He opened his eyes wide and leaned in close to me. I could smell the bitter mixture of coffee and toothpaste on his breath.
“I can already hear you screaming.” A slim tongue flicked up to the cut on his lip. “You’re on your back and it’s arched and I stab you in the chest.” He sliced a clenched fist through the air. “And I pull the knife back out and I stab you a second time.” His eyes glistened. “And then a third. A fourth. You’re screaming your head off and the blood’s popping up in spurts from your chest, and I just keep stabbing.” He sliced the air several more times, his mouth broadening into a rictus grin.
“No way…” Leonard said, and then his throat dried up. He swallowed several times. “Mr. Falk? No way, if we’re going to do this, we can get him out of here until nightfall. That’s, like, a long time away.”
Cody kept his eyes on me, studying me the way you’d study an ant trying to carry away your napkin at a picnic. “We move him out through the garage, put him in the trunk of his car.”
“And then what?” Leonard said. His eyes flashed my way, then back to Cody. “We drive him around all day? In a ’63 Porsche? Sir? We can’t do him in the daylight. It won’t work.”
Cody got a look on his face like it was Christmas Eve and he’d just been told he couldn’t open his presents until morning. He turned his head and looked back at Leonard. “Are you going gutless, Leonard?”
“No, Mr. Falk. Just trying to help here.”
Cody looked at the clock on the wall above my head. He looked out at his backyard. He looked at me. Then he slammed his palm on the floor several times and screamed, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!”
He dropped to his knees and kicked out the cabinet door below the butcher block.
He reared forward like an animal, the tendons stretched on his neck, and screwed his face up into mine until the tips of our noses touched.
“You,” he said, “are going to die. You understand, prick?”
I didn’t say anything.
Cody butted his forehead into mine. “I asked if you understood.”
I gave him a flat and bloodless glare.
He butted his forehead into mine a second time.
I bit down against the sharp stabs of pain filling the front of my skull and still said nothing.
Cody slapped my face and then scrambled to his feet. “What if we kill him right here? Right now?”
Leonard held out his huge hands. “Evidence, Mr. Falk. Evidence. Let’s say one person knew or even suspects he was coming here and then he turns up dead. A forensics team, right? They’ll find pieces of him in places you never thought they’d go. Cracks in the running boards you didn’t even know existed will have chunks of his skull in it.”
Cody leaned against the butcher block. He ran his palm over his mouth several times and breathed heavily through his nostrils.
Eventually, he said, “So we keep him here till dark. That’s your advice.”
Leonard nodded. “Yeah, sir.”
“And then take him where?”
Leonard shrugged. “I know a dump in Medford will do the trick.”
“A dump?” Cody said. “Like someone’s shitty apartment? Or an honest-to-God dump?”
“An honest-to-God dump.”
Cody gave it a lot of thought. He circled the butcher block a few times. He ran some water in the sink, but instead of running his hand through it and wiping his face, he just leaned over and sniffed it for a while. He stretched until the muscles in his lower back cracked. He looked at me several times and chewed his inner cheek.
“All right,” he said eventually. “I can live with this.” He smiled at Leonard. “But it’s cool, isn’t it?”
“What’s that, sir?”
He clapped his hands together hard, then clenched them into fists and raised them over his head. “This! Leonard, we have a chance to do something monumental. Monu-fucking-mental!”
“Yes, sir. In the meantime?” Leonard leaned into the butcher-block counter and looked as if a semi had settled across his shoulder blades.
Cody waved his hand. “In the meantime, I don’t fucking care. He can watch pornos with us in the living room. I’ll cook eggs and spoon-feed him. Fatten the calf and all that.”
Leonard looked like he didn’t have a clue what Cody was babbling about, but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir. Good idea.”
Cody dropped to his knees in front of me. “You like eggs, Pat?”
I met his smiling eyes. “Did you rape her?”
He cocked his head to the left, stared off into space for a bit. “Who?”
“You know who, Cody.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re the most logical suspect or I wouldn’t be here.”
“She wrote me letters,” he said.
“What?”
He nodded. “You didn’t know that part. She’d write me letters asking me why I wasn’t getting her signals. Wasn’t I man enough?”
“Bullshit.”
He giggled and slapped his thigh. “No, no. That’s the great part.”
“Letters,” I said. “Why would Karen Nichols write letters to you, Cody?”
“Because she wanted it, Pat. She was dying for it. She was as cock hungry as they all are.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t believe me? Ha! Hang on, I’ll get them.”
He stood up and handed the gun to Leonard.
Leonard said, “What am I supposed to-?”
“Shoot him if he moves.”
“He’s tied up.”
“I pay your freight, Leonard. Don’t fucking back-talk me.”
Cody walked out of the kitchen and then his footsteps charged up the stairs.
Leonard placed the gun on the counter and sighed.
“Leonard,” I said.
“Don’t talk to me, bitch.”
“He’s warming to this idea. He’s not going to-”
“I said-”
“-chill out by noon, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
“-shut your fucking hole.”
“Killing someone, he’s thinking, how ballsy. A new experience.”
“Shut up .” Leonard placed the heels of his hands over his eyes.
“And when he does, Leonard, I mean come on, you think he’s smart enough not to get caught?”
“Lotta people don’t.”
“Sure,” I said, “but this is strictly A ball around here. He’ll fuck up. Take a kill trophy home with him, tell a friend or a stranger in a bar. And then what, Leonard? You think he’s going to stand tall when the DA shows up?”