Colley couldn’t see anything funny about their present situation. He wanted to tell her to quit making dumb jokes. But there was something even more frightening about Jocko naked in the tub there and lying on his back than when he was dressed and standing on his own two feet. Even unconscious, Colley was afraid Jocko might overhear something he said to Jeanine and get up out of the water and... well... hurt him. There’d been a big guy like Jocko in prison, and he had hurt Colley.
“You going to need me?” Teddy said. “I want to get rid of the car. Hot car sitting out there with blood all over the front seat.”
“Go ahead,” Jeanine said.
“Okay to call my wife? She’s gonna be wondering.”
“Phone’s in the bedroom,” Jeanine said, and turned off the hot water. Teddy went down the hallway to the bedroom. In the bathtub, Jocko sighed. Jeanine was soaping the wound now, gently using a sponge on it. Down the hall, Teddy began dialing the phone. The apartment was silent except for the tiny splashing sounds of Jeanine dipping the sponge and lifting it from the water and dipping it again. There was blood on her white shorts. Blood on her thigh, too. Down the hall, they could hear Teddy’s muffled voice. Jeanine pulled the stopper from the tub, and then turned on the hot and cold water faucets and tested the stream of water with her hand. With a clean wash cloth, she began rinsing off Jocko. Teddy came back up the hallway and leaned in the bathroom doorway.
“I’m gonna split,” he said, “get rid of the car.” He hesitated. “Were they both dead, Colley?”
“I don’t know,” Colley said. “Two cops sitting the store,” he explained to Jeanine. “In the back room, there.”
“Him and Jocko walked into a stakeout,” Teddy said.
“Minute Jocko threw down on the old man, the two of them came out the back yelling fuzz.”
“You shot two cops?” Jeanine said.
“I only shot one of them. Jocko—”
“Never mind who shot them,” Jeanine said. “I’m asking—”
“Yeah, two cops got shot.”
“They both looked dead,” Teddy said. “Colley, they really looked dead to me. That one lying closest to the door, his brains were all over the floor.”
“Great,” Jeanine said.
“They surprised us,” Colley said.
“Great,” she said again. “Two dead cops.”
“I ain’t so sure about them being dead,” Colley said. “I ain’t even sure about the one Teddy says had his brains—”
“It’ll be on television later,” Teddy said. “I’ll bet it’s on television. Two cops getting killed.”
“Look, we don’t know for sure—”
“They’re dead all right,” Teddy said. He looked very owlish and wise and sad behind his glasses. He also looked exhausted. He had been busy since early that morning, boosting the car in Brooklyn, and he still had to get rid of it. Before the holdup, it had only been a stolen car. Now it was a car that had been used in a felony murder... well, Colley wasn’t sure either one of them was dead. Man could look dead without being dead. Hell, Jocko’d been bleeding like a pig all the way over here, but now he looked fine. Might be the same with those cops in the liquor store. Even the one Colley had shot might not...
“I’ll call you in the morning,” Teddy said.
“You going outside like that?” Colley said.
“Huh?”
“All that blood on your clothes?”
“Shit,” Teddy said. “You got something I can put on, Jeanine? Just something to—”
“Jocko’s clothes’d be too big for you,” she said. “Maybe my raincoat.”
Together, they went out of the bathroom. Colley could hear them rummaging around in one of the closets. In the tub, Jocko mumbled something, and then fell silent. Colley heard them in the hallway again, heard the front door opening and closing, heard Jeanine relocking it. Teddy had left without saying good night. He heard Jeanine padding barefooted toward the bathroom again. She came in, went directly to the tub, and said, “Give me a hand, here.”
Colley leaned over the tub and put his under Jocko’s right arm and across his slippery back. Jeanine grabbed Jocko’s legs, and together they half lifted him, half rolled him out of the tub. Colley got a better grip on him then, and they moved him over to the toilet bowl, and sat him down again. Jocko was still unconscious; his head lolled to one side as Jeanine began drying him with a big, white towel. Watching her, Colley was reminded of something — though he couldn’t tell what. He was completely absorbed watching her. Down the hallway, he could hear a clock ticking someplace. He kept watching her. The wound had stopped bleeding completely. She patted it dry carefully, and then took some stuff from the medicine cabinet over the sink, and squeezed something from a tube onto the wound, and then put a gauze pad over it, and wrapped it with bandage and adhesive tape.
“Help me get him in the bedroom,” she said.
Colley took him from behind, like before, but grabbing him under both arms now, and Jeanine lifted his legs again, and they carried him down the hall to the bedroom. He got heavier each time they moved him; Colley was beginning to think this was what Hell must be like — lifting and carrying Jocko Wyatt through eternity.
In the bedroom, Jeanine let his legs go while she pulled back the spread and then the blanket. Colley stood there supporting Jocko, the weight of the man pulling on his arms and his shoulders and his back. His own legs were beginning to tremble.
“Come on,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, and nodded.
He had the feeling she wasn’t even talking to him. She had pulled the blanket to the foot of the bed, and was coming around to where Colley stood with Jocko collapsed against him. She seemed completely involved with her own thoughts. She picked up Jocko’s legs as if she were picking up the handles of a wheelbatrow. Together they moved him onto the bed.
“You better cover him,” Colley said.
She pulled the sheet up over his waist, and stood there looking down at him for a moment. He was breathing evenly and regularly. In the hallway outside, a light was burning; they turned it off before they went into the living room. There was a television set against one wall. Colley instantly looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty. If either of those cops was dead, the eleven o’clock news would surely carry the story.
“Place looks like a slaughterhouse,” Jeanine said, and shook her head. “Do we have to worry about cleaning up right this minute?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you expecting company is what I mean.”
“Cops, you mean?”
“Cops, I mean.”
“No, no.”
“You sure?”
“Well, I’m not sure. But even if the old guy—”
“What old guy?”
“Behind the counter.”
“Great, did you shoot him, too?”
“No, no. Come on, Jeanine, it couldn’t be helped.”
“What about him?”
“I’m saying even if he gives them a good description of us, well, it takes time, you know, to check files, you know, and come up with mug shots and fingerprints and like that. They might never get to us. I mean, even if the old guy remembers what we look like—”
“Colley,” she said, “if those cops are dead, they’ll get to you.”
“Well,” he said.
“Even if only one of those cops is dead—”
“Who said anybody’s dead? Teddy was only in the store there a minute, when he come in to help me with Jocko. Whyn’t you ask me, huh? I was the one in there with Jocko when the shooting started. I’m the one ought to know what happened in there.”