The Killing Club Read online

  There was something weird about the way she kept telling her dead husband she was sorry, and asking us to call Father Connor at Immaculate Conception.But I figured she just felt guilty because she hadn’t been home when it happened so maybe she could have saved him.Except where had she been? Exercising at the new gym in Appleton Mall, she told us.I wondered why a married woman would wear so much makeup, a sleazy sequined blouse and big, blinking Christmas bell earrings, just to drive home from a workout in a gym.

  I told Megan how sorry I was, but that I had to ask her if she knew why Ben had wanted to talk to me tomorrow, why he’d said it was important.Her face first looked horrified, then shut down completely.“I got no idea,” she told me.

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  Keith Connor, a priest my age, arrived and took Megan to Ben’s mother’s house to pick up her daughters; I headed back downtown to tell Pudge Salerno that his best friend was dead.

  As for Rod’s birthday dinner at the Ironworks, we’d do it another night.

  “It’s okay,” Rod said as I kissed him.That’s what he says every time I put off setting a wedding date.

  Rod knows me.The only thing on my mind now was finding out what that “important” thing was that Ben had planned to say to me.

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  P U D G E

  “ PUDGE,I’M REALLYsorry I had to tell you this way.Step outside, come on.” The restaurant was busy and loud, like always.

  But I couldn’t get Dante “Pudge” Salerno to move.

  “You can’t lie to me.You know that.He’s not dead, Jamie, don’t screw around, Ben’s not dead.” Pudge just kept smiling, shaking his head to encourage me to admit I had made the whole thing up for a sick joke.

  Eleven years back, on that rainy December night when Ben’s touch-down took us to the final quarter of the state championship and no farther, Pudge had said the same thing to me.“Don’t lie.”

  That night everybody in the stadium had just laughed at him because his pants had fallen down as he’d marched off the field at the end of the halftime show.Pudge had played trumpet in the Hart marching band and he hadn’t wanted to quit on Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” in order to grab his trousers.So he lost them when his big safety pin broke.

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  “Just shoot me,” he said that night, tears splotchy under the high white hat with its gold GHHS.“I’ll never in a trillion years live this one down.”

  “Sure you will, Pudge.” I pulled him to the sidelines, patted his chest; the brass buttons gaped on the dirty white jacket.“Nobody really noticed.”

  “Nobody really noticed!?” Pudge bulged his large brown eyes, the lashes of which were the subject of periodic envy in the Hart High girls’

  bathroom.“The giant marshmallow man from Ghostbusters drops his pants on the fifty-yard line at the state finals and he’s wearing zebra-striped bikini shorts, and nobody really noticed?!”

  “Okay, maybe a few people noticed.”

  “Right, Jamie, maybe only seven thousand five hundred and ninety-nine people noticed.Maybe you weren’t looking because you were checking out the stands for stupid Garth McBride.”

  “Fat chance of seeing him there,” I admitted.

  Pudge grinned, wiping tears away with a plump pink fist.“Fat chance of his giving you the time of day if you did see him.”

  “Everybody noticed your pants fall down.They’ll be talking about it for centuries.”

  “Did Eileen Terry see it? Don’t lie to me.Only real Italians can get away with lying.” Because of my coloring, Pudge would never believe I was pure Italian, the Ferraras from Bologna and the DiMauros from Venice.“Don’t even try,” he told me fiercely.

  SO IT WAS WEIRD THAT Pudge said the same thing now, almost a dozen years later.But he knew I was telling the truth; he was just trying to 1 4

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  hang on to disbelief a little longer.His friend Ben, whom he’d idolized since pre-K and stolen food from his parents’ restaurant for, and shared pot with, and lent his car to, and bought more insurance from than he could ever use, was dead.

  Pudge leaned on a booth, his face almost the color of the green vinyl, breathing heavily.

  I tugged at him again.“Let’s go outside, it’s too crowded in here.Get your coat.”

  “I don’t need it.This better not be true, Jamie.”

  “It’s true.I’m sorry.”

  Pudge had inherited the landmarked storefront diner on River Street from his mom and dad.They’d named it Dante’s after him, their firstborn.

