Prayer for the Dead (12 page)

“Eric?”

“The asshole.” Eric was slouched in his chair, his left leg stretched out so it nearly tripped anyone who passed, his right leg draped over another chair. “The one sitting in two chairs.”

“Eric Brandauer,” said the bartender. “This is only his third drink.”

“His third
here,”
said Ginny. “He’s been swilling something stronger than white wine spritzers somewhere. Either that or he’s just naturally as pleasant as a molting snake.”

“Eric’s always had a mean streak,” said the bartender, hoping he wouldn’t be called on to do anything. Eric not only had a reputation for being mean, he was awfully quick to use his hands. And his boots. Tending bar was not the same as bouncing, and Harold had no desire to take up a new career at this stage in his life.

“If he gives you any more trouble, let me know.”

“I’m letting you know
now,
Harold. If he touches me again, or even looks at me like that, I’m through serving him.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Harold, placing the wine spritzer on Ginny’s serving tray. She added a napkin.

“I’ll
keep an eye on him,” she said. “You keep an eye on me.”

The bartender watched as Ginny put the wine on the table in front of Brandauer. He affected a hat, not quite a Stetson, but something semi-Western, that he wore very low over his eyes. Thinks he’s Clint Eastwood, Harold thought. Or no, someone else, some other actor. Who was it he looked like, not quite a star but well known, a character actor, foreign. Harold remembered him from a Redford movie where he had been a CIA killer, and then he had seen him only the other night in an old movie where he played Jesus or John the Baptist with a Swedish accent. The planes of his face were the same, the high cheekbones, the long, slightly horsey look. Funny that the Swedish women all looked good enough to eat, and the men had these thin, long faces with the big jaws. Max Von Sydow, that was it. He looked like a young Max Von Sydow. Or like Max Von Sydow pretending he was Billy the Kid.

Knowing just how far to push it and when to stop, Eric Brandauer let Ginny pass without incident, but his eyes under the brim of the hat looked at her with the kind of malevolent interest that Harold usually saw on television only when the punk was about to do something rash. Harold prayed that Eric would save his rashness for the parking lot where Harold wouldn’t have to know about it until he read the police report in the local paper.

Dyce waited until ten thirty. His favorite classical music station was playing one of the Beethoven symphonies—he wasn’t certain which, he had missed the announcement, but he thought it was the Seventh— and he was nearly as comfortable in the car as he would have been at home. When the driver of the car to the left of the station wagon finally left, Dyce pulled into the spot, carefully leaving just enough room so that he could open the passenger door all the way. He would wait for fifteen more minutes.

At a quarter of eleven, Dyce gave up and drove home. He wanted to be there before Helen called. Explaining his absence at that hour of the night would simply take too much effort. Seeing that he wasn’t jealous, Helen had decided to assume the role herself and she acted as if Dyce were this wild-eyed ladies man who couldn’t be trusted out of her sight for so much as an hour. He didn’t know what he was going to do about her.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, he saw Brandauer come out of the bar. For a moment he considered pulling back in, taking a chance, improvising something. He could take the man and still get home in time for the call—but then the man was in his own car and it was too late.

Dyce drove home to await Helen’s call. There would be other nights, as many as he needed, and things would be all the better for waiting.

“It’s happening again,” said Becker.

“What’s happening again?”

Becker was at the window once more, peering out through the Levolors.

“You need a new view.”

“You could try looking at me for a change,” Gold said.

“You think that’s an improvement?”

“What’s happening again?” But Becker had clearly changed his mind about discussing it, whatever it was.

“I was with this girl, this woman, the other night. We were talking about crawling into lions’ dens … She has thirty-seven freckles on her cheeks and across her nose.”

Gold drew a vertical line down the margin of his notepad. He did not note the number thirty-seven. He was not a numerologist.

“Bearding the lion in his den. Where did that expression come from? Lions don’t have dens. They live on the open savannah. The expression conjures up this picture of the hon in a cave with the bones of all its prey scattered all over. They don’t live that way. Bears don’t have bones in their caves, either. They don’t eat and they don’t excrete all winter long and the rest of the year they live outdoors. Why do we think of the beast hunkered down with the bones of its victims around it, waiting for us?”

