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  “And I just know, right then, I don’t know how. She looks at me with this big meat-eating grin, and she knows I know, and she puts her finger to her lips, says ‘S-s-s-h.’”

  “I just stand there with my mouth hanging open, and she strolls back to Jesse’s office like she doesn’t have a care in the world, knocks on the door bold as you please. Buzz has door guard, and he gets this big goofy leer on his face when he opens the door and sees her smiling up at him. I hear Jesse mumble something approving like, she walks into the office, and the door shuts.”

  “I don’t know what to do; I don’t know whether to shout out a warning, or run, or pop a vein, or what. It’s not like I owe Jesse any favors, but I’m dead meat if he finds out I knew and didn’t do nothing. So I just do my bar stuff and wait, kind of on autopilot like.”

  “Then it comes. It sounds like World War Three in there, I can hear Buzz’s Glock popping, and Jesse gets off a couple of blasts with that pump of his, but mainly I’m hearing these deep booms, kind of spaced out, but regular – whatever kind of gun it is, it’s big iron. The booms keep going a few more times after Buzz’s Glock and Jesse’s shotgun stop sounding, then I just hear the sound of silence.”

  “The door opens and she’s standing there looking right at me, like the wrath of God bundled up in this tiny little package. She starts walking toward me, she’s got me pinned with her eyes, and I can’t look away from them. I can tell she’s got a piece in her hand but I can’t even tell what kind it is other than that it’s something big.”

  “I’m frozen, I’m sweating hard, but I manage to let out with ‘I got terrible eyesight, and an even worse memory.’ And I wait for her to start blasting.”

  “But instead she laughs out loud with her head thrown back, and then she leans over the bar, kisses me on the cheek, and says ‘You’re sweet.’ Then she’s gone.”

  From the yearning look on the bartender’s face, Billy didn’t think Al was the kind of guy that got very much positive attention from women. Or maybe it was just the whole life-and-death thing that had made that kiss stick in Al’s mind?

  “So how’d you wind up with the place?” Billy asked.

  “Cops figured it must have been a robbery, Jesse’s floor safe was cleaned out,” Al said, not meeting Billy’s eyes.

  Billy waited for a few seconds until he figured Al wasn’t going to answer his question. He grunted and looked around at the cigarette-smoke-stained panel walls, at the cracked linoleum floor, at the solitary old passed out drunk at the end of the bar. Jesse’s place had gone downhill fast.

  “Congratulations,” Billy said.

  “Thanks,” Al said, a note of pride in his voice.

  All of a sudden a horrible idea came over Billy: what if this was all a killing gag set up by Jesse? What if Jesse was still alive, hiding inside his office with Buzz and the others, all of them hushing each other and giggling like little girls as they waited for the exact right moment to throw the door open and yell ‘Surprise, Billy.’

  All Billy had to do was walk back there and open the door, and he’d know for sure. But he couldn’t do it, even though he’d come all the way to Oakland to go into that room.

  Helpless rage engulfed him: it was Jesse’s fault Billy had to rip him off, it was Jesse’s fault he’d had to come back here at all – and now it was like Jesse was still haunting him, even from beyond the grave.

  Billy felt Al’s gaze on him as he turned away from that horrible door, and he looked up in time to surprise a pitying look on the fat, homely bartender’s face.

  “I always liked you, Billy,” Al said. “You were never mean to me like the others. I figured maybe Jesse stiffed her on her fee, that’s why she came blasting. But here you are.” Al shook his head wonderingly. “I’m glad you made it out of the Life, Billy.”

  Al looked at the sleeping drunk, and he frowned as he made his way to that end of the bar.

  “C’mon buddy,” Al said, giving the snoring old man a little shake. “Let’s get you a cab.”

  The guy mumbled something petulant and incoherent as Billy exited to the street.

  The drive home to Humboldt was several hours long, on winding mountain roads through the tall pines. Billy had a lot of time to think, which was good because even he knew thinking wasn’t his strong suit.

