The Little Brother

THE FIRST THING he did when he awoke that afternoon was look up the number for the small media representative firm where Tony worked. He wrote it down, then took a cassette from the blue case in his bedroom and slipped it into the tape deck. He kept the volume low and stopped the tape frequently to repeat a phrase aloud. It was a pleasure to use the speakers instead of the headphones, as he had been doing for the past few weeks, for fear that Tony might walk in. Now he made fast progress; his mimicry was near perfect.

Ostensibly as a joke, he had cajoled Tony into recording some of his exploits, saying he could sell the tape in the back of Penthouse, as an instructional aid on picking up women. He’d asked an occasional question to glean the information he needed, but it had been easy— Tony had gone for it completely. He was half drunk on four cans of beer, and always willing to give advice. “Confidence,” he said. “That’s what I’ve got, and that’s what you need.” Tony had filled both sides of the cassette.

Tony responded to a question about the women at work by discussing the secretary in detail. Karen was a good-looking woman in her early thirties who alternately flirted with and disapproved of him. As he often did with names, Tony shortened hers, calling her simply “Kare.”

That type of information was useful to the man who was listening to the tape. He had recognized early on that most people judged how well they knew others by how well others knew them.

When he felt he could repeat Tony’s sleepy yet resonant voice perfectly, he erased the tape and dialed the number.

“Boylston Advertising Sales,” a woman’s voice answered. “Can I help you?”

“You could, but so far you haven’t,” he said. “When are you going to drop that loser, Kare?”

“Tony? Is that you?”

“You forgot me already? I saw you yesterday.” He chewed on his lower lip. That was stupid. What if Tony hadn’t?

“Yes, well, don’t talk about Donny that way. What I said that time at lunch, I didn’t mean to have it thrown in my face.”

“You wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t true.”

She gave a short laugh. “Maybe so. Even more reason not to throw it at me. Anyway, I was just about to call you for Jerry. Are you sick or what? Your voice sounds kind of funny.”

“I’ve got a cold coming on.”

“You better think up something better than that. Did you just forget all your appointments? We expected you in this morning, and when you didn’t show, we figured you went directly to the agencies. A Mr. Piedmont from Johnson & Cleary just phoned wanting to know why you stood them up for your three o’clock. Jerry took the call.”

“Uh-oh,” he said, grinning.

She caught the tone. “It’s not funny, he’s furious.”

“Hey, that rhymes, kind of. Anyway, put him on. See if he can give me rabies over the phone.”

She was silent for a moment. Then, “Oh, Jesus. Just when he thought you were going to work out.”

“I’ve been working out for two years too long,” he said. “So save the lecture, okay?”

“Listen, stop that and be nice,” she whispered fiercely. “He’s been good to you. Why such a wise guy, anyway? You got a new job or what?”

“A whole new life,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe it. It’s a shame you don’t get to be part of it.”

“This is getting tired,” she said, coldly. “Jerry’s here now. I’ll put you through.”

“Good-bye, Kare,” he said, cheerfully.

“Uh-huh.”

The phone clicked, and he was kept on hold for almost a minute. Karen had surprised him. He’d thought she’d be more upset. She was probably in Jerry’s office now, bleating out their conversation. He considered hanging up. But they would just call him back, so it was better to deliver the message when he was ready.

They would have been getting this call sooner or later, he mused, even if he hadn’t killed Tony. More than once Tony’d said that he was on the verge of starting his own rep firm, that the time spent working under Jerry was just good experience.

Finally the connection went through and a raspy voice said, “You better be calling from the hospital, telling me both legs are broken and all your fingers too. Not going to your appointments, not even calling. How long you been doing this? Is this just the first time we found out?”

“Manners, Jerry, manners. Is that the way to answer the phone?”

“What’s going on with you?”

“Good news.”

“What?”

“A big career change. More money, more fun. Fact is, I was just wasting my potential working for you. Guy offered me a new opportunity and I had to take it.”

“Who?”

“You don’t know him.”

“If it’s Haskins, have the balls to tell me now.”

“Like I said, you don’t know him. Relax, Jerry, I’m out of the whole space-sales thing. Moving back to New York, closer to my family.” His lips twitched. “You know how it is. I got to thinking, I’m going to die someday, and looking back and seeing all the ad space I sold just doesn’t seem to cut it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m quitting.”

