“No question it was gunshots — not a vehicle backfiring, kids playing with fireworks...?”
Gershon gave him a look. “I’ve heard plenty of guns in my lifetime, J.C.”
“Enough to identify them by sound?”
“This was a handgun. Loud. I’d say a .357.”
“You do know your guns.”
Gershon twitched a smile. “You’ve already gathered you aren’t the only one retired from public service.”
Harrow had already suspected that it wasn’t company that Gershon feared so much as The Company. As in CIA.
“When I heard those shots,” he was saying, “I already knew it was too late to do any good. I’m not heartless, J.C. — I knew there were kids over there. But there was no saving anybody.”
Harrow nodded.
“Still, I grabbed up the Remington and got outside.”
“Could you see the perp leaving? Did you take a shot at him?”
The old boy shook his head, the silver locks swinging. “I meddled in other people’s affairs a long time ago — I try not to do it anymore.”
Harrow said nothing.
“Come on, J.C. Think it through. He’d killed who he’d come to kill, by the time I heard those shots. If I’d gone over there, they’d be dead anyway. If I shot the guy, who knows who he is or he’s working for? No. I have enough on my plate just keeping my own ass alive.”
“Why do you bother, Archie? Keeping your ass alive, if the world is such a shithole?”
“Why, J.C. — if I was dead? Something terrible would happen.”
“What?”
He grinned. “I’d miss your show.”
Harrow grinned back at him. “Okay, Archie. You didn’t take a shot. But what did you see through that scope of yours?”
He swigged more beer. “You’re right — I did watch as the guy drove off.”
“What direction?”
“East.”
“So, then... he drove right by here.”
Gershon swigged again.
“What did you see, Archie?”
“Late model Ford F-150.”
Harrow tried not to show any reaction. “Color?”
“Blue — light blue.”
Another hit.
Still, Harrow remained impassive. “See the driver?”
“Not really. Probably a man. That’s about all I got.”
“What makes you say it’s a man, then?
Gershon shrugged. “Just didn’t feel like a woman. Loud gun like that mag, truck like that... No, I think it was a man, all right.”
“What else did you get, Archie?”
Gershon took another gulp of beer.
“Come on, Archie — what is it you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to share?”
“...You want the license number?”
Harrow just looked at him.
“Oklahoma plates,” he said, and gave the number to Harrow, who wrote it down in his mini-notebook.
Harrow shook his head. “You memorized the number?”
“Sometimes having a good memory comes in handy. Other times you’d trade it for being able to forget.”
“And sometimes,” Harrow said, “memory is all you have.”
“Truth in that,” the old man said.
Harrow finished his beer, then stood. “Look, Archie — I’ve got to go run this plate. You got anything else for me?”
“I don’t think so.”
But Harrow couldn’t quite let go. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Just call your friend Roberto?”
“No phone.”
“It’s just... Archie, goddamn it — somebody might have caught this bastard, if you’d just notified the police.”
“If that’s all, J.C., I got shows to watch, and books to read.”
Harrow shook his head. “None of this means anything to you?”
“You lost your family, didn’t you?”
“...Yeah.”
“Ever want to cash it in after that?”
Harrow sighed. “I could use another smoke.”
The old man provided one, and the two went back outside where dusk had deepened to purple evening.
“I might want to cash it in,” Harrow said, “but I can’t think that way. I have to stop this son of a bitch before he does this sick thing again, and again.”
“See, that’s why I like you on TV, J.C. Why other people like you on TV.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t give a shit about being a star or having your fifteen minutes of whatever-the-hell. You’re the only person on television with an unselfish motive for being there.”
“Oh, I have a selfish motive, Archie. I want justice for my family.”
“Not revenge?”
“Semantics.”
Gershon chuckled dryly, letting smoke swirl out. “People think I’m crazier than a shithouse rat, living out here. I survived things I never should have, and that survival’s so ingrained in me, I couldn’t ever punch my own ticket. So, here I sit on this goddamned hill just waiting to die.”
“Or for someone to come kill you?”
“That’s just one way of dying.” He looked out into the gathering darkness. “What those ‘good’ people do out there to each other, that doesn’t mean squat to me anymore. Yet I’m still here. Waiting.”
Harrow stubbed out the cigarette under his heel, but before he turned to go, he asked, “Were you in Dallas in 1963, Archie?”
“...Don’t believe everything you hear.”
“I don’t,” Harrow said. “But I do pay attention.”
Bestowing his guest a tight smile, Gershon said, “I will tell you one thing — I was in the Dominican Republic in 1961.”
“Trujillo?”
“You know your history. If a man knows his history, he might keep from repeating it... not that anybody in charge of this country for the last twenty years ever got that.” The breeze blew at his hair again, and the old man shivered, possibly with the cold.
Harrow sighed. “Been a lot of blood spilled in a lot of places.”
“I said you knew your history.”
“Whoever spilled that blood next door, Archie, has got to be stopped.”
“Don’t disagree. But it’s your job, not mine.”
“It is at that... and I should get to doing it.”
“You should,” Gershon said. “But if you ever want to stop back and shoot the shit again, chances are I won’t shoot at you. And if I do, I won’t likely hit you.”
Harrow gave up a lopsided grin. “Thanks for that much. And thanks for the license plate number. That should put you in solid with your pal Roberto. And I’ll get my network to pay for the damage to his vehicle.”
“And they say TV stars are just a bunch of phonies.”
Then, laughing at his own joke, the old man turned around and went into the house and joined his hound, his TV, his lounger, his books, and his guns.
Chapter Eighteen
For tonight’s show, Carmen Garcia — chicly businesslike in black slacks and a gray silk blouse, her dark hair pulled up in a tight bun — was about to do the live segment intro. This would be followed by a long walking shot sans teleprompter — she’d memorized a full page of script — and Carmen could not remember ever feeling more nervous. She prayed it didn’t show, or else her meteoric rise might be quickly followed by the same kind of fall...
As the assistant director counted down to the second, Carmen sent herself a mixed signaclass="underline" Stay calm... and energy up!
“I’m Carmen Garcia. Welcome to Killer TV on the road with Crime Seen!”
Hathaway, on Steadicam this time, followed Carmen down the institutional hallway, as did Nancy Hughes with her boom.