Another reason was that, at the moment, his car wasn’t running right. The next morning he and it were in his own driveway, Williams under the spiffy little sportscar, on his back working on its rear end-a coincidence, because the day before he’d been working on my wife’s rear end-and he looked up at me from under there, the buggy jacked up with the back wheels off, and gave me this look, which I read as contemptuous, and commented, “I got nothing to say to you, bunghole,” which didn’t take much reading at all, and I said, “Fine,” and kicked out the fucking jack.

That almost caused me some trouble. Had I killed the prick still in the sack with my wife, I’d have been in a better position to claim temporary insanity and irresistible impulse and suchlike. Instead, after I’d found them together in what I’d presumed was my bed, I’d walked off and settled down and thought about it overnight and gone around to his house the next day and crushed the fucker under his car.

That got me arrested, though I explained that if I’d gone over there to do anything but talk, I would have taken a gun. I’d killed his ass, all right, but it wasn’t premeditated. He’d just gotten on my wrong side, calling me a bunghole and being generally disrespectful, and the thing hadn’t been planned. Not calculated at all. It was just he said “Fuck you” in his way and I said “Fuck you” in mine-only mine took on a more physical form.

The media had a whale of a time with it, and the public was on my side, so there was no trial. The war wasn’t popular, sure, but Johnny couldn’t be expected to come marching home and not get pissed off catching some son of a bitch fucking his wife. So the D.A. dropped it, saying it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money, and then some fuss followed, since a public servant can’t really win in a situation like that. Damned if you do…