Tough Guys Don't Dance (34 page)

“Tonight, tomorrow, next week.”

“Why not tonight?”

“I have to turn in the cruiser. It's town-owned.”

“You can't turn it in tonight?”

“I can do anything I want. I think I want a rest. I've been working for eight years without a real vacation.”

“Are you feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Me?” I had made the mistake of jolting him. He looked at my father and myself as if measuring us for the first time. “Fellow, get it straight,” he said. “I have nothing to complain about. I have the kind of life God wants you to have.”

“What kind is that?” asked my father. I think he was genuinely curious.

“Action,” said Regency. “I've had all the action I wanted. Life gives a man two balls. I've used them. Let me tell you. It's a rare day when I don't bang two women. I don't sleep well at night if I haven't gotten my second bang in. Do you read me? There's two sides to one's nature. They both got to express themselves before I can sleep.”

“What are those two sides?” asked my father.

“Dougy, I'll tell you. They are my enforcer and my maniac. Those are my two names for myself.”

“Which one is talking now?” I asked.

“The enforcer.” He laughed to himself. “You had to be wondering if I'd say the maniac. But you haven't seen
him
yet. I'm merely enforcing this conversation with two
so-called
good men.”

He had gone too far. I could take his insults, but there was no reason for my father to suffer them.

“When you turn in your police cruiser,” I said,
“be careful to wash out the mats in your trunk. The bloodstains from the machete are all over it.”

It came to him like a bullet from a thousand yards away. By the time the idea reached, its force was gone, and the shot fell at his feet.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “the machete.”

Then he struck himself across the face with more force than I had ever seen a man give to a blow against his own person. If someone else had done it, the act would have been comic, but in his case, the sound shattered the air in the kitchen.

“Would you believe it?” he said. “This sobers me up.” He seized the edge of the kitchen table in his hands and gave it a squeeze. “I'm trying,” he said, “to be a gentleman about all this and leave town quietly, Madden, without impinging on you and without you encroaching on me.”

“Is that why you're here?” I asked. “To leave quietly?”

“I want to see the lay of the land.”

“No,” I said, “you want the answers to some questions.”

“Maybe you haven't got it wrong for once. I thought it might be more courteous to pay a visit than pull you in for an interrogation.”

“That's all you need,” I said. “If you bring me in, you have to enter me on the books. Then I don't answer a single question. I just get a lawyer. When I finish telling him what I know, he'll ask the State to investigate you. Regency, do me a favor. Treat me with the same courtesy
you'd give a Portugee. Don't try these bullshit threats.”

“Hear, hear,” said my father, “he's laying it out for you, Alvin.”

“What do you know,” said Regency. “Your son is not incompetent with a problem.”

I glared at him. When our eyes locked, I felt like a small craft cutting too near the bow of a ship.

“Let's talk,” he said. “We got more in common than we're opposed. Isn't that true?” he asked my father.

“Talk,” said my father.

Regency's expression was bent by the last remark as much, I thought, as if we were brothers at odds looking for good marks from our father. The insight meant much. For I recognized then how jealous I was of Regency now that he was around Dougy. It was as if he, not I, were the good, strong and unmanageable son that Big Mac wanted to straighten out. God, I was as bad about my father as most girls are about their mothers.

Now all three of us stayed silent. There are chess games where half of the time allotted a player is spent on one move. He is studying how to go on. So I was silent.

Finally I decided that his confusion had to be deeper than mine.

Therefore I said, “Correct me if I'm wrong, but you want answers to these questions. One, where is Stoodie? Two, where is Spider?”

“Check,” he said.

“Where is Wardley?”

“Ditto.”

“Where is Jessica?”

“I'll buy that.”

“And where is Patty?”

“You got it all,” he said. “Those are my questions.”

If he had had a tail, he would have thumped it hard at the mention of Jessica's name and twice as hard at Patty's.

“Well,” he said, “let's have the answers.”

I wondered if he was wired. Then I realized it didn't matter. He was not there to act as a police officer. The .357 Magnum in the holster on the chair was what I wanted to keep my eyes on, rather than the remote possibility that he was recording what I said. After all, he was here with me to look for his own sanity.

“What are the answers?” he repeated.

“Both women are dead,” I told him, as if he might not know.

“Dead?” His surprise lacked all conviction.

“I found their heads in the same place my marijuana is kept.” I waited. He really didn't have the conviction that to pretend astonishment would serve any purpose.

“What happened to those heads?” he asked.

“You put them there, didn't you?”

“I never put both heads there,” he said. To my astonishment, he began without warning to groan. Like a wounded animal. “I've been in hell,” he said. “I can't believe it. I've been in hell.”

“I'll bet you have,” whispered my father.

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Regency said.

“Why did you sever Jessica's head?” my father asked.

He hesitated. “I can't tell you.”

“I believe you want to,” said my father.

“Let's slow up,” said Regency. “I'll tell you what you want to know, provided you inform me about what I want to know.
Quid pro quo.
”

“It won't work,” I said. “You have to trust me.”

“Where's your stack of Bibles?” he asked.

“It won't work,” I repeated. “Every time I tell you something, you're going to ask another question. After I tell it all, there won't be any reason for you to give anything back.”

“Turn it around,” he said. “If I talk first, what's in it for you to tell me?”

“Your Magnum,” I said.

“You think I'd off you in cold blood?”

“No,” I said, “I think you'd lose your temper.”

My father nodded. “That's logical,” he murmured.

“All right,” Regency said. “But, go first. Give me one piece of news I don't have.”

“Stoodie is dead.”

“Who did it?”

“Wardley.”

“Where is Wardley?”

“You have a reflex,” I said. “You ask questions. I'll tell you when the time comes. Keep your part of the bargain.”

