'Before we get into this I'll need you to tell me the truth right up front.'� He says, 'Level with me, kid, are you guilty?'�

Leo Jarvis, a red-faced alcoholic with a pomade comb-over and acute halitosis ' he is, incidentally, also my court appointed attorney. Jarvis is leaning across this cold steel table glaring me down in his wrinkled thirty dollar suit and twitching like he's ready for another fix from old Jack Daniels. Like so many, he had taken to attributing a corporate brand name to his drug dealer of choice. Still, I'm no different ' before he even launched into his spiel about 'where we stand'� I was asking him if he had any smokes.

He said, 'Sure, what's your brand?'�

'Camel,'� I said, 'preferably Turkish Gold.'�

'Sorry, guy, all's I got are these here Marlboros.'�

Now we're sitting here, Jarvis nipping a little of old Jack from a flask in his coat pocket and me drinking in nicotine vapors like shots off a bar. My attorney repeats himself, 'So, be straight with me here. Did you do it? It makes no difference to me either way. It's just a matter of procedure. I'll take different steps depending on our situation.'�

I like how he says 'our situation.'� As if he'll be doing the time with me. Yeah right, once he's done his duty Jarvis will return to his house and family ' scratch that, I meant he'd return home to his dive apartment and three bottles of infant whiskey and vodka.

This guy reeks of booze.

My orange jumpsuit is tight around my underarms and I twist my wrists in the handcuffs to try to adjust. No luck there and so I begin with what seemed to be the more pertinent information.

Okay, Jarvis, I'm not sure what you know or don't know so I'll just give you all the facts. I was a veterinary technician in the city. That's a fancy way of saying that I wasn't a licensed veterinarian so I worked under the supervision of a certain professional at the animal shelter. I did all of her little odd jobs, from cleaning the kennels and filing paper work to her favorite duty to have me perform ' euthanasia.

Jarvis looks perplexed and says, 'Euthanasia?'�

Come on, Jarvis, euthanasia or in layman's terms 'putting them to sleep.'�

'Your boss made you kill the animals that had to be disposed of?'�

Exactly, you see she just couldn't stomach it. Now, granted, I didn't mind doing this at all. It was interesting. See, there are a couple of different means of disposal that are widely accepted. Probably most common, at least a few years ago, would have been carbon-monoxide poisoning. The air slowly gets thinner and the animal would simply go to sleep. However, at my shelter we used something called sodium pentobarbital.

Jarvis chimes in, scribbling on a note pad, 'Oh yes, of course. Sodium Pepto Bismol'�'�

Sodium pentobarbital, you idiot, is simply a barbiturate that functions as an anesthetic. Pentobarbital works into the neurotransmitters and the subject simply relaxes into a lucid coma and eventually medical death.

'You still haven't told me if you're guilty or not, Davis, but this calculated view of death you have does not leave me with much hope.'�

Jarvis, everyone is guilty of something. That's why I've never grieved for the proverbial 'innocent man'� that is penalized for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, they didn't catch him for the right crime, but I guarantee you he was guilty of something.

My explanation seems to carry on without me, it tells Jarvis that my boss and I were working on streamlining a higher dosage of pentobarbital that could dissolve in liquid and vaporize into an airtight compartment. It lets him know that the boss lady was a real sweetheart. She ran her shelter like a Nazi concentration camp sending homeless victims to the gas chamber. And I was her stooge, the simple order-following soldier that pushed the red button.

Jarvis asks, 'What was your reasoning for trying to create this gas?'�

Convenience, what else? It was easier to place an unwanted pet into a metal box rather than try to hold them down and inject them with a needle. Jarvis asks what was so wrong with carbon monoxide and I explain to him that while it is a quiet death it still is essentially asphyxiation. Suffocating doesn't exactly sit well with the animal rights activists and those suckers over at Green Peace or whatever.

Anyway, I say, I'm straying away from the point. Let's see, I suppose it was a Thursday when things really got moving.

