The Spoiler (28 page)

Lofton looked out at the street again. The man who had been sitting on the porch across the way was no longer there, the noise of the children was gone, the same cars stood parked by the curb. Everything seemed quiet, safe. Still, he wondered about the wisdom of studying the papers here. Despite Amanti's assurances, somebody might happen along. He should take the papers back to Holyoke, maybe run off copies, then have Amanti return the originals. Otherwise, Brunner might find out the papers were missing, and there was no sense in inviting trouble. Meanwhile, he would be better off studying the papers back in his hotel in Holyoke. Better yet, he would get his things, check into a new hotel, and study the papers there.

Amanti lay on the couch, her legs splayed apart, face to the wall. Her black slacks were tight, the collar of her blouse was turned up in back, one of her sandals hung off her foot. For a moment Lofton did not want to leave. Something about the whole scene—the scattered papers, the empty glasses, Amanti prone and vulnerable on the couch—stirred his desire. Taken from the outside, without any idea of context, the scene could be a domestic one, the woman lying there could be his wife, the papers could have to do with their business or their taxes. He might touch her gently and help her into the bedroom. Things weren't that way, of course, and because they weren't, he felt his desire even more keenly, in a way that, if this really were a domestic scene, he would probably not even feel at all. If this were the scene he imagined it to be, he would not yearn for the woman on the couch but for someone else, a stranger.

He gathered the papers into a pile, then searched the room for anything he might have missed. On the trunk in the corner he found Amanti's photo album. It lay open, as if she had been looking at it recently. He flipped through the pictures: Amanti as a child, then in college, her lips pursed in a cashmere pout, and then the shots of her and Kelley.

He placed the book back where he'd found it and walked over to say good-bye to her. Amanti was lying on her back, the top of her blouse undone, her face soft with sleep. She moaned groggily. He touched her on the stomach, felt the elastic band of her black slacks, and then went into the kitchen. After getting a brown paper bag from under the sink, he gathered Brunner's papers into the sack and left.

Lofton took the back highway to Holyoke. He wanted to think, to avoid the main roads. Another car took the same turn—he watched for a while in his rearview mirror—but the car stayed well behind.

He passed a small, lighted corner in South Amherst, a convenience store on one side of the street, a gas station on the other. Once he was past here, it would be darkness until he was over the Notch. He looked down at the stack of papers beside him on the seat. Now that he was away from Amanti's apartment he felt more comfortable. He looked forward to getting out of his old hotel and into a new one, someplace bright and cheap along the expressway, where he could take his time with the papers.

Lofton started mulling things over. It seemed he had the evidence he needed now, proof that Brunner was working behind the scenes, putting the touch on the Boston politicians. Brunner had hidden the arsons pretty cleverly, Lofton admitted, so that when American Paper finally went—it was the prize, the biggest, the multimillion-dollar bonus baby—then its burning would seem the culmination of a spree, of the violence and self-destruction that victimized everyone in the city, usually the poor. At the last minute, however, Kelley had found out about the arsons, decided to play politics with what he knew, and tied up Brunner's plan. The big one wouldn't burn; Brunner couldn't collect. He wondered what Brunner planned on doing now, how he would set up the burn.

The car behind him gained ground, its lights coming up quickly in the rearview mirror. Lofton panicked, but then the car slowed down, maintaining its distance.
A drunk, that's all
. Then the car rushed back up on him again.

Lofton's station wagon sputtered on the hill. The car was on his bumper now; its headlights flashed off and on. “Bastard,” Lofton hissed, “just get around me.” He edged over to the shoulder, giving the car room to pass. The car stayed on his tail, looming in his rearview mirror, a steel dark shadow. Lofton glimpsed the man's silhouette through the headlights' glare, and he imagined the man in the other car, the brightly lit dashboard, the car surging beneath his feet. The lights on his own dashboard were burned out, the upholstery was torn, patched with duct tape. The car behind him swerved into the oncoming lane, then swerved back.