“Just like that? No notice, just don’t show up for your appointments, then cancel out two years with a phone call?”

“That just about covers it. Just do the direct deposit with the last two checks, okay? I figure that’s what I got coming, including vacation.”

“Screw you.”

His voice took on a sharper edge. “What’s that mean? You sending the checks or no?”

“It means screw you,” Jerry said distinctly. “Goddamn it, Tony, people quit jobs every day. It doesn’t have to be like this. Of course I’m going to send you your checks. I do what I say. I thought you were like that, too. Yeah, a wise ass who chases skirts up and down Newbury Street, but I thought still you knew the right thing to do. I put in too much time with you, too much effort, for you to just quit with no notice.”

“I’m crying,” he answered. “But send the checks anyway.” Then some of Tony’s regret began to seep into his consciousness and in a confidential tone, he added. “Honest, Jerry, I had to take this position. No choice. Besides, you’re old enough, you ought to know. People are never what you think.” He hung up.

* * *

Several hours later, he put on Tony’s clothes: a tan linen suit, a blue shirt with button-down collar, a burgundy tie with navy stripes, and black shoes with leather tassels. He slipped on the heavy gold watch he had admired for so long.

Tony stared back at him from the huge mirror over the black dresser. The bronzing cream had darkened his skin, but not quite enough. He rubbed on more makeup. As for the hair, the black wig he had bought the week before would do the trick for tonight.

He worked on the voice again. “Looking good, Tony. No punkers or B.U. girls tonight. Pumping some convention lady it is.” He held his gaze, smiled, then turned out the lights. Outside, the summer mugginess covered him like a sweat-soaked blanket. He considered going back for an even lighter suit but decided against it. They kept the rooms air-conditioned at the Westin.

He left the building and turned right onto Columbus Avenue. Many of the buildings along the street were gutted and boarded up, although here and there he noticed real-estate signs. Tony would be good at selling real estate, he thought. More money in that.

Moving at an easy pace, he took the time to savor being Tony. The clothes were comfortable and fit well. Most people looked away if he looked at them directly. And when a tough-looking black youth stared back at him defiantly, he didn’t feel even a tickle of the fear that normally would have twisted his stomach into a sour ball. Tony had that confidence, that arrogance, wherever he went. People recognized it; in particular, women recognized it.

A block ahead, a derelict sat on the steps of an abandoned building, babbling an angry litany. He rocked back and forth, clutching his knees. At the end of each breath he would rear back and yell an unintelligible word, then start over.

The man dressed as Tony found himself matching every fourth step with the bum’s punctuating yell. When he got closer, he stared directly at the old man, willing him to look away.

But interest flickered in the man’s milky eyes. Stained teeth flashed between his fast-moving lips. Drool had formed twin streaks of yellow down his beard, and at a distance of six feet the urine smell was overpowering. As his babbling wound up to another conclusion, he took a deep breath and screamed, “Liar!”

Tony faltered. Or rather, the man wearing his clothes faltered. He reached for a jagged-edged brick by his right foot. The derelict reacted immediately, scuttling back up the stairs, bellowing, “Go ‘way, go ‘way. I didn’t do nothin’.”

Tony immediately settled back into place. He grinned and made a show of pulling his sock up instead of touching the brick. He turned his back on the man and continued down the street; he even laughed when the old man began to yell after him from a safe distance.

Turning left up West Newton Street, he noticed the urban transformation was more complete. If he decided to take Tony into something more lucrative, like real estate, he would want a new apartment, maybe in Back Bay or on Beacon Hill. But for now, everything was just fine. So much potential.

Ten minutes later, he was riding up the escalator in Copley Place. The feeling of being watched and admired only increased as he walked into the lounge. “Dewar’s on the rocks,” he told the bartender. He sat back in a tall gray-and-chrome swivel chair and checked out the four waitresses. All wore the same uniform: a tight green dress with a slit cut up to midthigh on the right leg. The material was supposed to look like silk, but he was sure it was polyester. All the better, he thought.

