Straight Cut (7 page)

Nova Scotia, that was the first point, even though it was halfway around the world from the point of origin. I insisted and since I was the expert who never failed, Kevin finally went along even though it cost more time and trouble. It’s always better to pick a point of entry where people aren’t overly worried about your kind. Off-loading in Nova Scotia was not going to be much of a problem.

Transport. Jerry Hansen, financed by Kevin, became owner of a sixty-nine Buick with a fresh paint job and a few thousand more miles left in the engine and a lot of wasted space which I redesigned to suit his evil purpose. I drew the pictures and even found a guy in Brooklyn to do the work. Jerry would drive and Kevin would ride and after the bay crossing they would be home free.

We sat down, the three of us, with the maps and the diagrams and so forth, and talked and argued until there seemed to be no uncertainties left. Jerry was alert but he didn’t seem overconfident and by the time they left I was reasonably sure that it would be okay. It would have been too, if not for the dogs.

It was ten days or two weeks before I heard anything. They’d gone up fast and got leisurely once they were on the island. The plan had them masquerading as a couple of buddies on a camping trip, and they had the clothes and equipment to play the part. I wasn’t in touch because I didn’t want to be. Then Jerry Hansen made all the papers by getting himself shot dead while resisting arrest at the stateside end of the crossing.

It was a small item and the story was dead two days later when Kevin showed up at my door. He’d spent most of the interim sitting in the back of a bus, but he didn’t much look it. He was clean and shaved and seemed very calm, though I found out later that he’d come to me because he was afraid to go home at first.

“So what the hell happened?” was the first thing I said. Kevin asked for a drink, not very typical. The story by him was simple enough. Everything had happened according to specs until the ferry to Portland. Then, at U. S. Customs there, they turned up with a pack of
K-9
dope-sniffing dogs. Kevin didn’t know why and I didn’t either. The most they could have been looking for were personal-use busts on tourists, nothing like what they got. Oh happy day for the
K-9
patrol.

“But what about Jerry?” I said then. “Nobody needs to be dead, a deal like this.”

“I know,” Kevin said. “He choked. It was like you said. I should have listened to you.”

“Choked how?”

“He ran,” Kevin said. “He just … ran. The dogs pointed and he hopped out of the car and took off. They gave him warning shots and he didn’t stop and that was it. “

“Why didn’t you stop him?”

Well, now. Kevin finished his drink. It turned out that Kevin hadn’t been in the car at all. Kevin had boarded the ferry and left it on foot and had not been anywhere near the car on either crossing.

I asked him why that was. Kevin told me that it had just felt like the right thing to do at the time.

“We killed Jerry Hansen,” I said.

“He killed himself,” Kevin said, and gave me a careful look.

“Hey,” he said. “I feel as bad as you.”

We sat there for a minute until Kevin thought it was time to change the subject.

“God,” he said. “I’m really in the hot seat now. I borrowed money for this deal, you know.”

Kevin was wrong. It wasn’t time to change the subject yet. I snatched him out of his seat and pinned him to the wall with my left hand and smashed three holes in the Sheetrock beside his head with my right fist. Cut hell out of my hand and if I’d hit him even once I think it would have killed him. To the credit of his nerve or foolishness, he wasn’t overly impressed, though he did go a little pale. I let him go and backed off.

“What’s that all about?” Kevin said, brushing off his shoulders.

“Tell me one thing,” I said. “On the way over. Did you see any dogs?”

Kevin didn’t answer.

“Did you see any dogs on the way over?” I said again. I was having trouble keeping my voice level.

“It’s not my fault,” Kevin said. “I don’t see why you think it’s my fault any more than yours.” And he never did answer the question. Kevin was never very much for direct lying. He always just sort of omitted things.

That was pretty much the end of me and Kevin. Up until the day before yesterday, that is. I had precious little sympathy for the spot he was in, though events seemed to prove that it really was a tight one. Kevin had borrowed money, and borrowed it from some extremely serious people. Well, at the time I thought I wouldn’t be sorry to see him get his kneecaps smashed or his fingers kicked in a drawer, so I didn’t offer any help or comfort. But in the end nothing like that happened. Kevin scuttled the picture and bankrupted Chameleon (for that part I had to sign papers) and I don’t know what else he may have had to do, but he came through it all without a visible scratch, untouched, so far as I could see, in either body or soul.

