Specimen & Other Stories Read online

  Some days when Ken was in a bad mood he made lists of people he would kill for free. People who abused and abandoned their pets. Drivers who didn’t signal their turns. People who tossed litter on the sidewalks. Owners of very expensive cars who always seemed to have handicapped placards on their dashboards so they could park where they pleased.

  He looked at her again and wracked his brain for something to say. Her beauty was a frightening hurdle, like a mountain in the distance that he wanted to climb but knew that he would run out of oxygen and die before he reached its peak.

  She turned the page in the newspaper, picked up her coffee, sipped it again, and her eyes drifted briefly his way.

  “Would you like a date square?” he said to her, regretting it immediately. Could he have picked anything more ridiculous to say?

  She looked at him and after a moment a crooked little smile appeared on her lips. “Who you calling a square?”

  It took him a few seconds before he got it. Word play. She was messing with him. He liked that. His heart started pounding like a big bass drum.

  “You’d never make it as a square,” he said. “Too many curves.”

  “The better to roll with the punches,” she said.

  “Anyone punched you,” he said, “I’d tear their arms off and club them to death with the stumps.”

  “Ooh, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”

  “Did I...? Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I was only thinking it. Sometimes things slip out.”

  “Yes, I know. It’s like that motherfucking Tourette’s Syndrome. Don’t you just hate when that happens?”

  “Don’t get me started. There are so many things to hate.”

  “You know what pisses me off?” she said. “Take a walk along Avenue Road, see how so many handicapped people seem to drive a BMW, a Mercedes or a Porsche. I’d like to line up the doctors who signed those permits and run over their legs with a bulldozer.”

  Ken couldn’t believe his ears. It was both shocking and exciting to hear someone who thought so much like him. He stood up, but he wasn’t sure whether he should walk or run away. The last time he’d expressed an attraction for a woman, she’d called 911.

  “Would you like something? Date square, chocolate brownie, macadamia nut cookie...?”

  “What? I thought you were asking me for a date. Now who’s square?”

  He stared down at her. Was she still messing with him? This was worse than Sudoku. The numbers didn’t add up. She was beautiful and innocent, and he was a beast with homicidal hands. What kind of children would they have?

  Ken looked from her to the other end of the sofa, where the guy was now curled up like a pretzel, still on the phone. “I wouldn’t have said something like that, not when you’re with someone.”

  She made a dismissive wave. “My idiot brother?” She looked at her watch. “We were supposed to catch up, on account of we haven’t seen each other, for like a month, but he’s been on the phone all this time and now my break’s over and I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The Gap on the next block.”

  She stood up, made the universal thumb-and-pinkie signal to her brother. Call me, asshole. And walked out.

  Ken followed her into the sunlight. Briefly, it was like something out of a movie, where the earthlings step out of the spaceship and the new world is all bright and shiny and marvelous and they know somehow everything’s going to be all right.

  He saw it too late to warn her. Some idiot had left a juice bottle lying on the second step. She slipped on it and would have taken a header onto the sidewalk if Ken hadn’t reached out with reptilian reflex and grabbed her bicep in his hand. He held her steady until she was on the sidewalk.

  “Oh my God, your hands are so amazingly strong.” She looked up at him with gratitude. “And warm.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can let go now.”

  “Sorry.” His mother had always said, you find what you want in life, you hold onto it tight and never let it go. He wondered about that sometimes, and why she hadn’t held onto her own life, instead of spiraling down the drain in a swirl of cheap wine.

  “I’ve got to get back to work.” She pointed down the street.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Barb.”

  “I’m Ken.”

  “Barbie and Ken.” She smiled. “My friends are going to rip me a new one over that.”

  It took him a few moments before he got it. Was she making fun of him? He looked at her, still standing there, smiling with teeth from a dental ad, waiting for him to say something clever...

  “What time do you get off work?”

  “Six.”

  “Would you like to go to dinner with me?”

  “Only if you’ve got a lot of money, because I am really hungry. Not to mention, thirsty.”

