I got up and walked over to the sofa, then plopped down next to her and planted a hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard. “Maybe it didn’t happen that way, but we’ve got to know. You get me into those files. If it’s not like I said, nobody’ll ever be the wiser.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed.
I squeezed harder. “You have to.”
She pulled away from me and jumped to her feet. “No!” she yelled. The robe flew open all the way down to the loose knot at her waist. Her breasts were small, tight, with nipples so dark they were nearly black. I clenched my jaw, trying not to stare. Behind us, the roommate stepped back into the room.
“Alvy, you all right?”
Alvy turned, her hair flying. “Not now, Cheryl! Leave us alone.” Cheryl retreated.
“Alvy,” I said. “You have to help me.”
“And what if I won’t?”
“Then I’ll drop back and punt. And in the meantime I’ll make sure Mac finds out about your arrangement with Agon. You’ll be done with Mac Ford Associates, and probably washed up in the industry as well. I hate to put it to you that way, but I don’t have a lot of options.”
She glared at me, not bothering to pull the robe around her. “You bastard!”
“Help me, Alvy. Damn it, you know how bad she was beat up? You know what it takes to beat a full-grown adult woman to death with your bare hands? Can you imagine what kind of death that is, to lie in your own blood so battered you can’t breathe anymore, to be in that much agony and watching everything go dark around you, all alone?”
“Stop it,” she moaned. Her shoulders shook and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.
I walked over to her and gently took a lapel in each hand and pulled her robe to. “C’mon,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do this to you.”
Suddenly she fell into me and I had my arms around her. Her hair smelled warm and musty, her tears hot on my chest, her arms still crossed and cradled into me. I held her there for what felt like a long time, long enough for me to realize that I didn’t need to be standing there like that too much longer.
She pulled back gently, her eyes moist and full, tears down her pale round cheeks. She looked up into my face, and I realized with more than a little bit of surprise that she intended to kiss me; either that or she was waiting for me to kiss her. Nice prospect, but unwise.
I pulled away, just an inch or so, but enough. “That’s not why I came here, Alvy. Besides, I’m old enough to be your … your older brother.”
She pulled away from me. “Get out of here.” Her words were cold, but the edge had gone out of her voice.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can do it then.”
“Why do I have to be there?”
“Because if I break in, it’s a felony. If you’re there and let me in, then it’s just treachery.”
She looked sharply at me. “Not in the morning,” she said. “People are usually there for half a day on Saturday. Best bet’s later in the afternoon, say around two. Make sure you come in the back entrance.”
I left Alvy Barnes standing in the doorway in her black satin robe, the streetlights bleaching her out to the point where she became almost ghostlike. She was striking in a drawn, dissipated way. It had been a long time since I’d had a woman that young stare up at me with that look in her eyes. I walked back to my car thinking that I should have been proud for being so damned moral, but given that I’d just gotten her cooperation by blackmailing her, that was kind of hard.
For the seventh time, I listened to the computerized operator tell me that she was sorry, but the cellular customer I’d dialed had either turned off the telephone or left the calling area. I appreciated her sentiments.
It was three o’clock in the morning; I had a headache the size of a Buick and sleep was a stranger. I dozed off when I first got back to the apartment, but that only lasted about twenty minutes. I woke up with a start, wondering where I was, where Marsha was, where the last few days had gone.
I rubbed my shoulders, which had about as much effect as the three aspirins I’d choked down an hour earlier. I craned my head backward, then both felt and heard the vertebrae in my neck pop like dried chicken bones. The aspirin had set my gut off, and a nasty bile taste crept into the back of my throat.
I’d seen crap come down before, but never in sheets like this.
I flipped off the light and stared up at the darkness. Outside, a car that badly needed a muffler repair roared by, megabass speakers thumping away in time to some urban rap ditty. In the distance, a police siren wailed away on Gallatin Road. Neighborhood dogs took up a chorus of barking in return.
Maybe the television. No, nothing on. Besides, I’ve got to get some sleep. If sleep won’t come, at least lie here and rest. If I can’t turn the brain off, at least try unplugging the body. Tomorrow was Saturday, but it wasn’t going to be anything like a weekend. No decompression, no snooze, no rest. I needed to hear a human voice; I dialed Marsha’s cellular number again and waited for the now familiar artificial voice of the computerized telephone attendant. I listened to her tell me how sorry she was three more times before I finally drifted off into a fitful and uneasy half sleep.
There was this old Three Stooges short where the boys played doctors and Moe turns to Larry and yells “Anesthetic!” Larry turns to Curly and yells “Anesthetic!” Curly yells “Anesthetic!” and pulls out a hammer the size of a small beer keg and bops the poor patient on the head, sending him off to dreamland.
I woke up knowing exactly how that guy felt.
I stared into the mirror and realized that I had finally attained complete harmony in my life: I looked as bad as I felt. I started to step into the shower, then realized I’d had about a half-dozen showers in the last two days, and not one of them had made me feel any better. Was I filled with guilt about something and headed toward an all over hand-washing fetish? Is this what happens when frustration levels get out of control?
Coffee helped a little, and the morning newspaper brought me back to reality, although in a mixed-blessing kind of way. The siege of the Nashville morgue had taken up its rightful place as lead story once again, dwarfing even the latest genocidal massacre in some backwater third-world stinkhole.
The headline blared a warning of impending crisis. A full-color photo of Howard Spellman and the rest of the negotiating team huddled around a table wearing flak jackets dominated the middle of the page. Down below, a smaller aerial photo of a ring of Winnebagos, jammed together like covered wagons in a circle, spoke of the coming battle. I read the latest sidebar interview with the Reverend Woody T. Hogg, who claimed once again that he had no control over his followers but that God would speak when the time came right, and when Judgment Day came, it would rain hellfire and brimstone on all of us. All the wrongs of the world would be righted, all God’s children brought home to redemption, and the purveyors of sin and those who denied the resurrection of the body would be called to task for their sin and disbelief.
The problem with this sort of blathering is that if you listen to it long enough, you actually start to be able to follow it. It starts to make sense. I put my head down on the kitchen table.
God, do I need a vacation.
I drove by Lonnie’s trailer, but he wasn’t there. Either he was still in Kentucky picking up cars, or he’d gone to ground somewhere to recover. I petted Shadow for a while, made sure her water and food bowls were full, then left Lonnie a note telling him where I’d be and what I was doing. I didn’t expect anything particularly bad to happen today, but it never hurt to leave a paper trail with a buddy.
Alvy Barnes told me to come by the office around two, which meant I had just enough time to slide through the drive-in window, then stop by my office before showing up early enough to catch her off guard. There was some kind of riverfront festival going on downtown, so the traffic was as thick as sludge in a blizzard. I made my way around the fringes of the crowd and got to my office by avoiding Broadway. I parked the car near the front of the garage, then carried a sackful of Krystal cheeseburgers, fries, and a Coke upstairs. I don’t know what self- destructive urge drove me to subject my stomach to a Belly Bomb assault during times of great stress. I ought to have more sense. If Marsha found out, I would undergo a severe corrective interview.
Maybe that’s why I was doing it; right now I’d welcome even a chewing-out from her. If she were here, I’d
