The Throat (56 page)

John
watched the skyline as we curved down the ramp into the sparse traffic
moving west.

"Every
cop in town is going to be watching the marchers this afternoon. I
think we could take the Green Woman to pieces and put it back together
again without anybody noticing."

At
Teutonia, I began the long diagonal north through the strip of Piggly
Wiggly supermarkets, bowling alleys, and fast-food franchises. "Do you
know if Alan lets anyone use his garage?"

"He
might have let Grant use it for storage." John looked at me as if I
were playing some game he did not understand yet. "Why?"

"The
woman who lives across the street saw someone in his garage on the
night April was attacked."

Unconsciously,
he touched the butt of the gun through his jacket. His face looked
blander than ever, but a nerve under his right eye started jumping.
"What did she see, exactly?"

"Only
the door going down. She thought it might have been Grant, because
she'd seen him around. But Grant was already dead."

"Well,
actually, that was me," John said. "I didn't know anybody saw me, or I
would have mentioned it before this."

I pulled
up at the light and switched on the turn indicator. "You went there the
night April disappeared?"

"I
thought she might have been over at Alan's—we had a little argument.
Anyhow, when I got there, all the lights were off, and I didn't want to
make a scene. If April wanted to spend the night there, what the hell?"

The
light changed, and I turned toward Oscar Writzmann's cheerless little
house.

"We have
some old stuff in his garage. I thought I might bring some old
photographs, blowups of April, back home with me, so I went in and took
a look around, but they were too big to carry, and the whole idea
seemed crazy, once I actually saw them." The nerve under his eye was
still jittering, and he placed two fingers over it, as if to push it
back into place.

"I
thought it might have had something to do with her Mercedes," I said.

"That
car is probably in Mexico by now."

Out of
habit, I checked the rearview mirror. Writzmann's car was nowhere
behind us on our three lanes of the drive. Nor was it among the few
cars trolling through the dazzle of sunlight ahead of us. I pulled over
to the curb in front of the yellow concrete jail.

John put
his hand on the door handle.

"I think
this is a mistake," I said. "All you're going to do is rile this guy.
He isn't going to say anything you want to hear."

John
tried to give me his all-knowing look again, but the nerve was still
pumping under his eye. "I hate to say this, but you don't know
everything." He leaned toward me. His eyes pinned mine. "Give me some
rope, Tim."

I said,
"Is this about Franklin Bachelor?"

He froze
with his hand against the lump in the jacket. His eyes looked like
stones. He slowly moved his hand from the gun handle to the door.

"Last
night, you didn't tell me the end of that story."

John
opened his mouth, and his eyes moved wildly. He looked like an animal
in a trap. "You can't talk about this."

"It
doesn't matter if it really happened or not," I said. "It was Vietnam.
I just want to know the end. Did Bachelor kill his own people?"

John's
eyes stopped moving.

"And you
knew it," I said. "You knew he was already gone. You knew Bennington
was the man you were bringing back with you. I'm surprised you didn't
shoot him on the way to Camp Crandall, and then say that he got violent
and tried to escape." Then I understood why he had brought Bennington
back. "Oh. Jed Champion didn't understand things the way you did. He
thought Bennington was Franklin Bachelor."

"I got
there two days before Jed," John said in the same small voice. He
cleared his throat. "I was moving that much faster, at the end. I could
smell the bodies for hours before I got to the camp. The bodies and a…
a smell of cooking. Corpses were lying all over the camp. There were
little fires everywhere. Bennington was just sitting on the ground. He
had been burning the dead, or trying to."

"Was he
eating them?"

John
stared at me for a time. "Not the people he was burning."

"What
about Bachelor's wife?" I said. "Her skull was in the back of your
jeep."

"He slit
her throat and he gutted her. Her hair was hanging from a pole. He
dressed and cleaned her, like a deer."

"Bachelor
did," I said.

"He
sacrificed her. Bennington was still boiling the meat off her bones
when I got there."

"And you
ate some of her flesh," I said.

He did
not answer.

"You
knew it was what Bachelor would do."

"He
already had."