One of the waitresses looked great: tall, early twenties, with bright blond hair that hung halfway down her back. When she raised the drink tray over her head, the thin material hugged tight under her breasts just like his hand would do. She looked over and caught him watching. He smiled calmly. So did she.

Just a day in the life, he thought, watching her take an order from two older men in business suits. She leaned back, hip cocked, one smoothly muscled leg exposed. On her way back to the bar, one of the men said something to the other and they laughed. She looked at him, at Tony, rolling her eyes. He shook his head; couple of old losers.

He checked his watch. 9:00 p.m. Waiting for her to get off would take too long. He decided to try to connect with somebody else first. If nobody good showed, he could go away and come back an hour before the lounge closed. An hour should be plenty of time with her, he thought, the way she’s looking for it. He sipped his drink and considered the other women in the bar.

Most were already with men. Lots of name tags on lapels, a convention crowd. The men dressed in conservative suits, a few with bright yellow or red power ties, practically glowing in the dark. He closed his eyes. It was the women he could hear, chattering, light sounds over the rumbling voices of the men. With Tony inside him now, it was hard to imagine the excruciating pain women’s voices had been able to deliver in the past.

He opened his eyes abruptly. One woman he could have been interested in was guarded by her friend, a woman so fat she should be wearing a wide load sign. The only woman actually alone at the bar looked fortyish and tough. Not what he had in mind at all. So he waited.

Two drinks later, a woman who looked to be in her late twenties sat down two chairs away and ordered a glass of white wine. She had brown hair with blond streaks and wore lipstick a bit too vividly. The electric blue of her dress made him expect blue eyes, but when she glanced his way, he saw they were brown. She wore a white convention tag over her left breast with the name susan printed in red capital letters. He found her attractive, not gorgeous but attractive. She would be lucky to sleep with him, he decided.

He looked at the mirror behind the bar and found he had a good view of her, right between the Chivas and the Jack Daniel’s. When her head turned in his direction, he glanced her way, did a mild double take, and said, “So, Susan, you need a break from the hospitality suites?”

Smiling, but looking confused, she said, “Oh, I sure did. How much talk about employment can one person take? Plus all those pushy headhunters, trying to get your business.” Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth. “You’re with an agency, aren’t you? With my mouth, you’ve got to be. You know the saying? ‘Open mouth, insert foot,’ that’s me. I’m sorry.”

Laughing, he put up his hand. “Calm down. I’m not with an agency, whatever kind you’re talking about. I’m not even with the convention. I just figured you might be tired of running around to the hospitality suites. This hotel always seems to have something like that going on.”

Her brow furrowed, and then she clutched at her name tag. “I get it, you’re just trying to pick me up! Here I thought I was supposed to know you. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, everybody running around peering at each other’s chests and using first names only.”

“Sounds like a vacation I had in the Bahamas once,” he said and then tensed. Where in the Bahamas?

She giggled. “I’ve had a few like that. So what are you doing here tonight?”

He moved to the seat next to her. He smiled, warm but still distant enough to be polite. “Up until now, just killing time. I’m in from New York. Tomorrow morning I have to make some presentations to the ad agencies around here.”

“What are you presenting?” She giggled again. “You a male model?”

“Hey, flattery,” he said. “I’m supposed to do that. But anyhow, what I do is work for publications, sell their ad space to ad agencies. But I think I’m getting out of that, maybe doing something more interesting, like real-estate development. Make more money, too.”

“Money and interesting usually do go together,” she mused. “At least that’s what I’ve noticed in my travels.”

“Ah, you should have said so up front. I would have told you I was a rich Californian in town to sell my vineyard for ten million dollars.”

She petted his hand lightly. “I’m from California, so that would have worked really well on me. We could go back, I could quit work, and we could be rich together.”

“Well, see, I’ve got the right attitude. That’s got to count for something.”

“Just about everything,” she said, into her wineglass.

He signaled for another round of drinks. “So tell me about yourself.”

And she did. About the convention. About her job as a recruiter for a growing San Jose high-tech manufacturer. About her boss, whom she was close to slapping with a sexual harassment suit. About her lover, whom she had just dropped. After an hour, she had had three drinks to his two.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said. Her leg was warm against his. “I’m not a prude. I just don’t like to do it on command. And I especially don’t want to do it with my boss.” She slapped the bar. “His belly sticks out to here! It’s disgusting. Why doesn’t he get the idea?”

