This was good to hear even if I didn’t quite believe it. Mose didn’t know how strong Barbara’s fear of Jackie Newton could be. I knew it was stronger than any threat of perjury or the risk of public ridicule: I thought it might even be running neck-and-neck with the will to survive. If the fear is intense enough, if it goes on forever and there’s still no end in sight, death might begin to look almost appealing.
“You don’t look convinced,” Mose said. “I promise you, Cliff, I know how to get to people like her.”
“Yeah, but what happens to her afterwards?”
“Not your concern.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Her only crime, you know, is being too scared to think.”
“Her real crime is that she’s a self-centered lying bitch. She’ll destroy you or anybody else to get the pressure off herself. I can’t work up much sympathy for people like her.”
Poor Barbara, I thought, and I looked at her across the room.
“Want some more coffee?” Mose said. “I was gonna go home, but I hate to have those bastards think they ran us off. Let’s have another cup.”
I took a piece of apple pie with mine. We lingered over small talk far removed from our case. Mose had taken up fishing in his middle age: he was engaged in a herculean effort to master the fly rod. He asked, out of politeness, how the book business was, and I told him it was a lot like urban fishing. On any weekend morning, the fisherman and the bookscout went through the same motions and emotions. A nice catch for both was a dozen good ones. The hunt was the main thing, the chase was its own reward.
I glanced at the table where Levin and Newton sat hunched over papers and briefs. Barbara was wedged between them, her eyes cast into the bottomless gulf of her coffee cup. Any minute now, if she looked deep enough and hard enough, the Loch Ness monster might surface and show her its face. Jackie said something to her and she nodded: he said something else and she looked at him, looked into the face of the monster. Then she looked at me. I could feel her pain half a room away. I tried to smile and then—I couldn’t help myself—I winked at her.
She excused herself and went back to the narrow hallway where the rest rooms were.
All I could think in that moment was that line from Shakespeare, how cowards die a dozen times before their deaths.
Death was on my mind.
And I was suddenly very uneasy.
Mose was talking about the summer’s best fishing trip. I should take up fishing, he was saying: it was good therapy for us Type-A types. Scouting for books might bear some superficial resemblances to fishing, if you had a good imagination and wanted to stretch a point, but it was too intense. I needed something to help me relax, Mose said.
Jackie Newton gave me a long look from the far wall. I stared back at him. Levin was talking and shuffling papers. Mose was rattling on about a new lure he had found: fish were supposed to be able to smell it. A waitress brought Mr. Newton’s order, putting plates in front of each gentleman and another in front of the empty space where, a few minutes earlier, Barbara Crowell had been sitting.
“She sure is taking her time in there,” I said.
“Who?”
“Crowell.”
I got up and started back toward the rest rooms. Behind me, Mose called my name. “Hey, Clifford, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” There was a note of worry in his voice that almost matched what I suddenly felt in my heart. I went past Jackie’s table. Both Jackie and Levin looked at me as I went into the dark hall.
I called Barbara’s name.
Doors on opposite sides were designated by gender: pants and skirts. I knocked on the skirts and listened. I pushed the door open and peeped in.
“Barbara?”
I was staring at the outer wall of a toilet stall. I called her name again and got nothing. “Hey, I’m coming in,” I said, and did. I looked around the row of Johns and there she was, sitting on the floor. She held a small gun in her hand, and she was staring at it the way you imagine a medical student might look at a scalpel before his first operation. Tears were running down her face. She lifted the gun and looked at it, business end first.
“Hey,” I said, holding out my hands. “Don’t do that.”
It was a little .22 revolver. You can buy them cheap all over Denver without permits or hassles: a little gun, made for ladies and kids, but more than enough to do what she had in mind.
“Hey, Barb,” I said. I tried to smile and wondered if it looked real. It was reaclass="underline" a smile of fear. Softly, I said, “You know what they say about suicide, honey. Permanent solution to temporary problem. This gets you nothing.”
It gets me peace, she seemed to say. I came a little closer and tried to figure my chances. If I rushed her suddenly, without warning, I had about a dead-even chance of getting to her before she could cock the pistol and pull the trigger. She probably didn’t know much about guns—a point for my side. But I was still ten feet away—a big point for her.
“Listen, I’ve got a great idea,” I said. “You put that back in your purse and let me take you out of here. We’ll go to a place I know and we’ll talk it over. Okay? Okay, Barb? We’ll talk it over, and if I can’t give you at least ten reasons for living we’ll both kill ourselves. Now what could be fairer than that? C’mon, Barb. I’ll buy you a great dinner and we’ll work it out. I know you don’t want to do this.”
I stopped talking. She had cocked the pistol, taking away my only real chance. I felt a tightness in my chest, almost like hyperventilation.
“Barb, please… listen to me… Here, look at me.”
She did. Again, her misery was like a beacon, filling the room.
“I swear to God there’s a way out of this,” I said. “I swear there is. I promise you, but only if you do the smart thing.”
I could see it in her eyes: she was on the brink, right at the edge. I’ve seen three people commit suicide, and at the end there’s no doubt that it’s coming. They all look the same, drained of all hope.
I was going to lose her.
She spoke. Her voice was raw, the words ragged and broken. “I’ve left a note…It clears you… backs up everything you said…”
“It won’t mean anything if you do this. Are you hearing me? Barbara, are you listening to what I’m saying?”
“No.”
“Just give me one chance. One chance, Barbara, to prove what I’m telling you. I won’t even take the gun away from you, that’s how sure I am that you’ll see things different. Let me tell you something. Newton can’t do anything to me, and I won’t let him do anything more to you, either. I’ve got ways of fixing that bastard that he can’t even imagine yet. Just put the gun away and I’ll tell you about it.”
It was pointing at her right temple: her finger was on the trigger. She was going to do it. I couldn’t stop her. Janeway, if you’ve got any good quotes, you’d better get ‘em up now, because there isn’t going to be any tomorrow.
“I know a guy who can make Newton hate the day he first saw you. I’m not kidding. I wasn’t just yanking your chain that day when I told you that. Just put the gun down a little and let me say this. Just let me say this much, Barbara. Newton’s a master at playing the system for his own advantage. He’s got it all going his way—money, a sharp lawyer—he knows his rights, old Jackie does. The system’s all greased up for scumbags like Jackie Newton. So we’ll go outside the system. I couldn’t do that when I was a cop, but I damn sure can now. We’ll play Jackie’s game Jackie’s way, and I promise you we’ll make him hate it. And he’ll never be able to lay a hand on you again. That’s the main thing. When we get through with Jackie, he’ll never want to see your face again.”
“You don’t know him,” she said. “Don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“Oh yes I do. But I also know what he’s not capable of.”