"You
were in the realm of the gods," I said.

He
looked at me through his flat eyes, not speaking. He didn't have to
speak.

"Do you
know what happened to Bachelor?"

"Some
Marines found his body up near the DMZ." Now the pebbles in his eyes
shone with defiance.

"Somebody
found your body, too," I said. "I'm just asking."

"Who
have you been talking to?"

"Ever
hear of a colonel named Beaufort Runnel?"

He
blinked again, and the defiance left his eyes. "That pompous twerp from
the supply depot at Crandall?" He looked at me with something like
amazement. "How did you happen to meet Runnel?"

"It was
a long time ago," I said. "A veterans' meeting, or something like that."

"Veterans'
groups are for bullshit artists." Ransom opened his door. When I got
out of the car, he was reaching up under the hips of the buttoned
jacket to yank at the waist of the jeans. He did a little wiggle to get
everything, presumably including Alan's pistol, into place. Then he
pulled the jacket firmly down. He was in control again. "Let me handle
this," he said.

Ransom
plunged across Oscar Writzmann's brittle yellow lawn as if in flight
from what he had just said to me.

At the
doorstep, I came up beside him, and he glared at me until I stepped
back. He hitched his shoulders and rang the bell. I felt a premonition
of disaster. We were doing the wrong thing, and terrible events would
unfold from it.

"Go
easy," I said, and his back twitched again.

From my
post one step beneath John, I saw only the top of the front door moving
toward John's head.

"You
wanted to see me?" Writzmann asked. He sounded a little weary.

"You're
Oscar Writzmann?"

The old
man did not answer. He shifted sideways and pushed the door fully open,
so that John had to move back a step. Writzmann's face was still hidden
from me. He was wearing a dark blue sweat suit with a zippered jacket,
like the Ransoms' running suits but limp from a thousand trips through
the washing machine. His bare feet were heavy, square, and rampant with
exploding blue veins.

"We'd
like to come in," John said.

Writzmann
looked over John's shoulder and saw me. He lowered his cannonball head
like a bull.

"What
are you, this guy's keeper?" he said. "I have nothing to say to you."

John
gripped the door and held it open. "You want to cooperate with us, Mr.
Writzmann. It'll go easier for you."

Writzmann
surprised me by backing away from the door. John stepped inside, and I
followed him into the living room of the yellow house. Writzmann moved
around a rectangular wooden table and stood beside a reclining chair.
There was a cuckoo clock on the wall, but no pictures. A worn green
love seat stood in front of the hatch to the kitchen. On the other side
of the love seat stood a rocking chair with a seal set into the
headpiece above the curved spindles.

"Nobody's
here but me," Writzmann said. "You don't have to mess the place up,
looking."

"All we
want is information," John said.

"That's
why you're carrying a gun. You want information." His fear had left
him, and what I saw was the same distaste, nearly contempt, that he had
shown before. John had given him a look at the handle of the revolver.
He sat down in the recliner, looking hard at us both.

I looked
at the seal on the rocker. Around the number 25 the words
Sawmill Paper
Company
were described in an ornate circle full of flourishes
and
ornamentation.

"Tell me
about Elvee, Oscar," John said. He was about four feet from the old man.

"Good
luck."

"Who
runs it? What do they do?"

"No
idea."

"Tell me
about William Writzmann. Tell me about the Green Woman Taproom."

I saw
something flicker in the old man's eyes. "There is no William
Writzmann," he said. He leaned forward and put his hands together. His
shoulders bunched. The heavy blue feet slid back under his knees.

John
took a step backward, reached into his jacket, and yanked out the
pistol. He didn't look much like a gunfighter. He pointed it at the old
man's chest. Writzmann exhaled and bit down, pouching out his upper lip.

"That's
interesting," John said. "Explain that to me."

"What's
to explain? If there ever was a person by that name, he's dead."
Writzmann looked straight at the barrel of the pistol. He slid his feet
forward slowly and carefully, until only the thick blue-spattered heels
touched the floor and the stubby, crooked toes pointed up.

"He's
dead," John said.