  He’d first met Kerri right after he’d moved to Eureka. He was doing his wash at a laundromat and she walked through the door carrying a gym bag.

  Billy liked what he saw from the first moment he laid eyes on her: this short, wide shouldered girl with thick chestnut hair cut in a page boy, with a wide mouth that looked like it was made for laughing. And for kissing, he thought, when he realized right then he had no choice but to put the moves on her.

  Billy knew he was good looking, he had the mirror and every woman he’d ever met to reassure him of that. But to his surprise, he was actually hesitant to speak to Kerri, he almost couldn’t muster the nerve to walk up and talk to her. It was like he saw her as a person instead of just a babe even at this first meeting, and that was something brand new to him.

  But he did hit on her, he asked her out right then and there at their first meeting, the washing machines humming and surging in the background as he invited her out for coffee.

  She’d actually seemed surprised and taken aback at his approach, and she’d been wearing this hard and appraising look when he started talking. But her expression softened and warmed into a smile as she got a good look at him up close, and her eyes had roved over Billy’s face as she listened to his voice stumbling and halting like it never had for any other girl.

  They’d been together ever since.

  It was for love of Kerri that Billy had finally gotten the guts up to clean up his back trail, only to find out it didn’t even need doing anymore, and that he probably couldn’t have taken care of business anyway.

  He didn’t know whether to be happy or embarrassed. Billy was only glad that Kerri had no idea what was what.

  He finally gave up trying to make sense of it: this would have to go down in his book as one of the oh-so-many riddles he’d failed to solve in his confusing life.

  It was dark by the time he pulled in the driveway. For a second he admired the house he and Kerri had bought together, a fixer-upper they’d put a lot of sweat equity into, making a snug little love nest out of it.

  Kerri’s Mom had helped some too, after Billy’s stolen money had run out. Billy had never actually met the old lady, but she seemed to be pretty generous, kicking down to Kerri whenever they had need of funds.

  Kerri was in the kitchen when he came inside, she was washing dishes. “So how was the bachelor party?” she asked, rinsing a glass.

  “Uh, great,” Billy said, remembering that was the story he’d given her before he left.

  He figured she bought it. Kerri smiled for a second without looking at him, and then the smile turned off.

  “I can’t find Grandpa’s Peacemaker,” she said, voice a little flat.

  “Oh. I borrowed it for target practice,” Billy said, pulling the old pistol from his over night bag.

  Kerri dried her hands hurriedly, and went to pick up the revolver with deft hands. “It hasn’t been fired,” she observed.

  Billy stepped to the kitchen sink and grabbed a dirty dish. “I’ll finish up here, babe,” he said.

  Billy could see Kerri’s reflection in the kitchen window in front of him as he scrubbed a dinner plate. There was a hard, appraising look in her eyes for a second – actually, a look just like the one she’d worn the first time he met her, when he first asked her out. Then the look was gone like it never was, and an affectionate grin spread across her wide mouth as she put the pistol back down on the table.

  “Why’d you have to be so pretty?” Kerri asked as she stepped up behind him and gave him a swat on the butt.

  “I’m going to visit Mom again tomorrow, I’ll be gone a few days,” she said, favoring him with a little leer. “How about let’s turn in after you
finish?”

  Billy nodded and smiled as he rinsed the last plate and set it in the dish rack to dry. It was good to be home, even if Kerri seemed to visit her Mom way too much for his taste.

  Kerri put her wiry arms around his waist from behind, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You’re sweet,” she said.

  Tom Ripley: A SPECTRE Profile

  Mister Blofeld:

  The subject in question grew up parentless and in squalor, dominated by an emasculating aunt, and in mortal terror of authority. He early learned invisibility, accumulating a store of rage and resentment at the world’s indifference to his needs that even he fails to acknowledge consciously. Do not be fooled by the blandness he hides behind.

