Tony and Susan (16 page)

Caught in the excitement of closing in on Ray, Susan at the chapter break has almost forgotten her caution back there when Tony was discussing the death penalty with Francesca. On the question of revenge, Susan’s own answer is simple: I’ll kill anyone who harms my children. Send me to jail. Tracking down Ray is exactly what she wants, it thrills her. She hopes she’s not being manipulated into some ideology she doesn’t approve.

They watched Ray Marcus get into his car down beyond third base, a dirty green Pontiac, fifteen years old. ‘Let’s see where he goes,’ Bobby Andes said.

They had come in Tony Hastings’s car, parked near by. ‘I’ll drive,’ Andes said. There was congestion where they turned out to the main road, Ray’s car stopped ahead. They followed him into Hacksport with two cars between. They waited while he parked at a package store and came out with a six-pack, and watched without moving as he drove on two blocks, then turned right. ‘He’s going home,’ Bobby Andes said. ‘Let’s go.’

They came to where he had left his car by a hydrant on a narrow one-way street parked with cars all the way down. Number 19, he walked on the left sidewalk with the six-pack
and his baseball glove. There was a row of small white two-family houses along the street. Andes drove up beside him, with parked cars between. He leaned out the window. ‘Hey Ray.’

Ray looked at him.

‘Where you going?’

He stopped, said nothing.

‘What you doing?’

He stood there behind the intervening car, staring.

‘Come here, I want to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘I want to ask you some questions.’

‘Fuck you.’ He turned and went on.

‘Hey look at me. Don’t make me come and get you.’

The man stopped again. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Bobby Andes held up a plastic case with a piece of paper in the window. His other hand was in his coat.

From a distance Ray squinted at the document Bobby Andes held. He looked around. He shifted his feet. ‘What’s that?’

‘Come and see.’

He came, slowly, between the cars to Bobby’s window, bent over, took a look. He took a new look at Bobby Andes in sunglasses, at the grim face under his hat. Tony Hastings watched Ray, closely, closer than he had ever been.

‘What’s it about?’

‘A few questions. That’s all. Get in back.’

‘What for? I ain’t done nothing.’

‘Didn’t say you did.’

‘Ask me here,’ Ray said.

‘In the car. Okay?’

‘Okay okay!’ He shrugged his shoulders as if he were humoring Bobby Andes and opened the back door of Tony’s
car. Bobby Andes stepped out and got in the back seat with him.

‘You drive,’ Andes said to Tony.

From the back seat, Andes directed Tony where to go. They went down to the end of the street.

‘Where you live, Ray?’ he said.

‘Right there,’ Ray said, looking at a small white house with two doors and two mailboxes on the porch. He craned his long neck to look as they passed. Suddenly Tony felt sorry for him.

‘A few questions to help us out,’ Andes said. ‘Turn right, Tony.’

They drove two or three blocks in Hacksport and came out on the main valley road where the sign pointed to Topping 10 and Bear Valley 25 and Grant Center 40.

‘Live alone, Ray?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘It don’t matter.’

‘I live with someone.’

‘I know you do. You live with a woman.’

‘So why do you ask?’

‘You married?’

‘Hell.’

Bobby Andes laughed. Tony driving could not see Ray’s face. He was conscious of the large white baseball uniform in the back seat. All he could see in the rearview mirror was his baseball cap. He felt an ugly responsibility: that man the substitute right fielder, picked up and tortured because of me.

‘The reason I want to talk to you, we got a friend of yours in Grant Center, maybe you can help us with him.’

No word from Ray.

‘Name of Lou Bates, he’s in jail, maybe you heard. Two
friends in fact, only one’s dead. Steve Adams, you know him.’

‘Never heard of either of em.’

‘That’s funny,’ Bobby Andes said. ‘You sure you never heard of Lou Bates?’

‘Don’t know nobody by that name.’

‘Maybe you know him by a different name. Think about it. At least you heard what he’s in jail for.’

‘Nah, what’s that?’

‘You hear about the holdup at the Bear Valley Mall supermarket? You musta heard about it, the guy getting killed.’

‘Why are you asking me? I never heard none of it.’

‘Like I say, that’s strange. There’s a bunch of folks says you and those two was good friends.’

‘What folks?’

‘Folks. You know a place in Topping called Herman’s?’

Long pause before Ray said, ‘Yes.’

