Hope to Die

THIRTY-EIGHT

It's not difficult to buy a hunting knife in New York City.

It's very difficult, prohibitively so, to buy a gun. You need a permit, and that's not the easiest thing in the world to obtain, and you need to show two pieces of photo ID along with the permit. A knife is easier, because the movement for knife control has not made much headway. There are, he learns, certain kinds of knives you can't purchase, because they're illegal. Switchblades, for instance, or gravity knives. It's possible, however, to buy a knife which can be converted into a switchblade, and the same dealer who sells it to you can also sell you a simple kit with which you can make the conversion. That's evidently legal- but, should you use the kit and convert the knife, you're then subject to arrest for possessing an illegal weapon.

A switchblade is illegal because, just by pressing a button, you can convert it into a weapon. But a regular hunting knife that doesn't fold to begin with already is a weapon. You don't even have to press a button. But it's legal.

On the other hand, you can't carry it on your person if the blade is over a certain number of inches in length. Then it's a deadly weapon. You can buy it, and play mumblety-peg with it in the privacy of your own home, or take it in the woods with you to skin out big game. But if you carry it around within city limits, you're breaking the law.

He is breaking the law.

The knife is a Bowie-type, ten inches overall, with a six-inch blade. The handle is wrapped in dark brown leather, and the sheath that comes with it is of black leather reinforced with steel. The design tooled into the sheath shows two crossed flags, one the stars and stripes, the other the Confederate stars and bars.

The sheath is now attached to his belt, and as he walks along, his arm at his side, he can feel its comforting presence. His jacket is long enough to conceal it, but it's easy to reach under his jacket, easy to get his hand on the handle. There's a little strap that snaps closed, securing the knife, but he can leave it unsnapped if he wants, to make it that much easier to get at.

It's a beautiful piece of workmanship. The manufacturer is located in Birmingham, Alabama, and much is made of this in the article's packaging. The clerk at the sporting goods store made a point of telling him the knife was American-made. Are the best knives those made in America? Or is it that customers for hunting knives like to support American industry?

He doesn't know, or much care. It pleases him to have the knife, even as it pleased him to have the gun. Long before he was ready to use it, almost from the day he took it from that Freudian idiot's desk, he'd enjoyed carrying it concealed on his person, in a pocket or wedged under his belt, where he could touch it whenever he felt like it.

It's very satisfying, walking about armed, carrying a concealed weapon. You know something no one knows. You're empowered, secretly empowered. Sitting in a subway car, you look at the man opposite you, knowing you can draw your gun and shoot him dead and there's nothing, nothing at all, that he can do about it.

Once, in a darkened movie theater, he'd taken out the gun and pointed it at the back of the neck of the person sitting directly in front of him. Bang, he'd thought to himself, and put the gun back in his pocket.

By the time he finally got to use the gun, on that fool Bierman, he'd anticipated the moment a thousand times.

And where shall he go now, with his beautiful new knife? He has the whole day to himself, to use as he wishes. Shall he collect his car from the garage and go for a ride in the country? Go home, stretch out, curl up with a good book?

He could return to the house. His house, his future home. The giant, the Irish thug, must have moved on by now. If not, he can see how the man does against six inches of steel, honed to razor sharpness and hardened to 400 on the Rockwell scale, whatever that's supposed to mean. It's evidently a selling point, as the manufacturer trumpeted it on the box and the salesman troubled to point it out.

No doubt it means it's hard, as you'd expect steel to be. He imagines the big man dismissing him, telling him to fuck off, then the green eyes widening at the sight of the knife in his hand.

Then again, he thinks, perhaps not. A knife blade, whatever its numerical degree of hardness, might snap like a twig against that one's rough hide. More to the point, he can envision the man's hand darting out, quick as a cat, and taking the knife away from him…

He wants to try it out.

In a restaurant where he eats a sandwich and drinks a cup of coffee, he locks himself in the men's room and practices drawing the knife, practices thrusting at an imaginary opponent. There's a mirror, and he can watch himself as he goes through his moves. It seems to him that he has a natural feeling for the weapon. He'd been quick to master the gun (and, the job finished, sick at the thought of abandoning it) but it seemed to him that there was nothing to learn with the knife, or, more accurately, that his knowledge of the weapon was intuitive and innate, dormant and unsuspected for years, activated the moment he took the thing in his hand.

Perhaps he'd been a knife fighter in a previous life. Perhaps he'd been Jim Bowie himself, the man who'd invented the damn thing. Died at the Alamo, didn't he? Went out in a blaze of glory.

With a favorite knife in his hand? Why not?

Someone tries the door. It's locked. And if it were open? A man walks in, starts to apologize, sees the knife, tries to back away…

And he sees himself wiping the blade on the man's shirt, returning it to the sheath, and walking coolly out of the bathroom, drawing the door shut after him. Walking past the balding Korean attendant, down the stairs…

No, that was earlier, that was at the massage parlor. He's in a restaurant now, he's just eaten, just gone to the bathroom, and it's time to pay the check and leave.

On the street, he tells himself it was just imagination, that's all. A fantasy sideslipping into a memory. Nothing untoward in that, nothing to be alarmed about.

Now what? Another massage parlor?

The notion is shocking in the intensity of its appeal. The only element he doesn't contemplate with delight, he realizes, is the massage part. He doesn't want anybody touching him, doesn't want to be aroused sexually. He just wants to see the look in her eyes as the knife slides home.

