(2004) Citizen Vince

by Jess Walter

  “Is he coming?” Ray asks.

  “No,” Vince says, and looks at Beth, whose face is set, determined.

  Ray shakes his head as if he should’ve expected such weakness from Lenny. “Well, we’ll take care of that later.”

  They walk across the empty parking lot to the picnic benches, where Clay sits by himself. As they reach the table he rises, reaches in his back pocket, and produces the brochure for the sports car he wants to buy. “Hey, Vince.”

  Vince points from one to the other. “Clay Gainer. Ralph LaRue.”

  Ray shoots Vince a glare. “Ray,” he says. “My name is Ray.”

  All you can do. They sit, Clay and Vince on one side, Beth and Ray on the other. Vince holds his hand out beneath the table, hoping Beth will hand him the paring knife, but she just stares at him, that same placid look. Don’t do it, Vince thinks. Jesus, don’t do it. Clay opens the brochure, slides it across the table. “First thing, before we go any further, I gotta ask up front, do you have a problem with me buyin’ this car?”

  Ray takes the brochure, turns it over in his hand. “You bet your ass I got a problem. You work with me, you drive a Cadillac. Or a Mercedes, something with class. You can’t drive this cheap Japanese shit. This ain’t a car, it’s a fuckin’ wristwatch.”

  Ray hands the brochure back to Clay, who shoots Vince a told-you-so glance.

  “Okay,” Vince says to Ray. “You got everything you wanted. Let Beth go now.”

  “Maybe later,” Ray says, smiling.

  And that is when Beth leaps up, and the suddenness of her movement causes Ray to turn to face her, giving her the perfect angle, and Ray is so shocked he doesn’t move or even get a hand up as Beth drives the small paring knife into his chest with all the force a hundred-pound woman can muster. All three men at the table gasp and jerk back as the knife slams into Ray’s breastbone, and it takes a moment for Vince to realize what has happened, Ray staring straight ahead, unhurt, the broken blade clattering on the picnic table, and valiant Beth, wonderful Beth—driven now by instinct—flailing away at him with nothing but a plastic knife handle.

  Ray hits Beth in the mouth, and she falls off the picnic bench to the ground. Ray leaps up, puts a foot on her throat, pulls the gun from his waistband, and points it at Vince, who has picked up the knife blade. “Gimme that fuckin’ blade.”

  Vince stares at a spot over Ray’s shoulder.

  Ray holds the gun up to Vince’s face. “Gimme the fuckin’ knife.”

  Ray kicks at Beth, who covers her head with her arms. “You’re gonna eat this knife now,” he says to her. He waves the gun at Vince again. “Gimme that fuckin’ blade, chief.”

  The wind stops, expectant, and for just a moment it’s quiet—Vince still staring at the spot over Ray’s shoulder, until finally he holds out the knife and Ray reaches for it, and just as he does, a shadow falls across his arm, a meaty hand lands on his shoulder, and another deftly plucks the gun from his hand.

  Ray spins and comes face-to-face with Ange, wearing a dark overcoat and smiling warmly. Another guy stands a few feet away, in sunglasses. Vince doesn’t recognize him.

  Ray is confused. “Ange?”

  “Ray. How’s it goin’?”

  “Ange?” They stand close, feet at shoulder width, everyone tensed, the wind flapping their overcoats. Beth looks up at them from the ground. Without looking away from Ray, Ange hands the gun behind him to the second guy, who puts it in his coat pocket.

  “What—” Ray swallows. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Donuts told us where to find you.”

  Ray looks over at Vince, comprehension still a few seconds away.

  Ange puts his hands in his pockets. “John wants you to come home, Ray.”

  “Yeah?” Ray shifts his weight, looks wobbly. “Well…that’s…that’s…Yeah. I mean, this fuckin’ place. Yeah. Thank God.” He laughs uncomfortably and turns back to Vince. “See, I told you they’d want me back.”

  “Sure,” Ange says. “We need you back, Ray.”

  “You’re the best,” says the second man, as if reading from a script. “A legend.”

  Ray continues to stare at Vince, and then his eyes trail off and focus on a point behind him. It’s odd the way Ray’s hands just hang there, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them now.

