The Missing Head

The disgrace of having been conned by an illiterate lowlife like Bulldog Perruno had turned 70-year old Felipe Romero, retired math professor and neighborly family man, into a vengeful killer.

Any psychiatrist who examined the aging Cuban would have at once recommended that he be committed to a psychiatric nursing home, where his vengeful urge might be suppressed, if not through counseling, then, at least, with heavy medication. In short, render him a harmless vegetable until the years remaining of his lease on life ran out.

Felipe Romero, however, could still think clearly. He suspected that he was losing his mind, as had many of his blood kin, but he was not about to submit himself to a psychiatric examination and run the risk of getting locked up. No, he would mask his wrath, outwardly turn the other cheek, pretend to get on with his life, as would any normal person. No goddam shrink was going to prevent him from killing Bulldog Perruno.

How an intelligent man like Felipe Romero and his American-born wife Ruth, also a Ph.D., in Linguistics, came to be duped by some one like Perruno is a story too long and complicated to recount in detail. What happened, in brief, was this: Felipe and Ruth had driven down from their home in Alexandria, Virginia to Dawson, North Carolina, to watch their elder son Sam, right-fielder on the Dawson College baseball team, play in a doubleheader against Yale. While cruising the town, they came upon a fixer-upper Victorian house for sale at a bargain price, put a contract on it and, a week later, bought it.

Felipe knew exactly what needed to be done to remodel the house and how to do it himself if need be. In his youth he had held a number of jobs requiring skills in the main building trades--carpentry, plumbing, wiring, bricklaying and roofing--and had over the years honed his skills by maintaining the homes they lived in mint condition. But now he was too busy with a fledging post-retirement translation business to take on a remodeling job 400 miles away from home. And because Ruth was then undergoing treatment for breast cancer and not able to remain in Dawson to oversee Felipe’s plans, they opted to entrust the work to a local contractor, who, much to their regret, turned out to be Bulldog Perruno.

Michael Dana Perruno presented himself with a forged contractor’s license, false references, and a business card bearing the name of a bogus firm, “Bulldog’s Run, Inc” Hence the moniker by which referred to him, though “Walrus” would have been more fitting, given the man’s blubbery 400 lbs and waddling gait.

It didn’t take long for Felipe and Ruth to learn that Perruno’s credentials were fake and, furthermore, that he did not know the first thing about home construction, but by then the con job had been perpetrated. And to add insult to injury, the conman was now threatening to sue them for money he claimed to have spent on labor and materials he had planned to use. Then there was his deliberate passing of gas in their presence and calling up Ruth at night to boast about the size and vigor of his genitalia. The white cowboy hat ever perched on his bald pate, outdoors, indoors, no matter where, accentuated the mocking grin that creased his lips when he spoke. A scumbag in every sense of the word.

The Romeros had at first considered pressing criminal charges, but, on asking around, realized that it would be a waste of time. Though Bulldog’s con job included two felony and several misdemeanors, the county D.A. would likely regard it as a civil case. Seems that the D.A. saw little profit to be had in prosecuting and jailing conmen, whereas much business could be generated for his fellow attorneys, with favors later returned, by encouraging civil lawsuits. Never mind that even if the victims managed to win a judgment against the conman, the probability of collecting a cent would be practically nil. Lawyers abound who make a handsome living showing crooks how to hold on their ill-earned money legally. So rather than get fleeced twice, first by Bulldog, amd then by a lawyer, Felipe resolved to take the law into his own hands.

He didn’t act rashly, though. For two months he pondered the moral angle. Had Bulldog been a family man, with friends or even pets that loved or depended on him, he might have spared him. Had Bulldog been someone weaker than himself, a poor, misguided soul who didn’t know any better, he might have followed Jesus’ advice and turned the other cheek. But no, there were no redeeming features, no one who would grieve his death. The scores of people Bulldog had victimized over the years would be more than happy to know that he finally got his comeuppance. Bulldog, it was later learned, had a prolific criminal record harking back to his early teens—car theft, burglary, bank fraud, forgery, sexual assault, among other offenses. Turning the other cheek on one such as him, allowing him to go on perpetrating his evil, would not be an act of Christian charity. The Good Book doesn’t say what Jesus would have done had He happened upon a thug abusing a helpless person, but it was clear to Felipe Romero that the Son of Man who ejected the moneychangers from the Temple, with a makeshift whip no less, wouldn’t have just stood by smiling benignly and preaching forgiveness.

