The Brave

by Nicholas Evans

  "No, Diane. I'm not going to do that."

  "Open the goddamn safe, Ray!"

  Tommy stopped just outside the bedroom doorway and stood there a moment, listening and trying to peep in without being seen. He could see them at the far end of the room, facing each other in front of the open closet where the safe was. He took a cautious step forward. Ray had his back to him but must have noticed Diane's eyes flicker toward the door because he turned to look over his shoulder and saw Tommy and smiled.

  "You go downstairs now, son. Everything's okay. Your mom and I just need to talk a few things over. Go downstairs. Good boy. Do as you're told now."

  Tommy hesitated. He wasn't going to take orders from anyone but Diane. But she nodded her agreement.

  "Go on, Tommy. Just wait in the hallway. I'll be down in a minute."

  Tommy turned reluctantly and headed back across the landing. They were talking again, but in lowered voices now. He couldn't make out what they were saying but the tone was urgent and venomous. Dolores was at the foot of the stairs and she told him to come down and then headed off again across the hallway toward the kitchen.

  He was only halfway down the stairs when Diane screamed. He turned around and ran as fast as he could back up and across the landing and into the bedroom again. And as he came in he saw Ray shove Diane back against the far wall and then step toward her and hit her twice in the face, one-two, backhand and forehand, in quick succession. Tommy yelled for him to stop but Ray ignored him and Diane screamed and leaped at him and tried to hit him back but he was too quick. She clawed at his face then grabbed a handful of his hair and wrenched it and he yelled and grasped her by the wrist and swung her around and slammed her hard against the wall. Tommy heard the breath leave her lungs in a sudden, shocking groan. She saw him at the door and tried to say something but couldn't find her voice and then Ray punched her in the stomach and she doubled up and sank to her knees.

  "I said go downstairs, kid, didn't you hear?" Ray yelled, without looking at him. "Get out of here!"

  The command was so fierce that Tommy almost obeyed. He actually turned and began to head out onto the landing. But then he stopped and, in a moment of perfect clarity, knew what to do. He turned one last time and headed across the room to Ray's nightstand.

  Ray must have thought he'd gone. He'd taken hold of the lapels of Diane's jacket and was hauling her to her feet. As quietly as he could, Tommy slid open the drawer. Damn it, it wasn't there anymore. Ray must be keeping it in some other place. Diane was crying and pleading now, but Tommy couldn't make out what she was saying because his head was filled with the rush and pump of his own blood. Then he pulled the drawer out a little more and there it was, the dull glint of the barrel, right at the back.

  The steel felt cold in his hand as he pulled the gun out. He was trying to be quick and quiet at the same time which wasn't easy because his hands were shaking so badly. But he managed to slip the safety without making a click and then, with both hands, gripped hold of the handle and raised it to eye level and lined it up on Ray's back.

  It was Diane who caught sight of him first. Ray had his hand around her throat and was pinning her to the wall. Her eyes were wide and terrified. She stopped struggling and went very still and without letting go of her Ray slowly turned and saw him too.

  "Let go of her," Tommy said.

  "Jesus, kid. What the hell do you think you're doing? Put that thing down."

  "I said let go of her."

  Ray shook his head and smiled as if this were the most ridiculous and tiresome thing he'd ever seen. But he did release his hand and Diane slumped and turned to the wall and staggered sideways a little, gasping and coughing and clutching her throat.

  "Tommy," she at last managed to say. "Don't be silly now, put it down."

  But he didn't. He told Diane to move farther away but she still didn't seem strong enough.

  "You heard what your mom said, son. Put the gun down. There's a good boy."

  "Get away from her."

  "That's enough, son. Come on, now. Someone's going to get hurt. Give me the gun."

  He took a step toward him and Tommy shouted at him not to move. It was only the bed that separated them now.

  "Open the safe," Tommy said.

  Ray laughed.

  "You've seen too many westerns, kid. Who the hell are we today? Billy the Kid?"

  "Tommy, please, put that thing down."

  "No, he's going to open the safe. Open it!"

  He clicked back the hammer. From his westerns, he knew this generally helped to focus attention and it did. Ray held up his palms.

