ. This looks like the same gun I pawned.”

Lorna has a close look. “I don’t know. All guns look the same to me.”

“Somebody put a silencer on it, but it’s the same gun.”

“There’s probably a million guns that look like that. Come on. Get on with it. I’m going in the girls’ room. I’ve been eating like a pig.” She enters the bathroom.

Junior, still spooked by the gun coincidence, examines it closely again before attempting to place it in the man’s hands.

“Hey, you awake, sir? You hear me?”

Lorna purges noisily.

The man’s eyes snap open just as Junior extends the gun. “There’s the weapon, sir. All the best luck to you.”

With a palsied hand, the man takes the gun. Junior backs away from the bed, meets Lorna coming out of the bathroom.

They wait in the hallway.

The band downstairs plays “The Girl From Ipanema.” Lorna’s getting hungry. “We wait how long, ten minutes?” she asks.

“Yeah, that’s what Rick said. He said wait ten minutes. If the old guy don’t do it, I gotta go help him.”

Lorna lights up a yellow Sherman, paces the hallway. “I saw this program yesterday. They said serial killers liked killing people. It was a thrill. I’m having some fun with this, but I’m not thrilled. If we were making just as much money some other way, that would be fine. It doesn’t matter. These people are basically dead anyway. So this is definitely not serial killing, right?”

“Right. That’s what makes what we’re doing so cool. We don’t get any kick out of it. It’s just a good living, no different than most jobs.”

“I guess I’m cool with it, you know, basically.”

“Good. I’m going in. Ten minutes is up. He needs some help. It’s part of the job. That’s the way I gotta look at it.”

“Wait a minute. Don’t go in yet. I wanna tell you something. You know what?”

“What?”

“I think I’m pregnant. I’m not sure, but it feels like a little bomb went off down in there.”

“Piss-poor timing, Lorna. A fucking baby is the last thing we need right now.”

“That’s a nice thing to say, Junior.”

“I’m gonna hafta go in. You stay out here.”

“Can we go to Orlando tomorrow? We can rent a car, take a bus or something.”

“We’ll see. Maybe. Lemme get this over with. We’ll go down and drink a toast to the little bastard you’re having.”

In the bedroom, the man is asleep again, the gun still clutched in his hand. Junior nudges him. “Hey, you gonna do it?”

The man’s eyes pop open. Terrified and confused, he points the gun at Junior. “Who are you?” He fingers the trigger. “Identify yourself.”

“Uh?” Junior turns to run for the door, but the man fires a shot, striking him in the back. He falls. The man drops the gun and dies.

In the Zook home closet. When Vickie stands up, she jostles a crowded shelf and several shoeboxes fall. One falls open and spills its contents: the rabbit’s foot stash, the yin/yang pendant, a jar of patchouli oil, newspaper clippings about the Manson killings and the scissors she’d used to clip them. She holds the rabbit’s foot, stares at it, flips through the clippings. After musing over her mementos briefly, she uses the scissors to start a hole in the sheetrock wall at the back of the closet, then uses the plastic knife to saw a larger opening.

In the Angus Room, Mickey and Myra cut into bloody steaks. A bottle of inexpensive wine sits on the table. In a booth in the background, Mr. Smoot burbles boozily to a bespectacled, studious young man.

Myra recognizes him. “Isn’t that Principal Smoot over there?”

Mickey looks over. “That’s Smoot. Corrupting youth again.”

Smoot sips Drambuie on ice. He beams at the young man. “Did I ever tell you the difference between the sublime and the beautiful, Matt?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Smoot.”

“Stop it with the Mr. Smoot. It’s Phil. Just Phil.”

“Okay…Phil. No, you haven’t told me about that.”

“The difference is…like I said…the difference is…ah, shit. What was I talking about?”

“You were going to tell me the difference between the sublime and the beautiful.”

“Yeah, right. Well, beautiful things are safe things, like poems, like Ming vases, like…like…the face that launched a thousand ships …Cleopatra. The sublime, now, that has an element of danger to it…like lightning…King Kong…Mt. Everest…or the great blue rolling oceans.”

Mickey says, “There’s nothing more pathetic than a queer getting old.”

Myra wants to hear about the business.

Mickey says he guesses things are going more or less according to plan. “A few little hitches here and there. But basically everything’s fine and dandy with that. Junior’s down in Florida right now, paying a call on a customer.”

“A call? He’s paying a call? What does that mean?”

“Look, we’ve got some ends to tie up. When that’s taken care of, I’ll tell you the whole deal.”

“Are you ever gonna leave Vickie? And be with me full time? Tell me the truth, now.”

“Jeeze, Myra. Don’t push me. We got some unfolding events here that…you know…might drag on a while.”

“How many times have you told me you hate her?”

“Millions of people live with people they hate. I hate her, I hate my son-in-law, my brother. I even hate my own daughter.”

In the closet, Vickie has made an inch-wide hole in the sheetrock, allowing her to start breaking off ever-larger chunks. She pushes through the sheetrock into the bathroom and peeks out the door. She can see part of the living room.

The phone rings twice. The machine answers with Junior’s voice. “Thank you for calling. All our associates are busy with other clients or on the phone. Please leave your name, the time you called, contact information and a brief message after the tone. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Vickie ventures into the living room, hears the caller’s message. “Hi. A friend of mine down in Florida gave me your number. He said you were…that you performed…unusual services for people. My name is David…X. I don’t like giving out personal information, so I’ll call back. Thanks.”

Once Vickie is satisfied that no one is around, she dashes to the front door, remembers something, returns to get Wendy’s cremains from a kitchen cabinet, then makes a run for it. Dogs bark at her as she hurries down the street. When she reaches the corner, she sticks out her thumb toward passing traffic.