Thus, in his gathering madness, Felipe Romero convinced himself that his resolve to kill or, better put, to execute Bulldog Perruno went beyond personal vengeance. He believed that he had been ordained by the forces of Good to rid the world of a bad seed and, taking it one crazy step further, that he was obligated to pass on the example to his fellowmen by writing it up in a best selling novel.

Though he had never written anything other than an occasional letter to local newspapers and his share of mind-numbing scholarly articles on theoretical mathematics, he figured that he could produce a bestseller: After the execution, he would take a couple of months to write the novel, then turn himself in to the police. The account of the killing and the subsequent trial, which he would deliberately disrupt in dramatic fashion, would make front page news, and the novel, however poorly written, would sell, just as trashy books by and about air-head celebrities and talk show hosts sell by the millions. The law, he knew, would not allow him to profit financially from such a book. But to him it was the message, not the money that mattered. Whatever money was left over after the publishers, distributors, taxman and lawyers took their cut, would go to charity.

The decision made and firm in his mind, Felipe next pondered the pros and cons of his three fire arms. The 38-caliber snub-nosed revolver he had bought from an ex-Marine friend of his in grad school, for protection against muggers, would be easy to conceal, but not powerful enough to kill a man the size of Bulldog with one or two shots, unless the bullets happened to hit a vital organ. The thought of having to finish off a wounded man, begging for his life, didn’t appeal to him. Justice, not torture, was his objective. With the Remington M-70 rifle he used for target practice he could easily take out Bulldog from 200 yards, but that wouldn’t be intimate enough.

By default, the weapon for the execution he had in mind was the antique 12 gauge double-barreled shotgun he had inherited from his grandfather. With the shotgun he could edge close to Bulldog, see the surprise and fear in eyes, give the scumbag a moment to recognize him, his avenger, and yet assure that he died soon after, before he could feel the pain. No man, however large, could survive a blast from that piece for more than a few minutes. As a backup weapon he would bring his machete, a tool that in his youth he had learned to use like an experienced Cuban peasant, guajiro, while working summers on his grandfather’s farm.

Felipe, though, kept his thoughts and plans—the moralizing, the killing, the novel—to himself. Ever since Ruth came down with cancer, she feared that her husband or one of the boys would also get the disease. Felipe was sensitive to her apprehension and worried that his erratic behavior of late would seem to her like a sign of failing health. He could not tell her the truth because she would never understand. That a high-school dropout had duped them, two PhDs, was not remotely an issue with her. A pragmatic, even-tempered person, her sole concern was the swindled money. Bulldog the man meant nothing to her. If he gave them back some of their money, even a fraction of it, she would slough off the memory of him and go on with her life. The old Cuban’s resolve the kill the conman was not the kind of secret he could share with his American wife.

So to allay her worrying, for the time being, anyway, he put on a happy face and offered a short-range plan that he knew would please her: “Not to worry, Mama. (They took to calling each other Mama and Papa when their first son was born. Before that it had been the standard Honey and Dear) On Monday, I’ll drive down to Dawson and do some of the remodeling myself. The physical work would be relaxing. In the evenings, if I’m not too tired, I could go to the college library and do a little translating, at leisurely pace, of course. My translation gig may not pay much, but it does pay. We wouldn’t want to lose that source of revenue.”

Ruth raised no objections. Two months had passed since the con job was perpetrates, and the Dawson house, or the Manor, as Felipe had facetiously dubbed it, lay boarded up and unattended, an eyesore in an otherwise respectable neighborhood. “Good idea, Papa. Go down and get the job started. Later, if need be, we can hire small subcontractors, one at a time, to do the rest. Safer that way."

