30

Lee Boyle abandoned the stolen car – his third in the last twelve hours – in a parking garage downtown, and began the search for new transportation. The trick to stealing cars was simple: don’t get attached to them. He found a white Ford Taurus parked outside a health-food store in a side street, windows rolled down, keys dangling in the ignition. The owner must have stepped inside the store on a quick errand, mung beans or organic maple syrup, back in a flash, no sweat – no car.

Boyle drove through downtown, swung quickly past the Greyhound station – a seedy functional box surrounded by a stack of great smoking buses – and out to the freeway, thinking of young Ms Samsa, seeing her face in the photograph on Samsa’s desk, the neatly written message she’d inscribed: ‘Love to the Best Dad In the World, Darcy.’ She had a mouth like a cherub waiting to be kissed. And her teeth, the gleam of perfection. It struck him that if you dyed the brown hair black, and the eyebrows, she’d look a lot like Almond, those deep dark eyes were similar, a reincarnation if you thought about it from a certain angle, a restoration of somebody you considered lost.

Maybe.

At her age she was delicately poised between obeying rules and flaunting them. The way Almond had been. Exactly.

Darcy Samsa. Dar-cee. Rolled off the tongue.

He was on the freeway a few miles before he took an exit ramp, checking his rearview mirror. Now his mind went racing to the idea of Raseci, and he wondered if Bigshoes was tracking him. He’d seen no sign of him, which didn’t mean he wasn’t around somewhere. He’d also have minions who carried out tasks for him, such as surveillance. Boyle wouldn’t know their faces or the cars they drove.

But they were there. This was indisputable. Gospel.

The dashboard clock registered 11:02. Time clung to him like a succubus. $10,000. He pondered Crassman briefly. A total write-off. Crassman probably had his guys – those hapless dickheads who looked like they were fresh from some Appalachian hollow where the barber had palsied hands – hanging out at the trailer park, armed and waiting for Lee Boyle to show and muttering about what they’d do to that goddammed scumbucket next time.

He wanted to arrive at the appointed place early, check it out. The last thing he needed was to be bushwhacked. He felt nervy, like a man committed to a roller-coaster trip, but midway through the heart-shaking ride wondering if he’d made the correct choice, except it was too late to disembark – unless you stepped out into space.

He parked the car, bought a ticket at the booth and passed through the turnstile. Stub in hand, he walked in the direction of the reptile house. The zoo wasn’t upscale. The city didn’t have the budget for natural habitats. The polar bear, slightly fortunate, had been given a tiny pit to himself, where murky water dribbled across a rocky formation. The creature looked mangy and sorrowful, like he was having dim memories of the carefree ice floes of his youth, before human assholes came and shot him with a trank gun and he woke up in hell.

Boyle kept moving, glancing around. A squall of redassed baboons picked at each other’s butts and chattered. There were very few customers: a bunch of schoolkids led by a guide, a couple of solitary browsers. The air was dead and heavy inside the reptile house, and there was that stale musk common to places where creatures are trapped.

Boyle, who found himself alone in the building, stared at a boa constrictor inside a glass case. Fat and motionless. In the next case rattlers lay coiled. All that pent-up venom.

At the sound of footsteps Boyle turned his face, saw the door open and Samsa appear with the sun behind him. Boyle tried to slough off his tension, tried to be cool, but the speed in his system jittered him.

The cop approached slowly. One of the rattlers struck the inside of the case, a whack of tail upon the glass. Boyle moved away slightly.

‘Punctual,’ he said to Samsa. ‘I like that.’

Samsa said, ‘Let’s hear what you have to say, Boyle.’

Samsa had one of those thoughtfully still faces that might suddenly explode in animated expression. He looked, Boyle thought, a little on the haggard side. You needed to see under surfaces, though. The dark in Samsa’s eye, presently calm, could smolder and turn to fury without warning.

‘I agreed to meet with you, Boyle. I’m here and I’m waiting.’

‘Don’t rush me, Samsa. You can’t afford an attitude problem.’

Samsa gestured round the reptile house. ‘These some of your relatives?’ He tapped one of the cases and a diamondback reared up an inch or so, roused from its torpor.

‘You’re a wag,’ Boyle said. ‘Except I’m not the snake here. I wasn’t the one who picked up the girl. I wasn’t the one who killed her.’

‘Killed the girl? You out of your goddam mind?’

‘Let’s run through the facts, Lieutenant. You picked her up Monday night around ten.’

‘You’ve got quite an imagination there, Boyle.’

‘Then you drove her out to the Purchase place. You went off the fucking road in your Le Baron. Accident report number six-eight-two-zero, submitted by Frederick Trope, State trooper.’

‘You must have accessed a computer to get that information. Initiative, Lee. So I had a car wreck. So what? It’s a matter of record. The rest is bullshit.’

