Avenue De Cichy Anquetin: Five O’Clock in the Evening.

The Killer

Who was she? I had to find out before he did it. Harry is my brother, and I promised Mom I’d take care of him. I know the consequence for murderer. But where to look and what to look for? I decided the only way to find her would be to trace Harry’s footsteps.
As I walked down the crowded avenue I didn’t have any idea what to do next. Harry had called and said, “I’m going to kill her.” I’ve heard him make those threats before. I protect my brother from evil, and when he said he wanted to kill someone – They had to be thoroughly evil. Otherwise Harry would never think of killing someone. I heard a female laughing in the background while Harry told me his intentions. I just hoped it wasn’t too late.
He arrived in France only yesterday and already he wanted to kill someone. I didn’t think to trace where he had been and to whom he had talked would be a problem. I was mistaken.
Apparently, Harry talked and visited with dozens of girls since his arrival. Good old gregarious Harry, always hitting on the nearest girl.
He explained his system worked on the law of averages. “If I wait until I see the perfect one, I may only talk to a single woman all day,” he told me. “And then if I get rejected, the day is over. If I talk to every woman I see and try to get a date, the odds are with me. Out of the many I ask, I’m sure to get several dates. I usually keep my appointment with the choice one of the bunch.”
Obviously Harry was playing the numbers game, meeting so many women in such a short period of time.
I needed to find out who he wanted to kill and why. I started at the docks where Harry had landed yesterday, and I showed his picture to the crew of the ship he had arrived on.
“Do you remember this man?” I asked the crew, and discovered he had spent the night with one of the ocean liner’s hostesses.
Once I found her and asked about Harry, she said, “I just loved Harry, and I have nothing but good things to say about him.”
She wasn’t the one. I went to her apartment by the river where she told me Harry had spent the night. I figured I could trace Harry’s footsteps from her doorstep. I’d sense which way he would have gone from her apartment because I understand him so well. Sure enough, right around the corner from where he had stayed stood a beauty college. I stopped in, “You girls seen this man?” I showed a picture of Harry to all the girls.
“I remember him. Shirley and I had a date with him and he never showed up,” said a pretty brunette. Not Harry’s type at all.
“Did he say where he wanted to go? Was he angry when he left?” I had to get an idea of his state of mind. Maybe I was already too late. If I was it’d be the first time since I had been looking out for him that something like that happened. Twenty years ago I made the promise to my mother. God was that twenty years ago? It seems like yesterday and I can picture every detail.
I left the school and headed the way I surmised Harry had gone. I knew Harry real well. We were born five minutes apart. Mother used to call me the evil twin because of the mischief I caused as a small boy. But I showed her who the evil twin really was once she asked me to look out for Harry. He always threatened to kill someone at the least little provocation, but I made sure he didn’t kill anyone. If Mother were still alive, she’d praise me for all the people I’d stopped Harry from killing. I clearly remembered the promise I made to my mother on her dying day, “Promise me you’ll make sure H – H – e -- Harry won’t hurt anyone,” she asked, I knew she meant Harry, at first I thought she was trying to say Henri, which is my name.
I never could understand our parents calling us Henri and Harry but they did, and now my mother couldn’t get our names straight. She knew I was tough and it was Harry who needed looking out for.
“For me to make a promise like that means I’ll have to devote my life to looking out for him?” I told my mother.
She knew what her request entailed all right.
“Please just promise me Ha . . .” she said, in her rasping voice.
I did, she died shortly after my promise. To keep an eye on Harry became a full time job. Sometimes I wanted to give up, and let him get what he deserved, but a promise is a promise.
I knew Mother became concerned because of the little neighbor girl they accused Harry of killing. She took his bicycle without asking and Harry let his temper get the best of him and said in front of four witnesses he’d kill her for taking his bike.
When her mutilated body turned up the next day everyone assumed Harry had done it. I knew for a fact it wasn’t Harry. He was twelve when the murder occurred. Other than his threat, there wasn’t any evidence, so Harry wasn’t charged. He threatened to kill a lot of people these last twenty years, and a lot of people died. But not by Harry’s hand. I’ll guarantee he didn’t kill a one. After all, I’m looking out for him.
On the next corner stood a betting parlor.
I figured Harry wouldn’t pass without stopping to bet on something. I went inside, “Any of you gentlemen seen my brother?” I showed his picture around.
“Yeah yesterday,” a man wearing a pink shirt said. “He won big, and left with a hooker named Molly.”
My next step, find Molly was simple, because when the whores weren’t working they shopped, sometimes for clothes, but usually for drugs.
I went where the drug dealers hung out and I approached a guy who dressed the part of a pimp with his fancy clothes and wide brimmed hat. I handed him a fistful of francs. “I’m looking for Molly,”
“What do you want with a skank like her? I’ve got some nice girls right around the corner.”
He didn’t expect it. My knuckles crushed his nose. Blood spurted onto his pimp clothes. “My brother doesn’t hang around with skanks,” I informed him. “Now give me the info I want.” I made a fist and drew my arm back and said, “Tell me what I want to know or I’ll smash your face in.”
