M. Newman's Blog, page 4
December 11, 2011
The Gold Digger
“I now pronounce you man and wife; you may kiss the bride.” Bill and Nikki embraced in the most passionate kiss that veteran wedding guests had ever seen...lips locked, hands roaming and genitals grinding. Minister and guests alike were embarrassed at this gauche display and most looked away. When the party moved to the grand ballroom, the newlyweds continued to act like horny teenagers, pawing at each other while their friends and relatives tried their best not to gawk.
“Would you just look at Bill,” his cousin Robin told her husband. “That tramp is making him act like a fool.”
“I know,” he answered. “I said all along that he never should have married her. Of course, she’s only after his money.”
“That’s obvious,” another guest piped in. “We all know, for example, that it was he who paid for the wedding, not the bride’s family. They could never afford the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
“What a gold digger,” she added in disgust.
It was evident to Nikki that most of the guests disapproved of their behavior, and of her, especially; but she didn’t care. She was proud to be able to get Bill, a usually refined medical doctor, more than twenty years her senior, to act so out of character. That, in fact, was part of her master plan.
***
“Let’s see what’s happening at this bar,” Nikki suggested to her friends on a Friday night about six months earlier.
“Are you serious?” Barbara asked. “With all the cool bars on the Upper East Side, why would you choose this place? It looks like it’s full of old people.”
“My point, exactly,” Nikki replied. “What better place to hook up with a Sugar Daddy? All the men here are rich and available.”
“I’m not interested. I’m looking for a hot young stud. Not gonna find him here, honey. How about you girls?”
The others agreed with Barbara and continued up Second Avenue in search of a more appropriate place to meet guys, leaving Nikki free to enter the sedate tavern by herself.
All male eyes turned as she entered, the men paused from sipping their beverages and, instead, drank in the image of Nikki’s youthful beauty. She was a sexy young thing, after all...much younger and fresher than the other women in the place. Those men who were with a woman soon averted their eyes from Nikki while the unattached let their gaze linger a little longer.
Nikki pretended not to notice that she was being ogled but, of course, she actually loved the attention. She’d set her sights though, on a man at the other end of the bar who was drinking alone and had been scrutinizing her more intently than the others. Ignoring everybody else, she strode straight to him. He was a fairly handsome man with light eyes, an aquiline nose and short, salt and pepper hair. He had on a tastefully tailored, expensive looking suit and, Nikki’s sharp eyes noticed, a huge diamond pinky ring and a gold Rolex.
“I would love for you to buy me a drink,” she said as she momentarily touched his shoulder. Brief as the contact was, the heat of it lingered for what seemed to him minutes before burning a path straight to his heart.
“Sure,” he replied in a slightly bashful tone. “What would you like?”
“I’ll have a Black Velvet, if you don’t mind.” She thanked him and downed the fashionable champagne and beer concoction in three gulps.
“Wow,” he said with an amused smirk. “I suppose you were thirsty.”
“Yeah, well I think that the sight of you got me a bit heated.”
Bill was smitten. He’d never before met anybody like this child; for a child was what she was compared to the mature and sophisticated women to whom he was accustomed. A respected surgeon at a prestigious Manhattan hospital, who came from old money, Bill had dated scores of socialites, executives and international beauties, yet none had ever excited him like this girl.
“Have another drink?” he asked and before waiting for her answer, he ordered two Black Velvets from the bartender. After a few more of those potent cocktails they drunkenly relocated to his apartment.
***
After six months of marriage, Nikki was having the time of her life. Bill on the other hand, was beginning to have second thoughts. Although he couldn’t understand how she’d managed it, he was aware that his unsophisticated twenty one year-old wife had achieved total control over him. Aside from the enormous allowance that he’d bestowed upon her, he’d presented her with every luxury she’d ever asked for, from clothing, to jewels, to fancy cars. All she had to do was demand it and it was hers; and she never seemed to tire of demanding things. His life was no longer his own. Although he’d always adored the Opera, for example, he could no longer attend since Nikki claimed to despise it.
“How would you know that you don’t like opera if you’ve never been?” he asked.
“Do I look like a middle-aged snob?” she retorted.
Instead, he found himself accompanying her to second-rate rock concerts and third-rate bars.
It was at one of these bars that she met Eddie. With Bill always sitting quietly at the bar like a well-behaved child, Nikki would spend the night flirting and grinding uninhibitedly on the dance floor with the boys. Occasionally, she’d give her number to some hot dude and invariably hook up with him when he called. When she saw Eddie for the first time, she was so enchanted by his long, black hair, the sharply defined muscles on his heavily tattooed arms and his mischievous grin, that something happened inside her. “This must be what they call love at first sight,” she told herself. “I feel dizzy; I’d better sit down.” Yes, Eddie literally swept her off her feet. Bill could only watch from afar as Nikki spent the rest of the evening drinking and dancing with the guy. He couldn’t even bring himself to follow as they left the bar arm-in-arm, drunkenly stumbling out the door to St. Mark’s Place.
“We’ll be back soon, Bill,” she called over her shoulder. “Why don’t you have another drink.”
Bill was fuming when they returned about an hour later, sweaty and disheveled.
“Let’s go home now, Nikki,” he told her, in an uncharacteristically demanding tone.
“No, Bill, it’s still early; I want to stay. You go without me and I’ll catch a cab a little later.”
It gradually dawned on her that Bill was struggling to hold his temper. She saw in his eyes an angry white light which she’d rarely before seen. Acting quickly to deflect his anger, she gave him a little kiss and cooed, “I love you, Bill. I’ll see you at home, darling.”
That was all it took. He was suddenly as calm as a hurricane’s eye. He smiled benignly and mumbled something that may have been, “I love you, too,” then docilely walked out of the bar, leaving his wife with her new friend.
***
Nikki no longer dragged her husband with her when she went out at night. She wanted to be alone with Eddie. Despite the humiliation he had always felt when he’d tagged along, Bill now would have given anything to continue that practice. He begged his wife to spend her evenings with him, to no avail. Rather than sitting alone at home and moping, he spent more time at the hospital but had trouble keeping his mind on his work, sitting, instead at his desk and dreaming of the day that her infatuation with the boy would fade. He couldn’t recognize that even without Eddie, it was over for him. Nikki, in fact, was sick of the old fart’s existence in her world.
One evening, after several satisfying hours of sex in Eddie’s messy apartment, she rolled on top of him, kissed his naked chest and said, “sweetie, I love you more than anything. I want to spend my life with you.”
“How can we do that, Nikki? What about the old man?”
“I’ve got that figured out,” she said. Listen to this.”
She spent the rest of the night selling him on murder.
At first, he was totally against it. “Are you crazy?” he screamed. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in jail. Anyway, what has the old coot ever done to me?”
“He’s fucking your girl, Eddie,” she replied scornfully, not bothering to mention that she had not allowed him to sleep with her for months.
“Well, what about money; how will we manage to live without him to support you?”
Nikki sighed and stared at him as if he were stupid. “He’s leaving everything to me in his will. You didn’t think that I was dumb enough not to make sure of that, did you?”
Eddie gradually came around and they began to work out a plan. It was a simple one. He would wait in ambush with Nikki at her apartment, hiding behind the apartment door. When Bill arrived he would leap out and attack from behind, slugging him, like the Beatles’ Maxwell, repeatedly in the head with a hammer until he was sure that he was dead. They would dispose of the body in the swamps of northern New Jersey in the middle of the night and then report him missing. They set the date for two weeks later, on a Tuesday, a day that she knew Bill had an afternoon surgery scheduled and wouldn’t arrive home until after dark.
“I can’t believe I’ll finally be free of the old fool,” Nikki happily exclaimed.
All Eddie could do was grin stupidly.
***
“Nikki, where have you been? I haven’t seen you in like three days.” Eddie was leaving a voice message on her cell phone. He’d never before really cared if she were around. She was a good lay but good lays were a dime a dozen; if she wasn’t there it was easy to pick up another chick. Suddenly, though, Nikki was a hundred times more desirable to him. It was easy to understand why. When this was all over and they married, he would be filthy rich.
“Hello,” Nikki said in a weak voice just before he hung up. “Eddie? Is that you?”
“Yeah, Nikki. What’s going on? We have to go over our plans. The big day is coming up soon. Besides, I miss you.” It took a lot for him to admit that to her. He’d never said anything like that to a girl before.
“Oh, Eddie, I’ve been so sick the last couple of days. I don’t know what it is but I’ve been weak and I can’t hold my food down. I get dizzy whenever I try getting out of bed.”
“Sounds like a stomach virus. Have you seen a doctor?”
“My husband’s a doctor, stupid. Did you forget? Anyway, he thinks the same thing that you do; that its a stomach virus and nothing to worry about.”
“Okay, get some rest and feel better soon. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“Thanks, Eddie. I love you.”
***
Eddie called back a couple of days later. “Hey baby,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”
“No,” she groaned, in a voice so weak that he had to ask again.
“What did you say, honey? I think we have a bad connection.”
“I’m feeling even worse than the other day, Eddie. I think I’m going to die.”
Eddie felt the panic rise in his throat like bile. In his mind, he’d already been enjoying the fortune that she would inherit and he couldn’t bear to imagine not becoming rich. “Don’t talk like that baby,” he said. “You’ll be well soon. What is your husband doing for you?”
“He’s been giving me medicine but I seem to be getting weaker each day. He’s thinking about admitting me to the hospital.”
“Well, I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
Bill certainly did know what he was doing. Sometime in the past month, his wife’s spell on him had been broken. He finally saw her for what she was and vowed to himself that “that no-good, cheating gold digger” would be out of his life forever. His first thought, of course, was divorce but he knew that even if he could prove her unfaithfulness, there was always the chance that some bleeding-heart court would award her at least a little bit of alimony. “That witch doesn’t deserve a penny,” he thought bitterly. “I don’t care if I can afford it, she won’t get a cent.” He decided to take things into his own hands.
His first step was to falsify a medical file, showing that she had been under his treatment for diabetes. This enabled him to prescribe for her, glucose-lowering drugs and being her husband, he could just bring the drugs home from the hospital pharmacy. The drug that he chose was Metformin, a drug not quite as potent as insulin but one which, given the fact that she did not actually have diabetes, would drop her blood sugar to a dangerously low level. Bill began by putting the tasteless drug in her food. Once she began to get sick, he took charge of her “medical care.” He began injecting her with the serum in increasingly high dosages. Shortly after her last phone conversation with Eddie, she slipped into a hypoglycemic coma from which she never recovered.
Bill was distraught at the funeral. “I don’t understand,” he cried to anybody that would listen. I told her how much of the medicine to take. How could she make such a mistake? How will I live without her?”
Well, of course, without her was the only way he could have lived. With her demise, the murder scheme fizzled. Eddie, upon hearing of her death, immediately faded back into the bar scene, hooking up with a new chick every night. He quickly forgot about Nikki and her crazy plot. Bill never forgot her, though. Remorseless for his dirty deed, he used her memory as a reminder to never again fall under the spell of such a witch. Two years later, he fell in love with an attractive widow more nearly his age. They had a modest wedding and lived happily ever after.
“Would you just look at Bill,” his cousin Robin told her husband. “That tramp is making him act like a fool.”
“I know,” he answered. “I said all along that he never should have married her. Of course, she’s only after his money.”