  “I’m sorry,” Vince says quietly.

  This brings Ray back and he blinks a couple of times, then wipes his mouth. “Fuck you,” he says, and he turns to Ange with a big, almost-brave grin. “I was goin’ nuts here. This fuckin’ guy”—he jerks his thumb toward Vince—“thinks he knows everything.” He looks down at Beth, who has crawled away. “…the broads here stab you in the back…and there ain’t a fuckin’ dime to be made…don’t get me started on the pizza. You can’t believe the fuckin’ pizza here, Ange.”

  “Well, you won’t have to worry about the pizza anymore,” Ange says.

  Something occurs to Ray, and he reaches in his pockets for the bundles of cash Vince and Beth were going to use to buy the house. “And hey, I got some money, Ange. For John.”

  Ange smiles. “That’s unnecessary, Ray, but I’m sure it will be appreciated.” He steps forward, takes the bundles of cash, and puts his arm around Ray. “You’re a good man. Always thinking of the guys.” He leads him away, like a guy leading his little brother from a baseball game. Ray goes willingly. Ange steers him across the parking lot and over the curb to another lot, next door, the second man falling in a few feet behind. They walk to the back of the lot, where a square, four-door rental car is parked. A third man climbs out of the car and motions Ray into the front passenger seat.

  Just before he climbs in, Ray looks once more across the parking lot to the table, to Vince. He raises his hand as if he might wave, but it just hangs there, and Ange nudges him. Ray disappears into the car. Vince stares at the windshield of the rental, but it does nothing but reflect the gray clouds back at him.

  Vince helps Beth off the ground and she sits next to him on the picnic bench. “Can we go?” Clay whispers.

  “I don’t think so,” Vince says. “I think we’d better wait.”

  After a second, Ange climbs out of the car and walks back across the lot, the wind raising his black-and-silver hair like whitecaps.

  “You were supposed to have him here at nine,” Ange says.

  “I had to vote.”

  “No shit? Who’d you vote for, Donuts?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Sure,” Ange says. “I understand.”

  Ange looks around the parking lot.

  “Ange, this is my girlfriend, Beth.”

  She waves her good hand.

  “What happened to your eye?” He nods his head toward the rental car. “Did Ray do that?”

  She nods. “He broke my arm, too.”

  “I’m sorry. The guy’s an animal. You have my apologies.”

  “And this is Clay. My mailman.”

  Ange shakes his hand. “Your dentist here, too, Donuts?”

  Vince smiles. “I gotta ask you, Ange…the money that Ray has—it’s not his. It’s mine. I was gonna use it to buy a house and if—”

  Ange holds up his hand. “Come on, Donuts. You know I can’t do anything about that. That’s John’s money now.”

  Ange looks around the parking lot, takes in the freeway behind him, and the streets leading toward downtown: covered with squat brownstones and a few taller office buildings, the whole thing surrounded on both sides by gently sloped, tree-lined hills, like a city someone started building and then quit. Cars move languorously on the surface streets. In front of the restaurant, a streetlight sways gently in the wind. “So this is it? This is the place you were so excited to get back to?”

  “Yeah,” Vince says. “This is where I live.”

  “It’s not really what I pictured. It’s less…I don’t know.” Ange shrugs. “Just less.” He looks at the car across the parking lot, then back at Vince. “But I’m sure it
’s nice.”

  “So…are we square, John and me?” Vince asks.

  “Yeah.” Ange tugs on his shimmery slacks and seems to be searching for something profound to say. Finally he points a thick finger at Vince. “Be good.” He walks across the parking lot to the rental car, the wind ruffling the edge of his coat. He opens the back door on the driver’s side and climbs in.

  They watch the car pull out onto the street and drive away. For a minute, the only sound is the wind raking the trees.

  “I’m not gonna get my car, am I, Vince?”

  Vince doesn’t even look over at Clay. “No.”

  THEY LIE ON the couch all afternoon—Vince staring at the ceiling, Beth curled up on his chest. Kenyon toddles around the coffee table in a diaper, a sweatshirt, and slippers with bells on the toes. He jangles to his bedroom and brings out his toys one at a time to show Vince, holding them up proudly. He brings out a stuffed frog and holds it for Vince to see.