“Is that what we think?”

“Carnivores don’t live that way. At least not mammals.”

“Dragons do,” said Gold. “As long as we’re dealing in symbols. Dragons are surrounded by skeletons and treasure.”

“Did you have to go to school for this?” Becker asked.

“Why do you have such contempt for the psychiatric profession?”

“I see you don’t take it personally. Why is that?”

“What happened after you shot Sal?”

“He died.”

Gold began the serpentine line that intersected the vertical one.

“Sorry,” said Becker. “I’ve got to learn to let the easy ones pass … I had a reaction.”

“That’s normal.”

“I saw a shrink for a while.”

“There’s no record of that in your file.”

“I didn’t use a Bureau man.”

“You went to a private therapist for help? Why is that?”

Becker was silent.

“Why not use a Bureau therapist? … They’re experienced in that kind of trauma … They’re free.”

“Spiders do that,” said Becker. “They keep the corpses around them. They paralyze them, suck than dry, and leave the husks hanging there.”

“What were you afraid the Bureau would find out about you?”

Becker returned to the window. Gold started to fill in the parabolas on his notepad.

“I don’t respect you because you can’t really fix anything. You can drug the violent ones or put diapers on the bed wetters or talk the mild cases into giving up out of boredom, but when they’re really wrong, you can’t make them right, can you?”

“What do you mean by really wrong?” ,

“Some people are wired differently. They like to hear people scream or make them bleed or make them die—and you can’t do anything about those people, can you? You can’t change the wiring.”

“What do you think should be done with such people?”

Becker laughed. “Oh, doctor,” he said. “Now really.”

Eric Brandauer felt like killing somebody. The bitch whose lawn he had just finished mowing had paid him with her nose cocked as if he smelled. He wanted to thrust her head into his crotch; he’d show her what smelled.

The damned weed trimmer had given out on him and he’d had to use a hand sickle that he hadn’t needed in years, and he took a gouge out of his knee while working around the bitch’s flower beds. She told him he should have it looked at but didn’t offer to look at it herself, didn’t come up with iodine or bandages or invite him m. He had a good mind to put on his ski mask and come back there after dark to pork the shit out of the bitch and smash things up a little. Just to teach her a lesson. Just for old times’ sake. He wondered if he could even find the ski mask anymore.

Christ, he felt mean. At least the old life had offered some compensations; he’d been able to let off some steam now and then. Profit wasn’t the only motive for burglarizing the bastards. It did the rich fucks good to have someone trash their houses. Let them know how the other half lives in shit most of the time. It taught the men humility to feel their teeth crack. All those perfect teeth, ah those smiles they bought from the braces man. Let them go out and buy some more. They could afford it, and it did Eric a world of good to paste one of them now and then. Sometimes he would wrap his hands before going out on a job, just like a boxer. A good stiff wrapping with elastic, a pair of work gloves to protect the skin, a roll of nickels clenched in the fist—oh, it did their humility a lot of good. Plus it made Eric feel terrific. He was doing a service for them and himself Now that was his definition of a good deed.

Landscaping, on the other hand, not only didn’t offer any compensations but it didn’t pay worth a damn, either. Here it was Wednesday and he was out of money again. He would have to go to the bank again if he wanted to eat or drink tonight. And he sure as hell wanted to drink. The only good thing to be said about landscaping was that it kept him out of jail. At least he no longer had the cops rousting him out of bed every time somebody lost a VCR. In Shereford there just weren’t any junkies to blame, so all the thefts got pinned on him. And Eric hadn’t stuck a needle in his vein in his whole life. He
hated
needles. Stick one in himself? He’d have to be crazy. He’d smoked some, popped a pill or two, but nothing serious. Nothing to put him in the same league with the hard-core addicts you had to live with in jail. He didn’t belong there. He might not belong in landscaping, either, but he belonged in jail even less. Which was the only good reason he could think of not to grab the first son of a bitch who looked at him cross-eyed and do a number on his head.

