Acts of Mercy

by Bill Pronzini

  —until he was awake again.

  There was no disorientation this time; he was immediately aware of where he was, and of the fact that he was once more lying on his back, no longer touching Claire. The darkness in the compartment was heavy, complete except for faint shadow images dancing on the walls: reflections of passing landscape filtered through the partially shaded windows. Augustine turned his head to look at Claire, saw her as a dim silhouette beneath the blankets. He reached out to touch her hip again, felt the sleek material of her gown instead of bare flesh, and then realized that his own pajama bottoms were snug around his waist.

  He could not remember having pulled them up. Had Claire done that for him? On impulse, he put his face close to hers. She was also resting on her back, mouth open, making faint snoring sounds; the position of her body, Augustine thought, was almost exactly as it had been after she had come into the berth with him.

  Looking at her, he felt a sudden unease. What if she had not, after all, come awake during the time he was making love to her? What if she failed in the morning to bear witness to his success, even questioned that it had happened at all? What if she considered it a kind of wish-fulfilling dream on his part?

  What if she was right?

  The thought was abrupt and jarring. He rejected it instantly—and yet, while he recalled the sensations of the act clearly, the physical details were blurred, as in a memory of something which took place long ago. As in a dream—

  The sensations.

  He slid a hand beneath the covers, touched the front of his pajamas. And felt dampness, a faint stickiness. No, he thought, not at my age, not after all those nights of failure.

  But it was true and he knew it.

  A dream. It had all been nothing more than a wet dream ...

  Thirteen

  Justice sat in his dark compartment and told himself he ought to go to bed, get some sleep, because it was after midnight now and he would have to be up at six. But he did not move, only continued to look out the window at the black shapes of mountains and cutbanks and tree-covered ridges: the Presidential Special was moving now through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, somewhere northeast of Stockton. High running clouds obscured the moon and part of the sky, but stars winked here and there like tiny watching eyes.

  There’s just nothing I can do, he thought. Mr. Harper shouldn’t have come to me, he shouldn’t have tried to put any of the burden on me. It’s not up to me, I’m just a Secret Service bodyguard, a civil servant with no authority and no influence. What can I do to help the President that I haven’t already done?

  He kept on sitting there, watching the eyes in the sky that seemed to be watching him.

  Fourteen

  The observation car is empty when we come into it from the club car, but through the door-window opposite we can see the dark silhouette of a man standing outside on the platform, the red-embered tip of a cigar like a hole burning in the darkness beside him. Wexford? It must be, we think. We have been to his compartment in one of the forward cars and found it empty, and we have not located him anywhere else on the train.

  We cross to the door, slide it open. Cold night air surges against our face, spiced with the fragrance of spruce and pine, and the magnified clacking hum of steel on steel buffets our ears. The man at the far railing turns, and in the outspill of light behind us we can see him plainly. The muted thunder of the wheels seems to lift into a throbbing, wailing cadence, like a voice in the night.

  Wex-ford, Wex-ford, Wex-ford...

  We close the door, walk over next to him at the railing. He is wearing an overcoat buttoned to the throat and his hair is rumpled from the wind. Night-shadowed, his florid face has a waxy cast. He does not look dangerous, he only looks old and meek, like a benign grandfather. False illusion. We know him for what he really is, and our hatred for him glows as bright as the tip of his last cigar.

  “Oh,” he says, “it’s you.”

  “Yes,” we say. Like him, we have raised our voice in order to be heard above the chanting of the wheels.

  “Train upsets my stomach so I can’t sleep,” he says. “I thought some fresh air might help. Couldn’t you sleep either?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. Not for a while.”

  “It’s pretty cold out here. You ought to have a coat.”

  “I don’t mind the cold. It’s the heat that bothers me.”

  “Heat?”

  “Yes,” we say, “the heat.”

  Wexford frowns slightly, raises his cigar and draws on it until the tip shimmers cherry red and the wind strips away its dead ash. We can see the glow of it reflected in his eyes.

  The car lurches as the train moves into a long curve and we put out a hand to grasp the rail. Our fingers brush the back of Wexford’s hand; we jerk them away because we do not want to touch him, not that way. As we look at him his mouth puckers and his throat works—a silent belch, as if the sudden lurch-and-sway has made him nauseous. He peers distastefully at his cigar, then flicks it out over the railing where the wind catches it and hurls it into the night amid a shower of sparks. His mouth opens and we watch him breathe deeply several times.

  Then we say, “You don’t like trains, do you?”

  “No. I never have.”

  “They’re an integral part of American history, you know.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just like treachery,” we say.

  That startles him. “What?”

  “There have been traitors in Washington for two hundred years,” we say calmly. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”

  “Exactly what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means. You’re a traitor, Julius—just as Briggs was. But you’re even worse because you’ve hidden your treachery behind a mask of friendship and personal trust.”

  He glares at us, his mouth pinched with aggrieved anger. “What kind of wild talk is that?” he says. “I won’t stand for it.”

  We shrug. “The truth is always painful.”