  His parents had served only takeout, but Dante’s had grown into green-checked tablecloths and vinyl booths and was now a real restaurant.All year round, there was always a fresh pink rosebud on every table; it was to Pudge a sign of “class.” But the motto (on menus and cardboard buckets) was still “Take It Home,” and the portions were so big, you had to.Pudge was generous.He loved his customers.To him they were all family.His restaurant was cheerful and cheap and crowded.And the food was so good he had write-ups on the walls from newspapers as far away as Philadelphia.

  You had to wait for a table, you had to take a number for an order to go, but nobody minded.It was the most popular restaurant in Gloria.

  Pudge and I sat at one of the little iron tables chained outside under the awning.In the nice weather, you could watch the town go by.Now there was nobody around, except that across the street on Etten Green, the Virgin Mary and Joseph had returned to their manger.They stood hunched over Jesus, warming their hands in their armpits.

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  “Pudge, Ben called me today and said he wanted to come in, talk to me.I hadn’t heard from him in ages.Do you know what it was about?

  Was he okay?”

  Pudge seemed about to say something.His lips, pink and full, opened, but then tightened.“I don’t know.You ought to talk to Megan about it.”

  “...Okay.I will.And I’ll let Debbie know, but you can call Amanda.”

  “Life’s just not fair,” Pudge sighed.“Ben was the nicest guy in the world.”

  No, he wasn’t.Pudge was the nicest guy in the world.But I nodded, sat with him, gave his knee a rub every now and then.

  My baby brother, Dino, drove by too fast in a Ford Ranger that didn’t belong to him, and he had Clay with him.It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them riding around Gloria together.But I wondered what Clay was doing with Dino after his father, Barclay, had said he’d “dropped him off at a friend’s.” The truck was shaking from Pink Floyd on the audio system.

  Dino pretended not to see me but he did slow down.Dino’s twenty-four, a stoner, living in a time warp, headed for a Black Sabbath concert that happened years before he was born.

  Either the Ford or the wind knocked down one of the cardboard shepherds.Joseph ran over to pick him up.

  “It’s cold out here,” Pudge finally admitted.He had on his Christmas blazer, Kelly green, and he pulled the lapels around his neck.

  “You don’t know why Ben would want to see me tomorrow?”

  “No.” Pudge hesitated, then added, “But I don’t think he was happy. I think he was having money troubles and maybe troubles with Megan too.He was going to church a lot.”

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  “I never saw Ben.Why would he come to me with his troubles?”

  Pudge shrugged.“I don’t know.Connie’s with Megan now?” Father Keith Connor was already head priest at the largest local Catholic church, Immaculate Conception, the one Ben apparently often attended; we’d called him Connie since we were in high school together.I nodded.“And somebody ought to call Garth, Jamie.”

  “Garth?”

  “He’ll want to know about Ben.I mean, he started the club.”

  My legs were freezing.I wasn’t used to wearing a dress.“That was a long time ago.I don’t even know where Gar
th lives.”

  “Manhattan, East Sixty-eighth Street.”

  I was surprised.“You keep up?”

  “Christmas cards.He was Ben’s friend, sort of.Maybe it’d be too tough on you to call him.I’ll do it.”

  “Why tough?”

  “You know.” In Pudge’s world, once you felt something, you never stopped.Just because I’d once been a plump sophomore so desperate for Garth McBride it hurt my chest to have him suddenly amble past my school locker, why should that mean anything to me now? Now I was Detective Sergeant Giovanna Ferrara, Investigative Division, Gloria Police Department, currently engaged to marry the good and good-looking and very patient chief of detectives, Lieutenant Rod Wolenski.

  “Forget it,” I said.“I’ll call Garth tonight.Leave me his number.I should go.It’s Rod’s birthday.”

  “Oh, happy birthday.You want a cake?” He waved his hand at the restaurant.“I got a nice double fudge.I could write something on it.”

  “That’s sweet of you but thanks anyhow.You okay, Pudge?”

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  “It’s hard to take it in.” He shook his head. “I guess I’ll go see Megan.

  Did somebody tell Ben’s mother?”

