As for Tony, full of woe, at fault and to blame for everything, he was groping around in the empty spaces of the story he was supposed to tell, looking for its questions. “Bobby,” he said. “If Ray Marcus killed Lou Bates, when did he leave here?” More. “Where did he go?” Still more. “How did he get his gun? How did he get back here?”
“Let me worry about that,” Bobby said. “He left here when I left. I took him in town. I took him in town, yeah, because I didn’t want to do business with Ingrid here, that’s how it was. God knows what he did then. Got hold of a gun. Hitchhiked back this way. Don’t worry about it.”
He was looking at them like a sick scoutmaster. Have you got it now? Can I leave it with you? Are the gaps plugged?
“Let me recapitulate,” he said. “Shall I do that? Yes. So I brought Ray. When I saw Ingrid here, I took him away again. You waited. Susan came. You wondered where the hell I was. After a while I came back. As I came up to the house with Lou, bang! Two bangs. You ran out and saw this guy lying on the ground, the other one running away. Simple, right?”
Tony thought how galling to have Ray Marcus on the right side of the law against him.
“Don’t worry about Ray,” Bobby said. “He’s liable to get killed resisting arrest. Yes?” To Ingrid. “Did I shock you?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I have a job to do, and I have to find ways to do it.”
No one said anything.
“Shit. You’re all so fuckin honest. You too, Tony? Your wife and daughter murdered and you sit here splitting hairs?”
“Bobby,” Ingrid said, “is this how you always work?” She looked as if she had never seen him before.
“You criticizing the way I do my job?”
They stared at each other. After a moment he yielded. “No, I don’t usually do it like this.” He sounded reasonable now. “No, I never did it like this before.” Regretful.
“You’re a stubborn bastard, Bobby,” Ingrid said. “Why can’t you just say you lost control of a prisoner? Then you lost your head and shot him. Will they kill you for that?”
Bobby thought about it. “It’s not so simple,” he said at last. “I don’t lose control of prisoners. I prefer my version.”
Tony was thinking about the hostile officials who would be cross-examining him.
“I’ll explain it to Ambler,” Andes said. “He’ll take care of it. You probably won’t have to say anything at all.”
He rubbed the gun with a handkerchief and went to the door. “Be right back.” They watched him from the porch. He went by the body of Lou where it lay, shadow like roots of a tree, and on down to the river where he flung the gun into the water. When he came back he said, “If you’re worried it’s not the truth, think of it as the intrinsic truth. What happened is what would have happened.” Then, “Tony, I need your help to catch Marcus.”
This scared Tony, and again Ingrid objected. “How can you catch him? He’s in the woods.”
“If he’s in the woods we track him with dogs. If he gets out of the woods, he’ll hitchhike. So we catch him before he gets a ride.”
“He could be anywhere.”
“No he won’t. There’s only two roads he could get to before morning. If we get out there quick enough.” He looked at Tony, Tony full of horror. “If you go in your car and I in mine.”
“Hunting for Ray?”
“Relax.” It was not a laugh. “I want you to go to George Remington’s house. Wake him up and tell him we need his dogs.”
“Do that yourself,” Ingrid said.
“God damn it, woman, I’ve got to see Ambler while he’s still on duty.”
“Why Ambler?”
His look was one of those secret things. “I’d rather report to Ambler than to Miles.”
Bobby Andes went to the table with a piece of paper. He drew a map. “Here Tony. Bang on his door until he wakes up. Give him this note and tell him I want his dogs. Tell him a man got away and a man got killed but don’t say anything until he hears from me. Then come back here.”
Ingrid said, “Leaving Susan and me alone with him out there on the grass?”
“I have no choice.”
She didn’t say anything, but he heard it anyway. “Fuck you,” he said. “Let’s go, Tony.”
Obedient Tony got up, feeling horrible, and at the door Bobby turned around and made a speech. “The next time you see me I’ll have the guys. I’m gonna tell them how Ray killed Lou. If you don’t like it you can tell them any fucking thing because I don’t give a shit.”
He saw Tony trying to hand him his useless gun.
“Keep that, if you see Marcus.”
“Am I likely to?” He had to tell himself, being in the car there was nothing to fear.
“If you see him, pick him up. Stick his hands through the front and back windows and handcuff them together.”
Using the gun which he had not been able to use.
“Where do I take him?”
“Here. Leave him in the car until we get back.”
“What if he tries to run away?”
“Shoot him.”
Tony looked at him.
“Self-defense,” Bobby said. “Shoot him in self-defense.” He turned to Ingrid as if she had spoken. “It’s only a suggestion. He can do what he likes. If he needs to shoot him, do it in self-defense, that’s all I’m saying.” He patted Tony on the arm. “If worse comes to worst, stay put. We’ll find you.”
Tony Hastings and Bobby Andes went out to their cars. Before they went, Bobby tried to have a farewell scene with Ingrid. She turned away and then submitted. Tony got in his car. Bobby came over and leaned on his window. “How do you like that?” he said. “We got the bastard with the beard, that makes two. The one with the teeth, we’ll get him now, you’ll see.”
Trapped Tony saw his urgent last chance taking shape in words, a protest, Don’t make me tell that lying story, but he was too afraid of the violence of Bobby Andes’s scorn to be direct and instead what he said was, “Are you in trouble?”
“I don’t know. I don’t give a shit.”
He sat in his car motionless against an overwhelming resistance. He watched Andes get into his car and start up, lights, then pause, a shout, “What are you waiting for?”
“After you,” Tony said.
As if not trusting him, the man waited for Tony to start his engine, then drove out. But still not trusting, stopped at the turn and waited for Tony to move. As Tony backed out, the headlights swept across the grass and displayed the body lying by the river, looking small, the gray checked shirt, the black beard and white throat turned up. He wondered why he felt no gratification in that death and what had spoiled his fury and righteousness against the other. The clarity of the night stunned him. He had never left a dead man on the ground before.
SEVEN
Susan Morrow is running out of book. Two, three chapters left at most. The gun goes off like a bomb on the page, and everything swirls down a funnel toward some disastrous end.
Violence thrills her like brass in the symphony. Susan, who is well past forty, has never seen a killing. Last year in McDonald’s she saw a policeman with a gun jump a guy eating a sandwich. That’s the size of violence in her life. Violence happens in the world, in the parks, ghettos, Ireland, Lebanon, but not in her life—not yet.
Knock wood, knock knock. Safe insured Susan lives on the verge of disaster because everything she knows has happened, whereas the future is blind. In a book there is no future. In its place is violence, substituting thrill for fear, like the thrill in a roller coaster. Never forget what’s possible, it says, if you, lucky Susan with secure home and family (so unlike the world), should happen like Tony to meet something vicious in the night. If you had the gun, would you use it any better than Tony?