by S. J. Rozan
Maybe she'd pick me up a pack of Kents, if I asked.
She loaded the paper bag into her trunk, rolled out of the parking lot. She turned north on 30 as far as Middleburgh, then suddenly left it and started threading her way over back roads. I kept my distance. She wasn't acting as though it had occurred to her she might be tailed; she hadn't even scanned the Stewart's lot. But she wasn't stupid and I didn't want to scare her off.
She knew the roads well, choosing the better-paved shortcuts, working her way north. I kept her in sight close enough so I wouldn't lose her when she made a turn, but no closer. A couple of times I killed my lights, not for long, just long enough so that she'd think the headlights in her mirror belonged to three or four different cars, if she thought about it at all.
About half an hour after we'd left 30, twisting and turning along dark roads where the trees crowded close, she turned onto a well-kept county road and I suddenly caught on. She drove west about two hundred yards.
I didn't follow her, just watched as she turned left into a space in the trees that was a road only if you thought it was. I didn't need to follow her now; I knew where she was going.
After the Plymouth's tail lights disappeared I parked on the shoulder across from the mouth of the hardscrabble road she'd turned up. I locked up the car, started to pick my way. I had the flashlight from the car and I needed it. The sky was a thick steel gray, no moon, no stars. Branches pressed against its underside. The darkness around me started at the edge of the flashlight beam and was complete.
There were no night sounds, no birds; just my footsteps scraping softy, as softly as I could manage, up the stony road.
The road wasn't long; I knew it wasn't. I switched off the flashlight as I came near the top. The path leveled out and the trees stopped abruptly, staying behind. In the darkness there were darker shadows, but mostly there was a sudden feeling of openness, an empty plain where, if I stood long enough, I would begin to be able to see what I knew was there.
Close in, there would be piles of boulders and slag standing on the dead earth; farther off, a pit, an enormous hole maybe five hundred yards across and half that deep, sudden and sharp-sided and filled with inky water. Beyond the pit, a wall of rock, thin trees scratching for a living. On top of the wall was a road that ran straight along the top of the mountain. The only way to get here from that road was to scramble down the rocks.
About a third of the way around the pit there was a
bigger road than the one I'd come up, and there were three other pits like this one, vast canyons separated from each other by ridges which in places narrowed to ten feet. When this pit was active the gravel trucks had used that other road, kicking up dust, rumbling through the daytime hours with loads of stone crushed and ground to order in a towering collection of connected timber structures that clung to the side of the hill. Fist size, egg size, pea size, dust: there was nowhere in this part of the state that gravel from this quarry hadn't been used to build roads, line drainage ditches, mix into concrete.
This pit was abandoned now, and so were two of the others, but the fourth—the one MacGregor had said was close to played-out, too—was for now still working, lower down on the hill. Each of the exhausted pits was as huge and desolate as this one, and each, as it was abandoned and the dewatering pumps removed, filled with water from the interrupted springs that bled down the face of the rock. The local kids used these pits to swim in in the summer, diving from the rocks into the cold, bottomless pools. It had been one of those kids who, early last August, on the last warm night of the year, had discovered something strange here: a late-model Nissan Sentra come to rest on a ledge a few feet below the surface.
To my right two cars were parked: the yellow Plymouth, and a familiar Dodge Ram van. The van's rear windows were hung with Mylar shades from which a stag on a huge boulder stared, impassive, over a winter scene as desolate as this.
Just beyond the cars a dilapidated shack with a tin roof leaned into the night. Light shone through its grimy windows, reflecting weakly off the cars' chrome trim.
My footsteps were silent walking up to the shack. It seemed likely that Jimmy was armed, and though he wouldn't shoot me if he knew it was me, he was liable to be jumpy as hell.
I stopped about ten feet from the door, stood facing it. Anyone looking out through the glass could have seen me clearly then, a tall, solid shape on the barren plain. Inside my gloves, my palms were sweating.
"Jimmy!" My voice echoed off the rock wall, repeating, fading, dying. The light in the shack went out; nothing else happened. "Jimmy!" I called again. "It's Bill Smith. I'm alone. Let me in."