  “Frog,” Vince says.

  Kenyon looks at it, drops it, and ambles back to the bedroom. He comes back with a windup train.

  “That’s a train,” Vince says.

  The boy drops it and turns, all business, as if some little-kid handbook has instructed him that this is the proper way to act when you have a guest at your home.

  “Football.”

  They don’t talk about what happened, how Vince convinced Ange to come to Spokane and do the job himself, or what likely happened to Ray. They don’t talk about the money they lost, or the house. And they don’t talk about what happens now—although Vince thinks she must have some idea. They take turns sleeping, the other one watching Kenyon, who brings his toys back and forth from the bedroom in some frantic toddler inventory, pausing once to touch Beth’s new white cast. She told the doctor in the emergency room that she was in a car accident, and they seemed to buy it. Then she and Vince went to the bank and canceled the home loan. “Oh, well,” was all she said. They left Lenny in his car at Dicks and called the police anonymously from the bank.

  “A top,” Vince says.

  Kenyon’s expression doesn’t change. He drops the top and simply scuffles off to the bedroom again.

  Vince can feel Beth—her weight evenly distributed from his legs to his chest. He likes the feeling of having all of her touching all of him. He watches her back rise and fall with each breath. And her shoulders. He runs his hand through her hair and kisses the crown of her head.

  She nestles into his chest. “Tell me again.”

  “Well,” he says. “I’m going to borrow some money and we’ll find a building and open a restaurant.”

  “And I’ll be the waitress.”

  He speaks barely above a whisper: “You’ll be the waitress. I’ll be the chef. It’ll be called The Picnic Basket and we’ll serve everything in picnic baskets and the walls will be painted like trees and some of the tables will be blankets spread out on the floor. We’ll serve cold fried chicken and sandwiches and whole pies. And there’ll be kids everywhere, slides and swing sets…it will be like a park, but inside.”

  Kenyon toddles out with a toy bear.

  “Bear,” Vince says.

  “And we’ll live in a house?” Beth whispers.

  “We’ll live in a great house, with a barbecue and a front porch, and while I’m gone you and Kenyon can wait for me there with a big glass of lemonade.”

  ALAN DUPREE WINCES as he grabs his suitcase from the luggage carousel.

  Phelps is still laughing. “You’re the only cop I know goes to New York and gets himself mugged.”

  Dupree lets Phelps take the suitcase.

  “So what, this guy just jumps you, out of the blue, gives you a black eye and breaks your ribs?”

  “Something like that,” Dupree says.

  “Tell me you chased him.”

  “I chased him.”

  “Did he get your wallet?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good, at least. That’s a little less embarrassing.”

  They walk out the doors of the white, swooping jet-age airport, to Phelps’s car. Dupree moans as he settles in. Phelps drives them back toward town, curls onto the freeway, and descends Sunset Hill into Spokane, the sun breaking through the clouds behind them—just in time to set. Phelps updates Dupree on everything that’s happened—the diesel repair instructor over at the community college they found stuffed in the trunk of his own car, and just today, a stereo-store owner found stabbed to death in the passenger seat of his car at Dicks Drive-in. With Doug, the passport-shop owner last week, that makes three bodies in eight days.

  “And no connection between any of them?” Dupree asks.

  “Not that we can see,” Phelps says. “Don’t hold your breath, rook. Sometimes you just get a streak like this. Who knows why? Something in the water, maybe.”

  Dupree stares out the window.

  Phelps says there’s been no sign of Vince Camden since he popped in at the marshals service. “Probably left town again.”

  Phelps exits the freeway into the neighborhood just below the South Hill. He turns onto Alan and Debbie’s street and into their driveway. The lights are all on. “You taking tomorrow off?”

  “No,” Dupree says. “I’ll be in.”

  Phelps jumps out and tries to get Dupree’s suitcase, but Alan shakes him off and carries it himself. He’s halfway up the porch when Phelps calls after. “Hey, good job, by the way. Figuring out Camden was in witness protection. You did good, rook. You can’t always catch the guy.”

  Dupree says, without turning, “Yeah.”

