A Kiss Before I Die Read online

  It was another dumb exercise by someone with a degree with three attached letters.

  Sam was a good speaker. She understood words even if she could not always read them.

  “He’s a relationship manager,” she said.

  “Relationship manager?”

  “He utilizes mechanical and non-mechanical methods of persuasion to arbitrate disputes between divergent parties, with the goal of circumventing future disagreements by establishing mutually inclusive standards, trust points, and realistic, achievable goals.”

  The teacher smiled quizzically as laughter rippled around her.

  “Oh,” the professor said. “He’s a judge?”

  “He doesn’t judge.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He’s a private contractor.”

  “And he…?”

  “He’s a hit man for the mob and the FBI.”

  Samantha had issues with deliberate lies. Her father swore it was a character flaw, and that someday he would have her take a DNA test done to see if she was indeed his daughter. Her mother said her dad was a jealous idiot and only wished he could be as smart as she was.

  The professor with the three-letter degree gave her a B+ despite her not writing more than a thousand disjointed words.

  Middlebury, when needed, makes exceptions for exceptional students.

  **********

  She continued her swift inspection without interruption. Before she left the second floor, she opened the cold-water tap in the master bathroom, a moderate flow. The sound was loud enough to be heard at the front door.

  (4) The Man the Pork Pie Hat

  She was hungry. She’d arrived after 9:00 p.m. the previous night, purposely waiting until the sun was set and the town asleep.

  Based on her godfather’s manuscript and research she’d done on the village before arrival, she had an idea of where to eat, but had to drive through the town and search them out by sight.

  When she googled Foursquare for images – her surest signposts – she found a variety of meaningless pictures: close up interior shots of bars and chairs and tables, hamburgers, plates of fish, and, oddly, silverware.

  She drove north to south, east to west, crisscrossing the town, essentially memorizing the major intersections, coming to learn the village in a way a native might not.

  Street signs were a blur of symbols and gibberish. However, the town was laid out in a typical pattern of square blocks and rectangles with the main roads on the usual east/west and north/south parallels.

  She’d grown up in a small town about an hour from Foursquare, a place called Vernon Castle. There were no castles in Vernon Castle and the name was a subject of jokes and puns, especially for those who lived here.

  Middlebury had been a breeze to navigate once she had memorized the landmarks; Foursquare was evolving in a similar way.

  Cities were treacherous. She and her mother had to rely on her father, relatives like her Uncle Benny, and a succession of friends to help her navigate any town that didn’t follow a set pattern. She’d been to Manhattan once, with her parents while her dad was on business, and she and her mother never traveled without him unless it was to a restaurant or movie house in walking distance.

  Thanks to a freeway interchange, Foursquare had a McDonald’s, a Taco Bell, and a Pizza Hut. There was a place called Zambia’s, which she drove by slowly but was unable to understand what they were offering. Spanish? Italian? Portuguese? She concluded it was just one of those bizarre eateries destined for a restaurant rescue show.

  There were bars, plenty of bars, and she found a Denny’s, and a place called Tony’s Little Italy Pizza, which sounded and looked familiar although she couldn’t say why. Then, with her hunger worsening, thinking she would settle for a Big Mac or worse, she spotted the place that had come up so often in her godfather’s manuscript: Ramon’s Authentic Mexican.

  She sat in a booth next to one of its long windows: the scents floating through the restaurant assured her their menu would be delicious.

  The man in the kitchen, who was handsome, round, and short, was smiling and greeted her like a long lost relative although they had just met. The server offered a free drink – she accepted water, thank you, explaining that she didn’t drink wine, beer, or anything alcoholic.

  The menu was simple and the words were spelled out phonetically – this was a marvel for her, this breakdown in words into short symbols and sounds: Sha-lu-paz, Chee-lays ray-ya-nohs, and Nah-choz. She knew some of the dishes because of the pictures but the phonetics helped…Ramon’s made her think of home, her mother explaining and pronouncing the words in a cookbook.