Nothing, again.
Then Jimmy's voice, loud, tough, and blustery. "Mr. S.! Talk to me! You alone?"
"I said I was. Let me in."
I waited. The door creaked open; the doorway gaped emptily. I walked forward, stepped through into the darkness. The door slammed shut and the blinding beam of a powerful flashlight hit me full in the face.
I jerked, raised my hand to block the glare. The beam switched off and the small flame of a match lit a kerosene lamp. Wavering shadows were thrown against the bare walls, shadows of two figures standing, some distance apart, before me.
"Jesus," I said, trying to clear my eyes.
"Had to make sure." Jimmy's voice, nonchalant.
"You know a lot of guys my size that sound like me?"
"You never know."
We faced each other across the small, dusty room. In the flickering light Jimmy looked drawn and tired, his stubble-covered face smudged with dirt; but the grin, the cocky set of his shoulders under the plaid-lined parka were the same as always, the same as they'd been on the kid I'd taught to hit a baseball and to drive a nail straight and to split a log without chopping his own foot off.
And to shoot. I'd taught him that, too.
Loosely by his side Jimmy held an old Winchester. 30- 30, maybe the one Tony had given him when he was twelve. The shack smelled of stale beer, kerosene, and disuse. Shadows danced on the walls, moved over our faces. It struck me then how much Jimmy looked like Tony: the same short, powerful build, the same square jaw and dark, unyielding eyes. But where Tony looked as if he'd been put together by a rockslide, Jimmy had been carved more carefully. His nose was straighter than Tony's, his eyes set less deep; but the take-it-or-leave-it in them was Tony's, too.
To Jimmy's right, next to the wall, Alice Brown stood with her arms wrapped around her. She had taken off her hat, but not her parka; the potbellied woodstove in the corner wasn't giving off enough heat for that. She was watching me with guarded eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said to her. "I didn't believe you."
"You had no reason to," she answered calmly.
"I wanted to. But I couldn't afford it."
"I had to make sure Jimmy wanted to see you," she said.
I turned back to Jimmy. "Did you?"
"Hell, yes!" Jimmy leaned the rifle against the wall, reached into the Stewart's bag on a rickety table by the stove. He pulled out a six-pack, freed a can from its plastic collar, tossed it to me. He held out another, said "Allie?" in an unsure voice. Alice shook her head.
I dropped onto an upended wooden box, popped the top of the beer. Jimmy leaned against the table. There was one spindly chair in the room and he gestured Alice to it with his beer and a tentative smile.
"No," she said, with no smile at all.
So the chair stayed empty as I sat and Jimmy leaned and Alice stood. On the table next to the Stewart's bag was a half-eaten meatball hero, melted cheese and tomato sauce congealing on aluminum foil. "You mind if I finish this?" Jimmy asked me. "I'm starving."
"Go ahead," I said. He scooped up the sandwich, bit into it. Tomato sauce dripped on the floor, kicked up tiny craters in the dust. I asked, "When was the last time you ate?"
"Yesterday," he said, his mouth full of bread and meatballs. "Lunch."
I put my beer can on the floor, went to the table, took the carton of Salems from th
e bag. I shook out a pack, found a book of matches in the bottom of the bag. I lit a Salem as I sat down again.
Jimmy watched me. "You hate those," he said.
"Damn right," I answered.
I smoked and Jimmy ate. I asked, "Where were you yesterday?"
"Here," he said, wiped his mouth on a wadded-up paper napkin. "Been here for a few days."
"How many?"
He looked uncomfortable. "About a week," he answered. "Since Allie threw me out."
Over by the wall, Alice dropped her arms, turned around to stare out the window at the impenetrable darkness.
"Allie—" Jimmy said.
She shook her head, didn't turn around.
Jimmy looked at me, helplessly. "I come up here sometimes. To think. You know. Nobody comes here, except in summer. When Allie . .." His eyes shifted to her; she didn't move. "Where was I gonna go? I didn't want to crash with nobody. No way I was going back to Tony's. So I came here. I mean, just for a while. Just, you know, to get it together."
