The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  “Comin’ through what?”

  “Don’t think she’d like me to tell that.”

  Pearly considered his options. Then he said, “Tell me what you can and I’ll give you an extra five hundred from my share.”

  Donnie chewed on the apple and watched Ginger, who was still muttering and staring at nothing, though her rocking forward and back had ceased. “A thousand dollars,” he said, in a voice so low it was as if he feared Ginger might hear it even though she was transfixed and deaf to the room in her own private apocalypse.

  “Okay. Done.”

  “Ought to shake on it.” He held a hand out, Pearly shook it, and Donnie said, “Now if you don’t pay up I won’t feel so bad ’bout killin’ you.”

  “Fine. What’s the story?”

  “This is all my ma’s tellin’, you know, so if I don’t have the facts exactly right it’s on her. Well…she had a kid at sixteen. Didn’t know who the daddy was, could’ve been three or four men is what ma says. She wanted to keep the kid. Ran off from home to do it, wound up in Alabama. Got work as a secretary but…you know…she had to do some other things to make enough money. Anyway, she lived in what my ma said was ’cross the tracks. I reckon every town’s got one of those. One day…she was sleepin’ in the place she was livin’…and the kid—I think he was six about then—went out to a playground couple of blocks away. Other kids played there all the time, kind of a neighborhood place I guess.”

  Donnie paused to chew the apple down. Ginger had begun rocking herself again, though her mutterings were silent and the knife had ceased its war against the air.

  “Two rich kids stole their daddy’s car,” Donnie went on. “Took it joyridin’, into that place across the tracks. Guess it was excitin’ for ’em. Hell, I’ve done that, I know what it’s like. So they go screamin’ around with the cops on their tail and all of a sudden the kid drivin’ the car loses control of the wheel and that fine rich man’s car goes right into the playground. Yep. Hurt four kids playin’ there, broke their bones and such. But her little boy…well, ma said it broke him to pieces and tore him all up inside. Ambulance took him to the hospital but it was a time before they found out who the mama was, because she’d been lyin’ passed-out drunk in her bed. By the time the police straightened everythin’ out and she got to the hospital her little boy was dead…but it had took two days for him to pass.”

  “She could’ve sued the family,” Pearly said. “Gotten a lot of money that way.”

  “Yeah. Well, she got a lawyer and tried that. Pretty soon they turned it around that she was an unfit mother and it was mostly her fault for lettin’ her kid go out to that playground while she was lyin’ drunk in the bed. Yeah, my ma said they brought two lawyers in from Atlanta to turn everythin’ on its fuckin’ head. Then they fixed it so…Ginger…lost her job, lost everythin’ else and was lookin’ at jail time on charges of whorin’ and usin’ drugs. ’Bout then is when she cracked up, I reckon, and they sent her to that hospital.”

  “What hospital?”

  “Bryce, in Tuscaloosa. You know. A nuthouse.”

  “A mental hospital? How long did she stay in there?”

  “Two years, is what I heard. When they let her out, they near ’bout kicked her out of Alabama too. Right then, I think, is when she decided she wasn’t gonna be who she used to be. Right then, I think, she decided that it wasn’t all men who were gonna have the power and money in the world, and she was gonna get some herself however she could. Now I know that’s true ’cause she’s told me that directly.” He crunched a final time into the apple, biting down into the core, and then spat out a seed. “There you go. That story worth a thousand bucks, Mister Pearly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me tell you somethin’ for free,” Donnie said. “Soon as the money’s been got, she’s gone. I don’t know if you thought you were makin’ plans with her or anythin’, for after, but it ain’t gonna happen. So if I was you I’d pull up stakes soon as you got that cash in your hand, you head out wherever you’re goin’ and don’t look back.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Pearly replied, and he meant it. “What’re you plannin’ on doin’ with your share?”

  “Raisin’ hell,” said Donnie. His eyebrows went up. “What else is there?”

  Though Pearly didn’t care much for the younger man, he thought that maybe truer words had never been spoken. He stood up, dared to walk closer to Ginger, and moved the lamp back and forth before her sightless eyes.

