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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 29 |
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old man know something about the death of her sister? |
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was she capable of an act of vengeance? |
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AN ORIGINAL MYSTERY STORY FOR DARK CORRIDORS
for TheColumnists.com
"Yes, Mr. Pervis," I said. "By law, anything
a client tells me about his past, including you, will be held
in strictest confidence."
The old man’s arms were as sturdy as tree trunks above the
wasted roots of his legs. He rolled his wheelchair across the
one-room apartment and reached over to steady the bass fiddle
leaning against the chair on my left. He faced me across the
table and smiled. His mouth opened like a wound on his face.
"So you say, Missy,"
he asked. "Even if I got something to confess that would
make a shrink like you take pause?"
A wave of clammy heat swept over my chest. I hadn’t planned
on interviewing a man with some kind of moral crisis. Had I been
foolish for coming to this part of town alone?
"Of course,"
I said with a much practiced impassivity that conveyed nothing
surprised me. "The past is the past. I can only report threats
of future harm to yourself or someone else."
The corner of his mouth twitched with a hint of contempt. "The
last shrink Mental Health Outreach sent out shoulda asked the
undertaker for a refund. The one before that was a real serious
broad. No sense of humor, that one. I’d ruther have a little
talk with a pretty green-eyed blonde babe like you." He
panted at me like an old dog and stared up at my breasts.
Repulsed, I turned to avoid looking at him. Carefully, I pulled
out the only empty chair so as not to disturb the mannequin that
was propped up in the chair to my right. She was naked but for
a black satin pill box hat with an orange ostrich feather that
drooped over a chipped brown eye. With her vacant stare and outstretched
arms, she looked like a fashion zombie.
Rather than sitting down, I walked to look out French doors that
opened onto a sixth-story porch. Mr. Pervis’s rat hole faced
a red brick warehouse across a one-way back street in a section
of the city inhabited by gays, bohemians and drug dealers.
I was about to step onto the porch when I noticed that the wrought
iron railing hung precariously from several rusted bolts. I looked
sharply around at Mr. Pervis. "This is dangerous,"
I said.
He shrugged and grinned like a ventriloquist’s dummy with
bad teeth.
Up the street the staccato of a classroom bell rang out. A strained
and tortured string quartet stopped in the middle of a chord.
The din of traffic seemed to fill the room.
"Class’s out, Missy" the old man said. "Music
class at the College of Arts and Music. I meet up with some of
them college girls on occasion. Most of ‘em nice looking."
Perspiration bloomed inside the summer suit that I’d bought
specially for this job. His comments about college women forced
me to think of my sister. I squeezed my eyes shut, but couldn’t
blot out the image of her ruined, delicate body askew in a Dumpster.
Two years of emptiness engulfed me.
"Like I was saying," he said, "some of them babes
come up to play the bass fiddle for us." He leaned over
and patted the mannequins shoulder. "Me and my girlfriend
here."
I pulled myself together and looked at Mr.. Pervis with deliberation.
I had work to do. I couldn’t afford to let the old man scare
me and I had to let him know it.
"Mr. Pervis," I asked, sitting across from him at the
table, "why did you call Mental Health for services?"
"I suffer from a compulsion," he said, unnecessarily.
I shifted my eyes to the mannequin. Her cafe-au-lait plastic
skin was almost obscured under a greasy veil of black fingerprints.
Only her nipples were clean, the paint worn off leaving them
bone china white.
"I see," I said, "and you want to talk about it."
He chuckled. "It wouldn’t bother me at all setting
a while and telling a pretty gal like you my troubles."
"I have other clients to attend to, Mr. Pervis." The
strain of portraying indifference was wearing on me.
"Then you probably don’t want me PUSSY--footing around."
"No, Mr. Pervis, we don’t have time to pussyfoot around."
Please get this over with, I pleaded silently, so I can collect
my consultation fee and get on with finding my sister’s
killer.
I indulged in a momentary fantasy of having the courage to extract
vengeance for her murder with my own hands. My sister would have
done that for me, but even though I was the eldest, I’d
always been the meek one.
"Your big sis is compassionate," my mother would say in my defense.
