Together they went out of the bathroom. Colley could hear them rummaging around in one of the closets. 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 goodnight. He heard Jeanine padding barefooted toward the bathroom again. She came in and took a big white towel from the towel bar. Jocko was still unconscious; his head lolled to one side as Jeanine began drying him. Watching her, Colley was reminded of something — he couldn’t place 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, and Jeanine lifted his legs, 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 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 wheelbarrow. 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, huh? 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.”
“All right,” she said, “what did happen in there, Colley?”
“They surprised us, that’s all. Jocko threw down on the guy behind the counter, and next thing you know there was fuzz.”
“Who was the one started shooting?”
“The one coming at me,” Colley said. “Holding out his badge. He was left-handed, Jeanine, both of them were left-handed. They had their pieces in their left hands, how you like that?” he said, and shook his head in amazement. “Listen,” he said, “you got anything to drink around here? I could really use a drink.”
“There’s booze in the kitchen,” she said.
“You want one?” he said.
“Mix me a light Scotch and water.”
“I’m not moving in,” he said, “I just want to sec the news. I’ll go right after the news, you don’t have to worry.”
“Who’s worrying?” Jeanine said, and looked at him.
“Well, I didn’t mean actually worrying.”
“What did you mean?” she said.
She was still watching him. He couldn’t read the look on her face. He knew she was angry because of the shooting in the liquor store, and Jocko getting hurt. But there was something else mixed in with the anger.
“What I meant is I know you’re upset right now,” he said, and got up quickly and went out into the kitchen. On the counter near the refrigerator there was an almost full bottle of Scotch and an unopened bottle of bourbon. He pried an ice-cube tray loose from the freezer compartment and put a few cubes in each of two glasses. He was pouring Scotch liberally into both glasses when he remembered she’d asked for a light one, so he poured more heavily into his glass, which made hers light by comparison. “Did you say water in this?” he called to the living room, but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to answer him. He himself wanted soda, but there wasn’t any in the refrigerator, so he put a little water in both glasses and then carried them out to the living room. The living room was empty. Down the hall, he heard the shower going. He looked at his watch again. It was a quarter to eleven, plenty of time before the news came on.
He turned on the set, and then sat on the sofa and took a good heavy gulp of his drink, and then another heavy gulp, and then just began sipping at it slowly. Down the hall, the shower was still going. The apartment was still except for the steady drumming of the water and the drone of the television set. A movie was on, he watched it only because he did not want to think about what had happened in the liquor store. He did not want to believe that either of those two cops were dead.
He could accept them being hurt bad, but he didn’t want to believe they were dead because then he might just as well admit he himself was dead. You kill a fuckin cop in this city — any city, for that matter — that was it, Charlie. So he didn’t want to believe he had killed that cop. Until he knew other wise, why then, he chose to believe the man was only hurt bad. Stupid bastard running at him that way, holding out the badge as if it was a shield could protect him from harm. Like people hanging St. Christopher medals in their car. All those crazy bastards on the highway, you needed more than a St. Christopher medal to survive.
The sound of the water stopped. He kept watching the movie. He had no idea what the movie was about, no idea who the actors were. Down the hallway, he heard the bathroom door opening. Silence. The ticking of the clock. On the street outside, filtering up to the open windows, the distinctive laughter of a black woman. In the distance, the sound of an approaching train rattling along the elevated tracks on Westchester Avenue. Summertime. It was summertime in that apartment and beyond those open windows. Summertime. And he had shot a cop.
When she came back into the room, she was wearing faded blue jeans and a white cotton T-shirt. No bra, her breasts moved fluidly beneath the thin fabric as she came barefooted into the room. She looked clean and cool and she brought the scent of soap with her. She looked younger, too, possibly because the narrow jeans hid the fleshiness of her thighs and gave her a long, slender look. Stopping just inside the door to the room, she put her hands on her hips and stood there watching the television screen. The movie had just gone off. Another train went roaring past on the avenue a block away, smothering all sound. Jeanine looked for her drink, saw it on the coffee table and bent over to pick it up.