We Were the Mulvaneys (39 page)

C
hance follows design.

He wanted to believe that. It did seem to be so, after his many weeks of fevered planning.

Sitting now, at eleven that night, moon-bright Saturday eve of Easter Sunday, in his Jeep at the rear of the crowded parking lot of Cobb's Corner Inn where Zachary Lundt and three of his high school buddies had been for the past forty minutes. The Jeep's motor was off, no headlights. Beside Patrick on the passenger's seat, hidden by a strip of canvas should anyone pass close enough to glance inside (but no one did, or would: Patrick had parked just far enough away from other vehicles, partly on the grass) were Mike's. 22-caliber Winchester rifle, several yards of rope, a roll of black duct tape, a powerful flashlight and a fishing knife with a double-edged eight-inch blade acquired at a Sears in Whitney Point, New York weeks before. Except for the rifle all were anonymous items, randomly and anonymously purchased.

You would not really use that would you P.J. The knife, or the gun.

You would not be so cruel, or so desperate.

A half dozen times Patrick climbed out of the Jeep to stretch his legs, pace restlessly about in the damp gravel. The parking lot was a busy place: vehicles arriving, departing. No one glanced at him, he might have been anyone. Older than twenty-one, probably in his thirties. The army fatigue jacket added bulk. The bristly beard was not a college student's beard. Patrick was restless but not at all anxious. He might even have whistled to himself, through his teeth, thinly.
Whistle while you work!
It was only practical advice to be cheerful, optimistic. That was Mom's fervent belief and Mom was the daughter of farm people, knew you had to persevere with a smile until you couldn't and then it no longer mattered, you're done. You're gone. But until that moment have faith. Patrick was surprised, he was so calm: his thoughts floated on a placid surface without ripples, no rough current, no urgency. He knew what he would do though he did not yet know when he would do it, what the exact steps would be.
Chance follows design.
A state of pure waiting, suspension—as before an exam for which you've thoroughly prepared and are anticipating now you'll be thoroughly tested, and excel.

It was a clear, startlingly bright night. Smelling of wet grass, gravel. Beery fumes and greasy cooking odors from a vent at the rear of the tavern. Earlier, Patrick had slipped inside Cobb's in the wake of a company of noisy young people, stood unobtrusively by the bar searching for Zachary Lundt. His nostrils pinched at the smells of beer, cigarette smoke, barbecue sauce, pizza.
COUNTRY & WESTERN DISCO
was advertised but there was no disco tonight, only deafening rock music from the jukebox. Was it Plastica? Patrick wondered, bemused. He wouldn't have known. Hadn't given Plastica a second thought. Rock bands all sounded alike to him, pulsing hammering thrilling noise that worked itself into your heart like a screw.

Patrick knew that Zachary Lundt was at Cobb's. An hour before he'd telephoned the Lundts to learn the whereabouts of his friend Zach, “Don Maitland” just home from Owego, or was it Oswego, eager to join his friends for the evening, and Mrs. Lundt who'd answered the phone in a girlish voice had seemed to remember him, or maybe hadn't, in any case provided the information Patrick needed. Later, maybe the rest of her life she'd regret it but—who could have known, at the time?
We never suspected. How would we have suspected!
Mrs. Lundt had told him Cobb's Corner at ten, asked if he knew where that was, and Patrick said, “Know where Cobb's Corner is? Hell, Mrs. Lundt, everybody knows that.”

Patrick stood not quite at the bar, not a customer but just someone who'd strolled in looking for a friend. His wool cap pulled down low on his forehead, wearing now his daytime glasses, and the collar of the army jacket turned sharply up. In the beard that felt like thistles on his face, in his steely-blank expression, he believed himself disguised. In fact, there was no one who looked at him for more than a glancing moment, not even one of the bartenders. There was no one in the tavern, so far as Patrick could determine, whom he knew, except, in a booth against the farther wall, Zachary Lundt and his friends. They were drinking beer, laughing together, smoking.