Boyle smiled. ‘I admire you, Samsa. I’m in total awe of the way you handle two different worlds. One is all nice and respectable and wrapped in cellophane. The other’s a black steamy hole. And you think you can keep them apart. You’re the one with the bounteous imagination.’

‘If this is all you’ve got to say, Boyle, you’re wasting my time.’ Samsa turned and took a step away.

Boyle said, ‘You were seen, Samsa. The girl got into your car. You were spotted. I have an eyewitness.’

‘This eyewitness has a name?’

Boyle nodded.

‘But you’re not saying who.’

‘I look like a fool?’

Samsa stared at him hard. ‘So all you’ve got is a wrecked car and an anonymous eyewitness. My guess is your erstwhile friend Cassandra, or whatever she calls herself. Her reputation isn’t exactly unsullied, Boyle. You think anybody’s going to believe anything she has to say?’ Samsa shook his head. ‘Your story’s a work of sheer desperation. You’ve got surmise and supposition, which amounts to thin fucking air. What you’re doing is trying to divert focus away from yourself with this bullshit.’

‘I don’t think so, Samsa.’

‘No? Let me show you the cards in my hand.’

‘I’m all eyes,’ Boyle said. So Samsa knew about Cassandra. He’d been digging.

‘Your alibi frankly sucks, Boyle. Nobody can place you at Chang’s at the time you stated. Your pals Plumm and Raseci don’t have precise memories of when they saw you Monday night. They give vague a bad reputation. Rudolph Vass is another one that doesn’t know the time of day. Your whole yarn’s a sandcastle and the tide’s coming in. This is a way of saying you have problems, Boyle. Real problems. In fact, you’re up there on the suspect list. Way up. Certain parties downtown would like nothing better than for me to book you and lock you away without further ado.’

Boyle said, ‘So book me. What’s stopping you? Left your cuffs at the office? Here. Look. I’m holding my hands out. Take me downtown. Interrogate me. Lock me up. I’m a danger to society.’

‘Unfortunately the law says I can’t throw a guy in jail just because his alibi’s like a fucking sieve. I need a little more than that, Boyle. I wish to Christ I didn’t, but that’s the way it’s written. I’ll tell you this much, though. It’s only a matter of time before I nail you for the girl.’

Boyle thought, This is your moment. Wipe the look off this fucker’s face. ‘I happen to have something else, Samsa. Better than any eyewitness.’

Samsa didn’t look interested. Or if he was he had ways of hiding it. Boyle placed a hand inside the hip pocket of his pants and left it there a moment. I want to watch you sink, Samsa. I want to see the bubbles come up to the surface as you go down and down to where the bottom-suckers live.

‘What’s in the pocket?’ Samsa asked. ‘Or are you trying to keep me in suspense, Boyle?’

‘What an insightful guy you are,’ Boyle said. He took out a sheet of paper, unfolded it and held it in his hand. ‘This is a photocopy. The original is in a safe place. Here.’ Boyle gave the paper to Samsa, who took it, gazed at it, then let it flop over in his fingers like something he wanted to drop.

Boyle reached out and retrieved the paper. He watched Samsa a second, then he glanced down at the Xerox.

In grainy light, face hidden slightly by the upraised collar of a sports coat, illuminated weakly by a street lamp, Samsa sits in his car, rolling the window up. The girl, slightly blurred by her own movement, is stepping in on the passenger side. She holds an umbrella at an angle away from her head, like she’s about to fold it down. The expression on what you can see of Samsa’s face is one of nervous fatigue maybe.

The car, you can tell from the badge visible on the hood, is a Chrysler.

And the girl, even though she’s out of focus, is Almond. He knows the shape, the little skirt she’s wearing, the chunky big bracelet you can just about see. He remembers her body when they made love on the bathroom floor. He imagines her on a slab in the morgue.

He raised his face to Samsa and said, ‘So you see.’

Samsa gazed at a snake slithering across its cage. ‘It’s not a good image,’ he said. ‘It’s blurred.’

Boyle had the impression that Samsa was talking to himself. His voice was strange and flat.

‘It can be improved, Lieutenant. Technology’s terrific these days.’

Samsa was still observing the serpent. ‘I was running her off the streets, that’s all. You see a kid like that cruising, you think of your own daughter …’

‘I’m moved, Samsa. I’m deeply touched. I’m almost tearful. The lieutenant has compassion for hookers. It’s something he doesn’t want to discuss in his own office, so here we are in this fucking zoo having a secret meeting.’

‘It’s not a subject I wanted to talk about back there,’ Samsa said.

‘Why? Your colleagues might overhear, and they wouldn’t understand the sheer fucking depth of your compassion? They’d think more salacious thoughts, huh?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Fine, fine. So if I show this picture to Fogue or Rebb, you wouldn’t mind? If I took it to the Chief of Police, that wouldn’t bother you? Is that what you’re saying?’

Samsa didn’t reply. He had the look of a guy who has just backstepped into a pile of dogshit up over the rim of his shoe.

