The world is shiny and the surface is a little too frangible. Something can reach out of the black and grab you at any moment. Everybody wears a different set of compulsions. You can be maimed without warning, in body or in spirit, by a very nice guy. It is the luck of your draw. I did not feel like a nice guy. His red coat was a little too brave and pretty. Now it was a child’s toy on the beach after the child drowns. This one was not villainous. He was just a silly stud. A ski slope, and less reptilian, version of Harry Diadem, a specialist in racing wax and erogenous zones.
I drove on down into Speculator, looking for a place to take him. The snow banks made it difficult. I turned west on Route 8, and after about a mile I found a darkened structure on the right, some sort of a building supply establishment. The drive and parking lot in the rear had been plowed out. Nearby houses were dark. I could see no pedestrians in the glow of the spaced street lights of the village. No traffic was coming in either direction at the moment.
So I turned in quickly, skidding the back end, bumping it off a snow bank, turning off the car lights as I reached the parking lot. I backed it around behind the building, ready to head out. I got out quickly, looking around to see if I had attracted any attention. Snow laid a silence across the land. A dog barked, a comfortable distance away. Night sky speckled with silver. Bare trees in silhouette. Moving flicker of light as cars went by. It was about twenty degrees, I guessed, not too uncomfortable with no wind.
I opened the door on his side. He was coming out of it enough to strain for balance, but he came rolling out, onto the packed soiled snow of the parking area. I bent, braced myself well, and picked him up, the two hundred and twenty or so pounds of him, striving to make it seem effortless.
The mature male is seldom picked up. It resonates the lost memories of babyhood. It induces a feeling of helplessness. I walked four strides with him, and dropped him into the slope of the five-foot bank of bulldozed snow, dropped him butt first, as into an armchair. He chunked down into it, tilted slightly back, feet free, knees up, lashed wrists holding him hunched and about as helpless as a man can be.
He shook his splendid leonine head slowly and said, “Sick. Real sick. Please.”
When anything begins to fit their television or movie preconceptions they try to move toward the hero role. So one must give it a flavor they can’t comprehend. Cops are good at it. Jocular. You can learn a lot from cop technique.
I stood close and reached to him and rumpled his blond locks with the casual affection you extend toward a small boy. I chuckled. I patted his cheek three times, and on the fourth pat I gave it a little more steam. It was not a blow, yet not a pat. It was a sharp demand for attention. Pay attention to teacher, boy.
My eyes had adjusted, I could see him clearly. Things had moved too quickly for him. He was staring at me with a dumb willingness to ingratiate himself. It was exactly the right attitude. It was a cheap tin box and a joke lock, and it had opened at a touch.
“Carl, baby, Lee is over a thousand miles from here, and she wouldn’t say hello if she met you on the street.”
“What are you…”
“She’s a big investment. The people I work for get very nervous about her. You can understand that, Carl baby.”
“I don’t know what you…”
“They are very very annoyed with you, sweetie. You’ve been very stupid and very naughty. And you’ve gotten their investment very upset. You shouldn’t have played ball with the people who wanted to give Lee a hard time. You should have realized we’d come after you sooner or later, baby.”
“This is some kind of a mis…”
“Don’t play dumb. It’s too late for that. You have had it. They don’t give me much discretion. At the very least, Carl, I have to break you up a little. Like two or three weeks’ worth. And at the very most, I get my little shovel out of the trunk and stick you under this snow.”
The bulge of his eyes tipped me, so when the mouth opened wide for a roar of terror and protest, I packed it swiftly with. a handful of snow. After he had coughed and huffed and spat, I used a handkerchief to wipe the snow water off his face. His teeth clittered. He was melting himself wet, but it was fright and cold both.
“Please!” he said. “I don’t know what…”
I rumpled his hair again. “The pictures, sweetie! The photographs, the pies, the way she got set up for it on that terrace. Like this one.”
I had it in an inside pocket, folded once. I held it in front of his eyes, a lighter flame off to one side. A Lysa Dean sandwich. I put it away when he closed his eyes.
“Oh,” he said weakly. “Oh God.”
I said softly, “Now can you tell me a good reason why you shouldn’t die young, sweetie?”
Seven
I GOT back to the motel room a few minutes before nine. The door was unlocked. As I came in, Dana got up from the room’s only armchair and came toward me, silhouetted against the lamp light.
“You were gone so long,” she said.
The room was warm. I took my jacket off and stretched out on one of the beds. “A long time and a long way away” I said. “Scratch one ski instructor. We can leave now, if you want.”
She looked down at me for a few moments, and then went and fixed another drink in that silver cup. I perched on one elbow and sipped it. “A lot bigger than the last one,” I said.
“It seemed like a good idea.”
“You’ve got good instincts.” She sat on the foot of the bed. I shifted my feet to make room for her.
“Did… you hurt him?”
“I didn’t leave a mark on him. I just finished sneaking him to his room up there at the lodge. He didn’t want anybody to see him. His legs didn’t work very well. I had to help him out of the car. I had to walk him, with my arm around his waist. He was crying like a kid. He had the snuffles. He kept telling me how grateful he was I didn’t kill him. He likes me. It’s a quick dependency relationship, something like getting emotionally hooked on your psychiatrist. At his door I patted him on the shoulder and told him to get a good night’s rest. No, Dana, I didn’t leave any visible marks. But I left the other kind. They last longer.”
After a silence she said, “Trav, why do you do this sort of thing if it bothers you so much?”
“Maybe I like it. Maybe that’s what bothers me.”
“Look at me and tell me you like it.”
“Okay. So it was just smart-ass talk. I left him with less. Less assurance, less faith, less confidence. Maybe his mask will start to slip a little from now on. The tone of voice won’t be exactly right. The snow bunnies will detect it. And one of them will be a little too knowing, and push the right buttons, and big Carl Abelle will come up impotent just once. Once is all it will take, because that’s about all he’s got left.”
She put her hand on my ankle, a light quick touch, like a pat of assurance. “Travis, if you can feel this way, and keep on feeling this way, isn’t it all right for you? What if you should become indifferent to… this business of opening people up like little dirty boxes?”
“Maybe I care less now than I did a few years back.”
“Is Abelle so valuable?”
“Isn’t that the key to it, Dana? This act of judging the value of anyone? Is it something I am entitled to do for money? If we’re judging value, why am I working for your boss?”
“Why am I?” We watched each other. Suddenly she grinned. “Don’t try to fool me or yourself, McGee. If you’d learned anything important from him, you wouldn’t be acting like this.”
I admitted it. She fixed me a new drink. I told her what I had learned. Not very much. He was certain of one thing. No one had followed Lysa Dean to the Chipmann house. None of the playmates could have tipped anybody off that she was there, because he had not said who he was shacked with, and after they all got there, no one left until it was all over, and the phone was disconnected.