  “I have money.” It had been a good month. He’d killed two guys and he had another one to do this afternoon, although he wouldn’t get paid until tomorrow.

  “If you’ve got the money, honey, I got the time.”

  Ken had to control himself from having a nostalgic meltdown right then and there. His mother used to sing that song when he was a kid, and waltz him off his feet around the kitchen in their shitty little two-bedroom apartment, until he got too big for her and she got too drunk to dance.

  Ken looked at his watch. “How about if I meet you right back here when you get off work?”

  “Deal.” She offered her hand.

  Reluctantly, he shook hands with her, feeling her little palm swallowed up inside his big paw. Her hand was very warm and slightly moist, like a burrito that had just come out of the microwave.

  “Okay, I’ll see you later.”

  “You know, maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she said, “but you have awesome hands. They give me the shivers, you know, in a nice way.”

  “I get that a lot,” he lied, and he knew by the way she laughed that she knew he was full of it and she didn’t care. She waved bye and headed off toward the Gap.

  He turned and walked away. He gritted his teeth, telling himself not to get all mushy and look back at her. He started to hum a tune to himself, observing the debate going on between his ears. There was the old Ken who insisted she’d stand him up and he’d never see her again, and there was the new Ken who believed he’d see her for dinner tonight, and then who knows what could happen...

  He walked back to his car, a 14-year-old white Volvo – solid, dependable and unremarkable, very much like himself. He got inside and drove across town to Danforth Avenue where he parked on Logan in the heart of Greektown. It was wall-to-wall restaurants and bars and cafés for half a dozen blocks along this stretch. It was a warm and sunny September afternoon and there were lots of people on the terraces. He found the restaurant he wanted and went inside and saw the guy sitting there with a couple of friends. He was wearing a yellow shirt that stuck out like a banana in a cornfield. Perfect.

  Ken checked his watch and walked back to his car. He knew the guy had to be somewhere else at five o’clock, and he’d have to leave soon. But if Ken had his way, he wouldn’t get far.

  He got back inside his Volvo and opened the glove compartment to take out a pair of see-through latex gloves. He pulled them on and then reached under his seat to take out the gun. It was a .22-caliber Comanche revolver with a 9-shot magazine. They were pretty cheap and he bought them by the six-pack for a discount. The originals had 6-inch barrels but he’d taken a hacksaw to all of them and cut an inch and half off the muzzles. All the work he did was close up and personal, and he didn’t need a gun sight to hit a frontal lobe.

  He got out of the car and slipped on the double-breasted blue blazer with the gold buttons that he kept in the car for his work. He looked around to make sure no one was looking and stuck the gun into his waistband. He took a pair of sunglasses from the dash and slipped them on.

  He opened the back door and picked
up a soda can from the floor. He’d stuffed it lightly full of cat hair that he’d accumulated from weekly brushings of his 12-year-old Angora cat, whose name was Boston Blackie. The rate at which Blackie was shedding was sufficient to handle about three hits a month, and since Ken rarely achieved such a level of business, he had a bale of hair at home, enough to stuff a couple of pillows or knit a few sweaters.

  He locked the car and headed back to Danforth, occasionally raising the soda can to his lips and pretending to take a sip from it, but all he got was a whiff of pussy hair. Typical. Sometimes a whiff, rarely a taste. But all that could change...

  He glanced at himself in the window of a storefront. Lookin’ sharp, man, like a car salesman in a recession, all dressed up and no place to go. A couple of songs danced through his head, competing for his attention. He’s a real nowhere man, working with his awesome hands... And those bearded Texas bluesmen singing, Everybody talkin’ ‘bout a sharp-dressed man...

  He was a hundred feet away from the restaurant when the banana shirt stepped out onto the sidewalk. That was one thing Ken had, it was a sense of timing, like he was right in lockstep with destiny. He followed Mr. Banana a dozen stores down the street, and stood looking in the window of a bookstore until the guy re-emerged from a convenience store. Mr. Banana tore the cellophane off a pack of cigarettes, ripped out the foil-wrap sleeve and lit a cigarette with a lighter. He crumpled the waste in his fist and threw it half-heartedly at a trash bin, totally missing the waste paper aperture, and the garbage fell onto the sidewalk.