“That’s obvious,” another guest piped in. “We all know, for example, that it was he who paid for the wedding, not the bride’s family. They could never afford the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
“What a gold digger,” she added in disgust.
It was evident to Nikki that most of the guests disapproved of their behavior, and of her, especially; but she didn’t care. She was proud to be able to get Bill, a usually refined medical doctor, more than twenty years her senior, to act so out of character. That, in fact, was part of her master plan.
***
“Let’s see what’s happening at this bar,” Nikki suggested to her friends on a Friday night about six months earlier.
“Are you serious?” Barbara asked. “With all the cool bars on the Upper East Side, why would you choose this place? It looks like it’s full of old people.”
“My point, exactly,” Nikki replied. “What better place to hook up with a Sugar Daddy? All the men here are rich and available.”
“I’m not interested. I’m looking for a hot young stud. Not gonna find him here, honey. How about you girls?”
The others agreed with Barbara and continued up Second Avenue in search of a more appropriate place to meet guys, leaving Nikki free to enter the sedate tavern by herself.
All male eyes turned as she entered, the men paused from sipping their beverages and, instead, drank in the image of Nikki’s youthful beauty. She was a sexy young thing, after all...much younger and fresher than the other women in the place. Those men who were with a woman soon averted their eyes from Nikki while the unattached let their gaze linger a little longer.
Nikki pretended not to notice that she was being ogled but, of course, she actually loved the attention. She’d set her sights though, on a man at the other end of the bar who was drinking alone and had been scrutinizing her more intently than the others. Ignoring everybody else, she strode straight to him. He was a fairly handsome man with light eyes, an aquiline nose and short, salt and pepper hair. He had on a tastefully tailored, expensive looking suit and, Nikki’s sharp eyes noticed, a huge diamond pinky ring and a gold Rolex.
“I would love for you to buy me a drink,” she said as she momentarily touched his shoulder. Brief as the contact was, the heat of it lingered for what seemed to him minutes before burning a path straight to his heart.
“Sure,” he replied in a slightly bashful tone. “What would you like?”
“I’ll have a Black Velvet, if you don’t mind.” She thanked him and downed the fashionable champagne and beer concoction in three gulps.
“Wow,” he said with an amused smirk. “I suppose you were thirsty.”
“Yeah, well I think that the sight of you got me a bit heated.”
Bill was smitten. He’d never before met anybody like this child; for a child was what she was compared to the mature and sophisticated women to whom he was accustomed. A respected surgeon at a prestigious Manhattan hospital, who came from old money, Bill had dated scores of socialites, executives and international beauties, yet none had ever excited him like this girl.
“Have another drink?” he asked and before waiting for her answer, he ordered two Black Velvets from the bartender. After a few more of those potent cocktails they drunkenly relocated to his apartment.
***
After six months of marriage, Nikki was having the time of her life. Bill on the other hand, was beginning to have second thoughts. Although he couldn’t understand how she’d managed it, he was aware that his unsophisticated twenty one year-old wife had achieved total control over him. Aside from the enormous allowance that he’d bestowed upon her, he’d presented her with every luxury she’d ever asked for, from clothing, to jewels, to fancy cars. All she had to do was demand it and it was hers; and she never seemed to tire of demanding things. His life was no longer his own. Although he’d always adored the Opera, for example, he could no longer attend since Nikki claimed to despise it.
“How would you know that you don’t like opera if you’ve never been?” he asked.
“Do I look like a middle-aged snob?” she retorted.
Instead, he found himself accompanying her to second-rate rock concerts and third-rate bars.
It was at one of these bars that she met Eddie. With Bill always sitting quietly at the bar like a well-behaved child, Nikki would spend the night flirting and grinding uninhibitedly on the dance floor with the boys. Occasionally, she’d give her number to some hot dude and invariably hook up with him when he called. When she saw Eddie for the first time, she was so enchanted by his long, black hair, the sharply defined muscles on his heavily tattooed arms and his mischievous grin, that something happened inside her. “This must be what they call love at first sight,” she told herself. “I feel dizzy; I’d better sit down.” Yes, Eddie literally swept her off her feet. Bill could only watch from afar as Nikki spent the rest of the evening drinking and dancing with the guy. He couldn’t even bring himself to follow as they left the bar arm-in-arm, drunkenly stumbling out the door to St. Mark’s Place.
“We’ll be back soon, Bill,” she called over her shoulder. “Why don’t you have another drink.”
Bill was fuming when they returned about an hour later, sweaty and disheveled.
“Let’s go home now, Nikki,” he told her, in an uncharacteristically demanding tone.
“No, Bill, it’s still early; I want to stay. You go without me and I’ll catch a cab a little later.”
It gradually dawned on her that Bill was struggling to hold his temper. She saw in his eyes an angry white light which she’d rarely before seen. Acting quickly to deflect his anger, she gave him a little kiss and cooed, “I love you, Bill. I’ll see you at home, darling.”
That was all it took. He was suddenly as calm as a hurricane’s eye. He smiled benignly and mumbled something that may have been, “I love you, too,” then docilely walked out of the bar, leaving his wife with her new friend.
***
Nikki no longer dragged her husband with her when she went out at night. She wanted to be alone with Eddie. Despite the humiliation he had always felt when he’d tagged along, Bill now would have given anything to continue that practice. He begged his wife to spend her evenings with him, to no avail. Rather than sitting alone at home and moping, he spent more time at the hospital but had trouble keeping his mind on his work, sitting, instead at his desk and dreaming of the day that her infatuation with the boy would fade. He couldn’t recognize that even without Eddie, it was over for him. Nikki, in fact, was sick of the old fart’s existence in her world.
One evening, after several satisfying hours of sex in Eddie’s messy apartment, she rolled on top of him, kissed his naked chest and said, “sweetie, I love you more than anything. I want to spend my life with you.”
“How can we do that, Nikki? What about the old man?”
“I’ve got that figured out,” she said. Listen to this.”
She spent the rest of the night selling him on murder.
At first, he was totally against it. “Are you crazy?” he screamed. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in jail. Anyway, what has the old coot ever done to me?”
“He’s fucking your girl, Eddie,” she replied scornfully, not bothering to mention that she had not allowed him to sleep with her for months.
“Well, what about money; how will we manage to live without him to support you?”
Nikki sighed and stared at him as if he were stupid. “He’s leaving everything to me in his will. You didn’t think that I was dumb enough not to make sure of that, did you?”
Eddie gradually came around and they began to work out a plan. It was a simple one. He would wait in ambush with Nikki at her apartment, hiding behind the apartment door. When Bill arrived he would leap out and attack from behind, slugging him, like the Beatles’ Maxwell, repeatedly in the head with a hammer until he was sure that he was dead. They would dispose of the body in the swamps of northern New Jersey in the middle of the night and then report him missing. They set the date for two weeks later, on a Tuesday, a day that she knew Bill had an afternoon surgery scheduled and wouldn’t arrive home until after dark.
“I can’t believe I’ll finally be free of the old fool,” Nikki happily exclaimed.
All Eddie could do was grin stupidly.
***
“Nikki, where have you been? I haven’t seen you in like three days.” Eddie was leaving a voice message on her cell phone. He’d never before really cared if she were around. She was a good lay but good lays were a dime a dozen; if she wasn’t there it was easy to pick up another chick. Suddenly, though, Nikki was a hundred times more desirable to him. It was easy to understand why. When this was all over and they married, he would be filthy rich.
“Hello,” Nikki said in a weak voice just before he hung up. “Eddie? Is that you?”
“Yeah, Nikki. What’s going on? We have to go over our plans. The big day is coming up soon. Besides, I miss you.” It took a lot for him to admit that to her. He’d never said anything like that to a girl before.
“Oh, Eddie, I’ve been so sick the last couple of days. I don’t know what it is but I’ve been weak and I can’t hold my food down. I get dizzy whenever I try getting out of bed.”
“Sounds like a stomach virus. Have you seen a doctor?”
“My husband’s a doctor, stupid. Did you forget? Anyway, he thinks the same thing that you do; that its a stomach virus and nothing to worry about.”
“Okay, get some rest and feel better soon. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“Thanks, Eddie. I love you.”
***
Eddie called back a couple of days later. “Hey baby,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”
“No,” she groaned, in a voice so weak that he had to ask again.
“What did you say, honey? I think we have a bad connection.”
“I’m feeling even worse than the other day, Eddie. I think I’m going to die.”
Eddie felt the panic rise in his throat like bile. In his mind, he’d already been enjoying the fortune that she would inherit and he couldn’t bear to imagine not becoming rich. “Don’t talk like that baby,” he said. “You’ll be well soon. What is your husband doing for you?”
“He’s been giving me medicine but I seem to be getting weaker each day. He’s thinking about admitting me to the hospital.”
“Well, I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
Bill certainly did know what he was doing. Sometime in the past month, his wife’s spell on him had been broken. He finally saw her for what she was and vowed to himself that “that no-good, cheating gold digger” would be out of his life forever. His first thought, of course, was divorce but he knew that even if he could prove her unfaithfulness, there was always the chance that some bleeding-heart court would award her at least a little bit of alimony. “That witch doesn’t deserve a penny,” he thought bitterly. “I don’t care if I can afford it, she won’t get a cent.” He decided to take things into his own hands.
His first step was to falsify a medical file, showing that she had been under his treatment for diabetes. This enabled him to prescribe for her, glucose-lowering drugs and being her husband, he could just bring the drugs home from the hospital pharmacy. The drug that he chose was Metformin, a drug not quite as potent as insulin but one which, given the fact that she did not actually have diabetes, would drop her blood sugar to a dangerously low level. Bill began by putting the tasteless drug in her food. Once she began to get sick, he took charge of her “medical care.” He began injecting her with the serum in increasingly high dosages. Shortly after her last phone conversation with Eddie, she slipped into a hypoglycemic coma from which she never recovered.
Bill was distraught at the funeral. “I don’t understand,” he cried to anybody that would listen. I told her how much of the medicine to take. How could she make such a mistake? How will I live without her?”
Well, of course, without her was the only way he could have lived. With her demise, the murder scheme fizzled. Eddie, upon hearing of her death, immediately faded back into the bar scene, hooking up with a new chick every night. He quickly forgot about Nikki and her crazy plot. Bill never forgot her, though. Remorseless for his dirty deed, he used her memory as a reminder to never again fall under the spell of such a witch. Two years later, he fell in love with an attractive widow more nearly his age. They had a modest wedding and lived happily ever after.
November 27, 2011
School Colors
I'm happy to announce that my first novel, "School Colors" (originally published in 2002) is now available at Amazon.com. Although I try not to spend much blog space shilling my own books, I felt it necessary to make an exception this week. I hope you will excuse me and I also hope that you will buy the book.
http://www.amazon.com/School-Colors-M...
(My latest novel. "Sophie Paraskova" is also available on Amazon.)
http://www.amazon.com/Sophie-Paraskov...
http://www.amazon.com/School-Colors-M...
(My latest novel. "Sophie Paraskova" is also available on Amazon.)
http://www.amazon.com/Sophie-Paraskov...
