Tough Guys Don't Dance (29 page)

I took a turn to the right at Town Hall and parked across the street from the basement entrance to the police station. Regency's car was outside, standing double-parked and empty. The motor was running.

Then came a temptation clear as the mandate to mount the tower. It told me to step out of my car, walk over to his, turn off the motor, take his keys, open his trunk, look inside—speak of creative visualization, I saw the machete in the trunk!—remove it, lock the trunk, put the keys back in the ignition, start the motor, leave his car
and stroll back to my Porsche and a good exit, yes, I saw all of this in advance and as vividly as any trip to the burrow I had thought out for myself before I went. Now my first reaction was yes, do it! My second was no.

It was then I understood, as never before, that we live with not one soul but two, our father and our mother—at the least!—the night and the day, if you will; well, this is no exposition of dualities, but two souls I possessed that were equal to two matched horses—badly matched!—if one said yes, the other said no, and the poor driver was nothing but my own person who now cast the deciding vote: Yes, I would do it, I had to. I could not live through the debacle of the Monument one more time.

So I got out of my car. To my misery, the side street was deserted, thereby giving me no excuse to delay, and with an exaggerated hobble (as if a maimed man could do less harm in the eyes of the police) I crossed to his car, my heart beating at such a pitch that fear passed right through vertigo into the delirium of intoxication itself. Have you ever taken an anesthetic through a mask and seen the concentric circles bore in upon your brain as you go under? I saw them now as I took the keys from his car.

“Oh, hullo, Regency,” I said. “Hope you don't mind. I need a tire iron from your trunk.”

“Oh, yes, I mind,” said he and drew his gun and shot me.

That passed. The vision passed. Toes tingling,
hand shaking, I got the key into the lock of his trunk.

The machete was there.

In that instant when my heart spun like a cat on a high power line and I thought I would die, I knew some far-off chord of exultation and woe: He exists, or It exists, or
They
are out there. It was confirmation that the life we live with all our wit and zeal is only half our life. The other half belongs to something other.

My first impulse was to run. Instead, I pried the machete from the floor of the trunk—it was stuck to it!—slammed down the rear deck of the police cruiser, forced myself (it was the most demanding measure in the sequence) to get inside his vehicle long enough to start his motor again and only then was I free to cross the street to my own car. Under way, the steering wheel of the Porsche kept oscillating in my good hand until I was obliged to hold it with both.

Five blocks down Bradford Street I pulled under a lamp for a moment and looked at the machete. It was covered with dried blood on the side of the blade that had not been stuck to the rubber mat. All my notions of Regency collided. Never could I have conceived he would be so careless as this.

Of course, if he had used this weapon upon Jessica (and, yes, he must have used it) was it possible that he had not been able to go near the blade since? If one is going to perch on the abyss,
it is reassuring to discover that one's fellow maniacs also know fear and trembling.

Awash in my thoughts, I drove through all of town before I came to the simple conclusion that the machete ought to be transferred to my trunk rather than kept beside me in the front seat. I happened to be then at the circle at the end of Commercial Street where the Pilgrims landed and the breakwater now crosses the marsh. There I stopped, lifted my front lid and laid the machete in—its blade was nicked, I noticed—closed the trunk and saw a car stopping behind me.

Wardley got out. He must have put a new beeper on my rear bumper. God, I had not even checked my car.

Now he came toward me. We were all alone by the breakwater and there was just enough moon to see.

“I'd like to talk to you,” he said. He had a gun in his hand. It most certainly had a silencer on its muzzle. And, yes, it looked just like my .22. It took little creative visualization to conceive of the head of the soft-nosed bullet resting in its chamber.

“W
ardley,” I said, “you look a mess.” My voice, however, quivered enough to spoil the suggestion that I was feeling no large respect for his firearm.

“I've been,” he said, “on a burial detail.”

Even by the uncertain gleam of the moon taking its wan trip through the scud, I could see that he was covered with wet sand up to his hair and eyeglasses.

“Let's take a walk along the rocks,” he suggested.

“It'll be difficult,” I told him. “I hurt my foot kicking Stoodie.”

“Yes,” Wardley answered, “he thought you kicked him. He was angry about that.”

“I expected him to come over today.”

“We won't see Stoodie anymore,” said Wardley.

He made a delicate move with the muzzle of his gun as if pointing me to the most comfortable chair in the room. I set out a few steps in front of him.

It was not easy walking. The breakwater extended for a mile across the sand flats, the marshes and the bay, and you had to pick your route over the jetty boulders. They were level enough on top to form a sort of rough path for much of the way, but now and again you had to leap a four- or five-foot gap, or else go down the angle of one big rock and up another. In the dark, with my injuries, we made slow progress. He did not seem to mind. Behind us, a car would occasionally come along Commercial Street on its way to the circle, and either turn in at the Provincetown Inn or continue past the marshes out to where the highway began, but after we had traversed a few hundred feet of the breakwater, these cars might as well have been a good distance away. Their headlights seemed as removed from us as a ship's running lamps at sea.

The tide had been high but was going out, and so the tops of the boulders were some eight or ten feet above the water. Beneath was the sound of the sea coming out of the marshes and passing through the jetty. Maybe it was the pain in my foot and the heavy throb of my shoulder, but I was resigned. If my life were to end on this endless breakwater, well, there were worse
places, and I listened to the unrest of the gulls, cawing at our nocturnal passage. How loud were these transactions at night! I felt as if I could even hear the eelgrass stirring in the inlets and the sponge eating at the oyster shells. The wrack and sea lace began to breathe on the rocks as the swells undulated from our jetty. It was a windless night which, if not for the chill of November, was reminiscent of summer, given the placidity of the water, but no, a late-fall night it had to be: a northern chill lay upon the calm, telling us of those eternities where the realms of magnetism are icy and still.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Are you planning to go all the way across?”

“Yes,” he said, “and I warn you, after we cross this, you've got another half mile along the beach.” He pointed to our left, perhaps midway between where the breakwater ended and the lighthouse at the point a mile farther to the left out at the tip of the long barrier beach of Cape Cod. For all of that mile of beach to the lighthouse there would be no dwelling and no roads, nothing but sand trails for four-wheel vehicles. They would hardly be stirring on a November night.

Hell-Town had once thrived out there.

“It's quite a walk,” I said.

“See if you can make it,” he replied.

He was keeping a good number of yards behind me in order not to have to carry his gun in his hand, and whenever I came to a difficult passage (and there were one or two descents where the
rocks had settled and were slippery from the outgoing tide) he merely waited until I found my way across, then took it himself.

After a time I felt cheered. Local news is most important in catastrophic times, and my toe, broken or not, nonetheless seemed to be flexing a little better, and my bad left arm was finding a few more movements it could make without pain. Besides, I did not feel totally afraid. Despite what I knew of him in prison, I could not always take Wardley seriously. I had, after all, seen him cry on the day we were kicked out of school. On the other hand, I did not wish to stimulate his trigger finger by any rude act. Old boyhood certainties could prove dangerous.

More than halfway across, I asked for a break. He nodded and sat about ten feet away from me, near enough so that we could talk. Now he held the gun. It was here that he filled me in quickly on some details. He wanted to talk.

In brief: Nissen was dead. Stoodie was dead. Beth had left town with Bolo Green.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“I saw Bolo kill Stoodie. And I certainly saw Beth and Bolo off on their trip. Why, I gave them the money. They left in the van you damaged. It's hers.”

“Where are they going?”

“Beth was thinking of a visit to her mother and father in Michigan. Apparently they're retired and live in Charlevoix.”

“Bolo ought to make a considerable impression on Charlevoix.”

“Personable blacks have entrée everywhere but Newport,” he answered me solemnly.

“Wasn't Beth concerned about Spider?”

“I told her that he had decamped. She didn't seem too perturbed. She said she would sell their house. I think she's been missing Michigan.”

“Does she know that Stoodie is dead?”

“Of course not. Who would inform her?”

I tried to ask the next question with tact. It was as if I had been talking to a stranger and had just told a Polish joke. Now I had to ask, “Are you by any chance Polish?” So with considerable modesty of voice, I inquired, “Do you know who killed Spider?”

“Well, if you want to know, I did.”

“You did?”

“It's sordid,” said Wardley.

“Was he holding you up for money?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“Tim, I would think you've been concerned lately about heads.
Chez moi
, it's been
bodies.
You see, Spider and Stoodie were on the burial detail.”

I hazarded a guess. “They buried the bodies?” I asked.

“Both women.”

“Where? I would like to know.”

“Right where we're going.”

“Terrific.”

We were silent.

“Right in Hell-Town,” I said.

He nodded.

“You know about Hell-Town?” I asked.

“Of course. Patty Lareine told me. She's fixed on Hell-Town. It's a pity her remains are so separated.”

“From her point of view, yes.”

“Where's the head?” asked Wardley.

“At the bottom of the sea. I don't know enough to tell you more than that. I wasn't along.”

“I don't think that I'd want to do her such a great favor, anyway,” he said, “as to restore her parts.”

No reply came to me easily.

“Where are Stoodie and Spider buried?” I asked.

“Close-by. I have them all together. The two women and the two men. They're near enough so they can have a
dansant
should the spirit arise.” He was taken by a small convulsion of mirth, but since it came forth soundlessly, I cannot say that either of us expected me to laugh along with him.

Then he raised his pistol and fired a shot in the air. It made the pop I expected—like a small inflated paper bag suddenly broken, no great event.

“Why do that?” I asked.

“Exuberance,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I'm feeling good. I finished my burials. It was a good piece of work.”

“Didn't Bolo help you?”

“Of course not. I sent him off, as I told you, with Beth. He was much too hyper to keep around in the state he was in. I always knew he was strong, but he killed Stoodie with his hands. Just strangled him.”

“Where?”

A perverse look seemed to come on his face. I say
seemed
because I could not see too clearly by the moon we had, but I did have the impression that he chose not to answer this question for the pure pleasure of failing to reply.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked at last.

“Curiosity.”

“The desire to know is so powerful,” he said. “Do you think that if I do kill you, and I'm not saying I will or I won't—to tell the truth, I don't have a clue—do you believe you'll go out into that dark dominion better armed if a few of your questions are satisfied?”

“Yes, I think I do feel that.”

“Good. So do I.” He gave a sly smile. “It all happened in the Provincetown woods. Stoodie had a little shack off the highway. Just as well it's by itself. We made a racket.”

“And you left both men lying there and took Bolo over to visit Beth?”

“Yes.”

“And he and she took off. Like that?”

“Well, they began something last night. Apparently she had quite a time with him after you left The Brig. So I encouraged them to travel together.”

“But why did Bolo kill Stoodie?”

“Because I primed him.” Wardley nodded. “I said that Stoodie had killed Patty Lareine and disposed of her body by feeding it to his dogs.”

“Good Lord.”

“Stoodie didn't even have a dog,” said Wardley, “as far as I know. But you'd think he would. He's the kind of cur should have a beast.”

“Poor Stoodie.
Did
he kill Patty Lareine?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I'll tell you in a while, perhaps.” He became so thoughtful that I started to think the muzzle of his gun might be lowering, but no, it wasn't. It kept pointing at me. I would say it was as powerful in its effect as a bright light in one's eyes during interrogation.

“Well,” I muttered at last, “let's get going.”

“Yes,” he said, and stood up.