Sunday afternoon he and Ruth went to watch their younger son Luke, an 11th-grader at T.C. Williams High, play in a baseball tournament. That night, while they slept, Felipe donned an East German Army outfit he had bought years earlier for a camping trip to the Rockies, packed the shotgun and machete in one of the boys’ old bat bags, and the bat bag in the tool box of his Ford Explorer. Suddenly recalling a glaring scarlet bandanna that the boys had once given Ruth for Christmas but she never wore, he located it in her dresser and tied it around his neck—-the finishing touch on his warrior uniform. He then wrote Ruth a note explaining that the wanted to get early start to avoid Monday morning rush hour traffic, and instructing her and Luke not let Bulldog know, in case the conman called, that he was returning to North Carolina. Then downing a tall cup of espresso, he got into the Explorer, and drove off to fulfill his grand mission.

Given the scant traffic at that hour time of night, he reckoned to arrive at Dawson around dawn. To stay awake, he would stop for coffee every 100 miles. If the caffeine didn’t work, he would play his CDs of John Philip Souza marches and classic overtures at full volume. The cannonade of Tchaikovsky "1812" alone would keep him awake for hours.

But he wouldn’t need caffeine or adrenaline-pumping music to that night. Unbidden memories of his native Cuba, one triggering the other, was keeping him wide awake, his pulse racing apace with the Explorer. In the glow of the headlights piercing the gloom ahead he saw the faces of people he had not seen since he was a child, not as they actually were, he realized, but as ghosts altered by the prism of 60 years. It is said that at the brink of death one sees one’s his life flash before one’s eyes. Was that what was happening to him now? Was he approaching the end of his road? Were these ghosts beckoning him to join them? The thought of it made him slow down the Explorer and occupy himself solving physics problems in his head. The ghosts could wait. He still had too many promises to keep and miles to go before checking out.

Four hours into the drive on Interstate 81, he pulled up at an all-night gas station to fill the tank and use the rest room. By now the moon had departed and the planet Venus, the Morning Star, made her appearance, as she had for eons, just above the horizon in the eastern sky. Romero took a long moment to gaze at the planet, so familiar yet inaccessible, like the goddess whose name she bore, and the sight of her strengthened his resolve. There was a reason why ancient folk worshipped celestial bodies. He got back in the Explorer and drove on.

He arrived at Dawson shortly before dawn, while still dark, and drove to Bulldog’s neighborhood on the outskirts of town, an ersatz upscale community of oversized, overprized homes not yet five-years old but already showing signs of shoddy construction. The lighted sign at the entrance pretentiously read, “The Golden Oaks.” The thought of the conman getting duped into buying property here made Felipe chuckle.

He parked on a darkened side street and, taking the bat bag with the shotgun and machete, walked unseen to Bulldog’s house. He knew the house well. When he and Ruth were still in good terms with Bulldog, they had visited him several times and, while she and Bulldog discussed bathroom fixtures and kitchen appliances, he had ambled about the house, taking mental note the place, and the things in it—the layout of the rooms, the throw rugs on the bathroom floor, the arrangement of the furniture, the bric-a-brac shelf, the broken window latch in the guest room, a bottle of prescription sleeping pills—subconsciously knowing, he now realized, that one day he would day hr would need to bank on this intelligence.

Romero had also learned from others whom Bulldog had conned, that the man was a compulsive gambler, that every Friday, without fail, he would drive down to the gaming resort of Tunica, Mississippi, gamble all weekend, and drive back home Sunday night. On this particular night, he and Bulldog, had been driving in opposite directions toward each other, one south, one north, to their predestined rendezvous. There was no turning back now.

Standing tiptoe outside Bulldog’s bedroom window, Felipe peer in and saw the fat man sprawled out on his queen-sized be, mouth open, obviously in a deep, pill-induced sleep. He rapped on the pane, hard, to make sure. Bulldog did not stir. It would be an hour or two, he figured, before the pills wore off.

Moving to the guest room window with the broken hatch, he pushed up on the sash. To his relief, the window opened easily. He tossed the weapon bag inside and, chinning himself on the sill, went in through the window, breaking the drop to the floor with his hands, then closing the window behind him. Though old and frail-looking from a distance, he was surprisingly strong and agile. He could still keep up with his athlete sons in push-up contests. Not for nothing had he been working out religiously all his life.

