They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee (20 page)

I don't know, I just couldn't get a handle on which part of the ordeal was worst. At times, the fear of capture made me nauseous. Then, minutes later, the world would turn on me and capture would seem like salvation. The apparent hopelessness was getting to me; Existentialism 101. Somewhere, Sartre and Camus were laughing at me. I wondered if the point was to try and evade capture long enough to rate a movie of the week or could I hold on until I inspired an entire series? Alas, no. Quinn Martin was dead.

I hated being scared all the time and I was scared all the time now. Having been scared my whole life, you would've thought I'd've been prepared. I wasn't. This kind of scared was different. This kind of scared was amorphous and specific all at once. But being so scared helped me block out the thoughts of Kira.

In the end, though, it wasn't the insecurity nor the hopelessness nor the fear. It wasn't Guppy's god-awful cooking nor was it speculations over how much Kira had suffered. The worst part, I guess, was knowing that people thought I was a monster. It was eating me whole, inside out. I tried to recall how many times I had recited the cliché: “It doesn't matter what people think of you.” It matters, believe me, it matters. I think I understood how MacClough must have hurt when I confronted him about Hernandez's death.

Things were bad for me, but they had just gotten worse for Valencia Jones. The newspapers reported that her trial was back on and that each of her attorney's motions had been denied, most without comment. At least I had the myth of freedom to cling to. Guppy and Zak were bummed to the max and were busy trying to devise some new message to draw their enemies out. I had my own ideas about that, but kept them to myself.

“Guppy,” I tugged at his sleeve. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Certainly.” He followed me out of the shelter into the basement.

“I need to make two phone calls in private. Unfortunately, there's a chance at least one of the lines I'm calling could be tapped. Is there—”

“Yes, Mr. Klein, there is a secure method. Let us say that I have managed to gain access to certain phone systems in other countries which will allow me to route your calls through so many places that the place of origin will be impossible to detect.”

“You're sure?” I was skeptical. “I don't want any more innocent people hurt.”

“No one will be hurt. But what is—”

“It's better not to ask what you were gonna ask. If it works, maybe I can make it work for Valencia Jones, too.”

His face brightened beneath the low light of the bare bulbs. His desperation to get out of the hole he and Zak had dug for everyone was beginning to wear on him as well. The late-season blizzard had kept him out of work for an extra day, but he had called in sick the last two days. Someone needed to stir the pot and I meant for that someone to be me.

“When would you like to make these calls?” Guppy was eager to know. “I will need several minutes of preparation.”

“Tonight, preferably when Zak and Johnny are asleep.”

There was a yawn, a pause, then: “Hello.”

“Tess.”

“Dylan!”

“Shhhhh, keep it down.”

“Are you all right? There are cops—”

“I know, Tess. I'm fine. And no, I didn't do it.”

“You couldn't, Dylan, not what they say you did.”

“I loved her.” That was met with reverent silence. Tess was great like that. “Listen—”

“I'll go get Jeffrey.”

“Don't! I called for you. Zak is alive. He's with—”

Her voice cracked. “Can I speak to him?”

She began crying. I heard her put her hand over the phone's mouthpiece, but joy was a difficult thing to cover up.

“Tess . . .Tess, you okay?”

“Never better,” she sniffled.

“He can't talk to you now, but he'll be home soon.”

“What about you?”

“Forget about me. Just tell everyone Zak's okay. And tell my brother I know about Hernandez.”

“But—”

I hung up before she could put Jeff on the line or talk me into or out of anything. I waited for Guppy to give me the go ahead for the second call.

He tapped on the radiator and I picked up. The phone number I had given him was already ringing.

“You have reached . . .” the message began.

“Larry!” I screamed as loudly as I dared, “Larry Feld, pick up! Pick up the goddamned phone. It's me! Larry!”

“If you leave your name, number, time you called and a brief message, I . . .”

“Larry, pick up! It's me, Dylan!”

“ . . .If this is a business matter, you may reach me after 10:00
A.M.
at my office. The number is . . .”

“Lar—”

“Dylan, for chrissakes! I'm here. I'm here. Wait for the message to finish.”

As I waited, listening to the recorded Larry, I found myself feeling sorry that I had found him at home.

“Larry?” I screamed from nerves when the message was ended. “Are you there?”

“No, schmuck, I ran down to the deli for a cup of coffee while the message was running.”

“I need help, Larry.”

“Help!” He was incredulous. “You were never much for understatement, Dylan. From what my sources tell me, you need a miracle, not help.”

“I need you,” I said.

“For what?”

“To defend me, genius.”

“I don't do miracles, Dylan.”

“You gonna make me beg, Larry?”

“Maybe.”

“Consider yourself begged.”

“Not good enough.”

“What is it, Larry? You want me to swear I'm on my knees or something?”

He giggled. “I wouldn't care if you were standing on your head.”

“Then what is it?” I was really starting to regret finding him at home.

“Did you like me?” he asked.

“Did I what?”

He repeated: “Did you like me?”

“Christ, Larry, I feel like I'm in
Fiddler on the Roof.
What does it matter?”

“Maybe your future depends on it or maybe you would like your brother to defend you?”

“I didn't ask my brother. I'm asking you.”

“Answer my question,” he persisted.

“Yes, Larry, I liked you. What, do you think I was always sticking my neck out for you because I was Abraham Lincoln? I'm no hero. I did that shit when we were kids because you were different, driven, but not like Jeffrey. With him it was like success was preordained, like he had it coming. If I had what you had, Larry, I'd be the most famous fucking writer in the world, not some
putz
peddling his screenplay ideas like a Fuller Brush man. And you could make me laugh. That's it, you could make me laugh.”

