The Fan (26 page)

“Hey, Nig,” Gil said, and held out his hand. Nig sniffed it, then sniffed it some more.

“Who are you?” she said.

“A friend of Co’s.”

The gun came up again. “No one calls him that.”

“I always did.”

“What’s your name?”

“Onsay.” A thrill shot through him.

“He never mentioned you.”

Gil shrugged. Nig kept sniffing him, wagging his tail.

“He likes you,” the woman said. “And Nig don’t like nobody except Len.”

Gil said nothing. He knew what the sniffing was about.

“Where is he?” the woman said.

“In the city.”

“What’s he doing there?”

Gil paused. He was starting to feel clever. It was a nice feeling. Clever people could have the whip hand, even on their knees looking up a gun barrel. He gave his clever answer: “I don’t like to say.”

“Son of a bitch,” said the woman. “He just can’t keep his zipper up, can he? And don’t tell me he couldn’t wait. You don’t know what I’ve done for that prick.”

Gil didn’t reply. He didn’t know what she’d done for Boucicaut, suspected there was a lot he wouldn’t understand about a relationship where a whore demanded sexual fidelity from her man.

“When’s he coming back?” she said.

“Whenever I get down there and bring him back.”

The woman lowered the gun. There were still tough questions she could have asked, but she fed him an easy one instead. “Is that your car?” She pointed the muzzle at the 325i.

He nodded.

“Nice car,” she said. The expression in her eyes changed. “You can get up.”

Gil rose. She backed away, but only a little: living with Boucicaut, she must have gotten used to size in a man. Gil thought of another clever line. “I won’t bite,” he said.

“No?”

They looked at each other.

“What did you say your name was, again?”

“Onsay.” The thrill again, just as strong.

“What kind of a name is that?”

“It’s my lucky name,” Gil said. “What’s yours?”

“Claudine,” she said. “But it’s not lucky.”

“Maybe that’ll change,” Gil said, astonished by his sudden glibness, as though he were someone else, a tuxedo-wearing star from the thirties; a real player. And then it hit him:
I can be someone else—I’m already on the way
.

“Want to come inside?” she said. “I guess I owe you a drink, anyway.”

Gil went inside. Claudine laid the gun on the kitchen table. They sat down. On TV, tuxedo man was dancing with another woman; the sore-footed one looked on from the sidelines through narrowed eyes.

“Beer?” said Claudine. “Or there’s usually some Canadian.”

“Beer.” He never wanted to taste Canadian again.

She opened two beers. “What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m into a lot of things right now.”

Not much of an answer, not the kind that would do for someone like Garrity, or O’Meara, but it did for her. She nodded and said, “You’ve got a phone in your car, eh?”

“You peeked,” he said.

She giggled. This was supreme, to have the right words at hand with a woman; and he was cold sober.

“Who’s the peeper now?” he said.

Claudine gave him a long look. The nightgown she was wearing slipped a little off her shoulder. “Did Len say much about me?”

“Some.”

There was a silence. Gil heard the beating of heavy wings above; probably an owl.

Then Claudine spoke. “I could give you a special rate.”

“I’ve never paid for it,” he said.

“That’ll make it all the more exciting.”

It did.

Wonderfully more exciting. It was nothing like that last time with Lenore. This went on forever, and she came with loud cries, and there was no bitching and whining after. They lay together on the bed in the back of the trailer.

Claudine said: “What’s that hard thing?”

Gil laughed: “You still don’t know?” What ease!

“Not that,” she said: “I mean on your leg.”

“Nothing,” Gil said. He rolled on top of her and buried himself in her soft, wet space in a single surge. Then he moved like a madman. She didn’t cry out this time, but that was because she was even more turned on; he could tell.

“How was that?” he said after.

“Great.”

“Better than Co?”

Pause. “No one calls him that.”

“I always did. I told you already. Something wrong with that?”

“No,” she said. She gave him a little squeeze. “Nothing wrong.”

Soon she rolled over. Gil closed his eyes. He listened for the beating wings of the owl, but it didn’t come. He slept.