November 13, 2011
What Bird Brains
Following is another in my occasional reportage of News of the Weird:
11-year-old Skylar Capo and her mom got a bird's eye view of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's unbelievable lack of common sense. An agent happened to spot Skylar holding a baby woodpecker in her hands at a Lowes Home Improvement Center in Fredricksburg, Virginia. Skylar had, moments before, saved the woodpecker from a house cat that had just pounced on it and was preparing itself for a tasty little snack. Skylar was comforting the bird and intended to release it when the trauma had passed. The agent, however, was unimpressed, reciting a provision of the Migratory Bird Act, and two weeks later, another Fish and Wildlife agent, along with a Virginia state trooper, knocked on the Capo's door and served Mrs. Capo a citation calling for a $535 fine. All's well that ends well, however, as officials rescinded the fine a few weeks later, calling the agent's action a mistake.
11-year-old Skylar Capo and her mom got a bird's eye view of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's unbelievable lack of common sense. An agent happened to spot Skylar holding a baby woodpecker in her hands at a Lowes Home Improvement Center in Fredricksburg, Virginia. Skylar had, moments before, saved the woodpecker from a house cat that had just pounced on it and was preparing itself for a tasty little snack. Skylar was comforting the bird and intended to release it when the trauma had passed. The agent, however, was unimpressed, reciting a provision of the Migratory Bird Act, and two weeks later, another Fish and Wildlife agent, along with a Virginia state trooper, knocked on the Capo's door and served Mrs. Capo a citation calling for a $535 fine. All's well that ends well, however, as officials rescinded the fine a few weeks later, calling the agent's action a mistake.
October 30, 2011
Seven Billion
Incredibly, the world's population will reach seven billion sometime on October 31( Halloween). You may read what you wish into the timing of this event.
The landmark event will most likely take place in India, which boasts the world's highest number of births per minute:fifty-one. But the child may be born in China which is the world's most populous country or, actually, anywhere on earth. Of course, even the idea that on a particular day the birth of a particular child will bring the world's population to a particular number is ridiculous. Nobody can say, within tens of millions, how many people there are in the world at any given time.
For better or for worse, population has exploded since the beginning of time. About ten thousand years ago, there were perhaps five million people on earth. By the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt, there were about fifteen million, and by the time of the birth of Christ, the number had swelled to two hundred million. In about 1800, global population reached the one billion mark.
From this point, population really soared. It hit two billion in the 1920s and three billion by 1960. In 1968, it stood at about three and a half billion and since then, it has been growing at a rate of a billion people every twelve or thirteen years. According to the United Nations, the world's population reached six billion on October 12, 1999.
According to some famous intellectuals, this was not supposed to happen. In a famous essay written in 1798, just two years before the population reached a billion, Thomas Malthius stated that human numbers would always be held in check by war, pestilence or famine. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published "The Population Bomb" which predicted the imminent deaths, from starvation, of hundreds of millions of people.
To where is this historically unprecedented rate of increased population leading us? We, as a people, face the daunting challenge of providing food and comfort for the ever-increasing number of world inhabitants. Certainly greater numbers of consumers threaten the environment, as well as the food supply. It is imperative that we somehow slow, if not reverse, the burgeoning birth rate. The world's richer countries have already accomplished this; most European countries, as well as Japan and China, have seen their birth rates fall below replacement levels. It is in the world's poorer countries that most future population growth will occur. Contraception (or abstinence - lol) and education are the tools to reverse this trend before the world reaches an inevitable limit to how many people it can support. Right now, we do not know where that limit lies but unfortunately, sooner or later, we may arrive at an answer.
The landmark event will most likely take place in India, which boasts the world's highest number of births per minute:fifty-one. But the child may be born in China which is the world's most populous country or, actually, anywhere on earth. Of course, even the idea that on a particular day the birth of a particular child will bring the world's population to a particular number is ridiculous. Nobody can say, within tens of millions, how many people there are in the world at any given time.
For better or for worse, population has exploded since the beginning of time. About ten thousand years ago, there were perhaps five million people on earth. By the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt, there were about fifteen million, and by the time of the birth of Christ, the number had swelled to two hundred million. In about 1800, global population reached the one billion mark.
From this point, population really soared. It hit two billion in the 1920s and three billion by 1960. In 1968, it stood at about three and a half billion and since then, it has been growing at a rate of a billion people every twelve or thirteen years. According to the United Nations, the world's population reached six billion on October 12, 1999.
According to some famous intellectuals, this was not supposed to happen. In a famous essay written in 1798, just two years before the population reached a billion, Thomas Malthius stated that human numbers would always be held in check by war, pestilence or famine. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published "The Population Bomb" which predicted the imminent deaths, from starvation, of hundreds of millions of people.
To where is this historically unprecedented rate of increased population leading us? We, as a people, face the daunting challenge of providing food and comfort for the ever-increasing number of world inhabitants. Certainly greater numbers of consumers threaten the environment, as well as the food supply. It is imperative that we somehow slow, if not reverse, the burgeoning birth rate. The world's richer countries have already accomplished this; most European countries, as well as Japan and China, have seen their birth rates fall below replacement levels. It is in the world's poorer countries that most future population growth will occur. Contraception (or abstinence - lol) and education are the tools to reverse this trend before the world reaches an inevitable limit to how many people it can support. Right now, we do not know where that limit lies but unfortunately, sooner or later, we may arrive at an answer.
October 16, 2011
The Body in the Suitcase
“You’re a loser,” she screamed. “Nothing but a fucking loser. I don’t know why we ever got married.”
“Maybe it was because you’d claimed that I’d gotten you pregnant,” Joe replied indignantly. “I wonder whose child it really was?
“It was probably a good thing that she miscarried,” he thought.
He had just returned home, staggered through the door and told her that he’d been canned from his job for drunkenness; the fourth job from which he’d been fired in the past year... each time for the same reason.
“What kind of man are you that can’t hold a job,” she asked, scornfully. “What the hell is wrong with you? Only a bum goes to work drunk.”
“It’s your fault, you bitch,” he screamed, finally losing his cool. Your incessant nagging has driven me to drink. And what pleasure do I have in life aside from getting drunk? You certainly don’t give me any in bed.”
“That’s right, asshole. Blame it on me. You come to bed every night stinking like a brewery. Believe it or not, that doesn’t exactly turn me on. If I feel sorry for you and offer you some honey, you either can’t get it up or you come so quickly and roll over that I’m left to satisfy myself. You’re just a pathetic excuse for a man.”
“Am I? We’ll see about that,” he retaliated. He grabbed her roughly by her tee shirt and pulled her to him, tearing the shirt and exposing her breasts. He clumsily embraced her and locked his mouth on hers, slobbering all over her face.
“Get off me you creep,” she screamed as she pushed him away. “You are so disgusting; you make me want to puke.”
Joe erupted like a volcano. He couldn’t understand why the bitch would not respond to his advances. He called her every name in the book and even cursed her mother. Undaunted, she laughed disdainfully, slapped his face and spit right in his eye. Something in him snapped. Without thinking, he grabbed a marble paperweight from the coffee table and struck her on the head. He hit her several more times before she collapsed, dead before she hit the floor.
“Omigod,” he cried afterward. “What have I done? What will I do now?”
***
After fortifying himself with a couple of shots of whiskey, Joe attempted to stuff the body into his largest suitcase, bending the limbs at impossible angles in a monumental struggle to get it in. The room echoed with loud cracks as joints separated and bones actually snapped. He was soaked with perspiration and his muscles cramped from his efforts but try as he might, he could not get the cadaver to fit. Frustrated by his failure, he frantically fought back the urge to scream, knowing that he could not afford to wake the neighbors. Out of desperation, he sat down on the floor, put his head in his hands and proceeded to weep.”Why do these things always happen to me,” he whined. “Why do I have such rotten luck?” When the tears finally subsided he raised his eyes and stared forlornly towards the kitchen. Suddenly his gaze alighted upon a meat cleaver hanging from a hook on the wall. Filled with renewed optimism, he rushed into the kitchen and snatched the implement from the wall. He ran back out to the body and immediately began hacking away at whatever body parts would not fit into the suitcase. After he chopped off both hands and both feet, the corpse could almost, but not quite, fit. Before the frustration returned, he decided on a final solution. He calmly removed the mutilated body from the suitcase and laid it on the floor. He raised the cleaver over his head and violently swung it downward onto her neck, neatly severing the head from the body. It rolled a short distance before he picked it up and placed it inside the suitcase near the hands and feet. Now the body fit easily into the leather coffin.
***
Dressed all in black and walking unsteadily, Joe furtively wheeled the suitcase to the parking garage, his eyes maniacally darting back and forth in search of witnesses. He had bided his time in the apartment, drinking whiskey and cursing the dead woman in the suitcase. It was 3:00 A.M. and the possibility of running into another person was quite slim but he was taking no chances.
Relatively confident that he was alone in the garage, Joe clumsily lifted the suitcase into the trunk of his black BMW 530i and then slammed the trunk closed so quickly that it narrowly missed crushing his hand. He lost his balance while pulling his hand out of the way and fell to the floor. He choked back the high-decibel profanity that was straining to escape his mouth, frightened that he might be overheard. Silently, he picked himself up from the floor and brushed himself off. Now that the suitcase was safely out of sight, he stumbled to the front of the car and hurriedly got inside. Whether it was due to inebriation or nervousness, it took several attempts to get the key into the ignition; at first he was unable to get it into the hole and then he dropped it onto the floor. He cursed loudly as he banged his head on the steering wheel after finally retrieving the key. At last, he got the car started and slowly pulled out onto the street, alertly swerving out of the way of a speeding Subaru.
After hitting a huge pothole on East 84th St. and ruining his wheel alignment, he finally entered the FDR Drive at 86th St. and took great care to drive below the speed limit and stay in his lane. Being pulled over by the cops would not be in his best interests. He took a swig from the bottle of Black Label that he kept in the glove box in order to calm his nerves and sharpen his concentration. Humming softly to the pop music on the radio, he drove north on the FDR Drive to the Major Deegan Expressway to the New York State Thruway and kept driving until he reached the New Paltz exit, never exceeding 65 mph and treating himself to an occasional calming sip of scotch.
By the time he reached his ex-wife’s house, a slightly neglected salt box on a deserted country road, it was past 5:00 A.M. He was feeling good as he banged loudly on the door. All his worries had been drowned by the liquor and his brilliant plan for disposing of the body.
“Hi honey,” he said sweetly. He smiled at the red-headed woman with the sleep-swollen face who answered the door. “It’s really great to see you.” He lost the smile and took a step backwards when he caught a whiff of her morning breath. It took the woman a moment to focus before she recognized her estranged husband. Her sleepy eyes suddenly flashed fire.
“What the fuck are you doing here you creep? How dare you wake me in the middle of the night when you know damn well that I never wanted to see you again. Get the hell off my property.”
“But honey,” he whined. “I thought you would be happy to see me. I’m certainly glad to see you. Anyway, I only wanted to ask you a small favor. I just need to bury something in your back yard. Would that be okay honey? After that I can leave if you’d like but I was hoping that we could rekindle our romance.”
She’d added a few pounds to her voluptuous figure since he’d last seen her but still the sight of her aroused his little pecker.
She was stunned. She didn’t know whether to laugh at his bizarre request or punch him in the nose. “Are you crazy?” she screamed. “Get out of here before I call the cops, you asshole.” Then she slammed the door in his face.
Joe didn’t know what to do. He’d thought for sure that she would welcome him into her house if not into her bed; or at the very least, allow him to bury the suitcase in the back yard. He’d obviously forgotten what a disaster their marriage had been and how bitter their divorce. Now the bitch had screwed up his plans to dispose of the body. Disheartened, he returned to his car, trying to think of a Plan B.