  “I don’t know.Megan probably did.Anyhow—”

  “We ought to, I don’t know, take up a collection or something.”

  I said okay.Then he talked a while about funeral arrangements at Immaculate Conception.Megan would want to do the service there.Father Connie would say the Mass.And the Rotarians would want to do something.Ben would like a lot of flowers.My guess was, Pudge would pay for them.

  At the manger, the wind blew the shepherd over again.This time Joseph propped it up against a stone mile-marker that had stood there in the green since before the Revolutionary War.I could hear the Virgin Mary from all the way across the street.She didn’t sound much like the Mother of God.“It’s too fucking cold out here! My tits are ice! Can we just like go?” Joseph pulled a plug on an orange industrial cable.The crèche went totally dark.

  It was getting late.The early crowd was leaving Dante’s, waving to Pudge as they walked out.Looking at his customers was like taking a cen-sus of Gloria.Ninety percent white, most of them of Italian, Polish, Irish or German backgrounds.A few blacks, a few Hispanics and very few Asians.Merchants, truck farmers, teachers, Ober construction workers, tile setters.Gloria had started out building ships; now it built subdivisions.And made face cream at the Kind Lady Cosmetics factory.

  Pudge pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboros.I grabbed it away from him.“What are you doing? You quit smoking five years ago.”

  He shrugged, lighting up.“I’m doing the gum again but it’s not totally 1 8

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  working for me.” He flicked open a lighter that looked like it was made out of gold.It had his initials on it.

  “I guess not.Is that lighter gold?”

  “Yeah.Eileen gave it to me way back when.” He stared at it.

  I tossed the pack into the iron trash container near the crosswalk.I was surprised I made the shot.“I bet she doesn’t know you’re smoking.

  Or your kids either.Jesus Christ.”

  “Come on, Jamie, cut me some slack.”

  “Well, Jesus, Pudge, I care about you.”

  “You look pretty, by the way.” He gestured off handedly at my legs and shoes.Obviously this new look was something to consider if things blew apart with Rod and I needed a date.

  “Thanks,” I told him.“I’m freezing my butt off.”

  “You should go.So you said it was like Ben’s lights blew? What, he was electrocuted or something?”

  I guess Pudge had been so upset he hadn’t heard me.“No, I said he died from the fire.”

  “Fire? His house caught on fire?”

  Now Pudge asked for details.

  “What it sounds like, the main fuse blew, Ben headed down to the basement, tripped and fell down the steps, maybe had a candle or something with him, and somehow he set off a gas can.”

  Tossing his cigarette onto the sidewalk, Pudge frowned at me like I’d made fun of his dead mother.“That’s not funny.”

  “What’s not funny?”

  “Everything you just said.”

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  I didn’t know what he was talking about.He couldn’t believe I didn’t remember.“The Killing Club.The first murder Ben made up.That’s how he was going to kill Mr.Payton.”

  It took me a minute even to place the name.“Mr.Payton the geometry teacher?”

  He pulled thin wool gloves from his jacket, blew warm air on his big supple hands, then put the gloves on.“Yeah, for flunking him for cheating on the exam.”

  I smiled.“Ben did cheat on that exam.You gave him the answers.We all got grilled about cheating.You’re just lucky Ben didn’t tell anybody you were helping him or you would have flunked out too.”

  “Jamie, you’re not listening.It’s exactly the same.It’s what Ben wrote in the Death Book.For the club.How the killer ran a wire across the top of the basement stairs, and then when Mr.Payton went down there in the dark, he tripped and fell.”

  “No, I don’t remember, and I don’t see how you possibly could either.That was over ten years ago.More.You’re talking about those stupid Death Books we wrote stuff in?”

  Pudge looked sheepish.“I remember that one because I made it up for him.He didn’t really think of it.

  ” Pudge’s explanation came out

  quickly, the way things always did with him when he felt bad about what he was saying.“Ben was worried he couldn’t think of a good murder.And I really wanted him to get in the Killing Club, plus Garth really wanted us to be able to meet at the old theater, and it belonged to Ben’s dad, so I figured it would make Ben happy and Garth happy, and I made up a murder for him.”