Winston walks in and says, 'I swear to God, man, cigarette karma is killing me.'�

Notepad in hand Jarvis asks, 'And Winston is'�?'�

My roommate, oh, and just so you know, cigarette karma was a term tossed around by Winston and me. It was the belief that whenever a fellow smoker asked to bum a cigarette you were obligated to share otherwise you were a hypocrite to ask if you could bum from somebody else.

Cigarette Karma ' what goes around should always come back around.

For Winston and me it was never a problem. We didn't even keep score, sometimes he'd give me a few and sometimes I'd give him a pack, you get the picture. The problem was with strangers. Winston says, 'I got bombarded by a half dozen strays waiting on the subway today. You could see it coming, Davy, this real dirty looking bastard drops a bag full of God knows what and makes a bee line right for me. As soon as the pack was out it was like homeless dirt skids and junkies were coming out of the proverbial woodwork.'�

I laugh and tell him that you can only hope they pay it forward.

'Yeah right, the only thing that saved my entire pack from having the life drained right out of it was the train rolling up and the doors bursting wide to take me home. Something has to be done about this, have you seen this new beggar that put up stakes outside the park? Dude, his clothes were nicer than mine and I bust my ass every day of the week. I'm not kidding you, picture this, brown leather with cream topstitching by Neiman Marcus, a designer silk suit in a deep royal blue and it was either a mad good imitation or a truly authentic Rolex on the hand he held out to everyone that walked past. This guy was cleaning up and didn't have to do anything but stand around all day and lie. Serious, dude, something has to be done about this. Sometimes, I just wish the powers that be would allow me one a day. That's all I ask.'�

Now it's the following Tuesday.

Winston opens the front door and falls on his knees. I try to get him to tell me what happened and he can only manage to say, 'I said no.'�

Blood spilled out around his teeth when he spoke and I notice that his clothes are ripped and his side is bleeding. Come on, I say, we need to get you to a hospital. In the emergency room they told me that he had multiple stab wounds in his back and abdomen and that it seemed apparent that he was kicked repeatedly by a large group of people. Winston didn't wake back up for three weeks.

They kept him in ICU and I went back to work.

Jarvis interrupts me, clicks his pen signifying that he was taking a break from his notes and says, 'What does your roommate getting gang pumped by a bunch of half wit hobos have to do with my case?'�

Click your pen, you old fool, this is your case. You asked me if I'm guilty, I'll let you decide at the end of this thing.

I guess it was about a week later when I got the idea. Sodium pentobarbital, we'd perfected a higher dosage ' euthanasia. Things started out small. I stole one phial of the stuff and left work early. Suppose the goal was to find the crooked bastards that beat my friend into a coma. I suppose.

Winston's route to and from work was familiar to me, so I just started walking that beat like a rogue cop on his own kind of mission. No one stopped me, no one accosted me along the way and like most people in this city it seemed like no one even looked me in the eye. Smoking my Golds and trying to relax, I slowly trailed off toward the park without even thinking about it and that is when someone finally broke me out of my trance.

The gleam of the sun reflecting off of his Rolex was the first thing I noticed, he said, 'Excuse me, sir, could I trouble you for a smoke?'�

I said, Sure, I recently started to keep an extra pack on me just for people like you.

'Much obliged, sir, that's very kind.'�

With a match from a booklet I grabbed at a local pub I offer him a light and watch him close his eyes slowly and smile. He says, 'While I gotcha here, could I trouble you for some change as well? I just need a little change for the subway, I left my wallet at home and I just want to get back to my wife and daughters.'�

Right, he said the same thing yesterday - and the day before.

Neiman Marcus brown leather cream topstitch silk suit Rolex luxury and this guy wants to pick my pocket. I'm trying to think up an appropriate reply when I watch his face go kind of pale. He says, 'Oh my, I need to sit down for a minute.'�

I help him to a bench and he starts breathing in short little panic breaths. He says, 'What-what have you done to me?'�

I want you to know something, I say. I want you to know that because you have taken advantage of every living soul you possibly could and done this out of greed rather than necessity that you are going to die. That's right, you are dying. Soon you will start to feel very sleepy and then you will simply not wake up at all.

