Bloom was in the perfect spot, and Johnny hit the gas harder and was almost alongside him. He had the gun raised, aiming right at Bloom’s left ear, but then he thought, Why kill him now? Yeah, he’d be dead, and Carlos would be able to rest in peace, but would it really be getting revenge? Killing wasn’t revenge. Making a guy feel pain and then killing him was revenge.
Johnny continued tailing Bloom, staying about half a block behind him, trying to decide what to do- shoot him now, just get it over with, or fuck up his life first, and maybe make a few bucks at the same time? Johnny figured the guy had that big house and all that jewelry and that diamond ring. He probably had a lot of cash in there, too. It would still be nice to be able to kick back this summer, hit the beach down the shore for a month or two.
Then an idea came to Johnny- a way to get revenge, real revenge on Dr. Bloom, and get the biggest score of his life at the same time. It was so obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it sooner.
He left Forest Hills, going down Queens Boulevard, the plan getting better and better.
Oh, yeah, this was gonna be fucking beautiful.
After he ditched the Honda on a side street in Kew Gardens, he rode the subway to Brooklyn- lifting a wallet from a guy in a suit along the way, making a cool hundred and eighty- six bucks- and went to a Burger King with Internet terminals and started finding out as much as he could about Marissa Bloom.
The TV news reports had mentioned that it had been Adam Bloom’s twentytwo- year- old daughter, Marissa, who had woken her parents up last night, telling them that their house was being robbed. Johnny was looking for pictures of this girl to see what he was dealing with, and he found a picture of a Marissa Bloom right away, but this had to be a different Marissa Bloom, because she looked like she was about forty and worked at some company in San Francisco. Another Marissa Bloom was too young, played goalie on a Little League soccer team in Parsippany, New Jersey, but holy shit, here we go- Marissa Bloom with some friends at a party at some uppity- looking college called Vassar. She wouldn’t be the most beautiful woman Johnny had ever scored with, but compared to most of the women he’d been screwing lately she was a knockout- nice enough face, slim arms. The picture didn’t show her legs, but usually if a girl’s arms were fit it meant her legs were, too. If this Marissa Bloom was the right Marissa Bloom, he was in business.
He found some more pictures of her taken at Vassar. In a couple she had long hair; then her hair was shorter. In one her hair was spikier and she had a punk- type look. He was already starting to get an idea of who this girl was, imagining the guy he’d have to be to win her over.
But how did he know this was the right girl? He did a search for “Marissa Bloom Forest Hills,” checked out a few results, and found nothing, but hold up, what was this, a blog called Artist Girl? There was a picture of the Marissa Bloom from Vassar in the upper left corner, and then he scrolled down and there it was, the title of a blog entry from only a few weeks ago: ten things i hate about forest hills.
He felt like he’d hit the jackpot, like the goddamn stars were aligning. This was almost going to be too easy- everything he needed to know about her was right here in her blog. And she didn’t have one of those blogs that went on and on, talking about shit in the news. This blog was all about her, like a freaking diary. She posted almost every day, and the archives seemed to go back for years, to when she was in high school. All Johnny had to do was read this whole blog a few times and he’d be the Marissa Bloom expert of the whole goddamn world.
He stayed at Burger King for three or four hours, reading Marissa Bloom’s blog, finding out all about her, starting to feel like he’d known her all his life. He found out all about her past boyfriends, all the gossip with her friends, the classes she’d taken in school, her ju nior year abroad in London, her favorite artists and paintings. Usually when he was picking up a woman he had to get information as he was going along, try to figure out how to use it to his advantage on the spot. But in this case he had all the information he needed about her in advance, and he could think through every last detail, make sure there was no way he could slip up at all. This was almost going to be too easy.
He found more pictures of her on her blog and on her MySpace page, which she hadn’t made private. In a couple of the pictures she was in a bikini, and she wasn’t bad- looking at all. Her legs were as thin as he expected, and she had surprisingly nice tits. He had to rein it in- he was starting to get a hard- on, not a thing you want to do in a crowded Burger King- but, yeah, he could already imagine seducing this girl, making love to her, giving her mind- blowing orgasms.
He read more blog entries, trying to decide who he should be- a musician or an artist. He knew he could pull off either one, so it was only matter of which one she’d be more likely to fall for. He’d used the “I’m in a band” line lots of times to pick up women- he had a rock- star look to him, which helped, and any girl was a sucker for a hot guy with a guitar- but then he read that Marissa was into some band called Tone Def and had “hooked up with” the bass player for the band. That KO’d the musician idea. He figured she’d want somebody different, somebody fresh. She’d never had an artist boyfriend, so that definitely seemed like the way to go.
He went to Wikipedia and read about the artists and paintings she’d mentioned on her blog. He didn’t know shit about art, but after a while he knew enough buzzwords and basic facts to get the gist of what it was all about. Nobody could bullshit better than Johnny Long. All he needed was to know ten percent about something and he could fill in the other ninety and sound like an expert about anything.
He took in as much information as he could, then went home and crashed. In the morning, he got to work right away, knowing that this Marissa Bloom thing would be a lot more complicated than his usual pickup. If he wanted to do this thing right, really pull it off the way he wanted to, he’d need a whole new ID. For one- night stands he could make up any story about himself that he wanted because the girl never had a chance to check out any of it. But with Marissa he was going to have to build up her trust in him, get her to really like him and know him, or at least believe that she knew him. He might have to actually date her, even bring her back to his place, so everything would have to add up.
He went to Brighton Beach and met with this guy Slav who sold dead Russians’ IDs. For three hundred bucks Johnny got a Social Security card and a driver’s license and a brand- new identity: Alexander Evonov. Although Johnny was Irish- Italian, he had dark features and figured he could easily pull off the Rus sian story, say his grandfather was from Moscow or wherever.
Next, if he was going to say he was an artist, he was going to need some art stuff around his apartment. Made sense, right? He stopped at an art supply store and bought paint, an easel, a smock, and a bunch of drop cloths to spread around. He figured he’d need some art around the house, too, so he went to a Salvation Army and a couple of thrift shops and picked up whatever paintings he could find. Some were of mountains, others were of people and street scenes, and some were just shapes and colors and looked like they were by that guy Marissa had mentioned in her blog, something Polish- sounding, something- sky? Kalinsky, Kazinsky, no, Kandinsky. Yeah, that was it. Of course, the paintings Johnny bought didn’t look like the same person had painted them, but he already had a story ready to explain that. He’d say he was into a lot of different- what was that word he’d seen in Wikipedia?-movements. Yeah, he’d say he was into a lot of different movements.