  “Oh, Pudge.You were always cheating for Ben!”

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  He gestured with his shoulders.“He’s my friend.”

  I rubbed his hands.The black wool gloves looked weird with his green blazer.“Did you make up all Ben’s murders?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.But I just told him what to say.I made him write them up himself in his own words.But I remember the first one, Jamie, it was a basement fire.”

  As he told me the details, the story came vaguely back to me, Ben’s sloping careless handwriting in the Death Book in which our high school Killing Club had written out imaginary homicides.In these murders we disposed of the people who were ruining our lives.

  Pudge was saying, “The killer runs a wire across the steps, then he bashes in the back of Mr.Payton’s head with a baseball bat, pours gas on him and lights a match.There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”

  “We all thought Ben’s entries were pretty lame.” Ridiculously, I apologized to Pudge.“Not the ideas, the writing.”

  Leaning over, Pudge pointed his gloved finger in my face.“Maybe he wasn’t a brain, but Ben was never clumsy.He didn’t fall down his own steps like that.Those steps had a rail.He would have grabbed it.”

  “People fall.It happens.”

  “Jamie, he would have had a flashlight with him.What’s he doing walking down to the basement with a fucking candle?” Well, I’d asked the same question myself.

  A Salerno cousin in a waiter’s T-shirt labeled DANTE’S TAKE IT HOME

  came pushing through the crowd of young couples in the doorway and hurried over to us.He said that Pudge’s wife, Eileen, was looking everywhere for him, that she’d just gotten a phone call and was very upset.

  Pudge jumped to his feet.“Oh shit.That was probably Megan calling 2 1

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  about Ben.I gotta go.But we need to talk about this fire thing.You think about it, Jamie.You think about it.” Pudge pulled off a glove and took out his phone as he ran inside, I bet to call Ben’s wife, Megan.It was hard for him to m
ake his way quickly through the people waiting to get into his restaurant.

  I thought about it.

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  G A R T H

  IN THE BEGINNING,tenth grade,there were only four ofus, and Garth McBride named the club the Sign of Four after the Sherlock Holmes story.When we let more kids in, he changed the name to the Killing Club and called it KC.The club disbanded in our senior year.

  Garth was always starting things, trying to get something going in Gloria, wanting it to be bigger and more interesting than it was.Now he’s something of a local celebrity because he’s on a television news show in New York that gets carried by cable and dish here in Gloria.

  A widow, his mom ran day care out of her house.I was dropped off there for years with my sister, Gina (who giggled or cried all the time), and our baby brother, Dino, who smiled all the time like he was already stoned.Our other brother, Joe Jr., was out on his own, on his way to becoming the jerk he is today.

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  My sister was the same age as Garth’s sister Katie and they didn’t have much use for me, so I tried to hang out with Garth, but he didn’t have much use for me either.I spent a lot of hours spying on him.He’s probably the real reason I’m a detective.Unnoticed—or so far as I knew—I watched him pretending to be Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Bruce Springsteen, and once I saw him trying to pee into the gas tank of his mom’s Datsun.The first time Garth was nice to me was when he found out my dad was a cop and I told him I’d bring over his Python .380 to look at.

  I knew it wasn’t going to happen because my dad kept the revolver locked in the liquor cabinet when he was home.I just said it to show off.

  The original Sign of Four was Garth and me, Pudge, and Garth’s best friend, Lyall Hillier, who committed suicide our senior year.They let me join, even though I was a girl, because my dad got Chief Waige to give us a tour of the police station.

  Appointed secretary, I dutifully wrote down the rules.They hadn’t changed when the Killing Club maxed out at a dozen members in its final year: You had to be an outcast—meaning you didn’t sit at the lunch table with the in-crowd, you didn’t hold school office and you didn’t hang with the athletic crowd (until Pudge got us to invite in Ben Tymosz).You had to be funny and hold the world in ironic contempt.As for an ostensible purpose, we discussed mysteries and horror books we’d read (or at least had seen the movies), and we tried to scare one another by any means possible—leaping up from the backseat of a dark car, forcing the startled driver to spin off the road, for example—then whispering to our victim,