The Night Crew

Chapter 9

The two-faced man sat in the dirt, a hedge brushing his right ear, a fender a foot from his left. The spot was guarded, out of sight, and had the feel of a den. He was comfortable in it; he put the pistol barrel beside his nose, drew a breath scented with gunpowder and oil.

He waited; and as he waited, he lapsed into a fantasy.

He was invisible, drifting through Anna's house, hanging a few inches above the floor, like a wisp, or a genie. She was in the bathroom, naked, doing her face, bending over a counter, looking in the mirror.

Could she feel him there, so close, coming up behind? He reached out to touch the smooth bumps made by her vertebrae.

Mmm. no. She had to be totally unknowing. Unknowing, he'd be witness to her most intimate moments. Perfect moments.

But it'd be kind of neat if he could materialize, too. Not just an ethereal eye, watching, but somebody who had the power to materialize right behind her.

He edited: now he could materialize.

And she'd be naked, there, bending over the bathroom counter, putting on lipstick.

No. Edit again.

She'd be wearing nylons, with a garter belt, but that's all, nylons and a garter belt, no underwear, putting on lipstick, and he'd come up behind her and the first thing she'd feel would be his fingers trailing down her spine like a cold draft.

All right, he liked that. Return. He drifted in the door, set down beside her. She was leaning over the sink, her breasts free, nipples pink, a dark shadow where her legs joined; he put out a hand, touched her spine.

When he was a child, years before, he'd been captured by the image of Humpty Dumpty. Not the fall, but the shell. Because that's how he knew himself to be.

He had two faces, not one. The outer face looked to the worlda somber face, even when he was a child, but pretty, and forthright. The inner face was something else: dark, moody, fetid, closed. The inner face contemplated only himself. He might have been whole, once. But the wholeness had been beaten out of him, shattered like Humpty Dumpty.

His father had sold cars. Thousands of cars.

His father had been on television every night, prime time, with his fake nose and white painted face, his oversized shoes and Raggedy-Ann hair.

He was the most famous clown in the world, reeling across the sales floor with a gallon-sized jug marked XXX: 'Hey, you think Big Bandy is jes' being funny when he sez you can get this like-new Camaro for the low-low price of $6,240? What'd I say? Did I say $5,740? Another Bandy slip-o-the-tongue, that's old Bandy getting into the old brandy again, makin' mistakes like saying this like-new Camaro only $5,240. Whoops. There I go again. Get down here quick and you could get this Camaro for. Whoo, that's good stuff. Old Bandy may be into the old brandy again, but I'm as good as my word, so whatever ridiculous price I just said, that's all you'll pay.'

He could take the ridicule at school, Old Bandy being his father, because everybody knew that Old Bandy was making millions. What he couldn't take was when Old Bandy got into the old brandy at home, and beat the shit out of him.

His mother was worse. His mother was a small, dark-haired devil who drank more old brandy than Old Bandy did, and she'd turn him in'You know what your son did today?'as though he wasn't also her son.

And the things he did, that every kid did, would somehow boil in his father's brain, and he'd open the bedroom door in fear and find the old man standing there with a stick in his hands and a darkness around his eyes.

His parents' sex life was as bad as the beatings: they'd get drunk and screw on the couch, or the floor, or the stairs, and if everything wasn't going just right, his father might hit her with an open hand, bat her around. She seemed to approve of it, taunt him until he hit her. Their ravings were impossible to escape: a shattering scream would drag him into the hallway, and there they'd be, sweating, bleeding, drunk, naked.

Whatever happened at home, the family had an outer face for the world: Mom gave money to the symphony and the art museum and was something in the Junior League and every other goddamn silly group willing to ignore her character in return for her money.

The young boy created the two faces as a means of survival: the outer face was bland, careful, somber and never raised its voice to his parents; never commented on the sex or the beatings; not after the first few times with the stick.

But the inner face raged against them.

The inner face wanted to kill them.

His father had a.45 automatic, a big blue Colt. He kept it hidden in a leather holster fastened behind the headboard of his bed. His father took it out every once in a while, to look at it, hold it, aim it at the TV, dry-fire it. Then he'd go into the bedroom, reload it and hide it.

In the sixth grade, two-face dreamed of killing his parents with the.45. The dream had become part of his daily reality, the inner face pleading with the outer. The outer face prevailed, with logic: if he killed his parents, they'd lock him in a room somewhere, and that would be all for him. Even the inner face recognized the unacceptability of that outcome.

Still, the power of the killing mood was so strong that he took the shells out of the.45 and threw them down a sewer. Not because he didn't want to kill them; but because neither face wanted to go to jail.

But he would kill them, sooner or later; that was inevitable. He'd build an elaborate alibibuilding the mechanisms of the alibi was one of his favourite fantasiesand then he'd do it. He'd kill his father outright. He thought about a shotgun, aiming it at the old man's chest, pulling the trigger. He'd do his mother with a knife. Very slowly.

He got a hard-on thinking about it.

Life with his parents turned him, twisted him. He knew too much from the very start, and the girls sensed it. They shied away from him. And when the hormones hit, everything got worse: he had the fire inside, but no outlet.

And with adolescence, the inner face grew stronger, to dominate the outer, although the outer continued to shield his real nature. And the inner face needed to be fed.

