Kiwasee put his fingers through the mesh and shook it, then lay on the back seat and kicked at the windows with his feet. "Don't you make a mess in there now," said McNeil, unconcerned. "That car was nice and clean when you got in there. "
"What you want, McNeil?"
"I want you to think real hard about a living will, Ty rone. Looks like you're going to need one. Things happen to a bad man like yourself even if you don't get shot in the spine. There's all kinds of ways to get fucked up for life. Carbon monoxide poisoning, for instance, just to take one example. You know what it does? It shuts off oxygen to your brain. That goes on too long, of course, and you die. If it goes on just long enough, then you're a vegetable. You not only got a limp dick, you don't even know if you got a dick. The secret is in the timing. Just enough gas, not too much."
McNeil removed a yellow slicker from a hook beside the garage door and pressed it against the base of the door that led into the house.
"Man, turn off the engine," said Kiwasee, struggling to control his panic. "Le''s talk."
"You done enough talking, Tyrone. You just don't seem to be the kind who can keep his mouth shut."
"Tell me what you want. I'll do it."
"You know what I notice, Tyrone? I notice you're not calling me Pussy anymore." 'I is sorry about that. Didn't mean nothing by it."
McNeil looked around the garage. "Let's see, what did I forget?
Everything looks all right, what do you think?"
"Turn off the engine, man. Le's talk, le's just talk this out. I cooperate, you know that, I cooperate with you. Whatever you want, whatever you want."
"It takes about ten minutes, Tyrone," McNeil said. "You can tell the time right there on that nice big clock on the dashboard. Ten minutes to make a veg out of you. What kind of vegetable you like? Yam? Grits?
Corn on the cob? How about black-eyed peas? Let me see if I got the right recipe for black-eyed peas. Ten minutes, ten seconds, that's my guess. Of course, it depends on how much breathing you do. The more you struggle and try to get out, the more you're going to be breathing, so in that case, maybe nine minutes, eight and a half. Hell, I haven't got it down to a science, Tyrone, so don't blame me if I screw it UP."
McNeil opened the door leading into his house. "Got to go now, Tyrone.
It's starting to have a funny smell in here. Smell it? Is that gas? Or is that you, shitting yourself already?… Bye, Tyrone Abdul."
When McNeil stepped into the mud room leading into his kitchen and pulled the door closed behind him, Kiwasee's cries were muffled. When he closed the kitchen door as well, he could barely hear them at all.
Kiwasee was broken by fear and panic, his face streaked with tears and mucus, his eyes wild with terror. The clock on the dashboard had advanced nine and a half minutes when the radio suddenly came alive.
"Central to Car Two," the voice crackled. "Come in, please, Car Two."
"Man, I'm in here!" Tyrone screamed at the radio. "I'm in his garage.
He's killing me!"
"Come in, Car Two."
"He's killing me! McNeil is killing me! Help!"
"Two, come in, please."
"Get me out of here, lady! Lady! Help!"
"McNeil," the voice on the radio said testily. "Respond please."
"Lady! Lady! Get me out of here, you ho!"
The radio clicked into silence. Kiwasee, his nervous system assailed to the point of breakdown by adrenaline, anger, and horror, pulled his shirt over his face in an effort to keep out the gas, then alternately laughed and wept, until he heard the engine suddenly turned off. He looked with disbelief to see McNeil opening the garage door. Sun streaked into the darkened building.
McNeil lowered the back seat window another few inches and Kiwasee winced, not certain if the extra space was letting in more fresh air or more gas.
"You should have put your shirt in the window, Tyrone, block up the crack-that would have given you longer to breathe the oxygen in the car."
"Ten minutes, man, you left me for ten minutes."
"I told you, this ain't a science, not yet."
"I could be dead, I could be dead," Kiwasee said, incredulous, addressing his fingers, which he wiggled back and forth in proof of his vitality.
"Look at you, Tyrone Abdul, you made a terrible mess of yourself. Is that the way you do back in Bridgeport? Folks don't live like that in Clamden. We're a clean people, Tyrone. Look at me. You see any snot on my shirt? You see any pee stains on my trousers?"
"You left me for ten minutes," Kiwasee repeated, not looking at McNeil.
"I asked you a question, Tyrone."
Kiwasee turned immediately to the command in MeNeil's voice. His chest rose and fell in great panting breaths, trying to make up for ten minutes of not breathing.
"Sir?" Kiwasee asked.
McNeil smiled. "You can talk right, after all. I always thought you people could if you put your minds to it. You see any snot on my shirt, Tyrone?"
"No sir."
"You see anybody climbing out of the window of that house last week?"
"No sir, I did not."
"Were you in the house next door that night?"
"Yes sir, I sure was." Kiwasee searched McNeil's face for the proper answer. "No sir, I was not."
"That's right. You were everywhere else all those other times though, weren't you?"
"Yes sir… Which ones?"
"All the other burglaries you did in Clamden the last three years, you're going to tell Chief Terhune about each one, honestly, aren't you?"
"That's right, sir. I done 'em all. I'm guilty as can be."
"Except for which burglary?"
"The one last week, the one in the house we just looked at. "
"Were you there or not?"
"No sir, I was not."
"Ever?"
"Never, I never was there.
"Ever hear of anyone else who was there?"
"No sir. Never. I ain't even been in Clamden in over a month. Ain't heard of no one else who was, neither."
"Ever see anyone leaving that house next door?"
"I ain't never seen that house next door 'cause I ain't never been in the other one in the first place."
"Good, Tyrone. Very good. That gas didn't affect your brain, after all. In fact, I'd say you're a little smarter than before, definitely.
You're a better man for the experience."
"Yes sir, I am."
"How about your dick? Your dick still work?"
"I don't believe so, sir. It sure ain't working right now."
McNeil laughed. "You're all right, Tyrone. Now step on out of there.
First you're going to clean up my car, then you're going to clean up yourself, then we're going to talk to Chief Terhune."
"Yes sir." Kiwasee slid quickly out of the car.
"Don't think about crying to Terhune or any asshole lawyer about police brutality either. You haven't got a mark on you."
"I wasn't thinking about that."
"Don't ever think about it."
"I won't.
"And Tyrone?"
"Sir?"
"Now that you're out of the car, do anything wrong and I'll shoot your head off… You believe me, don't you?"
"Yes sir," said Kiwasee. "I surely do."
Later, McNeil wondered if he had overreacted, if he should have just laughed off Kiwasee's account instead of proving its importance. He did not second-guess himself for long, however, and he did not chide himself for making a mistake. He was, at all times, extremely forgiving of himself. To McNeil, McNeil was always right.
7
The were on display in the FBI forensic lab in New York like a paleontologist's dream-complete skeletons laid out from head to foot, everything in its place, nothing left to speculation. Lying side by side, teeth grinning ironically in the horrible skeletal grimace, they looked like a horizontal chorus line of phantoms, frozen in time and space in a Halloween dance. There were six of them in all, and each was identified by a tag placed between the, feet that read "Fl — Becker,"