Tony and Susan (23 page)

‘I’m just a ordinary simple fella, maam,’ he said.

‘I’ll bet you are.’

She said to Tony, ‘Do you know what he plans to do tonight?’

Tony didn’t.

‘Police work,’ she said. ‘Out here? God knows when any of us will get to bed.’

‘Damn right, lady, jeez I need my sleep,’ Ray said.

She ignored him. To Tony: ‘Maybe
you
could help Bobby.’

‘Me?’

‘You’re a professor, he admires your kind of people. If you could talk to him, calm him down.’

He felt sick, because he thought of Bobby Andes as helping him. The other way round had never occurred to him.

She saw his look and shrugged her shoulders.

Shackled Ray from the floor spoke up. ‘Hey lady, how about helping me?’

‘I want nothing to do with you,’ she said.

‘It’s cruel. You said so yourself. I got a crick in my back, I can’t move, I feel like a fuckin animal in the zoo.’

‘You’ll have to wait until Bobby comes back.’

‘Christ, he ain’t coming back.’

‘What do you want? There’s no way I’m going to let you go.’

‘Jeez I ain’t asking you to let me go. Just unlock my fuckin legs and let me sit in the chair. You got the gun. What more do you want? I ain’t going no place.’

Tony didn’t want to look at Ingrid, for he knew she was looking at him. He knew she thought they should undo Ray’s leg irons. Probably he thought so himself, for he felt ashamed looking at Ray on the floor. It made him uneasy, though.

‘What do you think?’ she said.

‘Let’s wait for Bobby,’ he said.

After a while a car approached, the light shining through the window. Reading in her chair, Ingrid muttered, ‘Thank God.’

Car door outside, footsteps light on the gravel, then the screen door opened and a young woman in a red miniskirt walked in. She looked confused. Ray looked up. ‘Well,’ he said.

‘My God, it’s Susan,’ Ingrid said.

The girl named Susan looked at Ray on the floor. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

‘Where’s Bobby?’ Ingrid asked.

‘How should I know. Isn’t he here?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Leslie kicked me out again.’

Ingrid laughed. ‘Well if you’re willing to sleep in the woods or something.’

The woman named Susan was looking at Ray’s leg irons.

‘Are you playing a game?’

‘A little police work here. Meet Tony Hastings and Ray Marcus. Ray Marcus is a prisoner.’

‘A
real
prisoner?’

‘Hi Susan,’ Ray said. ‘Pleased to meet you Susan.’

‘Tony is a visitor from out of town. Ray is charged with murder.’

‘Not anymore,’ Ray said. ‘They dropped the charges.’

Susan had a lot of makeup marking off the parts of her face. Her eyes were surrounded by dark color. She looked at Ray and shrank a little.

‘Listen Susan,’ Ray said. ‘Tell your friends they can get me off the floor now.’

‘What’s he talking about?’

‘He doesn’t like the leg irons.’

Susan gasped. She had just noticed the gun in Tony’s lap.

‘Are you a policeman?’ she said.

‘Tony’s the victim of the crime Ray is charged with.’

‘I thought you said the crime was murder.’

‘Christ, they think I’m going to jump them. They got the gun and the cuffs, and they still think I’m going to jump them.’

‘Oh shit,’ Ingrid said. ‘Let him up, for Christ sakes.’

Tony Hastings was glad for her decisive words. He knew their precautions were excessive, and they made him feel cowardly. The only thing was to be careful. They did it deliberately, with Ingrid holding the gun at Ray’s temple while Tony unhooked the hand from the bed frame, then locked the wrists together, and then released the irons. He stepped back and took the gun from Ingrid, and Ray struggled to his feet and sat in the chair.

Ray looked resentfully at them all. ‘Jesus,’ he said to Susan, ‘they think I’m from outer space.’

‘What’s Bobby going to do to him?’ Susan said.

‘Police work,’ Ingrid said. ‘My God, what’s keeping him?’

‘Where is he?’

‘Making a telephone call. He’s been gone a whole hour.’

‘He’s crazy,’ Ray explained to Susan. ‘She was telling Tony here, he’s out of his mind and she don’t know what to do.’

‘You be quiet, you don’t know the least thing about it.’

‘You’re worried he’s going to get his ass fired.’

‘You shut up. You don’t know anything.’

‘I’m not so dumb, lady.’

‘You’re a monster. You’re a murderer. You’re a rapist. You’re a
horrible
creature.’

‘Don’t be a bitch, lady. It ain’t nice.’

