Running Dog (20 page)

Van wasn’t ready for solid foods. He was living on milk shakes and soup. He never complained, Cao noticed, but he was clearly more intense than usual. That was worse than complaints.

They listened to country music and kept on driving, through Lexington, Bowling Green, Memphis, Little Rock, Dallas, San Angelo, and on toward a pinpoint on the map called Ozona.

Road signs baffled Cao. The country grew rugged, empty and vast. He wanted to turn back. It was Van who kept them rolling. His cheek was still badly bruised. His upper lip was swollen and purplish. He referred to his road map constantly when he wasn’t driving.

In Ozona, the lone town in a sprawling county, they saw a Toyota that appeared to match the one they were looking for. It was parked in a service station, off to one side, away from the pumps. A young woman sat on the fender drinking a Coke. Using binoculars, Cao checked the license. D.C. plates. Numbers matched.

The rangers were parked alongside the town square. Van showed his partner the map, gesturing excitedly at the line
he’d drawn from New York, where they’d started, through a point tangent to the curve in the Ohio River near Huntington, where they’d been ambushed and humiliated, and down across four states and into Mexico. The line was straight and passed very near Ozona.

Cao was happy because Van was happy.

It was decided Van would telephone Earl Mudger. Van knew the place names and had an easier time pronouncing them.

Moll sat in the back of a checkered cab, thinking this was the best time of year, unarguably—the snap and clarity of autumn. The driver kept missing lights, mumbling to himself.

At one of these lights a car appeared on the right, a silver Chrysler. From the corner of her eye, Moll watched the driver’s window come steadily down. Reflections gradually vanished, replaced by Earl Mudger’s smiling face.

“I called.”

“Once.”

“I see,” he said. “You have a point system.”

“Did you leave a number?”

“There’s a point system in effect. I lost points.”

“I don’t think you left a number.”

“I called only once and I didn’t leave a number. I’m dead. They’re taking me away. A new low, pointwise.”

The light changed. Her driver edged the cab forward. Mudger kept pace so that his front door was even with the taxi’s rear door.

“My car or yours?” he said.

“I like it this way.”

“Tell you what.”

Horns were blowing. Her driver was mumbling again. They crawled up Central Park West. Mudger suddenly floored it. There was a split second of noisy tire-gripping and then the Chrysler sprang forward. Half a block away he
braked into a U-turn and went slamming into a parking space nose first. The door opened and he came ambling out, crossing the center stripes just as the taxi approached. He kept on walking, forcing the cab to stop, and then came around the right side and opened the rear door. Moll slid over in the seat. Mudger got in and closed the door as the sound of horns grew thick behind them.

“We want the park,” Mudger told the driver. “Flip an R first chance and make some circles in the park.”

He looked at Moll.

“You like these old cabs.”

“Character.”

“I don’t know how to talk to you. You know that? I think that’s why I’m here. To learn how to talk to you.”

“I thought our chat went fairly well.”

“You had me on the defensive,” he said.

“It was your territory.”

“You don’t know what to call me, do you? We have this little difficulty with names.”

“It was your territory. You managed my arrival and departure.”

“We have this little tension between us.”

They were in Central Park, heading north toward the Eighty-sixth Street transverse.

“Here on business, I think you said.”

“Lining up customers.”

“What for?”

“The Mudger tip.”

“Yes, your invention. I recall.”

“Steel,” he said.

Heading east they passed the volleyball courts where she’d played tennis with Selvy. These goddamn bastards. Who were they and what did they want?

“This is your territory,” he said. “Which means I don’t stand a Chinaman’s chance.”

“You’re still managing the arrivals.”

“Only my own.”

“You’re commandeering taxis. That little old man is terrified.”

“After we ride around a while and get all this dialogue out of our systems, I think we ought to have some dinner.”

“I’ve given it up,” she said.

“What else have you given up?”

“You guessed it.”

“Now why would you want to do a thing like that?”

“The humor’s gone out of it. It’s basically a humorous pastime, but lately the laughs have been few and far between.”

“Two myths about women. Women see the humor in sex and appreciate men who do the same. Women care more for tenderness than for the act itself, the hardware involved—techniques, proportions, etcetera.”

“Who’s talking about sex? I’m talking about movies. Going to the movies.”

“I said it, didn’t I? Don’t stand a chance. She left me gasping.”

“What is it about our sparring and jabbing that gives you so much pleasure?”

“Does it show?” he said. “I didn’t know it showed.”

“I think that’s called a shit-eating grin.”

“It’s my military smile. Can’t seem to shake it.”

“We’ve all read about the tough time you combat vets have had making the transition. One day you’re standing around a provincial interrogation center, supervising the torture of some farmer.”

“Better slow down,” he told her.

“Next day you’re back in the States, looking around, a little bewildered. It’s no wonder you’re still using the same smile. I know, the farmer was dangerous. The enemy was everywhere.”

“You’re way beyond your range.”

“True,” she said. “It’s prim and smug for noncombatants to
criticize Those Who Were There. I understand that viewpoint and sympathize with it. Still, I’ve always felt the best view is the objective one, and sometimes this is made sharper and keener by distance. By thousands of intervening miles. The suffering we witness on either side can amount to a lie. But you’re right, by and large. In my ridiculous urge to be fair, I definitely see your viewpoint. And I agree. I’m beyond my range. So let’s stay closer to home. Things I’ve heard and seen.”

The cab headed downtown along the western edge of the park.

“You and the Senator are chasing the same item. I know what it is, although I can’t say I fully understand the various motivations. Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that a man was killed because of it.”

“You think that’s important.”

“It merits consideration.”