He had another swallow of scotch to help him think and after a few minutes came up with a new idea. He left the car and surreptitiously made his way to his ex-wife’s tool shed where he found a shovel. He put it into the car, jumped behind the steering wheel and floored it onto the road. He drove west without any particular destination, finally coming upon a large wooded area. He pulled off the road and struggled to remove the suitcase from the trunk. It was heavier than he remembered and he was suffering from an alcohol-induced clumsiness. The suitcase fell from the car to the ground, breaking open and spilling its contents. Joe had to chase after the head as it rolled down a hill. After tripping over a tree root, ripping his pants and skinning his knee, he finally caught the runaway head, returned to the car and stuffed everything back into the suitcase. He dragged the suitcase deep into the woods and returned to the car for the shovel. “Shit,” he cried after he tripped again over the same damned tree root. Treading carefully now, he went back to where he’d left the suitcase and began digging a grave. Over an hour later, he wearily made his way back to the car. When he placed the shovel back in the trunk, he was overcome by the sight and smell of the blood that had seeped from the suitcase. He quickly turned his head and vomited on the ground right behind the car, unfortunately soiling his shiny shoes. He nearly jumped out of those shoes when, from out of nowhere, an early-morning hiker appeared. The stranger stopped about five feet from Joe and looked him over with obvious concern. “Are you okay mister?” he asked. Is there anything I can do?”
“Fuck off pal,” was Joe’s rude reply. “If I had needed any help, I’d have asked.” Without another word he slammed the trunk shut, got into the car and drove away, leaving the amazed hiker in his wake. Joe did not notice the beautiful sunrise as he looked east towards Poughkeepsie nor did he pay any attention to the stately Shawangunk Mountains to the west. What he did notice was a full service car wash in the heart of New Paltz. He staggered into the manager’s office and offered him an exorbitant tip to clean the trunk as well as the car’s interior and exterior and left the vehicle there while he went for lunch.
***
“How long has it been since you’ve seen her, sir,” the portly policeman with the pockmarked face asked.
Joe was back home. He’d showered, taken a nap and called the police to report his wife missing. He had also phoned his friend Robert, who rushed over immediately to lend him support.
“Sir,” the cop, repeated, “I asked you how long it’s been since you’ve seen your wife.”
“Oh,” said Joe. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted. I’m sure you understand. The last time I saw her... um... it was yesterday morning when I left for work.”
“Did she say anything that might help our investigation?”
“Well, no. She was fast asleep. We’d been up all night doin’ our thing... you know what I mean. I guess I wore her out...as usual.” He winked at the cop and flashed him a foolish grin.
After about an hour, the interview came to an end. The detective (whose name, interestingly enough, was Tracy) shook hands with Joe and left his card, instructing him to call if he thought of anything that might help. He didn’t like what he’d seen of Joe. His story didn’t quite add up and he seemed like a real jerk. Tracy also wondered about the effeminate bleached blond gentleman sitting at Joe’s side, quietly drinking, who kept patting Joe on the back and squeezing his shoulder. “Something is fishy about this story,” he told himself. “I’d better look into this guy”
***
Meanwhile, back upstate, the early-morning hiker, after hours of deliberation, entered the Ulster County Sheriff's office to report the strange behavior of a well-dressed middle-aged man in a black BMW early that morning. He told the Sheriff that he had immediately been bothered by the appearance of the car in the woods. In his many years of hiking those woods, he’d only ever seen rugged, off-road vehicles there, and very few of those. “A man in wingtip shoes and a luxury car are as out of place there as a man in scuba gear and a sailboat. The gentleman appeared to be nervous and disoriented and I thought that I’d seen him throwing up. When I asked him if he needed any help, he became very nasty and then hurried off.”
The Sheriff didn’t really believe this to be a serious matter but it was a slow day, so what the heck. “I’ll send a man out to investigate,” he told the Good Samaritan.
He actually sent two men and it didn’t take long to find the body. Joe had not done a very good job of burying the suitcase. One corner of it was sticking out of the ground for the deputies to see. A pack of coyotes was sniffing around the grave when the cops got there but scattered when the men got close.
Later that day, Joe’s ex visited the Sheriff’s office to report the theft of her shovel. She didn’t really give a shit about the shovel but anything that she could do to get that bastard in trouble was well worth the trip into town. She made sure to let the Sheriff know that Joe had wanted to bury something on her property.
***
Detective Tracy returned the following morning with a search warrant and a forensics team. After ringing the bell for several minutes without a response, the cops were about to enter the apartment on their own. Finally, a bare-chested Joe opened the door. Tracy immediately smelled the liquor on his breath. “Yes, officer? What is it?” Joe was clearly annoyed at the early morning intrusion.
“I have a search warrant, sir. My team would like to inspect your house.” He showed him the warrant and breezed by. He was startled to see Robert lounging on the sofa.
“What are you doing here,” Joe asked. “Why aren’t you guys out looking for my wife?”
“Well, you know how it is. The husband is always a suspect.”
“Suspect? What am I suspected of?”
“Nothing yet,” Tracy replied, “but often when a man reports a missing spouse, she turns up dead.”
****
In a small town, news spreads like the plague. Word quickly got around that a woman’s body had been recovered in the woods. The manager of the car wash wasted no time getting to the Sheriff’s office to report that a stranger had paid him a lot of money to clean blood out of the trunk of his BMW. The manager had been smart enough to copy down the car’s plate number.
***
The NYPD forensics team spent several hours combing the apartment. They immediately discovered a wet spot on the carpet. They packed up the paperweight which, incredibly, still lay on the floor and a sharp-eyed technician noticed the meat cleaver in the sink. The team left with their evidence and Tracy requested 24 hour surveillance on Joe’s apartment.
***
The coroner’s report was delivered to the Ulster County Sheriff that afternoon. It identified the body as that of Joe’s wife and the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. The Sheriff immediately contacted NYPD. It was a matter of minutes before the Sheriff was connected to Detective Tracy. It was decided that Tracy and his team would arrest Joe and hold him in New York until the matter of jurisdiction was decided.
***
“Police! Open up!” Tracy banged on the door after ringing the bell several times. He knew that both Joe and Robert were in the apartment because the surveillance team had not seen them leave. Tracy turned the door knob and found it unlocked. As the cops entered the apartment, the two men simultaneously rose from the sofa, smoothing their rumpled clothes and swaying slightly. The place reeked of alcohol and two empty bottles of Black Label lay on the floor. Another half-full bottle sat on the coffee table.
“Joseph Parker,” Tracy said, “it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest for the murder of your wife. You have the right to...”
The panic-stricken idiot turned and bolted for the nearest window, meaning to flee via the fire escape. Incredibly, in his drunken state, he had forgotten that there was one window in the living room that did not open to a fire escape. Of course, the drunken fool picked that window. “No!” Robert shrieked as Joe flew out of the room. Like a wounded bird, he plunged through the sky, dropping thirteen stories and landing on the pavement with a resounding thud.
The tabloids had a field day reporting on the bumbling wife-killer of the Upper East Side. For days, pages were filled with lurid details and engrossing anecdotes. Joe’s name appeared nationwide in countless “America’s dumbest criminals” features. Most interesting to the scandal-seeking scribes and their thirsty readers was the presence in the apartment of his presumed homosexual lover and the fact that the broken body that lay sprawled on the pavement was discovered to be dressed in black-lace women’s underwear.
“Maybe it was because you’d claimed that I’d gotten you pregnant,” Joe replied indignantly. “I wonder whose child it really was?
“It was probably a good thing that she miscarried,” he thought.
He had just returned home, staggered through the door and told her that he’d been canned from his job for drunkenness; the fourth job from which he’d been fired in the past year... each time for the same reason.
“What kind of man are you that can’t hold a job,” she asked, scornfully. “What the hell is wrong with you? Only a bum goes to work drunk.”
“It’s your fault, you bitch,” he screamed, finally losing his cool. Your incessant nagging has driven me to drink. And what pleasure do I have in life aside from getting drunk? You certainly don’t give me any in bed.”
“That’s right, asshole. Blame it on me. You come to bed every night stinking like a brewery. Believe it or not, that doesn’t exactly turn me on. If I feel sorry for you and offer you some honey, you either can’t get it up or you come so quickly and roll over that I’m left to satisfy myself. You’re just a pathetic excuse for a man.”
“Am I? We’ll see about that,” he retaliated. He grabbed her roughly by her tee shirt and pulled her to him, tearing the shirt and exposing her breasts. He clumsily embraced her and locked his mouth on hers, slobbering all over her face.
“Get off me you creep,” she screamed as she pushed him away. “You are so disgusting; you make me want to puke.”
Joe erupted like a volcano. He couldn’t understand why the bitch would not respond to his advances. He called her every name in the book and even cursed her mother. Undaunted, she laughed disdainfully, slapped his face and spit right in his eye. Something in him snapped. Without thinking, he grabbed a marble paperweight from the coffee table and struck her on the head. He hit her several more times before she collapsed, dead before she hit the floor.
“Omigod,” he cried afterward. “What have I done? What will I do now?”
***
After fortifying himself with a couple of shots of whiskey, Joe attempted to stuff the body into his largest suitcase, bending the limbs at impossible angles in a monumental struggle to get it in. The room echoed with loud cracks as joints separated and bones actually snapped. He was soaked with perspiration and his muscles cramped from his efforts but try as he might, he could not get the cadaver to fit. Frustrated by his failure, he frantically fought back the urge to scream, knowing that he could not afford to wake the neighbors. Out of desperation, he sat down on the floor, put his head in his hands and proceeded to weep.”Why do these things always happen to me,” he whined. “Why do I have such rotten luck?” When the tears finally subsided he raised his eyes and stared forlornly towards the kitchen. Suddenly his gaze alighted upon a meat cleaver hanging from a hook on the wall. Filled with renewed optimism, he rushed into the kitchen and snatched the implement from the wall. He ran back out to the body and immediately began hacking away at whatever body parts would not fit into the suitcase. After he chopped off both hands and both feet, the corpse could almost, but not quite, fit. Before the frustration returned, he decided on a final solution. He calmly removed the mutilated body from the suitcase and laid it on the floor. He raised the cleaver over his head and violently swung it downward onto her neck, neatly severing the head from the body. It rolled a short distance before he picked it up and placed it inside the suitcase near the hands and feet. Now the body fit easily into the leather coffin.
***
Dressed all in black and walking unsteadily, Joe furtively wheeled the suitcase to the parking garage, his eyes maniacally darting back and forth in search of witnesses. He had bided his time in the apartment, drinking whiskey and cursing the dead woman in the suitcase. It was 3:00 A.M. and the possibility of running into another person was quite slim but he was taking no chances.
Relatively confident that he was alone in the garage, Joe clumsily lifted the suitcase into the trunk of his black BMW 530i and then slammed the trunk closed so quickly that it narrowly missed crushing his hand. He lost his balance while pulling his hand out of the way and fell to the floor. He choked back the high-decibel profanity that was straining to escape his mouth, frightened that he might be overheard. Silently, he picked himself up from the floor and brushed himself off. Now that the suitcase was safely out of sight, he stumbled to the front of the car and hurriedly got inside. Whether it was due to inebriation or nervousness, it took several attempts to get the key into the ignition; at first he was unable to get it into the hole and then he dropped it onto the floor. He cursed loudly as he banged his head on the steering wheel after finally retrieving the key. At last, he got the car started and slowly pulled out onto the street, alertly swerving out of the way of a speeding Subaru.
