by Barry, Mike
But now he was in a different situation. He hadn’t stage managed this one too well; he had to admit that part of it. It had been really lousy work letting the black run away. Put it down to overconfidence then or overplaying his hand when he really had no hand to play. But now it was obviously serious. He couldn’t afford to have the black get away; couldn’t afford to get involved with police authorities at this time. And although the crazed junkie might run straight into a hole somewhere, he might go to the cops, too. You simply couldn’t tell with junkies. They were unpredictable; they were apt to do anything whatsoever.
All of this calculation went through one part of Wulff’s brain very low-key, very carefully. But it was, really, as if he was behind it rather than letting thoughts drive him. He was merely a witness to his stream of consciousness rather than the subject, and while he was thinking a gun was in his hand, was extended, and fire was leaping from the deep end as he lay down shots into the man at target practice range, cross-stitching him with the bullets. Each of them was placed in a perfect shot pattern, and it was classic shooting in every sense. The dummy was levelled precisely in sight, except that the dummy was down, the black man at the edge of the corridor suddenly obliterated, and the white behind him was moaning. He had killed the man. Wulff turned and looked at the white who was not a man at all, only a boy. All of the twenty-five-year old scraped from his eyes, the age that had been laid in by dope, and now an eighteen-year-old face stricken and hopeless looked up at him. It was the face of a child who in different circumstances might not have been there at all, could have only dreamed what he had become, as the boy said, “You didn’t have to do that.”
Wulff looked at him. There was nothing to say.
“You didn’t have to do it. We didn’t do anything to you; what the hell did you do that for? Why would you want to off a guy? You a narco man or are you just trying to rip us off? What is this shit?” the white said, his fingers scrambling at the earth, little puffs of dust coming up. “What the hell is this?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand?”
“You don’t understand anything,” Wulff said. His voice sounded dry, meaningless, off the point. He was not sure that he himself knew what the hell he was driving at. Maybe nothing. That, as likely as not, was the explanation. Why did everything have to mean something? “Get out of here,” Wulff said.
The boy was on the ground, shaking. He seemed to want to stand, drew up his knees to shoulder level to try and force accommodation, but he did not quite have the strength and instead flattened out against the ground, like dough. “Murderer,” he said. “You off people and then you tell them they don’t understand.”
“If you don’t get out of here I’m going to off you too. I don’t need any witnesses.”
“Oh Jesus,” the boy said. His body convulsed, then he was on his feet. “Why?” he said. “That’s all I want to know. Why?”
“You don’t understand,” Wulff said again and raised the gun and pointed it, and then in a dream which must have been like the boy’s or like the running man’s, a dream which intercepted with theirs, diving in and out of the same murky patterns, the net of the dream grabbing and holding them together, he shot him in the head once with a brutal shot that went in behind the left ear and spattered blood. Even before the shot hit, the boy was down, as if he had apprehended death; as if, in fact, he had needed it. And death was only the last confirmation of all circumstance.
“I told you,” Wulff said weakly. “I told you, there can’t be any witnesses to this. I gave you a chance but you wouldn’t take it,” he added and then he put the gun away and went from there quickly, heading toward the hotel, toward Independence Hall, and toward Martin. It did not matter, nothing mattered, because at that place of grave intersection, wherever it would be, there would ultimately be only one judgment, and whatever that judgment would be he would take it, he would take it.
VIII
When he had made all the arrangements, as far as he could anyway, Martin blew a little pot alone in the house which had been staked out by competent men fore and aft, and thought about fucking. He could definitely use a little fucking, there was no question about it. The life force and all that. And besides, it was both a drag waiting for some lunatic to appear at your house for a heavy attack and impossible to leave the barricades and wait him out in a less shielded position … So what you had to do was to kill the time as conveniently as possible. Pot helped a little, and Martin had an airy, disconnected feeling working it over. The joint went down so easily that it seemed to make him a different person, and that different person was definitely interested in a little screwing. He went through the numbers and called the most pliable and expensive of all the prostitutes with whom he had been dealing recently, and then waited in a pleasant haze of pot and increased disconnection while she made her way over in her own Corvette, through the checkpoints that he had set up and all the way to the vestibule where he found that the anticipation and necessity were so great that he had her practically out of her clothes and indeed was on top of her before she had come into the living room, fucking and groaning and pinning her on the couch within four minutes of the time that she had pushed the door closed behind her. When the orgasm came it came off-center in a sudden torrent of depression which surprised him, and he fell on top of her, his head sunk between her breasts, breathing through clenched teeth and feeling the slow weakness begin again.
