"Some of the guys say it's because he small - like really small, and some of the guys say he's deformed or even worse down there, and some of the guys - well, just Mike and one of the chauffeurs, really - insist that he's got a dick and a pussy down there, and that's why he does it."
        
"Does what?," I asked.
        
"Puts out a contract on every woman he fucks.  But it's probably just as simple as 'he doesn't want the wife to find out.'"
        
I was stunned. 
        
"I am a sexually transmitted disease," I said.
        
"Ha-haaaa!  You are!  That's fucking hilarious!  Ha-ha-haa!"  Phil couldn't stop laughing.  I smiled back, but I tried too hard and the smile began to tremble.  Phil didn't notice.
        
"Can I call you... 'Gonorrhea'?"  Phil could not stop laughing.
        
"Yes," I said.  
        
"No, it's too formal - how 'bout 'The Clap?'  Good 'ole 'Clapper McClappy.'"  Phil doubled over with laughter.
        
"Yes," I said.  Then I put down my pool cue and walked toward the front of the bar.
        
"Where are you going?  You don't want to play again?"
        
"No," I said.  I walked straight up to The Professor.  The Professor was sitting alone at a table, drinking a Ramos fizz.  A Ramos fizz is a gin cocktail from New Orleans that takes nearly fifteen minutes to prepare.  The Professor does not particularly like drinking the Ramos fizz, but he always orders them so he feels like he's getting his money's worth out of his bartenders.
        
"I would like to meet The Judge," I said.
        
"Why's that?" asked The Professor.  "You need a favor?  One of your buddies get busted?"
        
"No," I said.  "Nothing like that.  I would like to express my gratitude for the job and meet the man who pays my bills."
        
"Well," said The Professor, "I suppose there wouldn't be any harm in it.  He appreciates what you do, very much.  I'll see if I can arrange it.  ...And be sure to tell 'im I taught ya everything you know."  The Professor winked and jabbed me in the ribs and I laughed and The Professor mimed the act of masturbation and jabbed me in the ribs again and we both laughed and laughed and laughed. 

***

Two weeks later, on a Tuesday after midnight at The Golden Oldie, The Professor told me quite abruptly that The Judge would see me now.
        
"Now?," I asked.
        
"Yes, now," said The Professor.
        
So we jumped into the back seat of The Professor's Lincoln Town Car, and Punxsutawney Phil took the wheel.  Phil usually didn't drive, but I supposed that this was a special occasion. 
        
We arrived at a complex of buildings on Centre Street.  I'd never been down there before and was taken aback by the beauty of the buildings.  Towering, ribbed columns supporting great slabs of marble.  "THE TRUE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IS THE FIRMEST PILLAR OF GOOD GOVERNMENT" proclaimed the carvings amid the scrollwork.
        
"The Judge lives here?," I asked.  Phil started laughing. 
        
"No," said The Professor.  "But he keeps late hours."
        
We exited the car, and I began to climb the sweeping stone steps.
        
"No, son," said The Professor.  "We go in the back way."
        
Phil and The Professor led me to a side entrance where we were buzzed in and then to an elevator. 
        
"Looking up at those columns," I said, "...it was like a cathedral.  A cathedral of justice."
        
"I think that was the idea," said The Professor.  Phil snickered a little.
        
"How did they hang those lamps?," I asked, "the chains must hang down forty or fifty feet."
        
"I don't know," said The Professor.  "Real tall ladders."  Phil snickered some more and we exited the elevator.  There was a wide wooden door with a gold plate on it and as we walked toward it, our feet crunched across the firm green carpet.  There was a kind of satisfaction to be had in walking on that carpet.  The Professor and I entered together.  Phil waited outside.
        
The room was homey; a small, cozy pocket of space in the grip of warm, red-leather volumes and mahogany shelving.  In the center sat a desk, and at the desk sat The Judge.  I couldn't decide if The Judge looked robust or prunelike, I guess it was some combination of the two.  I have a hard time now trying to imagine what he looked like at that particular moment.  I do know that the thought of him laying himself atop all those women repulsed me, him laying on them like a woolly, wrinkled balloon, a balloon filled with pancake batter and sand. 
        