After hitting a huge pothole on East 84th St. and ruining his wheel alignment, he finally entered the FDR Drive at 86th St. and took great care to drive below the speed limit and stay in his lane. Being pulled over by the cops would not be in his best interests. He took a swig from the bottle of Black Label that he kept in the glove box in order to calm his nerves and sharpen his concentration. Humming softly to the pop music on the radio, he drove north on the FDR Drive to the Major Deegan Expressway to the New York State Thruway and kept driving until he reached the New Paltz exit, never exceeding 65 mph and treating himself to an occasional calming sip of scotch.
By the time he reached his ex-wife’s house, a slightly neglected salt box on a deserted country road, it was past 5:00 A.M. He was feeling good as he banged loudly on the door. All his worries had been drowned by the liquor and his brilliant plan for disposing of the body.
“Hi honey,” he said sweetly. He smiled at the red-headed woman with the sleep-swollen face who answered the door. “It’s really great to see you.” He lost the smile and took a step backwards when he caught a whiff of her morning breath. It took the woman a moment to focus before she recognized her estranged husband. Her sleepy eyes suddenly flashed fire.
“What the fuck are you doing here you creep? How dare you wake me in the middle of the night when you know damn well that I never wanted to see you again. Get the hell off my property.”
“But honey,” he whined. “I thought you would be happy to see me. I’m certainly glad to see you. Anyway, I only wanted to ask you a small favor. I just need to bury something in your back yard. Would that be okay honey? After that I can leave if you’d like but I was hoping that we could rekindle our romance.”
She’d added a few pounds to her voluptuous figure since he’d last seen her but still the sight of her aroused his little pecker.
She was stunned. She didn’t know whether to laugh at his bizarre request or punch him in the nose. “Are you crazy?” she screamed. “Get out of here before I call the cops, you asshole.” Then she slammed the door in his face.
Joe didn’t know what to do. He’d thought for sure that she would welcome him into her house if not into her bed; or at the very least, allow him to bury the suitcase in the back yard. He’d obviously forgotten what a disaster their marriage had been and how bitter their divorce. Now the bitch had screwed up his plans to dispose of the body. Disheartened, he returned to his car, trying to think of a Plan B.
He had another swallow of scotch to help him think and after a few minutes came up with a new idea. He left the car and surreptitiously made his way to his ex-wife’s tool shed where he found a shovel. He put it into the car, jumped behind the steering wheel and floored it onto the road. He drove west without any particular destination, finally coming upon a large wooded area. He pulled off the road and struggled to remove the suitcase from the trunk. It was heavier than he remembered and he was suffering from an alcohol-induced clumsiness. The suitcase fell from the car to the ground, breaking open and spilling its contents. Joe had to chase after the head as it rolled down a hill. After tripping over a tree root, ripping his pants and skinning his knee, he finally caught the runaway head, returned to the car and stuffed everything back into the suitcase. He dragged the suitcase deep into the woods and returned to the car for the shovel. “Shit,” he cried after he tripped again over the same damned tree root. Treading carefully now, he went back to where he’d left the suitcase and began digging a grave. Over an hour later, he wearily made his way back to the car. When he placed the shovel back in the trunk, he was overcome by the sight and smell of the blood that had seeped from the suitcase. He quickly turned his head and vomited on the ground right behind the car, unfortunately soiling his shiny shoes. He nearly jumped out of those shoes when, from out of nowhere, an early-morning hiker appeared. The stranger stopped about five feet from Joe and looked him over with obvious concern. “Are you okay mister?” he asked. Is there anything I can do?”
“Fuck off pal,” was Joe’s rude reply. “If I had needed any help, I’d have asked.” Without another word he slammed the trunk shut, got into the car and drove away, leaving the amazed hiker in his wake. Joe did not notice the beautiful sunrise as he looked east towards Poughkeepsie nor did he pay any attention to the stately Shawangunk Mountains to the west. What he did notice was a full service car wash in the heart of New Paltz. He staggered into the manager’s office and offered him an exorbitant tip to clean the trunk as well as the car’s interior and exterior and left the vehicle there while he went for lunch.
***
“How long has it been since you’ve seen her, sir,” the portly policeman with the pockmarked face asked.
Joe was back home. He’d showered, taken a nap and called the police to report his wife missing. He had also phoned his friend Robert, who rushed over immediately to lend him support.
“Sir,” the cop, repeated, “I asked you how long it’s been since you’ve seen your wife.”
“Oh,” said Joe. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted. I’m sure you understand. The last time I saw her... um... it was yesterday morning when I left for work.”
“Did she say anything that might help our investigation?”
“Well, no. She was fast asleep. We’d been up all night doin’ our thing... you know what I mean. I guess I wore her out...as usual.” He winked at the cop and flashed him a foolish grin.
After about an hour, the interview came to an end. The detective (whose name, interestingly enough, was Tracy) shook hands with Joe and left his card, instructing him to call if he thought of anything that might help. He didn’t like what he’d seen of Joe. His story didn’t quite add up and he seemed like a real jerk. Tracy also wondered about the effeminate bleached blond gentleman sitting at Joe’s side, quietly drinking, who kept patting Joe on the back and squeezing his shoulder. “Something is fishy about this story,” he told himself. “I’d better look into this guy”
***
Meanwhile, back upstate, the early-morning hiker, after hours of deliberation, entered the Ulster County Sheriff's office to report the strange behavior of a well-dressed middle-aged man in a black BMW early that morning. He told the Sheriff that he had immediately been bothered by the appearance of the car in the woods. In his many years of hiking those woods, he’d only ever seen rugged, off-road vehicles there, and very few of those. “A man in wingtip shoes and a luxury car are as out of place there as a man in scuba gear and a sailboat. The gentleman appeared to be nervous and disoriented and I thought that I’d seen him throwing up. When I asked him if he needed any help, he became very nasty and then hurried off.”
The Sheriff didn’t really believe this to be a serious matter but it was a slow day, so what the heck. “I’ll send a man out to investigate,” he told the Good Samaritan.
He actually sent two men and it didn’t take long to find the body. Joe had not done a very good job of burying the suitcase. One corner of it was sticking out of the ground for the deputies to see. A pack of coyotes was sniffing around the grave when the cops got there but scattered when the men got close.
Later that day, Joe’s ex visited the Sheriff’s office to report the theft of her shovel. She didn’t really give a shit about the shovel but anything that she could do to get that bastard in trouble was well worth the trip into town. She made sure to let the Sheriff know that Joe had wanted to bury something on her property.
***
Detective Tracy returned the following morning with a search warrant and a forensics team. After ringing the bell for several minutes without a response, the cops were about to enter the apartment on their own. Finally, a bare-chested Joe opened the door. Tracy immediately smelled the liquor on his breath. “Yes, officer? What is it?” Joe was clearly annoyed at the early morning intrusion.
“I have a search warrant, sir. My team would like to inspect your house.” He showed him the warrant and breezed by. He was startled to see Robert lounging on the sofa.
“What are you doing here,” Joe asked. “Why aren’t you guys out looking for my wife?”
“Well, you know how it is. The husband is always a suspect.”
“Suspect? What am I suspected of?”
“Nothing yet,” Tracy replied, “but often when a man reports a missing spouse, she turns up dead.”
****
In a small town, news spreads like the plague. Word quickly got around that a woman’s body had been recovered in the woods. The manager of the car wash wasted no time getting to the Sheriff’s office to report that a stranger had paid him a lot of money to clean blood out of the trunk of his BMW. The manager had been smart enough to copy down the car’s plate number.
***
The NYPD forensics team spent several hours combing the apartment. They immediately discovered a wet spot on the carpet. They packed up the paperweight which, incredibly, still lay on the floor and a sharp-eyed technician noticed the meat cleaver in the sink. The team left with their evidence and Tracy requested 24 hour surveillance on Joe’s apartment.
***
The coroner’s report was delivered to the Ulster County Sheriff that afternoon. It identified the body as that of Joe’s wife and the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. The Sheriff immediately contacted NYPD. It was a matter of minutes before the Sheriff was connected to Detective Tracy. It was decided that Tracy and his team would arrest Joe and hold him in New York until the matter of jurisdiction was decided.
***
“Police! Open up!” Tracy banged on the door after ringing the bell several times. He knew that both Joe and Robert were in the apartment because the surveillance team had not seen them leave. Tracy turned the door knob and found it unlocked. As the cops entered the apartment, the two men simultaneously rose from the sofa, smoothing their rumpled clothes and swaying slightly. The place reeked of alcohol and two empty bottles of Black Label lay on the floor. Another half-full bottle sat on the coffee table.
“Joseph Parker,” Tracy said, “it is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest for the murder of your wife. You have the right to...”
The panic-stricken idiot turned and bolted for the nearest window, meaning to flee via the fire escape. Incredibly, in his drunken state, he had forgotten that there was one window in the living room that did not open to a fire escape. Of course, the drunken fool picked that window. “No!” Robert shrieked as Joe flew out of the room. Like a wounded bird, he plunged through the sky, dropping thirteen stories and landing on the pavement with a resounding thud.
The tabloids had a field day reporting on the bumbling wife-killer of the Upper East Side. For days, pages were filled with lurid details and engrossing anecdotes. Joe’s name appeared nationwide in countless “America’s dumbest criminals” features. Most interesting to the scandal-seeking scribes and their thirsty readers was the presence in the apartment of his presumed homosexual lover and the fact that the broken body that lay sprawled on the pavement was discovered to be dressed in black-lace women’s underwear.
October 1, 2011
History of "Happy Birthday."
The other day I celebrated my birthday (thank you to all my friends who sent birthday greetings). As always, it was a wonderful day...I'm one of those people who feels that birthdays should always be special. At the end of the day I got to wondering about the history of the birthday celebration. Below are some of the results of my research:
Apparently the tradition of celebrating birthdays originated with an all-male Pagan cult long before the advent of Christianity. Pagan cultures believed that they were susceptible to evil spirits, especially during life changes. Since a birthday signifies change it was important for the birthday person to be surrounded by friends and family. Loved ones shielded the person in happiness and laughter, which in turn, warded off evil spirits.
Birthdays of the rich and powerful have been celebrated for thousands of years. Records exist showing that Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors held birthday celebrations. Historians are also certain that although few records exist, common people have been celebrating birthdays for quite some time.
Different cultures have, over the ages, developed their own birthday traditions. In Chinese culture, for example, symbolism is very important and symbols play an important role in Chinese birthday celebrations. On the day of their birth Chinese babies are given gifts decorated with tigers for protection. Chinese families also serve extra-long noodles for a child's birthday lunch to ensure long life.
Baking symbolic objects inside a birthday cake is an old English tradition. In medieval times coins and thimbles were mixed into the batter and baked The finder of the coin would be blessed with wealth while the one who found the thimble would be cursed in love. This tradition is still practiced but the objects have been replaced by candy coins and candy thimbles.
In Jewish tradition a child becomes an adult on the thirteenth birthday: the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. After a religious ceremony there is usually a tremendous party.
Many Latin American cultures recognize a girl's 15th birthday (quinceanera) as a passage into womanhood. There is usually a ceremonial candle-lighting ritual involved. The quinceanera is similar to the sweet sixteen which is celebrated in the United States.