“What’s wrong?” she said. She was a very nice girl; any expensive prostitute working in the area of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would have to be a nice girl or she would have found the territory utterly impossible. As it was, she had managed to adjust herself to Harrisburg rather than the reverse, and although her clientele was restricted, she assured Martin that she had never once lowered her price or her standards, even though that would have been the easy way. “You look depressed,” she said, and expertly eased him out of her, twisted to the side, pivoted to an elbow and looked at him with a serious, committed expression that was nicely framed by her breasts, which were slightly pendulous at this angle—but none the worse for wear. “Did it have to do with all those men outside? Are they waiting for someone?”
“Something like that.”
“Problems,” she said understandingly. She had an inkling of his business, although she had never pressed it. Still, it was his assumption that she knew what kind of man he was; what he was dealing with in the underlay of the relationship which he had with her. He had never felt so close to a prostitute in his life. Often he found it hard to think of her as a prostitute at all, but rather simply Jeanine, an attractive girl, an easy lay whose affection he rewarded with gifts. “Everybody’s got problems. You have another joint?”
He said, “I might.”
“Why don’t you get up and get me one?”
“Not now,” he said.
“You just don’t want me smoking,” she said. “You’re very conservative. You don’t want someone you know blowing pot in your house even though you do it yourself.”
“That’s not fair, Jeanine.”
“Who’s looking to be fair? What does the truth have to do with being fair? You’re like a guy who sleeps out four nights a week but doesn’t like anyone looking at his wife and gets homicidal if he thinks that his daughter is behind the bushes.”
“Come on, Jeanine.”
“Come on yourself,” she said. “You know it’s the truth.”
“I just don’t want to hear it now.”
“Give me a stick.”
“They aren’t in here,” he said.
“So go where they are and get me one?”
“Listen,” he said, shifting his position. He came off her slowly, rolling to one side, and began to sit painfully on the couch feeling that his body had been partitioned into various sections, none of which were collaborating vigorously with any other. “Maybe you just ought to go now.”
“What? How’s that?”
“Maybe
this isn’t a good time to talk,” he said.
“Who’s talking? I want to blow a little pot.”
Something in her aspect, lying there on the couch naked but with a knowledge in her face which gave her more poise than if she had had clothing on and been uncertain, twisted within him and Martin began to feel the situation moving away from him, a lapse of control. He had had that feeling before, although not quite in such a situation, and certainly not with this woman. “I don’t want to talk,” he said. “I have things on my mind.”
“You just wanted to get laid.”
“So what the hell’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing’s wrong with that,” she said, “except that you fall on top of me before I’m even through the door and now you won’t even give me a joint when I want one. You won’t take me seriously.”
“Oh come on,” Martin said. It was too much. It was simply ridiculous that she should be engaging him in this now, that all of this should be happening at such a point of complex difficulty in his life. There was a madman who had declared his intention of killing him, and there were men pacing outside who were paid one hundred and fifty dollars an hour because they were quite capable of killing people like Wulff … or like Martin. Meanwhile there was a prostitute on his couch who was angry because he would not give her a joint and somehow took his fucking her too fast as a reflection upon her personality. Somewhere if you dug deep enough within this there was a moral or at least a proper irony, but Martin did not have the time. “All right,” he said. “All right, Jeanine, now that’s enough now. I think you’d better go.”
“I’d better what?”
“There’s nothing more to talk about. You’d better leave.”
“You just called me over here to get laid and now you want to throw me out,” she said. “Now what the hell does that mean?”
“It means I want you out.”
“You’re treating me like a whore.”
What the hell do you think you are? He almost said it, but he did not. He did not say that. Certain factors in any relationship were understood without statement; if they were indeed spoken the relationship was forever changed and not at all for the better. That was another one of those ironies about human relations. Everything was its opposite. “Not at all Jeanine,” he said. Patience was a virtue. You had to cultivate patience in or out of this world. With what else could you compose yourself against eternity? He had always believed in it, even though factors in his life like Wulff tended to make him fall apart. “It’s just that I have some things to do—”
“After you got laid.”
“Come on,” he said. He looked at her. She was an attractive woman. Not bad for Harrisburg; not even bad for New York. She could have made two hundred dollars a night easily in Manhattan, no strain. Just an answering service and a valise would have been sufficient equipment. Instead she was working in Harrisburg and its suburbs, settling for gifts and considerations which when averaged down could not even be half of that. Still, maybe she was happier this way. She would last longer, and she was away from the more immediate pressures of the terrifying situation of New York. She would be able to pace herself; might be making the same modest living at thirty-three without having left three-quarters of herself poured out over a thousand beds. Then, too, maybe she merely wanted to build up a set amount of money and get out of the game. Maybe she liked what was being done and enjoyed Harrisburg. Martin did not know. He really had no relationship with her.
“All right,” she said, “I’m coming on. You’re throwing me out; you could at least give me a stick.”
“No,” he said.
