Kindle County: Pleading Guilty Part 25

Oh, what about her? She imagined, no doubt, I was running from her. And I'd succored myself with disarming comparisons to the devotion of others - Bert to Orleans, Martin to Glyndora. But who was I kidding? My heart was suddenly sore and afflicted, full of a hurt that seemed to double its weight.

'Brush, there's no choice.'

'You keep saying that.'

'Because it's the truth. This is life, Brushy, not heaven. I'm out of alternatives.'

'You're only saying that. You're doing what you want.'

'Fine,' I said, though I knew in a way she was right. Standing with her now, I was abruptly some kind of suffering blob, ectoplasm without boundaries in which the only point of form was a hurting heart. But even in that condition there was a sense of direction. It wasn't hope, I saw now, that drove me. Perhaps I was at one of those pa.s.ses again, doing what I most fear, because otherwise I'm paralyzed, worse off than some slave in chains. But the compulsion was strong. I was like that figure of myth, flying with his wings of wax toward the sun.

'Mack, you talk about my life? What am I going to say? How am I going to explain why I let you run, why I didn't just call the police?'

'You'll think of something. Look.' I took one step back into the room. 'Here. Go to your pal Krzysinski. Right now. Today. Tell him the whole thing. Everything. Tell him how you couldn't stand by and let me ax Jake. Tell him how n.o.ble you are. And smart. You were going to sucker-punch me. Get me to give the money back. Then turn me over to the police.'

She was sitting on the bed, holding on to herself, contracted with pain, and she recoiled a bit. The words seemed to strike her with the reverberating force of an arrow. I thought at first she was again overwhelmed by shuddering wonder at my facility when it came time to lie. Then, at once, I saw something else.

I held absolutely still.

'Or did I just get it right?' I asked her softly. 'Was I finally reading your mind?' 'Oh, Mack.' She closed her eyes.

'Grab me and love me and let them haul me away? The Brushy-first plan?'

'You're lost,' she said. 'Do you even know the truth? When you're seeing it? When you're telling it?'

She thought she had me with that one, but you could nail most folks like that from time to time. I refused to back off anyway. Brushy, as I well knew, was a four-wall player. She had all the angles in her head, and I'd found something, some notion, some line of reflection she couldn't keep herself from seeing, any more than I could help being myself at that moment, full of a liberating spite, an anger so generalized but intense I didn't really know what was making me mad - her or me or some unnameable it.

'Was that the idea?' I put on my coat. I picked up my bag. 'Well, you haven't been listening.' I said it again and I suspected by now she believed it.

'You've got the wrong guy.'

B. Pigeyes Isn't The little light-rail system that ties Center City and the airport was one of those genius planning notions for which Martin Gold occasionally takes some credit. He was counsel to the Plan Commission and our bond folks worked out the financing. The thing doesn't always run on time, but in rush hour it beats the traffic, which you can see stalled on either side as the train rambles down the divider strip. The LR, as it is known around town, terminates in an underground station, a big cantilevered s.p.a.ce with the rising ceiling of a cathedral and various-colored block-gla.s.s windows lit from the rear to simulate daylight.

I arrived there lugging my case and still yelling at Brush in my head, purging my guilt and explaining again how she ought to be blaming herself, there are no victims. I was a few steps from the train when I saw Pigeyes at the end of the platform. I'd had a few intense and unsettling visions of Gino nabbing Jake, booking him, printing him, putting him in the police station cell where the g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers would grab Jake's Rolex right off him without even saying thanks, and I briefly hoped I was seeing things. But it was Gino. He was leaning on a pillar in his scruffy sport coat and cowboy boots, picking his teeth with a fingernail and eyeballing the pa.s.sengers as they alighted from the cars. No doubt about who he was looking for, but I didn't have too many places to go. He'd caught sight of me already and the return trip to the city wouldn't begin for another five minutes. So I kept walking. It was daytime, but I was dead in my dreams, headed for that mean dangerous stranger. He had me now and my blood was suddenly pumping at 30 degrees.

As he watched me approach, Gino's little black eyes were still and the rest of his big face harsh with purpose. He was ready to chase me, maybe to shoot. I took a quick peek for Dewey but it looked like Pigeyes was flying solo tonight.

'What a delightful coincidence,' I told him.

'Yeah,' he said, 'what. Your girlfriend gimme a call. Said I ought to track you down.' Pigeyes faked a smile without showing his teeth. I think she likes me.'

'That so?'

'Yeah.' He was not near my height. But he got good and close. His face was in mine, all his heavy breath and body odors. He was chewing gum. I was taking in a lot at that moment. I'd been soft about Brushy. I thought she believed all that stuff, attorney and client, my secret to keep and hers not to tell. She could give me one hundred reasons the privilege didn't apply; I could probably give you fifty of them on my own. But I hadn't thought she'd sell me out. She was always tougher and quicker than I figured. 'What'd she say?' I asked.

