“Yeah,” Earl had said, “but he knows the car. And you both know the roads. All the holes are, which rocks’re too big to go over. I don’t know any those things.” Battles had bent over the cockpit and extracted the ignition key from the lock. It was fobbed on black leather that carried a Mercedes badge. Battles had held it up by the tip of the key, dangling the fob. “Come to Papa,” he had said.
“And,” Earl had said, “while he’s been doing those things all these years, his neighbors and the other people that know him, they’ve been watching him do it. Judge must know a lot of people, he got to be a judge. They see me in it, they’re not gonna think: ‘Geez, the judge sure got tall. And younger.’ They’re gonna think: ‘Hey, that’s not the judge. How come he’s got the judge’s car? Somebody call up the sheriff, get a posse started here.’ Maybe that cop I met on the way down, maybe tomorrow he’s this side the road. I already told you, he recognized me, and he knows what my license says. It doesn’t say ‘judge’ on it, not that I saw, and what if he knows the judge? Maybe testified in his court. Cops do that, you know. They do it a lot. They know what judges look like. They know what they don’t look like, too.”
“Look,” Battles had said, “I know it’s a sports car. I know there’s not many. But this here’s still not the only one the Germans made, you know? You put a different set of plates on this, something out of state, and you just drive her up the road there and no one’ll bother you. Sunday traffic from the beaches, cops’ll have their hands full. Assholes running into each other, assholes overheating their radiator, assholes running out of gas? Assholes driving drunk? Assholes’ll be everywhere, whole fucking world of assholes. All driving the fucking cops nuts. Cops won’t have the time to wonder if some particular buggy’s hot. Long’s it keeps running, don’t clog up the road, that’ll be all that they care.”
“Yeah,” Earl had said, “but that’s you saying that. You in a barn in a field. I’m gonna be the guy out on the road. What if this fucking thing breaks? I don’t know these little sleds. ’Cept they can be delicate. Maybe it doesn’t like heat—that could be. Judge only drove it cool nights. What if it decides throw a hose on me? What if I’m one the guys that the cops stop to help? What the hell do I tell the cops then? ‘Well, Mister Battles there, he said it’d be all right I just drove this puddle jumper up to Boston for the night. Said you guys wouldn’t mind.’ Think that’ll satisfy them, do you? Think they’ll say: ‘Oh, that’s fine.’? I got as close a look at that jail yesterday as I really want to get. I don’t know if it’s better, or worse, ’n the ones that I’ve stayed in so far—and I don’t want to find out, all right? The food’s better in Cranston, it was out in Kansas, well then, good, the inmates are lucky. But I don’t want any more of that luck, no more of that kind of luck.” He had turned to go out of the barn. “I’m not messing with this thing,” he had said. “Get yourself another boy.”
Battles had grabbed him by the right forearm and spun him around. His face had hardened. “Now you listen me, fucking punk. You got that? You just listen to me. You’re here because you really owe somebody something, and that somebody owes me. You know what I did for a guy one time? I got him out of a fucking big jam he was in, because a fucking girl just fucking died. Because of me, it was a fucking accident, and that’s all it fucking was, and it stayed that fucking way. Not a fucking murder charge. Not some big fucking thing that the papers would’ve gone and had a fucking field day with. Just a fucking accident.
“Now,” Battles had said, clenching his grip on Earl’s arm, “I know how to do things, all right? I got a kid that doesn’t know his ass from third base, and he wants to go to Vietnam. Which means he gets it blown off, and I end up supporting his kid and his fuckin’ frogfaced wife. You think I want to do that? I do not. So I called a guy I know and I said: ‘Keep my fucking kid in Georgia.’ And he called somebody in Washington, and the kid is staying in Georgia. So I know how to do things.
“Now,” Battles had said, “the reason you are here is because the guy that owns this car’s got a big fucking problem, and I got a connected problem. And I consequently called the same guy I called about my fuckin’ kid, all right? It’s not a problem like somebody fucking dying is a problem, but it’s still a fucking problem. You can stand there and tell me: ‘The judge must be stupid.’ And I won’t argue with you. The judge was fucking stupid, get himself into this, and I told him when he started that was what he fucking was, and he wasn’t thinking straight. A lot of guys don’t think straight, they get pussy on the brain. And you can tell me: ‘You were stupid.’ I won’t argue with that either. Maybe what I did was worse. Because I knew it was stupid, and I was thinking straight, and I still went along with it.