"I understand you had something to say to me," said The Judge.
        
I stood for a moment, frozen.  "I... can't remember what it was exactly, but... I had it written down, I thought..."  My hands fumbled in empty pockets.
        
"Well, I have something I'd like to say to you," said The Judge.  "You're a helluva kid - a helluva man, yes, one helluva man to have on our side.  I appreciate it.  I appreciate you."
        
"Yes, sir," I said.  Suddenly, I was filled with the desire to please The Judge.  I knew he had to die, I knew he had committed the greatest crime of all, but I wanted him to like me, and it seemed that he did. 
        
"Well," said The Professor, "The Judge is very busy, and he appreciates your coming by, but he really must get some rest."
        
We turned to leave, and The Judge stood up.
        
"Let me shake your hand," he said.
        
The Professor lingered by the door, and I walked toward The Judge where he stood, his palm outstretched. 
        
"Oh, here's where I put my notes -" I said, and I reached into my jacket, only it wasn't my notes at all, it was a gun, and a blurry instant later I was cradling The Judge's head in my right arm while my left hand held the barrel of the gun beneath his chin.  I cradled his head tenderly.  The Professor remained exactly where he was, shaking and stammering.  He placed his hands upon his forehead and teetered like a catatonic.  I looked deeply into The Judge's fearful eyes.  A tear leaked from one eye.  I felt good.  I felt tight.  I felt pleasure. 
        
If you could see me now, Nan, in this place, I thought.  When she had left, she said that I was incapable of enjoying anything.  She said that it took her a long time to figure it out, but that I was a void.  Not a black hole, she said, because a black hole would draw you toward it.  A void is just there- but it isn't really, because it's a void, it's nothing.  I disagree, Nan.  If you could see me now- I had never looked forward to anything so much in my life.  I was electric.  I was compelling.  The Judge locked eyes with me because I was so captivating.  My pleasure captivated him. 
        
The Judge opened his mouth and time stopped.  But he hadn't opened his mouth, I had pulled my trigger.  It was really a great, red, wet, mouth-shaped hole that had appeared in the center of The Judge's face.  I'd nearly shot myself, too, by mistake.  Bits of teeth and gum and gristle flew upward, rotating gently in mid-air before plastering themselves against my face.  I still have a scar from one of The Judge's incisors.  It was beautiful.  It was beauty itself. 

One of The Judge's detached lips hung from my own; it was almost a kiss.  The Professor fainted.  There was no hatred anymore, only bliss.  Oh!  To be able to bring him back, back from the dead, to kill him again and again and again, to exist in that single moment, that rapturous moment, that sticky-wet moment of flash and bang and powder and force!  It was as if I'd pulled the pin on a grenade of pure pleasure and heaved my own body upon it just as it burst.
        
My idyll was interrupted by Punxsutawney Phil as he smashed down the door to The Judge's chambers.  "What...the...SHIT!?," he said, just like in a movie.  I shot him through his left eye while cradling The Judge's head in my other arm.  This, too, was a pleasure beyond belief.  My hands pulsated and my eyes throbbed with power and devotion and excitement.  One could live a lifetime in this moment.  One could spend a lifetime endeavoring to reproduce it.  I let The Professor live.  He looked so peaceful down there, as if he had absorbed some of my ecstasy by osmosis. 
        
I walked home along dark, dirty streets.  Thoughts swarmed within my mind, pricking like persistent needles.  I buzzed in the afterglow of my act, but felt a tremendous guilt, an onanistic guilt, a lonely guilt.  Is it wrong to partake in such pleasures in a world on a downgrade?  I remembered something my grandfather had once told me.  It was a story- a proverb, really- about an aging hooker who, between sleep and offering her sex to strangers, had spent damn near all of her life on her back.  Suddenly, as the gray hairs began to sprout and the skin began to sag, she found herself gently clinging to her clients, running her fingers through their hair, wanting the clock to run a little slower, deriving pleasure from her occupation.  "And lemme tell you what's to be learned from the old whore," my grandfather had instructed, "when you start coming with the customers, it's time to quit." 
        
It's time to quit.