The Autumn Dead (24 page)

It took me two or three long minutes to say it. "I'm sorry."

"'Right." She started to cry softly.

I leaned over and kind of kissed her arm. "I don't mean to take it out on you."

She kept facing the wall. "I get so damn discouraged about us when you push me away like that. You've been doing it since you walked through the door."

"I want to ask you something."

"What?" Sniffling now.

"I want to know if you'll let me inspect your underwear."

"You bastard," she said.

But she laughed. Or at least she sort of did.

S
everal times the next morning I thought of calling Edelman. Once I even got into a phone booth. Dialed. Waited while they put me on hold. Ready to tell him what I knew. But then I hung up and got back in my car.

In the afternoon I went into the American Security offices to pick up my paycheck.

Bobby Lee gave me some fudge that she'd made for Donna, and Diaz, the kid who'd put the choke hold on the Nam vet, gave me some grief.

In the back room, Diaz said, "You ever seen these?"

His smirk said it all. He was going to pull something out of his windbreaker pocket that was going to irritate the hell out me and he was going to love it.

"Diaz, I'm really not up to it today. All right?"

"Here," he said.

He brought his hand out. Over his knuckles were the metal ridges of brass knuckles.

"No more choke holds, man." He looked proud of himself. "Just these babies."

I put my hand out, palm up.

"Give them to me."

"What?"

"I want them, Diaz, and right now."

"Bullshit. They're mine. I paid for them with my own money."

I didn't say anything more. Just went over to the intercom phone and picked it up.

"Hey, what're you doing?"

"I'm going to fire you, Diaz."

"Hey asshole."

"Don't call me asshole, Diaz. You understand?" I punched a button. "Bobby Lee. Is he in?"

Diaz grabbed my shoulder. "Jesus, all right, here they are."

"Never mind, Bobby Lee," I said.

Diaz threw the knucks down on the table. They clanged.

"Enough people are getting hurt and dying these days, Diaz. We don't need to help it along."

I heard it in my voice and so did he. The same tone I'd heard in Evelyn Dain's voice. A kind of keening madness.

Diaz surprised me. He said, "You okay, man?"

"Why don't you just get out of here?" I sensed tears in my voice.

But Diaz, bully-proud in his bus driver's uniform, just stood there and said, "Man, listen, we have our arguments, but they don't mean jack shit. I mean, you're a decent guy. You know?"

I sighed. "Thanks, Diaz. For saying that."

"You let shit get to you all the time. You shouldn't. I worry about you. Everybody here does, man. The way it gets to you."

He came over and patted me on the back. "Can I tell you something?"

"All right."

"You look wasted. You got the flu or something?"

''No."

"Bad night?"

"I'll be all right, Diaz. I appreciate your concern."

But it hadn't been concern at all because as he pushed between me and the table, I saw his right hand go behind his back and lift the knucks and start to slip them into his back pocket.

I brought my fingers up and got him hard by the throat, hard enough that he couldn't talk.

"You got ten seconds to get out of here, Diaz, you understand?"

He nodded.

"And if I find you're using any weapons, including knucks or choke holds on the job, you're out. You understand?" He nodded again.

When I let go, he said, "You need some nooky, man. Or something. You need something, man, and you need it fast."

He said this in a raspy voice. I'd dug into his throat pretty hard.

When he got to the door, he said, "Some night, Dwyer, you and me are going to face it off. You know that?"

But I didn't say anything to Diaz. He was young and hot and worried about his honor. I was thinking of Karen Lane and Dr. Evans and Gary Roberts and wondering if there was any honor left that was even worth worrying about.

I
n my apartment I clean and oiled my .38, checked the snap on the shiv I'd once lifted off an extremely successful pimp, and then slid on Diaz's knucks just to see how they felt. They felt good. They really did, and I knew I wanted to use them, in just the same eager bone-smashing way Diaz wanted to use them.

It was five o'clock then and I watched "Andy Griffith" on cable and wished there were a real Mayberry and Aunt Bea and Opie and Floyd the barber and Ang and Barney because I'd go down there and see them all and maybe stay a year or two. And then it was six o'clock and the news came on, AIDS and teenage suicide and crooked local politicians, and I started staring out the window at the spring rain, chill and silver on the window, and the whipping night trees beyond. And then it was seven and cable ran a "Three Stooges" episode before the ball game started, and I just sat there staring at Shemp's face, a face that even as a kid had made me sad, the gravity of the eyes, the frantic deals he tried to make with a world that needed to make no deals at all with his kind. Then I picked up Karen Lane's copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's and looked through it for the fifth time, hoping to find something enlightening in it. But it was nothing more than it seemed to be—the favorite book of a girl from the Highlands who saw in Holly Golightly the perfect escape, the one person who seemed to do exactly what she wanted—lie, cheat, steal, care about no one but herself—and be loved for it. Holly might be fine for gentle little books and arch romantic movies, but I'd known a few Hollys in my days and they weren't forgiven or indulged forever. They were punched or even killed or they just moved on, and by age thirty-five the things in them that had been cute or fetching just looked silly and empty, and a meanness overtook them then. Go into half the bars in this town and you'll see women who used to be Holly Golightly. Now they're just drunks with evil mouths and sour memories. "She ought to be protected against herself," said a character on page 104, and I thought about that, about how Karen had needed that. And then I started wondering about the suitcase again and what was in it and thinking that maybe she was trying to protect herself with whatever it held. Then it was eight o'clock and I put a bowl of Hormel chili on the hot plate and crunched up about ten saltines in it. Then it was eight-thirty and I had two cold generic beers and went back to checking my .38 and my shiv and my knucks and knowing I was ready, knowing I needed this. Then it was nine and I went down and got in my Toyota and drove out to Pierce Point.