In the U.S. birthdays are often celebrated with a cake and candles. The presentation of the blazing cake is usually accompanied by the singing of "Happy Birthday To You," which was written in 1893 by two sisters, Patty and Mildred J. Hill. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records HBTY is the most recognized song in the English language. At the end of the song the birthday person makes a wish and blows out the candles. Blowing out the candles is symbolic of extinguishing the past while the wish is meant to influence the future.
Regardless of one's culture or tradition, birthdays have evolved to be a celebration of one's life. If you have a birthday coming up, Happy Birthday! I hope it is special.
Apparently the tradition of celebrating birthdays originated with an all-male Pagan cult long before the advent of Christianity. Pagan cultures believed that they were susceptible to evil spirits, especially during life changes. Since a birthday signifies change it was important for the birthday person to be surrounded by friends and family. Loved ones shielded the person in happiness and laughter, which in turn, warded off evil spirits.
Birthdays of the rich and powerful have been celebrated for thousands of years. Records exist showing that Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors held birthday celebrations. Historians are also certain that although few records exist, common people have been celebrating birthdays for quite some time.
Different cultures have, over the ages, developed their own birthday traditions. In Chinese culture, for example, symbolism is very important and symbols play an important role in Chinese birthday celebrations. On the day of their birth Chinese babies are given gifts decorated with tigers for protection. Chinese families also serve extra-long noodles for a child's birthday lunch to ensure long life.
Baking symbolic objects inside a birthday cake is an old English tradition. In medieval times coins and thimbles were mixed into the batter and baked The finder of the coin would be blessed with wealth while the one who found the thimble would be cursed in love. This tradition is still practiced but the objects have been replaced by candy coins and candy thimbles.
In Jewish tradition a child becomes an adult on the thirteenth birthday: the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. After a religious ceremony there is usually a tremendous party.
Many Latin American cultures recognize a girl's 15th birthday (quinceanera) as a passage into womanhood. There is usually a ceremonial candle-lighting ritual involved. The quinceanera is similar to the sweet sixteen which is celebrated in the United States.
In the U.S. birthdays are often celebrated with a cake and candles. The presentation of the blazing cake is usually accompanied by the singing of "Happy Birthday To You," which was written in 1893 by two sisters, Patty and Mildred J. Hill. According to the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records HBTY is the most recognized song in the English language. At the end of the song the birthday person makes a wish and blows out the candles. Blowing out the candles is symbolic of extinguishing the past while the wish is meant to influence the future.
Regardless of one's culture or tradition, birthdays have evolved to be a celebration of one's life. If you have a birthday coming up, Happy Birthday! I hope it is special.
September 18, 2011
Little Crimes For Little Tots
Visitors to my Goodreads page may have noticed my recent infatuation with Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith, whose many works include "Strangers on a Train," which became a great Alfred Hitchcock movie, is widely considered to be the best writer of crime fiction ever. Somehow, despite being extraordinarily popular in Europe, she was under-appreciated in her native United States until the movie version of her "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was released in this country in 1999. Although her genre was crime fiction, she has been lauded by many writers and critics as a major player in mainstream literature, much like her own favorite authors, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus and Proust.
According to one of her biographers, Joan Shenkar, Ms. Highsmith was fond of making lists, some of them quite macabre. Below is one such list of helpful activities which small children can do around the house. The list was jotted down in her writer's notebook on November 16, 1973 in Moncourt, France:
Little Crimes for Little Tots. Things around the house — which small children can do, such as:
1) Tying string across top of stairs so adults will trip.
2) Replacing roller skate on stairs, once mother has removed it.
3) Setting careful fires, so that someone else will get the blame if possible.
4) Rearranging pills in medicine cabinets; sleeping pills into aspirin bottle. Pink laxative pills into antibiotic bottle which is kept in fridge.
5) Rat powder or flea powder into flour jar in kitchen.
6) Saw through supports of attic trap door, so that anyone walking on closed trap will fall through to stairs.
7) In summer: fix magnifying glass to focus on dry leaves, or preferably oily rags somewhere. Fire may be attributed to spontaneous combustion.
8) Investigate anti-mildew products in gardening shed. Colorless poison added to gin bottle.
According to one of her biographers, Joan Shenkar, Ms. Highsmith was fond of making lists, some of them quite macabre. Below is one such list of helpful activities which small children can do around the house. The list was jotted down in her writer's notebook on November 16, 1973 in Moncourt, France:
Little Crimes for Little Tots. Things around the house — which small children can do, such as:
1) Tying string across top of stairs so adults will trip.
2) Replacing roller skate on stairs, once mother has removed it.
3) Setting careful fires, so that someone else will get the blame if possible.
4) Rearranging pills in medicine cabinets; sleeping pills into aspirin bottle. Pink laxative pills into antibiotic bottle which is kept in fridge.
5) Rat powder or flea powder into flour jar in kitchen.
6) Saw through supports of attic trap door, so that anyone walking on closed trap will fall through to stairs.
7) In summer: fix magnifying glass to focus on dry leaves, or preferably oily rags somewhere. Fire may be attributed to spontaneous combustion.
8) Investigate anti-mildew products in gardening shed. Colorless poison added to gin bottle.
September 4, 2011
Murder at the Biltmore Hotel
The grey-haired gentleman with the slit throat lay lifeless in the king-sized bed in the master bedroom. Yellow police tape blocked the entrance to the penthouse suite of the Biltmore Hotel. Police investigators discovered that the dead man was one Winston Defoe, a Princeton man who had made his fortune in real estate. Defoe’s wife, Emily, was to meet him at the hotel later that evening upon her arrival from their summer estate on Long Island’s Gold Coast; she’d planned to help him celebrate his 60th birthday.
Defoe’s identity was just about the only thing that the police were able to discover. The suite was totally devoid of evidence. Forensic science, in 1926, was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today.
The desk clerk recalled that Defoe had checked in late the previous evening, accompanied by a very young, lovely lady who was dressed in a beautiful, black Basque dress and a Cloche hat. The couple were obviously quite drunk and couldn’t keep their hands off each other. “I didn’t really notice anything else,” the clerk confided. “The girl was exactly as young, beautiful and drunk as all the other girls Mr. Defoe had brought here over the years.”
The girl would never be found. She’d covered her tracks expertly. Lord knows she was experienced at covering up. Despite her youth, Defoe was not the first rich old man that she’d slept with and then murdered; he probably would not be the last.
It wasn’t as if she’d planned to murder those men. Something would come over her and it would just happen; a sort of climax to a long night of sex. But there were so many other men with whom she’d slept and merely kissed goodbye in the morning; often she would meet one of these men again at a party or a speakeasy and allow him to seduce her a second time. She just never knew when her passion would culminate in murder.
Isabel Ashton was the name of this twenty-one year old femme fatale. A look into the history of her young life may perhaps explain how she’d grown to become a sexy man-killer.
Isabel was born in the early spring of 1905 to the extraordinarily beautiful Elizabeth Henderson. The father was Thomas Ashton, a moderately famous adventurer. It is unclear whether the couple ever married but Ashton did live with Elizabeth and Isabel, on and off, until his unfortunate death in France mere weeks after he’d enlisted to fight in the Great War. Elizabeth was devastated by Ashton’s death, having had it in her head that he would remain overseas for only a few months before returning as a hero to her and their twelve year old daughter.
Estranged from her parents and never having had to work for a living, Elizabeth found it difficult to support herself and her daughter. She began frequenting the New York City taverns and dance halls, picking up men and bringing them home to her bed. They paid impressive sums for their escapades with the most beautiful woman they’d ever bedded. Despite the high price, not one man was disappointed in the bang he got for his buck. In this way, Elizabeth was able to provide for herself and her child but she hated herself for sinking to such depths.
After several months of this illicit life, Elizabeth brought home a well-groomed man with an aristocratic face and a full head of snow-white hair, who happened to be in New York City on business. Edward Albertson was a wealthy, sixty-two year old businessman from Chicago who made frequent trips to New York. Despite the significant age difference, he and Elizabeth fell for each other and although he had a devoted wife back home, he moved in with Elizabeth and increased the length and frequency of his trips East.
Albertson treated Elizabeth like a queen and Isabel like a princess. He showered the girls with fancy clothes and expensive gifts and eventually moved them from their little apartment in Greenwich Village to a sprawling Park Avenue residence. He looked upon Isabel as his own daughter and gradually came to love her even more than he loved her mother.
Isabel didn’t seduce him; at least, not intentionally. It was just that the mere presence of the newly-blossoming nymphet made his stomach do cartwheels. “Yes, she’s beautiful,” he told himself desperately, “but she’s just a child...only twelve years old.” But try as he might, he could not keep his eyes off the young beauty. He vowed to himself that he would never act inappropriately toward the girl. Despite his vows, he often found himself daydreaming about her and he hated himself more with each new fantasy. Frequently, while making love to Elizabeth, he would imagine that he was with Isabel and he would achieve the most incredible climax.
One evening, Albertson arrived bearing many gifts for his two favorite women. For Elizabeth, he brought a box of chocolates, a bouquet of roses, a sexy, sheer negligee and a beautiful emerald necklace. For the girl, he brought a ruby ring, an unsuitably skimpy red dress and a copy of the popular novel, “Anne of the Green Gables.” Isabel was thrilled. “Oh, Uncle,” she cried, happily. “I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages. All my friends have told me that it’s wonderful!” With that, she leaped onto his lap. “Read it with me Uncle. Oh, please.”
“Yes, dear,” Elizabeth encouraged him. “Why don’t the two of you read the book together? I have a splitting headache and must go to bed.” She kissed the two of them goodnight and took her leave.
Still sitting on Albertson’s lap, Isabel wiggled and squirmed until she was comfortable and opened the book to page one. Her skirt hiked up well above her knees. Almost immediately, Albertson got hard. He cleared his throat and began reading aloud but could not pay attention to the words. His hands, refusing to be governed by his will, proceeded to roam wildly about her body, eventually coming to a stop at her bare legs. He moaned from deep inside his throat as he caressed her thighs and then ran his hands up to her hips. He pulled her closer and thrusted rhythmically as her little derriere rubbed against his sex.
Isabel was confused. She somehow sensed that this was wrong, but it felt nice, nevertheless. She instinctively moved her hips to her “uncle’s” rhythm, increasing his excitement still further.
“Stop,” he screamed suddenly, and roughly pulled her from his lap and pushed her to the floor. “This is crazy. What are you trying to do to me you little whore?”
The girl was bewildered. She had done nothing wrong. Or had she? Albertson seemed to have been the one that was doing something to her. Why was he angry? He’d seemed to enjoy whatever it was that was happening and even though she did not totally understand it, she had tried to maintain his pleasure. It had not been at all unpleasant for her, either.
She picked herself up from the floor and ran, crying, to her bedroom. After a short while, Albertson followed. “I’m so sorry, Isabel,” he said. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what came over me. Can you ever forgive me?”
The befuddled girl hesitated for a moment then tearfully replied, “Yes, uncle. Of course I can.”
He gave her an avuncular hug and meant to leave but, of course, one thing led to another and he stayed for hours. From that time on, Albertson made nightly visits to the girl’s bed.
Not long after this episode Albertson deserted his wife, transferred his business interests to New York and moved in with Elizabeth and Isabel full time. As soon as he was able, he married Elizabeth and the three settled down as a wildly dysfunctional family.
Albertson grew to hate himself. He understood that what he was doing was beyond depraved but no matter how hard he tried, he could not end it.