“Listen,” he said, putting his arm around her. “I can see why you’re not interested, but if I were him I’d be chasing you around all day too. You’re a good-looking woman. You’ve got to expect it.” The giggle. “If you were chasing me all day, I’d let you catch me.”

“Susan, I’ve been chasing you all night.”

“I noticed,” she said. “Catch.”

* * *

He caught a glimpse of his face in the lobby mirror as they walked around an older couple on the way to the elevators. Being Tony was strong in him now, and he hurried Susan into a waiting elevator and pushed the door close button. He drew her into the corner and kissed her on the mouth.

“Hold the door, please,” the old man said, irritated.

But he left his finger on the button and said in Susan’s ear, “The hell with him, he’s already got his own girl.” The door slid shut. Her breasts felt firm and ample against his chest. He touched his tongue against hers and got an erection.

“Nice,” she said, pushing her hips forward. He ran his hands over her silk—real silk—dress, feeling the panty-hose line at her waist, then cupping her cheeks. Her skirt was slit on the side too, like the waitress’s. He put his hand on her thigh and started to run it up her leg slowly. “Careful,” she said. “The door might open, and much more of this, I’m not responsible.”

“Okay.” He emphasized the huskiness of his voice, stepping away from her slightly. She blinked, then smiled. “You’re different than you seem at first,” she said.

“How so?”

She laughed. “Well, you stopped, when I asked you to. That doesn’t happen too often.” She added quickly, “Not that this happens to me all that often.”

His face suddenly felt wooden, but his voice sounded easy enough, saying, “Well, when you’re right, you’re right. We don’t stop, there could be some old geezer waiting for the elevator who’d kick off when the door opened, the way we’re heading. That would slow us down for sure, waiting for the ambulance and all. And I don’t want to wait. How about you?”

Smiling, she said, “No, what I mean is first you come off as this slick type of guy. You know, pick me up two minutes after I sit down. Usually guys like that talk about themselves the whole time, but not you. You let me talk, and, God knows, give me a chance, I’ll talk.”

“So why are you saying I’m not what I seem?”

The elevator door opened and she stepped out, taking a key from her purse. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said as they reached her room. “You’re beautiful. I like you better this way. You know, a nice guy, not just a stud.” She cocked her hip against him and said, “Though I’m sure that, too. Want to come in and show me?”

She went in ahead of him and flipped the light switch. He blinked in the harsh glare, and when she turned, he mentally pushed her age up another few years. Looking at him, her eyes narrowed and her mouth opened, then snapped shut.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She looked in the mirror and said, “Oh God, this light stinks, it’s not doing us any good.”

Us? he thought, and started to touch his face, but stopped. He waited while she turned off the light and drew the curtains back. The John Hancock tower stood like the blade of a colossal sword stuck into Copley Square. Her room was smaller than he had expected and dominated by a huge bed.

Kicking her shoes off, she stretched across the width of the bed easily. “The room may not be big, but it’s got all the furniture we need,” she said, patting the mattress.

He could barely see himself in the mirror with only the moonlight illuminating the room. He wished he could see Tony more clearly, putting it to this girl Susan the way she wanted it. Was the wig on straight? Why had she looked at him like that when the light was on?

“Come on,” she said, “I want to see you without those clothes … and show you me, without mine.”

He knelt beside her on the bed, leaving one leg on the floor. “Hey.” She picked at his sleeve. “Clothes. Leaving your suit on comes under the heading of wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” She slid her hand over his chest and down. His penis wilted. She touched him, and the room wasn’t so dark he couldn’t see her frown.

“I’m just what I appear to be,” he said, hating the quavery sound of his voice. Goddamn Tony.

“What?” She sat up. “Wait, I didn’t mean to insult you. Don’t get mad.”

“Well, why did you have to go say that?” His voice was rising. “We were doing fine, then you go say I’m a fake, start looking at me like something is wrong.”

She crossed her arms. “I didn’t say you were a fake. So I just noticed the makeup, okay? I wasn’t going to say anything, it doesn’t matter. We’re just here for one night. So lighten up.”