“I’ll take it with me. I won’t have it here.”
“No,” he said again.
“You’re flagrantly opposed to pot.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re against it on moral grounds. You think that people are destroying their minds, polluting their consciousness. Actually you think that it’s the enemy of youth, a scheme by the pushers and criminals and dope dealers to ruin people.”
“That’s ridiculous, Jeanine,” Martin said. “We’re not getting anywhere,” he said. “This just isn’t moving us anywhere at all. I want you to go now.”
“I’ll go. Permanently I’ll go.”
“Just get out,” he said. “Please.”
She stood, went over to her dress which lay crumpled to one side of the room, stooped, picked it up, and unfurled it with disgust. “You ruin everything,” she said. “Look at the mess you’ve made of this. I’ll have to take it to the cleaners.”
“Do that.”
“I can’t even find my goddamned brassiere.”
“It’s behind the couch,” Martin said.
“Oh,” she said and looked that way. “That’s right. You kind of threw it there. You tore it off with your teeth and spat it out over there, didn’t you?”
“Shit.”
“Nice restrained behavior.”
“I’ve had all of this I can take,” Martin said. “I don’t know why you’re doing this but I can’t take it any more. I want you to get out and get out now.”
“All right,” she said, stopping. “Pot,” she said. “Blowing a joint but anti-pot, and won’t even pass on a joint to a friend. You’re really something,” she said. “You know that? All of you are the same.”
“What?”
“All of you are the same,” she said. “You’ll deal in it and you’ll even use a little bit of it on your own, just for the kicks, of course. Never anything serious like doctors taking a little hypo of shit just to relax. But when it comes right down to actually passing the stuff onto somebody know, when it becomes a matter of having to face the person and see them doing it, then you can’t take it. You just don’t want to face the truth of what you are,” she said angrily and bent down and picked up her brassiere, started to put it on, and then, apparently thinking better of that, dropped it over the couch and instead began to struggle with her dress, pulling it down over her shoulders with strange little grunts. “None of you want to face the truth, that’s your goddamned trouble.”
Martin stood, walked away from her, adjusted his clothing. Always, at moments of great crisis or when under pressure, he wanted to feel that he was well dressed and that everything was in order. Call it crazy if you wanted but that was just the way it had to be if he was going to function. He smoothed his shirt, tucked it away underneath his belt, adjusted his tie, and then reached down to jerk his fly closed, and feeling his hand literally shake as it fumbled on one of the striations, momentarily jammed, he finally forced the zipper all the way up. “What are you calling me?” he said.
She had the dress over her head, peeking out angrily like an animal between bars. “Oh come on,” she said. “Come on, don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m not being an asshole. I want to know what you were trying to say.”
“You know what I was trying to say.”
“You calling me a dealer?”
“Oh,” she said, “oh come on and be reasonable, Horst.” This was the first time that she had ever used his name. He had no idea that she even knew it. Where had she learned his name? Had he cried it out in sleep?
Unconsciously, not even sure of what he was doing, Horst had walked over one, two, three steps toward her and hit her hard across the face, backhanded with his right hand, centering the blow so that it did not send her sprawling so much as it rooted her further into place, brought her to bear with a surprised and terrible attention. Her eyes were rolling as he said, “Don’t you ever call me a dealer and don’t you ever use my name,” and hit her again. She crumbled this time, making little sounds within her. Seeing her broken like this was not enough for him; indeed, it fed the rage. It was not fair that this kind of pain should come from one who was, really, so vulnerable, and he was ready to hit her again and might have lost all control except that at that moment there was a dim whistling unlike anything he had heard in the thirty years he had been back from the Euro
pean theatre. The sound was like metal colliding against itself, and then with a shocking and yet somehow satisfying sense of implosion, the house, the carefully built house, the house that he had made his protection and his life, blew.
IX
Wulff had stolen another car and headed directly toward Harrisburg after the business with the junkies. Standing Williams up, then. Well, that was just tough shit. He couldn’t be everywhere, could he? He wasn’t expected to be every damned place, and he was busy, goddamned busy now. The thing that had happened on the south side had given him the feeling, no longer vague, that matters were closing in on him rapidly and that if he had any real business to do he had better transact it quickly. Do it damned quickly while he still had the options to work with because after what had happened with the kids there was no saying how long he would remain free. They were closing in on him from all angles, and two new bodies would register further clues. But then again it was his fault in a way. He had to admit that. He really had no business offing the two of them if what he wanted to do was to wait out Williams and take care of Martin. Scratch one for him on that; he had overreacted. Still, how could he have resisted? Once matters were started, once he had come up against them, he knew his duty. It was a cop’s duty. You could not look upon a junkie and let him go on that way unless you were an accessory to murder. You had to help them. And these kids were beyond help; death surely was the only answer.
