Serial Killer

Being the best friend of a serial killer doesn’t happen over night. First, in my case for example, the serial killer wasn’t a serial killer when we first became friends. And the serial killer does you a big favor, I mean a life changing favor, like sets you up in business in Chicago. Buying, evicting, gutting, selling businesses off for parts. We moved buildings and businesses around like chess pieces. That’s how things began in our particular friendship. Innocently enough.

I want to stress here that I know what you must be thinking, ‘Who in god’s name is friends with a serial killer ?’ Fair question. 

I should say, I’m writing this and I’m going to tape it to my refrigerator, to be completely honest in case I might ‘disappear’. It’s important to me. So if you’re reading this I suggest you drag the lake. 

I’m going to ask you to remember, that a serial killer, before he actually kills anyone, might be, and I don’t think I’m going to go out on a limb here, he’s probably a very charming guy. 

Excuse me, I had to stop for a minute to Google, “How many killings does there have to be before a person is considered a serial killer?” I added ‘asking for a friend’ just to be on the safe side. I thought 5 or 6. Well, it’s not- it’s two. But there’s gotta be a cooling off period between them. So a killing spree would not count. 

The cooling off period is the important part. That’s the part they look at   because it means you went out and killed somebody, one person, could happen to anyone, but then, after a while, you gravitated back to it, did it again. The quiet time in between killing people is what makes you a serial killer. Music is like that. If you think about it. 

When I was a 13, I had this piano teacher, she would sit next to me on the piano bench. She would touch my hands sometimes. I would drop my wrist on purpose so she’d touch them. My wrists. I liked being touched. By anybody, to be honest. She used to talk about the silence between the notes being what music was all about. That’s my point. I had no idea what she meant, but now I think it’s like killing people. Same thing. 

I just realized it’s also like epilepsy. If you have one seizure, fine, people have one seizure. It’s ok. It’s not epilepsy. But if you have two seizures, it’s epilepsy. That means, if I don’t take the medication they can take my license away. Never let me drive a car. What I did was I took the medication for a while and then quit. I don’t like medicine. I’m not saying my body is a temple, it isn’t, believe me. 

So, you can stop the medication, and if you don’t tell them, you’re pretty much home free, I think. Down side is the seizures come back, upside is I can still drive. Most of my seizures are ok. Some I kind of enjoy. I have a favorite. I call it The Halo. My doctor said it was the ‘Aura effect’ but I call it ‘The Halo’ because a golden circle of light sort of drifts down around me. The Halo is cool actually. 

Halos last about a minute, then the light fades away. Must be strange for the people around me ‘cause during that time- I’m well away. I’m in another world. I can’t really move. I can’t talk, well, I’ve never tried to talk. I’m just like communing. This is like Buddhism when you think about it.

I’ve gotten off track now. I can see that. 

So before he killed anybody, he was a great guy. Even after. My father called him a ‘real mensch’ cause he brought me into his business hardly even knowing me at all.  I can play pool but he was a little better. I met him in a classy pool hall up town. He took me for a couple hundred bucks and then invited me around to his place. For some reason he liked me even though he was a successful businessman. No one had ever given me much of a break before him. I mean, look at me. 

He brought me in. He taught me the ropes, fed me a couple listings that I handled pretty well with his guidance. I want to point out again that a serial killer can be very charming. I mean they pretty much have to be charmers. It goes with the job. Can I add something here? I never killed anybody. Worst I ever did was cover for him. He helped me, I helped him. 

If I have a character flaw, it’s stealing.

Totally different from killing people. Obviously. This might be tricky to imagine but I get a lot of pleasure from nicking stuff. Maybe out of your glove box. You step out to pump gas, I take your binoculars.The way I steal things, I guarantee you’ll think, ‘I must have misplaced that.’  Its not the expense of the item. But there has to be some strong connection for me to get the buzz. I took a shotgun once that my friend’s father had given him. It was the only thing he had from his father. It was tucked away in a closet upstairs and I knew he wouldn’t notice it for a long time. He never hunted or anything. I feel that I’m doing him a favor. It’s one of the most important things in life, don’t get attached to things. Again, that’s a Buddhist teaching. I’ve studied Buddhism quite a bit actually. 

So when my friend killed his wife and weighted her down and dumped her out in the lake, he told me about it. Not right away, but we were buds. She had something serious on him and she was blackmailing him. It was the first one I knew about. He told me what she was up to and god dammit, I hesitate to say it, but after a while, I understood, and I couldn’t really blame him.