“Nothing is the matter with me,” he said savagely. “I was doing fine, then you screwed it up.”

“Right,” she said curtly. “My fault. You’re wearing a wig, and makeup, and you can’t get it up. And it’s my fault.”

He broke her nose. Howling, hands covering her face, she fell back onto the bed under him. She tried to roll, but he got his hands underneath her arms, grabbed her by the throat, and dug in with his thumbs. He twisted his legs around hers so his groin pressed hard against her belly. She tried to scratch at his eyes, but he jammed his chest against her face, buried his head in the pillow, and rode her as she tried to buck him off.

And then the feeling came. It was always a surprise. She was hot and sweaty beneath, and she had hurt him just moments before. She had only known him for a few hours, yet she still felt that woman’s compulsion to cause him pain. But as her life pumped against his hands, he was suddenly touched by a love for her, and with it, he was hard again. A flickering sense of jealousy that she had had other men passed through him, and then he forgave her as her hot twisting below rubbed him hotter and hotter. When he climaxed, the muscles of his arms and chest swelled, and something cracked in her neck. She twitched and then was silent. He lay on top of her until finally he realized the only beating heart was his own.

Leaning back on his right elbow, he looked down at her staring eyes. “You shouldn’t have made me do that,” he said.

* * *

He sat in an armchair looking out the window, disgusted. Her body had become incontinent. Fucking Tony had lasted less than two days. He kicked the armchair across from him suddenly, knocking it over.

There had been times when he’d been somebody else for over a month, and without having to kill any women. Now he had to start all over again.

Nobody had pounded on the door to save this Susan. He assumed that if anyone outside the room had heard the noise, they would figure it would be an embarrassing mistake to knock and ask what was going on.

He yanked the spread out from under her and put her on her side, facing away from the door. Grabbing a handful of hair, he pulled her head up and put a pillow underneath. Then he covered her with the spread, so only a shock of her hair was visible.

Surprise, surprise for the maid.

In the bathroom he checked himself for cuts. She had gouged his right temple, but it wasn’t bleeding very much. He went back into the bedroom, found the wig on the floor, and brought it into the bathroom. It covered the cut easily.

Taking a paper towel from the dispenser, he wiped down every surface he thought he had touched. He didn’t really know much about it, but he didn’t think his fingerprints would do the police much good. He had never been in the military, had never been fingerprinted by the police anywhere. And so what if the police picked up a print down at the bar or up here in the room? They could keep it, as long as they didn’t have him.

Using the paper towel, he opened the door and left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob. He walked down the stairway for two floors before taking the elevator. In the lobby, he kept his breathing steady, met no one’s eye, and walked out of the hotel. Walking away from the South End, he took a left at the Boston Public Library on Boylston Street. He continued past a multicolored glass window of an English-theme pub and took another left. Twenty minutes later he was going up the stairway to Tony’s apartment. He let himself in and leaned back against the door, eyes touching on the cheap furniture, the posters without frames. He spit on the floor.

In the master bedroom, he turned on the light to see what Susan had seen. The makeup line was obvious near his eyelashes. There was bronzing powder on his shirt collar, and the wig was slightly askew. Sweat had drawn streaks through the makeup on his face. He closed his eyes and almost vomited.

After a few moments, he raised his head and opened his eyes. Only a foot away, on the dresser, was a picture of Tony sitting in the Thunderbird when it was new. A blond girl in a blue tank top was kissing his cheek, her eyes on the camera. Tony was grinning, his left hand out the window, thumb up.

“Bullshit!” He threw the picture into the mirror, shattering his own image. He pulled the suit off as quickly as he could. Stumbling when he reached the pants, he fell onto the bed, then jumped off as if burned. He threw the black briefs along with the rest of the clothes onto the bed.

He hurried into the bathroom and showered. Some of the black hair color flowed down the drain with the shampoo. He dried off with his own towel and then stuffed it into a garbage bag with his dirty clothes. In his room, he dressed quickly in tan polyester pants and a white shirt. He returned the contact lenses to the blue case. In the mirror, his face looked narrow and his lower lip trembled. He slammed the lid down. Tossing the rest of his clothes into the garbage bag, he took his belongings into the kitchen and left them by the door. Glass crunched under his shoes as he walked into Tony’s room. Tony’s wallet was on the dresser. He stuck it in his back pocket, then stepped up onto the bed, unzipped his fly, and urinated over clothes and pillows. “You’re useless,” he said.