"She needs to take a stand, do what’s right," my sister would reply. "Then she wouldn‘t be so depressed all the time."
Nonetheless the thought of harming another person, no matter how despicable and remorseless they were, remained abhorrent to me.
"Well then," the old man said, bringing me back to
reality. "My Ma died when I was a young’un. They put
me in a Catholic orphanage down in Chattanooga, with the Nigra
children. My great-grandfather was a darkie, so they decided
I was one, too."
I winced at the derision in his voice, but it was not my place
to judge his racism or dispute his self-hatred. Unlike the old
man, my family had loved me, at least as long as they were alive
to do it.
His upper lip curled. "I can see by the look on your face
that you’re one of them knee-jerk liberals. Well, let me
tell you about those nuns in the orphanage. They forced me to
play the fiddle and beat me if I didn’t get it right. Ruined
me."
He flared his nostrils like an angry bull and began to wheel
around the room. His chair spun past green splotchy walls and
century-old architectural features blurred by cracking paint
applied with an indifferent hand. He came to rest under an anatomically
specific calendar of a naked, large-breasted woman.
"They indoctrinated me into their ways."
"Indoctrinated you?"
I asked.
"Horny bitches, all of them," he said, like he’d
gone over it a thousand times before. "They taught me about
pleasure and pain of the flesh, fear and obsession, and self
loathing for wanting what I wasn’t supposed t’ have.
Many times I wanted to kill myself, but the nuns drilled into
my head that it’s a mortal sin." He looked down at
his broken body. "I probably deserve to die, but burning
in hell for eternity sure ain’t my idea of a good time."
Even though the very smell of him sickened me, my heart hurt
for this pathetic, solitary old man. In my mind, I saw him as
a child, an innocent choirboy at the mercy of lascivious women
in black habits. How his life might have been different if his
childhood hadn’t been lost?
"How terrible that you had to keep that secret all these
years," I said.
He rolled his chair over to the French door and looked out. "Like
I was saying, I never told no one until now. Now I got no life,
and you’re the only one who’s ever gonna hear it."
Not knowing what else to say, I asked, "Why don’t you
get the railing fixed? Then you could at least go out and sit
out on the porch."
"Never wanna go out." He patted his wheelchair. "Except
once in a while I take a ride down the elevator to take out the
trash."
A truck rumbled down the street. The wheels of a car screeched.
A driver let loose a string of vulgarity.
"Why now?" I asked. "Was there something that
made you decide to talk about what happened to you?"
He began to cough violently. Pink spittle sprayed across the
table. Finally he spoke in his chain saw voice, "This damned
sickness won’t kill me fast enough, but it will kill me
and I’m in need of confessin’ what I done."
"But I’m not a priest, or even Catholic. In fact, I’m
not particularly religious at all anymore."
"I been to priests. Most of ‘em are about as holy as
I am." He wiped his chin on his arm and forcefully pushed
himself over to the door. I gasped as he pulled a key from his
pants, locked the door, and put the key back in his pocket.
"Don’t worry." He grinned. "It’s just
to keep my nosy landlady out. I’m not going to hurt you."
He emphasized the word "you."
He rolled back to the table. With tenderness in his eyes, he
gently patted the mannequin. "Do you have a family?"
he asked.
His tender demeanor softened my already weakened defenses. My
words spilled out almost before I was aware of speaking them.
"My stepfather committed suicide two years ago after my
sister was mur. . . ." Biting my lip, I turned my head away
to hide my tears. "My mother died last year of heartache."
Suddenly, the little hairs on my arm raised up as if in warning.
In the corner of my eye, I could see the old man’s long
fingers reaching toward me. Before he touched the flesh of my
arm, I quickly raised my eyes to meet his.
"I came here to help you, Mr. Pervis not to discuss my problems."
"It appears we have something in common," he said.
"We do?"
"We’re orphans. We not only lost all our kin, I imagine
that we both lost our faith. Or at least all of it that counts."
He winked. "We been brought together in this world for a
reason."
His motion startled me. I stood and bumped against the table.
The literature I’d brought from the Mental Health Clinic
scattered to the floor. The neck of the bass violin rocked back
and forth across the chair making a woa-woa sound. When
I could speak, my voice was high and tight as if the air had
caught in my lungs. "Please, I’d like to go."
