Frank's Shadow by Doug McIntyre

Author:Doug McIntyre [Doug McIntyre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Each of these thoughts comes one by one, like bullet points. I construct my alibi working backward from the accusations I know will be leveled against me: opportunity, motive, DNA, timeline, all the NYPD Blue clichés and legal mumbo jumbo I have picked up watching a lifetime of television and every second of the O.J. trial. I play lawyer in my head, arguing my own case, telling the jury about the locket in the bag of trash, the unlocked door, and the mystery man who slipped in after I had left Jane smoking in the window, very much alive. Then I get a crazy idea. Why not tell them the truth? Jane is the killer. Jane murdered herself.

I know she took her own life because I saw her sitting naked in the window blowing smoke up to the stars. I know because I saw the lost look on her face as she sat alone at McSorley’s. It was that look that drew me to her. I know Jane killed herself because I watched her orgasm on the sofa and again on the floor, joyless sex scored by a shower of verbal abuse. Joyless for both of us, a mutual degradation. I know Jane killed herself, because when I looked into her eyes, they mirrored my own. She had planned to die tonight, too, only she actually did, proving she was the stronger one after all. It’s terrible!

Jane’s death has changed me. All my indulgent years of self-pity and flirtation with theoretical suicide have been vaporized by the gruesome, repulsive reality of her self-destruction. I am ashamed. How could I ever have considered death as an alternative to life? I must do penance for all my selfish years. Jane’s death is an epiphany, and those are rare. I cannot waste this.

I will live now. I must live as long as I can, as long as my father. As long as Frank Sinatra. Longer. Jane Doe’s spectacular self-immolation has saved me. She died for my sins. Jane is my Christ.

I decide I will tell the truth. Tell them everything: the end of my marriage, my bender after two years of white-knuckle sobriety, the fistfight on the altar at St. Anastasia, the old spitting veteran, the long night of walking and drinking, looking for a woman who turned out to be Jane.

The cops handcuff me. They do it roughly, shoving me around and clamping on the shackles so tight they break the skin. This pleases the women in the hallway and the shirtless giant who is still busy convicting me until a detective finally tells him to wait his turn. A team of sweat-soaked paramedics enter after humping a gurney up five flights. They hate these old elevator-less buildings almost as much as they hate me.

I walk the cops through the sequence of events that led to this tragedy. I emphasize “tragedy,” not crime, not rape, certainly not murder. I do it coherently, without a trace of drunkenness. My composure is impressive. Maybe too impressive.

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