  “Playin’ with fire there,” Donnie said.

  Ginger showed no reaction, except when he lowered the lamp and the darkness was on her face again she started that singsong muttering once more: “Told you…told you…no, no…not that way…told you…” And then the strange question, as if directed at herself: “Who are you? Who are you?” Her voice trailed off, unanswered.

  “I’m hittin’ the hay,” Pearly told Donnie, but he knew he would be sleeping with both eyes open and his ears to the wall. He returned to the bunkbed room, put the lamp on the desk and climbed up to the top bunk, and there he lay trying to envision the paradise of Mexico again but all he was seeing was a vast plain of thornbrush and smelling the bitter fruit of rotten peaches.

  When the door opened he nearly jumped out of his skin. By the lamp’s dying glow he could make out on his wristwatch that it was four forty-three. He heard her slide into the lower bunk, and then there was silence but for the hard beating of his heart.

  Afraid of her? he asked himself.

  Terrified, was the answer.

  But it would be over in about twenty-one hours, and then he was quits with the both of them. Ginger was the one who’d brought up the idea of heading straight to Mexico, but what Donnie had told him made sense; Ginger had no destination, she was just travelling from one name and one con job to another, and that was her life.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  He didn’t reply. He breathed so shallowly he felt like it was barely keeping him alive. After awhile he heard her turn over in the sheet and then be still, and he lay sleepless as dirty light slowly crept over the windowsill and through the curtains of ship anchors and leaping gamefish struggling vainly and forever against their hooks.

  FOUR.

  Blood Will Tell

  Twenty.

  “You ready?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It’s time.”

  Curtis and Ludenmere had shared that exchange nearly thirty minutes ago. Now, as the seconds ticked away toward one o’clock on Friday morning, Ludenmere guided his second car—a dark blue Pierce-Arrow sedan—through the streets of New Orleans on a northwesterly course. Curtis had the passenger seat, and behind them on the rear seat was the cardboard box holding two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in bills not larger than fifties, the box itself lightly taped shut but not heavily sealed.

  As he’d not had a change of clothes, Curtis still wore his Redcap uniform but had left the crimson cap at the Ludenmere mansion. Ludenmere had hardly slept last night and had drowsed only for an hour or so yesterday afternoon, when they’d gotten back from their trip to find the fishing pier at the end of Sandusky Road. He was dishevelled and weary and operating on the strength of nervous energy alone. He had offered the Pierce-Arrow’s wheel to Curtis but that wasn’t going to work since Curtis told him he’d never in his life sat behind the wheel of a car.

  The streets were nearly deserted but for a few other nocturnal travellers. The day had been cloudy and heavy. To the northwest occasional streaks of lightning flared over the lake, and by their stark illumination for an instant turned the seething sky around them vivid purple. Ludenmere had brought a thermos of strong black coffee along and as he navigated the ghostly-quiet streets he drank down jolts of java one after the other.

  “Tell her we’re comin’,” Ludenmere said, his dark-hollowed eyes fixed on the way ahead.

  Curtis had already done that when they’d left the house, but he nodded and sent out, :Nilla, he says to tel
l you again we’re comin’. It won’t be long now.:

  :All right,: she sent back. :I don’t think they’ve left yet.:

  :But…they’re bringin’ you and Little Jack, aren’t they?:

  :I don’t know. Like I said before, they’ve kept us in this room all day.:

  Curtis was relieved that her sending was stronger than it had been yesterday. She must’ve been able to get a little rest, enough to recharge herself. They’d been talking briefly during the day, as he hadn’t wanted to run her down again, and it was during one of those talks that she’d told him they hadn’t seen any of the three all day, had had nothing to eat and nothing to drink.

  :Let me know when they come for you,: Curtis told her. :We’ll be at that pier at one on the dot.:

  :Thank you, Curtis. Thank you so much for being here.:

  :Well, we’re gonna be there real soon, so there’s nothin’ for any of you to worry about.:

  “What’s she sayin’?” Ludenmere asked, breaking Curtis’s concentration.

  “She says they haven’t left yet.”

