The Spoiler (29 page)

“Fuck off.”

“Fine. Nurse, could you show in Officer Ryan?” Nassau gleamed. “I think you'll find this interesting.”

A policeman came into the room, a short man, blond hair, small, tight curls. He joined Nassau at the bedside, and Nassau sent the nurse away.

“You are going to see my poetic side, Mr. Lofton, something few people see.… Let's think back. Let's remember the summer. Let's remember a day, one of those grimy, awful days, when the air was full of pig sweat and fat, when old men were dying of strokes and young men dying of boredom. Let's think back.…”

“Get to the point,” said Lofton, but he was afraid of the cop. What were these two trying to pull off?

“Let's think back to a hot and ugly night. The ambulance lights are flashing. A dead man lays on the floor—a
Mexican
—his skull blown to tiny pieces. Outside, there's static. A reporter sits in a squad car, waiting, thinking, plotting, scheming.” Nassau paused. “Can you see it, Lofton? Can you imagine the reporter? Can you see him at the scene of the crime, hours earlier, studying the dead body? The question is, Why would he conceal such a thing? Why wouldn't he call the police?”

“Fuck off.”

“You said that already.… Now imagine the hardworking policeman, coming back down from the crime to the squad car.” Nassau pointed to Ryan. “The hardworking, honest policeman, the man on the beat.” Lofton remembered. The detective came down the driveway. He spoke in the intercom. He looked through the cage at Lofton in the back seat.

Nassau turned to Ryan and gestured at Lofton. “Do you remember this man, Officer Ryan? Have you seen this reporter before?”

Ryan peered at Lofton. His eyes were gray slits.

“Should I remember him?” Ryan asked.

“Should he remember you, Lofton? Should he?” Nassau smiled.

“What do you want from me?” Lofton asked.

“Want, want, want. All this talk of want. Of need. Of desire. Would men have ever climbed from the slime, would Christ have ever died on the cross, if all we thought of was our own paltry
wants
, our own paltry
lust?”
Nassau's face was twisted and happy. The lawyer was in ecstasy.

“Officer Ryan, tell us what the police found in Mr. Lofton's car when they arrived at the accident.”

“A medallion, some letters written in Spanish—the personal effects of Randy Gutierrez, the murdered ballplayer.”

“Those things weren't in my car,” Lofton said. He was telling the truth. The letters, the medallion, he'd left all that stuff back in his hotel room.

“What else did the police find in Mr. Lofton's car?”

“Cocaine. A dozen ounces, not very pure. Cut with milk sugar, Benzedrine, just about everything under the kitchen sink. Same as the drugs found at the ballplayer's apartment, a perfect match.”

“That's a lie,” Lofton said. “If that was in my car, then someone else put it there—”

“Officer Ryan, what's your position in the department?”

“Detective, homicide.”

“If somebody asked you to speculate, what would you infer from the evidence in Mr. Lofton's car?”

“I would guess that he killed the shortstop and stole the cocaine. That he was getting ready to leave town when he lost control of the car.”

“That's ridiculous,” Lofton said. “I was on my way back into town when one of Brunner's men, Dick Golden, forced me off the road. I was investigating the arsons—”

Lofton had directed his appeal at the cop, but he broke it off. He could see it was hopeless. Ryan stared at the hospital bed, not seeming to see Lofton, not seeming to see anything. Brunner had had the cop bought off, clear and simple.

“On the other hand, Detective Ryan, if nobody said anything to you, if nobody asked you to speculate on the meaning of this evidence, what would you do then?”

“Not much,” Ryan said. His face was deadpan—nothing, no emotion, not even a flicker.

“Good, good,” the lawyer said. “I'm happy to hear it, and I bet Frank is happy, too.”

Nassau dismissed Ryan. The policeman left Lofton and the lawyer alone together.

“Get the picture?” said Nassau.

Lofton said nothing. He understood Nassau's message: Keep out of Brunner's business or we'll turn this whole thing around on you; you'll find yourself on the line for Gutierrez's murder.

“I've warned you. Jump out of this.” Nassau's voice was iron. The fun and games were over; he'd finished his routine, and he wanted Lofton to know he was serious. “We'll pay the bills on this room. We know the meaning of generosity. You stay here as long as you need. Weeks. Years. Decades. Just leave town when your nose stops bleeding.”