“But none of that fucking matters,” Battles had said. “The judge asks me to help him? I hadda help the judge. He wants to come to my place on the Wednesday afternoons, use a room a couple hours? Well, I run a public place, and I rent rooms to people, and some of them get laid in them, or do some other things, and some of them aren’t married, and some are but not to them, and some if you know what I mean can’t get married anyway, ’cause guys can’t marry guys, and gash can’t marry gash.
“Well,” Battles had said, “I told him, and I told him: ‘This fucking town is small. People see what’s going on, and they talk about it. They don’t know who’s doing it, they don’t talk very much, but if they fucking notice you, they just won’t shut fucking up. So for Christ’s sakes, all right? Do me a fucking favor. I know you done me a few favors, and I will do this for you. But: just be fucking careful.’ And he said that he would.” Battles had paused and laughed shortly. “I fuckin’ near fuckin’ died the first time I see this fuckin’ car outside the room on a Wednesday afternoon. I mean: I fuckin’ died. I call up the room extension, and I hear him breathing hard, and I said: ‘Hey judge, all right? Sorry for the interruption. But parking that fucking car out there, with that fucking license plate, I mean, you call this “fucking careful”? You call this “being careful”? Like I thought we both agreed we’d fucking better be?’ And you know what he says to me? ‘My other car broke down.’ He’s a fucking wonder, he is, a fucking goddamned wonder.”
Earl had looked down at the registration plate. Between the “Ocean State” and “Rhode Island” lettering were five capital letters reading “HONOR.”
“Well,” Battles had said, “I did, I guess, I scared the guy. I brought him back, his right mind. He didn’t pull that fucking stunt again, about two years. And he stopped coming Wednesdays—Mondays he came in, about ten different cars. I think he must’ve been borrowing them, lawyers that he knew. There’s a lot of lawyers I know, wouldn’t bother them at all if you caught them fucking whores. Everybody knows they do it, so who cares if they get seen? And I figure, couple months go by, nothing seems to happen, must’ve got away with it. Which was where I was stupid. Should’ve known that one time was enough to do the damage. Might as well’ve put an ad in the fucking Journal—once they saw this fucking car, everybody knew. After that they all were watching. Pretty soon they tipped the cops. And the cops don’t like this judge, or at least the top cop don’t. Thinks the judge’s been a little easy on bad guys. So, I don’t think they were sitting out there, camped out watching us, but I do think they told some people, who it was that tipped them off: ‘If another day comes when you’re sure he’s in there, drop a dime and let us know. We’ll handle it from there.’
“I look at my watch. What good does that do me? I don’t know how long he’s been in there. He comes in at various times. The point is I don’t know if he just got there, and maybe he’s lucky, and nobody noticed it yet, or if he’s been fucking his brains out for hours, and fifty guys noticed the car. I think: The fuck difference does it make? One guy saw it, or fifty? All it takes is the one—one’s all it takes. I better go back in the office. Because, see, I can’t just go down to the pay phone at Chuckie’s, call him from there and scream at him. For one thing, the phones in the rooms only ring or go ou
t after they go through the switchboard. For another thing, the pay phone at Chuckie’s is inside of Chuckie’s damned store. Right next to the cash registers. Where my fucking ex-wife works, and she don’t fuckin’ like me, and’d only jap me if she could. And she’s got ears on her like a fuckin’ radar dish. I’m surprised the navy didn’t grab her up and take her down the boatyard there, install her on one of the subs. I talk to him and she can hear me, might as well call Walter Cronkite.
“I put the Lincoln back. I go back in the office. I call up his room. He answers the phone. Sounds like he’s running the Preakness. I say to him: ‘Judge, I know you’re my pal. How come I can’t go for some beer?’ And he says: ‘What?’ I say: ‘It’s a very hot day, and I see I run out of beer. So I think: “Well in that case, I’ll have to go out, pick up a six-pack of beer.” But then I go out, and I see that car, and therefore I’m back in my office. Because I got to ask you, you out of your mind? Have you lost all your fuckin’ grip? Because that’s what it looks like to me, you bring that car here again.’