Pervis hung his head and rolled his watery eyes up in their sockets
like a shamed puppy. "Like I said, I need some help, Miss.
I apologize if I my funnin’ scared you."
I began breathing again and sat down on the edge of the chair.
"I’m sorry. What is it you want to say, Mr. Pervis?"
"If I was a praying man, I’d pray for the end of me.
If I wasn’t afraid of eternal damnation, I’d do it
myself. Trouble with suicide though, is that you ain’t alive
afterward to ask for forgiveness." He looked me in the eye.
"Do you ever want yourself dead?"
Before I could answer, he said, "Silly question. You have
a whole lifetime in front of you. But maybe you’d like to
see whoever hurt you so bad dead instead."
I sat up straight in my chair, indignant. "Mr. Pervis, I
didn’t go to college for all those years because I wanted
to harm anyone. My job is to help people, and I resent that you
would think me capable of wanting something so vile. I could
never even consider causing the slightest pain to another human
being, much less killing someone."
"I didn’t say nothing about you killing no one,"
he said, smiling. "I only said you’d want to see someone
who hurt you dead. You ask me, there’s not a man or woman
on this earth who hasn’t considered doing something vile,
as you say, to those that pained them deeply."
"Well, Mr. Pervis, I’m not one of those people. That
would never be an option for me."
"Now that’s a bald-faced lie."
There was a tense silence between us broken only by the noise
of the street.
The old man spoke first, raising his voice over the rumble of
a heavy delivery truck. "Like I was about to say, the best
thing about being Catholic is that whatever you done, God will
forgive you just so long as you repent. I might have forsaken
God, but I want t’ make sure He don’t forsake me."
Still miffed by his accusation of me, I looked at him the way
I’d look at an errant child. "It seems mighty convenient
to use your religion to excuse bad behavior. Yes, perhaps the
death of my sister cost me my faith, but nonetheless I resent
that you use yours to serve your own purpose."
He lowered his head. "I can tell you’re a genteel lady.
T’other young women these days out there at the college
go around chewing gum so loud it sounds like a cow walking through
mud."
I kept my eyes narrow and did my best not to allow his flattery
to lower my guard.
"Those women," he said, "they tease a man the
way they dress and
move their bodies. I swear to God it was Eve who seduced the
serpent."
I ran my hand over the rough surface of the table to cover my
shaking.
"That’s a rather cynical attitude, Mr. Pervis."
He jerked up his head and pointed his jaw at me. "A poor
spent man like me. Alls I want is a little conversation when
I tend to my business. Is that too much to ask?"
His whining burned like acid in my gut, a warning that he was
a hater and manipulator of women. "What is your business?"
I asked, breathing deeply to calm myself. Confrontation was not
my style, but I pressed on. "Are you bored? You must have
better things to do than toy with women."
He looked at the bass violin. "I’m like any other man--just
in need of a little companionship, even for just a short time.
So I put me a want ad in the college newspaper. To sell the bass
fiddle, or give tutoring lessons. Whatever. Just for a little
time with some nice company."
"I understand, Mr. Pervis, but I’m at least the third
psychologist who’s come to help you, and apparently you
haven’t benefitted from talking to any of us. If there is
something that you need to discuss, may we please do it now?"
"Missy, I’m asking you to hear my confession. You sayin’
I’m all foam and no beer?"
"I think you’re taking up time without saying much
about what’s really bothering you. If you insist on making
yourself out to be a victim of women, then I’ll be the latest
who will disappoint you." A pang of guilt pestered me. I
shouldn’t be so stern with someone so pathetic, even if
my motive was to help him.
He was sulking. "What I want to hear is that you women ain’t
so perfect after all. Like them nuns, women act all holy on the
outside, but they got human weaknesses just as bad as anyone.
Why, I bet under the right circumstances, I could make you wish
me dead."
"That’s utterly ridiculous, Mr. Pervis." I stood
and held out my hand.
"Either talk to me about the real issue, or give me the
door key."
"You want to know what I done?"
"Yes. Tell me now or I’ll leave." My assertiveness
was a surprise even to me.