‘You know it? Good. You hang around there a lot?’

‘Not a lot. Some.’

‘You hang around there with other guys?’

‘That doesn’t mean I know who they are.’

‘No? They’s folks say you was hanging around at Herman’s with these here Lou Bates and Turk Adams. You know anything about that?’

Another long pause from Ray. ‘Is that who they was?’

‘You want me to believe you don’t know who they was?’

No answer from Ray. Silence in the car, wind blowing by the windows, the long straight road through new green fields in the valley floor between ridges. Heading for Topping, then Bear Valley, with Ray. Tony Hastings must not forget his hate, this man in his head for almost a year.

Ray said, ‘What do you want from me?’

‘For the moment, just some questions.’

‘I ain’t done nothin.’

‘I ain’t said you did.’ Another windy silence. Tony could hardly hear the question: ‘What would you have done that you say you ain’t done?’

‘Wha-at? You trying to trap me or something?’

Bobby Andes laughed again. ‘What kind of trap could I set, Ray? How could I trap you if you ain’t done nothing?’

‘It’s dumb.’

‘What?’

‘You’re asking dumb questions. What do you want to know? Go on, ask me.’

‘I just want to know what you know about that holdup your friends was involved in. If you heard anything, I mean. Or know anything. Only you say they wasn’t your friends, only maybe you know them under a different name. So what do you say, Ray?’

Tony Hastings listening longed to hear an opening in Andes’s questions, yet he felt uncomfortable about what was going on. Conscious of the baseball uniform and the right fielder wiggling his hips at the crowd, while he tried to remember a man in the woods.

‘I don’t know nothing about it. They didn’t consult me.’

‘You did know them?’

‘If they was the guys at Herman’s, I must of. Slightly.’

‘Under a different name.’

‘I don’t remember their name.’

‘Okay, now we have established you’re a liar –’

‘I ain’t no liar. Why do you call me a liar, goddammit?’

‘Forget it. I notice a reluctance on your part to tell the truth. There’s no reason you shouldn’t know Lou and Turk. Lots of people knows them wasn’t in that holdup with them. Only
one
of their friends was in it.’

No sound from Ray.

‘You any idea who that was?’

‘Not me.’

‘No rumors, no nothin?’

No answer.

‘
I
heard a rumor,’ Bobby Andes said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Some folks is telling me you was the third party.’

‘I thought you said it wasn’t me.’

This pity Tony was feeling for Ray, it shocked him. He tried to remember. For example: Mister, your wife wants you.

‘I never said that, did I? I never said it was you, I never said it wasn’t.’

‘Hey,’ Ray said. ‘Are you questioning me?’

‘Why yes, that’s what we’re doing, ain’t it?’

‘You ain’t read me my rights.’

‘You know your rights, Ray.’

‘You’re supposed to read em to me.’

‘I read you your rights. Didn’t I, Tony?’

Did he? Here’s a jolt, if Andes expects Tony to play along.

‘Hell. It ain’t legal.’

‘You’ve heard them before, Ray, you know them by heart. Any you want me to repeat?’

‘It ain’t legal. I’m supposed to have a lawyer.’

‘Informal questions, Ray, you’re helping me out. I haven’t charged you with anything yet. If you want a lawyer, we’ll have to take you to Grant Center and book you for something.’

‘Looks like we’re going to Grant Center anyway.’

‘Right now we’re just driving around. What do you want a lawyer for if you ain’t done nothin?’

‘Damn right I ain’t done nothin.’

‘I’ll get you a lawyer when we get to Grant Center.’

‘You said we wasn’t going to Grant Center.’

‘Changed my mind. Since you got rights on your mind.’

Pity for a man who slammed his car off the road, muscled Laura and Helen into a trailer, dug a hammer in her head, but now is just a dumb jerk outclassed in cat and mouse. Tony Hastings tried to rebuild his villainy, find the devil in him.

‘Aw come on, man, you don’t need to take me to Grant Center. I’m answering your questions, ain’t I?’

‘Well I don’t know. Seems like I don’t know no more about that holdup than I knew before.’

‘It’s sure a mystery, ain’t it?’

‘Well frankly Ray, I don’t think it’s no great mystery. Nah, I got most of the facts pretty straight. Tell you what. There’s something else I’d like to ask you about. You recognize this car?’

‘What car?’

‘This. The one we’re in.’

