Peter said nothing. He couldn’t reply to that with complete assurance. But he quietly thought there wouldn’t be any more surprises so long as he himself wasn’t found out. He didn’t see how this could happen though. And so, enjoying Tara’s company once more, he reached over and patted the kitty cat lounging across her lap.
Unexpectedly, the cat leapt down to the floor and stretched…
II
Max suddenly came into the living room and everyone stopped what they were doing or interrupted what they were saying to stare at him. He was cleaned up and wore different clothing: a scoop-necked t-shirt and dress pants. A plastic bag filled with what looked like his old sullied garments was trailing after him. He came out to them, more collected in his overall bearing, and he saluted them.
Dom pointed to a spot on his own face: “You still have a little bit of––”
Max touched the tip of his forefinger to where Dom was showing and wiped it away.
“Oh––I couldn’t get the blood off completely. I think it still smells on me.”
“How are you feeling?” Charlie asked.
“Better I guess.” Max slightly raised the plastic bag. “I didn’t know what to do with my clothing.”
“You want to sit down?”
Still standing, Max hesitated, looking absently at all of them.
“I heard you all argue from Charlie’s room,” he said. “I still can’t remember what it is that I may have done. And I want you guys to tell me.”
Charlie felt it was behooving her to lay it all on the table for him. To recap this whole murderous affair as best as she could, without injecting her bias or her feelings into it, which she found very difficult not to do.
She said, “Earlier this morning, we found something here in the apartment. It was a cardboard box, that one.” She indicated the square package sitting on the side table by the laundry room door. “Inside there was … there was … the head of man was inside, wrapped up in plastic. We also found a meat cleaver stained with blood and it looks like it’s the crime weapon.”
“And the argument is whether I’ve committed the crime…”
“Max––”
“—It’s okay; I … hum … I don’t have anything to say in my defense. It’s still a complete blur right now. But in my soul, I know there’s not any part of me that’s capable of that. I just wanted you to know that.” He paused, then added after a moment’s hesitation, “But I’ll understand if the present circumstances make it hard for you to believe me.”
That was all. It was quiet then; Max deposited the plastic bag in a corner and, eyeballing the others, he sort of hesitated to mingle with them around the central table.
Dom scooted over and let him share the couch upon which he was sitting. Max sat down on it, eyes weary and sad, hands folded together on his lap. And seeing him like that, everyone thought to themselves that it was becoming increasingly difficult to accuse him of murder.
In all consideration, it was no longer such a cut and dry case when the accused made such a face.
III
Peter glanced at the time on his wristwatch; it was nearly forty minutes since they had all been holed up in the apartment. He tried to take relief in knowing that it was just a matter of time … just a matter of time … and then Charlie would finally come to terms with her brother’s crime and the police could pick up from there.
He felt sorry for her; probably because the place was already crammed with a felt melancholy. And there was plenty of it in the air to last out a good deal of time, even long after her last-ditch attempt to prove Max innocent was a thing of the past.
The apartment actually stank of it, the melancholy and the sadness, and it screwed up your soul in the same fashion the stench of the bodiless dead man ought to screw up your nose after a while. While sitting there and thinking all this, Peter suddenly took pity on Max. His exposure to the case meant a connection between them was there. And even though they weren’t exactly friends, he thought he owed him a gesture of profound sympathy, to sort of show him that he wasn’t in it alone.
And so, Peter walked over to Max, one of his baseball cards palmed in his hand. He held it out and said, “Hey … hum … I saw that you seemed particularly interested in this little beauty last night. So hum … here, you can have it.”
Max looked up.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” An engaging smile spread on Peter’s face. “I guess you could use a little cheering up right now, you know. And I was going to exchange it first chance I got anyway. It’s my least favorite.”
It was a card from the Junk Wax Era, a 1992 Bowman Mariano Rivera. The effect of this present on Max was not as enlivening as Peter had hoped.
Max’s shoulders fell even though he appreciated the gesture; however, he said, “Thanks, but you don’t have to––”
Peter was about to not take no for an answer when Dom quickly yanked the baseball card out of his hands.
“Let me see that…” he said.
Peter cried, “Hey! What’s wrong with you, man?”
“Where did you get it?”
“It was a gift.”
Peter reached for his card but Dom quickly drew his hand back and asked again, “Who gave it to you?”
“What––what’s this? Are you interrogating me? Will you give it back?”
“Who gave it to you?” Dom repeated. He was serious.
“My uncle collects these things,” Peter replied, his annoyance growing rapidly. Everyone in the room could see that now.
Dom said, “You’re fucking lying!”
Tara said, “Dom, stop that now!”
“He’s not being straight,” Dom said, looking at Tara. “This card isn’t his.”
A look of dismay came on Peter’s face. “What?” he started.
Tara sprang up from her seat, her eyes and mouth hardened.
“What do know about it?” she asked Dom.
