Tony and Susan (17 page)

Susan Morrow reads on, no pause here, elated by this capture of Ray, looking forward to what will come. Feeling good, she would like the enjoyment of a good fictitious rage.

Thinking into Ray. The man locked surly in a cell across the street, Tony Hastings not sleeping in the cold motel, full of the words behind Ray’s dirty little smile. Drawing them out: I remember you. You’re the fella let us drive off with your womenfolks. If you can’t take care of them better than that.

He went back to the police station in the morning, had breakfast in the cafeteria with Bobby Andes. Andes’s eyes were blood-streaked, the deep grooves in his face pulled the skin back from his teeth, fury and frustration had cut deep around his eyes and nose. He carried the tray like an old man, with a limp Tony had not noticed before. His skin looked like tarnish.

‘Shit,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I said fuck.’

‘That’s what I thought you said.’

He leaned over his scrambled eggs, shoving in with his hand what spilled from his mouth. When he got to his third cup of coffee, he leaned back in the plastic chair.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘I want to take your friend Ray on a little memory-jogging tour. I want you to come too.’

‘Where to?’

‘The sightseeing spots in Bear Valley.’

He felt some dread. ‘You need me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What for?’

‘It might do him good.’

Tony Hastings guessed Bobby Andes had some other purpose too, but could not think what it might be.

The guard with his pistol, whistle, and keys unlocked the steel outer doors and cell door and brought out Ray Marcus, wearing green army fatigues, no hat, his baseball uniform gone. He had the bald forehead Tony Hastings remembered.

‘You again,’ he said.

‘We’re taking you for a little ride.’

They went to the big tri-colored police car with bulbs on top and a painted shield on the side. The policeman Tony remembered as George got into the driver’s seat with Tony beside him, while Bobby and Ray got in back.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Sightseeing.’

Ray looked at Tony. ‘Why’s he coming?’

‘He’s got an interest in this case.’

‘I don’t want him. You can’t bring him.’

‘What’s the matter, Ray? I can bring anyone I like.’

‘You can’t bring him. He’s prejudice. He tells lies.’

‘Sorry Ray, there’s nothing you can do about it.’

‘You’ll lose your case that way.’

‘So much the better for you, eh Ray?’

George driving, they came out to the main valley road and headed back whence they had come yesterday. Andes said:

‘Speaking of rights, Ray, I want you to know I got a tape in this car. It’s hearing me tell you this.’

‘Great.’

‘We’re going back to some places you may remember. You can help by telling about them. If you don’t remember, Tony does.’

In the front seat, Tony leaned against the side and watched Ray and Bobby in the back. Ray was clicking his tongue like a school teacher, shaking his head how immoral this was.

‘If you think I can tell you something about who killed this guy’s wife and brother, you’re wasting your time.’

‘Brother, Ray?’

‘Whatever it was.’

‘Daughter, Ray, daughter. How could you confuse a daughter with a brother?’

‘How the hell should I know what it was?’

‘That’s not as clever as you think, Ray. In fact it’s dumb and I’m ashamed of you. Why, it’s good as a confession.’

Ray holding himself in, eyes looking around. ‘Whaddaya mean, good as a confession? What are you talking about?’

‘It’s stupid, Ray. It’s stupid to make out you’re dumber than you are.’

Ray looking away, out the window, in a sulk.

‘You know damn well it was wife and daughter. You didn’t have to be there to know that.’

Out the window. ‘I never noticed. I don’t pay much attention to the papers.’

‘You didn’t need the papers, Ray. Tony told you yesterday.’

‘I didn’t pay much attention to that neither.’

‘And in our interview last night, I must have mentioned daughter twenty times.’

‘All right, all right, daughter. You take me for an idiot?’

‘Calm down Ray. We’re not out to get you.’

‘Like hell you ain’t.’

‘It will go easier for both of us if you tell us the truth.’

‘I’m telling you the truth.’

‘Both of us, Ray. That includes you. You cooperate, we get you better terms.’

‘Better than what?’

‘Better than what you’ll get if you don’t.’

‘I told you why it couldn’t be me. What more do you want?’

‘You sticking to that story?’

‘Christ, how could I stick to it if it’s true?’

‘Tell Tony. You expect him to believe it?’

