Read Online The Joy of Killing by Harry MacLean - Free Book Online

up to the night sky and spread my fingers wide until the moon catches between the knuckles of the second and third digit. The moon seems to have filled up a little, as if someone had poured molten light into it. I squeeze gently until the orb flattens out a little. I relax my fingers, and it springs back into shape. The blood streaks on it are gone. The moon is pure and pretty as the first night it shone. My mother’s voice reverberates in my bones. I knew by then what it was about; the only way to survive this scene was to stay hidden. Once I said yes or no or maybe, I was screwed. I shook my head at another question. I hadn’t really done anything, after all, just gone along for the ride and watched the scene play out. The second detective, with the eyes that didn’t move, and the small ears stuck low and back on his head, picked up the wallett and opened it. There was a little pocket with a snap on it for change. Behind a piece of scratched plastic was a photograph. It was of David, with the usual smirk on his face, the flattop with the lock curled over his forehead.
    â€œYou know him?” The guy’s voice was surprisingly deep, like a radio announcer’s.
    I nodded.
    â€œWho is it?”
    I peered closely.
    He took the picture out of its case and held it up to me.
    â€œDavid Wright?”
    I nodded. He lay the picture down on the glass table and opened the last fold in the wallett, as if to extract something else. He pulled out a small photo. It was a girl, with blonde hair, a forced smile. Judy Pauling.
    â€œYou know her?”
    I shook my head. He lay it down on the table, next to the picture of David. I had misread the situation; this was about Judy. Her father had beaten it out of her, the stuff in the basement. But the cop had mentioned Willie. Willie and Judy did not go together. Maybe a photo of Willie was coming out next. I pictured him: slight, short, balding, small black eyes in a sallow face. The three of us met outside a drugstore on the main street of Booneville early one afternoon. David and I stood there for half an hour before he showed up. We stepped under an awning, and he explained that he had arranged for a girl from the fair grounds to meet us at his apartment. Her name was Janice. Half an hour apiece, and wouldn’t cost us a thing. He kept glancing around as he talked. Suddenly, he was gone. Behind us not twenty yards stood the postman. He had followed us, and Willie had spotted him and figured him for a cop. The postman gave us a ride back to the shop in exchange for a promise to stay away from Willie.
    I PUNCH THE keys on the Underwood in a vain attempt to describe the feeling of that night on the train. No other time witha woman came close to it. Surely I was to blame for that. I see myself as chasing that sensation the rest of my life, always slightly on the run, scared to come to a complete stop for fear of what might overrun me, and drop me. Sometimes, usually when booze or drugs were part of the mix, the barriers to impulse gave way, like the night of my best friend’s wedding party, some five years after I’d caught him and my wife together, when all supposedly had been forgiven and everyone, all three of us, had moved on. I was standing on the makeshift stage at the resort outside of Montego Bay giving the best man’s speech, rambling on about what a remarkable couple they made, and suddenly the bullshit of it all made me hesitate just long enough for the familiar scene of the two of them fucking to slip through the netting. I looked around for my former wife in the wedding party, and when I spotted her sitting with the bride’s parents, a half-empty rum drink in front of her, blonde hair pulled back into a long ponytail, smiling up at me, I raised my glass. “Finally, I’d like to thank David for fucking my wife. In the ass, I might add. I’m looking forward to returning the favor. Cheers!”
    It was one of my favorite scenes