Broken Prey

the other reporters when it came to picking a replacement for the regular night man, when the night man went on vacation.
    That occasion always started a newsroom dogfight. Ignace had been peremptorily ordered to take the job: “You have,” his team leader said, “the requisite skills. What am I supposed to do, have the music critic write about fires on deadline? And you’re single and you’re not dating anyone.”
    “Is that why you asked me yesterday if I was dating anyone?” Ignace asked.
    A muscle twitched in the team leader’s jaw. “Well . . . yeah.”
    “You treacherous fuck.”
    The “treacherous fuck” line didn’t do him any good, so here he was, eleven o’clock at night, waiting. He was the “just in case” guy. Just in case the president was assassinated, just in case terrorists took out the Target Center, just in case one of the Vikings was busted on cocaine charges. Nobody really wanted to tear up the paper when it was this close to the press turn.
     
    SO IGNACE HAD HIS FEET UP , reading the Idiot’s Guide to Etiquette, which he’d lifted off another reporter’s desk. When the phone rang, he assumed it was the desk asking for a rewrite.
    A voice in a harsh, rustling whisper inquired, “Is this, I don’t know how you pronounce it, I apologize, Rough Ignacy?”
    “That would be Roo-fay Ig-Nas,” Ignace said. “Who is this?”
    “This is old Charlie Pope, calling to thank you for the write-up.”
    Now Ignace sat up. “Who is this really? Is this Jack, you shithead?”
    A whispery laugh: “Nope, it’s me, old Charlie Pope.”
    Ignace had a notebook and a pencil out: “Okay, old Charlie Pope. Tell me something about the murders that wasn’t in the newspaper.”
    A pause, then, “Wasn’t in the newspapers that I cut Adam Rice’s dick off.”
    “What?”
    “I cut his dick off,” the whisperer said. “You didn’t put that in the paper.”
    “The cops haven’t said anything about that—I don’t believe it happened.”
    “Believe it, Ruffe.” The whisper turned cold, ragged.
    “We didn’t say what you killed the kid with. What’d you kill him with?”
    “He come down the stairs in his pajamas. I didn’t even know he was up there until he started running. There was an aluminum baseball bat in the corner and when the kid went running into the kitchen, I picked up the bat and caught him right by the door and whacked him. Then I went back and finished with Daddy.”
    The ring of truth pushed Ignace back in his chair. “With a baseball bat.”
    “That’s right. When I got outside, I wiped it down with Adam Rice’s undershirt, so it wouldn’t have no fingerprints on it. That’s before I knew they were gonna pick up on me so fast. I threw it into that field of whatever-it-is off to the side of the farmhouse. Right by the driveway going up the hill.”
    “I’m going to check that.”
    “Check your ass off, Ruffe. By the way, you got something wrong in your story. I didn’t have a straight razor to cut their throats. I used a box cutter. But. As soon as you wrote about the straight razor, I got a hard-on. I said, I gotta get me one of those things. Now I got one. Got an old leather strop to sharpen it up, and I’m learning how to do that. Next guy I do, I’m gonna do with the razor.”
    “Jesus Christ.” Ignace swallowed.
    “He’s not here. It’s just me, old Charlie Pope.”
    “You gotta . . . let me, Jesus Christ.” Ignace was flabbergasted. He’d never been at a loss for words, and now he floundering. “Are you . . . why did you . . . uh . . .”
    “What do I want?”
    “Uh, yeah.”
    “Mostly I just want to talk to somebody. I liked your story. And I tell you, I got this goddamn woman is driving me crazy. I don’t know what to do about her. I don’t want her to stop, but every time she starts to howl, I see blood. I want to take her, but . . . then she’d be gone. I like it when she starts to howl. I mean, she does me up like nothin’ I’ve ever felt before. You know what I mean?”
    “Not exactly.” Ignace was scribbling like mad, taking it all down in shorthand. “Are you saying that you can’t decide what you’re going to do? I mean, Jesus Christ, don’t hurt her. I mean how can you . . .”
    “How can I do it?” The whispery laugh again, like a ripple of paper: “Because it feels good. I just ain’t right, Ruffe. My head is fucked up. I know that. Everybody knows that. But what everybody doesn’t know is