‘Next time you come, smuggle me in something to drink,’ Dussander said. ‘I find I don’t miss the cigarettes, but—’
‘I won’t be back again,’ Todd said flatly. ‘Not ever. It’s the end. We’re quits.’
‘Quits.’ Dussander folded his hands on his chest and smiled. It was not a gentle smile… but it was perhaps as close as Dussander could come to such a thing. ‘I thought that was on the cards. They are going to let me out of this graveyard next week… or so they promise. The doctor says I may have a few years left in my skin yet. I ask him how many, and he just laughs. I suspect that means no more than three, and probably no more than two. Still, I may give him a surprise and see in Orwell’s year.’
Todd, who would have frowned suspiciously over such a reference two years ago, now only nodded.
‘But between you and me, boy, I have almost given up my hopes of seeing the century turn.’
‘I want to ask you about something,’ Todd said, looking at Dussander steadily. ‘That’s why I came in today. I want to ask you about something you said once.’
Todd glanced over his shoulder at the man in the other bed and then drew his chair closer to Dussander’s bed. He could smell Dussander’s smell, as dry as the Egyptian room in the museum.
‘So ask.’
‘That wino. You said something about me having experience. First-hand experience. What was that supposed to mean?’
Dussander’s smile widened a bit. ‘I read the newspapers, boy. Old men always read the newspapers, but not in the same way younger people do. Buzzards are known to gather at the ends of certain airport runways in South America when the crosswinds are treacherous, did you know that? That is how an old man reads the newspaper. A month ago there was a story in the Sunday paper. Not a front page story, no one cares enough about bums and alcoholics to put them on the front page, but it was the lead story in the feature section, IS SOMEONE STALKING SANTA DONATO’S DOWN-AND-OUTS? — that’s what it was called. Crude. Yellow journalism. You Americans are famous for it’
Todd’s hands were clenched into fists, hiding the butchered nails. He never read the Sunday papers, he had better things to do with his time. He had of course checked the papers every day for at least a week following each of his little adventures, and none of his stewbums had ever gotten beyond page three. The idea that someone had been making connections behind his back infuriated him.
‘The story mentioned several murders, extremely brutal murders. Stabbings, bludgeonings. "Subhuman brutality" was how the writer put it, but you know reporters. The writer of this lamentable piece admitted that there is a high death-rate among these unfortunates, and that Santa Donato has had more than its share of the indigent over the years. In any given year, not all of these men die naturally, or of their own bad habits. There are frequent murders. But in most cases the murderer is usually one of the deceased degenerate’s compatriots, the motive no more than an argument over a penny-ante card-game or a bottle of muscatel. The killer is usually happy to confess. He is filled with remorse.
‘But these recent killings have not been solved. Even more ominous, to this yellow journalist’s mind — or whatever passes for his mind — is the high disappearance rate over the last few years. Of course, he admits again, these men are not much more than modern-day hobos. They come and go. But some of these left without picking up welfare cheques or day-labour cheques from Spell O’ Work, which only pays on Fridays. Could some of these have been victims of this yellow journalist’s Wino Killer, he asks? Victims who haven’t been found? Pah!’
Dussander waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss such arrant irresponsibility.
‘Only titillation, of course. Give people a comfortable little scare on Sunday morning. He calls up old bogies, threadbare but still useful — the Cleveland Torso Murderer, Zodiac, the mysterious Mr X who killed the Black Dahlia, Springheel Jack. Such drivel. But it makes me think. What does an old man have to do but think when old friends don’t come to visit anymore?’
Todd shrugged.
‘I thought: "If I wished to help this odious yellow-dog journalist, which I certainly do not, I could explain some of the disappearances. Not the corpses found stabbed or bludgeoned, not them, God rest their besotted souls, but some of the disappearances. Because at least some of the bums who disappeared are in my cellar."’
‘How many down there?’ Todd asked in a low voice.
‘Five,’ Dussander said calmly. ‘Counting the one you helped me dispose of, just five.’
‘You’re really nutso,’ Todd said. The skin below his eyes had gone white and shiny. ‘At some point you just blew all your fucking wheels.’
‘"Blew my wheels." What a charming idiom! Perhaps you’re right! But then I said to myself: "This newspaper jackal would love to pin the murders and the disappearances on the same somebody — his hypothetical Wino Killer. But I think maybe that’s not what happened at all."
‘Then I say to myself: "Do I know anybody who might be doing such things? Somebody who has been under as much strain as I have during the last few years? Someone who has also been listening to old ghosts rattle their chains?" And the answer is yes. I know you, boy.’
‘I’ve never killed anyone.’
The image that came was not of the winos; they weren’t people, not really people at all. The image that came was of himself crouched behind the dead tree, peering through the telescopic sight of his .30-.30, the crosshairs fixed on the temple of the man with the scuzzy beard, the man driving the Brat pick-up.
‘Perhaps not,’ Dussander agreed, amicably enough. ‘Yet you took hold so well the other night. Your surprise was mostly anger at having been put in such a dangerous position by an old man’s infirmity, I think. Am I wrong?’
‘No, you’re not wrong,’ Todd said. ‘I was pissed off at you, and I still am. I covered it up for you because you’ve got something in a safety deposit box that could destroy my life.’
‘No. I do not’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘It was as much a bluff as your "letter left with a friend". You never wrote such a letter, there never was such a friend, and I have never written a single word about our… association, shall I call it? Now I lay my cards on the table. You saved my life. Never mind that you acted only to protect yourself; that does not change how speedily and efficiently you acted. I cannot hurt you, boy. I tell you that freely. I have looked death in the face and it frightens me, but not as badly as ! thought it would. There is no document. It is as you say: we are quits.’
Todd smiled: a weird upward corkscrewing of the lips. A strange, sardonic light danced and fluttered in his eyes.
‘Herr Dussander,’ he said, ‘if only I could believe that’
In the evening Todd walked down to the slope overlooking the freeway, climbed down to the dead tree, and sat on it. It was just past twilight. The evening was warm. Car headlights cut through the dusk in long yellow daisy chains.
There is no document.
He hadn’t realized how completely irretrievable the entire situation was until the discussion that had followed. Dussander suggested Todd search the house for a safety deposit key, and when he didn’t find one, that would prove there was no safety deposit box and hence no document. But a key could be hidden anywhere — it could be put in. a Crisco can and then buried, it could be put in a Sucrets tin and slid behind a board that had been loosened and then replaced; he might even have ridden the bus to San Diego and put it behind one of the rocks in the decorative stone wall which surrounds the bears’ environmental area. For that matter, Todd went on, Dussander could even have thrown the key away. Why not? He had only needed it once, to put his written document in. If he died, someone else would take it out Dussander nodded reluctantly at this, but after a moment’s thought he made another suggestion. When he got well enough to go home, he would have the boy call every single bank in Santa Donato. He would tell each bank official he was calling for his grandfather. Poor grandfather, he would say, had grown lamentably senile over the last two years, and now he had misplaced the key to his safety deposit box. Even worse, he could no longer remember which bank the box was in. Could they just check their files for an Arthur Denker, no middle initial? And when Todd drew a blank at every bank in townTodd was already shaking his head again. First, a story like that was almost guaranteed to raise suspicions. It was too pat They would probably suspect a con-game and get in touch with the police. Even if every one of them bought the story, it would do no good. If none of the almost nine dozen banks in Santa Donato had a box in the Denker name, it didn’t mean that Dussander hadn’t rented one in San Diego, LA, or any town in between.