Reading Online Novel

The Next(21)



Stop eyeing me! What do you want from me?

I wanted to retaliate, but I had no immediate means to. My face was reddening from anger.

"His laptop had no screen saver," he stated.

Huh?

He waited deliberately again, once more leaving me feeling like a walrus  in a chess tournament. I'm a dunce. Thanks. He crossed his arms and  averted his eyes patiently. He had a slight smirk.

Was he enjoying this?

The motherfucker knew he was confusing me. He was deliberately teasing  me, engaging in another form of flirting. I didn't understand. Why the  hell would Marzoli feel the need to do anything more than exchange  information? Just for his entertainment?

He continued at last, "His MacBook was on the piano with the score to  Barber's Violin Concerto. He'd turned off the screen saver so he could  practice from his laptop without interrupting the score. I think your  instincts were correct. He never returned to his apartment, but he'd  intended to."

"He was murdered."

"All we know is he left and did not come back."

"My instincts say he was murdered," I insisted.

"Why?"

I looked him squarely the eyes and stated with retaliatory conclusiveness, "The wire cutters."

I said no more and waited. He was confused. I relished it.

His brain began tick tick ticking as it tried to understand this  apparent non sequitur, and when it finally dawned on the fucker that he  was receiving a taste of his own cryptic medicine, he grinned and looked  away.         

     



 

Oh. My. God.

He was blushing. His dimples pitted even deeper than before. I'd no idea  this tough son of a bitch had the genetic disposition to blush. His  lips were skewed to one side in puckered embarrassment. I had the  impulse to either squeeze his cheeks like a five-year-old or face-fuck  him like a twenty-five year old.

"Ah, the wire cutters," his ego responded, grinning with false comprehension.

My tongue needs to know how deep those dimples are.

"Mr. Layworth wiped the wire cutters clean with a paper towel, placed  the wire cutters way in the back of a kitchen drawer, then flushed the  towels."

Marzoli absorbed the info and tried to make sense of it just as I had.

My previous anxiety about failing to find ample proof of Ruben's murder  surfaced again. I took a controlled breath and exhaled, but that only  sent the anxiety deeper down in my belly.

"And I'd been thinking," I added, "that Nathan's open window on the  night I cleaned his nipple and Ruben's open window might be linked.  Until a day ago, my curtain had been closed for more than half a year. I  wouldn't have seen anything, but what if Nathan had flirted with Mr.  Layworth just like Ruben, and what if … "

Oh my god! I'm rambling!

Marzoli crossed his arms and rumbled quietly, politely refraining from  incredulity, "You think Mr. Layworth killed and disposed of two  neighbors from the same apartment in the space of a couple months just  for putting on a show?"

"Mr. Layworth and Mrs. Layworth," I stuttered. "Maybe."

Fuck!

I must have sounded like I belonged in the zipcode of Tune Town. I wanted to sink a fist through the wallboard.

Marzoli looked out the window at the view I had of the neighbors. In the  short time I'd known him, he'd turned away from me in this manner a  couple times before. I now realized that that this act was the  equivalent of saying, "The emotional state of the pathetically psychotic  man talking to me will not play a role in my assessment of the facts." I  swallowed painfully. A lathe shaved slender slices of my vocal chords  one pass at a time. Nothing is more injurious to your pride than knowing  your very presence impedes the pursuit of truth. God, what he must  think about me …

I've lost any chance. I've blown it.

If I remained stationary one second longer, I felt I would shrivel up  and disappear like a dime between the cushions of this couch. I stood up  to view whatever he was viewing.

Mr. Perfect was still asleep on his bed, atop the shiny quilt he'd  previously been stuffing into his mouth to stifle his moans of  ass-pummeling ecstasy. His open laptop rested on his chest. Mrs. Perfect  had still not returned. The children were still not back from their  weekend in the snow. The door to the bathroom was closed. The door to  the walk-in closet was closed. The windows were closed. The wood  trimmings of the apartment all gleamed with polished shine, contrasting  with the rich deep tones of the furniture fabric, curtains, paintings,  and fabric wallpaper. The Architectural Digest cutout was as resplendent  as ever, right down to the handsome executive posing casually and  dashingly.