When they reached the Notch, a flat hollow of land cradled between the sharp peaks of these low hills, the driver leaned on his horn. He pulled up close to Lofton, backed away, pulled close again, flashing his lights off and on, his horn blaring through the darkness. The road crested and headed downhill. In his old boat of a car Lofton did not dare drive much faster. He would lose control. The car came up close, and Lofton tried a trick he had learned on the California freeways to keep tailgaters at a distance. He touched his brake pedal lightly. On a car like this, with its brakes worn, you could often trigger the brake lights before engaging the brakes themselves. The trick worked. The man behind him hit his brakes; his car wrenched to the side, spun, lost ground, but then came down on Lofton again, faster than before. Lofton tried the trick again; but the car came down on him hard and fast—
right up my ass
—and Lofton swerved onto the gravel shoulder. He felt himself floating, weightless, behind the wheel, felt the dizzy rush of the darkness around him. The wagon spun and crashed, and the world disappeared into a Crosshatch of fear, an ugly black wave that washed over him and then away, leaving Lofton sideways on the seat, broken glass lying scattered over him. He touched himself for blood but could not find any.

He struggled to get up, trying to unlatch the seat belt. Outside the car he heard a quick scuffle of gravel. He heard a motor running. A passing car swished by on the road—he could see its lights—but it did not stop. The gravel crunched closer to the car. Footsteps.

The door on the driver's side opened, and he saw a man, a stocking pulled over his head, holding a gun. The man climbed into the car. Lofton closed his eyes. He was trapped. Suddenly he saw himself back in the library looking at Einstein's by-line, at the picture of the Latino leader up above. “They are burning our city; they are being paid.” Like Einstein, maybe even better than Einstein, he'd figured it all out. The only thing he didn't know was the name of this man in the stocking cap, kneeling over him, getting ready, Lofton thought, to answer all my questions forever.

“Bastard.”

The man's voice was unnaturally high, choked with emotion. He put the gun to Lofton's head. Lofton thought of how his death would look in the paper.
REPORTER SHOT TO DEATH
. He wondered how Kirpatzke would play it, if he would play it at all.

The man pushed his knee into Lofton's groin and bent over; Lofton stared into the stockinged face.

“Bastard.”

The man's voice was unnaturally high, choked with emotion. He put the gun to Lofton's head. Lofton thought of how his death would look in the paper,
REPORTER SHOT TO DEATH
. He wondered how Kirpatzke would play it, if he would play it at all.

The man pushed his knee into Lofton's groin and bent over; Lofton stared into the stockinged face.

“Bastard.”

His breath smelled like whiskey.
He's not a good killer
. Raising himself up, the man gathered force, then brought the butt end of the revolver down toward Lofton's head. Lofton squirmed, and the blow glanced off. The gun slipped from the man's fingers, but Lofton could not reach it. The man pounded him in the face, over and over, with a vengeance that was not mercenary but personal.

Then the beating stopped. Lofton felt him reaching for the gun but could do nothing to stop him.

“Bastard.”

Why doesn't he just kill me?

“Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.”

Grabbing Lofton by the collar, the man pushed his knee deeper into Lofton's groin and touched the gun to his head. Lofton's skull hurt from the beating, his vision blurred, but he could still see the man; he still waited for the shot. Leaning over Lofton, backing the gun away then bringing it closer, the man began—suddenly, horribly—to sob. The man was close, and Lofton could see the features through the mask. And, finally, he recognized the voice.

“Golden,” Lofton said.

There was a pause. Golden sat up. He was no longer crying. He stared at Lofton a long moment and then began to hit the reporter, again and again, and with each blow Lofton watched the darkness burst into light, until finally there was only one pure light, indistinguishable from the darkness.

The old man would not leave him be. “It happened in a split second,” he said, leering up at Lofton, grabbing on to his sleeve. The old man pointed at the building. Lofton saw shadows moving up on railings, then a small light, like a candle or someone striking a match. The old man pulled Lofton closer; his face was mottled, ugly. “I saw a small flame, then a larger one, and I knew what it was.” The man's breath was dank. The night smelled like gasoline. “I knew I had to call for help, but I knew it couldn't get here in time. The fire was in three places; then it was everywhere.”