  She ate slowly, mindful of public manners and etiquette, not wanting to appear impolite, eager, or, worse, hungry. She engaged the server in chitchat, who explained the cook was her husband.

  “Esteban is the son of Ramon and a master Mexican cuisine chef in his own right.”

  She was also taking her time so she could get a better impression of the white man in the pork pie hat.

  He was driving an ‘80’s model Ford Taurus, a model SHO: Super High Output. He’d been following her since she left Deerfield, making a U-turn at the top of Quarry to follow her down that steep hill. He’d kept a safe distance at first, but her seeming aimlessness had vexed him and he ended up intercepting her at an intersection. He’d waved her on although he had arrived first.

  She considered the possibility he was more chaff, another fool thinking he was going to “bump” into her; that she would instantly fall in love, get married, let him beat her, and have babies because she stood by her man. Small-town he-man fantasy.

  After he disappeared, she put the car in reverse and headed in the direction he’d come from.

  She pulled into a parking lot and waited for him to drive by; she smoked as she waited. It was a bad habit, she knew, and she tended to smoke for effect or when she felt a certain loneliness, a separateness that might be depression.

  So she had leaned against the Camaro and smoked, letting the engine idle. She didn’t think he was connected to the moron in the red Ford, but word travels quickly in a small town, and whether the word was accurate or not was immaterial. For all she knew she had jacked up the local bad guy.

  When he did drive by, he shifted his eyes off the road and to her but kept his chin and nose forward.

  She squashed the butt and tossed it into the gutter.

  That was when she found Ramon’s.

  Then she ate, leisurely.

  He walked by twice.

  He was what she expected: thin, the word lanky seemed right, with tattoos from his wrists to his elbows and probably beyond, another tattooed love-boy with far away eyes. 37° and no coat. The hat was cocked back, and she thought he looked foolish, not fashionable. She guessed he was older than she was by a decade, maybe two.

  Hot flash. Crawling skin. Methadone, she thought. Got the shakes. Anything but harmless.

  Sometimes the harmless-looking were the deadliest, and not because they were more competent, smarter, or stronger, but for all the opposite reasons: dumbasses that took emotional or ill-timed risks. Meth addicts were the worst. They killed 7-11 clerks for seven bucks, a corndog, and a Big Gulp.

  He couldn’t see her: Ramon’s windows, facing west, were tinted. He stood on the corner, looking puzzled. He was smart enough to not come in. He made a cell call on what looked like a Samsung – it definitely wasn’t an iPhone.

  She waited longer than she would’ve liked, idly talked to the server, and when she paid her bill she wrote a short play for her. Her name was Patti.

  “Patti, do you know a man named Wilcox? He’s a lawyer.”

  “Oh, yes, he comes in here all the time, sometimes twice a week.”

  “I was supposed to meet him – and I got turned around and can’t find his office address…”

  Patti gave general directions and by the time she was done, the regulars were shuffling in for Happy Hour.

  “He is such a nice man
, too,” Patti said. “And handsome!”

  “I’m looking forward to meeting him…”

  “And if I know him, he’s going to love meeting you!”

  The Camaro was parked around the corner, on the opposite side of the street, facing her. The green Ford Taurus was not there.

  When she approached the car, she walked to the passenger side, examined the tires, and saw the rear wheel had miraculously positioned itself against an upright roofing nail, itself another miracle.

  She took the nail, positioned it in her left hand between her two middle fingers and without fanfare approached a telephone that was two steps behind the car, cocked her elbow, swung her forearm, and with a quick motion slammed the nail into a decidedly agreeing gap. It was a cheap trick, using the telephone pole, taking advantage of its cracking age, but sometimes, especially in a small town, you make your own entertainment. She hoped that whoever planted the nail saw her.

