Chapter 22 #2
Then his listening expression changed. He brightened, even smiled a little. His teeth were as white as ever, she observed, and why not? He had always brushed them at least half a dozen times a day. “Hello, Mr. Amberson. Someone here has something to say to you.”
He got off the hassock and handed Sadie the phone. As she put it to her ear, he slashed out with the knife, quick as a striking snake, and sliced open the side of her face.
4
“What did you do to her?” I shouted. “What did you do, you bastard?”
“Hush, Mr. Amberson.” He sounded amused.
Sadie was no longer screaming, but I could hear her sobbing.
“She’s all right. She’s bleeding pretty heavily, but that will stop.
” He paused, then spoke in a tone of judicious consideration.
“Of course, she’s not going to be pretty anymore.
Now she looks like what she is, just a cheap four-dollar whore.
My mother said she was, and my mother was right. ”
“Let her go, Clayton,” I said. “Please.”
“I want to let her go. Now that I’ve marked her, I want to.
But here’s what I already told her, Mr. Amberson.
I am going to kill one of you. She cost me my job, you know; I had to quit and go into an electrical-treatment hospital or they were going to have me arrested.
” He paused. “I pushed a girl down the stairs. She tried to touch me. All this dirty bitch’s fault, this one right here bleeding into her lap.
I got her blood on my hands, too. I will need disinfectant. ” And he laughed.
“Clayton—”
“I’ll give you three and a half hours. Until seven-thirty. Then I’ll put two bullets in her. One in her stomach and one in her filthy cunt.”
In the background, I heard Sadie scream: “Don’t you do it, Jacob!”
“SHUT UP!” Clayton yelled at her. “SHUT YOUR MOUTH!” Then, to me, chillingly conversational: “Who’s Jacob?”
“Me,” I said. “It’s my middle name.”
“Does she call you that in bed when she sucks your cock, cockboy?”
“Clayton,” I said. “Johnny. Think what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for over a year. They gave me shock treatments in the electric hospital, you know. They said they’d stop the dreams, but they didn’t. They made them worse.”
“How bad is she cut? Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“If you let me talk to her, maybe I’ll do what you’re asking. If you don’t, I most certainly won’t. Are you too fogged out from your shock treatments to understand that?”
It seemed he wasn’t. There was a shuffling sound in my ear, then Sadie was on. Her voice was thin and trembling. “It’s bad, but it’s not going to kill me.” Her voice dropped. “He just missed my eye—”
Then Clayton was back. “See? Your little tramp is fine. Now you just jump in your hotrod Chevrolet and get out here just as fast as the wheels will roll, how would that be? But listen to me carefully, Mr. George Jacob Amberson Cockboy: if you call the police, if I see a single blue or red light, I will kill this bitch and then myself. Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m seeing an equation here where the values balance: the cockboy and the whoregirl. I’m in the middle. I’m the equals sign, Amberson, but you have to decide. Which value gets canceled out? It’s your call.”
“No!” she screamed. “Don’t! If you come out here he’ll kill both of u—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
5
I’ve told the truth so far, and I’m going to tell the truth here even though it casts me in the worst possible light: my first thought as my numb hand replaced the phone in its cradle was that he was wrong, the values didn’t balance.
In one pan of the scales was a pretty high school librarian.
In the other was a man who knew the future and had—theoretically, at least—the power to change it.
For a second, part of me actually thought about sacrificing Sadie and going across town to watch the alley running between Oak Lawn Avenue and Turtle Creek Boulevard to find out if the man who changed American history was on his own.
Then I got into my Chevy and headed for Jodie. Once I got out on Highway 77, I pegged the speedometer at seventy and kept it there. While I was driving, I thumbed the latches on my briefcase, took out my gun, and dropped it into the inner pocket of my sport coat.
I realized I’d have to involve Deke in this. He was old and no longer steady on his feet, but there was simply no one else. He would want to be involved, I told myself. He loved Sadie. I saw it in his face every time he looked at her.
And he’s had his life, my cold mind said. She hasn’t. Anyway, he’ll have the same chance the lunatic gave you. He doesn’t have to come.
But he would. Sometimes the things presented to us as choices aren’t choices at all.
I never wished so much for my long-gone cell as I did on that drive from Dallas to Jodie. The best I could do was a gas station phone booth on SR 109, about half a mile beyond the football billboard. On the other end the phone rang three times… four… five…
Just as I was about to hang up, Deke said, “Hello? Hello?” He sounded irritated and out of breath.