  “Yeah, I expect they’ll make us wait a spell at that damned pier. But…we’ve got the money and that’s a done deal, thanks to Victor. He wanted to come with me and hide in the back seat, but I told him if they found him—and they were bound to look—there’d be hell to pay. I’m gonna have enough trouble explainin’ you.”

  “How’re you gonna do that?”

  Ludenmere stopped at a red light. He’d already told Curtis they weren’t going to run any lights or do any speeding; being pulled over by the police was not part of the plan and would ruin the time schedule they’d figured out this afternoon. “I’ll say you’re my driver. They may not like it, but they won’t pay much notice to you.”

  Curtis knew what that meant. “You mean ’cause I’m a Negro?”

  “That’s right, and also ’cause you’re a skinny kid who doesn’t look like you could threaten a snowball. Don’t ask me to tiptoe through any gardens right now, Curtis. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Fair enough,” Curtis said, without anger or resentment, because it was the reality of his world.

  The light changed and Ludenmere drove on through the misty streets, where by night and the yellow-tinged streetlamps the famous old oaks and weeping willows of the city took on the shapes of gnarled dragons lurking on the roadside.

  During the day, Ludenmere had shown Curtis a professionally-taken photograph in a silver frame of both the kids, smiling with their arms around each other. They were handsome children. Curtis thought Little Jack looked a lot like their father, but Nilla looked younger than he’d expected. He guessed it was because when they talked she had sometimes seemed older than ten years, surely older than he’d been at that age, and he figured it was because she—like her brother—had been blessed with the gift of not only a rich father, but the richness of an education. He thought she probably knew a lot more about the world than he did, though he tried to travel as much as he could through reading. It was a sorry thing, now, that she and Little Jack were getting such an education in how plain mean, conniving and selfish some people could be, especially about money…something he’d already been taught in his dealings with the Rowdy Pattersons and Miles Wilsons of the world.

  “What I can’t figure,” said Ludenmere after he’d driven about another half-mile, “was how they got the kids with both Hartley and Detective Parr bein’ on the alert. I swear to God, I thought Parr was smarter than that, to let themselves be waylaid between the school and the house. How the hell did that happen? And both of them with guns…I just can’t figure it out.”

  Curtis said, “I doubt they wanted to do any shootin’ with the children liable to get hurt.”

  “Yeah. Right. You know, I blame myself for this. When that detective came to me, the first thing I should’ve done is hire three more bodyguards. But…the way he told it…maybe I didn’t want to believe it was true. I mean…he wasn’t sure about it himself. Just a story from some lowlife criminal who wanted to stay out of prison. But damn it, I should’ve acted! Should’ve hired three extra bodyguards right that afternoon!” He reached for the coffee thermos again for a drink of more fuel.

  “It’ll be over soon,” Curtis said, but it sounded more lame than helpful.

  “This part’ll be over,” Ludenmere corrected. “I don’t think the idea that my—our—children were kidnapped and at the mercy of three criminals for thirty-four hours is gonna be over anytime soon. Jane’s hangin’ on by whatever fingernails she’s got left, and so am I. When we get the children back…God only knows what shape they’ll be in…mentally, I mean.”

  “They’re holdin’ up.”

  “Ask her again if they’ve left yet.”

  The answer to that was :No, not yet.:

  “Gonna make us wait,” Ludenmere said between clenched teeth. “Goddamn bastards gonna make us wait.”

  Leaving the outskirts of New Orleans behind, they reached Sawmill Road that led into Kenner. Ludenmere took a left and in silence drove toward the meeting place. Through his side window Curtis watched the lightning flare over Lake Pontchartrain, sending out jagged and blazing whips from clouds to earth. The noise of thunder came to him like a muffled bass drum.

  His heart was beating harder and his stomach—enriched with a ham sandwich from a rich man’s kitchen—felt like it wanted to lurch and spill its contents into the fine, leathery-smelling car.

  :Curtis? Curtis, we heard the front door open and close. We think they’re leaving!:

  :They’re not takin’ you with ’em?:

  :No.:

  “Nilla says she thinks they’re leavin’ now,” Curtis reported, “but they’re not takin’ the kids with ’em.”

