I didn’t speak. “You answer me!” he shouted, losing control for a moment.
“I don’t know,” I said thickly.
Macy walked to his desk, his face rigid with a sort of pain. “Sit down, Pete, and listen to me. If you walk away now so help me I’ll kill you.”
He took a key from a holder he carried and unlocked a drawer of the desk. He took out a cardboard box and untied a string around it with clumsy shaking fingers. He sorted through the stuff inside as if he couldn’t quite remember what was there. Then he stopped, shook a soiled folded envelope free, looked it over, put it on the edge of his desk.
“Look at it,” he said gruffly.
I did. It was the one. I opened the envelope to make sure.
Macy grunted harshly, leaned out of the chair and grasped the wastebasket beside the desk. It banged against the desk as he upended it. The contents of the wastebasket were scattered on the floor. He heaved it to the desk, stood up, picked up a cigarette lighter. He held the letter with one hand and set fire to it. When it was burning good he dropped it into the wastebasket and sat down again. The burning left a sour brown smell in the room.
“There it is, Pete,” he said. “You can go now, if that’s all that was keeping you here. I never would have used it. I never would have sent it to your girlfriend. It was a bluff. Just bluff. That’s all I am now, bluff.”
He stood up and turned around and kicked the chair he had been sitting in. It flipped over and banged into the wall nearby. “Go on, get out of here. Go back to your girl, Pete. Hang on to her. Hang on to her as if you never had anything in your life before. Because you never did, till you had her.”
“If I leave,” I said, “somebody’s going to kill you. He may do it anyway.”
His head hung for a moment. “I know it,” he said as though he had just at that moment begun to realize it.
“You’re a sad sight, Macy,” I said. I didn’t know why I was going to say the things that had been collecting in my mind. I knew it wouldn’t help now, but this man had been a second father to me once, in his own way. “Every two-bit racketeer in this area has his hand in your back pocket. The wolves are circling, and Maxine’s leading the pack. What the hell you been doing?” He just looked sullen and a little bit pitiful.
“Who’s supposed to be taking care of things in town for you?” I said, trying to punch the right key to make him react.
“Reavis,” he said. “Reavis handles most of the work you used to do. Taggart does most of the traveling.”
“What kind of job is Reavis doing?”
“Lousy.”
“Not that I care, but can him and get a new bunch. The pilings are rotten, Macy, and the whole works is coming down around your ears. I was in town one day, and I can see it.”
“Let up on me! I know it. I know.”
“But you don’t give a damn.”
He tried to fling an answer at me. Nothing came. He jammed his hands into his pockets.
“What’s got into you?” I said. “The kid? Aimee? Did that start it? Or were you already coming unstuck when she came along? Now a crackbrain killer has thrown a scare into you. You used to have steel walls around you, but when you weren’t looking somebody stole them, and all that’s left is cardboard. A handful of men and a bookkeeper are all you got left. No wonder you’re shaking.”
“Pete! Will you leave it alone, Pete? I did you a favor, what do you want? Will you leave it alone, Pete!” I didn’t know whether or not he meant it, but he had pulled the automatic from his pocket and was pointing it at me.
“Put it down,” I said, wondering how touchy the trigger might be. A coldness spread from the roof of my mouth to my chest.
He looked down at the gun, puzzled. He put his other hand over his chin, and the barrel of the .45 dipped slowly, as if his wrist muscles were stretching.
“I think we need a drink,” he said then.
“Let’s have a drink,” I agreed breathlessly.
There was a bar in the living room, with a small refrigerator. We went there. He mixed the drinks and made them strong. We sat in two stylish chairs, facing each other uncertainly. Macy lifted his glass to me.
“You’re right, Pete,” he said. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe as far back as six years ago. It hasn’t been anything sudden. A little ground lost here and there, not recovered. Some cheating overlooked because it wasn’t quite so important at the time. Things got loose. I didn’t stay around town enough. It was better down here. Last year I moved. I stay here all the time now. With Aimee.
“I wasn’t completely unaware of what was happening, Pete. I thought I could step back in any time I wanted. Give the orders. Clean things up. Then one day it was too late. It didn’t even seem to matter much. I knew then how old I was getting. I tried just to hold things as they were. Tell myself it really wasn’t as bad as it looked, that nobody realized. But everybody knew. My own boys knew first. A few of them left. They went over to Maxine. The others got sloppy. Now Maxine’s getting ready to make his bid. It’s not worth fighting back.”
“What are you going to do when the showdown finally comes?”
“There won’t be any showdown,” he said, but his eyes were evasive. He had something in mind but wasn’t ready to talk about it. “Tell me what happened today, Pete. Everything.”
I told him. “Both Gilmer and Carla Kennedy are important,” I finished. “When I find either of them I may know who’s been sending you fan mail.”
“Rudy doesn’t sleep any more,” Macy said reflectively. “I look at Rudy and say that it doesn’t bother me like that, but it does.” He swirled ice in his glass, drained the last of the whisky. “I ought to tell you to go home, Pete,” he said without shame, “but I’m afraid to. I want you around.”
He frowned, hearing what I had been hearing. It was a woman’s hard ugly scream mixed with a man’s thick-voiced, shouted curses. Macy sat up straight in his chair. “What the hell is that? They’ll wake Aimee.” He ran heavily from the living room and I followed, wincing at the searing, uncontrolled hate underscoring the shouts.
In the wing of the house where my room was, I saw Owen Barr wrestling, bearlike, with a woman. It was Diane. She hit him in the face, the fingers of her hand slightly curled and stiff. He was having a hard time with her. He bounced her off a wall and she tried to kick him between the legs. He lowered one shoulder, dug it into her stomach, brought it up hard to smash across one breast.
Diane spat at him. She spat until her mouth was dry, and clawed at the top of his head. Hair hung down on her face. She tried to thumb his eyes, but he kept his face down. One of her feet kicked through a pane of the French doors and blood gleamed at her ankle. The raw animal fury in her face slowed my step for an instant. There was a dribbling of saliva from her mouth. She screamed hoarsely, over and over. Owen muttered guttural curses.
His hands closed over the blouse she wore and there was a sharp ripping noise. Diane was suddenly still. Owen grabbed her by the neck and threw her into his room, catching her wrist as she stumbled. Diane searched for the tear, found it under one arm. A bit of her skin showed through the frayed material at her armpit. She tried to kick Owen but he kept out of her way. She wasn’t screaming any more, but breathed with a slight snarl, like a cornered lioness. There was a chilling blank look in her eyes, as if she saw nothing.
Macy went into the bedroom. I stood in the doorway.
“Look at it!” Owen screamed. “Look at it! You ruined it! Bitch. Bitch!” He lunged forward and his small fat palm flew upward in a big arc to crack across her face with a nasty meaty sound. It snapped her head back and knocked her halfway around. She would have fallen if Owen hadn’t held her wrist. There was blood on his lower lip where he had bitten it in rage.