“What did he find?” Matt’s voice snapped through his own wailing.
“Find? I don’t know what he found. What do you mean, find?”
“Did he get the guns? Did he get the money? Did he get the serum? Didn’t you look around?”
“Matt, I didn’t even — “
“Look, dummy! Get off your ass and look!”
“Matt, how could I be expec— “
“Look now!”
“All right,” he said. “All right. I’ll be right back. Matt?”
“What?”
“I wasn’t sure you were still there. I’ll be right back.” He put the phone down and labored to his feet, as stiff and clumsy as a washerwoman. He went through the apartment, not looking at the destruction this time, looking for the signs of robbery, and he found them. He went back to the phone, turning a chair back onto its legs and sitting on its slit-open seat, picking up the receiver from the floor and saying into it, “Everything, Matt. He got everything.”
Mart cursed. Angry, harsh words, clipped and bitter. Brock rubbed the heel of his free hand against his forehead, listening to the tinny words in his ear.
Finally Matt took a deep breath and said, “Okay. He’s number two on the list. We’ll get him, baby, don’t you worry.”
“I want to kill him,” Brock said in the same faint voice. “I want to do it myself, Matt.”
“He’s yours. But right now there’s still number one. Uhl, he’s the one we’re after first.”
Brock forced himself to ask, “Have you found him?” Though he didn’t really care. He would never say anything to Matt, but he was thinking that none of this would have happened if Matt hadn’t insisted on horning in between Parker and Uhl.
Matt said, “Sure I found him, baby, what do you think? I found out his drop, anyway, and that’s all that matters. He’s either there or he’ll show up there. I’m gonna need you.”
“All right.”
“You don’t want to stick around there anyway.”
Brock looked at the room. “No. I don’t.”
“I’ll meet you in Philly. I looked it up; there’s a six-ten express train gets in at seven forty-five. I’ll meet you there.”
“All right.”
“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll have Uhl and the dough out of the way by tonight, and then we’ll go settle the score with Parker.”
“All right.”
“And we can use a chunk of that thirty-three grand from Uhl,” Matt said, “to put the apartment back in shape again. What do you think of that, huh?”
Voice dull, Brock said, “That will be fine, Matt.” Thinking how very alone he was, that the only man in the world he was close to could be so ignorant about him. That Matt could think for a minute he would ever want to set foot in this apartment again. That Matt couldn’t understand how it had been spoiled for him, that no amount of money on earth could make this apartment a virgin again. “I’ll see you in Philadelphia, Matt,” he said.
Four
Pam Saugherty said, “Well, I hope he never comes back at all.”
Ed Saugherty said, “Frankly, I hope the same thing. Just to get you off my back about him,”
“Is that any way to talk to me in front of the children?” Who were sitting with them at the dinner table, eyes round, ears open, mouths full of unchewed food.
Ed Saugherty knew there was no way to win an argument when his wife began hitting him in the head with the kids, so he just made a face and picked up his knife and fork and started cutting his roast beef.
Pam, having reduced him to silence, continued her half of the argument as a monologue, but he didn’t really listen. He thought about George Uhl instead, and about his earnest prayer that George wouldn’t come back. Not ever. Not at all.
And not just because of Pam either, though God knew that was a big part of it. But George was mixed up in something bad, and the longer George hung around here the greater the danger Ed Saugherty was going to get mixed up in it with him, and that was the last thing Ed wanted.
It wasn’t like high school anymore. The world was different now; the responsibilities were different. Only George didn’t seem to understand that. Back in high school he’d been an exciting guy to know, a risky, dangerous guy who drove cars too fast, drank before he was of legal age, got into fights with strangers, was always in trouble with the teachers at school; and it was fun to be a pal of his then, to share even just slightly in the excitement of his adventures. But when you’re a kid nothing is for real, nothing counts, there aren’t any responsibilities. That was what George failed to understand — that when a man grows up he has to set aside the things of a child, goddammit.
I He remembered calling George four years ago, when he’d been up in New York with the convention, and he remembered with embarrassment how he’d deferred to George both evenings. In adult, practical, realistic terms it was Ed Saugherty who was on top of the heap and George Uhl who was on the bottom, but it hadn’t worked out that way, and Ed knew it was his own fault. He’d still seen George as romantic and dramatic; he’d seen himself as a dull, plodding, uninteresting sort of guy, and he knew he’d spent those two evenings trying to win some sort of approval from George, approval and understanding. He’d even tried to buy his approval with that forty bucks they’d