'Nothing much. I told you. We talked about you.' 'How good I am in bed?'

'I don't recall that being mentioned.' Pigeyes smiled the same way. 'Where you off to?' 'Miami.' 'For?' 'Business.'

'Oh yeah? Okay I look in your little case there?' I don't think so.' He had one hand on it and I tightened my hold.

I think maybe there's a bankbook in there. I think you got a connecting plane for Pico-whatever. I think maybe you're about to take flight.'

He took a step closer, which didn't seem physically possible.

'Careful, Pigeyes. You may catch something.'

'You,' he said. He opened his mouth and tried to belch. He was standing on my toes now, so that if I moved I'd fall over. If I pushed him, G.o.d knows what he'd do. 'I knew I'd catch a piece of you. Guy asked me to do this thing, this whole caper, and I said to myself, Maybe you'll meet up with your old pal Mack.'

I believed that. Pigeyes was always looking for me, and I was always watching for him. Immovable object. Irresistible force. In that moment that is worse than dying, the flaming terror that wrests me from sleep, Pigeyes will always be there. How do we explain that? I turned this over in my mind, that same old thought, that there are not accidents, there are no victims. And then, G.o.d only knows why, I had one last revelation. I was okay now. I knew it at once.

'I think,' said Pigeyes, noting the intensity of my expression, 'you just wet your socks. I think when you walk, your shoes'll go squish.'

'I don't think so.'

'I do.'

'No, I've got this too well figured.' 'That's what you thought.'

'That's what I know. You always talked too much, Gino. Especially to me. Couldn't live with me thinking I'd skunked you one more time, could you? You couldn't resist straightening me out when I called to tell you about Jake this afternoon.'

His belt buckle was still under my belly, his nose was one inch from mine. But a certain caution had set in. Once badly bitten, Pigeyes was an unusual creature in the depth of his respect for me.

'All of these things I should have seen,' I said, 'I couldn't explain. Why you never arrested me. Or served me. You must have thought I was deaf, dumb, and blind. You say you knew I was spreading manure this afternoon with that myth about Archie and Bert, but you left Bert alone even so. Why? Why didn't I see it? You'd been called off. Whoever hired you in the first place unhired you. The capo, or whoever. What are they holding your marker for, Pigeyes? Gambling? Dope? G-Nose take one sniff too many? Or are you doing it for one of the old buds from the neighborhood? You're the guy, though, right? You're the one who was supposed to get Archie to give up his connect. You're the one who was going to make the connect grateful for staying alive so he could throw basketball games for some ungrateful types. It's you.' I had his attention now.

'How could I not catch on? I should have known as soon as you said you were following Kam with the credit card. Christ, where the h.e.l.l do you come by that card? I know where I found mine. And the envelope was open. There were footprints on the mail. You were in there before me, Gino. At Bert's. And that wasn't the first time.

'The first time, Pigeyes, was when you guys put Archie in the icebox. You were gonna scare Bert into telling what you wanted to know. Big-time lawyer? I don't care whose windpipe is severed. Bert couldn't call the police, because he can't answer their questions. He's not gonna throw away the money, the s.h.i.+ngle, by admitting to the coppers how he's been fixing national sporting events. He'd be meat when he saw that body. He'd be yours. Bert would cry on the telephone. Beg for his life. He'd tell you just where to find this Kam f.u.c.king Roberts who Archie kept mentioning. Bert would even have to take care of dumping Archie himself. It never figured he'd run - not when all he had to give you was a name. But he wasn't there when you called.'

Pigeyes's dark eyes were caving in. He was not as smart as me. He'd always known that.

'So that was trip number two to Bert's, right? Looking to find where he'd gone. That's when you picked up the credit card. And decided you better lujack Missing Persons' case. That way you'd be the only cops looking for Archie. You got Missing to send the case to Financial - those guys are always happy to lose one - then you went sniffing around the Bath to see if you could get a hot lead on Kam.

'And if guys didn't do dumb things, Gino, they'd never get caught. Why didn't you get the body out of Bert's when you had the chance? What was the problem? Upstairs neighbor at home that week? Not enough help? But when you nabbed me with the bank card down at U Inn you knew where I'd been. And what I'd seen. I mean, Gino, who's the guy who taught me to look first thing in the refrigerator? But dim-bulb Malloy, he gives you the perfect excuse to go back in. With a warrant, no less. That's why the body disappeared then, right? Before I could tip Homicide. That's why we had our scene in the surveillance van. So you and Dewey could get me on paper in front of a prover, saying I never saw anything of interest in Bert's apartment. I mean, Christ, was I dumb or what? Why would you wanna make me say that? And that's why you didn't want to run me in on any of the chicken-s.h.i.+t that you could have. It wasn't worth it. I'd be out in an hour, so why take the chance that I'd have second thoughts and start free-a.s.sociating to some stray Homicide d.i.c.k about this body I'd seen?'