Susan has no time for more than a passing thought on the appearance of her own name on the page or to remember that this particular Susan was named by Edward, who didn’t have to do that. There’s time only for a moment to savor the melancholy of Bobby’s camp and think of the pervading grief in all summer places, cabins or cottages in the woods or on the shore, Penobscot Bay or the Cape in childhood, Michigan now, which is not just the memory sadness when childhood is over and the place is gone, nor the generic sadness of boarding up the windows, but sadness of the height of the season, of bright sightseeing days as well as foggy ones in the hammock, of August silence, retreat of the birds, the goldenrod, the goodbye in every greeting. The sad vanity of measuring time by summers, eliding winter and the rest of things.

Assert the present. Snow covering the car tracks in the streets. On the ice, arcs and figure eights with shrieks and music under the high roof. Henry lagging along on buckled ankles watching Elaine of Astolat’s fairy ass in her short skirt sail away a hundred miles an hour into the center with the big boys. As the new cycle begins.

So there was Tony Hastings sitting with a gun in Bobby Andes’s camp, watching Ray Marcus on the cot with handcuffed hands in his lap. There was Susan in her red miniskirt in the wicker chair. There was Ingrid Hale fussing in the alcove. Ray was looking at Susan’s legs with a grin on his face. They were waiting for Bobby Andes, wondering what had happened to him. Tony was thinking, what keeps that man prisoner is
his
belief that
I
would use this gun to kill him if he tried to get away.

Susan explained herself to Tony and Ray. ‘I am Bobby’s cousin. When Leslie kicks me out I come here.’

‘Come any time you like,’ Ray said.

She was conscious of his eyes on her thighs and she looked at him boldly. ‘Hey mister,’ she said. ‘Who did you kill?’

‘I didn’t kill nobody.’

She asked Tony. ‘Who did he kill?’

‘He killed my wife and daughter.’

Her eyes opened. ‘When did he do that?’

‘A year ago.’

She looked again at the man on the cot, who was instantly different, alien or another species. In a whisper as if to pretend he could not hear though of course he could she said, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ Tony said. ‘I saw him do it.’

He felt shock in the room, and Ray leaned forward. ‘Why, you’re a liar, mister, and you know it.’

So Tony told his story again, conscious of his real audience at last on the cot, pretending not to hear, but he felt as if too much telling had made it no longer quite true.

She murmured, ‘How horrible, how horrible for you.’ Then, ‘Are you back to normal now?’

He almost said yes, then saw the gun in his lap, in the dark strange cabin, with Ray across the room, and said, ‘No.’

‘No?’

He thought, I want to murder everyone in this room. No, that’s stupid. He changed his mind. ‘I’m all right,’ he said.

She cheered up. ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m a professor of mathematics.’

She didn’t have anything to say about mathematics. He asked, ‘What about you?’ He had a notion she was disreputable, maybe a prostitute, and he wondered how she would put it.

‘I’m a singer.’

‘Really? Where do you sing?’

‘Right now there are no openings. I work in the Green Arrow.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a bar,’ Ray said.

‘It’s a night club,’ she said. Ray smirked.

She yawned. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

‘Bobby, Bobby, it’s so late,’ Ingrid said. She looked at Susan. ‘Maybe you should go to bed.’

‘Maybe you should all go to bed,’ Ray said.

‘You want to sleep in the bedroom?’ Ingrid asked Susan.

‘Sorry I can’t stay, myself,’ Ray said. ‘I got my sweetie waiting for me.’

‘Bobby won’t mind?’

‘To hell with Bobby,’ Ingrid said.

‘That’s telling him,’ Ray said. ‘Way to go.’

‘I don’t want to take your bed,’ Susan said.

‘Use the cot,’ Ray said. ‘Sleep here. We won’t mind.’ He looked at Tony and grinned. ‘Will we, Tony?’ Tony remembered he hated him.

‘Maybe Tony wants to sleep too,’ Ray said. ‘You and Tony want to lie down on the cot? I won’t mind, Ingrid can guard me, okay Ingrid?’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Susan said.

‘Come on, baby, I know the girls in the Green Arrow. Sweet chickies. Ain’t they, Susan?’

‘Just ignore him,’ Ingrid said. She asked Tony, ‘Do you know if Bobby was planning to put you up for the night?’

‘I have a motel,’ Tony said.

‘I can sleep on the floor if I have to,’ Susan said.

‘You can sleep on the cot like I said,’ Ray said. ‘With him. You can turn out the lights and go to town. Me and Ingrid won’t mind.’