Cradling the shotgun in the crook of his arm, he walked down the hall and opened the door to Bulldog’s bedroom. Bulldog had not stirred. He was still in a deep sleep, emitting loud grunts and snores, his tent-sized clothes and triple E shoes strewn on the floor, but the signature cowboy hat neatly placed on a beside chair. Felipe could have shot him right then, but didn’t. He had rehearsed the execution in his mind a hundred times. In the living room, that was where he had planned to kill him, when the conman was on his feet, fully awake and aware of what was happening to him. Any change of plans at this late stage might backfire.

Romero then went into the living room to set the stage. He removed the fake Persian carpet at the entrance of room and replaced it with one of the thin throw rugs in the bathroom. From the bric-a-brac shelf he took the cheap made-in-Taiwan dragon that Bulldog claimed was a sacred Inca lion, demolished it and scattered the pieces by the throw rug. Then removing Ruth’s scarlet bandana from his neck and tying it around his head, Samurai fashion, he took a seat in Bulldog’s reclining chair in front of the large screen TV and calmly waited for the conman to wake up.

He was scanning the art work on the walls, worthless stuff that Bulldog had picked up in auctions and yard sales, when his eyes alighted on a picture of a minotaur-like devil emerging from a cave, and the title of his bestseller came to him: The Avenging Demon Yes, that’s what he would call it. The Avengin Demon.

At around 7:00 Bulldog awoke and was in the bathroom trying hard for a bowel movement. Romero could hear him straining and swearing at his futile efforts. Quietly, shotgun in hand, scarlet headband picking up the sunlight rays filtering in through the windows, he rose from the recliner and crouched behind it.

Five minutes later, clad only in his under shorts and white cowboy hat, Bulldog waddled into the kitchen and fixed himself a cup of coffee. Sipping the coffee, he waddled off to the living room to watch the morning news on TV. When he saw the pieces of his fake Inca ceramic on the floor, he did a double take. He was headed to the phone to call the police, when Felipe rose up from behind the recliner.

The sight of the little old man in military garb and scarlet bandanna wielding a double-barreled shotgun, finger firm on the trigger, froze Bulldog in mid stride. He opened his mouth to say something, or to call for help, but no sound came out. His legs, then his whole blubbery body began to quiver. The half-filled cup of coffee he was holding fell from his hand and crashed with a splash to the floor.

Romero slowly came toward him, shortening the distance between them. He had deliberately waited until Bulldog was on the loose throw rug. If the fat man tried to flee

“Good morning, Mike,” he said, grinning. “Payback time. Judgment day. You stole my children’s inheritance. Ruined my wife’s retirement. Humiliated me. Screwed decent people all your life. You didn’t think you would get away with it forever, did you?"

Bulldog again tried to speak and again the mouth that had served him so well all his life failed. A wet spot appeared and spread on his under shorts. Felipe knew that like all bullies the Bulldog was a coward at heart, but had not expected him to become so paralyzed with fear. All Bulldog could do was gape at him, at the shotgun, his eyes saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’ll give your money back, do anything you ask, please forgive me, I beg you, please!”

But Romero took no pity. Shaking his head no, he let Bulldog plead with his eyes a while longer, and when the conman started to whimper, he braced himself and shot him in the belly. He shot him in the belly and as Bulldog’s jackknifed backwards, he remembered how the scumbag had talked dirty to Ruth. So he braced himself and shot again, this time aiming lower and blowing away his genitals.

Bulldog lay crumpled against the wall 10 feet from the throw rug where he had been shot, his huge abdomen and pelvis now a darkish puddle of skin, bone bits, blood, gore undigested food and feces. The stench of it was overwhelming. Felipe laid the shotgun on the recliner and, circling around to avoid the puddle, went up to Bulldog. Amazingly, Bulldog was still alive and the cowboy hat atilt and crushed but still on his head. Felipe knelt beside him. As if speaking to a child, he said softly: “Do you understand why I had to kill you?”