‘I don’t give a fuck what he believes.’

‘I do, Ray. He believes you murdered his wife and kid. Tell him what you say you were doing that night.’

‘You tell him.’

‘I forget. Already I’ve forgotten what you said.’

‘You bastard.’

‘Tell me again, Ray. I’ve got the tape. Maybe it will help me remember.’

‘I told you, you got it on the other tape. I was with Leila. All night, you know what I mean. Watching television, Braves over Dodgers six to four. Look it up, damn you. A couple of beers, then bed, woowoo. Ask Leila. Have you asked Leila?’

‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘You’d better ask her. It’s your job to ask her. It ain’t fair to me if you don’t.’

‘Like I say, Ray.’

They turned to the right, a black road into the woods, which began to climb the mountain, turning back and forth. Tony remembered it, the turns, his breath coming short.

‘I have a question about your alibi, Ray. What night did you say that was?’

‘July nineteen, I told you. You can look up the baseball score if you don’t believe me.’

‘You’re sure it wasn’t the twentieth or the twenty-first?’

‘I know when it was.’

‘Let me tell you my question. My question is where you was the night of the twenty-sixth? Last year, July twenty-sixth.’

Ray confused. ‘What are you asking? It wan’t that night.’

‘No. I just wonder if you remember where you were that night.’

‘Hell, that’s a year ago, man.’

‘Well how come you remember the night of the nineteenth if you don’t remember the night of the twenty-sixth?’

Discomfort. Muddy eyes, scared. He thought of something. ‘Maybe it was my mama’s birthday.’

‘Was it your mama’s birthday, Ray? We can look that up too, you know.’

Hesitate. ‘I said,
maybe
it was, I mean it might of been. It could just as well of been. But it wasn’t.’ He thought again. ‘It was in the papers. That’s how I remembered.’

‘You’ll have to explain that to me.’

‘I mean, we saw it in the paper next morning. Leila and me, we saw how this guy’s folks was killed, and we said, How interesting, and what was we doing when that happened, and we was watching the ballgame and afterwards we was in bed.’ Suddenly Ray looked at Tony. ‘I’m sorry you lost your folks, man, that’s a shame. But I didn’t have nothing to do with it, believe me.’

‘The paper next morning, Ray?’

He thought. ‘The morning after that.’

They passed the white church and a moment later went
fast around a curve where the trailer was still in the woods above the ditch. The sight shocked him in the chest, and it occurred to him to watch Ray, who glanced at it, you could see the glance and the pretense not to notice and the settling in his face right afterwards. Thinking into Ray, who was thinking you’re such wise guys you don’t even know where it happened. Tony looked at Bobby Andes whose eyes were watching his prisoner’s eyes.

They came to where the other road went down the hill, where he had gone down that night, and in another moment turned up the drive into the woods. The road seemed first broader and then narrower and wilder than Tony remembered, with the grass high in the middle and green bushes leaning into the track to scratch the car, and sharp turns around boulders and trees and gullies. Almost a year had passed since this place located itself in Tony’s mind, and it was hard to believe he had only been here twice. Since then, the leaves had fallen into it, the branches had gone bare, the heavy mountain snows had covered it and new green had appeared on everything, the scrub and undergrowth and all the high branches. All this green was new, a different growth from what he had stumbled through and recapitulated after, and it reminded Tony of the bleeding green agony of his grief, forgotten, left behind in the time between, the shame making everything since then a masquerade of neglect or a long foolish hibernation in the locked house of his living.

He heard the feigned stupidity of the voice in the back seat, ‘What’s this place?’ He remembered the tyranny of the same voice in the woods: Mister, your wife wants you. He looked again at the face looking out the window at the trees, he stared at it trying to force the eyes back to him, compel them, look at me. He realized that Bobby Andes was looking not at Ray but at him, with a slight grin, just a suggestion of one.

It was Tony, not Andes, who said, ‘You know this place.’

Now Ray did look at him, a long stare before he said, ‘Honest to God I don’t.’ Not stupidity now, though. Now the voice was unmistakably ironic, and the stare was not stupid or confused. Tony Hastings was looking at his enemy as if no time had passed, and he did not have to think into Ray because the words were clear by themselves: What’s this, man, you think you’ve got me? Why fella, you and your cops, you’re just digging a hole for yourself because you ain’t got a case, only your word which won’t stand up in court without nothing to back it up.