“This card is part of a lot which has been withdrawn from regular sale for what––fifteen years now,” Dom explained. “And it usually has the buyer’s initials on it to indicate their scarcity and value. Now check out the initials––”
Tara didn’t move. Instead, Alvin came over, took the card from Dom and examined it.
Dom went on, “It’s very thin, but you can read ‘B.S. from Dad’.”
Alvin nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Dom added, “B. S. stands for Benjamin Seymour. The card is his.”
Alvin narrowed his eyes; he said with caution, “Wait… You mean our Ben, the program director’s son.”
“Yes. He lost his card collection to a con artist a few days ago and asked me to keep an eye out should they resurface again. It’s worth a lot.”
Peter said, a lump in his throat breaking the tone of his voice, “This is nonsense. There must be a mistake––”
“—Well, let’s see the rest of the cards that you were so obligingly showing off during the party. Let’s see if they bear you out.”
“I don’t know what I did to upset you but––”
Dom didn’t bother to listen to Peter’s outrage. Driven by some blind lunacy, he suddenly hurtled to where Peter had set down his rucksack, saying: “They are in your bag, aren’t they?”
Tara protested, “Dom, that’s enough! You have no right pestering him like that.”
But Dom had already unzipped the rucksack and turned its contents out. To everyone’s shock, the baseball card collection spilled out over the floor along with a bunch of wallets, credit and debit cards with different cardholder names to them, four driver licenses which weren’t his and other trinkets of such suspicious nature.
Poking through all those items, Dom said, all puffed up, “Christ, look at all this. It’s even worse than I thought. I think I start to see what your game is here. You gave us all that phony crap about enrolling in school to win our trust. Is this your usual M.
O. to cadge free goodies off trusting people?”
“No, I was just––” Peter started.
“—You were just playing us,” Dom cut him off, never looking directly at him. “From the beginning… We were the numbers of your new swindling act. Well, bravo, you deserve a standing fucking ovation.”
Peter was going to respond to that but then he broke off and turned shamefully to the group.
They had been good hosts all in all… His chest began to nervously heave up and down when he saw the way they were now staring at him. They felt cheated, deceived and, for that reason, their judgment about him was final.
“Listen, I’m not a bad person,” Peter said in a breathless voice. “Yeah, I fend for myself. I have no one to look out for me so I do what I’ve got to do to survive. That doesn’t make me a bad person.”
They looked at him and said nothing.
“None of you know what’s like to live in shelters,” Peter went on, “to wake up every morning in your life with all kinds of worries to trouble you because you don’t know how or if you’ll even get through the next hour; to hustle day in day out for scraps; to not have a constant roof over your head. So any piece of sunshine that I can get, I take it, all right? Nobody ever gets hurt.”
There was no apparent reaction from them. They were still staring at him in silence, the look in their eyes unflinchingly hard and unforgiving.
At last, something crossed Simon’s mind and he stepped forward, peering at Peter even more suspiciously.
“Hey, did you lift my wallet?”
“What ––”
“—I can’t find it anywhere. Do you have it?”
“No, I don’t have it,” Peter said, his eyes filled with indignation. “I mean, you guys were good to me. I didn’t come in here to steal.” He turned to Tara. “You have to believe me––”
“—So all this time,” Tara said, eyes shining, “you were lying to us, pretending?”
“Tara––”
“—My gosh. I brought you here, put my friends in danger.”
“Look, I’m sorry; but, please, it’s not like I’m a screwball or something.”
“I have no idea who you are,” Tara told him.
Right then, she turned away from him. Instinctively, he wanted to reach his hand to her shoulder and turn her round, talk it over with her, make her see he was still the same person she had spent the night out on that terrace with.
“Just a minute,” Dom broke in. “I’m not done with you yet. Now I’m wondering what else you’ve lied about.”
“How do you mean?” Alvin asked Dom.
“He’s the one who suggested that we should get rid of the box, pretend it wasn’t even here. I think he knows something.”
Charlie made a tentative move toward Peter.
“Do you?” She asked. “Have you anything to do with this?”
Peter hesitated to answer. Her tone was not accusing, only pressing. She came closer to him and looked him in the eye.
“Please, I beg you,” she said. ”You know what’s at stake, you said you weren’t a bad person, Peter.”
“Look, I’m in awe about this murder just like the rest of you, all right? I only know as much as you do.” He paused; but she was still onto him, not leaving it at that.
To liberate himself from her insisting gaze, he slowly added, “I may know something but I didn’t think it was going to be helpful to share it with you; that’s why I didn’t say anything.”
Dom sharply countered, “Or maybe you didn’t want to expose yourself and your scheme…”
Peter took it very badly. To save what was left of his honor, he snapped back.
“You know, between the two of us, if you’re concerned about winning some kind of dick contest, don’t sweat it because you win hands down. You’re such a big one.”
Charlie said, “Please, just tell me what you know.”
“That dead guy in there,” Peter said, “I think I recognized him; I have seen him before.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Charlie did not buy that.