“Okay. Molly came here a couple of hours ago, and she copped enough dope to kill a horse.” He wiped blood from his nose using the sleeve of his pimp coat.
He gave me her address. I gave him a few more francs, “For the cleaning,” I said.
She lived atop a bar called Smiley’s. I knocked hard on her door. No answer. I worried she may be the one—Perhaps Harry may have already killed her. I went to the bar situated on the ground floor of the building she lived in. “Do you know Molly who lives upstairs?” I asked the bartender.
“Who’s asking?”
I reached into my pocket for some money and set the bills on the bar.
“Over there,” he pointed to where Molly sat. Harry’s type all right long. Long legs clad in fishnet stockings, skirt so short she wasted her time putting it on, piercings, so many I couldn’t count them. Eye brows, nose, lips and anywhere possible it seemed there was a piercing. A regular pinhead. Her hair wasn’t blond at all but a deep blue that caused her milky white skin to stand out like a lighted movie screen in a darkened theatre. Better to show off her purple lipstick and the lavender eye shadow that highlighted her deep purple eyes. I came right out and asked her, “What did you do to piss Harry off?”
She glared at me like I was insane, “Harry pissed off? You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t imagine Harry being pissed off about anything. He’s such a nice guy.” She pointed in the direction Harry had gone, and I hurried in that direction. Boy did he fool her. Nice guy. If she only knew how many had died these past twenty years she wouldn’t be saying, ”Nice guy.”
The clock on the wall showed five o’clock, and the avenue became as crowded as ever. I pushed my way through the crowd, searching for a clue any clue to help me find out who Harry was angry enough at to kill her.
Walking down the crowded avenue I came across a sign, “Girls, Girls and More Girls.”Right away I guessed Harry wouldn’t have passed by a sign like this. I paid my entry fee, and walked into a dark, smelly, smoke-filled club. The “girls” turned out to be transvestites, and now I thought I was getting close to the person Harry wanted dead. If he ended up with one of these lady/men, when he stuck his hand down her crotch and found he was with a man. That would be enough to piss him off. Yeah, I figured, I’m close.
I showed his picture, and as usual they recognized him immediately. They animatedly told me how Harry had come in the day before with a blonde on his arm and bought drinks for everyone. He even paid for the champagne they usually had to hustle to get someone to buy.
Disappointed, I thought my search over. But now I had another blonde to find. I continued my trek down the avenue until I came to an outdoor café. I knew Harry just loved to sit outside and drink coffee while watching the girls go by.
I sat at a table, and when the waitress came over I showed her Harry’s picture. She recognized him right away, “He came in yesterday with Shelia.”
Now I was getting someplace. “Shelia who?”
“Shelia the model, she’s modeling right now at the museum.”
I tipped her with a handful of francs, thanked her, and rushed to the museum. I found Shelia modeling all right. She stood beside a sarcophagus holding a perfume bottle with an Egyptian name. At the sight of her my feet became glued to the floor. She was the spitting image of the neighbor girl who got herself murdered twenty years ago. She must have returned to haunt me. I mean haunt Harry Mom. I knew Harry wanted her dead, just like he wanted her dead twenty years ago. I knew this was the one Harry was pissed at. It had to be her. I made my preparations, and filled my syringe with snake venom. This would make great headlines. If only I had a snake handy to blame it on. But this being a museum, everything here had died long ago.
I waited until Shelia finished with the job. As she walked toward the exit, I bumped into her. I pricked her arm with the needle. Shelia jumped as the needle penetrated her arm. All control left her body. Shelia could only glare at me as her paralyzed body slunk to the floor. She died on the way to the hospital. I had to give Harry the good news. When he finally called me we made arrangements to meet at the bar he made his hangout.
As soon as I walked into the crowded bar where Harry said to meet him I observed him surrounded by people as always. He rushed to my side when he saw me to tell me he all about his getting married to a model by the name of Shelia.
Stunned doesn’t come close to explaining how I felt at this news. Married! Harry had never even mentioned the word before. I better not tell him I just killed his Shelia. Instead I asked him who got him angry enough to kill.
“Oh, I bet everything on a filly in the last race, and she came in second. I got so mad I could have killed her right then but an inquiry disqualified the winner, and my filly was declared winner,”
I thought of my mother in heaven and how proud she’d be of me now taking care of Harry. “Who’s the evil twin now? Huh, Mom?” I knew she’d been watching me all these years taking care of my little brother.
Mother knew I never killed anyone for the fun of it. Although maybe I’d like to, but if I did I’d be the evil twin like she accused me of being. So I waited for Harry to say he wanted to kill someone and did it for him. That makes him the evil twin and me the good one. Because, by helping my brother stay out of trouble, I’m doing a good thing. I’ve done a lot of good things in the last twenty years, and I’m sure I’ll do a lot more in the next twenty. The gates of heaven are going to open wide when I come knocking
I knew I made a mistake, and I shouldn’t have done what I did to Shelia, but hey, we all make mistakes. Don’t we Mom?