Tony Hastings felt a chill in his ribs. His ugly responsibility for having brought the man here, which he would now have to face. Either that or some cat glee in getting closer to the point. Both, probably.

‘This car? What should I recognize this car?’

‘It ain’t familiar to you? It don’t remind you of nothin? It don’t take you back?’

‘Nohoo man, why should it? It may be taking me somewhere but damned if I know where.’ Joke. Think scum, Tony said. No compassion.

‘You don’t remember driving it?’

‘What is it? Was this mine? I never had a car like this.’ Clearly he did not remember it.

‘How about the driver?’

‘What?’

‘The guy driving, my friend Tony there. You remember him?’

‘I can’t see him. Make him turn around.’

‘Stop the car, Tony.’

Tony Hastings slowed and stopped on the gravel shoulder by a long straightaway. He felt the heavy thumping strokes of his heart, with shocking lustful fright, and other things. And a test to take he had forgotten would be so frightening.

‘Turn around and let him see you.’

A truck roaring shook the car with a blast of wind. Tony turned around. The man in his soft white baseball uniform with CHEVROLET on the front, the face under the beak of his cap. The eyes looking out at him, the small mouth with the teeth too large. What he remembered but not quite like this.

‘Who’s this guy?’ Ray said.

‘You don’t remember him?’

‘Can’t say as I do.’

He was chewing, a barely visible motion of the jaw, while he stared at Tony, wary, unrecognizing. Tony saw everything, the bulge of his eyes, the red beads in their corners, the little red veins in the eyewhites, as well as nose, nostrils, hair in nostrils, the crookedness of the two front teeth, one protruding, chipped – looking at him, waiting for him.

‘You remember him, Tony?’

‘Yes.’

‘Refresh his memory.’

‘I remember you,’ Tony said.

‘Tell him where it was.’

‘Last summer, on the Interstate, near the Bear Valley exit.’

Ray’s eyes looking at him, staring, waiting.

‘Tell him what you remember he did.’

Looking at Ray’s eyes, Tony did not know if he could say it. He tried. ‘You killed my wife and daughter.’ He was conscious of the tremor in his voice, like a lie.

He saw the slight widening of the man’s large eyes, the chewing quietly stop, no other change. ‘You’re crazy man. I never killed nobody.’

‘Tell him the whole thing.’

‘You and your buddies on the Interstate. You forced us off the road.’ The audible rasp in his voice, the quaver of being forced to speak.

‘Tell him who his buddies were.’

‘Lou and Turk.’

‘Remember that, Ray? Remember horsing around on the Interstate, playing chicken with other cars?’

Ray’s voice very soft. ‘You’re crazy man.’

‘You made us stop and we had a flat tire. Lou and Turk fixed it. Then you and Turk got into my car with my wife and daughter and forced me into your car with Lou.’

‘What then, Tony?’

‘Lou took me up in the woods and kicked me out. I had to walk back.’ Thinking the man’s enjoyment of humiliating me, and does he enjoy a second time behind his careful locked mask hearing me confess it now?

Voice stronger now, asserting things, turning humiliation into vengeance. ‘Then you came back to the woods in my car. You called and tried to lure me into a trap. You went on to where Lou had left me. When you came out later you tried to kill me with my car.’

‘What did you go back there for, Ray?’

‘You’re crazy man.’

‘Tell him what we found there, Tony.’

‘You tell him.’

‘Do I need to? You know, don’t you, Ray?’

‘You’re crazy man. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘The bodies of my wife and child, which you took back there and dumped.’

Image of the two white mannequins followed by the two wrapped cocoons, bringing back a sudden memory of old grief, clouding Tony Hastings’s eyes with wetness which the man could see. He noticed, it must have touched his lust through the mask, and for one moment Tony saw a smile, not much but enough, the same smile he had seen last summer, sadistic and contemptuous then – just enough to ignite Tony’s almost forgotten rage and blast pity out of mind. The mask was back again but too late for Ray.

‘You’re the one,’ Tony said. ‘I know you.’

‘Whaddaya say, Ray?’

‘You’re crazy man.’

‘Okay, let’s go to Grant Center. I think I’ll book you.’

‘You’re making a mistake, man.’

‘I don’t think so, Ray.’

Driving to Grant Center, Tony Hastings did not look back. He bit his lip, a childhood habit to hold together the organization of his nerves. He was full of angry joy, and he drove fast.