He's not thinking clearly.

That, at least, is clear to him. He has been walking around, turning left, turning right, walking into shops, looking around, walking out. He's looking for something and doesn't know what he's looking for, and he's not thinking clearly, that's it in a nutshell, and in the process he's placing himself at risk.

He reaches into his shirt, touches his amulet.

And knows what he has to do. He has to go home and lie down, he has to take a Valium, he has to get some rest. He has had a very busy day, and his energy levels are depleted, and he's got to allow them to replenish themselves. A hot bath, a glass of Harold Fischer's excellent single-malt Scotch, a Valium, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. That's what he needs, and what he's going to get.

He steps to the curb, holds up his hand, and two taxis dart across several lanes of traffic, eager to take him wherever he wants to go.

He rewards the one who gets there first, gives his address, sinks back into the cushions. He touches the handle of his knife, touches the rhodochrosite circle.

Power and clarity. He's feeling better already.

On Central Park West, a block and a half short of his destination, the taxi stops for a red light. Without planning it, without any forethought whatsoever, he says, "I'll get out here," and takes money from his billfold. They're not at the curb, there's a lane of traffic to the right of his taxi, but no matter. He stuffs money into the pass-through compartment of the partition, ignores the driver's protest, and gets out. There's a red light, no one's going anywhere, and it's easy enough to walk between a couple of cars and reach the sidewalk.

Why, though?

There's a reason, he's certain of it, and so he keeps his eyes open and his wits about him as he proceeds north for a block on the side of the avenue bordering the park. And, when he's covered half the distance, he knows why he didn't let the taxi take him to his door. He doesn't know what warned him, what subtle observation inspired that inner prompting, but he can hardly question it.

Because his building is swarming with policemen.

There are police cars parked all over the place- at a hydrant, in a bus stop, in a no-parking zone around the corner. Is there a fire truck on the scene? An ambulance? No, nothing but police cars. And there's a uniformed patrolman standing in the entrance, talking with the doorman. And there's a man who's not wearing a uniform, but might as well be.

Can he spot a film truck? Are there any barriers set up to hold back the crowd? They are forever filming things in this city, movies, television episodes, along with New York exteriors for shows ostensibly set here but actually filmed in Los Angeles, and much of what they film involves crime and the police. Walk into an apparent hostage situation and you're likely to spot Jerry Orbach, looking more like a cop than the cops do.

But Jerry Orbach's not here. No one's filming this.

It's all over, he realizes. He knows without the slightest doubt that he's the reason for the presence of all these policemen. And it's not one cop, come to ask him a few questions. It's a whole slew of them, several vehicles' worth, and that means they've been in the apartment, and yes, of course, they've read what's on his computer, they could hardly have failed to do so, and they'll have long since discovered the wretched little masseuse tucked in her wretched little cupboard, and, well, what is there to say? It's over.

And they're waiting for him, standing there waiting for him, and if he hadn't somehow known to get out of the cab when he did, he'd have waltzed right into their arms.

But he's been given a second chance.

He heads for the parking garage to collect his car.

You get what you get, he thinks.

And it's up to you what you make of it.

He thinks of alt.crime.serialkillers. He'll have his own thread, won't he? Have whole Web sites devoted to him and his exploits.

And how many cops will spend how many hours searching for him? There are no photos of him, he's seen to that. Family photos, high school yearbook photos, but he had another name then, and no one searching for Adam Breit will know that name, or have access to those photos. They can run all the sketches they please on America 's Most Wanted. It won't do them any good. He'll watch the program with new friends in Spokane or St. Paul and shake his head and sigh with the rest of them. "What a sick son of a bitch," he'll say. "I wouldn't mind seeing him hang. I'd pull on the rope myself."

Waiting for a light to change, he drops his hand to his side and feels the knife, then reaches up to touch his amulet.

And thinks of the people who love him.

Christ, they're going to hear about this, and it's going to shatter them. Peter and Ruth Ann and Lucian and Marsha and Kieran, his whole little family, and what are they going to think? How are they going to feel?

He can't leave them like this.

He pulls out of line, wrenches the wheel all the way around, hears brakes squeal behind him as he makes a U-turn in front of oncoming traffic. Horns sound in reproach, but he scarcely hears them. He heads for Delancey Street, and the Williamsburg Bridge.

Is he in time? Will they welcome him with the love that is their greatest gift to him? Or will he walk through the door only to see fear and horror on their faces?

He brakes at the curb, leaps out from behind the wheel, dashes across to the front entrance. The door's unlocked and he flings it open, and there's Kieran and Ruth Ann, looking up from their work, and there's big Peter over to the side, chipping away at plaster. And what is it on their faces? Shock?

No, no, it's surprise, and of course they're surprised, because they were not expecting a visit from him. But it's a good surprise, he sees. They're delighted, their faces glow with love. "Doc!" they cry. "Doc, what are you doing here? Doc, it's so good to see you!"

He makes the rounds, embraces them in turn, and when he and Peter have finished their hug he hears footsteps on the stairs, and turns to see Marsha and Lucian, beaming, radiant, coming to join the party. Everybody's here, his whole family, and how could he have possibly driven off and left them, these five dear people who love him so? How could he even have considered it?

What was he thinking of?