  "Okay, okay."

  He turned around and it looked for a moment as if he really intended to go and open the safe. But as he stepped toward the closet he suddenly lurched to one side and grabbed hold of Diane. Tommy knew what was coming. He'd seen it a hundred times on TV and in the movies. The guy was going to use her as a shield. Or maybe he was going to start hurting her again or worse. Either way, in that sliver of a second Tommy knew there was no other choice. He squeezed the trigger and fired.

  Watching someone die was nothing like they showed it on TV. The bullet entered Ray's head just below his right eye and he fell back against the wall and slid slowly down until he was sitting on the floor. The look on his face wasn't of agony or even of pain, just a kind of amused surprise that this had actually happened, that this was real life and not some episode of Sliprock and that nobody was going to be calling Cut!

  Time seemed suddenly suspended. There was no blood at first, just a charred black hole. The room smelled of smoke and Tommy's ears rang from the explosion. But he could still hear the rasp and gurgle coming from Ray's mouth. Diane stood there stunned and staring down at him as the life trickled out of him.

  "Tommy," she whispered. "What have you done?"

  "He was going to—"

  Dolores was calling from down in the hallway now, shouting Ray's name, asking what had happened. She sounded terrified. Then they heard her outside, calling for Miguel.

  Tommy still had the gun in his hand. He couldn't take his eyes off Ray. There was blood now. A lot of it. Rivering down his face and neck, glistening on his shirt. Then his hands twitched and his fingers did a spidery little dance on the floor and he groaned one last time and went still.

  "Tommy, quick, give me the gun. Give it to me!"

  She snatched it from his hand and he warned her sharply to be careful because the safety was still off. He showed her how to click it on. She grabbed a corner of the counterpane and began wiping the gun down.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Tommy, listen to me now. Listen very carefully."

  Then there was a scream and they turned and saw Dolores and Miguel standing in the doorway. Dolores was clutching her face in her hands, her eyes darting from the gun in Diane's hand to Ray's body slumped and bloody on the other side of the room. She murmured something then turned and fled and Miguel backed slowly away across the landing.

  Chapter Thirty

  THE FIRE HAD BURNED low by now and Tom gazed into the embers. He knew Danny was staring at him, waiting for him to go on, but these truths and the pictures they conjured had lain buried for almost half a century and digging them up had taken its toll.

  "Dad? Are you okay?"

  Tom nodded and glanced at his son but quickly turned away and looked up at the sky. The moon had passed in an arc over their heads and now hung reflected upstream between the steep pinnacled banks where the water ran unruffled.

  "I'm getting cold. Are you cold?"

  Danny shook his head.

  Tom stood up. His knees had stiffened and he limped a little as he walked to the tent. He pulled a sweater from his pack and put it on while Danny fed the fire with the last few limbs of the wood they had gathered. They settled again and both took a drink from Tom's water bottle.

  "Dad, you don't have to go on. I can see how hard—"

  "I want to." He laughed. "Hell, don't stop me now. This is wh
ere it gets interesting."

  It had taken Tom many years and thousands of dollars in therapy bills to stop viewing his life as a sequence of If Onlies. If only he'd done this instead of that or kept his temper and his mouth shut at certain crucial moments; if only he'd been able to see some important event from someone else's point of view instead of being so damned sure he was right; if only he'd been kinder and more considerate with Gina; if only he hadn't allowed himself to be overwhelmed with anger and self-loathing when she and Danny left. He'd discovered at last that this wasn't a useful way of looking at things—unless, of course, it helped you avoid making the same mistakes over and over again (which, in his case, it hadn't). All it ultimately did was fill your head and your heart with maudlin regrets that sprouted roots and tendrils and clung there like some noxious creeper until there was no room for anything else to grow.

  Even so, it was difficult to retrace what had happened to Diane without finding an If Only at almost every juncture.

  In the late 1990s, just before he died, Herb Kanter had given a long interview to a movie magazine about his life and career. The interviewer had clearly done her research because she'd asked about Diane Reed, a name which by then meant little even to those who considered themselves movie buffs. Herb didn't have a lot to say on the subject except that Diane had been very talented and that what happened was tragic. He reflected that if only Jerry Giesler had still been around, the case wouldn't even have gotten to court.

