"I wondered if you'd get here in time," I said. "I'm due to leave in a matter of hours. They're sending a car for me."
"If you knew I was coming over, why didn't you leave ahead of schedule? Why didn't Bucky Wunderlick get out when he had the chance?"
"Dumb question," I said.
"I guess it is. Heck, I'm stupid sometimes. You half want this confrontation. You half want to go to Essex Street with me."
"Who cut Azarian's throat? Did his people do that?"
"Longboy."
"What for?"
"Longboy's our throat man. When he was a medic in the Airborne he performed many a tracheotomy out in the field. Man with broken jaw, blocked air passage, choking to death in the drop zone. Longboy would trake him right there. He traked maybe ten people all told. He got to know the throat. He's developed a feel for it. So we sent Longboy after Azarian's throat. We had a lot of trouble locating Azarian. We knew he was after the product but we couldn't get him located right."
"He was just bidding," I said. "He never had his hands on it. There was no point in killing him."
"We killed him because we found him," Bohack said. "It was a heck of a job. We put a lot of time and effort into it. After all that time and effort, we obviously had to kill him. If we didn't kill him, it would have been a total waste, all that time and effort. We knew he was in California, in L.A., most likely in Watts. Finally we got street name and house number. That's when we sent out Longboy. He's our throat man."
"Dr. Pepper told you I was leaving. Is that right?"
"Right, Pepper told us. Pepper wanted me to arrange a get-together with Rex, Brandy, King, Bruno and the others. He knew about Happy Valley's interest in your retirement and he wanted to use the dog-boys to keep you permanently in this room. He was scared half to death of even approaching the dog-boys but he thought you'd cut him out of any chance at the product and this was his way of getting revenge. I was surprised, tell you the truth. I didn't think Pepper was that vindictive. He came on like a spiteful kid who wakes up one morning and finds he has two poison fangs and it's just a question of who gets the first nip. But I could tell he expected heap big trouble if he got anywhere near the dog-boys. Fear and trembling. It might have been halfway funny to see Pepper with those lunatics but I finally told him it wasn't necessary. I told him we didn't need the dog-boys. Don't you want to know why? You're just standing there without any look on your face. Isn't Bucky interested? Doesn't he care about these things?"
"He cares deeply."
"The dog-boys aren't an independent pack. I control them. I run them back and forth. They're not a separate faction. They're just a lunatic fringe that we use for our own purposes. They're completely subordinate. There's only one Happy Valley Farm Commune. The dog-boys are the lunatic fringe. We use them to sow fear and confusion. People think Happy Valley's weak and disorganized when it's just the opposite. A nice touch, what do you think? Broadcasting dissension, what do you think? Not bad, right? Sowing fear. Sowing confusion. What's your opinion?"
"I need time to think about it."
"I gave them the names," he said. "Bruno, Rex, Corky and so on. What do you think? Nice touch, don't you think? Sense of humor. You need that."
"How heavy are you?"
"I go two forty-five. Is that too heavy? I've got a big frame. With a big frame you need considerable poundage. My face is a round-type face but the rest of me is packed pretty solid."
"Are your parents big people?" I said.
"They're both normal size except my mother has the biggest thumbs I've ever seen in my Me."
"Any brothers or sisters?"
"Only child."
"Where do you buy your clothes?"
"Orchard Street."
"Do you pay your rent with cash, check or money order?"
"Right now we owe four months."
"What are your plans for me?"
"It's a nice day," he said. "Let's go up to the roof."
We strolled among chimneys of various shapes and materials, crumbling brickwork, heavy metal painted black, aluminum peanut-whistles. The tar was hard. To north and south, towers grew out of crooked rooftops in the foreground. Bohack rested against the ledge, eyes closed and face thrust upward, although the sun was at his back. It was one of those electrically blue days when every tall building set against the sky seems to drip silver. Bohack was looking at me now. His arms were folded. He wore crushed dented clothing that made him appear to ripple upward, a fountain of automobile parts and bland expressions.
"Your suicide should take place in a city like Tangier or Port-au-Prince or Auckland, New Zealand. Some semi-mysterious or remote place is probably best for your kind of suicide. That way the news is late, the news is garbled, the news is full of contradictions. A doubt always lingers that way. Even when they produce your body, there's a doubt or a shadow of a doubt. Maybe it's somebody else. Maybe it's a look-alike provided by the local police. The perfect suicide is when people know you're dead on one level but refuse to accept it on a deeper level. It's the final inward plunge, Bucky. It's what you owe us. It really is. We patterned our whole lives after your example. What happens? You decide to pull out. Just like that. You decide to step back into the legend. No good, Bucky. Not acceptable. Obviously it leaves us hanging. We're in the midst of an inward plunge and you suddenly just like that decide to sneak out into the open. Zero acceptability. Suicide's the best answer all around. I think you see that now."
"It's a good answer. But not the best."
"There's a definite second-best. But suicide's the best. How can I tempt you further? Can I say it's what everybody ultimately expects of you, right down to the littlest scribbler of fan mail? Should I say it's a life-affirming gesture for someone in your position? Do I put the whole thing in perspective by arguing that your life and work will draw off additional meaning from an act of this kind? How can I tempt you, Bucky? We're how high up – four stories? Not enough, is it? You want to be sure and I don't blame you one bit. Istanbul, that would be ideal. Better than Auckland, New Zealand, where chances are they do things in a neat tidy manner and we wouldn't have the proper mystery or doubt. Our building on Essex Street is five stories high. Add one for the roof. That's six, which is probably high enough."
"I admit I'm tempted."
"It's by far the best answer."
"Not by jumping though. That's no good at all."
"Let's discuss alternatives," he said.
"Many better methods."
"I'd be happy to discuss them with you. Anything you have to offer in the way of ideas is great with me. Gun's not bad. It's a right-there kind of thing. It's got a brutal purity other methods don't have."
"You're not being serious," I said. "If you were really bearing down on this, you wouldn't make dumb suggestions. It has to be more passive. But not drugs and not gas. An exotic poison maybe, A snake in a basket. Something that harks back to the great days when excess was the style. But I'll tell you the truth, Bo. We're just making noises up here. I have no real intentions. I'm not innocent enough for suicide."
"You have to teach by example, Bucky. Otherwise you're just a salesman."
"I've done things without understanding them fully. This would be one more such thing. Besides I'm not innocent. I've ass-licked around the edges of some mean conceits. You can't kill yourself when you're half-rotten with plague. Only the innocent are received. No suicide gets through unless he's free of attachment. It's murder I've been burning to commit. I'm way beyond suicide."