* * *

He stayed in the car on a side street in Brighton for the rest of the night. It was hot and cramped in the backseat, and his skin stuck to the vinyl. Breathing through his mouth, he tried to relax. But as he began to fall asleep, his arm, shiny with sweat, slid off the rounded edge of the seat and thumped on the floor. He rolled over and pushed his face where the seat and the back met, rubbing it in a way he found soothing. Closing his eyes, he began to hum quietly, steadily. For a long time, his thoughts turned to gray cotton, nothing.

Suddenly he knew that Tony was in the trunk and tearing through the seat to get at him. The car was careening around corners, and he was jammed, helpless. He could hear the ripping of foam, and feel the touch of Tony’s dead fingers through the vinyl, brushing against his own cheek.

He tried to scream but couldn’t get anything out. He rolled onto his back but couldn’t get up; his arms lay paralyzed. Above him, the seat bulged tight over the outline of a face, like that of a baby suffocating in a plastic bag. Then the bag ripped and Tony’s head burst through. The right side of his face was crushed, one eye swollen shut. Tony reached out to clutch his throat, and suddenly they were underwater, chained together and weighted by cinder blocks. He held his breath as long as he could, then finally, blood pounding in his forehead, he opened his mouth wide to the black water.

He awoke. His face was still jammed in the corner, and his arms had fallen asleep beneath him. Turning over on his back, he gasped in the stale air of the closed car. It was morning. He sat up, pushed the front seat forward, and dragged himself outside. The sun was covered by a hazy cloud. It hurt his eyes to look anywhere.

Sensing that he was being watched, he turned quickly to find a little Oriental boy in the yard of the house he was parked in front of. A chain-link fence separated them. “Did you sleep there?” The boy pointed to the car, his high-pitched voice amazed. “All night, did you sleep there?”

He almost didn’t answer, then knelt by the fence, smiling, and said, “Do you know what wonton soup is?”

The little boy said, “Wonton.”

“Well, that chewy part in the center tastes like pork. Know what it really is?”

The boy shrugged.

“It’s little boys who don’t mind their own business. We put them in a grinder and let the rest of their family eat them in soup. You think about that before opening your mouth about somebody else’s business, okay?”

The boy backed away from the fence quickly. “Hah,” he said, but he looked scared.

“You talk about me, your mama-san and daddy-san will be eating you before they know you’re gone.”

The boy’s lower lip stuck out, and he crossed his arms and backed away. “Hah,” he repeated.

The man got in the car and drove off thinking both he and the boy were lucky. If the little kid had been a crier, he could have been in the house by now screaming about the man out front who tried to grind him up. Then again, if it had looked like that was going to happen, who knows? He could have been over that fence before the kid hit the porch. Why did he do stuff like that? He started a little joke, and it could have gone all wrong. Last thing he needed was to have to explain anything to the cops right now. Especially why he twisted some kid’s head around for looking at him funny.

At a convenience store in Kenmore Square, he stopped and picked up the Boston Phoenix and the Globe. There was no mention of Susan, dead Susan, but it was too soon anyway. He thought about it sometimes, why he always wanted to read about it in the paper the next day. Like on television, the SWAT team comes bursting in on some sicko, and he’s got clippings of his victims on the wall. He didn’t do that nonsense. But he did need to know what the police knew, just so he didn’t get caught. Logical.

Crossing the street to a bank, he took Tony’s cash card up to the machine and punched in the code, “Stud.” Sure enough, Tony’s big mouth hadn’t lied. Three hundred dollars was the daily limit, and he planned to hit a different branch each day for the next few days until the meager account was cleaned out. Beat working. And it was a lot safer than hanging out in the park at night, trying to avoid getting mugged by the other muggers.

At breakfast, the young waitress tossed her hair impatiently while he stumbled out his order. His face turned stiff. He didn’t know what to do while waiting, where to look, what to do with his hands. He started to read the paper, like the man in the booth across from him, just as the waitress brought back his French toast. She made a small irritated noise when he knocked the pepper shaker off the table. He bent down to pick it up and envisioned taking the steak knife from the table, ramming it up under her chin, and twisting. Instead, he smiled politely. “Sorry.”

