“Come on, outside. Let’s go to the car.”
Ray turned and went back to the bed, where he sat down.
“I said, let’s go.”
“What’s gonna make me?”
“I just showed you.”
“If you shoot me, what good will that do? You’ll have to carry me.”
“I’m not afraid to shoot you,” Tony said.
“Yeah.”
He did not move. Tony waited, and he did not move. Tony said, “Let’s go now,” and Ray opened his eyes wide, shrugged his shoulders, spread his palms out wide. Tony cocked the gun, and he clicked his tongue, tsk tsk. “I’m not afraid to shoot you,” Tony repeated, hearing the strain in his voice, and Ray did not move. Tony thought. He pulled up the little straight-backed chair, straddled it backward resting his chest on the chair back, and said, “Well, if you’d rather wait here, they’ll be along after a while.” Thinking that was true, they would look for his car when he didn’t show up, and they would find it here.
Then wondered if that much of a concession was a mistake.
Ray said, “You want me to wait for them?”
“You wouldn’t have to wait so long if you came in the car.”
“I don’t seem to want to do that, do I? Listen mister, I think I’ll be going now. It’s been nice talking to you.”
He got up and headed for the door again. Tony said, “I warned you. Watch out.” His voice was turning into a scream. “I don’t want to shoot you, but if you try to get away, I swear I’ll kill you.”
The strange voice stopped Ray, who put up his hands, okay okay, and went back to the bed. Tony thinking, if I can’t make you go, I can make you stay, and another thrill of power.
They sat looking at each other. Ray said, “Listen mister, why does a nice guy like you keep such crummy company? That Ganges Andes fella, he’s a bloodthirsty crook. He kills people. If I go back to him, he’s going to kill me, just like he did Lou. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
Tony thinking, he’s right about Bobby Andes. He said, “You kill people.”
“Aw shit.”
“Don’t you shit on that,” Tony said. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here.”
The annoyance in Ray’s face, like something inconvenient he’d rather not talk about. Tony enjoyed seeing that look.
He said, “There’s no point denying it. I remember you.”
“You got a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Nah, of course you don’t.”
Looking at him, staring at him, after a moment Ray said, “They had it coming.”
“What? Who?”
“Your fuckin wife. That kid.”
The leap of Tony’s heart, after all these months, a whole year, news, news at last. “So you do admit it. It’s about time.”
“You got me wrong,” Ray said. “That was an accident.”
“What was an accident?”
“Your wife, yeah. I remember your fuckin wife.”
“My wife and my daughter, whom you killed.”
“Take it easy man. An accident, like I say.”
Wait. Hold back your joy, husband your energy. “So. What sort of accident?”
“Listen mister, I know it’s your wife and kid, and I sympathize with your loss, but that don’t excuse how they treated us.”
“How they treated you?”
“They asked for it,” Ray said.
Well now. That’s good. That calls for joyful uncorrupted rage. Contain it, though, steam to drive the cylinders, not swoosh out the stack. Hold the voice down, stilclass="underline" “Exactly what do you mean, they asked for it?”
“You want to know? Nah mister, you don’t want to know.”
“You tell me just how you think they asked for it.”
“They called us vile things.”
“They were right.”
“They was full of suspicion and dirty thoughts. Mister, they was set against us from the start. They didn’t give us a chance. They thought we was crooks and murderers and rapists from the moment they laid eyes on us. You saw that daughter of yours when we fixed your tire. They acted like we was the scum of the earth. When we got in the car, they thought it was the end of the world, like we was gonna slit their throats and fuck their dead bodies. I tell you mister, I got a certain pride how people talk to me, and there certain things I don’t put up with.”
Slow and easy. Tony said, “Their suspicions were justified.”
“They brought it on themselves.”
“You are murderers and rapists. You murdered and raped them.”
“Let me tell you, man, when someone accuses me of something, that’s an insult, it gives me the right. When Leila accuses me of screwing Janice, by God I screw Janice. If your fucking daughter thinks I’m a rapist, by God she gets raped.”
“They were right to fear you. Everything they feared came true.”
“Because they fuckin asked for it.”
“They were right you are the scum of the earth, because you are the scum of the earth.”
“You’re a fucking mushroom, man.”
“You have no rights. You lost your rights when you killed Laura and Helen.”
“I have as much rights as you do.”
“You have no rights. I’ve been waiting a year for this.”
“Yeah?”
Tony Hastings knew this pleasure of the gun in his hand and the right to insult which it gave him was a treacherous and dangerous power, for every additional insult would have to be backed up by his willingness to use that gun. He was proud of himself for running that risk, the courage he was acquiring, minute by minute.
He said, “Let me tell you something. Nobody gets away with what you did to me.”
“They don’t?”
“You came after me, that was a mistake you’ll never forget.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“You ruined my life, you’d better be scared.”
“Well gee, if I’d a known I was ruining your life—”
“I mean to make you suffer. I mean to make you remember, the reason for your suffering is what you did.”
Tony thought, I sound like Bobby Andes. Ray did not look impressed. “How do you propose to do that?”
He thought about that, a flaw in his strength, he did not know the answer. The power was only for now, the two of them together here, he with the gun. He considered how to extend the menace, protect his pleasure. “I’m turning you back to Andes.”
“That won’t work,” Ray said. “They’ve already decided there’s no case.”
How to make it dire and frightening. “Andes has other plans for you.”
“It’s Andes’s own ass from now on.”
Probably true. True also realizing this orgasm of power was based on an assumption he had not made, namely, that he was going to kill Ray Marcus. But there was also an ecstatic notion that he had now been liberated to do so, though he did not know where that idea came from. This feeling he had a right, it had been given to him. Or even a duty, which gilded the right and made it an orgy. He looked back, trying to find it: where did that liberation come from which would change the killing of Ray Marcus from a murder to a right or duty?
He remembered Bobby Andes saying, Kill him in self-defense. He doubted that was it.
He thought, Tony Hastings, professor of mathematics. Not the right thought for moments like this.
He thought, Is Tony Hastings professor of mathematics willing to accept the sympathetic but scandalous publicity and possible detention for a crime of passion everyone would understand?
Ray was studying him and said, “So why don’t you just kill me, man?”
“I’ll kill you if I have to. You think I won’t?”
“Come on man, you don’t know nothing. It’s fun to kill people. You ought to try it sometime.”
“Fun? Yes, it would be, for you.”
“Fun, right.”
“You found it fun to kill my wife and child?”