“He says: ‘Jeez, Jimmy, I hadda. I’m on vacation. I been on vacation all month. Which is why I haven’t been in. My own car’s the beach house, the Cape. My wife’s sister’s with her and my youngest’s at home. So I hadda leave them my usual car, and then I come over, the bus, and there’s traffic. I didn’t have time, make arrangements, the city, borrow somebody else’s today. But a month is too long, go without seeing Lauren. I hadda see Lauren, ’fore August. A month’s too long a time. It’s only one time. Why get so upset? Nothing happened, I did it before, you got so upset. Not a goddamned thing ever happened.’
“I say: ‘Judgie, my pal, something happened. Believe me. What happened’s the very same reason, you shouldn’t’ve done it again. Now take my advice for a change, will you, please? Get dressed. Get dressed as fast as you can. Come out alone, and get in your car, and get your ass out of this place. Maybe so far, just maybe so far, nobody’s had time to get down here. I don’t think the chances of that’re too good, but maybe your fuckin’ luck holds. So I’m going out for some beer now, all right? It’s your own good, you know, I am telling you this. Be a good pal and take my advice.’
“I hang up. I go through the drill with the sign and the door. I act like everything’s normal. I get into my car and I drive up to Chuckie’s, exchange a few digs with my ex, like I’m not in a hurry and everything’s peachy, nothing to worry about. I get back the motel and I pull in the lot, and the first thing I see is the car. ‘The fucking asshole’s still here.’ I pretend it means nothing, nothing, just one of my guests, and I park in my usual place. I walk slow to the office and open it up, put my beer in the refrigerator. I am wondering if I get in more trouble if I do what I want, which is kill him. I decide that I probably will. I take one of the beers and go out on the porch. I sit down in the chair and I sip it. All I am doing is having a beer, wait for the night clerk to come. I’m not watching the parking lot and the road like a fucking eagle looking for a fucking fish. No sir, not me. I’m just sitting on my own porch, having a nice cold beer. I never even saw that unmarked cruiser with the two suits in it come rolling down the road like it’s going to a fire, then slow down fast and pull into my lot, nice and quiet. I never even saw the two suits inside it, or the guy that wasn’t driving start rolling down the window with this camera in his hand. It was just, I just happened to decide, you know, I hadda go inside for something that I all of a sudden remembered I hadda do in there. Could’ve been they pulled around, like I hear, so the guy with the camera could just sit there shooting picture after picture. I certainly didn’t see it. I was onna phone.
“I said: ‘Judge, there is a problem. There’s a problem with two guys out there in a car, and one of them has got a camera, which my guess is he is using. I bet he’s got film in it too. Now I don’t know if you still got some lead left in your pencil, and I don’t know how long these guys’ve got to sit around in my yard taking pictures, but I think what you and your roomie should do there is see if she can get another rise out of you, you know what I mean. Or if that doesn’t work, get the Bible out the bureau there and read some prayers to each other. Because if what’s going on that I think’s going on, you’re gonna need all the help you can get anyway so you might as well start applying. And anything’s better’n you running out there right now, which you should’ve done the first time I called you, and getting your picture took, too.’
“He sounded like he swallowed something that he didn’t finish chewing. ‘You think they’re cops?’ he says.
“ ‘Well, I don’t know that for sure,’ I say. ‘They might be from one of those outfits that makes the picture postcards, and they picked my lot for the view. Or maybe they’re from Duncan Hines, right? And I’m getting recommended, his next guide. Or it could be the Beatles checked in last night, and the night clerk forgot to mention it, and these guys out there’re from Time. Does it matter? You just stay fuckin’ put, and they’re still here, it gets dark, don’t turn the fuckin’ lights on. Don’t make any noise, even if you don’t hear anything outside the door. Don’t run the TV. Those guys’re as quiet as cats. Don’t open it, somebody knocks. If they pull that routine, talking loud: “I know he’s in there, goddamnit—let’s just kick the thing down,” don’t fall for it, all right? They need a warrant for that. Don’t flush the fucking toilet. Gotta pee? Fine, then so piss down the side of the bowl. Don’t let it splash. Don’t run the fucking sink. Don’t go in the fucking shower and start playing games in there. Those guys are likely to come in here, ask me, see my register. And I got to show it to them. That’s the law. And don’t be surprised if that happens. I’m not fucking around with you here. If these guys’re cops, like my guess is, they are, they get their asses made by U.S. Steel, the very best grade. Rust’s the only thing bothers them—they can sit on those asses forever. And if they do decide it’s time, go and get a bite to eat, two more’ll probably show up to replace them. So I’m not telling you, this’s guaranteed to do it, get you out of this. But at least it won’t make it worse’n it already is, and it might at least save something. Leave you one of your balls, at least.’