  “I demand an apology.”

  “Demand all you like.”

  He stands flustered, at a loss for words. “We’ll see about this,” he says finally, and starts to move past us.

  The voice of the train says, Wex-ford, Wex-ford, Wex-ford. We look back through the door-window; the observation car is still empty. In the darkness, then, we take from our jacket pocket one of the train’s standard White House heavy glass ashtrays which we had picked up in our compartment. We cup it upside down in our palm, holding it along our hip where he cannot see it.

  “We have a little something to make you sleep,” we say.

  He hesitates, half-turning toward us. “What’s that?”

  “To make you sleep,” we say again, and we thrust the ashtray straight up against the bridge of his nose with such force that pain erupts in our armpit and chest.

  A sharp cracking thud, a gasp that strangulates almost instantly in his throat. Wexford’s hands flutter up toward his face, spasm, then fall limply as his legs give way and he drops bull-like to his knees. We sidestep quickly, watch him topple over against the railing and lie still, lie silent.

  Lie dead.

  Another execution, another act of mercy completed.

  We check the observation car another time, but no one has come inside in the past few seconds. Then we hurl the ashtray into the night, bend to grasp Wexford under the arms. In death his features seem to have softened, to have lost form and definition like gray wax melting. The skin of his face is cold against our bare wrist; but we don’t mind it now because we are not touching him, we are only touching a lifeless shell.

  He is much heavier than Briggs was and it takes us a minute or two of straining effort to lift him across the railing so that most of his bulk is tipped forward and hanging down toward the tracks below. We step back then and take his ankles, heave up once, push once—and he slides away from us and is gone.

  We lean forward on the railing, trying to s
ee where he has landed. We seem to see him bounce and roll across the tracks, off the right-of-way, but the train is moving so rapidly and the night is so dark that we cannot be sure. Not that it matters. On or off the tracks, he’ll be found eventually by searchers; this is not a wilderness area of gorges and deep ravines that might hide forever the body of an old traitor. The main thing is, his death, too, will appear to have been a tragic accident.

  The wind is chill on our face, but it is also somehow soothing; we continue to stand looking down at the black steel ribbons appearing and retreating beneath us—so close beneath us that we imagine we can reach down and touch them. The voice of the wheels shrieks in our ears, only we realize abruptly that it is no longer saying Wex-ford. We close our eyes, listening.

  And the words become clear. You-too, the train is saying now. You-too, you-too, you-too.

  We do not find this strange, nor does it frighten us. We have thought of suicide before: the utter peace of death is appealing. But this is not the time or the place, and we do not want to lie out there with Julius. We must continue to be strong until the conspiracy has been completely and irrevocably destroyed.

  We stop listening to the wheels and turn for the door.

  Miles to go before we sleep.

  Miles to go before we sleep.

  Fifteen

  Harper said, “Have you seen Wexford this morning, Nicholas?”

  Augustine had been loading a pipe from a humidor of tobacco, but now he paused. “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “I stopped by his compartment a little while ago. I wanted to talk to him—”

  “Talking to him won’t do any good, Maxwell.”

  Harper repressed an annoyed sigh. “The point is,” he said, “Wexford wasn’t in his compartment. Nor was he there last night when I first went to talk to him. Nor was I able to find him anywhere else.”

  Augustine frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “I’d say so, yes.”

  There was a moment of silence as Augustine put the cold pipe between his teeth, gnawed reflectively on the stem. It was just past seven A.M. and they were sitting in the President’s office, where Harper had found him sipping coffee and scribbling what he said were “campaign notes” on a scratch pad. Pale sunlight gave the compartment a dusty, almost elegiac aura. Beyond the windows patterns of early-morning mist drifted among the mountain evergreens like smoke from smoldering fires; the view made Harper feel cold.

  His lips curving in a faint smile, Augustine said finally, “Maybe the bastard fell off the train during the night.”

  Harper stiffened. “That’s not at all humorous, Nicholas. We have enough problems without any more of your ill-timed wit.”

  The words came out more sharply than he had intended, but Augustine seemed to take no offense. He said only, “Yes, I expect you’re right,” and made sucking sounds on the pipe stem, as if it were lighted and he was trying to get it to draw. “Well then, he’s around somewhere. He’ll turn up by the time we arrive at The Hollows at nine.”

  “I can’t wait until then,” Harper said. “There’ll be press people at the station. And you told me yourself you’d disinvited him to join us at the ranch.”

  “All right. If it will make you happy, ask Christopher to find him for you. Tell him I said to take care of it.”

  “I’ll do that,” Harper said. He stood, paused. “If you want to be present when I talk to Julius, I can have Justice bring him here—”

  “No,” Augustine said. “Definitely not. I don’t want to see or listen to that son of a bitch today.”

  Now he’s turned petulant, Harper thought. He said, “Just as you say, Nicholas,” in a neutral voice, and went to the door and out into the corridor,

  Maybe the bastard fell off the train during the night.

