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A BOATLOAD OF BANANAS by Virgil Hervey |
| A beautiful bunch a'ripe banana (Daylight come and he wan' go home) Hide the deadly black tarantula (Daylight come and he wan' go home) From "Day-O"(The Banana Boat Song) Words and Music by Harry Belafonte, Lord Burgess, and Bill Attaway That night I slept like a boatload of bananas, moving slowly through coastal waters, green, but slowly ripening, transporting the occasional tarantula. "Bananas" by Michael McNeilley |
*** Annie and I had just driven back from ten days in Florida. Her husband, Billy, was still away in the Smokies with his current squeeze. They weren't supposed to be back until the next day. Billy knew about Annie and me. Annie knew about them. There weren't supposed to be any secrets. She and Billy had what they called an "open marriage." I was never comfortable with the arrangement. I preferred good old fashioned cheating. As a consequence, I'd encouraged her to lie to him about a lot of things, especially the intensity of our relationship. I don't know, it just made me feel better. We had just come into her house. Our suitcases were still in the car. She had gone into the bathroom. I was poking around on the breakfast bar between the kitchen and the living room. "I don't want to stay here, tonight," I called to her. "Why not?" she called back. I could hear her tinkling in the toilet. "This place has bad feng shui." I aimed it right at her new age heart. Maybe something was wrong with me, but I liked to keep things stirred up. I didn't want her and Billy to feel any more comfortable about this setup than I did. "Don't say that!" "Well, it's true. Look how dark it is in here. And besides, it smells like cat piss." "Max must have been a bad boy while we were away." "Your house always smells like cat piss." I was being unusually frank. I was tired and irritable from the long road trip and, maybe, a little depressed because I'd be heading back to New York in the morning and I wouldn't see her again for another month. We'd been going on like this for two years, mostly only seeing each other for a few days every month. "You always start this shit just before you go home." She had brought the mail in with us. It sat in a pile on the breakfast bar. I leafed through it, idly, not really being nosy. There were other papers on the bar. My eyes wandered over to them. "What's this?" She was just coming into the living room. "What's what?" "Oh Christ..." I said, only half out loud. "What is it?" I had picked up a proof sheet with about a dozen color prints of her husband. He wore nothing but a leather mask and a few other items of metal-studded leather trim. The hairy body, familiar tattoos and bulging beer belly left no room for doubt that it was him. He was standing with his legs spread, a steam iron suspended on a chain through a ring in his testicles. I had known about the piercing. But this was too much for me. I handed her the proof sheet. "Did you know about this?" She looked at it. "No." I couldn't tell if she was lying. I wouldn't have put it past her. If she'd lie to him, then she'd lie to me. That was something I'd figured out on my last trip to Nashville, when she'd called him at his job from the phone in my motel room and pretended that she was at work. "You sure..?" "I swear, I didn't know about it." "How could he leave them lying around where anyone could find them? This son-of-a-bitch is sicker than I thought." She'd usually come to his defense when I said something like that about him. If she did this time, it was over. I was running out of patience. Annie and I would never live together as long as she and Billy had this agreement. I had given up hope of his finding another woman, one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. His relationships were sexual, but always casual. He always came home. He would never leave Annie and it was looking more and more like she wouldn't leave him, either. Time after time she had told me she would never hurt him. It was part of their agreement that they wouldn't commit to anyone else. It was time for me to make a stand. This had to be my line in the sand. Annie must have realized that. "Yes, he is sick." "I really don't want to stay here tonight," I said. "I don't want to see him. They might decide to come back a day early." "They might. I'm not really sure when Tammy's flight leaves for California." "I've reserved a room over at the Red Roof." "You never really intended to stay here." "No I didn't." *** In the evening at the Red Roof Inn, we watched a movie on TV. She smoked a joint and I killed a pint of Jack. I find I sleep better when I'm wasted. Later, in the dark, we nested like a pair of spoons, Annie's red hair splayed out on the white motel pillow case, her considerable butt up against me. The sobbing started softly, then her body began to shake. I decided not to press her anymore. Not on this trip, anyway. Last night, I slept like a boatload of bananas. I had to catch an early plane to LaGuardia. Annie drove me to the airport before she went to work. By the time we got there, she was already running late. She kissed me goodbye and left. She wasn't gone but ten minutes when they posted a two hour delay on my flight. I had a fresh charge on the battery in my laptop, so I decided to do some work. About the time the low-battery warning came on, a guy in a suit approached and stood in front of me. I looked up. "Harry Kresge?" he asked. I looked around. There was another guy, standing two seats away, and two uniform police officers standing off another few feet. It felt like a scene in a movie or, maybe, something I'd heard from a client. The man flashed a detective's shield and told me his name. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." "Where to? My plane leaves in a few minutes. I've got to get back to New York. I'm supposed to be in court this morning. I'm already delayed." "I'm afraid you're going to miss this one. If necessary, I can give you a letter for the airline to put you on a later flight." "What's this about?" "We're investigating the death of a guy named William Ward. We understand that you were an acquaintance of his. We'd like to ask you some questions." "William Ward?" For a second I couldn't place the name. "Billy?" "Yeah, Sideshow Billy, the guy with the freak-show act. I believe you know his wife." "Am I in custody?" I knew this was a gray area. "Custody" has a special legal connotation. Most people wouldn't know enough or would be too afraid to ask such a question. I could see the detective was put off. At first he didn't seem to know what to say. He couldn't have had probable cause for an arrest, but he did have the right to investigate. And then he'd have to deal with my right against self-incrimination. "You're a lawyer, right?" "That's right." "Let's put it this way, Mr. Kresge. You're not in custody, but you're not free to go. If you refuse to come with me, I'll have to take you into custody on suspicion. I can't just let you get on that plane and leave the jurisdiction." "Suspicion of what?" "You really want to make me say it? Murder." Although I had known what he was going to say, there was a difference between knowing it and hearing it. It was the difference between suspicion and realization. It was dizziness and nausea. It was damn close to being my vomit in a puddle on the carpet of the airport terminal. I barely managed to maintain my cool. *** We were seated across a large metal table from one another in a windowless room with a large mirror on one wall. The only furniture was the table and four chairs. I'd been in rooms like this before, representing the accused. The detective pulled a half-dozen eight-by-ten photographs from an envelope and slid them across the table to me. They were glossy color photographs of Sideshow Billy. He was outfitted pretty much the same as he had been in the proofs I had seen the day before, only he was lying on the floor of his kitchen. There was blood everywhere. His not-so-privates had been cut off and stuffed into his mouth. Again, I had to fight the gag reflex. The detective spoke first. "Before we start, I want to tell you that we have already spoken to Mrs. Ward." I was familiar with this technique. They wanted to pit us against each other, get me wondering about what she might have said, get me talking. I shrugged it off. "When did it happen?" "The folks over at crime scene figure it was about 3:00 a.m. We're waiting for the coroner to confirm that." "Then Annie must have told you it couldn't have been me." "She told us that she was asleep in a motel just five minutes from the crime scene. When she went to sleep at about eleven, you were in the bed beside her. When she awoke at 6:30, you were in bed beside her. She couldn't say, with certainty, that you didn't sneak out without waking her. She also told us that you had been pressuring her to leave her husband, that there had been incidents in the past, like the time you tore up a photograph of her and her husband in a rage and the time you threw eggs at his truck." "What the hell?" The photograph I had torn up was a picture of the two of them, naked. It had been hanging on their kitchen wall. I had been in a rage all right. And the eggs... Well, I didn't understand that, myself. I had considered doing it, considered it very strongly, in fact. But I hadn't done it. That same night, someone smashed eggs all over his windshield. But it wasn't me. I figured it had probably been some irate husband. But Annie never did believe me. The detective waited for me to say more, but I caught myself. He began to tap his fingers on the table, rapping out something that sounded like a marching beat for a parade band. What was probably five minutes seemed like a half-hour. Finally, he spoke. "I'm going to ask you some questions. I realize that, in your case, it's just a formality, but, first, I have to read you your rights." "Let's save some time. Get an Assistant District Attorney down here with a video camera. Until you do that, I'm not saying anything." "Okay, Mr. Kresge. It will take us a couple hours." "I'll wait," I said. "You want a burger and fries from