He struggled to get up, trying to unlatch the seat belt. Outside the car he heard a quick scuffle of gravel. He heard a motor running. A passing car swished by on the road—he could see its lights—but it did not stop. The gravel crunched closer to the car. Footsteps.
The door on the driver’s side opened, and he saw a man, a stocking pulled over his head, holding a gun. The man climbed into the car. Lofton closed his eyes. He was trapped. Suddenly he saw himself back in the library looking at Einstein’s by-line, at the picture of the Latino leader up above. “They are burning our city; they are being paid.” Like Einstein, maybe even better than Einstein, he’d figured it all out. The only thing he didn’t know was the name of this man in the stocking cap, kneeling over him, getting ready, Lofton thought, to answer all my questions forever.
“Bastard.”
The man’s voice was unnaturally high, choked with emotion. He put the gun to Lofton’s head. Lofton thought of how his death would look in the paper. REPORTER SHOT TO DEATH. He wondered how Kirpatzke would play it, if he would play it at all.
The man pushed his knee into Lofton’s groin and bent over; Lofton stared into the stockinged face.
“Bastard.”
The man’s voice was unnaturally high, choked with emotion. He put the gun to Lofton’s head. Lofton thought of how his death would look in the paper, REPORTER SHOT TO DEATH. He wondered how Kirpatzke would play it, if he would play it at all.
The man pushed his knee into Lofton’s groin and bent over; Lofton stared into the stockinged face.
“Bastard.”
His breath smelled like whiskey. He’s not a good killer. Raising himself up, the man gathered force, then brought the butt end of the revolver down toward Lofton’s head. Lofton squirmed, and the blow glanced off. The gun slipped from the man’s fingers, but Lofton could not reach it. The man pounded him in the face, over and over, with a vengeance that was not mercenary but personal.
Then the beating stopped. Lofton felt him reaching for the gun but could do nothing to stop him.
“Bastard.”
Why doesn’t he just kill me?
“Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.”
Grabbing Lofton by the collar, the man pushed his knee deeper into Lofton’s groin and touched the gun to his head. Lofton’s skull hurt from the beating, his vision blurred, but he could still see the man; he still waited for the shot. Leaning over Lofton, backing the gun away then bringing it closer, the man began—suddenly, horribly—to sob. The man was close, and Lofton could see the features through the mask. And, finally, he recognized the voice.
“Golden,” Lofton said.
There was a pause. Golden sat up. He was no longer crying. He stared at Lofton a long moment and then began to hit the reporter, again and again, and with each blow Lofton watched the darkness burst into light, until finally there was only one pure light, indistinguishable from the darkness.
The old man would not leave him be. “It happened in a split second,” he said, leering up at Lofton, grabbing on to his sleeve. The old man pointed at the building. Lofton saw shadows moving up on railings, then a small light, like a candle or someone striking a match. The old man pulled Lofton closer; his face was mottled, ugly. “I saw a small flame, then a larger one, and I knew what it was.” The man’s breath was dank. The night smelled like gasoline. “I knew I had to call for help, but I knew it couldn’t get here in time. The fire was in three places; then it was everywhere.”
“All right, all right,” cried Lofton, “all right,” but the man held on. His face twisted and became uglier. The fire spread over the wooden porches, the railings, the window frames, the gutters—a glowing filigree. “The whole building in three minutes, just blown up and gone, just a shell, a corpse.” Lofton felt himself sweating. He tried to pull away. The old man grabbed him by the collar; his grip was unshakable. “The explosion is white,” the old man hissed. A main exploded, the heat blistered out, the walls of the empty rooms were gold and red. A man disappeared down an alley five blocks away. Then came the second explosion, brighter than the one before. Lofton couldn’t breathe. “This is what it all comes to,” the old man said. “Somebody sets a fire, and your soul’s got three minutes to get out.” Then there was one last explosion, a weariness in Lofton’s chest.…
8
Lofton woke up in the hospital. His dream of the old man and the fire was far away; his head hurt, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. He had been drugged hard, so he kept falling back to sleep, the pain ringing in his bones—his skull, his cheeks, his jaw—each time he woke. When he touched his face, he found a bandage there, and beneath the bandage a tight, aching pain he could not escape, not even in sleep.