“ ‘I got to go home,’ he says. ‘My wife’s expecting me.’
“ ‘You go out there,’ I say, ‘and she’ll be divorcing you. Which she’ll probably be doing anyway, those car pictures hit the Journal. Just don’t make it worse, ’s what I say.’
“ ‘I’ll have to call her,’ he says. ‘Call her and tell her something. Get me an outside line.’
“ ‘The fuck I will,’ I say. ‘That’s a long-distance call, your house over the Cape. It’ll show up on the toll sheets the cops’ll then get, probably already ordered them up, and if they don’t get your actual picture, well that’s almost as good. Who the hell else’d be calling your wife from my joint the same day her car’s here? You wanna explain that, the papers? Now, stay put. Only one of us’s thinking right here, and he’s not the one in the room with the broad.’
“ ‘I can’t stay trapped in here, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘I got to get out of this room.’
“ ‘No, you got it backwards,’ I say. ‘You’re the one that wouldn’t leave it when you could’ve. Now you can’t, so stay. And keep something else in mind. I’m stuck in this office, too, and you’re the one that did it. ’Less of course I want to pose for them too. Which I don’t. Cops got enough pictures of me. Don’t answer the phone again if it rings. Those cops do come in here, ask see my register, well, Room Four’s vacant on it. The phone rings after this time, it’s them. You answer it, not in the book, this fact could get me in trouble. If they ask me to show the room, as they also can do, I’ll tell them fucking lock’s jammed. I’m waiting for the guy to come fix it.’
“ ‘The window in the back,’ he says.
“ ‘Bullshit,’ I say, “ ‘the window in the back.” You don’t think they figure that out? Oh, that’d make a great shot, you and Sister Mary Agnes climbing out the window. What do I say: “Well, they eloped?” N
o, just sit tight and try to think of what we’re gonna do, you finally can go out, get you out of this—if there’s any way. I see them leave finally, I will come out, start making a routine inspection. You’ll hear me knock on Three, and say who I am, and either someone answers or I go in myself. Then I’ll go to Five, ’cause we know Four’s door is busted, and go through the same thing again. And then it’s safe to come out. Unless, of course, they want to join me, in which case you’ll hear us talking. Then, well, don’t come out.’
“Well,” Battles had said, “this’s what we come up with, all right? He’s not only got a lot of things, he’s got to explain his wife, but it’s also, he’s gonna have to give up the car. The cops finally leave, it’s after eleven, and I sneak him around to the back to where my wife’s in her car, and the broad meantime takes off in her own. My wife drives him down to fuckin’ La Guardia, and he takes a plane to the Cape. Rents a car at the airport, he says he got Providence, goes home and tells her hers’s been stolen, he’s out on a long lunch, the boys, having a few after that, and then they all took in a show. All this’s going on, I call my lawyer, Providence, tell him the name the judge gave me, his best friend in the world. Who’s supposed to call the cops there, tell him he’s the judge and the Mercedes’s been stolen. And that he’s on his way back the Cape, they can call him in the morning, tell him if they got it back or he makes a full report. I drive his car up this place, belongs a friend of mine that isn’t even home, and lock it up in here. Then I walk four miles home.
“Now I am telling you,” Battles had said, “I know this isn’t taking candy, babies, anything, but something that’s got to be done. It’s almost two weeks since they filled out the hot sheet, and most cops see sixty a day. So hundreds of other cars made the list since then, and they’re not just lookin’ for this one. The tank’s full—I checked that. You won’t have to stop. Get a new plate, stick it on, and drive careful. Take it the crusher. Destroy it. Tell the guy that you owed that you’re even.”
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