Nassau put his checkbook down on the table and filled out one of the yellow sheets. He stuck the check under Lofton's pillow.

“
Et cum spiritu tuo,”
he said, and left the room.

Afterward Lofton talked to his doctor. The man was friendly, short, and balding, thick around the middle. It was obvious, from his friendly, innocent manner that he knew nothing about what was happening. “We did X rays all over,” the doctor said, serious now. “The abdomen, the chest cavity, we checked it all.” Lofton took a breath. It hurt. “You're a lucky man. Not even a broken rib.”

“Nothing wrong internally?”

“Not a thing,” said the doctor, and he gave Lofton a generous smile.

A Casa de empeños. Pistolas. Joyas. Cámaras Fotográficas. Lofton stared at his bandaged face in the pawnshop window. Underneath the Spanish the same words had been written again in English—in the same gold Gothic lettering, only smaller,
THE HOUSE OF PERSISTENCE. GUNS. JEWELRY. CAMERAS
. The window was plated silver, its reflection blue and warped by the cheapness of the glass. Lofton tore the bandage from his face. Bruises blackened the skin beneath his eyes; his eyes were streaked red; his nose was bashed and sore. “The bone's broken in one place, cracked in two others, very difficult to set,” the doctor had told him while changing the bandage. He gave Lofton prescriptions for codeine and antibiotics. “The bandages will help hold things a little firmer.” The doctor laughed. “But mostly they'll keep you from looking so ugly.” Lofton pressed the bandage back on and headed down the street.

“
Señor, quiere algo?”

Lofton wheeled. The pawnbroker, a small, fat man with eyes the color of asphalt, stood in his doorway. “Are you looking for a pistol? Something small?”

“No,” Lofton called. “Not right now.”

Lofton went into a tavern on the corner, not far from his hotel. He needed to make a decision. He took one of the doctor's painkillers, ordered a beer, and lit a cigarette.
No internal injuries. Not even a broken rib. Lucky bastard
. Nassau's check was in his pocket. Twenty-five hundred dollars. He still hadn't cashed Liuzza's check, the note for a grand that Amanti's cousin had given him that day in his Northampton home. All things considered, he hadn't made out too badly. True, now that Brunner had gotten his papers back, the story was pretty well ruined, or at least difficult to document. But Lofton was alive, he had some money, he hadn't lost everything. Still, something nagged at him: Somehow Dick Golden had known exactly where to find him. Certainly the general manager had not followed him all the way to Vermont. Golden must have known he was going to be at Amanti's that night, then waited for him there, finally catching up to him on the dark, open road.

He felt a confused surge of hatred for Golden, not at all the pure hatred you should feel for a man who had beaten you senseless. Somebody had told Golden where to find him, he was convinced, but who? He had a suspicion he didn't like.

He went over to the phone and dialed Amanti. There was no answer. He was worried, despite himself and his suspicions. He slammed the phone into its cradle.

“Easy,” the barkeep called out to him. “We only got one phone here.”

Lofton flipped through the phone book. Golden. A street in the Point District, a mile or so beyond Mackenzie Field. He dialed the number to make sure. A woman answered, her voice slurred, barely audible. That was the handicapped woman, Golden's wife. Lofton hung up harder then he had the first time. He winced, drawing his shoulders tight, realizing what he had done. This time the bartender said nothing.

He walked back to his hotel and checked his messages. The clerk was not there, and nothing was in his box. He started up the stairs, but then the clerk appeared. He shouted at Lofton in Spanish. He blocked the staircase, his arms outstretched, one palm flat against each wall. He told Lofton he could not go up to his room until he paid for the damage. If Lofton did not pay, he would call the police.

“I almost lose my job because of you,” the clerk said in English. “The room has been destroyed by some one of your hoodlum friends. Five hundred dollars' worth.”

“I'll pay,” he said, though he had no intention of doing so. “Just let me get my things out of here.”

The clerk looked at him warily. Lofton walked steadily forward, until he was face-to-face with the man.

“I said I'd pay,” Lofton said. He could feel the clerk's breath in his face. He imagined his own face in the man's eyes. It was an ugly face, distorted. The clerk backed off, and Lofton brushed by.