“I'd like to meet this Wardley,” said Regency. “Every time I take a step, he's underfoot.”

“You'll meet him,” I said. Only after the words were out of my mouth did I realize how spooked they were.

“I'd like to. I'd give him a fistful of teeth.”

I began to laugh. I couldn't help it. That may, however, have been the best reaction. Regency poured himself a drink and swallowed it. I realized it was the first liquor he had tasted since I mentioned the machete.

“All right,” he said, “I'll tell you my story. It's a good one.” He looked at my father. “Dougy,” he said, “I don't respect many people. I respect you. From the moment I came in here. The last guy I met who was your equal was my colonel in the Green Berets.”

“Make it a general,” said Dougy.

“We'll get there,” said Regency. “But I want to make it clear. There's rough stuff ahead.”

“I would think so,” said Dougy.

“You're going to lose sympathy with me.”

“Because you hated my son?”

“Hated. That's past tense.”

My father shrugged. “You seem to respect him now.”

“I don't. I half respect him. I used to think he was dirt. Now I don't.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I'll tell it my way,” he said.

“All right.”

“Get it straight. I did a lot. Tim, I was trying to drive you off your nut.”

“You nearly succeeded.”

“I had a right to.”

“Why?” asked Dougy.

“My wife, Madeleine, when I first met her, was a rescue case. Your son drove her into depravity. She was a cokehead. I could have arrested her. Your son put her in orgies, cracked her up in his car, destroyed her womb and took off on her a year later. I inherited a woman who had such a habit she was obliged to deal for the stuff in order to feed her own nose. You try living with a female who can't have your son. So, get it straight, Madden, I hated your guts.”

“Well, you stole my wife in turn,” I said quietly.

“I tried to. Maybe she stole me. I got caught between two women, your wife and mine.”

“Jessica, too,” I said.

“I make no apologies. When your wife took off, she was not only leaving you, she was leaving me, buster. I got my habit. Love has nothing to do with it. I tool two women a night. I've even made it with some of Stoodie's disease-bags—to give you an idea of the force of the principle,” he said with some verbal pride. “Jessica was a surrogate for Patty, no more.”

“Then you and Madeleine … every night you went home?”

“Of course.” He belted more bourbon. “It's simple. Let's not get side-tracked. What I want
to say is that I hated you, and I have a simple mentality. So I took Jessica's head and put it next to your marijuana. Then I told you to go to your stash.”

“Didn't you think I might associate you?”

“I figured it would open your ass. I thought you would die in your own shit. That's the word.”

“Did you put the blood on the front seat of my car?”

“I did.”

“Whose was it?”

He didn't reply.

“Jessica's?”

“Yes.”

I was about to ask, “How did you do it?” but I could see his eyes going in and out of focus as if the scene were still thrusting itself upon his mind and he kept forcing it back. I wondered if he had used her head for such a purpose but I put the thought away before I could start to visualize it.

“Why,” asked my father, “didn't you do a test next day for the blood on the seat of the car?”

Regency smiled like a cat. “Nobody would ever believe,” he said, “that I put the blood there if I was too dumb to test it, and let you wash it off. How could they ever accuse me of entrapment then?” He nodded. “I woke up that morning worried that I would be accused of entrapping you. It sounds stupid now, but that's how I was thinking then.”

“You were losing the best part of your case against Tim.”

“I didn't want to arrest him. I wanted to drive him nuts.”

“Did you kill Jessica?” I asked. “Or did Patty?”

“We'll come to that. It's not the point. The point is that I was crazy about Patty, but all she'd talk about is you, and how much she hated you, and how you used up her life. All I could see is that you had half her guts, so what was she bellyaching about? Then I got it. She fucking well had to destroy a man. Because when I wouldn't lift a finger against you, she almost destroyed me. She took off. So I got the picture then. I was supposed to do a job on you. Forsake my police vows and do a job.”

“It wasn't a small one,” said Dougy.

“Fucking aye. It was
brilliant.
” He shook his head. “The details were brilliant. I told Patty to take the gun that was used on Jessica and put it back in its case uncleaned. The smell alone should have given you a heart attack. There you were, all passed out, and she stopped by the bed and put the gun away.”

“How did you ever find my Polaroids that night? Patty didn't know where they were.”

He looked blank.

“What kind of Polaroids?” he asked.

I believed him. My heart fell into a small hole lined with cold lead. “I found some Polaroids with the heads cut off—” I started to tell him.

“Patty says you do crazy things when you're
drunk. Maybe you sliced those heads off yourself.”

I didn't wish to live with the thought, but how could I confute him?

“Well, if you were to cut up a photo,” I asked, “why would you do it?”

“I wouldn't. Only a creep would do that.”

“But you did. You cut up Jessica's photos.”

He took a little more bourbon. A paroxysm seized his throat. He spat forth the bourbon.

“It's true,” he said. “I cut up Jessica's photos.”

“When?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

“Why?”

I thought he was going to have a fit. “So I would stop seeing her last expression,” he managed to say. “I want to get her last expression out of my system.”

His jaws were grinding, his eyes bulged and his neck muscles knotted. But he pushed out the question, “How did Patty die?”

Before I could answer he gave a fearful groan, stood up, went over to the door and began to butt his head against the doorjamb. I could feel the kitchen shake.

My father approached from behind, seized him around the chest and tried to pull him away. He threw my father off. My father was seventy. Nonetheless, I could not believe it.

It calmed Regency, however. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“So be it,” said my father, giving farewell to some last illusion that strength remains intact.

I was afraid of Regency again. As if I were the accused and he the aggrieved husband of the victim, I said softly, “I had nothing to do with Patty's death.”