Elizabeth knew, in the back of her mind, what was happening between her husband and her daughter but she was too weak to put a stop to it. She could not imagine living if Albertson were not there to share her bed and support the family so she said nothing and pushed her disturbing knowledge beneath her consciousness.
Isabel, too, had intense and conflicting emotions. She dreaded her stepfather’s nightly visits to her bed but at the same time, looked forward to them. She despised him for his unfaithfulness to her mother and for his defilement of herself, and yet, she adored him. She cringed when he demanded that she now call him “daddy” but in the heat of passion she eagerly screamed out that sobriquet. As time passed, she convinced herself that the entire situation was her fault.
By the time she was sixteen, Isabel had the voluptuous body of a grown woman and the morals of a slut. The rapes had continued throughout the years, occasionally coming to a halt when he would temporarily develop a conscience or when she left home to escape his molestation. During the times that she was away, she stayed active, seducing the boys from her school or finding older men who reminded her of Albertson. Among the schoolboys she soon became known as “the headmistress of sex education” (she certainly taught them a thing or two about sex); from the men, she learned sophisticated sexual skills and how to knock down a shot of whiskey. Always, though, she would begin to miss her stepfather and like a boomerang, she would fly back to his arms.
Over the years, Elizabeth became more and more affected by her repressed knowledge. Although Albertson often desired her as a tasty appetizer to the main course with his stepdaughter, deep down she sensed what entree awaited him in the next room.
“Isabel,” he accidentally blurted out one night while having sex with the mother.
“What?” Elizabeth screamed in disbelief. “How dare you! Get the hell out of my bed and run to your little whore.”
This angered him although he realized that he’d been in the wrong. “You’ll be sorry, you dried up bitch,” he replied as he stormed out of her bed and headed for the arms of the girl.
Soon, Elizabeth took to drinking in order to ease her growing fear that he would permanently abandon her for her daughter. No matter how humiliated, she never denied him her body, despite knowing that he would take her and then run to Isabel. Although she often thought about it, she could never bring herself to confront the girl.
One evening after Albertson had left her bed, although she was already quite tight, Elizabeth guzzled what was left of a half-full bottle of bourbon, took something from the drawer of her night stand and staggered, half-nude to Isabel’s room.
“Bastard,” she screamed drunkenly at Albertson just as he climaxed. “And you,” she shouted to her daughter, “you’re nothing but a shameless little tramp.” She then pointed her gun and fired. Her first shot hit the wall just behind the bed but the second one found its target in the side of her husband’s head. The third hit Isabel in the leg as she dived to the floor. Two more shots went awry as Isabel rolled to safety beneath the bed. Elizabeth saved the last bullet for herself. She died instantly after putting the gun in her mouth and squeezing the trigger.
***
Shortly before midnight on the last day of Spring,1926, Isabel knocked three times at the door of the speakeasy at 42 West 49th Street. Jack Kreindler, one of the two owners of the place, looked through the peephole.
“What’s the password,” he asked.
“Godammit, Jack. It’s me, Isabel Ashton. Open the damn door.”
“You can never be too careful, Isabel,” Jack replied sheepishly. But he opened the door and let the beautiful young lady inside without hearing the magic word.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Where’s Martin?” Martin was the usual doorman/bouncer. He was a good-looking guy and Isabel enjoyed flirting with him.
“Oh, he’s just cleaning himself up. He had a bit of unpleasantness with a rowdy customer and was forced to do what he was hired to do.”
Isabel smiled at him and made her way to the bar, swiveling her hips ostentatiously for the handsome men to admire and for the flappers to envy. She was quite familiar with this place and several other speakeasies around town. This one was her favorite. She’d been coming regularly for years. It was a great place to get drunk and meet a man; and the owners, Jack and his partner, Charlie Berns, took care of her when she was alone and loaded.
She was already a bit tipsy when she ordered her first drink. She sipped the bourbon as she surveyed the room. She noticed several men with whom she’d been before and nodded to each of them. Now she caught the eye of a handsome, grey-haired man who had just entered. She’d seen him here many times before, usually with a young girl on his arm, occasionally with an older woman who appeared to be his wife. She knew that he was very wealthy and that his name was Defoe and it certainly made no difference to her that he was married.
The man smiled at her from the entrance and, ignoring a bevy of bobbed-haired beauties, headed straight to where she was sitting.
“May I buy you a drink, Miss?”
“I haven’t finished this one yet.” She gulped down the rest of her drink and smiled. “Now you may.”
They spent about an hour at the bar, downing shots and getting to know each other. He invited her to his hotel the moment she placed her hand between his legs.
They stumbled straight to the bedroom. Isabel wasn’t particularly impressed by the fancy hotel room. She’d been to countless luxury suites during her young life. What did impress her a while later was the performance of the old man. His prodigious sexual appetite belied his age and his skills were impressive. He thrilled her in ways she’d never before known, deftly bringing her to the pinnacle of pleasure. She couldn’t help but think about her stepfather, a man about Defoe’s age who’d taught her a thing or two in bed. While in the throes of a particularly powerful orgasm, she screamed out,” oh, yes, daddy, yes. You make me feel so good, daddy...oh, daddy!”
In the aftermath, Isabel was horrified by what had come out of her mouth. Defoe had taken her to a place in which she’d lost all sense of reality and while she was in this place, she believed that she was having sex with her stepfather. The moment had been epiphanous, as she suddenly realized that Defoe and Albertson were alike. With Defoe finally exhausted and fast asleep beside her, she became agitated, suddenly losing the ability with which to distinguish between the two men. For a time she did nothing but grind her teeth, pull at her hair and mutter profanities to herself. Suddenly, she rose and left the bedroom, not bothering to cover her nakedness. She soon returned with a butcher’s knife, still wearing nothing but an insane smile. She approached the bed on tippy-toes, silently got in and straddled the dozing Defoe. The exhausted man barely stirred.
“This,” she cried, “is for turning me into a slut.” Then, still smiling insanely, and with the expertise of a sushi chef, she calmly severed her sleeping lover’s jugular.
Defoe’s identity was just about the only thing that the police were able to discover. The suite was totally devoid of evidence. Forensic science, in 1926, was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today.
The desk clerk recalled that Defoe had checked in late the previous evening, accompanied by a very young, lovely lady who was dressed in a beautiful, black Basque dress and a Cloche hat. The couple were obviously quite drunk and couldn’t keep their hands off each other. “I didn’t really notice anything else,” the clerk confided. “The girl was exactly as young, beautiful and drunk as all the other girls Mr. Defoe had brought here over the years.”
The girl would never be found. She’d covered her tracks expertly. Lord knows she was experienced at covering up. Despite her youth, Defoe was not the first rich old man that she’d slept with and then murdered; he probably would not be the last.
It wasn’t as if she’d planned to murder those men. Something would come over her and it would just happen; a sort of climax to a long night of sex. But there were so many other men with whom she’d slept and merely kissed goodbye in the morning; often she would meet one of these men again at a party or a speakeasy and allow him to seduce her a second time. She just never knew when her passion would culminate in murder.
Isabel Ashton was the name of this twenty-one year old femme fatale. A look into the history of her young life may perhaps explain how she’d grown to become a sexy man-killer.
Isabel was born in the early spring of 1905 to the extraordinarily beautiful Elizabeth Henderson. The father was Thomas Ashton, a moderately famous adventurer. It is unclear whether the couple ever married but Ashton did live with Elizabeth and Isabel, on and off, until his unfortunate death in France mere weeks after he’d enlisted to fight in the Great War. Elizabeth was devastated by Ashton’s death, having had it in her head that he would remain overseas for only a few months before returning as a hero to her and their twelve year old daughter.
Estranged from her parents and never having had to work for a living, Elizabeth found it difficult to support herself and her daughter. She began frequenting the New York City taverns and dance halls, picking up men and bringing them home to her bed. They paid impressive sums for their escapades with the most beautiful woman they’d ever bedded. Despite the high price, not one man was disappointed in the bang he got for his buck. In this way, Elizabeth was able to provide for herself and her child but she hated herself for sinking to such depths.
After several months of this illicit life, Elizabeth brought home a well-groomed man with an aristocratic face and a full head of snow-white hair, who happened to be in New York City on business. Edward Albertson was a wealthy, sixty-two year old businessman from Chicago who made frequent trips to New York. Despite the significant age difference, he and Elizabeth fell for each other and although he had a devoted wife back home, he moved in with Elizabeth and increased the length and frequency of his trips East.
Albertson treated Elizabeth like a queen and Isabel like a princess. He showered the girls with fancy clothes and expensive gifts and eventually moved them from their little apartment in Greenwich Village to a sprawling Park Avenue residence. He looked upon Isabel as his own daughter and gradually came to love her even more than he loved her mother.
Isabel didn’t seduce him; at least, not intentionally. It was just that the mere presence of the newly-blossoming nymphet made his stomach do cartwheels. “Yes, she’s beautiful,” he told himself desperately, “but she’s just a child...only twelve years old.” But try as he might, he could not keep his eyes off the young beauty. He vowed to himself that he would never act inappropriately toward the girl. Despite his vows, he often found himself daydreaming about her and he hated himself more with each new fantasy. Frequently, while making love to Elizabeth, he would imagine that he was with Isabel and he would achieve the most incredible climax.
One evening, Albertson arrived bearing many gifts for his two favorite women. For Elizabeth, he brought a box of chocolates, a bouquet of roses, a sexy, sheer negligee and a beautiful emerald necklace. For the girl, he brought a ruby ring, an unsuitably skimpy red dress and a copy of the popular novel, “Anne of the Green Gables.” Isabel was thrilled. “Oh, Uncle,” she cried, happily. “I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages. All my friends have told me that it’s wonderful!” With that, she leaped onto his lap. “Read it with me Uncle. Oh, please.”
“Yes, dear,” Elizabeth encouraged him. “Why don’t the two of you read the book together? I have a splitting headache and must go to bed.” She kissed the two of them goodnight and took her leave.
Still sitting on Albertson’s lap, Isabel wiggled and squirmed until she was comfortable and opened the book to page one. Her skirt hiked up well above her knees. Almost immediately, Albertson got hard. He cleared his throat and began reading aloud but could not pay attention to the words. His hands, refusing to be governed by his will, proceeded to roam wildly about her body, eventually coming to a stop at her bare legs. He moaned from deep inside his throat as he caressed her thighs and then ran his hands up to her hips. He pulled her closer and thrusted rhythmically as her little derriere rubbed against his sex.
Isabel was confused. She somehow sensed that this was wrong, but it felt nice, nevertheless. She instinctively moved her hips to her “uncle’s” rhythm, increasing his excitement still further.
“Stop,” he screamed suddenly, and roughly pulled her from his lap and pushed her to the floor. “This is crazy. What are you trying to do to me you little whore?”
The girl was bewildered. She had done nothing wrong. Or had she? Albertson seemed to have been the one that was doing something to her. Why was he angry? He’d seemed to enjoy whatever it was that was happening and even though she did not totally understand it, she had tried to maintain his pleasure. It had not been at all unpleasant for her, either.
She picked herself up from the floor and ran, crying, to her bedroom. After a short while, Albertson followed. “I’m so sorry, Isabel,” he said. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what came over me. Can you ever forgive me?”
The befuddled girl hesitated for a moment then tearfully replied, “Yes, uncle. Of course I can.”
