The girl came out of the bedroom again. “Is everything okay?” she said.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. “They just argue like this sometimes. Go back to bed.”
She swallowed. “All right,” she said, and went back into the bedroom and closed the door. A moment later I heard the door lock.
The hall door behind me opened and Virgil came out. He said, “Come in here. Doc wants to chat.”
I went back inside. Price had helped himself to some brandy from the Doc’s liquor cabinet. He stood by the cabinet sipping the drink. He didn’t look as if he had exerted himself at all. His shirt wasn’t even wrinkled. Doc was on the couch. Blood was running out of his nose and the corners of his mouth and it had dripped onto his beautiful robe. No wearing it to church now. There was a lump above his right eye. He reached up with his right sleeve and wiped the blood away.
I felt very small and very ill.
Price held up the glass of brandy and said, “Anyone else want some? Doc? I bet you could use something.”
Neither Virgil nor I said anything. Doc said, “Yeah.”
“Brandy?” Price said, as if he were accustomed to bartending.
Doc nodded. Price set his glass aside and lightly poured Doc a brandy from a large decanter and brought it to him. Doc took the glass carefully, as if expecting Price to hit him with it.
Price smiled at him. Doc sucked the brandy down and gave the glass back to Price. “More,” Doc said.
Price said, “That’ll do you.” He went back to the liquor cabinet and set the glass next to the brandy decanter. He picked up his own glass and sipped. He said, “Now where were we?”
29
“I admit to what you say I did,” Doc said, “what’ll happen to me?”
“They’ll strap you to a gurney and stick a needle full of poison in your arm,” Price said. “Unless I set things different. I can do that. I would do that, provided I get the stuff to see Fat Boy and Snake go down.”
“You can do that?” Doc asked.
“I can do any goddamn thing except lick my own balls,” Price said.
“I’m going to talk,” Doc said. “I’ll need another drink. Something stronger. Switch me to Scotch.”
“All right,” Price said. He poured Doc two fingers of Scotch and gave it to him. Doc drank half of it and melted into the couch. “Our marriage was a sham,” Doc said. “Tara had a kind of mental cruelty you can’t dream of. She…”
“Hey,” Price said, “you’re breaking my heart here, but what I want’s the skinny on Fat Boy and Snake. Give me that and save the harp music.”
Doc sucked in a slug of Scotch and moved it around in his mouth. He swallowed. When he spoke, his words were as dry as an emery board, “All right. I hired Fat Boy and Snake to kill her.”
“How’d you set it up?” Price asked.
“An accident really,” Doc said. “You see I have a special interest in certain things. Things that bother some people.”
“We playing charades here?” Price said. “I’m tired of prodding. Talk like you know some English, or you and me, we’re gonna dance again.”
“I like them young,” Doc said.
“Like the big tittied heifer,” Price said, nodding toward the hallway.
“I like that,” Doc said. “But I like them even younger. I haven’t acted on that, mind you. I just like to think about it now and then. Thinking isn’t doing any harm, is it? Just thinking?”
Suddenly the child pornography angle Fat Boy had brought into all this clicked. “You like children,” I said.
“I like to look at them,” Doc said. “You know, naked. Well, a little more than naked, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“I just look at the pictures,” Doc said. “I mean, I haven’t touched any children. It’s just the fantasy, you see. Looking at the pictures and thinking about it. Where’s the harm in that?”
“Just connect the dots,” Price said. “It’s past my bedtime.”
“Guy I knew out of Houston who came to me now and then for a little work was my connection to Fat Boy,” Doc said. “His name was Jake. Into oil or something. He came to get some tightening around the eyes, mouth, that sort of thing. He used to do a little fishing around here now and then, and he got to thinking all the money he was spending on me made us buddies. I went fishing with him a few times, because he was talking about a breast implant job for his wife. I figured the money was good enough, and he could pay a little more than was needed, so I went along with him. Kind of a business investment.
“One time we’re out on his boat fishing, and Jake starts talking about his daughter. I’m thinking it’ll be the usual thing. You know, how smart the kid is. The braces on her teeth. Her athletic ability. Stuff you hear parents say. And it started off like that, him telling me she’s ten, and he thinks she’s going to be a real beauty, you know. He talked about how she liked to sit on his lap and kiss him. How he liked to set up the camera and take a few pictures of her naked. Keep in mind, this wasn’t some scumbag. He had money, a good home and job. An attractive wife. He said his wife didn’t mind he took the pictures. She knew he liked to fool around with the kid some, and the kid didn’t mind that much either. They didn’t see it as a big deal.”
“Who’s telling you she didn’t mind, that it isn’t any big deal,” I asked, “this asshole Jake?”
“Cork yourself,” Price said to me. “Keep singing,” he said to the Doc.
“The more he talked, more I sorta, you know, ta, you liked it,” Doc said. “The idea, I mean. I had experienced those kinds of thoughts now and then. You know how it is. See a naked kid in a photograph. Out swimming at the pool, wearing little bathing suits-I’m not talking about boys, understand. I’m not talking anything strange.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re some special project.”
“I don’t see the big deal,” Doc said. “You’re making a big deal.”
“You were saying,” Virgil said to Doc.
“I asked the guy a few questions, and pretty soon he’s telling me all of it. How he’s been showing the girl that love between a father and daughter, sexual love, isn’t so bad. Explaining how it’s a special relationship… I can see that, can’t you?”
“No,” I said.
Neither Virgil nor Price said anything. Price looked bored, and Virgil had on his lawyer expression, which could have meant anything or nothing.
Doc looked at his drink and lifted the last of it to his mouth and tossed it back. “Next time he came up, we went out on his boat, and he had a few pictures of him and the daughter. You know, doing it. They were really tastefully photographed.”
“That makes me feel better,” I said. “I’d hate to think they were grainy or blurred or something.”
“Go out in the hall again, Small, you can’t shut up,” Price said.
It was tempting, but I felt I needed to know all this. I had already fallen into the sewer by accident, I might as well spend a few more minutes bobbing about with the turds.
“So Jake says if I like this sort of thing, he can make some arrangements with his daughter, who does what he says. Get me kind of a date, you know? But it didn’t work out. I mean, I wasn’t going to do it anyway. I was just thinking about it. I just wanted to see the pictures.
“Anyway, Jake was murdered. It was all over the newspapers for a week. Whole family was rubbed out. Him and the wife and the little girl, and nobody was ever picked up for it. I thought that was the end of it. But one day this guy came by the office, like he was there for a consultation. I saw him in private, in my office, and I thought he wanted liposuction, way he looked. But he didn’t want anything done. He said he’d known my friend in Houston, and they shared some interests.”
“Fat Boy with a few pictures.” Price said.
“Yeah,” Doc said. “Just two or three pictures, then. One of them of Jake with his daughter. Couple other kids with adults. Fat Boy said he could provide me some stuff, if I wanted it. Though any more pictures would cost me. He gave me the pictures and told me a number to call. I got it on my mind I’d like to see more of what he had, so a week later, I called the number. Fat Boy met me after work, drove me out to a place in the woods around Busby. An old abandoned sawmill. I mean, this place was out in the boonies. I got to thinking maybe I’d gotten into something more than photos, and I was right.