I said nothing, tasted the cool taste of menthol, wished for a Kent. Jimmy went on, "I was on my way to work yesterday, in the van. Had the police scanner on just to listen to the cop talk. Heard about Wally. Heard Brinkman was looking for me. Well, no shit, Sherlock!" He grinned, but the grin seemed strained.
"What did you do?"
"Turned the hell around and came back here. What'd you think?"
"Did you talk to anybody?"
"What do you mean, talk?"
"You have a CB in the van, don't you?"
"Oh, yeah, and I said, 'Breaker, breaker, this is Jimmy Antonelli, tell Brinkman I'm up at the quarry.' What're you, fucking nuts?"
"How did Alice know you were here?"
"He called me," Alice said, without turning around. Her voice was strong, but waiting to crack, like spring ice. "In the middle of the night, from someplace closed. He asked me to come after dark, and bring him some things."
I looked around the shack, at the leaning walls, at the cardboard jammed over the missing windowpane, at the sleeping bag spread on the floor, at the dirt and the darkness in the corners.
"How long you figure to be here?" I asked. "A couple of months? A few years, maybe, until everyone forgets?"
"Years? What the hell are you talking about?" Above the grin Jimmy's eyes were confused. "A few days, that's all. Just till the heat lets up a little."
"Then what?"
"Then I'll take off. Time I left this dead-end place anyhow." He crumpled his empty beer can one-handed, flipped it into the Stewart's bag, popped the top on another.
"And go where?"
"What's the difference?" He slurped beer off the top of the can. "New York, Chicago. Hell, L.A.! I hear it's nice out there. You been there?" I didn't answer. "Anywhere. I got a million choices, man. I'm gonna disappear. Change my name. You know." He laughed. "I'm gonna grow a big fuckin' mustache, be a real dago wop, like my grandaddy! Hey, whadda-you a-think?" He looked from Alice's back, which didn't move, to me. His grin was desperate for company.
I dropped my cigarette butt in my empty beer can, listened to the hiss it made. "All right," I said, looking up at Jimmy. "Now listen to me, and hear every goddamn
word." The grin wavered a little. "You don't know shit about life on the run. You'll never get out of the county. If you do you won't last six months. You'll be spotted in Asshole, Texas, by some pork-faced sheriff who sits around reading wanted posters because he's got nothing else to do. And you're a cowboy, aren't you, Jimmy? You'll pull out that Winchester when they come for you in the hole you're hiding in, which'll be just like this one except instead of cold and filthy it'll be hot and filthy and the water'll taste bad. And they'll blow your head off. And that'll be it, Jimmy. That'll be all of it."
He stared at me for a long moment; then he pushed sharply away from the table. He turned away, ran a hand over his hair, turned back. He stood looking at me, his empty hands opening and closing.
"What the fuck you want me to do, man?" For the first time the fear stood out in his eyes. "Brinkman's after my ass, you know he is. He's gonna hang this on me if he can. What am I supposed to do, just let him?"
Alice turned from the window then. Her lip trembled as she looked from him to me and back again.
"Did you kill Wally Gould?" I asked him.
Color drained from his face. He sank down slowly onto the chair.
"You think so, Mr. S.?" he asked quietly. "That what you think?"
I lit two cigarettes, passed one to him. He took it, hunching forward in the chair. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
"Listen," I said, in a voice gentler than the one I'd been using. "Listen, Jimmy. That's not my only question. I've got a lot of questions, and you're going to have to answer them all. Jimmy?" I waited; he looked up at me. "You'll have all of me, either way. Either way, Jimmy. But I want to hear it from you."
He took in smoke, exhaled. He stood, walked around aimlessly, sat down again.
"Wally. That stupid little fuck," he said in a half-whisper. "He was real into making trouble for me. With Frank, with Brinkman, with anyone he could think of. And now check it out: he's fucking wasted and he can't stop!" He laughed shortly, looked up at the ceiling, back at me. "Ain't that a kick in the ass?" He did what I'd done, pushed his cigarette into his beer can, watched it disappear.
He lifted his eyes to mine. "I didn't kill him, Mr. S."