"Fine, then. Some of them college boys call about the bass
fiddle, but I say I sold it already. The young girls call and
I have them come up and look at it. Trouble is, once they see
me, they don’t want to spend no time getting tutored. The
white ones, I don’t mind them, but the colored ones, they
just trash anyway."
My knees went soft even before I flashed on the night my sister’s
strangled body was discovered. The detectives had given me all
her belongings. In her purse had been a want ad from the college
newspaper. I’d wondered about it at the time. "What
do you do with trash, Mr. Pervis?"
He gave me a stupid grin. "Like I said before, after I’m
done with it, I take it out."
The room seemed to close around me. A ringing so loud it was
painful filled my ears. I stood uncertainly, holding onto the
chair for support. "She was looking for a mannequin, Mr.
Pervis. My sister was an art student at the college. She needed
a mannequin for an art project. Did you put an ad in the paper
for the mannequin, too?"
He looked at me with wary eyes. "I done that once just to
see. The one who came had green eyes like you, but she wasn’t
sweet and white...."
"You’re the one who killed her." I could barely
get the words out. "You’ll pay for this, you pervert.
I’ll make you pay."
He smiled. "Like you said, Missy. The past is the past.
Ain’t nothing you can say to anyone. Anyway, that one weren’t
your sister. She was nothing but trash, Nigra trash. . ."
"Shut up," I yelled at the fearful pounding of my heart.
"Don’t you say another word about her. We had the same
mother. My stepfather was black."
"That’s disgusting." He rolled toward me, smiling
cruelly. I dodged around the table. With hands strong enough
to crush a human skull, he grabbed the table and threw it across
the room where it smashed into the wall. The bass fiddle crashed
onto a red-brown blotch on the floor and rocked back and forth.
"I thought you was a lady," he hissed, "but your
mama was a nothing but a Nigra’s whore. That makes you white
trash."
He was incredibly quick and agile, but in my fear I was faster.
I stooped and grabbed the base fiddle by the neck. I plunged
it peg first at him. His eyes registered a flicker of surprise
before he grabbed it like it was a twig and threw it across the
room. "For a little one, Missy," he grinned, "you’re
a mite stronger than the rest of ‘em."
I dodged behind the mannequin like a child seeking her mother’s
protection. With a white knuckle grip on the rim of his wheels,
he rolled himself right at me with such force that the chair
squealed against the wood plank floor. I met his offense with
the mannequin, running and pushing her toward him with all my
strength.
My aim was better than I could have planned. The mannequin landed
prone on Mr. Pervis, her arms pinning him in his wheelchair like
a desperate lover. He lurched. The momentum of the mannequin
began to push him backward. His eyes widened. He grunted in surprise
and his mouth formed a lopsided "O." He could have
dragged his heels on the floor or even fallen out of the chair,
but instead he made no attempt to stop himself. The rear wheels
of his chair, quickly followed by the front ones, thumped over
the lip of the French door.
I ran toward the entry door, shouting for help as loud as I could.
Suddenly an agonized groan of twisting metal turned me around.
Mr. Pervis and the mannequin were balanced precariously on the
porch. His wheelchair was tilting backward in slow motion.
I began to run toward the old man, stretching out my arms in
an instinctive effort to save him. At the threshold of the French
door, I heard an echo of my sister’s voice. For the first
time in my life, I listened. I stopped in my tracks and dropped
my arms to my side. "Seems to me you have a small problem,
Mr. Pervis."
With a hideous screech, the metal bolts began to pop and rip
one by one from the wall. "Is that so, Missy?" His
knew that now he’d not need to ask forgiveness from his
god.
Just before he disappeared from view, I could see that stupid
grin on his face.
I hope he saw the smile on mine.
©2008 by Marilyn
J. Wooley. This story first posted July 28, 2008. The illustrations
are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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MARILYN WOOLEY is a clinical psychologist with a practice in Northern California. She's the author of the Cassandra Ringwald mysteries. Her first in the series, "Jackpot Justice," won the 1999 Best First Novel competition conducted by the Malice Domestic mystery organization. She wrote this story for the DARK CORRIDORS pages of this site. |
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You can comment on this story online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Marilyn Wooley. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Marilyn's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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