The Strangler

14

Amy had installed a new deadbolt on her apartment door, a monster of a lock that looked like it belonged on a bank vault. It quelled the unease she’d been feeling and it helped her sleep. She did not like to think of this foreboding as Strangler-anxiety; she did not see herself as the hysterical type. But it was getting hard to ignore the alarm on the street. Sometimes it seemed the Strangler was all people talked about.

In the beauty parlor, Amy had listened, captive, while a half dozen women debated the available tactics.

– -I don’t know what I should do when I get home. Maybe I should leave the door open and look around, so if the Strangler’s inside I’m not locked in with him. But then I think, what if he’s outside? Maybe I should lock the door as quick as I can.

– -Even when you’re inside with the door locked, who says you’re so safe? All these ladies he killed, even the young girls, he got in. He finds a way in, this guy.

– -When I go to bed, I set up soda bottles by the door, so in case he opens it during the night, I’ll hear and maybe he’ll get scared off.

– -He doesn’t break in! They let him in! He talks his way in, he’s a con man. So just don’t answer the door…

On and on people talked. Nobody knew anything. Newspapers described the killer as a phantom and a monster, but they had no idea what he actually looked like. They hinted at carnal sadism or ritualistic sexual deviancy and suggested that the Strangler had satisfied his unnatural appetites. But the details were withheld; no one knew exactly what had happened to those thirteen women. Everyone was free to imagine the murders according to her own personal horrors. The victims, on the other hand, were absolutely real. In a city as small as Boston, it was not unusual to know someone who knew someone who knew one of the victims. Even if you could not find such a link, among thirteen victims, young and old, white and Negro, all nice girls, all grandmothers and college girls, it was not hard to find a victim who seemed familiar enough.

Far from distracting people from it, the Kennedy assassination fed the paranoia. It touched the same nerve. The Strangler too was an enemy within. The phantom fiend, they’d been told, probably looked just like them. If it turned out in the end that the city’s resident monster was just another Oswald, well, they might be disappointed but they would not be surprised.

And so it went: Priests warned women from the pulpit to keep their doors locked. Jittery phone-callers flooded the police with warnings about neighbors who were suspected of harboring fetishes, or men who tried to pick them up on the street, or mysterious hang-up calls. Single women felt their hearts quicken when they entered their darkened apartments. Strangler-anxiety became a fact of life.

Amy tried not to feel any of it. What the newspapers had said was true: Statistically, you were more likely to be killed by lightning than by the Strangler. Anyway, she had always felt strong, and feeling strong, she believed, made her so. Still, something was off. She wanted that big new lock. It helped her sleep.

Now she fiddled with the key, sawing in and out, searching for the proper fit as she clutched her purse and the mail and supported a bag of groceries precariously on one raised knee. Finally she was able to get the thing open. She stepped inside, snapped the light on-and screamed.

Ricky was in the armchair in the opposite corner.

“Jesus! Stop, doing, that!”

“I don’t have a key.”

“Exactly.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“So knock! Like a normal person!”

“Well, but you weren’t home, see, so I just-”

She cut him off with a look, then lugged her groceries into the little galley kitchen.

Ricky followed her in and gave her a peck on the mouth.

“You’ve been drinking. Where were you? No, wait, let me guess. McGrail’s.”

“How’d you guess?”

“You’re a creature of habit. You should have your mail delivered there.”

“I’ve been banned.”

“From McGrail’s? They’ll go broke without you.”

“It’s true.”

“What’d you do, run out on a tab?”

“I consorted with the criminal element.”

“You are the criminal element.”

“I mean the real criminal element. This guy came to see me. That’s what I need to talk to you about. I need to disappear for a while, take care of this thing.”

“What guy?”

“Amy, really, you don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

His face was blank. This was the infuriating thing about Ricky, the secrecy, the way he just disappeared into himself.

“What’s going on, Ricky?”

He did not respond.

“Come on,” she teased. “It’s not so hard. It’s what the little hole in your face is for; that’s where words come out.”

“Amy…”

“Fine, Ricky. That’s just…fine.”

“Amy, it’s nothing. I’ll take care of it. It’s just better we don’t talk about it. Trust me, I have reasons.”

“What reasons? Tell me.”

“Amy, please. Just let it go.”

She studied him. She knew, oh, she knew what Ricky did. But if he chose not to discuss it, then the subject was verboten. That was the unspoken rule. At times like this, though, it killed her to let it go, just killed her. Her temperament, her training, her every day was about finding things out. She was a born finder-out. But, good Lord, did she love that man! Everything about him. His face, his smell, his voice, his body. The more she looked at him, the more she feasted on him. It was just possible, too, that she loved Ricky the more for his tantalizing secrets. He was a story she could never quite get. In any event, there was no sense in pressing him for answers. He wouldn’t talk anyway.

But in the next moment all that sighing, girlish acceptance was gone. How could you really know a man if you could not discuss his work? What kind of relationship was that? Where was it all headed? They’d been together all these years and still?…Oh, the hell with secrets! Were they a couple or not? Did he love her or not?

“Ricky, it’s not fair. You can’t just show up and tell me you’re going to disappear for a while without even explaining what’s going on. It’s…”

“This again. It’s what?”

“It’s not fair.”

“Not fair? How do you know that? How do you know I’m not doing this for your own good?”

“I think I can decide what’s for my own good. I’m a big girl.”

“Well, the answer is no. You don’t get to know this time. It’s better you don’t know. You’ll just have to trust me on that. Now, do you trust me or not?”

Her mouth fell open. Trust him? Ricky, you hypocrite! What balls! She raised her hand to slap him in the chest, not playfully but because there was nothing else to do, no other way to reach him.

Ricky snatched her wrist before she could strike him. He held it, and though his face showed nothing, he squeezed her arm hard. His message could not have been clearer: Don’t snoop.

“Ow, Ricky, stop it, you’re hurting me.”

He released her, then shook his head, frustrated, inarticulate. “Sorry.”

“You’re hurting me.”