He forced himself to sit up, but a nurse came and forced him back down. He slept some more, his sleep no longer black and seamless but filled with dreams, fragments acted by a kaleidoscope of interchangeable players. Tenace lumbered in bed with Amanti; Maureen and Brunner went off together.
Finally, he pulled himself up again—the pain was fading—and he saw the nurse, a brisk older woman who took his pulse with a professional, almost distasteful air. He asked her what day it was.
“Go back to sleep. You have a concussion.”
Lofton was in a large room. There were other beds nearby, and he could hear, aside from the footsteps of his nurse, hard breathing and moaning. A cop sat on a stool by the entrance.
“Officer,” he called, but it was a weak cry. The policeman did not come. Lofton felt dizzy. The car spun. Golden raised his fist. The room turned bright, then black.
The nurse was adjusting his IV. He was in a different room now, a private room: television set, empty bed beside him, no policeman at the door.
The nurse left, and he dozed. When she came back—hours later or a few minutes; it was impossible for him to tell—she showed in a small, seedy man dressed in a light beige suit and a black tie.
“Frank Lofton?”
The man extended his hand as he walked across the room, as if to shake Lofton’s hand from a distance. The man had a thin, snakelike smile. He held his hand palm upward as if expecting something to be placed in it. When Lofton reached over to shake it, the man’s hand went limp. The nurse leaned against the door, watching.
“My name’s Ray Nassau. Jack’s lawyer.”
“Jack?”
“Yes, Jack Brunner. He asked me to handle your problem.”
Nassau held out his hand again.
“We already shook.”
Nassau smiled. “Yes, you’re right.”
“What do you want? I thought Liuzza was Brunner’s lawyer.”
“Different lawyers have different specialties. Jack Brunner got you this room. See, when they pick someone off the street—out-of-state ID, accident, no insurance card, junky car, that kind of thing—they don’t give you the best treatment. Put you in the ward with the crooks and the drunks.”
“I don’t want anything from Brunner.”
“No?”
“No.” Lofton raised his voice. “Nurse, I don’t want this man here. He’s making my head hurt.”
“Are you in pain, Mr. Lofton? Should I call the doctor?” The nurse did not move from the door.
Nassau bent over, whispering—hissing really—at the bedside. “The little shortstop is a sympathetic figure, you know. The jury will be hard on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Murder. An accomplice at least. Leaving the scene. Suppressing evidence.” Nassau pursed his lips and shook his head. “Bad stuff. You’d think a reporter would be above such things. Playing rough stuff with a Mexican over a few nosefuls of cocaine.”
“He was from Nicaragua,” Lofton said. “And I didn’t kill him.”
“That’s what they all say. And I believe you all, of course. It’s a common problem: an innocent man caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, holding a bloody sword. Still, I wouldn’t expect a man like you to get so tied up in this, so implicated. You might go to j
ail. Unless you have a good lawyer. Or a good friend.”
“Fuck off.”
“Fine. Nurse, could you show in Officer Ryan?” Nassau gleamed. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”
A policeman came into the room, a short man, blond hair, small, tight curls. He joined Nassau at the bedside, and Nassau sent the nurse away.
“You are going to see my poetic side, Mr. Lofton, something few people see.… Let’s think back. Let’s remember the summer. Let’s remember a day, one of those grimy, awful days, when the air was full of pig sweat and fat, when old men were dying of strokes and young men dying of boredom. Let’s think back.…”
“Get to the point,” said Lofton, but he was afraid of the cop. What were these two trying to pull off?
“Let’s think back to a hot and ugly night. The ambulance lights are flashing. A dead man lays on the floor—a Mexican—his skull blown to tiny pieces. Outside, there’s static. A reporter sits in a squad car, waiting, thinking, plotting, scheming.” Nassau paused. “Can you see it, Lofton? Can you imagine the reporter? Can you see him at the scene of the crime, hours earlier, studying the dead body? The question is, Why would he conceal such a thing? Why wouldn’t he call the police?”