McDonald's?' "I want a telephone. I've got to call my office." "Later," he said. "After we finish taping." *** They left me alone in the room. I had plenty of time to think: Christ, is she trying to pin this on me? Our bodies were in contact all night. I'm sure I slept with my arm around her. Didn't she tell them that? Maybe she did and they're just not telling me. Where is she now? She must be here in another room. When the D.A. gets here, I'll certainly tell him that she couldn't possibly have done it. If she had moved to get out of bed, I'd have been awakened. She should have told them that about me, too. But then again, she told them about the time I tore up their picture. And the eggs. The thing about the eggs... It was weird, it was almost as if I had willed it. I remember, I was staying down the road at the motel, she insisted that she had to go somewhere with Billy all day, that day. I was really steamed. I bought a case of beer, sat around all afternoon drinking and thinking how much I hated Billy. I wanted to do something nasty, something that would make him suspect me, but so he'd never really be sure. That's when I came up with the idea about egging his truck. But then I decided not to do it. It was too risky. I was worried that someone might recognize my car. I would certainly be suspect, because I was the most likely one to do something like that, probably the only one with a motive. The next day Annie called, wanted me to come to their house that night, they were having a few friends over. I didn't want to go. I really hated being in the same room with that son-of-a-bitch. It went back to the first time I met him. The three of us were together on the couch. She was seated between us. "I don't mind her going with you," he had said. "Just remember, she belongs to me." Then he pulled down her blouse and tweaked her nipple right in front of me. I've hated that bastard ever since. I decided to go anyway. That night, they told me about how his stupid truck had been egged, the night before. It was fucking uncanny. It was almost as if I had thought about it so hard, that it just happened. Couldn't be... Couldn't... Some other asshole who hated him as much as I did must have done it. Fucking Billy. Everybody thought he was so cute with his sideshow act and all the leather and tattoos. Everyone thought he was harmless, just a jolly good- ole-boy. He was such a pervert, he must have had other enemies. There must have been someone else beside me. Another guy screwing Annie? I know I didn't egg his goddam truck. Maybe I willed it, but I didn't actually do it. I remember it clearly. I drank most of that case of beer then went to bed. That night, I slept like a boatload of bananas. Why would I kill Sideshow Billy? So what, about the photographs, the ring, the chain and the iron? So what, that she had condoned that kind of behavior in the past, even participated? She's a different woman now. She even told me so, after I showed her the photographs. Does it make any difference that I'd felt like killing him when I saw those pictures? Does it make any difference, that I'd wanted him dead, as long as I wasn't the one that killed him? It was all in my mind. Could I have willed it? I think not. That business about the eggs... It must have been someone else, then and now. I was asleep. I'm sure I was asleep. *** The door opened. The detective came in carrying a tripod and a video camera. Behind him was a young man. He was an Assistant District Attorney. "I understand you're a lawyer," the A.D.A. said. "Admitted in New York. I do criminal work." "This is the first time I've had anyone demand to be video-taped," the A.D.A. said. "Usually, the police ask for it. I can see you're no fool." I'd handled enough cases where my clients told me that they have made off-the-record denials that somehow turned into on-the-record confessions. "No I'm not," I said. "Okay, we're going to roll the tape now." "Good." The Detective was behind the camera. He started it and gave us the okay. The A.D.A. read the Miranda Warnings and asked me if I understood. I told him I did. Then he asked me if I wanted an attorney present. I told him I did not. "Now Mr. Kresge, are you prepared to make a statement?" "Yes, I am." "You may go ahead." I looked dead on into the camera. "I did not kill Sideshow Billy." The Detective let out with a groan. The A.D.A. was waiting for me to continue. "Is that it?" "Yes." "I thought you'd have more to tell us. Okay then, I'd like to ask you a few questions." "That's all I have to say." "Did you ever tear up a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Ward?" "At this point, I wish to invoke my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States." "Did you ever throw eggs at Billy Ward's truck?" "I decline to answer that." "We have a witness who has described the vehicle you were driving on the night you egged Billy's truck. Are you denying that it was you?" He was bluffing. I was sure he was bluffing. "You can stop the tape now. I won't be answering any questions." |
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