“When they were kids?”
“Yeah. And, sometimes, even after. You show me a kid who tortures animals and sets fires, I’ll show you a man I’m going to have to hunt someday.”
“You think they’re born like that?”
“No,” he said, watching the candlelight dance in Ruth’s dark hair. “It takes a lot of work to make them turn out that way.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:01
Procter pulled into the Mobil station with eight minutes to spare. He left his car at the pumps and walked inside. “Where’s the restrooms?” he asked the attendant, covering his tracks to the pay phone.
“Around the side,” the young pump jockey told him, pointing.
“Thanks. I’ll just get some gas first.”
“I can fill it for you, mister,” the kid said. “If you’re not back, I’ll just pull it over in front for you, okay?”
“You got a deal,” Procter said.
He ambled out of the station, walked around to the side of the cement-block building and into the darkness between the two restrooms.
The pay phone was hanging on the wall, sheltered by the overhang of the flat roof. Procter lit a cigarette, hunched his shoulders, and waited.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:03
“Oh God!” Tussy moaned, falling face-first against Dett’s chest.
Dett’s arms encircled her, as rigid as steel bands, but not quite touching her back.
“It’s all right, Walker,” she whispered against him. “Come on.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:08
When the pay phone rang, Procter snatched it before the pump jockey could react. As he lifted the receiver to his ear, he heard, “That was a nice piece you did for The Voice of Liberation.”
“Oh, you’re the guy who read it,” Procter said.
“How come you never did another?”
“I didn’t care for the company.”
“You knew they were Commies before you-”
“I drove a long way,” Procter said. “So where’s the big story you promised, whoever you are?”
“You never wrote another article for them because you found out that the man in charge of that paper wasn’t Khrushchev, it was Hoover,” the voice said. A statement, not a question.
Procter felt the hair on the back of his neck flutter, and he knew it wasn’t the night breeze.
“Want more?” the voice said.
“Not on the phone, I don’t,” Procter said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out with the heel of his shoe.
“They ran you off once,” the voice said. “But I’ve been studying you. And I don’t think they could do it again… if the story was big enough.”
“You’re doing all the talking,” Procter said.
It was another few seconds before he realized he had been speaking into a dead line.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:21
Alone in his room, Carl angrily tore another sheet of heavy, cream-colored stationery into strips. It has to be perfect!
He stood up, went to his closet, and spent several minutes precisely aligning his clothes until a familiar calmness settled over him. Then he sat down and began to write.
Mein Kommandant, I am yours to…
1959 October 07 Wednesday 03:59
As Ruth and Sherman slept in each other’s arms, Walker Dett slipped through the darkness behind Tussy’s house to where he had hidden the Buick and a change of clothes.
Driving back to his two-room apartment, Procter was thinking, This one’s no crank. And he knows about that time the G-men paid me a visit in Chicago.
Holden felt the darkness lifting around him, felt the night predators retreating to their dens, felt the forest respond to the not-yet-visible sun. He checked his notebook one more time, then headed back to his cave.
A maroon Eldorado crept around the corner on Halstead, then turned up the block.
“One more pass,” Rufus said to Silk. “Then we’ll have it all mapped out.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 06:11
“You’re up early, Beau.”
“I can sleep when I’m dead, Cyn.”
“Why do you always have to say things like that?”
“I’m sorry, honey. I just meant there’s so much to do and there’s never enough time.”
“I know.”
“And I’m never really sleepy, you know? A couple of hours, that’s all I ever need.”
“At least have a good breakfast, for once. I’ll make some bacon and eggs, and maybe some potato pancakes?”
“I’m really not so-”
“You know how much Luther loves it when we have breakfast together, Beau. We can all eat at the big table. What do you say?”
“Sounds good,” Beaumont said, smiling at his sister.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 07:12
“What?”
“Oh, Walker, I’m sorry! I woke you up, didn’t I?”
“Tussy,” Dett said, as if to reassure himself. “I thought it was… business. No, you didn’t wake me up at all. Is anything wrong?”
“No! Nothing at all. I was just… I… well, I remembered you were staying at the Claremont, and I don’t have to be at work until three, so I thought… I mean, I know you’re busy, you have business and all, but I thought, I mean, if you wanted to come over for lunch, I could…”
“I never wanted to leave,” Dett said.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 07:13
“You can pay six hundred dollars for a suit,” the man with the rawhide skin and dirty-water eyes said, fingering the sleeve of his alpaca jacket. “And it could still be a bargain. A real work of art, all hand-tailored. Takes a whole team to make something like that. You have to see the design in your head, draw a pattern, cut the cloth perfectly, sew each stitch by hand, fit it and refit it until it hangs on you just right…”
The spotter sat behind his tripod, listening with the patience of his profession. The rifleman’s eyes watched the speaker’s hands.
They’re not two men, they’re one man with two bodies, the man in the alpaca suit thought to himself. Put them next to each other in a lineup, you couldn’t tell one from the other. “But one loose thread,” he said aloud, “and the whole thing could be ruined. It’s not the thread itself, you understand; only if someone were to pull on it the wrong way. The thing about a loose thread, dealing with it is no job for an amateur.”
The speaker glanced around the top floor of the warehouse, as if waiting for one of the other men to speak. The spotter didn’t change position. The rifleman breathed shallowly, dropping his heart rate as offhandedly as another man might wind a watch.
“Now, even the best professionals can disagree on something like that,” the speaker continued. “One member of the team looks at the suit, says, ‘We can fix it.’ Another one, he says, ‘No, we need to snip it clean.’ The first tailor, he says, ‘You do it my way, there won’t be a trace-we can weave it back in; it’ll be as good as new.’ But the other one disagrees. He says, ‘That loose thread, it’s like a cancer. Just because you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it won’t eat you alive. Only thing you can do is cut it out, at exactly the right spot, or the whole beautiful suit, the one we all worked so hard on, could get ruined.’ ”
The rifleman and the spotter listened, growing more and more immobile with every word.
“Now, let’s say the tailors, they’re partners,” the speaker said, his low-pitched voice just a shade thicker than hollow. “Equal shares in the business. They both worked on the suit; they both want it to be perfect, but, now that something’s gone wrong-potentially gone wrong-they can’t get together on how to fix it. It’s like America: you let everyone vote, but, somewhere along the line, the big decisions come down to one man. So, with a suit like I just told you about, it’s not up to the tailors to decide how to fix it. No, that’s up to the customer, the one who ordered it made in the first place.”