It was the first time Patrick had seen Zachary Lundt since high school graduation. The day when, unable to avoid passing close by his sister's rapist, he'd fixed his gaze on Zachary's forehead, his face taut and expressionless as now. If the other boy had blushed, or stared defiantly at him in turn, Patrick hadn't noticed. So frequently had Patrick imagined Zachary since October, since his obsession had overcome him, he had to force himself to realize, no, he hadn't seen Zachary, not in person, since June 1976. And Zachary did look slightly altered: hair differently styled, face thicker at the jaws. Still there was the sly foxy narrowness at the eyes. The heavy-lidded eyes. Girls had found him attractive and Patrick supposed he could see why. Except how broken-backed Zachary appeared, leaning his elbows on the sticky tabletop, laughing his hyena-laugh with the others. He was smoking a cigarette, expelling smoke from his grinning mouth. Patrick remembered—hadn't he smashed his fist against those teeth, once? Hadn't he drawn blood? Maybe not. Maybe it hadn't happened yet. He felt a thrill of excitement in the pit of his belly. In his groin. It was a sensation Patrick Mulvaney had never had before. Except possibly in his dreams.

Zachary Lundt. Now a student at SUNY Binghamton, studying business administration. Out drinking with his old high school pals Ike Rodman, Budd Farley, Phil Spohr. Pizza crusts lay scattered on the table before them, beer cans, glasses. Crumpled napkins. They all deserved punishment, not just Zachary. He'd wait for them in his Jeep and when they left Cobb's, one by one he'd pick them off with the rifle. Execution of justice. Calm, methodical. Irrevocable.

Was Patrick Mulvaney capable of such an act? A forced move, one time only. You wouldn't know, would you, until you tried?

Sometime, maybe. And the father, too—Morton Lundt. Even the mother, Mrs. Lundt. They too were involved. They too were guilty. Defending the rapist, slandering the victim. That breathless admission
Mort and I did appreciate it—your loyalty
.

Patrick backed off from the bar, unseen. Left Cobb's, returned to the Jeep, to wait. Thinking how unsuspecting they all were—his enemies. They had no reason to be otherwise. He himself could not have said why now, why such passion on his part now, after such a long time. The Mulvaney men had long shirked their responsibility, that was it, and it was unsaid—Mike Jr. had fled all the way to the Marines where he boasted he was a new man now, soon to be shipped to the Mideast. Michael Sr. had fled—God knows where. But there was Patrick. He was not the Mulvaney man you'd have expected to exact revenge but there was no other, and no choice.

 

At 12:10
A.M.
at last Zachary and his friends appeared, leaving Cobb's by the side door. Beneath the lights of a concrete walkway bordered by crude stucco latticework. The young men stood talking and laughing before going to their cars—Patrick might have picked them off one by one. How unsuspecting they were, unknowing. Oblivious of danger. Patrick thought of the fantastic wingless birds of New Zealand that had intrigued the young Charles Darwin. No mammal predators for millennia—a heaven of birds, of countless species. As if all of creation were exclusively birds, yet birds not birds—unable to fly, helpless against predators when predators arrived. Easy prey.

Zachary crossed the lot to his car, a Corvette. He walked carefully, as if resisting the impulse to sway. He'd been drinking beer for hours, he was drunk. His friends pulled out of the lot while Zachary stood fumbling in his pocket, searching for his keys—no, it was a pair of glasses he took out, and put on, after his friends were gone. So Zachary needed glasses to drive. So his vision wasn't perfect.

Patrick started the Jeep, waited until Zachary's Corvette pulled out of the lot and followed him. A left turn, a quarter mile and a right turn, headed for Zachary's house in north Mt. Ephraim near the Country Club. Zachary drove cautiously, not very steadily, weaving in his lane. He seemed unaware that only his parking lights were on, not his headlights. Patrick waited for the strategic moment—as Zachary turned onto Depot Street, through a darkened stretch of overgrown vacant lots, boarded-up warehouses—before overtaking him, passing him on the left and blocking his way. The Corvette came to an abrupt halt. Patrick leapt from the Jeep, rifle raised to his shoulder and aimed at Zachary's head. “Don't move! Stay where you are.”