  “I figured they wouldn’t. They’ll want to see that all the money’s there first,” Ludenmere said. “I don’t know how this is gonna work, but I want my children back tonight. I want ’em in this car with me when we head back home, and by God that’s what’s gonna happen.”

  ****

  Behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile, Ginger shifted uneasily in the seat. She made a noise that sounded to Pearly like a whisper of discontent.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Somethin’ I’ve forgotten,” she answered, as she steered the car east along Sawmill Road. “Can’t remember what. Somethin’. That damned Donnie…last night…got me all out of whack.”

  Pearly said nothing. Between them on the seat was Hartley’s .45 Smith & Wesson revolver, and Pearly carried his .38 pistol in the shoulder holster under his coat. They had also brought along the bull’s-eye lantern and the flashlight. A streak of lightning across the sky to the northwest lit up the interior of the car for an instant, and the thunder that followed seemed to vibrate in Pearly’s bones. His palms were damp and his shirt was sticking to his back. He had rolled down his window to let the air circulate and cool himself off, but even the moving air was thick with heat and the wet clammy noxion of the approaching storm.

  “Fine night to get paid two hundred thousand bucks,” said Ginger, but it was spoken with absolutely no emotion, either good or bad.

  “Two hundred and fifteen,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She swerved the car a few feet to crunch a tire over a raccoon that was sneaking across the road. “Somethin’ I’ve forgotten,” she said. “Damn if I can remember.”

  They would be passing through Kenner in a couple minutes more. Pearly wished he could light up a cigarette and swallow it down, but he could do that later. Mexico, Mexico, he thought.

  It was not so far away now.

  Again Ginger shifted uneasily, and the words were out of Pearly’s mouth before he could think to stop them: “I thought you said you didn’t have any kids.”

  “Huh? I don’t.”

  “Never?”

  “Fuck, no. I hate kids. Gettin’ in the way of everythin’.”

  “Uh huh. Don’t you mean you hate rich men’s kids?”

  She didn’t answer that one right
off. Did he see her hands tighten on the wheel? It was hard to tell. The lightning flared, sending a dozen spears into the dark, and the thunder came with a sharper edge.

  They passed through Kenner, which had likely folded up and gone to sleep at eight o’clock. Two stray dogs were nosing around some trash cans, but that was all the movement in evidence.

  “What’re you talkin’ about?” Ginger asked. Her voice was a little too light. “Gettin’ crazy, the closer we get to the payoff?”

  “Just thinkin’ out loud, I guess.” He realized he was one foot in, and he might as well put the other one in too. “Thinkin’ that I hope this job is just about kidnappin’, and not really about some kind of…oh, I don’t know…revenge.”

  “Revenge? For what?”

  “Oh…life, I suppose. Like I say, just thinkin’ out loud.”

  “Stop thinkin’, you’re makin’ me nervous. I’m doin’ the talkin’ when we get there. Got that?”

  “Sure, whatever you say.”

  “Comin’ up real soon,” she said. “Take the safety off my gun.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she answered, her eyes deadset on the centerpoint of the cones of light that fell upon the road ahead, “I want you to.”

  ****

  They heard the scrape of the table being moved.

  The door opened. Donnie came in holding an oil lamp and the pillow from his cot. Tucked into the waistband of his jeans and against the white cotton of the undershirt he wore was the handle of the kitchen knife with the serrated blade.

  Beside her, Nilla felt Little Jack tremble in spite of his bravery. Across the room, Hartley slowly drew his knees up against his chest.

  “Howdy, folks,” said Donnie. He grinned in the yellow light. “Came to keep you company for awhile.” His eyes moved toward the boy. “How you doin’ there, kid?”

  ****

  Ludenmere pulled the car to a stop at the end of Sandusky Road, about three hundred yards off Sawmill. Before them was thirty-five feet of fishing pier. To the right stood a pair of cabins, both dark and empty as they had been when Ludenmere and Curtis had peered through the grimy windows this afternoon, and to the left was a mass of scrub brush and woods.