  Inside, he buries his face in Debbie’s neck, and repeats the story about being mugged. She rubs his back and then goes to make him something to eat. Dupree eases into a dining-room chair, pulls a number from his wallet, picks up the phone, and dials.

  “Fair Oaks Treatment Center.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to see about a patient I checked in there this morning.”

  “I’m sorry. We can’t release information on clients.”

  “Please. I dropped him off there myself. I just want to know if he’s still there. His name is Donnie Charles. He’s a cop.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t.”

  “Please. It’s important.”

  “Are you family?”

  “No. I’m…his partner.”

  The woman on the other end is quiet for a moment and Alan can hear the pages ruffling. “He’s here,” the woman says.

  THEY EAT DINNER quietly. Dupree has just lowered himself in a bath when he hears the phone ring. He hears Debbie say, “I’m sorry. He’s in the bath.” And then he falls asleep and the next thing he knows he jerks awake in cold water and sees Debbie standing in the doorway of the bathroom. “Alan. I think you better come out here.”

  Dupree comes out in a robe and sees Vince Camden, his back to them, sitting on Dupree’s couch, drinking a cup of coffee, and watching the late election returns. Dupree looks over at Debbie. “I’m sorry. He said he had something for you. I didn’t want to disturb you.” He pats her reassuringly on the hand and she goes back into the kitchen.

  On TV there’s a square-jawed guy, his arm around his wife, waving to a roomful of supporters at a downtown hotel, shaking hands as the numbers on the screen tell the story: 60% of precincts: Grebbe 61.4%; Thomas 38.6%.

  Finally Vince Camden turns. “Hey.” He holds up the business card Dupree gave him days earlier, his home number on the back. “I’m sorry. I called and got your address from your wife. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Are you—”

  Vince Camden nods. “Turning myself in.”

  “For—”

  “What’ve you got?” Vince asks. He smiles. “I’ve been stealing credit cards. Dealing pot.” Vince shifts on the couch. “And I can tell you who killed Doug, the passport guy. And Lenny, the guy in the car at Dicks today. And maybe more.”

  Dupree just stares at him.

  “It wasn’t me,” Vince says. “It was
this guy, Ray. He was at my house the day you came by. He did it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I saw him kill Lenny. Stabbed him in the shoulder with a paring knife.”

  “Do you know where this Ray is?”

  “No,” Vince says. “I don’t. He was staying at a motel on the west side of town. But he’s not there now. The last time I saw him he said he was going back to New York.”

  “By himself?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  Dupree isn’t sure about the inflection—if Vince can’t tell him, or won’t.

  Vince turns back to the TV. Dupree stands behind him, in his robe, unsure what he’s supposed to do now. Or what he wants to do. He’s just so goddamned tired. Finally, he sits down in his easy chair, next to the couch and across from the console TV.

  Debbie returns from the kitchen, sets a plate of sliced banana bread on the coffee table, and fills up Vince’s coffee cup.

  Vince takes a bite of banana bread. “This is very good, Mrs. Dupree.”

  “Thank you.” She looks at her husband for help.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Dupree says. “This is—” He stops. “Is it Marty, or…”

  He smiles. “Vince. Please. Call me Vince.”

  “Vince. This is my wife. Debbie.”

  They shake hands, and then Vince goes back to his banana bread, breaking off bites above his little plate. They sit together like a family, watching the local returns. The Republicans are making major gains; even heavyweights like Warren Magnuson and Tom Foley are in danger of losing. The presidential race was called hours ago, with Reagan winning by nine points and four hundred electoral votes. There’s some anger directed at Jimmy Carter for conceding so early, when the polls were still open in the West, and the news anchor cuts to a tape of Carter’s concession, flanked by huge red and white stripes, brace-knuckled at the podium, Rosalynn and Amy standing shamefully at his side like co-conspirators, their arms dead at their sides, the three of them resembling nothing so much as a poor Southern family being turned out of their home. His eyes are puffy and red—I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you, so I can’t stand here tonight and say it doesn’t hurt—and his face seems different in some profound way from the face of the man who arrived just four years earlier, as if time and pressure have conspired to sever the muscles and allowed the familiar features to drift—I call on the new administration to solve the problems still before us. And to bring Americans back together.