As if, taken so utterly by surprise, mouth gaping in cartoon astonishment, Zachary Lundt could have behaved otherwise.

Quickly Patrick came around to the passenger's door of the Corvette and climbed inside, keeping the rifle trained on Zachary Lundt's face. In mere seconds that face had drained of blood. Zachary appeared paralyzed. His staring eyes, the slack of his mouth, his very posture that seemed to have caved in upon itself—he was in a state of panic, totally disoriented. “Don't shoot, please don't shoot,” he begged, “—oh please don't shoot me, you can have my w-wallet, my car—anything you want—
please don't shoot
—” His voice cracked, there was no volume to it. He'd begun to tremble convulsively so Patrick felt the tremors of his body as if they were his own.

Is this all there is to him?
—the thought pierced Patrick like a knife blade.

After so long, years—this is all?

It was not a thought Patrick could retain. He had his plan, his strategy. He would not be deterred.

Patrick said, “Drive up ahead. See that underpass? On this side of it, turn in, drive the car up that lane, go ahead. Go!”

For a dazed moment Zachary sat unmoving. Patrick was losing his patience. He tried to speak reasonably, “Come on, drive. You won't be hurt if you do as I say.” Patrick's voice was deep, guttural, a voice to match the beard, the wool cap, the army jacket. “Come on, for Christ's sake
move
.”

Zachary whispered, blinking rapidly, “P-Please don't hurt me—don't shoot me—you can have my m-money—my car—please!—I won't t-tell the police—I won't tell anyone—I p-promise—”

There was a sharp smell of urine. Zachary had soiled himself.

“Drive where I told you!” Patrick said. “Don't be such a coward.”

Like a disgusted elder brother, Patrick prodded Zachary with the rifle barrel. In his endlessly rehearsed scenarios of this event he would never have pleaded with his enemy, would never have touched his enemy with the gun; the Zachary Lundt of his imagination, wily and quick as a fox, would have seized the barrel and wrenched the gun out of Patrick's grip and shot him point-blank in the face. But this was a different Zachary Lundt entirely.

He didn't seem to recognize Patrick. His eyes brimmed with tears behind his glasses, he seemed incapable of focussing upon Patrick's face.

“I said—don't be such a coward!”

“Let me go—please! Don't—”

“Drive up to that lane and turn in, now.”

Zachary fumbled at the transmission, the steering wheel as if he'd forgotten how to drive. He was sobbing to himself, his breath in shuddering gasps. But he did manage to follow Patrick's orders. He drove the Corvette haltingly forward to a lane that led off Depot Street into a desolate back lot of junked cars and other debris. The moonlight was vivid: the dump looked like an impromptu gathering of fantastical creatures. Hulks of rusted vehicles, part-burned mattresses, gutted sofas and chairs and broken lamps, refrigerators toppled onto their sides with doors gaping open like mouths. Patrick was reminded of Darwin's first glimpse of the Galapagos Islands, the bizarre species and subspecies of animals he saw, a young man just a year older than Patrick.
What does it mean, chance has singled me out for such visions?

Beyond the dump was a railroad embankment. A quarter mile away, the dimly illuminated water tower,
MT. EPHRAIM
in ghostly white letters. More vivid were scrawls emblazoned by teenagers,
CLASS OF
'78 in bold Day-Glo orange. Patrick wondered if anyone from the Class of '76, reckless enough to climb the tower, had left a boastful memento behind. Before tonight he might have credited Zachary Lundt and his friends with such exploits.

Patrick's initial plan for
executing justice
against his enemy was to execute it here. Whatever he'd do to Zachary, he would do here. Later, he'd changed his mind. He had a new idea, incompletely formed. But this spot, hidden from the street, in a sparsely inhabited part of Mt. Ephraim, was ideal for leaving Zachary's car without driving it far. With luck, the Corvette wouldn't be discovered for a day or two. And then only because a search would be out for its owner.

It was as if Patrick had spoken aloud. Zachary pleaded, “Don't hurt me, please?—you can have anything you want, I p-promise I won't tell anyone—”

“Oh for God's sake shut
up
.” Patrick was both disgusted and embarrassed.