For years, the inner face was content with cruelties to animals and smaller children.

In eighth grade, he'd killed a cat he found crossing their back yard, beat it to death with a dowel rod. The first blow broke the cat's back, and a dozen more killed it. He buried it along their back fence line, carefully shoveling dirt over the body, smoothing the spot, even transplanting a chunk of sod to conceal the fresh dirt.

Nobody had suspected him: and in the next week, a half-dozen cardboard signs were nailed to phone poles, asking for help finding a red-black-gray tabby named Jimbo.

A small thrill; which the inner face contemplated, patiently, turning it over and over.

The next time he killed a cat, he killed it only after a protracted hunt. He had to know where it came from: so when he killed it, he could carry it up to the neighbor's porch, ring a doorbell, and with a real tear in his eye, say, 'A car hit your cat.'

The neighbor lady had broken down in tears, her daughter had been distraught and the outer face had cried with them, real agony. So much so, that the neighbor lady walked him home, to thank his parents for his concern.

In the eleventh grade, he took a major step, when the inner face noticed that Mrs Garner was never without her coffee.

Mrs Garner was thirty, a dark-haired, almost-pretty young science teacher, with long, slender legs. He was drawn to her from the start; a week into class, he'd stopped at the front of the room, and the outer face had ventured an awkward pleasantry.

Mrs Garner had frozen him, had said, 'Go to your chair, please.' Two or three of the girls in the class had exchanged quick, knowing glances, smirking, at the snub.

As quickly as thatsnaphe hated the woman.

And noticed that she carried the coffee cup with her during chemistry class, and would, from time to time, duck into the teacher's work space at the back of the room to freshen the cup.

The inner face considered that for a time: that Mrs Garner never seemed to wash the cup after she started using it, but simply filled and refilled it. He got to class very early one day, while Mrs Garner was in the teachers' lounge for her hourly smoke, and tipped a small dose of chlordane into the cup.

Mrs Garner never noticed when she drank it: but a half hour later, she suddenly declared herself to be ill, and on the way to the door, collapsed in convulsions. Two-face was a hero: he took charge, ran to the principal's office, got an ambulance on the way. Ran back, knelt by Mrs Garner as her convulsions nearly pulled her apart.

She was sprawled on her back, her dress hiked up her legs; from two-face's perspective, kneeling next to her, he could see far up her legs to the squared-off juncture, and a few random dark hairs outside her white cotton underpants.

He was ferociously aroused; and for years afterward, he pictured himself kneeling next to Mrs Garner's body.

He didn't think, until later that day, that for two hours after the poisoning, the poison bottlean iodine bottle that he'd emptied to take the chlordanewas still in his pocket. If anyone had suspected poisoning, he would have convicted himself.

And it didn't occur to him until after he'd dumped the bottle in a trash barrel that he hadn't wiped it for fingerprints.

Nor did he consider for almost a month that the chlordane bottle where he'd gotten the poison was still in his parents' garage with the other pesticides.

Eventually, he thought of it all, and the two faces agreed: He'd been lucky to get away with it.

Mrs Garner lived, and returned to class, although her memory was never as good as it should have been. Her science was never as good. The other teachers were told that she might have accidentally poisoned herself with one of the compounds that sat around the science room, odd powders in small vials, not all identified; and they pitied her as her hands shook when she tried to grade papers or to write.

The two faces watched her for the rest of the year, and for all of his last year in high school. Proud of their handiwork. Tempted to finish it.

But too smart.

The inner face retracted, went back to the small cruelties. The other face matured, and learned even better how to mask the inside.

As two-face grew older, he had some women, but none that he really wanted. He got the leftovers, the losers. The ones he wanted sensed the wrongness about him, and turned away.

Then came Anna. The look of her, the sound of her.

She was his woman, always had been. He didn't know exactly why, didn't realize that his first view of her reminded him of his first glimpse of Mrs Garner, but there wasn't any doubt, never the slightest, from the first time he'd seen her amongst the others, heard them talk about her. She'd turned the key in him, and the inner face had gone outside. Had dealt with his rivals. One to go.

He still processed those images through his imagination: like Anna herself, the images excited him, turned him on, as did the memories of Mrs Garner. O'Brien and MacAllister, thrashing in their own blood. The inner face fed on the blood, swelled with it.

And Anna must feel it, somewhere in her soul. Or would feel it, when she was no longer surrounded by these others.

Two-face and Anna were fated to be together.

He fantasized: Anna bent over the bathroom counter, her buttocks thrust toward him, the sinewy structure of her spine and the soft sheets of her back muscles.

Then Anna turned and spoke to him.

He edited frantically: she couldn't see him, how could she speak to him? He edited, but she persisted, and she said:

'. talking to Les and he said the guys at Seventeen are going to ditch their overnight monitoring guy and the guys in the truck are gonna have to do their own, like with one scanner.'

Another voice: 'Oh, that's horseshit.'

The editing broke down, snarled, crashed: and the two-faced man suddenly came back. He was sitting in the dirt with a fender next to one cheek and a hedge next to the other. He had a.22 pistol in his hand.

The voice was real. And so was Anna.

He pushed himself up, and stepped out.

'Anna?'