“You move nothing before you pay,” the clerk yelled after him. Lofton could hear the man following behind him, muttering in Spanish.

Lofton's door had been kicked in, and the room thrown into shambles: cupboards and refrigerator cleared; drawers and closet emptied; food, paper, laundry, and glass—all scattered on the floor. The mattress had been stripped of its sheets, turned over and slashed, as if the intruder had expected to find something inside the mattress. Tiny bits of foam rubber lay everywhere. His clippings and his notebooks were gone, his trunk all but empty.

He gathered up his clothes, clean and dirty, and stuck them in an old duffel bag he had taken around the country with him. He put what was left of his papers and correspondence into the bag, everything except the most worthless scraps of paper. The pictures he had taken in the warehouse were gone, his camera, too, even his fountain pen. They had taken it all.

“Five hundred dollars,” the clerk shouted. “Or you take nothing. I call the police now.”

“You call the police?” Lofton yelled. “I'm the one who is going to call the police! I leave my room and come back to find it destroyed. What kind of place is this? And what do you mean, five hundred dollars? For the door? The mattress? This whole fucking hotel isn't worth five hundred dollars.”

The blood rushed to Lofton's face. He clenched his fist. The clerk clenched his fists, too, but he backed up as Lofton came forward. Lofton could see the man was afraid of him. He imagined how he must look to the clerk: the bloodstained, dirty bandage; the rumpled clothes from the night of the attack; the half-drugged, glinting eyes. He enjoyed the fear he inspired and took a menacing step toward the clerk. For a second he thought he might grab the man and hit him; but the clerk had a scrappiness about him, and Lofton did not really want to fight. Instead, he pulled out his wallet.

“Paid, you want to be paid?” He took out a Redwings' schedule that had small, mugged pictures of the owners and a ticket office phone number.

“You want your money, you call this man.” Lofton pointed a finger at Brunner's name. “You tell him one of his pigs tore up this room. You call the police on him.”

Lofton pushed past the clerk, feeling a real flush of anger, a good feeling, a powerful swagger in his step, a happy rage he could barely contain as he brushed past the people in the hall who had come out, attracted by the noise.

Outside, the daylight made him wince. He squinted down the sidewalk at streets, his sack of clothes and paper slung over his back. The anger had not left, but now he felt foolish. The clerk was no enemy, not really. He was just an easy target. He thought, again, how the intruder had even taken the old silver fountain pen, tarnish and all, that his brother had given him.

“Gutless,” he hissed out loud, not at the clerk but at himself, as he walked past a drunk on the street. “Taking it out on the smallest, the weakest you can find. You want to smash Brunner, you want to smash Golden, but you're afraid. Fool.” His heart beat raggedly in his chest and he reached first for another cigarette, then for another painkiller. Who is it that you really hate? he thought, and looked down at his gnarled hands.

He stood still on the street. He wasn't going to give up on it this easily. He pushed open the pawnbroker's door.

“
Una pistola?”
asked the pawnbroker.

“
Sí,”
said Lofton. “
Una pistola.”

The clerk showed him a cheap one, an H&R .32, something small that could kill from across the room.

Golden lived in a neighborhood south of MacKenzie Field, away from the tenements. The houses were small but clean, at least for the most part, and the yards well trimmed, the bushes flowering, the sidewalks free of garbage. The neighborhood reminded Lofton of the one he had grown up in, tucked between the business district of San Jose and that city's railyards, back before the city had boomed, the orchards had disappeared, and the suburbs had grown. Here, as there, you did not have to walk the streets long to see how modest the neighborhood really was, how thin the prosperity. On each block a few houses needed paint, their yards were overgrown, and if you looked closely, you could see that many of the houses, built without real foundations, had sunk and shifted with the earth. He touched the gun he carried in his suit coat pocket. The practical reason for coming here, Lofton told himself, was to see if Golden still had Brunner's papers.

Golden's door was open. Lofton stood on the porch step and looked through the screen. The television was on in the far corner of the living room. He could see the back of a wheelchair and a woman's head tilted to the side. He rapped on the screen door, pulled the handle, and stepped in.