“
All right, all right,” cried Lofton, “all right,” but the man held on. His face twisted and became uglier. The fire spread over the wooden porches, the railings, the window frames, the gutters
—
a glowing filigree. “The whole building in three minutes, just blown up and gone, just a shell, a corpse.” Lofton felt himself sweating. He tried to pull away. The old man grabbed him by the collar; his grip was unshakable. “The explosion is white,” the old man hissed. A main exploded, the heat blistered out, the walls of the empty rooms were gold and red. A man disappeared down an alley five blocks away. Then came the second explosion, brighter than the one before. Lofton couldn't breathe. “This is what it all comes to,” the old man said. “Somebody sets a fire, and your soul's got three minutes to get out.” Then there was one last explosion, a weariness in Lofton's chest.…

8

Lofton woke up in the hospital. His dream of the old man and the fire was far away; his head hurt, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. He had been drugged hard, so he kept falling back to sleep, the pain ringing in his bones—his skull, his cheeks, his jaw—each time he woke. When he touched his face, he found a bandage there, and beneath the bandage a tight, aching pain he could not escape, not even in sleep.

He forced himself to sit up, but a nurse came and forced him back down. He slept some more, his sleep no longer black and seamless but filled with dreams, fragments acted by a kaleidoscope of interchangeable players. Tenace lumbered in bed with Amanti; Maureen and Brunner went off together.

Finally, he pulled himself up again—the pain was fading—and he saw the nurse, a brisk older woman who took his pulse with a professional, almost distasteful air. He asked her what day it was.

“Go back to sleep. You have a concussion.”

Lofton was in a large room. There were other beds nearby, and he could hear, aside from the footsteps of his nurse, hard breathing and moaning. A cop sat on a stool by the entrance.

“Officer,” he called, but it was a weak cry. The policeman did not come. Lofton felt dizzy. The car spun. Golden raised his fist. The room turned bright, then black.

The nurse was adjusting his IV. He was in a different room now, a private room: television set, empty bed beside him, no policeman at the door.

The nurse left, and he dozed. When she came back—hours later or a few minutes; it was impossible for him to tell—she showed in a small, seedy man dressed in a light beige suit and a black tie.

“Frank Lofton?”

The man extended his hand as he walked across the room, as if to shake Lofton's hand from a distance. The man had a thin, snakelike smile. He held his hand palm upward as if expecting something to be placed in it. When Lofton reached over to shake it, the man's hand went limp. The nurse leaned against the door, watching.

“My name's Ray Nassau. Jack's lawyer.”

“Jack?”

“Yes, Jack Brunner. He asked me to handle your problem.”

Nassau held out his hand again.

“We already shook.”

Nassau smiled. “Yes, you're right.”

“What do you want? I thought Liuzza was Brunner's lawyer.”

“Different lawyers have different specialties. Jack Brunner got you this room. See, when they pick someone off the street—out-of-state ID, accident, no insurance card, junky car, that kind of thing—they don't give you the best treatment. Put you in the ward with the crooks and the drunks.”

“I don't want anything from Brunner.”

“No?”

“No.” Lofton raised his voice. “Nurse, I don't want this man here. He's making my head hurt.”

“Are you in pain, Mr. Lofton? Should I call the doctor?” The nurse did not move from the door.

Nassau bent over, whispering—hissing really—at the bedside. “The little shortstop is a sympathetic figure, you know. The jury will be hard on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Murder. An accomplice at least. Leaving the scene. Suppressing evidence.” Nassau pursed his lips and shook his head. “Bad stuff. You'd think a reporter would be above such things. Playing rough stuff with a Mexican over a few nosefuls of cocaine.”

“He was from Nicaragua,” Lofton said. “And I didn't kill him.”

“That's what they all say. And I believe you all, of course. It's a common problem: an innocent man caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, holding a bloody sword. Still, I wouldn't expect a man like you to get so tied up in this, so
implicated
. You might go to jail. Unless you have a good lawyer. Or a good friend.”