“I don’t think it’s so important.”

He was crowding her a bit, edging her way, his left arm moving along the back of the seat.

“Are you learning how to talk to me?” she said.

“What?”

“You said you didn’t know how to talk to me. That’s why you’re here, you said.”

“I’m learning something. I’m not sure what it is. You think that’s important. A man was killed. Did you think that was important ten years ago? In the days of your demolitions expert.”

“You know about him. Of course.”

“Of course I know. Late, great Gary Penner. And there you were, a slip of a girl, in your greatcoat with epaulets. How many people did Gary put into orbit, plying his trade? You ought to know. Living with the man. Having lived with the man. A few night watchmen. A few passersby. Arm here, leg there.”

She looked out the window.

“You didn’t take part directly. Enough fun just watching from the sidelines. But you’ve matured, haven’t you? Terror isn’t the erotic commodity it used to be. We know too much. We’ve seen. We’ve taken up organic gardening.”

“You think I’ve matured, do you?”

“Somewhat,” he said. “To a certain extent. Enough so that you’ve drawn a line.”

The smile. The head tilting right.

“What you think is taking place, I’m flat-out telling you it’s not that way. To the extent I straightened out the alliances for you once before, that’s the way it still stands. There you go now. Putting me on the defensive again.”

“In the flesh you have your convincing moments. I’m the first to admit.”

“We have this tension. The air’s a little crackly. Maybe I shouldn’t let it bother me. Maybe it’s auspicious. It might be I’m misreading the thing completely. Sometimes tension’s to be encouraged. Sure, tension’s a bitch of a stimulant sometimes. See, down home everything’s so smooth, so mellow, a man can be put off by the little mocking noises he hears in a place like New York. Sure, these little whipcracks, these hard edges. Personal relations work like machinery. The air is taut. People know what they want. There’s a rasp, a little machinelike whine you hear in conversations in restaurants and shops. Women walk around with little numbers clicking behind their eyeballs. I wonder what they’re seeing in there. My impression, New York women, they’re always keeping something in reserve, holding it back, saving the little extras. Who for, who for? Their analysts. That’s why bald-headed Jews always look so happy. Nobody keeps a secret from a bald-headed Jew. They get all the leftovers, the most interesting parts, the greasiest and wettest and sweetest and best. Let me figure out how to decipher this suspense between us. I want to see if I can find out what it is people enjoy about these uneasy codes they keep sending into the air, all this nervous strain. Tension’s an edge, that must be it, a goading force, a heightener.
It betokens something good. Maybe there’s a wild time in the works. What do you think? Who knows? Some all-out supersonics.”

He started edging toward her again. Twilight. The cab moving uptown now. Fifth Avenue’s taupe stone buildings. That surfer’s gleam rising to Mudger’s face. His lustrous blue eyes seemed to have been attached to him independent of his other features. They were devices of a sensitivity and distinctness she didn’t associate with Mudger, although she was willing to consider the possibility she was wrong. All she had to do was recall the number of varying moods he’d already composed and demolished in the relatively brief time they’d been in the taxi together.

She would have liked to suspend judgment, somehow to sabotage her own capacity to perceive the crux of things. When she was with Mudger earlier, in Virginia, sitting under the scarlet oaks, she’d felt they were communicating from either side of a semitransparent curtain or theatrical scrim. It was a weakness of hers. She liked drifting into strange terrains. It was what she’d had for a while with Selvy. That other son of a bitch. That son of a bitch in entirely different ways.

But things were clearer now. She was able to follow this man’s line of attack, or that man’s, or the other’s, nearly to the end. The only real question remaining was a rhetorical one, a lament, uttered solely for effect. Who are these bastards and what do they want?

They passed a horse-drawn cab, four tourists huddled in the chill. Some kids chased each other across the road, causing the driver to start mumbling. Mudger sat with his head tilted back. She noticed the cuts and crosshatchings on his fingers, the eroded skin near his thumbnails.

“Who are you sleeping with these days?” he said.

“That’s what my father used to ask me.”

“Was he jealous?”

“Just sophisticated, that’s all, and a little stupid.”

“You should have slept with Percival. He knows interesting people. You could have had some sneaky fun. Junkets galore. You could have written a book. Lloyd’s into everything. He’d love having someone like you to show off for. We talk, Lloyd and I. Not directly. There are channels. It never hurts to stay in touch.”

He was getting ready to deliver another preemptive speech. Moll had noticed during their first meeting how he tried to establish prior rights to convictions and views he assumed she held. A tactic she found amusing.

“People are born conservative. They have to learn how to be liberal. In substance, at the bedrock, we’re all of us conservative. People at the helm, I’m talking about. Lloyd’s an instance of this. Slowly, surely reverting. Progress, mild reforms, old Lloyd’s made a name. But those are the gleanings, the accidents, the random accretions. It all slides off eventually. It becomes sheer biology at a certain point.” Here he smiled thinly, as though anticipating a joke on himself. “You return to your origins. What’s old age but a kind of jaded infancy? You get physically smaller. You start to babble. You become sexually neuter.”

“Poor Lloyd Percival.”

“Now, myself, I’m getting out before any of those dire things can happen to me.”

“Yes, you’ve said.”

“The corollary to secrecy and power in this country is self-pity. I want to avoid that if I can.”

The meter read twenty-one dollars.

“We’re not getting anywhere, Earl.”

“At least you call me by my name.”

“It signifies an end to tension. To all these energies you tell me you detect in the air.”

“I only sense what’s there.”

“Ride’s over.”

“That’s regrettable.”

“Your specialized bullshit versus my debased sensibility.”

“She’s warming up at last.”