  Tom Ripley is a liar on par with Odysseus, practicing dissemblance and deception merely to stay in practice. He is so effective as to even deceive himself – self examination is something that he recoils from. It is inadvisable to ever put him in a situation where he has to look within himself – it will provoke him in unexpected and unpredictable ways, with dire results.

  Ripley is an accomplished murderer, his early bumbling efforts evolving through a Darwinian learning curve into a finesse approaching genius. His specialty is improvisation, and of engineering fatal ‘accidents.’

  It is fortunate for the rest of us that he understands just how much effort surrounds a successful killing. Murder is something he holds as a last resort, if only because the cleanup and damage control is so inconvenient and tedious. His ability for self deception enables him to handle police interrogations and investigations with aplomb.

  His personality harkens back to the Renaissance style, prompting comparison with Cellini or Hannibal Lector (though without the artisan’s crude, thuggish brutality, or the Doctor’s cannibalistic malevolence). Tom’s penchant for leisure is not due to laziness, but rather reflects his innate need to distinguish himself from the herd – his refusal to be a wage slave is not arrogance, but a classical inborn self knowledge that he is an exception, a natural aristocrat. His need for beautiful and expensive things is an expression of his highly developed esthetic sense, a need for splendor to embellish his almost solipsistic existentialist mind set.

  Again like the men of the Renaissance, Tom will not allow slights and insults to go unpunished – offending him through bad manners is a sure fire way to observe his convoluted techniques of revenge first hand. It is not advised for amateurs, or for anyone not willing to go all the way.

  Contrary to some expressed opinions, Tom Ripley is not gay. He is almost asexual, despite being able to function physically in a way that approaches normalcy (though any woman that expects ‘normal’ intimacy to follow his caresses will be sorely disappointed).

  The famous incident where he wanted to bathe with Dicky Greenleaf was not, in the opinion of this profiler, an expression of homo-eroticism. Rather, it was a subconscious desire to ‘don’ Dicky, to become him – not unlike Ed Gein’s and Buffalo Bill’s need to wear ‘girl suits.’

  A true chameleon, Tom was aware from the start that his lowly beginnings did not reflect his actual quality, and that he needed better. He is not hypocrite enough to fool himself that he ‘deserves’ the good life. He has never begged or asked for anything – everything he has achieved, he has achieved at great risk, through his own efforts, and without apology.

  The question has to be asked: who deserves a life of ease and beauty more? Tom Ripley, the self made man who rose from nothing and achieved his ends in a scuttling single minded rush? Or the spoiled children of the rich, born to privilege and besotted with their own sense of entitlement? Ultimately, Tom Ripley is a much more interesting person than any of his victims, and the world would be a duller place without him in it.

  Final recommendations: Do not confront this man. Do not intrude on his life, create a nuisance of yourself, and – most definitely – do not ever appear to be a threat to him. Law enforcement’s only chance to take him down will be with a high tech sting – he is immune to the psychological manipulations necessary to extract a confession, and his paranoiac genius precludes him leaving any effective forensic evidence. For one of our assassins, the best approach would be with either a remotely controlled explosive device, or the services of an exceptionally competent sniper – and even then, his death would not be a foregone conclusion.

  Make no mistakes with Tom Ripley – he is a formidable foe.

  Sincerely,

  The SPECTRE profiling team

  Church Social

  Rita can't believe how calm she feels, sliding the shells into the pump shotgun's magazine. It's actually a little disappointing: something like this should really stand out, really justify all the preparation. Instead, she feels so fucking – normal.

  She finishes loading the twenty-gauge, rolls it up in a beach towel on the bed, and leaves it there as she checks the rest of her gear one last time. The tote bag's heavy on her shoulder, but it doesn't bother her; she's been pumping iron for a while. She humps it down the darkened hallway, the wrapped shotgun in her hand.

  Then she's abreast the open door to Carl's room. She turns to look in as she passes. Her husband hovers over his computer in the dark, lost in one of his endless war games, losing himself as he had since the day Eric had disappeared.