  Giesler was the legendary attorney who was summoned when Hollywood's greatest found themselves up to their hips in trouble. He'd successfully defended a small galaxy of stars, including Errol Flynn, Robert Mitchum and Charlie Chaplin. One of his last triumphs was in 1958, when Lana Turner's daughter plunged a kitchen knife into her mother's mobster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. Giesler got to the scene of the killing even before the police and made sure that mother and daughter had their stories in order. The case never got beyond an inquest where Lana gave the performance of her career, clinching a verdict of justifiable homicide. Herb Kanter apparently believed that Giesler could and would have done the same for Diane. Sadly for all concerned, by the time she needed him he was but a plaque on the wall at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park.

  The biggest If Only by far, however, was the one that Tom alone knew about. If only he had disobeyed his mother and told the truth. But Diane had been so clear and forceful about what was best. In those fifteen minutes before the police arrived, she told him again and again what he should say and made him promise—cross his heart and hope to die—to stick to it. Without yet knowing what she intended, he had watched her clean the gun then grip it firmly in her right hand, even gently press her finger against the trigger, then lay it on the bed. Then she went to the nightstand and wiped the handle of the drawer then pressed her fingers on it.

  "Diane, what are you doing?"

  "You heard me shouting when you were down in the kitchen with Dolores, right? And you came upstairs and heard us fighting. You stood in the doorway, just the way you did, and you saw him hitting me. Okay? Tommy, look at me. This is very important."

  His eyes kept wandering off to Ray's body, so she grabbed him by the shoulders and made him look her in the eyes.

  "I managed to get away from him and run over here, to the other side of the bed, okay? And I got the gun from the drawer—I got it, okay? Not you. And I pointed it at him and told him to keep away, just like you did, only remember: it was me who said it, not you. You were just watching from the doorway, do you understand? Tommy, listen to me!"

  "I am."

  "Then I asked him to open the safe and get the passports but he came running at me and that was when I fired."

  "But, Diane, that's not—"

  "I don't care! That's the story. I did it, not you. If we both say that's what happened everything will be all right. Now go and wash your hands."

  And that was the story they both told the police officers who interviewed them and the one they stuck to long after Tom realized she was wrong and everything wasn't going to be all right.

  He knew from the start that Diane was only lying to protect him and he wondered later if there was any connection between this and the other great lie of their lives, the one about who his parents were, the one that was supposed to protect them all from shame. Perhaps she believed it had worked well for all concerned. At least, until it had served its purpose and the truth could safely be revealed. Perhaps she had convinced herself that this new lie would work in their best interests too.

  After Danny was born (and long before the question ceased to be altogether hypothetical), Tom had often wondered if he would do the same, wipe his child's fingerprints from the gun and lie under oath to shoulder the blame. He didn't know. How could you ever know until it happened?

  Given his fine propensity for guilt, he'd also wondered if he had in some way let Diane down. He knew he should have paid more attention to what she'd instructed him to tell the police, for there were, as it turned out, discrepancies between the statements they had separately made. In particular these concerned what exactly Ray had said and done before Diane fired the shot that killed him.

  The officers who interviewed him were friendly and sympathetic but that didn't stop them asking sneaky questions. They got him talking about where he and Diane had been living lately and he probably told them a lot more than he should have. He said how kind Cal had been to them both and even mentioned what Diane had said on the train about how she and Cal might marry once she could divorce Ray. He didn't notice at the time but their ears must have pricked up.

  They kept coming back to whether Diane had in any way sought to suggest what Tom should tell them. And it took him a while to realize that this wasn't because they suspected that it was he and not Diane who had killed Ray, but rather that she was trying to make the killing look more like self-defense than it truly had been. And the more he tried to help her, the more tangled his lying became. Finally, he tried telling them the truth. But by now they didn't want to believe him.

  "It's her fingerprints on the weapon, Tommy, not yours."

  "I know, because she wanted to take the blame. She wiped mine off—and off the drawer handle. It was me. You've got to believe me."