  (5) An Honest Woman

  She parked a block from the hotel. She entered through the side lobby and took the stairs to her room, packed her duffle, taking towels, soap, and other sundries not knowing what was at Deerfield.

  She left a hundred dollar bill on the dresser.

  She exited a rear emergency door that activated the fire alarm.

  She was deliberate in the action. She wanted the man in the pork pie hat to know she wasn’t afraid. She also thought of it as a magicians trick, a distraction.

  “An honest woman can make decisions without fear,” her mother would say. “And she isn’t afraid of burnt bridges.”

  She drove north, passed the helipad, swung east, found Route 5, and took it to the Wal-Mart on the southeast corner of the village.

  She bought a variety of items – which included five boxes of Vivarin, a pre-packaged caffeine tablet. She did not take anything stronger than caffeine, and then only in pill form. She bought milk, frozen foods, and a dozen boxes of ammunition for the weapons she’d seen in Deerfield.

  “Looks like you’re having a party,” the cashier said.

  “An all-nighter,” Sam said. “A rager.”

  The girl was maybe 18. She was flirting. Sam wasn’t.

  “Where’s it at?”

  As a joke, Sam gave her the address of the hotel.

  People with real jobs and real problems were going home and she had to wait through a series of traffic lights. But she had time, and was content with food and the first caffeine pill that was beginning to create that familiar tickle through her scalp.

  She called the hotel and told them she was checking out because of the fire alarm. The clerk was apologetic and asked if she would mind waiting to speak with the manager. She did mind and clicked off while he was talking.

  After the light changed, the trip was quick and uneventful. There was no green Ford Taurus. The black road was unlit except for two white streetlights: one at the south curving bend leading to the field and the other on the auxiliary road leading to the reservoir and its tanks. She swung into the driveway from the side she’d twice exited from, intending to off load her purchases through the three-car garage.

  The man with the pork pie hat lay face up close to the middle garage door, the hat near his left hand.

  She’d left Ramon’s an hour ago; the lanky man had been alive ninety minutes earlier.

  Despite her father’s vocation, she was immediately chilled and nauseous. She fought the urge to vomit.

  She doused the Camaro lights. The location was too rural for her to park and walk to the house. She had no one to talk to or advise her other than the memory of lessons her parents and godfather had passed to her. She was undeniably alone and would need to make her own decisions.

  She parked at the front door. She locked the car without setting the alarm, avoiding its sharp chirp, a noise that might attract her new neighbors. Before she entered the house, she unscrewed the porch lights until they were off.

  She kept her gun forward. She wished she had another. She heard the water running.

  The water was a lure. Her father had taught her that when an intruder – especially a man with bad intent – hears water running he will automatically gravitate to it, assuming teeth are being brushed, hands washed, makeup removed. When he finds the water running he will turn it off because that is something people do – and doing this he will reset the lure.

  Only a few night-lights were lit, including the stairs to the second floor and basement. She did not search the house. The keys to the Laragia cars were in the kitchen by the door leading to the garage. One had a BMW emblem, a second had a Volvo emblem, and the third was unadorned. She took all three and entered the garage.

  It was a cosmic joke: the man in the pork pie hat was lying in front of the middle door, door number two, Monty, and behind door number two was an early model, mud-brown Volvo. She couldn’t think of it other than as a joke, a gesture from its late owners.

  She started the mud-brown Volvo with the unmarked key – it took three attempts. She let it idle for a few seconds, found the parking lights and flipped them on, and released the trunk lid. It was empty.

  Growing up in the Moretti house meant watching movies like Goodfellas, the Godfather’s, and Leon, The Professional. Her father called them “educational films”. The decision to relocate him was instinctive. And the decision to line the trunk with plastic or tarp came naturally. She found a roll of painter’s plastic, unfurled it, fitted it tightly into the trunk, and tore a section loose to use on the dead man. She sledded her four-hundred dollar coat and threw it in the backseat of the car. She pressed the garage door opener.