I had not touched him either, though in the technical sense I’d come quite close, and four years later I was still uncertain why I had jumped him in the first place. Certainly it had been far and away too late for me to make any useful defense of the innocence of Jerry Hansen. Maybe that was why I’d sheered off and hit the wall instead.

Because I couldn’t prove and didn’t even really know that Kevin stepped aside
deliberately
to let Jerry Hansen take the fall. That was only a suspicion, a feeling I had. Maybe Kevin had only had a feeling too, that something would go wrong and that it would be serious and that he would do well to step out of its way. That’s the same sort of instinct that gets you out of the path of a speeding car, and Kevin had all these reflexes refined and sharpened to a rare degree. And a reflex never stops to worry about bystanders. So it might be beside the point to accuse Kevin of any sort of deliberation at all, or give him credit for it either.

If that was the case, I reflected, sleepless on the plane to Rome, then Kevin was innocent, and could only be called innocent in any transaction he happened to be involved in. Though this innocence of his was simply a vacancy, a vacuum. And the winds which whirled around it could do all sorts of damage to anyone in the near vicinity of Kevin.

We
killed Jerry Hansen.
With my relentless flair for the morbid, I have often rehearsed the scene. I am confident that Kevin braced him well. Kevin made him feel and trust that fortune would favor him on this business, as it always seemed to favor Kevin’s ventures. Kevin would have made Jerry Hansen believe that he was untouchable too.

Then Jerry Hansen would have been so thoroughly convinced of it that he would not have believed in the dogs when they turned up, nor in the police or their guns or their power to harm him. So I can imagine him sliding out of the car and beginning to run, without any sense of genuine danger, in perfect faith that Kevin’s luck would save him.

But unfortunately, Kevin had only enough luck to cover himself on that particular day.

Kevin was and remains a very lucky guy, and I have always wondered how fully he was aware of his luck and how much he could control it, if at all. I was wondering about that again when the stewards pulled up all the blinds and startled the drowsy passengers with the sudden light of Italian morning. So I forgot about Kevin and his quirks. Now, with the Rome airport floating up under the wings, if I was going to worry about anyone’s luck it would be my own. And for the moment I felt lucky enough, equal to whatever wrinkles and twists might be waiting for me down below, in Rome, and
Come sei bella, Roma,
as the old song runs,
amore mio.

E
VER SINCE AIRLINE PILOTS
started to be younger than I am, since they have begun to resemble careless teenage drivers, I have been slightly nervous of flying in airplanes. But what really makes me nervous is the guards in the Rome airport, who really are teenagers, who have nifty berets and sashes and spit-shined boots, and who carry teensy submachine guns, usually at the ready. I stand in the long line for the passport check, my hands already beginning to tremble a bit (though this time I’m innocent), and I think, if one of these guys trips, it’s all over.

So I was really very uncomfortable when two of them came and pulled me out of the line. They were polite, but definite, and don’t forget the machine guns. They spoke to me in Italian, which I was too flustered to understand.

“Mi dispiace,”
I said, which means “I displease myself,” more or less.
“Non parlo l’italiano bene.”

The guards stopped trying to talk to me. By gesture they indicated that I should walk ahead of them through the checkpoint. Once through, one of them came up beside me and guided me to a small examination room, windowless and empty except for a long metal table and two chairs, one on either side of it. At the invitation of a guard I sat down in one of these, placing my books on the table before me. One of the guards then left the room and the other stood to attention against the wall behind my back. I sat straight, eyes front. Oddly, I felt calmer now.

And I thought I was too old to fit the profile anymore. Well, I suppose it was flattering, in its own weird way.

After five or ten long minutes what I took to be a customs inspector entered the room, shut the door, and sat down in the chair opposite. He was young too, middle-sized, black glossy hair, dark civilian suit, horn rims.

