Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [119]
“Virgil got laid off at the mill but he still went out every day looking for work. And he’d leave money with his wife for food and other stuff for the house. One day, he comes home and there’s no money in the place. She had given it all to the freak. Virgil got into a beef with his wife about it and she couldn’t tell him what happened to the money, and Virgil had been drinking a little bit because he was down and out of work and she still wouldn’t tell him anything—he got crazy and slapped her. That was the first time he ever hit her. And then she started to cry and it all came out and he told her he would make it all right and he was sorry he hit her. Finally he calmed her down.
“He told his wife he was going to speak to the police the next day, and he left that morning like he always did. Virgil didn’t know where to find the freak, but he knew he would come around sooner or later. He was patient—when he saw the freak go upstairs he followed right behind, but when he threw open the door the freak was trying to hold his stomach together from where his wife had stabbed him—she was holding a kitchen knife in her hand and going after the freak to finish the job. The freak just lay there on the floor while Virgil and his wife screamed at each other loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear—she was yelling at Virgil to get the hell out and let her finish what she’d started and he was trying to make her get in the bedroom and she wouldn’t go—Virgil finally just took out his own knife and gutted the freak like you would a deer you just shot. Then he went next door and borrowed a phone to call the police.
“When the cops came Virgil said he had killed the freak but his wife kept saying she was the one. They both got arrested, but Virgil made a deal and took the whole weight himself. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and his wife was waiting outside for him to finish his time so they could be together—she came every visiting-day . . . I had this little racket going with some of the cons and I had Virgil help me out with some of it—he sent the money he made home to his wife through a hack we knew was all right.”
I looked down at Flood, still stroking her hair. Lying next to me, she was quiet as death but her eyes were focused and I knew she was listening.
“Anyway, one day the parole board came in to interview all the guys who were eligible for release. I used to make good money coaching some of the guys on how to act in front of those lames, and I went over the whole thing with Virgil to make sure he got it right—no prior record, crime of passion, a workingman, home and family waiting for him, roots in the community, regular churchgoer—he realized that he was wrong and was full of remorse, he would be a good citizen in the future. All that bullshit.
“Before you actually get to see the board you have to see this guy we call the I.P.O., that’s Institutional Parole Officer. He does all the preliminary screening and most of us believed that the board would go with whatever he recommended. I went with Virgil to the interview and sat down at the desk right outside the I.P.O.’s office like I was the next case. It cost me twenty packs to get the seat but I wanted to make sure Virgil handled himself like we’d rehearsed. He did real fine, said everything I told him to say. But then the I.P.O. got to the crime itself. He asked Virgil flat out, ‘Why did you kill that man?’
“And Virgil just told him, ‘He needed killing.’
“That was it for the interview—it was over right then, you understand?”
Flood spoke for the first time. “I . . . think so. I don’t know.”
“Flood, how do you explain killing a cockroach? There’s some things that shouldn’t be on this planet, some things that are born to die, nothing else. Not everything fits in this life, baby, no matter what the ecology freaks say. Who needs rats? Who needs roaches? From the very second that two people sat together around a fire in the forest,