  For a few seconds, she feared the body might not be there, that he’d passed out, that she’d fallen for a ruse. She hadn’t checked the body; the man just looked dead. But the man was definitely there and most certainly dead.

  She laid the plastic between him and the garage. Having no gloves, wanting no gloves, she used the plastic to push him onto the sheet. He’d been shot, close range, in the chest, a double tap, and the blood oozed from him, poured and leaked from him.

  He was older than she imagined, fifty, at least. He had the trace of a goatee or was maybe just unshaven. His hair was pale brown.

  She fought tears as the sadness and fright of what she was doing grew like a virus from her heart to lungs to throat. She was not a killer. She was not looking for this. This man was probably her enemy but this man did not have to die because he was her enemy.

  He was no more than one-hundred-forty pounds, she guessed, and when she rolled him, she did not find a wallet or any form of ID other than the tats on his wrists and neck. Once she had him wrapped, she lifted him head first into the trunk, breathing in Volvo fumes, managing her fear.

  She exited the house quickly, remembering to close the garage, and realized that it wasn’t yet 7:00. She drove north.

  Houses gave way to farms. There were fewer roads, fewer lights, and fewer witnesses.

  She drove until she came to a sign that said Vernon Castle, and at the first main road she turned and followed it until she came to a familiar farmhouse, lights on, appearing lived in, at the end of a long driveway. She drove the Volvo pass the home and far out into an adjoining field, to a large barn, lights extinguished, opened its doors, and pulled the car inside.

  She gently settled the man and his hat into an ancient horse water trough, and covered him with a tarp. She kept him in the plastic. Trembling, cold and fearful, starving again, she returned to the farmhouse.

  She entered the rear porch, which was always unlocked. She stripped and put all of her clothing into a garbage can. The jeans, like the boots, were expensive and she hated to lose them but she had no choice.

  She went upstairs, showered and redressed. She had better control now and her breathing was normal. It was good to be home, if for only a few minutes.

  Before she left, she found her father’s DVD of Grosse Pointe Blank. Her parents thought it was one of the best movies ever made: sometimes they referred to each other a
s Marty and Marcie.

  Besides her godparents, they were the only two she ever so in love with each other that they would die for the other.

  Sam had no one in her life she was willing to die for. And that was okay because when you came down to it you didn’t need to die for anyone. You just had to be willing to die for yourself, your own reasons.

  (6) Officer Dan Judd

  Sam returned to Deerfield shortly after 10:00. She dumped the bloodied clothes at the V.C. landfill. It was open all hours despite the gate that closed it officially. You unhooked the chain, opened the gate, dumped, closed and re-chained.

  She parked the Volvo in the garage. She found a can of transmission oil and poured it over the area the dead man had covered. The oil, she knew, would be a shade of red that would at least obscure seen and unseen blood. She found a snow shovel, heaved some of the frozen stuff from the side of the house, and left if for the next morning.

  The water was running in the upstairs sink; it gave her comfort. She closed the shutters and blinds on both levels. She assessed the weaponry her godfather had in his library – and throughout the house. He didn’t have an alarm system but had enough ordnance to conduct a small battle.

  She removed groceries from the Camaro. She showered and used the bathroom, swallowed her second caffeine tablet, and prepared and ate four egg whites, garnishing the food with pepper. She put Grosse Pointe Blank on the living room TV.

  She kept her gun close. She waited for the inevitable, sure of herself, but unsure of when the next violent act would be delivered.

  The doorbell rang shortly before midnight.

  “Hi, how are you?” she said aloud as she approached the door. “Did you get our house warming gift?”

  Through the peephole, she could see her caller was dressed for the occasion. She placed her gun on the edge of the umbrella stand. If this was a ruse, it was beautifully orchestrated.

  “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “How can I help you officer?”

  There were many rules in her father’s profession. One was that you didn’t kid authority unless you understood the man representing the authority. Your attitude and pose had to be simple: don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours.