Dog Day Afternoon (28 page)

“Thanks, Maria.”

“I am praying you have a safe flight.”

“You’re a good kid,” Joe told her. He watched a faceless FBI man in a gray suit escort her off the runway into the hot, empty night.

“It’s you and me, Sam,” Joe mused aloud. When Sam said nothing, he glanced at him. “Okay, baby? We’re in.”

“It’s getting out of the car that bugs me,” Sam said. His teeth had started to chatter again.

“No problems,” Joe said. “You move her out when I start to move out. Just keep a grip on her and a grip on the Colt and we’re home free.”

Nobody spoke for a while. The driver cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said then, “maybe I can split this car before you mens do. Okay?”

“No way,” Littlejoe decreed. “Ready, Sam?”

“Ready.”

Joe started to move out of his door of the car. At the same time, Sam pushed Ellen out their door on the same side of the limo.

Baker reached for Joe, as if to steady him. Another FBI man reached for Ellen. The driver turned halfway around in his seat to face the rear.

There was a gun in the driver’s hand.

“Sam!”

Baker was yanking Joe off balance. The other man pulled Ellen toward him. Sam’s gun lost contact with her temple for an instant.

The driver fired point-blank.

Sam’s head flipped back. A great splash of blood spouted into the air. Littlejoe hit the asphalt runway face first.

The driver fired again. The top of Sam’s head flew off. Hair and brains spattered the inside of the Cadillac.

The .45 Colt automatic arced through the air and fell to the cushioned floor of the limo. Joe, twisting as he hit the runway, looked straight up into Sam’s eyes. They were already dead.

He glanced at the driver and saw the muzzle of his .38 magnum S & W aimed at his face. “Shoot!” Joe screamed.

The driver’s eye was lined up along the gun’s sights, staring along the barrel directly into Joe’s eyes.

“Shoot me, for Christ’s sake!” Littlejoe shouted.

Baker reached down and locked Joe’s hands behind his back. The driver lifted the gun, broke the cylinder, removed the unfired cartridges, closed the gate, and handed the gun butt first to Baker. “Tag it and file it,” he said then.

Joe was lying face down on the soft surface of the asphalt, still hot from the long day. The tarry smell filled his nostrils. In the distance Moretti approached slowly, as if against his will. The driver got out of the car and stood next to Baker.

When Moretti came up, the three law-enforcement officers stood there watching Joe. From his prone position, head craning up off the asphalt, they looked huge, like giants. Joe eyed the black driver. “You I won’t forget.”

“Yeah, well.” The driver glanced at Baker. “We all gotta be somewhere.” He walked away.

“And I won’t forget you neither, prick,” Littlejoe told Baker.

The FBI man’s face didn’t change at all. “You,” he said then, as he started to walk off, “I’ve already forgotten.”

Joe glared up at Moretti. “Walk,” he ordered. “Walk away.”

Moretti stared glumly down at him. “It’s been a long day, Joe.” He hunkered down on the asphalt, as if talking to a small child, his head just a foot or two above Joe’s. He took off his hat and mopped his forehead with a bandanna. Then he put the hat back on and gave it a tug. He patted Joe’s shoulder.

“My God, Moretti,” Littlejoe burst out, “people!”

EPILOGUE

T
he television studio was smaller than Flo had expected. She’d been brought here by special limo from the scene of the bank robbery, once the cars with Littlejoe and the FBI had left for the airport. Now the news was in. Sam was dead. Joe was unharmed. And in forty-five minutes the eleven-o’clock news would start to roll. Accordingly, they ushered Flo down a long hall to a small studio with two cameras, a desk, and two chairs.

The woman who was going to interview Flo was young and black. Her hair was done in a neat short-length Afro. She herself looked Italian to Flo, with a narrow, aquiline nose and big eyes. She looked like an Italian with a deep tan, but Flo refrained from telling her that.

“I’m Ann Anderson,” she said, shaking Flo’s hand. “And you are Mrs. Florence Nowicki? That’s, uh, Polish, okay?”

Flo got the idea that to the colored all whites looked alike. “The name is Polish,” she admitted. “My husband, Augie, he’s Polish. Me, I’m Italian.”

“Right,” Ann Anderson said. “But, like, I mean, can you pronounce it correctly for me one time, okay?”

“No-wick-ee,” Flo said.

“No-wick-ee?”

“No-wick-ee,” Flo echoed weakly. “Are they taking our picture now?”

“Oh, no. It’s, like, we’re just talking a little up front. Like I chat a little with you and then we do it again for TV, okay?”

Ann Anderson patted the underside of her Afro hairdo near her right ear. She shuffled some typed papers. “This Joe Nowickee is your son or your husband’s?”

“The both,” Flo responded. She was suddenly very self-conscious of her pronunciation, and she knew she was speaking sloppily. She knew she had actually said “Da boat,” and it was because she was tired and upset and it was late in the night of a very bad day. She sat up straighter in her chair. “The both of us’s kid,” she said with great care.

“Right,” Ann Anderson said. “And the first inkling you had of Joe’s like, bizarre lifestyle was, like, this afternoon at the robbery, okay?”

Flo shook her head. “No.”

Ann Anderson had been shuffling through papers. She now looked up, and Flo could tell that she was actually seeing this white woman for the first time. “You mean, like, you knew what kind of life he was leading?”

“If there is any human being on this here earth,” Flo said with as much decisiveness as she could muster, “that I know what’s inside of their head, it’s my own dear son, who never once harmed nobody, and now he’s going to jail. Sure.” She stopped and sniffed. “Sure I knew what kind of life he was leading. I mean, my son never hid nothing from his mother. He was a good son. I was there both times, at both weddings.”

Ann Anderson placed all the papers she was holding in a neat pile on the desk in front of her. She caught the eye of one of the cameramen and gave a small “not now” headshake. Then she placed her hands palms down on the desk, and with her eyes on the wall clock she said: “Mrs. Nowickee, maybe you better, like, start at the beginning, okay?”

“The beginning was when he married that cun—” Flo’s mouth shut down tightly. She glanced around. No one seemed to have heard anything, least of all the black woman, whose eyes were fixed on the clock. The time, Flo saw, was a quarter to eleven.

“I was at both weddings, to Tina and to Lana,” she said then.

“And you knew Lana was, like, a transvestite?”

“I don’t know from that. I knew Lana was a fella,” Flo admitted. “But there was a priest at the wedding. All right, maybe a faggot priest, and maybe it wasn’t in no church, but I knew my son was gonna be happier with Lana than Tina had ever made him.”

Ann Anderson opened her mouth and then closed it. After a moment, she opened it again. “I have a quote from your son’s, uh, female wife.” She started to rummage through the papers on her desk.

By now the small studio was crowded with technicians, about twice as many as necessary. In addition to two cameramen, helpers, and a boom man, people began to file in out of camera range and lean against the walls.

“Here,” Ann Anderson said. “This is Tina Nowickee speaking. Quote: ‘I know in my heart that my husband did not commit this crime. I mean, his body functions may have done it, but my real husband, deep in his heart, he is innocent of this crime.’ Unquote. Can you comment on that?”

Flo blinked. “Comment on what? It’s Tina’s usual horseshit.”

Some of the onlookers snickered. Ann Anderson looked up. “We start taping any minute now. Give me room to work, fellas, okay?” She turned her large eyes on Flo. “But, I mean, what does Tina mean by what she said?”

Flo’s shoulders rose and fell in a mammoth shrug. “Who knows what goes on in that lardhead’s brain? Are we talking about her or my son?”

“Right. We’re trying to get a line on your son.”

“I mean,” Flo continued, “just look at the two wives. Look at Tina and look at Lana. One look and you know one of them is a no-good pusbag who never had a thought for anything but her own mouth and the other has class, real class, star class, like a movie star.”

Ann Anderson’s mouth opened and closed again as she tried to choose the next words. “But yet,” she said then, “it was for Lana that he robbed the bank.”

Flo nodded. “It’s that operation.” Her voice dropped. “You know the one I mean?” she murmured. “We’re not on the air yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Lana wanted it. My son is a real man. He wanted to give her the money for it.”

This time Ann Anderson’s mouth stayed halfway open. No words came forth. She glanced down at her papers, shuffled them helplessly, and then looked up. “Mrs. Nowickee,” she said then, “like, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere this way, okay?”

“Getting?”

“We’re trying to find out, like, what makes Joe tick. You tell me you of all people know. I can see he didn’t hide anything from you. But we’re not getting anywhere and pretty soon we have to tape this, okay?”

“Just ask me questions, then,” Flo said somewhat grumpily. “Don’t expect me to do all the work.”

Ann Anderson’s mouth was a tight line for a moment. Then: “As a little boy, did Joe show any special, uh, trend toward anything, uh, out of the ordinary?”

“He was a beautiful child, just gorgeous.”

“And did he show any signs of—”

“And he grew up just fine,” Flo went on, not hearing. “He grew into one real man. Strong. Smart. Good to his mother and his kids.”

Ann Anderson looked up from her papers and caught the eye of the floor director, a man wearing earphones attached to a long cord that plugged into one of the cameras. “Jimmy,” she said, “can Paul hear this?”

“Yeah. He says start whenever you want. If it plays, it plays.”

Ann Anderson nodded and glanced through her papers again, and then turned sideways to face Flo almost head on. “During the time you talked to your son on the street in front of the bank this evening.”

“Yes?”

“There was some talk about his father’s brutality to him?”

“No such thing.”

“About being beaten as a child.”

“Never.”

“We seem to have taped something to that effect.”

“It’s a goddamned lie!” Flo burst out.

The black woman glanced at the floor director. “This isn’t going to work,” she said then.

“Why not?” Flo demanded. “I’m his mother. If anybody knows the truth, I do. You talk to me. Anything else you get, it’s lies.”

“But we understood his father used to bea—”

“He ain’t got no father!”
Flo burst out.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t mean that,” Flo muttered. “What the hell, yes, I do mean it.” She glanced around her, feeling trapped. “Forget what I said, huh?”

Ann Anderson looked at her for a long time. Then she turned to look at the clock. Ten fifty-two. The black woman cleared her throat carefully. “Right.” She glanced up at the floor manager. “We’ll start taping now, Mrs. Nowickee. You know what sort of questions I’ll ask. You get your answers in order, okay?”

The room had grown very quiet. “Okay,” Flo said. She could hear her voice tremble a little. “Okay.”

“We’re going to move right along without stopping, even if we make any mistakes, okay?”

Flo nodded. “Okay.” She took a breath to steady her breathing. “I just wanna say, if there is anything I can do now or some other time for a son as brave and good as my Joey, you can bet, don’t worry, miss, I’m ready to do it.”

The black woman stared blankly at her. “Right. Jimmy?”

“Tape rolling,” the floor director intoned. “Sound rolling. Five . . . four . . .”

His voice dimmed in Flo’s head. Her throat was dry. The red light below the camera lens went on. The floor director pointed at the black woman.

Flo sat in silent misery, ready to tell any lie. She couldn’t really hear what the woman was saying. All she could think about was what she could ever say about Littlejoe that would make sense, now or ever after.