  Carl peers up at her, corpse-like in the flickering glow from the screen. Rita realizes they haven't exchanged a word in days.

  "Nothing," she whispers. “Nothing at all.” Her husband faces back into his world, and she continues out into hers.

  She's in the car, driving the speed limit. The tote and shotgun are in the trunk. She knows she should stay focused, but her mind wanders.

  She imagines how it must have been for Eric. The coroner said that Eric was alive throughout everything that was done to him.

  An image always came to her mind, unbidden: Eric, bound to a chair, gagged with a rag and duct tape – then a man's thick hand, reaching out to rip the shirt from Eric's back in a single yank.

  Terror. Violation. Agony. He'd have tried to call out to her many times, and at the very end of course – but she hadn't been there.

  She swoops the car over to the curb and sits hunched over the steering wheel with her eyes closed. She grips the steering wheel so hard that it feels as if her knuckles will burst through the skin.

  As he always does, Eric comes to her then. ‘It's all right, Mom,’ he whispers. ‘It's all right.’

  She even feels his small hand, caressing her shoulder. She screws her eyes shut even tighter, knowing that he won't be there when she opens them. After a while Rita continues driving.

  She eases the trunk shut and stoops to pick up her tote. This is a residential area, the blocks all bisected by gravel-paved alleys.

  Rita crunches down the alley to its end, out of reach of the inquisitive street lights. She stops at the edge of the paved church parking lot, next to a large sign listing all the church's various activities.

  Church: ‘Yeah, right!’ Eric sneers to her.

  Rita had heard about this place long before, but it had never touched her life – even during the endless waiting when Eric vanished. But when the police finally found the shallow grave up in the hills, and she was forced to identify what was left of her son – when everything unraveled and the Bad Times began – Rita had lots of time to think about it then.

  5150, she remembered them calling her then – but she’d thrown away their names the night she threw away their meds.

  Actually, the place was a church, except at night. At night, the church building was used for social work, serving the community. Various self-help groups met there, twelve step programs, things like that.

  And one night a week, the group therapy sessions met in the basement: court ordered group therapy, for convicted child molesters.

  The basement windows ran the length of the building, yellow light spilling from them to pool like curdled butter in the parking lot. She imagines the talking heads inside, spouting their
manipulative rhetoric to the nodding doctors. Well, God knows she's had her fill of psychobabble.

  She slings the strap of the tote bag over one shoulder and goes to stand behind a dumpster. Shaking the wrapping off the pump shot gun, she jacks a round into the chamber and props the gun against the wall.

  Rita pulls a ski mask out of the tote and dons it. She picks up the twenty-gauge, depresses the safety, and marches across the lot as to war. The open basement door draws her forward irresistibly.

  Crossing the door is like piercing some invisible membrane. A haze settles across her vision as she stands there anonymously masked, holding her shotgun at the ready, suddenly hesitant.

  As so often before, she feels that Eric is looking through her eyes with her – she hears him growling like an angry puppy. Rita pans slowly across the dozen staring faces, wondering if it was one of them that did her son.

  Then a gaunt horse-faced woman sets down her clipboard and uncoils from her chair. The woman approaches Rita slowly, hands outstretched, smiling benignly like all the doctors at the institution had.

  "I can see you're in pain," she intones in a soothing voice. "Well, no one here is a stranger to pain – we can help you ..."

  The shotgun blast punches the therapist in the stomach and lifts her off her feet to skid on the floor, trailing a splatter of her own guts. She looks surprised.

  Everyone in the room stands frozen for a moment — then they explode into action like cockroaches fleeing a kitchen light:

  An obese hulk of a man waddles toward her in a comical attempt at a lunge, screaming "Bitch! Bitch!" Rita blows his face into ruin, and he topples to the floor in a flopping heap.

  A goggle-eyed man with the face of a kewpie doll scampers toward the basement's other door. Her shot clips him off at the hips, and he slams down onto his side.