‘You shut up,’ Susan said. ‘For your information, asshole, there aren’t any chickies in the Green Arrow, I’m the
only
girl there, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She turned to Tony. ‘Excuse my language. But an asshole is an asshole.’

Ray was restless, squirming in his chair. He kept moving as if to get up, and every time he did that Tony tightened his grip on the gun. He kept thinking about what this power he was supposed to have depended on. One human being with the means to hold another down: this gun, that human being. He thought, Do I remember how to use it? If I had to, could I aim well enough to hit him before he got me? If he gets up and moves around, can I threaten to kill him? And could I actually do it? And if I did it, what would be my legal excuse? The question startled him, he had not thought of it before. Obeying the lieutenant’s orders, if those orders were outside the law? An act of murder to support an act of kidnapping? He thought, Why, I can’t use this gun. I might as well not have it.

Again he thought: the only thing that keeps us safe is, that man doesn’t know what I’m thinking. He still believes I could
use it. That’s the difference between him and me. As soon as he finds out, we’re finished.

The dim webby cabin, he could smell the mold in the wood. Abandoned by Bobby Andes into deep trouble, which according to Andes was not trouble but a clever plan, working fine, Tony bystander and beneficiary. The difference between Bobby Andes and him. He thought Thank God for Ingrid. She sees how it is, she’ll back me up. If only Bobby Andes would hurry up.

He thought, maybe we should put those leg irons back on. Maybe he should suggest that to Ingrid. If it was safe to suggest it in Ray’s presence.

So thank God again a moment later when they heard another car and again the light through the window, and the car door, and voices, male and harsh, and gravel footsteps to the front of the cabin. A man with a black beard came in, the lieutenant behind him with his gun. The man with the beard was Lou Bates, Tony told himself, drawing inferences since he did not instantly recognize him. He was slouching because his wrists were handcuffed behind his back.

Lou Bates looked at everyone, trying to figure it out.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Ray said.

Bobby Andes gestured Lou to sit next to Ray on the cot. He stared at Susan. ‘What’s this, a goddamn party?’

‘Leslie kicked me out again.’

He glared at Ingrid. ‘Did you invite her?’

‘Where the hell have you been, Bobby?’

‘I said, Did you invite her?’

‘She came because she always comes.’

‘Is it all right?’ Susan’s voice was high and tiny.

Tony was wondering when Bobby would notice they had freed Ray from his leg irons.

‘I had to go to town,’ Bobby said. ‘Had to get him myself.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I didn’t know. I thought George would be on duty. I thought George would bring him out.’ He was full of irritation because other people were so stupid.

‘This man?’ Ingrid said. ‘Who’s he?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Why couldn’t one of those other guys bring him out?’

‘They weren’t going back,’ he said. He spoke with the contempt of a man talking to someone who had no business being there. He stood in the middle of the room looking around at the crowd, his face pale and full of disgust. ‘Jesus, I’m sick.’ He sat down on the wicker chair. The look on Ray’s face was watchful and curious. Bobby never did notice Ray’s legs. He calmed down deliberately and looked at Susan. He said, ‘I’m sorry to be unhospitable but I’m doing some police work here. I wasn’t figuring on visitors.’

‘Mr. Policeman –’ Ray said.

‘I count on you to maintain the confidentiality of what you see. I may have to send you women into the bedroom later on if you don’t mind.’

‘Mr. Policeman, can I go to the bathroom?’

‘Oh shit.’

‘Yeah, shit. That’s right, Mister Policeman, and pretty quick too.’

Bobby snarled. ‘Get up,’ he said. He led Ray out the back. They heard them clumping across the leaves in the back.

Susan looked questioningly at Ingrid and Tony. Ingrid raised her eyebrows. Lou Bates stared at the floor. Finally Susan turned to him. ‘Can I ask who you are?’ she said.

He didn’t answer. She repeated her question, and he still
didn’t answer. Tony said, ‘That’s Lou Bates. He was the other one who killed my wife and daughter.’

Lou raised his eyes and looked gloomily at Tony, then back to the floor. Susan said, ‘Oh. I think I begin to get it.’

Ingrid had a book. ‘You better read,’ she advised Susan.

After a while Ray and Bobby came back. Ray’s handcuffs were off now. He sat on the cot next to Lou, and Bobby sat in the wicker chair. Ray looked at Ingrid and said pleasantly, ‘What you need, lady, is more lime out there. It don’t smell too good for the women and children.’

‘Shut up,’ Bobby said. He turned to Susan and said, ‘So, can I trust you?’ He was finishing the point he had been trying to make before Ray’s shit interrupted him.

‘Who, me? Sure, I guess.’

