Death Notes

I’m not moving to Marin.’
    He smiled.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘Come on, Ronnie. I know you don’t really feel that way. What’s so bad about Marin? Just think about it, that’s all.’
    I didn’t get rid of him until after eleven. By then I was convinced he was having some kind of mid-life crisis. Thirty-four was a little young for that kind of thing, but in the age of technology, maybe Mitch had turned precocious.
    Whatever it was, my worrying wasn’t going to help him, so I finished my report, slapped a bunch of stamps on the envelope, and turned off the lights. I didn’t go to sleep, though. I couldn’t.
    In the slice of neon from the sign outside my window I punched a button on the tape deck and lay down to let the heartbreaking wail of Match Margolis’s sax wash over me. His song reached deep into the very core of my soul and stayed right there, filling the emptiness I was feeling tonight.
    Right now, just for the moment, I wanted to feel sad.
     

16
     
    S omething clicked. Or had I dreamed it? I opened my eyes. The clock on the table by the couch said three a.m. I held my breath, closed my eyes and listened.
    There. There it was again.
    I was too groggy to tell what it was or where it had come from, but I was awake enough to have my instinct kick in. My instinct said not to move.
    I circled the room with my eyes. All the hulks and shadows were in the right places. That, at least, was reassuring. I didn’t exactly relax but I did start breathing again - short, shallow breaths that barely touched my lungs.
    Then I heard it again: a grating, scratching metallic noise at the door, less than twenty feet from where I lay. I sat bolt upright. I knew the sound. Somebody - some fool - was working the lock.
    I had a hammer out from under the kitchen sink within seconds. The fact that only about a dozen people in the country had the skills to pick my lock, and that I knew all of them, gave me confidence that nobody was going to come through the door any time soon.
    Barefoot, in the oversized 49ers sweatshirt I sleep in, I tiptoed toward the tiny beacon of light coming from the peephole in the door, trying to step in all the right places so the floorboards wouldn’t creak. I was doing great until the last step, the one that brought me up to the door. The hardwood under my foot cracked as loud as a pistol shot. I froze, then heard rustling on the other side of the door.
    Was he running away or just moving around out there? I put my eye up to the peephole and blinked into the lighted hallway. Nothing. Nobody. Shit. I couldn’t have imagined it all.
    Just as I started to pull away, a dark specter skittered down the hall out of my range of vision. Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Damn!
    I flung open the door and charged into the hall, barefoot, hammer in hand.
    ‘Hey!’ somebody shouted from the foot of the stairs. Then, ‘Oomph!’ and, ‘What the...?’
    Then a door slammed shut.
    From the top of the landing I saw a bent figure struggling to stand; he was midway down the stairs.
    ‘Blackie?’
    I dropped the hammer and rushed down the steps to help him.
    ‘Blackie, are you all right?’
    By the time I reached him, he was on his feet, gripping the bannister, and weaving against the wall, reeking of aged whiskey and tobacco.
    ‘Who the fuck was that?’ he said. He sounded fine.
    ‘Are you okay? Does anything hurt?’
    He patted his torso, checking, then winked broadly at me and grinned.
    ‘One fucking piece.’
    He eyed me up and down, taking in my bare legs and the sleep shirt.
    ‘You throw him out of your bed, doll?’
    ‘Hardly. He was trying to pick my lock.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    I glanced past Blackie down to the front door.
    ‘Did you get a good look at him?’
    ‘A good look at him? Fuck. I got a look at something.’ Blackie started up the stairs, one staggering step at a time. I followed him.
    ‘You’re sure you’re not hurt?’
    ‘Yah, yah.’
    ‘Did you see his face?’
    ‘Fuckin’ asshole...’
    Blackie paused at the landing and picked up the hammer.
    ‘You get a whack at him?’
    ‘I didn’t get near him. Blackie, what did he look like?’
    ‘Nixon,’ Blackie said, and tumbled into the apartment. I switched on the light in time to watch him collapse into the chair.
    ‘Nixon?’
    ‘Yah. He was wearing a fucking Richard Milhous Nixon mask, doll.’
     

17
     
    A black leather jacket, jeans, blue Nikes and a rubber Richard Nixon mask. Not much to go on.
    ‘What about his