He gave her an avuncular hug and meant to leave but, of course, one thing led to another and he stayed for hours. From that time on, Albertson made nightly visits to the girl’s bed.
Not long after this episode Albertson deserted his wife, transferred his business interests to New York and moved in with Elizabeth and Isabel full time. As soon as he was able, he married Elizabeth and the three settled down as a wildly dysfunctional family.
Albertson grew to hate himself. He understood that what he was doing was beyond depraved but no matter how hard he tried, he could not end it.
Elizabeth knew, in the back of her mind, what was happening between her husband and her daughter but she was too weak to put a stop to it. She could not imagine living if Albertson were not there to share her bed and support the family so she said nothing and pushed her disturbing knowledge beneath her consciousness.
Isabel, too, had intense and conflicting emotions. She dreaded her stepfather’s nightly visits to her bed but at the same time, looked forward to them. She despised him for his unfaithfulness to her mother and for his defilement of herself, and yet, she adored him. She cringed when he demanded that she now call him “daddy” but in the heat of passion she eagerly screamed out that sobriquet. As time passed, she convinced herself that the entire situation was her fault.
By the time she was sixteen, Isabel had the voluptuous body of a grown woman and the morals of a slut. The rapes had continued throughout the years, occasionally coming to a halt when he would temporarily develop a conscience or when she left home to escape his molestation. During the times that she was away, she stayed active, seducing the boys from her school or finding older men who reminded her of Albertson. Among the schoolboys she soon became known as “the headmistress of sex education” (she certainly taught them a thing or two about sex); from the men, she learned sophisticated sexual skills and how to knock down a shot of whiskey. Always, though, she would begin to miss her stepfather and like a boomerang, she would fly back to his arms.
Over the years, Elizabeth became more and more affected by her repressed knowledge. Although Albertson often desired her as a tasty appetizer to the main course with his stepdaughter, deep down she sensed what entree awaited him in the next room.
“Isabel,” he accidentally blurted out one night while having sex with the mother.
“What?” Elizabeth screamed in disbelief. “How dare you! Get the hell out of my bed and run to your little whore.”
This angered him although he realized that he’d been in the wrong. “You’ll be sorry, you dried up bitch,” he replied as he stormed out of her bed and headed for the arms of the girl.
Soon, Elizabeth took to drinking in order to ease her growing fear that he would permanently abandon her for her daughter. No matter how humiliated, she never denied him her body, despite knowing that he would take her and then run to Isabel. Although she often thought about it, she could never bring herself to confront the girl.
One evening after Albertson had left her bed, although she was already quite tight, Elizabeth guzzled what was left of a half-full bottle of bourbon, took something from the drawer of her night stand and staggered, half-nude to Isabel’s room.
“Bastard,” she screamed drunkenly at Albertson just as he climaxed. “And you,” she shouted to her daughter, “you’re nothing but a shameless little tramp.” She then pointed her gun and fired. Her first shot hit the wall just behind the bed but the second one found its target in the side of her husband’s head. The third hit Isabel in the leg as she dived to the floor. Two more shots went awry as Isabel rolled to safety beneath the bed. Elizabeth saved the last bullet for herself. She died instantly after putting the gun in her mouth and squeezing the trigger.
***
Shortly before midnight on the last day of Spring,1926, Isabel knocked three times at the door of the speakeasy at 42 West 49th Street. Jack Kreindler, one of the two owners of the place, looked through the peephole.
“What’s the password,” he asked.
“Godammit, Jack. It’s me, Isabel Ashton. Open the damn door.”
“You can never be too careful, Isabel,” Jack replied sheepishly. But he opened the door and let the beautiful young lady inside without hearing the magic word.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Where’s Martin?” Martin was the usual doorman/bouncer. He was a good-looking guy and Isabel enjoyed flirting with him.
“Oh, he’s just cleaning himself up. He had a bit of unpleasantness with a rowdy customer and was forced to do what he was hired to do.”
Isabel smiled at him and made her way to the bar, swiveling her hips ostentatiously for the handsome men to admire and for the flappers to envy. She was quite familiar with this place and several other speakeasies around town. This one was her favorite. She’d been coming regularly for years. It was a great place to get drunk and meet a man; and the owners, Jack and his partner, Charlie Berns, took care of her when she was alone and loaded.
She was already a bit tipsy when she ordered her first drink. She sipped the bourbon as she surveyed the room. She noticed several men with whom she’d been before and nodded to each of them. Now she caught the eye of a handsome, grey-haired man who had just entered. She’d seen him here many times before, usually with a young girl on his arm, occasionally with an older woman who appeared to be his wife. She knew that he was very wealthy and that his name was Defoe and it certainly made no difference to her that he was married.
The man smiled at her from the entrance and, ignoring a bevy of bobbed-haired beauties, headed straight to where she was sitting.
“May I buy you a drink, Miss?”
“I haven’t finished this one yet.” She gulped down the rest of her drink and smiled. “Now you may.”
They spent about an hour at the bar, downing shots and getting to know each other. He invited her to his hotel the moment she placed her hand between his legs.
They stumbled straight to the bedroom. Isabel wasn’t particularly impressed by the fancy hotel room. She’d been to countless luxury suites during her young life. What did impress her a while later was the performance of the old man. His prodigious sexual appetite belied his age and his skills were impressive. He thrilled her in ways she’d never before known, deftly bringing her to the pinnacle of pleasure. She couldn’t help but think about her stepfather, a man about Defoe’s age who’d taught her a thing or two in bed. While in the throes of a particularly powerful orgasm, she screamed out,” oh, yes, daddy, yes. You make me feel so good, daddy...oh, daddy!”
In the aftermath, Isabel was horrified by what had come out of her mouth. Defoe had taken her to a place in which she’d lost all sense of reality and while she was in this place, she believed that she was having sex with her stepfather. The moment had been epiphanous, as she suddenly realized that Defoe and Albertson were alike. With Defoe finally exhausted and fast asleep beside her, she became agitated, suddenly losing the ability with which to distinguish between the two men. For a time she did nothing but grind her teeth, pull at her hair and mutter profanities to herself. Suddenly, she rose and left the bedroom, not bothering to cover her nakedness. She soon returned with a butcher’s knife, still wearing nothing but an insane smile. She approached the bed on tippy-toes, silently got in and straddled the dozing Defoe. The exhausted man barely stirred.
“This,” she cried, “is for turning me into a slut.” Then, still smiling insanely, and with the expertise of a sushi chef, she calmly severed her sleeping lover’s jugular.
August 22, 2011
Fred Flintstone Must Have Been The Driver
The other day I came across a very amusing Associated Press article in the back pages of my local newspaper. I thought it would be nice to share it with my readers:
FEET DON'T STOP BRAKELESS CAR
ROSEVILLE, Mich. (AP) - A police video camera captured images of a 24-year-old Detroit-area man who tried using his feet to stop a runaway pickup truck with faulty brakes and caused multiple collisions, exhibiting "moronic decision-making," a Roseville police official said Thursday.
After the vehicle's brakes failed on a busy street in Roseville, about two miles north of Detroit, the man continued driving and stuck his feet outside the car to stop it, Roseville Deputy Police Chief James Berlin said.
Witnesses said the man reached speeds of about 40 mph and was able to stop the car on at least two occasions. The car eventually struck four vehicles.
"This guy's no rocket scientist," Berlin said. "Citizens were calling in saying this guy is all over the road, using his feet."
I hope the guy's shoes had thick soles.
FEET DON'T STOP BRAKELESS CAR
ROSEVILLE, Mich. (AP) - A police video camera captured images of a 24-year-old Detroit-area man who tried using his feet to stop a runaway pickup truck with faulty brakes and caused multiple collisions, exhibiting "moronic decision-making," a Roseville police official said Thursday.
After the vehicle's brakes failed on a busy street in Roseville, about two miles north of Detroit, the man continued driving and stuck his feet outside the car to stop it, Roseville Deputy Police Chief James Berlin said.
Witnesses said the man reached speeds of about 40 mph and was able to stop the car on at least two occasions. The car eventually struck four vehicles.
"This guy's no rocket scientist," Berlin said. "Citizens were calling in saying this guy is all over the road, using his feet."
I hope the guy's shoes had thick soles.
August 14, 2011
How Long has She Been Ms.ing?
I recently read a wonderful book which took place in the 1920s. In it, a character referred to a "Ms. McMein." The use of the term, "Ms." in this book set my ocasionally well-oiled memory gears in motion and I recalled that the honorific did not really come into use until the early 1970s.
There was a proposal in 1901, in the Sunday Republican of Springfield, Mass., to use the title in order to avoid any confusion between Miss and Mrs. but after causing a minor uproar for a few weeks, the proposal was soon forgotten.
The proposal briefly resurfaced in 1932 when a letter writer in the New York Times wondered if "a woman whose marital status is in doubt" should be addressed as Ms or Miss.
In 1949, the philologist, Mario Pei noted in his book "The Story of Language" that "feminists who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features, have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one, 'Miss' (to be written 'Ms.')."
Nothing more was heard until1961 when Sheila Michaels, a 22 year-old civil rights worker in New York City, took up the fight for "Ms." Fiercely independent, Michaels loathed having her identity defined by her marital status and she became a tireless lobbyist for the title as a feminist alternative to "Miss" and "Mrs."
For several years there was little interest. The turning point came in 1969 or 1970 when Michaels was interviewed on the progressive NYC radio station WBAI. The program, "Womankind," invited her on with other members of a group known simply as "the Feminists." During a lull in the show she made an impassioned plea for the use of Ms. The following August, days before a national demonstration by women's rights supporters celebrating the 50th anniversary of suffrage, Gloria Steinem registered her approval in New York magazine and Ms. became recognized as the calling card of of the feminist movement. The rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, by the way, the wonderful book in which I noticed that harmless little anachronism was "Murder Your Darling: an Algonquin Round Table Mystery," by J.J. Murphy. I recommend that you read the book at your earliest convenience.
There was a proposal in 1901, in the Sunday Republican of Springfield, Mass., to use the title in order to avoid any confusion between Miss and Mrs. but after causing a minor uproar for a few weeks, the proposal was soon forgotten.
The proposal briefly resurfaced in 1932 when a letter writer in the New York Times wondered if "a woman whose marital status is in doubt" should be addressed as Ms or Miss.
In 1949, the philologist, Mario Pei noted in his book "The Story of Language" that "feminists who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features, have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one, 'Miss' (to be written 'Ms.')."
Nothing more was heard until1961 when Sheila Michaels, a 22 year-old civil rights worker in New York City, took up the fight for "Ms." Fiercely independent, Michaels loathed having her identity defined by her marital status and she became a tireless lobbyist for the title as a feminist alternative to "Miss" and "Mrs."
For several years there was little interest. The turning point came in 1969 or 1970 when Michaels was interviewed on the progressive NYC radio station WBAI. The program, "Womankind," invited her on with other members of a group known simply as "the Feminists." During a lull in the show she made an impassioned plea for the use of Ms. The following August, days before a national demonstration by women's rights supporters celebrating the 50th anniversary of suffrage, Gloria Steinem registered her approval in New York magazine and Ms. became recognized as the calling card of of the feminist movement. The rest, as they say, is history.
Oh, by the way, the wonderful book in which I noticed that harmless little anachronism was "Murder Your Darling: an Algonquin Round Table Mystery," by J.J. Murphy. I recommend that you read the book at your earliest convenience.