There, it's moving in on you now. You already can't move your limbs. You can't feel your fingers or toes. I want your last thought in this life to be one of regret and panic for never once trying to earn something on your own, instead you cheated and deceived to take it out of the hands of strangers who have suffered and worked harder than you'll ever know.

It felt good to say that and the last thing out of his mouth was a gasp of saliva that sounded like the word, 'How?'�

Winston used to say, 'Just one a day, that's all I ask.'�

Police discovered the body on that bench in the city park cold. His face was swollen and bloated blue. This high society beggar had been sitting out there for three days before anyone noticed he was dead. Perhaps it was the smell, bodily fluids had drained into his silk suit and leather shoes and someone had stolen his Rolex. There was a burn between his middle and index finger that took forensics a while to identify. But I knew it was from holding on to his last cigarette until it burned down to the filter.

Jarvis asks, 'Are you confessing to the murder of Mark Kromer?'�

Was that his name? I never knew his name.

'Look Davis, I can overlook this. That has nothing to do with my case.'�

I'm getting to your case, Jarvis.

It was the next Monday when I had finally found the guys that attacked Winston. I'll admit that there was some collateral damage in my search. I had called into work for three days straight and my pack was running low. He used to say, 'All I ask is just one a day.'� Two a day, three a day, four'� that's all I asked. Heading home after several hours and a body count of seven they found me waiting for the subway. I knew it was them
because they still had bruises and cuts on their knuckles and that could only have been Winston's blood on the right sleeve of their ringleader. Ringleader says, 'Hey you, gimme a square.'�

I play dumb, square, what's a square?

'A smoke, dummy,'� he growls. "You know, a cig - Camel, Marlboro, Parliament, Newport, a goddam cigarette.'�

What if I say no?

'I know you're holding a full deck right there, it would be rude of you not to deal them around the table.'�

Okay, okay, I get the point.

So I handed them out. Wiped the pack clean and they didn't seem to mind that there weren't any left over for me. Ringleader, the guy with blood on his hands, he fell down first and I whispered into his ear that I knew who he was and I knew what he did. I told him that he was dying. He was dying for making my friend need thirty stitches in his back ' he was going to die for being arrogant and foolish enough to think he deserved something for nothing. I told him I was the one who was killing him and that I did it for fun, not for revenge or out of anger, but just out of sheer boredom. I did it because my friend said someone needed to do something and because no one did it in enough time Winston might not wake up.

Just eight a day that's all I ask.

I stopped going to work altogether. Stole dozens of phials for ammunition, I just didn't want to stop anymore. I bought a carton and spent an entire night injecting each individual cigarette with sodium pentobarbital. I was using the same gas we used to euthanize animals ' unwanted pets, homeless vermin. Whatever. I walked the city and went through cigarettes like a chain smoker. Smoked a pack a day, two, three'�all I ask is twenty a day. All I ask is thirty.

Winston said, 'Someone should do something. Someone should clean up this mess before it's too late.'�

Jarvis is silent now, staring at me with his pen hovering still over his notepad. The last stage before death is coma. He's not even blinking. God, I want a cigarette. He's staring blankly ahead as I tell him that it was a Wednesday when Winston woke up.

The call came in from the hospital at three 3:14. I picked him up and drove him home. Winston needed his rest and constant care so I didn't go out that day. But that night when he woke up screaming for his Vicodin I got him his relief and a drink of water and told him what I had been up to.

I guess I expected anger, shock or even tears. Instead he leaned back and looked comfortable for the first time in weeks. He said, 'I'm going to help you. As soon as I get my legs back under me, I'm helping you.'�

For three days solid while I waited for Winston to get his strength back I raided the supply closet at the shelter taking trips back and forth with trunk loads full of anything we could use. We copied the key to the shelter and I quit my job. Money was rolling out of the pockets of all of the street cats and bums we were wasting. The real bread came when I started bumming smokes out to hookers under corner lampposts and in alleyways. Some grease-lipped grizzly long past her prime would ask for a cigarette and try to proposition me. They would always be on their way out before I had to turn them down.

