Anatomy of a murder part II

After the initial mile of our murderous cross town trip we look at each other. Ern is chain smoking and silent as he has been all day. The look in his eyes is one of resignation to the madness we are in. We begin to talk going over the reason we are choosing murder. We want to be sure there is no other choice. Tony won’t leave. Of this fact we are sure. He is finally positioned where he wants to be. He is a tall strong man from Nigeria who came into our lives through a back door on the coat tails of dubious friends of Berta. She was enjoying the freedom of divorce with reckless abandon and meeting a wide and disturbing caliber of men. She was married for such a long time to Rob, over 20 years. They were the first interracial couple legally married in the state and had spent the first half of the years united together to fight off the prejudices of this backwards region. In the waning years life settled down and the fire went out. They were just another couple and like so many couples he cheated on her. She kicked Rob out in the blink of an eye. How could she get so mad at this nerdy little civil rights lawyer who had been with her for years and given her three daughters yet she wouldn’t leave Tony even after four beatings and the abuse he was giving to her youngest daughter. She said from her hospital bed it was her fault. She had aggravated Tony with questions about his business dealings. She blew off the threats he made to her daughters not believing he would say such horrible things. Whatever hold he had on her was working. She was in the hospital. He was alone in her house. And that was as good a place as any to gun him down. What unlikely assassins we are I thought. Two laid back peaceful men. Ern a theater graduate from Howard who was fascinated with metaphysics and me who has never been in a fight in my life. Yet here we rode resolved to murder. We had talked with Tony after the second beating. He denied any wrong doing defending himself with cries that we did not understand his culture. Ern had no patience with the man. Years of dealing with shady Africans in D.C. had immunized him to Tony’s appeals of cultural misunderstanding. An asshole is an asshole no matter where he’s from. After 30 minutes of driving and debating the wisdom of our actions we reached Berta’s neighborhood. We turned into the sub division that looked so normal but we felt so far from normal it was comical. I expected to freeze or panic or just chicken out as we got closer to her street but a hyper sense of awareness kicked in and in a manic clarity we both did a speed round of the charges against Tony and asked the question of justification. He had driven an entire family mad and threatened rape and death to all. Right. Unleash the dogs of war. We turned at her corner and could see the house at the end of the cul du sac. I readied my pistol and Ern took out a vicious crescent shaped Arabic knife. We were ready.