After she returned to the kitchen, he sliced the French toast into small chunks, poured on a stream of sugar from the glass dispenser, then topped it off with maple syrup. He ate ravenously, pushing new forkfuls of the sopping bread into his mouth before he’d swallowed what was there.

When he was done, he looked through the Phoenix for a furnished room and found one listed with an address nearby, on Massachusetts Avenue. The waitress was back in the kitchen, out of sight. He left a five-dollar bill in the puddle of syrup on his plate, wiped the steak knife off carefully, and slipped it into the back of his pants. It was good to be ready.

He drove down Massachusetts Avenue past Symphony Hall and parked the car in the South End. With Tony’s resident sticker, it should be there whenever he wanted it. He walked toward Commonwealth Avenue, carrying the garbage bag of clothes and the makeup case, thinking about the chances of the police looking for him. The real question in his mind was whether they would look for Tony. There was no reason to look for him.

He didn’t have black hair and green eyes. The person who’d killed Susan did. The bartender knew that; the blond waitress, probably, too. Maybe even the old geezer and his wife who’d been shut out of the elevator. He’d picked the Westin because it had seemed like Tony’s type of place, but Tony had never talked about going there.

He’d talked about places like the Lion’s Den on Stuart Street. “You should see it,” Tony would say. “I walk in and Louis at the bar points them out and I take what I want. He says I’m good for business, I keep the babes coming in.”

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how full of it Tony was about everything. Tony hadn’t brought a girl home once all summer. He always made a big deal about how he would go to girls’ apartments so he could leave whenever they tried to crowd him. Such bullshit.

He glanced at his watch. Tony’s watch. He covered it automatically with his right hand, then relaxed. Far as he knew, nobody was even looking for Tony yet. And if they were, how could he be traced to Tony? He had never said so much as hello to the neighbors. The rent was just a cash deal with Tony.

And Tony didn’t even know his real name. Loser. That’s what he and the girl in the hotel were. A couple of losers.

* * *

“It ain’t a hotel and it ain’t your apartment,” the old man said. “So don’t be calling me for ice, and keep the TV down after eleven.”

He nodded. “How much?”

“One forty-five a week, plus a twenty-five-dollar deposit on the key.” The old man’s stubbly chin stuck out defiantly. “Some people come in here and leave me with a kitchen full of dirty dishes and take the key. Then I got to go cut another one. I can’t make my nut if I got to pay for a key every time.”

“Yeah,” he said, handing over the cash in exchange for the famous key. “I’ll get it back to you.”

The old man grunted. “That’s the way it starts. Anyhow, come on, I’ll show you the room now. You don’t like it, good luck finding something better.”

The landlord, wearing baggy brown pants and a yellow Ban-Lon shirt, shuffled ahead of him down the narrow hallway. The building seemed to be decorated to the old man’s taste. Fiberboard hid what were probably nine-foot ceilings. The walls were painted an institutional beige, like in high school.

“Last person here,” the landlord said, as he opened the door, “loved to eat cabbage and fish. Must’ve ate it every day. So don’t worry about that smell, it’ll go by tomorrow. Damn cabbage stinks.” A cockroach scuttled across the opposite wall, onto the nightstand, past the telephone, and down to the floor. “Life in the big city,” the landlord said. “Can’t do nothing much about that. Find a can of Raid under this sink, if they give you the heebies.”

He crossed his arms and said, “I’m not going to be here long. That phone hooked up?”

“For local calls,” the landlord looked at him warily. “You got to go through me to place long distance.”

“No problem. I can find what I need here.”

Alone, a few minutes later, he brought the telephone stand closer to the table, opened the newspaper, and started ticking down the “Apartments to Share” column with a pencil. He quickly scratched out the ads for women, or those with multiple roommates. His nose wrinkled when he read a listing stating that the present occupant was gay, “… but you don’t have to be.” He read it again, glanced toward the window, then scratched a big X across that ad. He did the same with all those requiring someone older than thirty. About a dozen possibilities were left. There were more in the Globe. He started dialing.