“Good day,” he said. His English was precise, mechanical, more correct than my own. “You will please show me your passport.”

I complied. He examined the passport without expression, left it open on the table, and looked up at me.

“For what purpose have you come to Rome, Mr. Bateman?”

“I am employed by the QED film company as an editor,” I said, helplessly imitating the anglicized formality of the inspector’s speech. “I have come to edit a film which was made in New York.” In support of this contention I produced a letter on QED stationery which Kevin had given me. The inspector skimmed it and nodded.

“How long will you remain in Rome?”

“One month, perhaps longer,” I said. “I cannot say for certain until I have seen the film.”

“I see,” the inspector said. “You will please show me your money. “

I handed over my traveler’s checks and he thumbed through them. While he was doing this a guard came in and put my shoulder bag on one end of the table.

“You carry a great deal of money for such a short stay,” the inspector remarked.

“One never knows when an emergency may occur,” I said. “Besides, Rome has become very expensive, I am told.”

“It is true. Rome is expensive. Where will you be staying in Rome?”

“I must speak to the director of the QED film company before I decide the matter,” I told him.

“I see. You will please open your suitcase.”

I unzipped the bag and the inspector proceeded to unpack it completely. Not an interesting or suspect item in the lot, though, only clothes, toothbrush, razor, phrasebook, the manual. The inspector spread these things across the table and then fingered the lining of the bag. I could not tell if he was disappointed or not.

“You will please empty your pockets,” he said, standing up. “Please also remove your shoes. “

There wasn’t a very good haul from the pockets either. Keys, change, a miniature calculator, date book, lighter, cigarettes, money clip. The inspector squeezed my shoe leather between his thumb and forefinger.

“You will please stand up and lean forward with your hands flat on the table.”

Then I received a medium-thorough frisking. He missed a couple of places, but I hadn’t held anything back. He finished and I straightened up and looked at him. Now he did seem a little perplexed.

“Excuse me, please, I must telephone,” he said. Then he headed for the door, taking my passport with him. In the doorway he paused to say, “You may put on your shoes.” While he was gone I did that and also put everything back into my pockets. Ten or fifteen minutes passed before he returned.

“You are expected immediately at QED,” he said. “I have taken the liberty to call for you a taxi.” He went to the table and began to repack my bag, doing quite a neat job of it, I noticed. When he came to the books he picked up a volume of Kierkegaard and flipped through it with some curiosity.

“You are a student of theology, I see.”

“Ethics, really. And in any case I am only an amateur.” He shrugged and put the books in the bag, then handed me my passport.

“Your passport has been stamped,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. Then the guard behind me said something in Italian which had something to do with money. It might have been “What about the money?” or “Did you find the money?” The inspector snapped at him and he said nothing more.

“Your taxi is waiting, Mr. Bateman,” he told me then. He handed me my bag and I slung it on my shoulder.

“I hope that this procedure has not occasioned you too much inconvenience,” he said.

“Not at all,” I said.

“I trust that you will enjoy your stay in Rome. I hope that your visit will prove both pleasant and profitable both for you and for the QED film company.”

“Thank you very much,” I said. I might have gone for a handshake too, but my hands had started to shiver again, now that it was over.

The good part about all this was that the cab driver didn’t even try to cheat me.

What with all the rush and confusion of this whole operation, I had not noticed or paid any attention to the address of the QED studio, which turned out to be not quite what I had expected. Given Kevin’s hints about the budget, I’d assumed the place would be somewhere along the Via Flaminia, or else to the east, in the newer part of the city. But the cab dropped me off on a narrow street just a bit above the Piazza Navona, what looked like a residential block.

But the number agreed with the QED stationery. I hitched up my bag and approached the front door. On the door frame there was a vertical row of bell buttons and beside the top one someone had affixed the QED letterhead, evidently cut from a piece of note paper, with a blob of Scotch tape. I pressed the button several times, but I could not hear it ring inside. After a decent interval I began ringing the other two as well. Making a pay phone call in Rome is no simple matter. You can’t use coins, you have to buy a
gettone,
you have to find somewhere to buy it, and then you have to find a phone, which in many cases will not work.