Gil had a dream. He was a Crusader, riding a red Schwinn across a barren plain. He came to a headless body lying on the ground. It wore a magnificent shirt of spun gold. He stripped it off as a gift for the king. The king’s domed palace opened for him, and he was about to gaze upon the king’s face when something cold and hard pressed against his forehead.

Gil opened his eyes. The woman, Claudine, now fully dressed, stood over him, holding the shotgun to his head.

“You killed him, you son of a bitch,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Gil tried to sit up. She pressed the muzzle against his skull, keeping him down.

“I’m talking about the blood all over the goddamn truck, Mr. Gil Renard.”

“That’s not my name,” said Gil, realizing he no longer felt the thrower around his leg.

“Then it’s not your fancy car out there either, is it? The one with ‘Gil Renard’ on the registration.”

Gil said nothing. A single lamp shone in the trailer, on the kitchen table. He spotted the thrower beside it, in its sheath.

“Maybe you stole it,” Claudine said. “Maybe the two of you stole it and then something went wrong, eh?”

Now she was the one with the power of words, and Gil had lost it. His racing mind offered up nothing better than the rules of the successful commission salesman. Take the offensive.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“Then where is he? And whose blood’s all over the truck?”

Gil had no answer.

“I’m calling the cops,” she said. She backed away toward the wall phone, holding the gun on him. Sinews twitched in her forearm. At that moment, something rough and wet rubbed against the sole of Gil’s foot.

Nig. Nig was licking his foot. The dog smelled Boucicaut all over him.

Gil had an idea.

“It’s deer blood,” he said.

Claudine paused, her hand on the phone. A gratifying pause. He was coming into himself at last.

“Deer blood?”

“He shot a deer yesterday. I was driving, on that old logging road north of the bypass. He just leaned out of the window and pow.”

“And then you put it in the cab?”

“To keep it out of sight. Not exactly hunting season, Claudine.”

That sounded like the Boucicaut she knew: he could see it in her eyes. But the gun was still pointed at him. “You said he was in the city.”

Gil tried to look sheepish. “That wasn’t quite true.”

“But he’s with somebody, right?”

Gil nodded.

“Close by?”

He nodded again.

“Show me.”

“Aw,” Gil said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Her hand shifted back to the phone. “Then I’ll have the cops track him down.” The gun barrel, heavy for her, dipped toward the floor.

“You win,” Gil said. He got off the bed, reached down to pick his shirt off the floor.

Claudine laughed a mean laugh. “Don’t want them to take a gander at that bag of knives in the truck, do you?”

Gil looked puzzled. “Why not? I’m a collector.”

She thought. Gil knew what she was thinking: knife collector, 325i, it fit. There were lots of things that didn’t fit, though, and Gil could see she wasn’t finished with them. She started to frown. At that moment, Gil heard the heavy wings beating overhead again, going the other way this time. Nig, at the foot of the bed, heard them too. Whether the sound reminded him of some nocturnal fright in his past, whether he was reacting to something else, or nothing at all, Nig suddenly began to howl.

A loud and startling intrusion that filled the trailer with bestial noise. Claudine jumped. Gil jumped too—right across the room and full force against her legs. She fell, lost her grip on the gun. Gil got his arms around her, started to shift his weight on top. Then Nig landed on him, and sank his teeth into the back of his thigh. Claudine squirmed away.

She ran across the room and out the door. Gil scrambled up. Nig bit him again, the other leg this time. Gil took the thrower off the kitchen table and sank it to the hilt in Nig’s head.

Then he was out the door too, bloody thrower in hand. Claudine was halfway across the yard, already past the pickup and the 325i. She had no keys, he realized. He ran after her, gaining at first. In seconds he was close enough to hear the high-pitched noise she made at the beginning of every breath. But then they were in the woods, where the ground was rough, and she had shoes on and he did not. He ran as hard as he could, but stopped gaining. Her frosted hair flashed on through the trees. There were trails in the woods, trails she probably knew and could probably find, even in the darkness. She was going to lose him. Without thinking of the proper form, without calculating distance or rotation, Gil drew back the thrower and let go.

How much time passed? Half a second? Three-quarters? It seemed much longer to Gil. Then he heard her say, “Oh,” and she crumpled and fell.