“Honest to God, I don’t know. I spotted him a couple times at a Riverside hangout in company of some local thugs. That’s all I know.”
Peter started putting his valuables back into his rucksack.
“What are you saying,” Charlie said at this point, “that he was some kind of thug too?”
“Most likely, if he was associated with any of those Riverside gangbangers. Those guys are no jokes; they’re freaking mad and they stand together like one. Your brother may have to worry about them, too, besides the police.”
‘But he’s innocent’ Charlie heard her voice echo within the emptiness of her mind. She had great trouble getting over this potential new threat coming her brother’s way if this affair now implicated thugs and their violent retaliation practices, or what they often called ‘street justice’. She was fearing the worst.
After stowing everything back inside his rucksack, Peter risked another look at Tara. Their eyes met: the disdain on her face was partially gone. It’d worn itself to something less hard and it made him feel better.
However, for the time being, Peter chose to isolate himself from the others by moving to a corner of the living room.
IV
Jen picked up the newspaper Dom had been reading the lottery numbers from while Carol, barely recovering from the revelation of Peter’s duplicity, said, in a low voice, “That thing with Peter was pretty unexpected, don’t you think?” She saw Jen leisurely delve into the paper. “Seriously, you’re going to read a paper while all this drama is playing out right in front of us?”
“I need a diversion.”
“A diversion…”
“Well, if we’re going to be here much longer, I’d like to give my nerves a little break.”
“Right.”
Carol kicked back on the couch and appeared to smile, for no other reason than she felt the need to give her nerves a break too.
Meanwhile, Simon approached Charlie from behind. She was still deep in her thoughts and started when he reached her.
“Do you believe what he said,” Simon asked her, discreetly looking over to Peter, “about the dead man being maybe some kind of thug?”
“I believe he’s got nothing to gain by lying about this,” Charlie added, sighing tensely. “Christ, I have this feeling you get when you have a horrible nightmare and you know it’s only a dream but you cannot wake yourself from it, whatever you do. You have to endure it through to the very end.”
“Do you know if Max knows anyone over at the Riverside?”
“I don’t know, maybe he does.”
“Maybe he’s taken some pictures there, you know, street portraits or something. Maybe he got mixed up in some gang stuff.”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “I need to talk to Max.”
“Yeah, let’s push him a little,” Simon eagerly suggested, “see how the dots connect.”
“I need to talk to him alone.” She sensed that Simon was going to object and added, rather tactfully, “And about your wallet, last time I saw you with it, you were in my room. Maybe you lost it there.”
Simon nodded and moved off while Charlie went over to Max. She bent closer when she was near where he sat.
“Hey… I just want you to know that I’ll do anything to get you through this, alright?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“This,” Max said. “Patronizing me because you think I’m limited in the head.”
“I don’t think that,” she said. “I’m greatly worried; can’t you see that?”
“You’ve been worried about me for a very long time.”
“Of course, like I’m supposed to.”
“And you like that too, don’t you?” Max added curtly. “I’m the one with all the problems. And all you do is just try to help,
is that it?”
“It’s not fair for you to––”
“—Fair?”
“Yes, yes… Your suffering doesn’t only affect you. It affects me too.”
“Really?” Max said; he looked a little roused. “Well maybe I’d have done a lot better on my own if it wasn’t for your overwhelming concern. You know, just leave me alone.”
He suddenly stood up and paced away from Charlie. He seemed to be heading for the front door. Charlie quickly bolted after him and stopped him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know, Charlie,” he said. His voice had a fever-pitch tone. “I’m fucking crazy. How the hell can I think for myself, huh?”
“What’s up with you?” Charlie said, gripping at his top, sounding as if she was going to either start a fight with him or break into tears. “Why are you so difficult? Why are you making it so hard for me to talk to you?”
“Because I’ve never made much sense anyway, so why even bother, huh?” he said. “Let’s just dump me into some fucking nuthouse because that’s what has to happen for everyone’s sake. I bet you and mom slept much better at night knowing I was well taken care of by all those crazy doctors.”
“Max, I––”
“—Even when I was too medicated to know my toe from my nose, I knew I was only there because you guys figured me for a handicap, a dead weight, an embarrassment nobody wanted to face in our little family.”
“That’s not true––”
“—You both walked away and left me to be someone else’s problem.”
“No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Just fucking admit it,” Max said, callousness showing in his eyes. “You weren’t exactly supportive during my commitment hearing.”
Charlie slightly shook her head: what he was talking about, the involuntary commitment, it was a chapter which dated a few years back. Dredging up those bad memories now was the last thing she expected and needed. It brought unnecessary tension and widened the rift she had sometimes felt between them after he’d gotten rehabilitated after seven months of therapy. More than ever before, she was now feeling it big time, the rift, like a big splash of bad blood on the face and it suddenly scared her ... the bad blood.
“Mom and I were… Look, we did what we thought was best for you,” she said, never faltering in this belief. “I mean you were getting out of hand. But you are fine now.”