When I got home, my body burned and I could barely breathe. The mailbox down at the bridle path that leads up to the front gate was stuffed with paper and the postman had left several packages on the ground. I scooped it all up, dumped the batch on the dining room table, thought about more Scotch, drank a half gallon of water instead, returned to the mail and began sorting listlessly.

Bills, ads, solicitations from real estate brokers, a few worthy causes, lots of dubious ones. The packages were a psychology book I’d ordered a while back, a free sample of toothpaste guaranteed to heal my gums and feed my smile, and an eight-by-twelve rectangle wrapped in coarse blue paper with DR. A. DELAWARE and my address typed on a white label.

No return information. Downtown postmark, no stamps, just a meter. The blue paper, a heavy linen rag so substantial it felt like cloth, had been folded neatly and sealed tightly with clear tape. Slitting the folds revealed another snug layer of wrapping—pink butcher paper that I peeled away.

Inside was a three-ring binder. Blue, pebble-grain leather—substantial morocco, thumbed, grayed, and glossy in spots.

Stick-on gold letters were centered precisely on the front cover.

THE MURDER BOOK

I flipped the cover to a blank, black frontispiece. The next page was also black paper, encased in a stiff plastic jacket.

But not blank. Mounted with black, adhesive corner pockets was a photograph: sepia-toned, faded, with margins the color of too-whitened coffee.

Medium shot of a man’s body lying on a metal table. Glass-doored cabinets in the background.

Both feet were severed at the ankles, placed just under ragged tibial stumps, like a puzzle in partial reassembly. No left arm on the corpse. The right was a mangled lump. Same for the torso above the nipples. The head was wrapped in cloth.

A typed caption on the bottom margin read: East L.A., nr. Alameda Blvd. Pushed under a train by common-law wife.

The facing page featured a shot of similar vintage: Two sprawled gape-mouthed bodies—men—lying on a wooden plank floor, angled at forty degrees from each other. Dark stains spread beneath the corpses, tinted deep brown by age. Both victims wore baggy pants with generous cuffs, plaid shirts, lace-up work boots. Extravagant holes dotted the soles of the man on the left. A shot glass lay on its side near the elbow of the second, clear liquid pooling near the rim.

Hollywood, Vermont Ave. Both shot by “friend” in dispute over money.