Winston joined me on a Friday. Just a pack a day, that's all I ask. Two packs, please, who's going to notice? Three packs of strays and tramps a day, Lord. I'll admit we went too far. Winston started offering smokes to anyone who looked at him wrong. He didn't even wait for strangers to take advantage of cigarette karma. He'd offer them to cops and cab drivers and dumb yuppie-looking tennis coaches. He'd say, 'Look at this guy, he looks like a real tool. Let's go.'�

No one missed the bums, but the newspapers started reporting the body count or the missing person reports. Local reporter goes missing ' husband, family man. Local teacher found dead of what appears to be exposure. Like I said, we went too far. It was on a Wednesday that my ex-boss caught me in the storeroom with an arm full of syringes. 'What the hell are you doing in here?'�

I ask, Would you believe I have a drug problem?

Thinking very fast about how to get out of this, I hear her say, 'I was beginning to suspect something. Missing all of that work, showing up looking wasted and tired, why didn't you just come to me for help? I would have understood, Davis.'�

Think fast. Think fast. Clean up this mess. Someone needs to do something.

I ask her if she would like to have a cigarette outside with me, tell her I'd like to talk things over. She smiles and says, 'Yes, let's do that. We'll get you all fixed up.'�

This time was different. When her legs went limp she fell and hit her head on the doorknob, when her breathing became restricted she had tears in her eyes. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to admit that I was sorry. Instead I get close to her ear and tell her that now she is just another one of the unwanted rodents she made me euthanize. Now I've put her out of her misery.

Cleaning out the last of the storage room was easy with no one left to catch me. Still, I felt all in a panic when I got back to the apartment and told Winston what happened. I told him things were going to be bad. I said that they would catch me this time. Every motive and circumstance points right to me. Winston said, 'Well, let's just get a plan together. If they catch you we'll have to know what to do ahead of time.'�

They arrested me on a Monday.

So there it is, decide for yourself. Am I guilty Jarvis? It's like I said, everyone is guilty of something. The only difference between most people and guys like me is that I'll be remembered for it.

Jarvis looks appalled. He looks at me like I'm trash and takes a long drag of whiskey. He says, 'Well, the insanity plea should be no contest.'�

I'm not insane, Jarvis, I knew what I was doing and I did it. I did it because I could, because I wanted to, but mostly because someone had to. Our society is full of leaches ' it may be uncomfortable, but someone has to pull them off of America's backside before they drain us dry.

'You sick twisted freak,'� Jarvis growls. Then after a pause, 'I'll defend you, but only because I have no real choice.'�

It was 4:23 when they locked me back in my cell. It was 4:25 when I heard Jarvis outside of my window. He said, 'Can I get one of those from you?'�

A familiar voice says, 'Sure.'� I hear the sound of a Zippo flash to life and that same voice say, 'Enjoy.'�

4:32 and Winston is on the other side of the bars. He says, 'They almost wouldn't let me in to visit you, but I told them I was your brother dying of lung cancer and this might be the last time I ever get to see you again.'�

I grunt, Ain't that the truth.

Winston says, 'I want you to know that this will go on as long as I can manage. You've started something here, Davy, and I intend to finish it. Cigarette Karma is finally biting all of these bastards back. Now, for old time's sake, do you want a cigarette?'�

Yes, Winston, I want a cigarette. Just like we planned, I'll fall asleep and they won't be able to hurt me anymore.

I drink it in like a shot off of a bar and feel my skin tingle and my feet go numb. Winston is saying, 'This is euthanasia, just like all those animals that no longer had a place in society. Just like you, you don't fit anymore. You can't be released and you can't stay locked up.'�

It was 4:41 when my lungs started to seize up. Winston was saying, 'Someone has to clean this mess up before it's too late.'�

Now my watch shows 4:43, the lights are going out and the last thing I hear is Winston saying, 'Cigarette Karma - what goes around should always come back around.'�

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