  "You're a brave boy, son. Trying to protect your mom like that. But it just doesn't figure."

  "But it's the truth!"

  Diane was kept in custody. And, until Cal arrived, this meant that Tom had to be kept in custody too. He was declared a material witness and dispatched to the county juvenile hall, about which he could now remember very little except that it wasn't nearly as bad as his boarding school in England. There were some pretty tough kids there and one or two seriously mean ones but at least no psychopaths like Whippet Brent on the staff.

  Cal rented an apartment in West Hollywood. Tom remembered them peeping through the shades at the little crowd of reporters and photographers who, for the first few weeks, waited under the trees in the street outside, smoking and laughing then erupting into action the moment they caught sight of anyone coming out of the apartment block. Then they seemed to lose interest. Tommy went back to Carl Curtis and then, in the fall, to the local junior high school.

  Diane was duly charged with murder. At a bail hearing, according to the press clippings Tom later dug up, the prosecution did all it could to paint her as a cold-blooded killer, even darkly hinting that Ray's death might not have been a one-off domestic issue but instead merely the start of some wider purge of Hollywood's thespian cowboys. The judge wasn't convinced. John Wayne and friends, he said, could sleep soundly in their beds. But the bail application was denied. Arthur died a week later, unaware of the crisis engulfing his daughter and grandson.

  It was a little over twelve months before the case came to trial.

  Reading the clippings many years later, Tom was intrigued by how the plot and the leading characters had been manipulated to fit the Hollywood template. Despite the fact that Ray's seamier side had been an open secret, his
demise required that he be remembered only as the valiant cowboy hero, one of the nation's most treasured TV darlings, Red McGraw, righter of wrongs, who stood alone against injustice—only now with wings and a halo around his hat.

  Diane, by contrast, had to be the wicked temptress. Ambitious beyond all scruple, she was portrayed as the shameless English harlot who'd broken up a happy marriage and lied about her sordid and immoral past, whose illegitimate son dear, sweet Ray had so generously taken in, only to find himself cuckolded by his own stunt double and wrangler, a half-breed Indian to boot. Nameless sources spoke of how the torrid affair—there could be, of course, no other kind—had started in Arizona, on the set of The Forsaken, and (most heinous of all, for everything in Hollywood, in the end, boiled down to money) how the scandal had blighted the movie's performance at the box office.

  Cal rented a blue Buick sedan which they kept in the basement garage and every Wednesday afternoon, after school, they drove over into the valley to visit Diane in prison. They were allowed forty minutes with her and had to talk through a glass screen. The only time they were allowed to touch each other during those first few months was when, by special dispensation of a sympathetic judge, Diane and Cal were married in the little prison chapel. Herb Kanter came to give Diane away. The only other people there were the chaplain, who looked about sixteen years old, and a shriveled old man with thick glasses who played the organ. Diane wore a pale blue dress and held a bouquet of cream-colored lilies. She smiled bravely while everyone else tried not to cry.

  The trial began in the third week of November in front of a jury of nine men and three women. Tom was not allowed to attend, not even to testify. Both sides agreed that this would be too traumatic and that the sworn statements of his police interviews would suffice. He never found out if there was some other reason. Diane's attorney probably thought there were enough inconsistencies already and that his appearance on the stand might make matters worse.

  Not that they could have gotten much worse. The deadliest prosecution witness was, of course, Dolores. On the second day of the trial, according to the press reports, she told the court in a brave and tremulous voice that Diane had always treated her badly and been rude and cruel to her; that she had many times seen and heard Diane yelling and swearing at Ray and even throwing things at him; that in a fit of rage she had once broken the living room mirror; how Ray had always tried to calm her and how kind and loving he had been both to Diane and, especially, to young Tommy. On the day of the murder, she said, the accused had barged into the house, shouted at her and threatened her; when Ray arrived she had heard Diane screaming foul-mouthed abuse at him. She said that she'd heard a shot and run upstairs and seen Diane with the gun in her hand, calmly looking at Ray's body; and that when Diane caught sight of her and Miguel in the doorway, she turned toward them, still holding the gun; and that, fearing for their lives, they had fled downstairs and called the police.