Gil hurried to the spot, bent down, and saw that he had
been perfect. He rose and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. His hand encountered gouges in the bark. He looked, and discovered the deer-heart-sized circle he had carved, and the deep marks of his practice session.

“Yes,” he said.

He carried Claudine back to the pickup, laid her on the front seat. He put Nig in there too. If it was blood they wanted, let them find a confusion of it. Of course he knew who they would look for first. Boucicaut, even in death, a rock for him.

Gil went inside, showered and dressed, retrieved the bag of knives; then climbed into his car and drove away. He was coming into his own.

The custodian of the cemetery called the police station next morning.

“Been some digging again,” he said.

“What kind of digging?” asked Claymore.

“Just digging. No vandalism or nothin’. Everything put back, like. But digging, all the same.”

“Probably just some kids,” said Claymore.

“Maybe, but why would kids dig up the same place twice?”

“What do you mean, the same place?”

“The same grave, like.”

“Whose grave?”

“Renard, R. G.”

“I’ll be right over,” said Claymore.

“
C
oming up on the All-Star break now, Bernie.”

“Sure was fast, Norm.”

“Faster for some than for others.”

“Slow going for the old town team, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“You got it.”

“Good a time as any then, Norm—what’s your midseason assessment?”

“In two words, Bernie? De pressing. They’re dead last and going nowhere.”

“What the heck happened, Norm?”

“More what didn’t happen.”

“Like?”

“Like Rayburn, Bernie. It starts and maybe ends right there. Wasn’t Rayburn supposed to be the missing piece of the puzzle, the big bat in the middle of the lineup that was going to put them over the top?”

“Don’t look at me, Norm. Who warned everybody he wasn’t the Messiah? Taking nothing away from his great career, of course, but he’s been stuck in this woeful slump so long now, it’s maybe getting to be time we asked ourselves if
slump
is still the right word.”

“The implication being?”

“Just that all good things got to end. All things must pass, right? George Harrison.”

“Not my favorite Beatle.”

“Who was?”

“Ringo.”

“Me too. Where were we, Norm?”

“Bobby Rayburn.”

“Right. He’s no kid anymore, is he? Lose a little off your bat speed, it gets around the league pretty quick.”

“Trade rumors are already percolating.”

“So I hear, from reliable sources. But it may already be too late for them to get anything for him. It’s like the stock market—by the time John Q. Public gets wind of something, the insiders have already discounted it.”

“Except they don’t spit tobacco juice on Wall Street, Bernie.”

“Might be an improvement if they did. Let’s go to the phones. Who’s out there? Gil? Gil on line three. Go ahead, Gil.”

Dead air.

“Gil?”

Dead air.

“Looks like we lost Gil. Let’s go to—”

“Hello?”

“That you, Gil?”

“Am I on?”

“You’re on, Gil. What’s up?”

“Trade rumors?”

“Say what?”

“There are trade rumors about Rayburn?”

“Just speculation at this point, Gil.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“The usual kind—unconfirmed. What’s your point?”

“You said reliable sources.”

“I may have.”

“Like who?”

“Like people close to some of the principals. I can’t get more specific than that, Gil, without violating a confidence. I’m sure you understand.”

“Bernie here, Gil. I take it from your tone you don’t think trading Rayburn would be such a good idea.”

Dead air.

“Gil? You still there?”

“It would be a disaster.”

“Isn’t that putting it a little strong, Gil?”

“Not strong enough. Not nearly. Bobby Rayburn’s the best thing to happen to this team in years, and all they’ve done is screwed him up and down.”

“Who’s they?”

“Everybody. Look how they mishandled the rib thing. And they didn’t exactly welcome him to the team, make him feel at home, did they?”

“That’s a new one on me. You hear anything like that, Norm, not welcoming him to the team?”

“Never. Can you give us an example maybe, Gil?”

“I could.”

“Well?”

Dead air.

“Gil? You still there?”

“I’m still here. But what’s the use?”

“What’s the use of what? I don’t get you, Gil.”

“Just get this, Bernie. I’m sick and tired of you taking shots at him all the time. When’s it going to stop?”