  The President’s words echoed in his mind as he made his way forward to the security’s Pullman. God, suppose something like that had happened to Wexford? Ridiculous, of course. And yet, was it really any more ridiculous than some of the other things which had happened of late? When matters degenerated toward chaos, anything was possible. Anything at all.

  But Weacford hadn’t had an accident, wasn’t dead; he was alive and well somewhere in the bowels of this damned mechanical serpent. Of course he was.

  Maybe the bastard fell off the train during the night....

  Sixteen

  At first Justice did not think much about Maxwell Harper’s—and the President’s—request that he locate the attorney general. It was routine enough: Wexford wasn’t immediately available and either Harper or Augustine wanted to talk to him, so someone had to be dispatched to fetch him. And where routine was concerned, you didn’t stop to draw conclusions. You just went ahead and did what you were told.

  He went first to Wexford’s compartment, but the room steward was there making up the berth and told him that he hadn’t seen the attorney general since last night. From there he went down to the dining car and spoke with two of the waiters; both of them said Wexford had neither come in for breakfast nor sent for it. Frowning a little then, Justice entered the club car. It was empty, shades drawn against the thin sunlight. He walked through it to the observation car, where Ed Dougherty was sitting alone with the current issue of the Congressional Record When Justice asked him about Wexford, Dougherty shook his head and said that the last he’d seen of him had been after midnight, out on the observation platform, just before he himself had retired. He’d been alone then, having a smoke and taking some air because he couldn’t sleep.

  Justice stepped out onto the platform and stood for a moment with his hands on the iron railing. Apprehension had begun to grow in him—a fearful suspicion that he did not want to believe. He took several deep breaths of mountain air that was bracingly cold, damp with mist that drifted across the right-of-way and curled sinuously along the surrounding slopes. In the distance the snow-draped shoulders of the Sierra Nevada peaks were visible beneath clouds of sunlit fog; Justice stared at them without really seeing them.

  What could have happened to Wexford? he thought.

  He returned to the aides’ Pullman and spoke with another steward, with Frank Tanaguchi, with Elizabeth Miller. Negative. He went into the security’s Pullman and asked two agents if they had seen the attorney general. Negative. He went forward and looked through the train staffs car, the baggage car. Negative. He came back and checked the communal lavatories in the staff car and in each of the Pullmans. Negative.

  That left him only one option—to begin knocking on compartment doors. He did that, and each time there was a response he was careful to keep his questions casual so as not to arouse curiosity. At those compartments where no one answered his knock, he opened the door just long enough to make a visual check of the interior. He even glanced into the President’s private drawing room, and through the open door of the First Lady’s drawing room as a steward delivered a tray of coffee and toast.

  Negative.

  His stomach was knotted with tension by the time he finished. He stood uncertainly in the swaying corridor of the aides’ Pullman, trying to decide what to do next. Inform the President? No; he had to be absolutely sure the attorney general was nowhere on board before he said anything, raised even that much of an alarm. Go over the train again, each of the cars in turn. But no more Inquiries—and no alerting the other agents, at least not yet, not until the President was consulted.

  He hurried down to the observation car, started there and worked his way forward to the baggage room. His search was careful, thorough. And it yielded nothing.

  There could no longer be any doubt: Wexford had vanished from the Presidential Special.

  What had happened to him?

  Then his mind closed, as if defensively sealing itself off from the question. Through the baggage car window he became aware of a familiar landmark: a large lumber mill, plumes of wood-smoke fanning upward from its chimney stacks, and a series of smaller rustic buildings surrounding It—the village of Greenspur, situated les
s than ten miles from The Hollows. Justice glanced at his watch, confirmed that it was a quarter of nine. They would reach The Hollows station in less than fifteen minutes.

  He left the baggage car and began to hurry through the corridors to U.S. Car Number One.

  Seventeen

  Augustine was about to leave his office and join Claire when Maxwell returned and asked if Justice had reported back.

  “No,” Augustine said. “You mean he hasn’t turned up Wexford for you yet?”

  “Certainly that’s what I mean,” Harper said. “I’ve been waiting in my compartment for the last hour. Nicholas, I’m frankly becoming concerned about—”

  And there was a sudden sharp, urgent rapping on the office door.

  They exchanged a brief look, and immediately Harper went to the door and slid it open. Justice. He seemed to hesitate at the sight of Harper, then came quickly into the compartment and stood uneasily with his arms flat against his sides. Looking at him, at the distressed planes of his face, Augustine thought with cold alarm: My God, there is something wrong—

  “Mr. President,” Justice said, “may I speak to you privately?”

  Harper shut the door and came over in front of him. “Is it about Wexford?”

  Justice hesitated.

  “Is it about Wexford?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then for Christ’s sake, man, spit it out.”

  “Mr. President?”

  “Yes, yes,” Augustine said, “go ahead, Christopher.”

  Justice took a breath, let it out sibilantly. “I couldn’t find him,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s ... disappeared.”

  A tic began to flutter Augustine’s left eyelid. “Disappeared?”