Writzmann
took his eyes from the gun and looked at John's face. He did not seem
angry or frightened anymore. "People like you should stay down there on
Livermore, where you belong."

John
lowered the gun. "What about the Green Woman Taproom?"

"Used to
be a pretty seedy place, I guess." Writzmann pulled back his feet and
shoved himself upright. "But I don't want to talk about it very much."
John raised the gun waist-high and pointed it at his gut. "I don't want
to talk about anything with you two." Writzmann stepped forward, and
John moved back. I stood up from the rocking chair. "You're not going
to shoot me, you sorry piece of shit."

He took
another step forward. John jerked up the gun, and a flash of yellow
burst from the barrel. A wave of sound and pressure clapped my eardrums
tight. Clean white smoke hung between John and Oscar Writzmann. I
expected Writzmann to fall down, but he just stood still, looking at
the gun. Then he slowly swivelled around to look behind him. There was
a hole the size of a golf ball in the wall above the recliner.

"Stay
where you are," John said. He had straightened his right arm and was
gripping the wrist with his left hand. The ringing in my ears made his
voice sound small and tinny. "Don't tell anybody that we came here."
John backed up, holding the pistol on Writzmann's head. "You hear me?
You never saw us." Writzmann put his hands in the air.

John
backed toward the door, and I went outside before him. Heat fell on me
like an anvil. I heard John say, "Tell the man in the blue Lexus he's
finished." He was improvising. I felt like grabbing him by the belt and
throwing him into the street. So far, nobody had come outside to
investigate the noise. Two cars rolled down the broad drive. My whole
head was ringing.

John
walked backward through the door, still holding his arms in the
shooter's position. As soon as he was outside, he lowered his arms,
turned toward the sidewalk, and began to run. We rushed across the
sidewalk and John opened the back door and jumped in. Swearing, I dug
the keys out of my pocket and started the Pontiac. Writzmann appeared
in the frame when I pulled away from the curb. John was yelling, "Floor
it, floor it!" I smashed my foot on the accelerator, and we moved
sluggishly down the street.

"Floor
it!"

"I am
flooring it," I yelled, and the car, though still moving with dreamlike
slowness, picked up some speed. Writzmann began walking gingerly across
his dry lawn. The Pontiac swayed like a boat, then finally began to
charge. When I turned right at the next corner, the car heeled over and
the tires squealed.

"Whoo!"
Ransom shouted. He leaned over the back of the front seat, still
holding the pistol. "Did you see that? Did that stop the bastard cold,
or what?" He started laughing. "He came toward me—I just lifted this
sucker—and WHAM! Just like that!"

"I could
murder you," I said.

"Don't
be mad, it was too good," John gasped. "Did you see that fire? Did you
see that smoke?"

"Did you
mean to fire?" I took a couple more rights and lefts, waiting to hear
the sirens.

"Sure.
Sure I did. That old thug was going to take it away from me. I had to
stop him, didn't I? How else could I show him I meant business?"

"I ought
to brain you with that thing," I said.

"You
know what that guy was? He used to take guys apart with his bare
hands." He sounded hurt.

"He
worked in a paper mill for twenty-five years," I said. "When he
retired, they gave him a rocking chair."

I could
hear John turning the revolver in his hands, admiring it.

I took
another turn and saw Teutonia two blocks ahead of me. "Why do you
suppose he told us to go back to Livermore Avenue, where we belonged?"

"No
offense, but it's not the classiest part of town." I did not say
another word until I turned into Ely Place, and then what made me speak
was not forgiveness but shock. A police car was pulled up in front of
John's house. "He got your license number," I said.

"Shit,"
John said. He bent over, and I heard him sliding the pistol under the
passenger seat. "Keep going."

It was
too late to keep going. The driver's door of the police car swung open,
and a long blue leg appeared. A giant blue trunk appeared, and then a
second giant leg emerged from the car. It was like watching a circus
trick—the enormous man could not have fit into the little car, but here
he came anyhow. Sonny Berenger straightened up and waited for us to
park in front of him. "Deny everything," John said. "It's our only
chance."