We sat on his porch and we talked about it. Man to man. Have a couple fingers of scotch. Cards on the table. Nothing held back. He was totally open and honest with me. It was things like that that made me realize how close we actually were. How much he trusted me. 

He always had the best scotch I ever tasted. Can I recommend something here? Try some Bunnahabhain Scotch. You’ll thank me.  

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t accept it right away. He didn’t say, “Kurt, I killed my wife and dumped her body in the lake” (the same lake I was fucking looking at.) So don’t think I just went, “Hey, I’m good with that, pass me the chips.” No. I was scared as all hell. My friend was a murderer.  You can imagine. His porch was overlooking this perfectly blue lake, and you could fish right off the dock. He talked and I listened. I was horrified. Anybody would be. Anybody with a heart. I didn’t actually know his wife well. Honestly I didn’t much care for her. Always badgering him. He called her his ‘fishwife’. It was a joke I think. 

My friend explained, item by item, how she had boxed him into a corner.  Honestly, I felt sorry for him, not her. He was the victim, way more than her. She was going to take everything he’d worked for his whole life. And, turns out, sure as shit, she’d have ruined me too. On paper, legally, our businesses were still tied together. So, as nicely as we’d both done in the property market, if he went down, I went down. I mean broke, and in jail. That’s a sobering thought. 

Now, only once or twice in my life have I thought that my only way out of a bad situation was to kill the other person. I guess we’ve all felt that, if you’re honest with yourself. Only difference is, he did it. You kind of have to admire that. It takes big balls to kill somebody. Especially someone you know. Actually doing it. And getting away with it.

So what do you do when someone admits it like that?  I’m sure you’re wondering right about now. ‘What would I do?’ you’re asking yourself. Am I right? Well I’m betting you’d do the same thing that I did. Keep shtum. There’s really no good that can come from dropping a dime on him. Remember, as far as I knew that was the first person he’d ever killed, and I could sympathize. Walk a mile in another man’s shoes, right? The Buddha probably said that originally. 

It was dead quiet out there. Just the birds. No motor boats. No airplanes. And we’re getting drunker and drunker. As many times as I stayed out there with him, drinking on that porch, sun going down, that was a special night. We sat there a long time looking at the stars. I swear to God, in all the times I was with him out at the lake house, I never once heard an airplane go by. That’s how much money he had. The airplanes gave him a wide berth. 

Long story short, after the third one, the law caught up with him and they did have a lot of evidence, though apparently most of it was circumstantial. 

I should say, I’m not going to talk about the second one because it’s a little harder to figure how he absolutely HAD to kill him. I’m going to skip it. Just understand that that second one, which was about 6 months after the first one, made him a serial killer when you think about it.

They didn’t have a witness per se for the third one and he was pretty confident. He was out on bail and he invited me out to the lake house. He had one of those ankle things so they could keep track of him. He brought out a couple glasses with hefty pours in them. We talked about this and that. He asked me questions about how things were going with a house I was buying in Connecticut. We talked about work a bit. That kind off thing.

“I need you to promise me you’re not going to testify,” he said. 

“Hey,” I said. “We’re friends. I’m not going to do that.” 

I don’t know if I said, but I had been best man at his wedding. Not the one in the lake, another one.

“You could put me in real hot water,” he said. And he’s looking at me, like side eye, and it was the first time I really saw his ‘lizard eyes’. People used to say he had ‘lizard eyes’ but I honestly never saw it until then. He hit me with those ‘lizard eyes’ and I knew he’d kill me right there if I said the wrong thing. He didn’t really have any choice. I’d have done the same thing.

“You know, Pat,” I said, (not his real name) “I would never betray our trust. We’ve been open with each other about some damn personal things. In fact, I can’t think of anything we haven’t been able to talk through. Not many men have that kind of friendship and I’d never do anything to damage it.”

“Come here,” he said standing up. I stood up too. Honestly, I thought he was going to put a knife between my ribs. But, he gave me this big bear hug. I never felt that, ever. I felt like I’d never been hugged before. We just stood there hugging on his deck. Not sex, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was kind of spiritual. Then my halo descended over us. Thinking about it now, that might have been a seizure I guess. But I’d never been in that bubble with another person. I’d only been there completely alone. It was a wonderful feeling. Sharing it, I mean. Like we became the one person. One personality. One soul. I’ll never forget that. I think it was as close to love as I’ve ever come.