“Fuck off.”
“You said that already.… Now imagine the hardworking policeman, coming back down from the crime to the squad car.” Nassau pointed to Ryan. “The hardworking, honest policeman, the man on the beat.” Lofton remembered. The detective came down the driveway. He spoke in the intercom. He looked through the cage at Lofton in the back seat.
Nassau turned to Ryan and gestured at Lofton. “Do you remember this man, Officer Ryan? Have you seen this reporter before?”
Ryan peered at Lofton. His eyes were gray slits.
“Should I remember him?” Ryan asked.
“Should he remember you, Lofton? Should he?” Nassau smiled.
“What do you want from me?” Lofton asked.
“Want, want, want. All this talk of want. Of need. Of desire. Would men have ever climbed from the slime, would Christ have ever died on the cross, if all we thought of was our own paltry wants, our own paltry lust?” Nassau’s face was twisted and happy. The lawyer was in ecstasy.
“Officer Ryan, tell us what the police found in Mr. Lofton’s car when they arrived at the accident.”
“A medallion, some letters written in Spanish—the personal effects of Randy Gutierrez, the murdered ballplayer.”
“Those things weren’t in my car,” Lofton said. He was telling the truth. The letters, the medallion, he’d left all that stuff back in his hotel room.
“What else did the police find in Mr. Lofton’s car?”
“Cocaine. A dozen ounces, not very pure. Cut with milk sugar, Benzedrine, just about everything under the kitchen sink. Same as the drugs found at the ballplayer’s apartment, a perfect match.”
“That’s a lie,” Lofton said. “If that was in my car, then someone else put it there—”
“Officer Ryan, what’s your position in the department?”
“Detective, homicide.”
“If somebody asked you to speculate, what would you infer from the evidence in Mr. Lofton’s car?”
“I would guess that he killed the shortstop and stole the cocaine. That he was getting ready to leave town when he lost control of the car.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lofton said. “I was on my way back into town when one of Brunner’s men, Dick Golden, forced me off the road. I was investigating the arsons—”
Lofton had directed his appeal at the cop, but he broke it off. He could see it was hopeless. Ryan stared at the hospital bed, not seeming to see Lofton, not seeming to see anything. Brunner had had the cop bought off, clear and simple.
“On the other hand, Detective Ryan, if nobody said anything to you, if nobody asked you to speculate on the meaning of this evidence, what would you do then?”
“Not much,” Ryan said. His face was deadpan—nothing, no emotion, not even a flicker.
“Good, good,” the lawyer said. “I’m happy to hear it, and I bet Frank is happy, too.”
Nassau dismissed Ryan. The policeman left Lofton and the lawyer alone together.
“Get the picture?” said Nassau.
Lofton said nothing. He understood Nassau’s message: Keep out of Brunner’s business or we’ll turn this whole thing around on you; you’ll find yourself on the line for Gutierrez’s murder.
“I’ve warned you. Jump out of this.” Nassau’s voice was iron. The fun and games were over; he’d finished his routine, and he wanted Lofton to know he was serious. “We’ll pay the bills on this room. We know the meaning of generosity. You stay here as long as you need. Weeks. Years. Decades. Just leave town when your nose stops bleeding.”
Nassau put his checkbook down on the table and filled out one of the yellow sheets. He stuck the check under Lofton’s pillow.
“Et cum spiritu tuo,” he said, and left the room.
Afterward Lofton talked to his doctor. The man was friendly, short, and balding, thick around the middle. It was obvious, from his friendly, innocent manner that he knew nothing about what was happening. “We did X rays all over,” the doctor said, serious now. “The abdomen, the chest cavity, we checked it all.” Lofton took a breath. It hurt. “You’re a lucky man. Not even a broken rib.”
“Nothing wrong internally?”
“Not a thing,” said the doctor, and he gave Lofton a generous smile.
