“Not violated,” she said, “not exactly violated. It’s as though I didn’t matter, as though whether I was even alive or not had no meaning at all. He doesn’t care. I’m a worm to him, less than a worm. Nothing to him. Not even worth feeling contempt toward.”
“In other words,” Dr Godden said, “for the first time you’ve met someone else who has the same attitude toward you that you have. The attitude you think is the only thing you deserve.”
She frowned at the rug. “Is that it?”
“Of course,” he said. “But when you treated yourself that way, you always knew you had the choice, you could stop treating yourself that way whenever you wanted. But when this man Parker gives you the same treatment it’s out of your control. He isn’t even doing it to expiate your guilt. Your guilt has nothing to do with the way he acts.”
“He doesn’t care what I think,” she said. “He doesn’t care. Everybody cares. You might hate somebody, but you care what they think, you want to know what they think.”
Dr Godden let the silence stretch this time, and she knew that meant she was supposed to look inside and see if there was anything else there, anything she was trying to hide from herself. “It isn’t really Pam I’m angry about, is it?” she said. ”It isn’t even me, not the real me.”
“No?” he asked gently. “What is it, then?”
“The mask I’m wearing,” she said. “Motherhood. You know, the good mother bit, the whole cop-out to make up for everything I’ve done wrong all my life. You know, how now I’m a mother and I hide behind that. And Parker doesn’t pay any attention to the mask. He goes ahead and puts the guns in Pam’s closet and doesn’t even ask me. The whole mother mask doesn’t mean a thing to him.”
“You think he sees through it?”
“I think,” she said, “I think he doesn’t give a damn.”
“What about Stan? Do you think he cares about Stan?”
“Parker? He doesn’t care about anybody except his own sweet self.”
Dr Godden said, “Then perhaps he’ll arrange the robbery so he’ll be the only one to get away.”
“Do you think so?” she said, alarmed.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
She studied the question, trying to be fair, and finally said, “No, that isn’t how he’d be. He’s cold and ruthless and he doesn’t care about anybody, but that’s because he cares about things. Not even the money, I don’t think. It’s the plan that really matters to him. I think the thing that counts is doing it and having it come out right. So he wouldn’t want anybody else to be caught.”
“It would be unprofessional.”
“Yes. Oh, they found a hideout.”
“Did they?”
“Out Hilker Road. A hunting lodge up near the border that got burned down a couple of years ago.”
“Andrews’ Lodge?”
“I don’t know, I guess so. They went up there yesterday to look it over.”
“Then the plan is set?”
“Not entirely, I don’t think. Maybe in Parker’s mind it’s all set, but they haven’t talked about it all yet. I guess they’re waiting for the others to come in.”
“How many more?”
”Three. They’re supposed to come in by Monday night, I think. So I guess I won’t have much to tell you next time. But lots on Wednesday.”
“That’s when they’ll be doing it.” Dr Godden said.
Ellen shivered.
8
Jake Kengle unlocked his way into his furnished room, threw his briefcase on the bed, and got the bottle of whiskey out of the bottom dresser drawer. He went to the bathroom for a glass, half-filled it, and sat down on the bed to ease his feet while he slowly drank. The briefcase sat beside him, fat and black, sternly demanding he go back to work.
The hell with it. The double hell with it. He sipped at his whiskey, he looked moodily out the window at the airshaft with its gray brick wall five feet away, and he found some small pleasure in anticipating how good it was going to feel when he finally bent over and removed his shoes. His feet tingled inside the shoes, enjoying already their coming freedom. The liquor burned warm down his throat, slightly watering his eyes. The tension across his shoulders very gradually eased.
When he did at last bend forward to remove his shoes he saw out of the corner of his eye the briefcase again, still squatting there on the bed. In sudden rage he picked it up and hurled it across the room, generally in the direction of the window and the airshaft. His aim was way off; the briefcase hit the front of the dresser and thudded to the floor. Kengle left it there.
The briefcase contained something called a “presentation”. A lot of brightly colored sheets of glossy paper, that meant; two expensive-looking loose-leaf folders, all telling how great some damn encyclopedia was.
Why would anybody buy an encyclopedia? Kengle didn’t know. He’d been ringing doorbells day and night since Tuesday on this damn job, and here it was Saturday afternoon, and he hadn’t yet found anybody stupid enough to fork over three hundred bucks for a bunch of books. And the commission on zero sales is zero dollars.
It was a stinking way to make a buck, trying to sell things door-to-door on commission. But the good ways to make a buck, the soft and easy ways, they didn’t show up all that often for the guy with a record. “In your employment resume, Mr Kengle, you give no employer for the last fifty-two months. Why is that?”
“I was in prison.”
“Oh? Mmmmmmmm.”
He’d gotten out the first of September, and here it was the twenty-sixth already, and so far he’d landed two jobs, one peddling a food-freezer plan on commission and now this book thing. He’d been lucky the second day with the freezer plan, found a family that had just moved into this stinking town and had friends with a freezer plan, so they were what the boys called pre-sold. Sixty bucks commission. Then he’d gone the next ten days without a nibble, got into a stupid argument with Nettleton, the sales manager, and that was the end of that.
And how long is sixty bucks supposed to carry a guy? Monday they’d start bitching about the rent on this place, and he just didn’t have it. So then what?
The trouble was, he wasn’t a penny-ante boy. He could hustle into a big-time caper, cut ten or twenty thousand for himself, handle his action with no trouble. But cop some old lady’s purse in the park for six dollars and thirty-seven cents? He’d never done it, he had no taste for it, and it seemed to him an ignominious thing to get the collar for. So it looked as though he was going to sit here in this room—or out in the street, if they threw him out of the room—and starve, because he couldn’t turn an honest dollar and wouldn’t turn a dishonest nickel.
The briefcase lay on the floor like a legless bug on its back. The sales manager—Smith, this one’s name was, and as phony a bastard as Nettleton—had told him the weekend was always a hot time for book sales, because of husbands and kids being home. Well, it had been crap so far today, and here it was three in the afternoon. So should he go fight it some more? Who the hell works on Saturday afternoon? Or Saturday evening, or all day Sunday? Ex-cons trying to make a commission buck, that’s who.
If that bastard lawyer hadn’t used up every penny of his stake in useless appeals things wouldn’t be so bad now. He could sit back, relax, live small but comfortable until somebody showed up with something. But no. He had to hustle books like some baggy-pants straight man in burlesque.
He finished the liquor in the glass, got to his feet and padded in his socks over to the dresser. He was reaching for the bottle when somebody knocked on the door.
Weren’t they going to wait till Monday? All set to blow his top, Kengle went over and opened the door, and there stood a tall skinny kid in an undershirt. “Phone for you,” he said, and trotted away down the hall.