Somewhere along there he had gotten off my toes. If we had been having this discussion out on a dark road, he'd have shot me. But we were standing in the subway stop underneath the airport, and various pa.s.sengers burdened with heavy cases and garment bags were coming and going on the platform, glancing back to get a load of what looked like it might turn into a fistfight. Pigeyes was not a happy dude.

'Tell me you didn't start out to murder poor Archie, Pigeyes. Tell me you just got carried away when Archie wasn't coming up with Kam's real name. Tell me you felt sorry.' I pulled away the briefcase from where he had continued resting his hand.

'What do they pay for a job like that? Fifty? Seventy-five? You getting ready for retirement, is that it? I'll make that in interest in a couple of weeks.' For emphasis, I tapped him right over the heart, grazing my fingertips on the same dirty knit s.h.i.+rt he'd been wearing for days. We both knew I had him.

'So turn me in,' I said. "Think I can swing a deal for immunity if I give them a hit man who walks around with a star?' He didn't answer. He'd been to Toots's school. "The guy I hung with,' I said, 'my old partner, he wasn't that bad. He cut some corners, he did some things. But he didn't torture people for money. Or dope.' I picked up my suitcase and nodded to him.

With that, I had a serendipitous recognition. If you gave Pigeyes truth serum he'd explain to you how this was partly my fault. Years ago I'd taken his good name. And cheated to do it. The neighbors, his ma, the people in church - they now knew what he was. He couldn't pretend. He looked to them suddenly the way he looked to himself. I put it to him out loud, here in the public way.

'You're a bad guy,' I said.

You know how he responded: Fan-gull Fan-gull 'I gotta take that from you?'

'Have it your way, Gino. We're both bad guys.' I didn't mean it. I wasn't as low as him, not in my mind. We were two different types, two different traditions. Pigeyes was like Pagnucci - really tough, really mean, capable of courage and cruelty. One of those men for whom it's always wartime, where you do what you have to. I was the second in a line of thieves - deceivers. But we'd both touched bottom, Gino and I, and I saw then that was the point of all the bad dreams: I am him and he is me, and in the dark feelings of night there is no discernible difference between wis.h.i.+ng and fear.

So that's where I left him, on the train platform. I looked back once, just to make sure he was absorbing the full effect of letting me go. I made my plane to Miami, and now the connection to C. Luan. I'm sitting here, in first cla.s.s, telling the end of my story to Mr Dictaphone, whispering so that my voice is lost below the engine's great hum.

When I get off, these tapes, every one of them, are going to Martin. I'll send them Federal Excess. I will be wildly pie-eyed by then. At the moment, on the fold-down table in front of me, four little soldiers, hot off the attendant's drink cart, are dancing with the vibration of the plane, the sweet amber liquid bobbing in the throat of each bottle so that I can almost feel it in mine. I will be drunk, I promise, for the rest of my life. I'll travel; I'll sun. I'll engage in prolonged dissipation. I'll think about how ecstatic I was sure this gig would make me and how, in that frame of mind, I couldn't tell the right guys from the wrong ones, the merely plain from the plain ugly.

Now that I'm done, I'm thinking that telling this whole thing was for me. Not for Martin, Wash, or Carl. Or U You. Or Elaine up above. Maybe it's me I meant to entertain. A higher, better me, such as Plato described, a kinder, gentler Mack, capable of greater reflection and deeper understanding. Maybe I wanted to make another of those failing efforts to figure out myself or my life. Or to tell it all in a way that is less ambiguous or boring, remembering it with my wit sharper and my motives more defined. I know what happened - as much as memory serves. But there are always blank spots. How I got from there to here. Why I did whatever at a particular moment. I'm a guy who's spent so many mornings wondering just what happened the night before. The past recedes so quickly. It's just a few instants under the spotlight. A couple of frames of film. Maybe I recount it all because I know this is the only new life I will get, that the telling is the only place where I can really reinvent myself. And here, I am the man who controls not just the words but with them the events they record. The higher, better Mack, sovereign over history and time, a fellow more earnest, honest, more fully known than the mysterious guy who has always recovered from one disaster just in time to rush on to another, that incomprehensible being who blinks at me in the reflections on windowpanes and mirrors, who treated most of the settled items in his life with scorn.

Nonetheless, I've had the final word. Taking blame where it is due and otherwise a.s.sessing it. I don't make the mistake of confusing that with an excuse. I have regrets, I admit, but who doesn't? Still, I had it wrong. Completely.

There are only victims.

end.