‘Hey,’ Ray said. ‘This don’t sound legal to me. All this confidential shit, that don’t sound good at all, mister.’

‘Ha,’ Bobby said. ‘You worried about legality, are you?’ His lips were the same color as his cheeks, he was breathing heavily, and he grinned. ‘I told you not to worry about it.’ He leaned back in the wicker chair and looked at them as if enjoying the sight.

Tony looked at them too, Ray and Lou, the same Ray and Lou, prisoners here because of him, paying for what they did to him, since what happened last summer in the woods had not ended then but was still unfolding in ways he never imagined.

‘Okay you guys,’ Bobby said.

‘Hey Lou,’ Ray said. ‘What did you tell this guy?’

‘I didn’t tell him nothing.’

‘He says you implicated me in the murder of this guy’s wife and kid.’

‘Shit man, that’s what he told me about you.’

Ingrid Hale clicked her tongue. She turned her back and read her book fiercely.

Ray laughed, meanly. ‘You think he was trying to play a trick on us, hey?’

Lou looked at Bobby, outraged, shocked. ‘You’re supposed to be the law, man. What kind of bullshit is that?’

Bobby Andes laughed. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘You fellas got anything to say to each other?’

‘What’s to say? You told us a bunch of lies.’

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, an officer of the law,’ Lou said. He sounded really aggrieved, disillusioned.

‘Let that be a lesson to you.’

‘What?’

‘The lesson is, everybody in this room knows what you done, so it don’t make the slightest bit of fuckin difference who implicates who. I don’t give a shit what you tell me.’

Nobody said anything.

‘I
know.
That’s all I need. Got that?’

Ray said, ‘So what are we doing here?’

‘That’s
what you’re doing here.’

‘What?’

‘Because I know what you done.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘You will. I ain’t got anything to lose. Consider that.’

‘You threatening us?’

Bobby Andes laughed again. The laugh was sickly and choked and nasty. ‘I’m dying of cancer but I expect you to die first.’

‘Don’t take it out on us, man.’

‘We’re going to have a party.’

Ray looked uneasy now, uneasy. ‘Man, you better watch it,’ he said.

‘Tell you something, babies. You thought you were free,
Ray, but look at you now. Here you are. Imagine that. Jeeze I feel sorry for you.’

No answer.

Bobby Andes stretched himself, as if he had a belly ache, a kink in his middle. ‘You’re gonna be kind of sorry you bothered a guy with womenfolks in a car. You may prefer to die, guys. You’re kind of like garbage, you know, you kind of stink. Skunks, yeah, that’s you. Not exactly live skunks, more like dead skunks.’ He was twisting and twisting.

Tony Hastings was embarrassed though Bobby was speaking for him, saying what he thought Tony was thinking. But Bobby was ill.

‘What’s the matter, Bobby?’ Ingrid said.

He looked at Ray Marcus and said, ‘Have you ever had the stomach flu? Have you ever had the stomach flu on top of cancer of the insides?’

Ingrid whispered, ‘Bobby?’

Bobby Andes to Ray Marcus: ‘Don’t you grin at me you fucking bastard.’

Ingrid to Bobby: ‘Maybe you ought to lie down a while, Bobby?’

Bobby Andes to Lou Bates, ‘You’re dead, you son a bitch.’

Ingrid touched Bobby’s shoulder.

‘You ever had a bullet in your gut?’

He took deep breaths. She brought a wet washrag and put it on his forehead. ‘Ah shit,’ he said. He shoved it aside and turned to Tony.

‘I’m thinking of killing them now,’ he said.

‘Killing them?’ Jolt for Tony, the two men too, who stiffened.

‘I ain’t quite made up my mind. Do it now or catch them by surprise later on. You know what the law demands. They
think they can lawyer their way out of it, but on that point they’re mistaken, the death sentence has been passed, it’s only a question of when it will be executed.’ He looked at Ray and Lou. ‘You know the meaning of that word, don’t you, guys? “Executed,” it means carried out, like when they carry out the body after the electric chair. I wish I could tell you your mode of execution, Ray my man, because it’s much worse not to know, but I’m afraid I can’t.’ To Tony again as if to explain, while the two men listened. ‘You see, if I let them go, it’ll be rough on these poor guys, not knowing how it will come. The police are all around, they have a busy schedule of work. Ray could get killed resisting arrest, for instance. Or breaking into a jewelry store with some guy he thought was his pal. Coming home to his house late at night, he might get shot by a burglar in the kitchen. Who knows? No telling who you can trust, no telling at all.’