“You're not a
putz
, Dylan, but I'm real tired of owing you.”

“That's the joke,” I told him, “you never owed me anything.”

“I'll take the case,” he said almost before I finished my sentence.

“Don't you wanna know if I—”

“You didn't do it, so shut up and stop wasting my time.”

“Okay.”

“Dylan, just one thing. Why do you need a lawyer?”

“I want to turn myself in.” The words came out, but I couldn't believe I'd said them. “There's some people I need to protect.”

“This have anything to do with your nephew? Don't tell me he whacked the girl.”

“Don't be an idiot, Larry.”

“I have to meet you and talk,” he explained, “then we can arrange terms with the cops to turn yourself in. Where are you?”

“I'm in—”

MacClough stepped out of the shadows and depressed the phone button before I could finish. I could barely make his face out in the dark, but I knew it was him. I continued to hold the mute phone to my ear like a stage prop.

“No one,” MacClough whispered, taking the phone from my hand, “is turning himself in. No one.”

I thought about arguing with him, but his face told me not to bother. That face of his made me think twice. MacClough wasn't an unreasonable guy. You could sway him sometimes. Then there were times, times like this, that you just knew he wasn't moving. You would have better luck lifting the Statue of Liberty on your back and walking it to Prospect Park. I was just as glad to go to bed right then. I wasn't so eager to surrender that I needed to throw myself at the cops in the middle of the night.

Cancer Face

For the first time since I'd gotten to Guppy's underground palace of Red paranoia, we ate breakfast together. I whipped up some omelets and bacon and toast, keeping Guppy as far away from the kitchen as possible. We dined in the bunker. The fact was, we had spent little if any time as a group. We all seemed far too preoccupied with our own guilts and ghosts to bother with socializing. And when we did attempt to make small talk, the small talk tended to degenerate into anger, the anger into silence, the silence into separation.

The only noise at breakfast was the scraping of silverware on cheap china. No one mentioned my phone calls or my plans of surrender, though I felt sure that Zak and Guppy had some sense of what was going on. The weather had broken finally and Guppy could no longer avoid work. With the better weather came the paper. As we ate, it sat folded and untouched like a boobytrapped centerpiece at your cousin Mary's wedding. Everybody wanted to take it home, but were afraid of what might happen if they made the first grab. I thought I caught Zak's arm twitch as if he had decided to go for it only to change his mind at the last moment.

“For chrissakes!” MacClough growled, unfolding the paper to show us the front page. “Take a gander.”

I looked like hell in black and white. Sometimes I think newspapers purposefully hunt down your ugliest photo before going to press.
The Riversborough Gazette
had nearly succeeded. It wasn't my investigator's license photo—Sorry, MacClough. It wasn't my bar mitzvah portrait—I'd burned all the copies. What it was was a head shot of me at Sissy Randazzo's prom. I sported an afro the size of a small asteroid, no beard, and a mustache that could have been a caterpillar, but never a moth. The grainy reproduction made it impossible to differentiate between my acne and freckles. The lapels on my polyester tux were piped in dark felt and wider than the thirteenth and fourteenth fairways at Augusta. The ruffles on my shirt added three inches to my chest and my bow tie looked like two yield signs welded together. The fact that one of my eyes was half closed when the picture was taken did nothing to enhance my already splendid visage and attire. It did, however, make me look like an escapee from an Ed Wood movie.

And all along I was thinking that Sissy Randazzo had forgiven me for grabbing her nipples that night and pretending to tune in Radio Free Europe. You never can tell. On the other hand, as Guppy was quick to point out, no one would ever recognize me now from that picture. We all actually had a pretty good laugh at my old self. MacClough stopped laughing first. We were quiet again.

“What?”

“They think you're here,” Johnny said.

“Here!” Guppy was disbelieving.

Zak jumped up. “Let's get—”

“Not in this house,” MacClough shoved Zak back down in his seat. “In Riversborough.”

“So what?” I was curious. “We know that from TV.”

“From what it says here, the cops are thinking of starting a house to house for you now that the weather's calmed down.”

“I'm safe down here,” I said.

MacClough sneered: “Yeah, Hitler had the same idea.”

“Maybe I should not go to work.”

“No!” Johnny and I chimed. “You go. We can't afford to raise any suspicions,” he finished.

Then something hit me. I don't know, it was like stepping into a hole that was camouflaged by fallen leaves. You're not expecting to fall and all of a sudden boom, you're down.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what, Uncle Dylan?

“Why here?”

“Why here what?” Guppy joined in.

“Don't mind him,” MacClough teased, “the pressure's gettin' to him.”

“No. Listen, we've been going round and around, asking ourselves a thousand questions, but not getting the answers we need. Why do you think that is? It's because we haven't been asking the right question.”

“So,” Zak wondered, “what's the right question?”

“Why here?” I repeated.

“Jesus, that shit again.”

“Why Riversborough?” I screamed at MacClough. “Why here? What makes Riversborough the Isotope capital of the northeast? What's here? Come on guys, what's here?

“The school,” Zak said.

“The ski resorts,” Guppy added.

“Canada,” MacClough chimed in unenthusiastically.

“Exactly.,” I counted off on my fingers.‘ “The school, ski resorts, and Canada's just a few miles north of here.”

John was unimpressed. “So what? There must be twenty places in northern New York within pissing distance of Canada that have schools and resorts of one kind or another. Look at Plattsburgh.”