“Deke? It’s George.”
“Hey, boy!” Now tonight’s version of Bill Turcotte (from that popular and long-running play The Homicidal Husband) sounded delighted instead of irritated. “I was out in my little garden beside the house. I almost let it ring, but then—”
“Be quiet and listen. Something very bad’s happened. Is still happening. Sadie’s been hurt already. Maybe a lot.”
There was a brief pause. When he spoke again, Deke sounded younger: like the tough man he had undoubtedly been forty years and two wives ago.
Or maybe that was just hope. Tonight hope and a man in his late sixties was all I had.
“You’re talking about her husband, aren’t you?
This is my fault. I think I saw him, but that was weeks ago.
And his hair was much longer than in the yearbook picture.
Not the same color, either. It was almost orange.
” A momentary pause, and then a word I had never heard from him before. “Fuck!”
I told him what Clayton wanted, and what I proposed to do. The plan was simple enough. Did the past harmonize with itself? Fine, I would let it. I knew Deke might have a heart attack—Turcotte had—but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. It was Sadie.
I waited for him to ask if it wouldn’t be better to turn this over to the police, but of course he knew better.
Doug Reems, the Jodie constable, had poor eyesight, wore a brace on one leg, and was even older than Deke.
Nor did Deke ask why I hadn’t called the state police from Dallas.
If he had, I would have told him I believed Clayton was serious about killing Sadie if he saw a single flashing light.
It was true, but not the real reason. I wanted to take care of the son of a bitch myself.
I was very angry.
“What time does he expect you, George?”
“No later than seven-thirty.”
“And it’s now… quarter of, by my watch. Which gives us a smidge of time. The street behind Bee Tree is Apple-something. I disremember just what. That’s where you’ll be?”
“Right. The house behind hers.”
“I can meet you there in five minutes.”
“Sure, if you drive like a lunatic. Make it ten. And bring a prop, something he can see from the living room window if he looks out. I don’t know, maybe—”
“Will a casserole dish do?”
“Fine. See you there in ten.”
Before I could hang up, he said, “Do you have a gun?”
“Yes.”
His reply was close to a dog’s growl. “Good.”
6
The street behind Doris Dunning’s house had been Wyemore Lane.
The street behind Sadie’s was Apple Blossom Way.
202 Wyemore had been for sale. 140 Apple Blossom Way had no FOR SALE sign on the lawn, but it was dark and the lawn was shaggy, dotted with dandelions.
I parked in front and looked at my watch. Six-fifty.
Two minutes later, Deke pulled his Ranch Wagon up behind my Chevy and got out. He was wearing jeans, a plaid shirt, and a string tie. In his hands he was holding a casserole dish with a flower on the side. It had a glass lid, and looked to contain three or four quarts of chop suey.
“Deke, I can’t thank you en—”
“I don’t deserve thanks, I deserve a swift kick in the pants.
The day I saw him, he was coming out of the Western Auto just as I was going in.
It had to’ve been Clayton. It was a windy day.
A gust blew his hair back and I saw those hollows at his temples for just a second.
But the hair… long and not the same color…
he was dressed in cowboy clothes… shit-fire.
” He shook his head. “I’m getting old. If Sadie’s hurt, I’ll never forgive myself. ”
“Are you feeling all right? No chest pains, or anything like that?”
He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Are we going to stand here discussing my health, or are we going to try to get Sadie out of the trouble she’s in?”
“We’re going to do more than try. Go around the block to her house.
While you’re doing that, I’ll cut through this backyard, then push through the hedge and into Sadie’s.
” I was thinking about the Dunning house on Kossuth Street, of course, but even as I said it, I remembered that there was a hedge at the foot of Sadie’s tiny backyard.
I’d seen it many times. “You knock and say something cheery. Loud enough for me to hear. By then I’ll be in the kitchen. ”
“What if the back door’s locked?”
“She keeps a key under the step.”
“Okay.” Deke thought for a moment, frowning, then raised his head. “I’ll say ‘Avon calling, special casserole delivery.’ And raise the dish so he can see me through the living room window if he looks. Will that do?”
“Yes. All I want you to do is distract him for a few seconds.”
“Don’t you shoot if there’s any chance you might hit Sadie. Tackle the bastard. You’ll do okay. The guy I saw was skinny as a rail.”