Boyle laughed aloud. ‘I didn’t think so, Samsa. Here’s another scenario for you to mull over: Almond’s in your car, and you go skidding off the road and down into the field. And somewhere in that time frame your passenger, God rest her sad young soul, dies. Maybe she’s giving you head as you’re tooting along and you lose your concentration. Or maybe she’s administering a hand job and your senses are otherwise engaged. Or maybe it’s even more devious and deliberate than that. There’s this dark side to you because you’ve been hanging around homicides for too long, and something’s rubbed off and it’s warped your thinking and you wonder, hey, what’s it like to kill somebody, what’s it like to snuff out a life, because you’re sick –’

‘No,’ Samsa said.

‘And after you kill her you fake the accident –’

‘No,’ Samsa said again.

‘Whatever it is, bang, you go off the road. And the lieutenant, concerned about his reputation as a law-enforcement officer of some standing, has a big-time panic attack. He’s got a dead hooker on his hands. But wait. The idea of the century comes to him. Why, he’ll just dump the corpse and report the accident – minus any mention of the dead girl, of course. So he goes through with this chump scheme, and he thinks he’s got his ass well and truly covered. Right? Right?’

Samsa pressed his forehead against the surface of a glass case. Sweat filmed his forehead. He had his hands clenched and white against his sides.

‘Right?’ Boyle asked again. ‘You dumped the corpse. You falsified an accident report. Oh, you’re in deep shit, Samsa.’

Samsa looked at Boyle and was silent for a very long time, as if a prolonged inner struggle were coming to some kind of resolution. ‘You can’t prove this. It’s all guesswork.’

‘Okay. I’ll take the picture to your boss. You don’t have any objections to that, I suppose.’ Boyle folded the Xerox and turned away.

He hadn’t walked more than a few steps before Samsa called him back. I knew he would, Boyle thought. I see his fear. I can smell it.

‘You want money. It’s usually money.’

‘Money’s always useful.’

‘I’m not wealthy, Boyle.’

‘And I’m not greedy. I call that serendipity.’ Boyle thought a second. Ten thou to get Plumm off his back. Something for himself. ‘Twenty-five K should keep your name out the papers.’

‘That’s a lot of cash.’

‘But you’re in a lot of trouble.’

‘Look,’ and Samsa stopped, his face devoid of color.

‘I’m looking,’ Boyle said.

There was a shiver in Samsa’s voice. When he spoke, the words came out of some locked cellar deep inside. ‘It was an accident, Boyle, a tragic fucking accident. I didn’t kill that girl. I didn’t mean for that to happen. Believe me, if I could go back and change things I’d do it. I’d give anything to be able to do that.’

‘Nobody’s going to give a shit if it was an accident or if you broke her goddam neck with your own hands,’ Boyle said. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that this is an impossible situation for you. And just in case it sneaks across your mind to pull out your gun and shoot me dead in this big empty snake house, remember, you don’t know where the original print is. You imagine I came here without taking some precautions?’

Samsa looked as if he was calculating in his head. ‘I want the print, the negs, the photocopy or copies. Plural. I want all of that. Because I don’t want you coming back at me again. You understand that. I give you the cash, I get the stuff, I never see you again. That’s the end of it. You cross my path one more time, I can’t be responsible for what I might do to you. You understand that, too?’

Boyle smiled. ‘Gotcha.’

‘Twenty-five thou. After that, I’m tapped out. I’m empty. Is that clear?’

‘Transparent,’ Boyle said.

‘I can get it this afternoon. Tell me a place we can meet.’

‘I’ll think about that. I’ll phone you at your office. Three o’clock say.’

Samsa said, ‘You’re scum, Boyle. A real piece of work.’

‘You’re not exactly a walking paragon of virtue yourself, are you?’

‘I make one mistake, Boyle. One goddam mistake and –’

‘What was it anyhow? A mid-life crisis? Or is it something you do often – go downtown, slumming for a piece of young ass, a little stroll on the dark side to get your juices flowing? Whores excite you? Blow jobs in the front seat? A quick fuck with the seat inclined? Is it like that?’

Samsa made an angry sound that came deep out of his chest, and he shoved Boyle back against one of the reptile cases. He moved quickly, surprising Boyle with his agility and strength. His eyes were wild all at once, and Boyle, whose antennae were finely tuned to such things, felt the unmistakable buzz of serious danger.

He saw Samsa’s hand come up and instinctively he ducked, feeling Samsa’s fist skim his scalp and hearing the searing crack of glass in his ears. Samsa’s knuckles were cut and blood was running down the glass, and one of the snakes, agitated, flicked a tongue against the splintered case. Samsa drew his hand to his side and held it with the other, and the look on his face was one of raw pain.

‘Get the fuck out of my sight, Boyle.’

In the doorway Boyle stopped, looked back, saw Samsa, shoulders slumped, clutching his bloodied hand.

Lee Boyle thought, You could almost feel sorry for Samsa.

Almost. But he didn’t.