  Ken gritted his teeth, picked up the litter and placed it in the Paper & Plastic compartment. It wasn’t much, but it was the principle of the thing. What was the matter with people these days?

  He followed the guy around the corner onto Carlaw. A dark blue Porsche Cayenne was illegally parked in a commercial zone. Its lights blinked, its horn made a little toot, and its engine started up as Mister Banana approached it. Ken crossed the street with him, glancing around him as he went. No innocent bystanders to witness what was about to happen, the nearest pedestrians on Danforth a good twenty yards away.

  Mister Banana opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. Ken was just five steps behind him. He saw it was a Cayenne Turbo, which listed for about $125K. Interestingly enough, there was a big blue Handicapped placard lying on the front dash. Oooh, bonus points!

  He caught the door just before Mr. Banana swung it shut and in one smooth movement he pulled the Comanche from under his jacket, jammed its barrel into the mouth of the soda can and popped the guy one right under the armpit. The home-made silencer burped discreetly. The guy leaned away from him, pawing the air like he was trying to shoo away a bumblebee, and his voice gagged in his throat, like the noise Blackie made when he was trying to cough up a hairball. Ken grabbed the flapping hand, held it tight for a moment, and popped the guy another one right in the temple.

  There was no big splat from an exit wound because a .22 didn’t have the power to do more than one cranial wall. The slug just went in and bounced around once or twice and that was all she wrote. The Cayenne’s cream leather interior would be left unspoiled and the wife could either keep the ride or, if she felt any guilt about it, sell it like new.

  “Now you’ve got a real handicap,” Ken told the dead guy.

  He kept the soda can but dropped the gun on the floor and closed the door. He looked around. Not a soul was looking in his direction. He’d always been lucky that way too. He walked back to Danforth and headed for his car. He stopped at one of the litter bins and inserted the soda can into the compartment marked Cans and Bottles. He peeled off the latex gloves as he walked along the sidewalk, glancing at the happy couples eating pikilia and drinking wine.

  There was a small square at the corner of Danforth and Logan dedicated to Alexander the Great. Ken put the gloves in the Garbage compartment of another litter bin. A place for everything, and everything in its place, his mother used to say. Just that he’d never understood why she had to go so soon to the place most people tried to avoid.

  He unlocked the Volvo, took off his jacket and laid it flat in the back seat. He was hungry and there was a souvlaki joint right there on the square, but it was already after five, and he didn’t want to spoil his appetite.