They came to the end. New meadow grass covered all where the police cars had been. Tony saw the deep loss in the bushes of what he did not see. ‘Want to get out, Tony?’ Andes said.

All right, yes. He went over to the bushes, where he remembered having seen. As he approached he was suddenly aware of the danger of finding something belonging to them, overlooked by the police and left lying all winter. The possibility frightened him, he thought he should stop but he couldn’t stop. He stood next to the bushes and realized he did not know exactly where it was. Bobby Andes took him by the elbow. His eyes were shining.

Tony Hastings went to the window and looked down at Ray in the car. ‘I want to know,’ he said. ‘Were they already dead in the car when you brought them, or did you kill them here?’

‘I didn’t kill nobody, man.’ The voice was soft and mocking.

‘Nothing to say to us, eh, Ray?’ Andes said.

‘I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time.’

Tony Hastings did not think so. He was more and more aware of power he had acquired to do whatever he liked. They left the
place and drove out. When they got to the road, Tony pointed to the ditch and said, ‘That’s where you tried to run me down.’

Ray was grinning all the time now, enough for Tony to see but not Bobby Andes. If you ain’t got sense to get out of the road. What was you doin in these parts anyway? I thought you was going to your summer place in Maine.

They turned up the hill road and down the other side of the ridge, and at the curve George pulled onto the gravel by the trailer.

‘Now what,’ Ray said.

‘Care to look inside?’ Bobby Andes said.

‘What for?’

‘Let’s just take a look.’

They all went, Tony lagging, an unexpected shock. George the policeman held Ray by the arm and Bobby Andes took a key and unlocked the door. Tony in fright, about to see this place constructed so often in imagination, but unprepared, must he go in yet? Bobby Andes switched a light inside, the light drew him on. The walls, which he had imagined draped with a print cloth like the curtain in the window, were blank and gray. There was a small stove by the door and a bed with brass bedposts where the fingerprints must have been and a trashbox full of newspapers.

‘Raped them on the bed I presume,’ Andes said.

‘I never raped nobody.’

‘Come on Ray, we got your record.’

‘God damn, the charges were dropped. I never raped nobody.’

Tony went to stand in front of Ray next to the bed. He was surprised how small it was, like a cot with bedposts. And Ray a shade shorter than he was. ‘I want to know, Ray,’ he said. ‘The exact story of what you did to them.’ He was surprised at the pressure of his words like steam driving him.

‘You’ll have to ask somebody else, man.’

‘I want to know what they said. I want to know what Laura said and what Helen said. I have no one to tell me but you.’

Looking at Ray’s face close, the bloody eyes, the teeth too big, the ironic grin. Why man, that’s private between them and me. You was out hiking. If you ain’t got the sense to come out of the woods. It’s none of your business, man.

‘I want to know how you killed them. I want to know if they knew what was happening to them. I want to know, damn it.’

Naw you don’t, man, someone like you brought up with your antipathy to violence and fighting, it might make you sick to the stomach.

‘What they suffered, Ray. I want to know if they hurt. I want to know what they felt.’

You don’t want to know that now, you know you don’t.

‘Answer me, bastard.’

‘Mister, you’re out of your mind,’ Ray Marcus said. The voice that said Mister. Why shit, fella, you ain’t got no cause to complain. I thought you were done with them.

The eyes went on talking. I told you she wanted you. If you’d a come when we called. If you can’t care for them better than that. Hell, I thought I was doing you a favor.

The face was in front of him, the small hard chin like a baseball with a gash in it, the misshapen teeth, the leer. That, and quick think, if he could, yes he could, by surprise before they could stop him, with all his strength, and
that.
Bobby Andes grabbed Tony by the arms pulling him back. ‘Easy, easy.’ George had his gun drawn, then reached down to where Ray was sprawled on the floor against the stove. There was blood on Ray’s face, his mouth a mess. One second. Then Ray lunged up from the floor and George snagged his arms, twisting
them behind, buckling him over, and Bobby Andes got between. Handcuffs, quick. Ray with his hand on his mouth, blood all over.