By the window, Alice's hand moved slowly to her mouth, and she started to cry.
Jimmy jumped from the chair, moved to Alice's side. He folded an arm around her shoulders, spoke her name softly, but she pulled away. She wiped her eyes, leaving her face streaked with grime.
"I want to go home," she said, voice quavering. She pulled together her mittens, hat, car keys. "You don't need me now. I can go."
"Baby—" Jimmy reached out a hand; she shrugged it off.
"Alice, wait," I said.
"Why?" she asked unhappily. "Jimmy has you now. You'll know what to do. I just want to go home."
"It's not him I'm thinking about. It's you."
She pulled on her mittens, stood thin-lipped, waiting.
"Remember I said I wasn't the only person looking for Jimmy? One of the other people is Frank Grice. He offered me a thousand dollars."
Jimmy's eyebrows shot up. "What the hell for?"
"You."
They were both silent, digesting that.
I went on, "If I found you, Alice, Grice can too. He's not a nice man."
She threw Jimmy a confused look, then back to me. "I don't understand. What do you want me to do?"
"I don't want you out there in that house by yourself. Is there someone you can stay with?"
"That's ridiculous!" she snapped. "It's my home. I've always lived there. I'm not afraid of those people."
"That's a mistake," I said. "I am."
That stopped her. "Well . . ." She frowned. "Laura and her husband live in Schoharie."
"Good," I said. "Go there tonight. And I don't want you alone during the day. You know Grice by sight?"
She nodded.
"You even think you see his shadow, call the state troopers." I described Arnold to her, and Otis and Ted. "And if anyone does ask you anything, do you think you can lie better than you did to me?"
She flushed crimson, and for the first time she smiled. "I think so."
"Good," I said again. "You haven't seen Jimmy since he started cheating on you and you threw him out." Jimmy started to protest; I ignored him. "You don't know where he is, and you hope he rots in hell. Right? Tell them to go ask his new girlfriend. And tell them if they find him not to bother to tell you about it because you really couldn't care. Can you do that?"
"Yes." Her voice was clear again.
We looked at each other, the three of us, in the cold, dingy room. The kerosene lamp sputtered.
"If you need me," I said, "you have the number; or try Antonelli's."
Alice opened the door, shut it silentl
y, and was gone.
Jimmy watched at the window as the yellow Plymouth backed into position, headed down the stony road.
He sat down, nodded toward the door, gave me a shamefaced smile. "I messed that up, huh?"
"Big time," I said. "Was it worth it?"
He shook his head.
I lit another Salem, tried to taste the tobacco through the mouth-numbing menthol. "Okay," I said. "Let's get to work."
He grinned his old grin. "You're the boss. What do we do now?"
"I ask, you answer. Who killed Wally Gould?"
"Oh, man, I told you, I wasn't there!"
"No, you didn't. You only said you didn't kill him."
"Well, I wasn't. Happier?"
"Lose the attitude, Jimmy. This isn't a game."
His grin spread, and he reached for a cigarette. "Sure it is, Mr. S. It's a big fucking game, and you're my ace in the hole. You're gonna pull it out for me, just like before."
I pushed to my feet so fast the box I'd been sitting on fell over, clattered on the floor. I took two steps across the room, grabbed Jimmy's parka, slammed him up against the wall. His cigarette dropped and his fists clenched but all he did was stare at me through eyes suddenly grown huge.
"What the flick—!"
"Shut up, you stupid bastard!" I felt the blood rush hot to my face. "Now listen to me! There's no game. A man's dead: the game's over. I don't know if I can pull it out for you, but I know this: there's only one way now. My way! You got that, Jimmy?"
He didn't answer, didn't move.
Our eyes locked in silence. In his eyes I saw the kid who, years ago, had skated out onto a frozen pond on a dare, triumphantly clowning at first, then hearing the ice crack.
I didn't know what he saw in mine.
I spoke slowly, controlling my voice. "You're going to give me everything you know."
I released him urgently, took a step back, drew in a long breath. My Salem had scorched the table where I'd left it. I set the box on end again, sat down.