  As he headed back downtown, he ran through a short list in his mind of places he might take Barb for dinner. But mostly, he wondered what he’d tell her when she asked him what he did for a living.

  ~~~~~~~~~

  River Girl

  Stanley Rudd was a man of regular habits. Every morning he rose at six AM and went for a one-hour run. Every Tuesday morning, he ran only 15 minutes, to the home of Isabel Amore, where he spent 30 minutes in her bed, and then ran home to shower before going to work at the Department of Social Welfare, where he was Manager of Social Statistics.

  His wife Martha used to run with him, but she’d injured her knee two years ago falling off a stepladder in the art gallery she co-owned. He now ran solo. Which was just as well since Isabel, despite being a sexually-charged divorcee whose champagne cork could pop after only a few minutes of agitation, was not into threesomes.

  This Tuesday morning Stanley got up five minutes earlier so that he could say goodbye to Martha, who was catching an early flight to New York. She and her co-owner Beth would spend the rest of the week prowling the galleries of SoHo and Greenwich Village in hopes of discovering hot talent fresh out of the Big Apple oven, and new product for their growing clientele.

  “You won’t forget to water the plants?” she reminded him. It was mid-August and a withering heat had settled over Toronto like a sweat-drenched sauna towel. Aside from art, Martha was an amateur botanist. Her current pride and joy was her backyard garden filled with flowers whose Latin names she could rattle off like a catechism.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Stanley said. “I have my instructions.” Martha had prepared a detailed work order, specifying how many milliliters of purified water and organic supplements went into each plant each day.

  “Have a good week. I’ll see you on Sunday.” She gave him a quick hug and a dry kiss on the mouth. “Call me if you have any problem with the rhododendrons. They’ve been droopy this weekend but so long as you follow their schedule, I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  Stanley tied his Nikes and set off for Isabel. He lived in Riverdale, whose tree-lined streets of large houses were near dozens of good restaurants, lively bars and stylish boutiques. It was a neighborhood many upwardly-mobile professionals set their sights on. Ironically, Stanley was never so happy as when he was running away from it.

  He loped up Broadview a few blocks, then descended Pottery Road, which twisted down the hillside to the meandering stream of the Lower Don River. On the other side of the Don Valley was Rosedale, where the sultry Isabel lay waiting for him in her red-walled boudoir on Hampton Park Crescent.

  Stanley took it slow going down the hill, mindful of the shock to his 50-year-old knees. At the bottom of the hill was a small bridge over the river. As he crossed it, he saw in the corner of his eye a brief flash of something in the river. As he broke his stride to turn his head, he saw a pair of naked buttocks breach the surface of the water and disappear.

  Amazing what the eye could register in a blink. The buttocks flared at the hips, immediately registered in Stanley’s reptilian cortex as female. Also tanned, and further classified in Stanley’s analytical mind as belonging to a nudist, or perhaps a lady of bohemian nature whose derriere had been protected from the sun by nothing more than a thong.

  The Don River, however, was not typically high on a local swimmer’s choice of dipping destinations. Scarcely a kilometer upriver from where Stanley now stood, breathless with both exertion and curiosity, was the North Toronto Sewage Treatment Plant. Tree-huggers who biked and hiked along the river trail swore its effluence was contaminating the environment, an accusation the Public Works Department vehemently denied.

  Possibilities danced through Stanley’s mind like
ping-pong balls in a lottery barrel. The woman had tumbled from her bicycle into the river, somehow losing her biking shorts in trying to reach shore. She’d been ambushed by a would-be rapist during her morning jog and leaped half-naked into the river to escape her attacker. She’d been sky-diving when severe wind shear had blown her off-course, ripping parachute and clothes from her body.

  No matter the cause, she had to be in jeopardy. Although he had a standing engagement, Stanley could not stand idly by. He trotted off the bridge and entered a well-trodden trail paralleling the river. But the bushes were thick along this section and, although he could hear splashing and thrashing, he couldn’t see the woman.

  He forced his way through an alder thicket until he stood on the bank of the Don. It was only 20 feet wide at this point and scarcely deeper than six feet, its sluggish current moving in eddies of dark green, reminding him of the wheat-grass smoothies sold at the juice bar of The Carrot Common, a local health food mecca on Danforth Avenue.

  Beneath the turgid surface, the outline of her body writhed like a naked eel. Was she caught in the roots of a riverside tree? Or chained to a pair of construction blocks, a murder witness condemned to drown by Mafia hitmen?

  He toed off his Nikes, peeled off his T-shirt and dived into the water. His hands had barely touched her nakedness when she thrust off from the bottom and broke the surface. He quickly followed. In a few powerful strokes, she reached the shore. He caught a brief glimpse of a fish, flashing silver and speckled in her fist, before she gave it a hard smack on a rock near the river’s edge.

  She turned to look at him, the fish hanging limp in one hand, like a post-tumescent member. Despite her nakedness, it was her eyes that drew his attention. They were bright green, as iridescent as the thorax of a dragonfly, seeming to sparkle with the light of a superbly-cut emerald.

  “Had breakfast?” she said, holding up the fish.

  “No.” Stanley typically bought a double-double and a bran muffin at Tim Horton’s en route to his office.

  “Join me?” There was something about the way she said it, teasing him, pushing the envelope of his credulity, as if this scene might not be real. Or was she daring him to make it real?