His laptop slid off to his side, rousing him. He sat up, yawned, wiped  his eyes, and walked from the bedroom through the dividing hallway to  the kitchen. He retrieved from the refrigerator and cupboard a loaf of  bread and honey, and scoured the cupboards for a clean plate. I recalled  from my earlier days of open curtains that the Layworths' cleaning lady  came weekly on Monday mornings, thus it made sense that the sink,  dishwasher, and counter were presently piled with the week's dishes. In  Manhattan, couples as busy and successful as the Layworths wash their  own dishes only when avoiding undesirable conversations.

For the first time, a new association occurred to me. Marzoli belonged  with that kind of perfection. He belonged with a partner as successful  and as polished as Mr. or Mrs. Layworth. He deserved a setting that  framed his innate nobility and spotlessness. He belonged in the  privileged slice of the world where men craned their necks to listen to  his every notion, assuming the leading role in any situation with the  naturalness and relaxed authority that superior intellect, experience,  and emotional alignment grants to men of his sort. Like Mr. and Mrs.  Layworth, Marzoli belonged with someone who was equally elevated by the  gods of destiny to the top of the ladder.

Did Johanna truly see potential for me to join this distinct group, or  was her pressure-cooker timeline forcing her to skew her perspective of  the truth to get the man to get the baby to get the marble kitchen  island in the Hamptons? As Marzoli stood looking at Mr. Layworth across  the courtyard, the truth was as glaringly different from Johanna's  wishful thinking as a basement mailroom is to a penthouse office suite.  All I had to do was look around at the claustrophobic pigsty, the unpaid  bills, and all the dusty unfinished scores. The brutality of this  realization was so real, I no longer felt the pain of it. I no longer  felt my Adam's apple swell and plummet into my stomach like a cement  block off the edge of a pier. My ego was too numb to react any more than  a nod of my head-a sign of acceptance.         

     



 

It was so easy not to fight it. So easy.

After combing through all the cupboards, Mr. Perfect retrieved the only  clean dishes available-his daughter's pink Disneyland plastic cup and  glittery Cinderella plate.

Marzoli was still silent, and the longer he hesitated in responding to  my theory about Ruben, Nathan, and the wire cutter, the more doubtful I  grew about my suspicious. Maybe I'm woefully incorrect about the  Layworths' guilt.

God. Maybe I'm nuts.

Unprompted, Marzoli reached for the pillow and withdrew it from the  window. Marzoli wrapped his arms around it, squeezing it tight against  his chest. What was going through his brain that caused him to hug a  pillow against his chest? Did the sight of Mr. Perfect trigger a vision  of Nathan getting his throat sliced? Was he so saddened by the cruelty  of a powerful man?

With the pillow taken from the window, the Little Old Man's apartment  was visible again. Marzoli's eyes dropped to the courtyard level as the  Little Old Man answered a knock on his door. He had pajamas on for a  change, as if he'd been expecting the visitor. He trembled as he opened  the door, admitting the old black man with the white mustache. His  visitor stepped in and placed a bag full of soup cans on the small  kitchenette counter. From his brown leather jacket pocket, he withdrew a  small bag of weed and presented it to his customer.

The Little Old man did something unexpected.

He shook his head, rejecting the bag of pot.

The dealer returned the Ziploc bag back to his pocket with a suspect  look in his eyes. He watched the Little Old Man reach beneath the sink  and withdraw the Chock Full O' Nuts piggybank. The mustached black man  opened his hands out and as the Little Old Man proceeded to empty the  entire contents of the can into his hands until the can was upside down  and verifiably empty.

The Little Old Man put the Chock Full ‘O Nuts can in the garbage. The  slowness of this activity had the profundity of a final act. He'd just  placed every last cent of his life's savings into the two old  outstretched hands of the black man.

What was he asking the white mustached man to buy?

The black man put the money into his pocket. The Little Old Man spoke,  the black man nodded and exited. He was alone again. He huddled into his  bed and pulled the maroon sheet over his body.