He was about to answer the question for him, recount in detail the many reasons, but he said nothing. His mission complete, all the hatred and vengeance had suddenly gone out of him. The realization that he was now armed with the inner strength to kill any scumbag that crossed his path made him feel secure, at peace with himself. He had confronted evil without outside help or encouragement, and he had prevailed. Nothing more he needed to prove. A glimmer of comprehension appeared momentarily in Bulldog’s eyes, then the eyes opened wide and stopped seeing.

The digital clock on a shelf read 7:44. Romero gazed out the living room window facing the street. Forty minutes earlier the street had been deserted. The neighbors now were waking up or having breakfast, the well-insulated walls of their modern homes having muffled their ears from the shotgun blasts. Soon the street was alive with traffic, neighbors going off to work in one direction, service vehicles coming in the opposite direction, a woman with hair curlers in a Subaru pickup delivering newspapers, all oblivious to the execution that had just taken place. At eight o’clock, the executioner put his weapon in the bat bag, exited the house through the back door, walked back to the side street where he had parked his Ford Explorer, and joined the rush-hour traffic. Bulldog’s cleaning lady found the body two days later.

The Dawson police had no clue where to begin their investigation. Michael Perruno had made at least one enemy a week for the past thirty-five years. In addition to the ones Romero knew of, there were scores of others, all over the country—swindled homeowners, subcontractors, vendors, partners, car dealers—as well as enforcers sent to exact payment for unpaid debts, of which there were many. Any of them could have killed Perruno.

The police might not have devoted as much time as they did investigating the crime—-Bulldog, after all, was no pillar of society—-had it not been for the grisly fact that he had been beheaded. The police reported that the conman was killed by two 12-guage shot gun blasts and, after he stopped bleeding, his head was severed and carted away by the killer or killers. His signature cowboy had been neatly placed over the gash where his head had been. A photo of the beheaded corpse somehow got out to the news media, and the story made national news. For several days the story commanded front page space in the Dawson Observer, but then was abridged in a paragraph and relegated to the back page, and finally bumped altogether to make space for more newsworthy local events, like the opening of turkey hunting season and the upcoming North Carolina Cheerleading Competition at the Charlotte Sports Arena.

The cops never bothered to look for the murder weapon or for the beheading instrument. Bullets fired through the distinct spiraled bores of rifles and handguns, can be traced to a particular weapon, but not pellets fired through the smooth bores of shotguns cannot. And half the hundreds of people in that part of the country who owned shotguns also owned or had easy access to hunting knives, axes, hatchets, meat cleavers, machetes and other such instruments with which to sever a human head.

The cops focused their efforts instead on identifying someone who not only hated Perruno enough to shoot him, the easy part, but who also would punctuate the murder with a barbaric beheading ritual, a madman of sorts. The mild manner elderly former professor Felipe Romero certainly did not fit that profile, so he was never a suspect, nor, it turned out, was anyone in the long list of the conman’s potential suspects interviewed. Eventually the cops gave up. Yet another unsolved murder for the Dawson Police files.

Romero’s plan had been to record the crime in a novel, The Avenging Demon, to confess to the crime once the novel was finished, and then let the news media pick up the story and thus bring the novel to the attention of publishers and movie directors. Surely on of them would buy it. But what if the cops didn’t believe him? What if his confession was dismissed as one of the many false confessions that the cops would invariable receive from nut cases? He needed definitive proof that he was the perpetrator. so two hours after the execution, he went back to Perruno’s house with his machete, loped off the conman’s head, placed the his cowboy hat on the neck gash, to spice up the story, then took the head with him and hid it somewhere until the time came to produce it as evidence. Romero never told his family what he was up to. The execution, the beheading, the novel, he kept it all a secret. He did not return to Alexandria, but stayed in Dawson, to work on the house he had facetiously dubbed The Manor.

But the old man’s well-laid plan did not pan put. One night a week later his son Sam, unable to concentrate in his noisy college dorm, had come to the Manor to study for an exam and found his father slumped dead over his laptop. On the screen was an empty file titled the Avenging Demon, Chapter I, and a random row of Y’s and H’s typed by his face when it hit the keyboard. So Felipe Romero’s novel never got written and Conman Perruno’s severed head was never found.