T
he small scarred houses of the highlands were dark in the rain as I followed the street leading to Pierce Park. The business district came next, and even in the rain glow of neon and wet pavement it looked shabby, the windows with beer signs and the porno shops with long posters of fat strippers promising the least redeeming of pleasures.

Two blocks later I was up in the hills, driving on a two-lane asphalt road that cut through deep hardwoods. The trees looked slick with rain, as if they'd been varnished. On my right, in a clearing, I saw playground equipment yellow in the sudden jut of my headlights, and then a park pavilion with all its benches and tables piled up for winter. Nearby, I cut my lights and pulled off the side of the road, into a grove of timber, so that my car could not be seen from the asphalt. The radio was off. No kind of music could soothe me now. The rain banged on the metal roof. The windows steamed over immediately. Somewhere on the far side of the woods I could see the sprawling lights of downtown, a radio tower with soft blue lights as warning for airplanes a watercolor against the gloom. I checked everything in the big flap pockets of my green rubber rain jacket. Shiv. My .38. Diaz's brass knucks. From the flask in the glove compartment I took a long drink of Jim Beam. It felt hot in my throat but it felt good, and by the time it reached my stomach it felt wonderful. I put up the hood on my jacket and took another quick drink, not so deep this time, and got out of the car.

Where I wanted to go was a quarter mile away. I kept to the timber. The night smelled of dead wet leaves and a skunk that had been killed within half a mile or so. I could see my silver breath. The most real sound was my breathing. I carried just enough extra weight that moving through undergrowth winded me. Twice more I took hits from the flask. To keep me warm, I told myself. A dog came up, some kind of collie whose coloration I couldn't tell because he was soaked. He looked me over and apparently didn't think I was worth bothering with. He went right, deep into the timber, and disappeared. A few times I glanced up at the quarter moon behind gray clouds promising a continuation of the rain. It was a very bright moon, luminous enough to cast long shadows here in the timber. My heavy work shoes crunched pop bottles, beer cans, the plastic odds and ends left here by children playing on sunny days. Then I came to the edge of the timber and stopped, making sure to keep behind the cover of the trees. Here was Pierce Point.

Lovers had moved on to other places these days, but back in the fifties, this was the preferred spot for making out. If you were a male you came to show off your girl, and if you were a rich male you came here to show off both your girl and your car, some of the fancier ones running to chopped and channeled black '49 Mercurys, the kind James Dean drove in Rebel Without a Cause, or red street rods with white leather interiors and soft white dice hanging from their rearviews, or customized '55 Chevys with glass-pack mufflers that turned motor sounds into symphonies of power and prowess. The times I'd come up here with Karen Lane, we'd come in my '49 Ford fastback, and once or twice I'd had the impression that she was vaguely embarrassed by the car, as if it marked us—which it did, I suppose—as being from the Highlands, when obviously the rest of the kids were from the better areas of the city.

On the northeast corner of the Point was the edge of a cliff that was a straight quarter-mile drop to pavement below, a road used mostly by heavy trucks on their way to the power plant that squatted like a shining electric icon from a terrifying future. This was where Sonny Howard had dropped to his death.

I held my Timex up to the moonlight. In ten minutes the exchange was to take place. I had no idea how it was supposed to happen, just that it was. I sat in the cold and rain of the timber and waited. In a few minutes I'd meet Karen Lane's killer.

They came in Forester's new Mercedes.

They came right up the muddy road to the middle of the clearing and stopped, leaving their headlights on.

I got out my .38.

The rain was heavier now, almost cutting with ferocity, and in the yellow headlights it was the color of mercury.

The Mercedes just sat there for several minutes. I could see the shapes of three silhouettes through the steamy windows.

Then the driver's door opened up and Ted Forester got out. He wore a London Fog raincoat and a golf hat. In his black-gloved hands, he carried a black briefcase.

In the downpour, he walked to the center of the Point, where a formidable smooth boulder lay, a vestige of the Ice Age, and a perfect surface on which to write the name of the girl you loved. By now thousands of names must have been put on that rock.

Forester walked over to it and looked around as if he knew very well he was being observed, and then he set the black briefcase on top of the boulder that was maybe three feet wide and two feet tall.

Finally, I started to see what was going on here.

Forester looked around some more, hunching under the battering rain, and walked back to the Mercedes.

He got inside and slammed the door.

The Mercedes was put into reverse almost at once. It swept magnificently back onto the muddy road and then proceeded to back all the way out of the Point to the asphalt road, taking the warm civilized illumination of its headlights with it.

Then it was dark again, the quarter moon gone entirely behind clouds now, and there was just the rain and the smell of cold dead leaves. I took out my flask and had another belt. Not a big one or one that was going to impair me. But one I needed.