On a whim, Eric decided not to go to his regular bank but to drive to Guileford instead. It would be dark when he got there and there was an automatic teller machine at the train station where the light didn’t work. Or could be made not to work. He wasn’t promising himself anything, but if everything worked out just right, if some wimp decided to get some money and it was between trains and no one was around and Eric felt froggish, well, he just might jump. He didn’t
have
to, that was the beauty of it. He would just see how things worked out and how he felt. And if nobody showed, he could always just draw twenty-five out of his own account and go back to Shereford and hassle the waitress at the Peacock Lounge. “Lounge,” he liked that, the place was a saloon—hassle the middle-aged bitch until the bartender was forced to try to make him stop. Now that he wanted to see. That might be even better than whipping ass at the Guileford station. He didn’t see how he could lose.

Not once in the thirty-five-minute drive to Guileford did Eric look in his rearview mirror. He hadn’t done anything yet; there was no reason to worry about cops who, as far as he knew, hadn’t gotten around to reading minds yet, and so there was no reason to notice the gray Toyota that followed him all the way to the train station.

Eric drove past the automatic teller machine and turned the corner, parking in front of the office supplies company so that his car was not visible from the machine. That way all he had to do was saunter around the corner, get in the wagon and drive off without worrying whether the victim—if there was a victim, he still had not decided—could identify his car.

A woman was walking away from the teller machine as Eric rounded the corner, putting money in her purse. Let her go, too far away. Eric was not about to chase anybody down the street. What he wanted was a nice, plump businessman, somebody with enough meat that he wouldn’t fall at the first blow. Eric liked it when they stood there, not quite believing him, not even having enough sense to cover up so that he could get in three or four good licks before they really understood what was happening. And men would not scream right away, the way women did. Most of them had just enough ego to convince themselves it was some sort of contest—see how many punches you can take before you fall. None of them took very many.

The street was empty when the woman left. A car drove slowly by and Eric waited until it turned the corner before crossing to the machine. He decided to give it a few minutes. It was a whim, after all, not a job. He could take it or leave it.

The machine was mounted on a concrete wall that had been installed just to house it. On the other side of the wall, between the concrete and the depot, was a small recess, out of sight and in the dark. Stepping into the recess, Eric glanced at his watch before pulling his work gloves up snugly on either hand. Ten minutes, that’s all he would wait, ten minutes, fifteen tops. He was already getting thirsty.

The situation was ideal. Dyce pulled his car into the spot just to the left of the station wagon. He leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door to check. It opened and came to a rest against the driver’s door on the wagon. Dyce had removed the fuses for the overhead light and the door buzzer so he could work in silence and darkness. Perfect.

Removing the plastic cap from the syringe needle, Dyce pressed the plunger until a drop of liquid oozed from the tip. Perfect. He kept the syringe in his right hand, resting out of sight on the seat.

The station was empty. There were no trains due for another forty-five minutes. There was a light on in the office supply shop, but not enough to illuminate Dyce clearly to any passerby. Anyone passing in a car would see only the back of his head, if they even bothered to look. Perfect.

Dyce put Schubert’s Trout Quintet on the tape machine and turned the volume down low. He turned slightly to one side so he could see Eric coming around the corner and have at least thirty seconds to go into action. Perfect.

He settled in to wait. Schubert was beautiful. Dyce felt certain he and the composer would have understood one another.

Fifteen minutes stretched to twenty, and Eric finally said fuck it. The place was a goddamned morgue. Two cars had passed and that was it. He didn’t need this shit, and he was thirsty and hungry and had to piss. He started to pee in the recess, then decided to do it on the teller machine, just to let them all know what he thought of them. He peed a long time and actually managed to hit the face of the machine. Then, walking back to his car, he remembered that he had forgotten to withdraw some money for himself. He had to stand in his own puddle, cursing, to get the twenty-five dollars.