A Casa de empeños. Pistolas. Joyas. Cámaras Fotográficas. Lofton stared at his bandaged face in the pawnshop window. Underneath the Spanish the same words had been written again in English—in the same gold Gothic lettering, only smaller, THE HOUSE OF PERSISTENCE. GUNS. JEWELRY. CAMERAS. The window was plated silver, its reflection blue and warped by the cheapness of the glass. Lofton tore the bandage from his face. Bruises blackened the skin beneath his eyes; his eyes were streaked red; his nose was bashed and sore. “The bone’s broken in one place, cracked in two others, very difficult to set,” the doctor had told him while changing the bandage. He gave Lofton prescriptions for codeine and antibiotics. “The bandages will help hold things a little firmer.” The doctor laughed. “But mostly they’ll keep you from looking so ugly.” Lofton pressed the bandage back on and headed down the street.
“Señor, quiere algo?”
Lofton wheeled. The pawnbroker, a small, fat man with eyes the color of asphalt, stood in his doorway. “Are you looking for a pistol? Something small?”
“No,” Lofton called. “Not right now.”
Lofton went into a tavern on the corner, not far from his hotel. He needed to make a decision. He took one of the doctor’s painkillers, ordered a beer, and lit a cigarette. No internal injuries. Not even a broken rib. Lucky bastard. Nassau’s check was in his pocket. Twenty-five hundred dollars. He still hadn’t cashed Liuzza’s check, the note for a grand that Amanti’s cousin had given him that day in his Northampton home. All things considered, he hadn’t made out too badly. True, now that Brunner had gotten his papers back, the story was pretty well ruined, or at least difficult to document. But Lofton was alive, he had some money, he hadn’t lost everything. Still, something nagged at him: Somehow Dick Golden had known exactly where to find him. Certainly the general manager had not followed him all the way to Vermont. Golden must have known he was going to be at Amanti’s that night, then waited for him there, finally catching up to him on the dark, open road.
He felt a confused surge of hatred for Golden, not at all the pure hatred you should feel for a man who had beaten you senseless. Somebody had told Golden where to find him, he was convinced, but who? He had a suspicion he didn’t like.
He went over to the phone and dialed Amanti. There was no answer. He was worried, despite himself and his suspicions. He slammed the phone into its cradle.
“Easy,” the barkeep called out to him. “We only got one phone here.”
Lofton flipped through the phone book. Golden. A street in t
he Point District, a mile or so beyond Mackenzie Field. He dialed the number to make sure. A woman answered, her voice slurred, barely audible. That was the handicapped woman, Golden’s wife. Lofton hung up harder then he had the first time. He winced, drawing his shoulders tight, realizing what he had done. This time the bartender said nothing.
He walked back to his hotel and checked his messages. The clerk was not there, and nothing was in his box. He started up the stairs, but then the clerk appeared. He shouted at Lofton in Spanish. He blocked the staircase, his arms outstretched, one palm flat against each wall. He told Lofton he could not go up to his room until he paid for the damage. If Lofton did not pay, he would call the police.
“I almost lose my job because of you,” the clerk said in English. “The room has been destroyed by some one of your hoodlum friends. Five hundred dollars’ worth.”
“I’ll pay,” he said, though he had no intention of doing so. “Just let me get my things out of here.”
The clerk looked at him warily. Lofton walked steadily forward, until he was face-to-face with the man.
“I said I’d pay,” Lofton said. He could feel the clerk’s breath in his face. He imagined his own face in the man’s eyes. It was an ugly face, distorted. The clerk backed off, and Lofton brushed by.
“You move nothing before you pay,” the clerk yelled after him. Lofton could hear the man following behind him, muttering in Spanish.
Lofton’s door had been kicked in, and the room thrown into shambles: cupboards and refrigerator cleared; drawers and closet emptied; food, paper, laundry, and glass—all scattered on the floor. The mattress had been stripped of its sheets, turned over and slashed, as if the intruder had expected to find something inside the mattress. Tiny bits of foam rubber lay everywhere. His clippings and his notebooks were gone, his trunk all but empty.
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