afraid to die? Boy, then you ain't never been in no hard places, I tell you, and you don't know what hard places do to a man. In this room we're all going to be dead tonight or by noon at least. But by God, I will settle my dues and leave this world without no uncashed lous in my jeans.”
Bud blew through speed limits like a man in flames, and toward the end gave up on red lights. It was near two forty-five, the streets deserted. He charged up and down hills, cut across dirt roads, traversing Tillman and Comanche Counties on sheer instinct, then hit 62 just beyond Cache for a straight-line run to Snyder. He hit the 7- Eleven just beyond the town and found it still open, and someone on the phone.
He pulled his badge.
“Police business. We need this phone free.”
An Indian boy looked at his badge and spat on the ground and went back to his call.
Bud pulled the .45 and rammed it into the boy's throat.
“You sonofabitch, you git or you and I will have serious business and you won't like that a goddamned bit!”
In the face of the weapon and Bud's fury, the boy melted, hung up the phone, and ran off into the dark. Now Bud felt a moment of shame, having given in to the cop's worst temptation, the display of brute power to require obedience.
You can't just pull guns on civilians. On another night, it was grounds for suspension. Not tonight. Fuck it, tonight.
He looked at his watch. It was five after three. Shit.
Maybe Lamar had called while the Indian was on the phone. He sat, breathing hard, his mind empty. The seconds clicked by. Suddenly it was ten after.
Christ, he thought, / blew it.
~ But the phone rang.
“Pye?”
“Oh, Bud, sorry I's late. Just gittin' to know your lady here.”
“Don't you hurt her.”
“Damn, she's a pretty one.”
“Let her go. You'll have me. Let her go.”
“We'll see. If you're a good boy, who knows, maybe I'll cut you some slack. If you got attitude. Bud, I may have to let her have a taste of some discipline, you know? Shit, maybe she'll even like it.”
“Goddamn you, Pye.”
“Best hurry on, Bud. You got to get all the way to Toleens, by four.
Oh, you going to be a busy boy.”
Lamar hung up.
Bud stared at the phone in sick fury. Toleens? Toleens?
Where the hell was that? He hoped he had a map in the truck.
But instead he dropped a quarter and dialed the police annex, Henderson's number.
“Hello?”
“Lt. Henderson?”
“Bud.”
Bud could tell from the tragic tone in the old man's voice. Nothing.
“I'm trying,” the old man said.
“I just ain't had no luck.”
“Christ,” said Bud.
“They have a hostage. They'll kill her. You've got to figure this thing out!”
“Bud, you give me the okay, I'll put the call in. You go 'bout your business. We can track by air. A chopper. I'll have two busloads of the best SWAT operators in the business ten minutes behind you. We'll take that place down and the hostage can walk free.”
“He'd hear the goddamn chopper, you know he would, Lieutenant. You can't play straight and outsmart Lamar.
He's too goddamned good. He may even be watching me now and knows I'm pulling something. You have to come through. You have to.”
Only the sound of the lieutenant's raspy breathing came.
“You haven't been drinking?”
“Son, I drink every damn day of my life. I won four of my seven gunfights drunk.”
“All right, all right. Oh—Toleens. You ever heard of it?
A town?”
“It's on 54, between Gotebo and Cooperton. Had a murder there in fifty-nine.”
“Yeah, got it. There's a pay phone in the town?”
“Hell, boy, the pay phone is the town. Git on your way.”
The lieutenant stared at the phone, listening to the dial tone in the seconds after Bud hung up. Then he placed it down on the cradle and put his fingers on the bridge of his nose between his eyes and squeezed.
The flare of light as his optic nerves fired somehow pleased him; then the room returned, deserted, green, junky, a police station room like all the ones he'd spent a long life in.
He felt used up, lacking will. A woman at least would die tonight, maybe Bud, too. A woman, a policeman, dying too young. Why should tonight be any different than any other night? It happened the world over. Why was it his responsibility to intercede?
He tried to tell himself it didn't matter, not cosmically.
But it did. It mattered so goddamn much he wanted to cry.
He looked at the list. Eight-three names of young women who owned a car possibly linked to the robbery. A category that wasn't a category Was it all an illusion? Was he a vain fool trying to tease meaning out of random events? Was there no pattern at all? Break it down. Two elements. Young and woman.
What did woman tell him? A daughter of a criminal possibly.
A criminal herself? Not in the records. No correspondence to the records.
He had a laugh. How much of it depended on the records. So much of police work was simply accountancy, human accountancy, the recording of accessible fact that may on faith in some distant time tell us something when we most need it.
Woman. Nothing.
What about young? What could there be about young, about youth, about immaturity, that fit into this or that touched on any issue of the central conceit, 'a category that isn't a category.”
How would a young girl get to know Lamar, who had been in jail for years and years? How could she meet him?
Only way: She could write him.
Hmmmm.
Why would she write him? How would she hear about him?
Maybe she was one of those strange, desperate creatures who wrote to convicts, sent them money, proposed to them.
It was a sickness, but it was there; and if that was it, there'd be no category for her. Or: wouldn't prison officials have noted it? That was where they started their investigations when a prisoner escaped.
Once again: nothing.
He returned again to the component: Young? What could that have to do with it? A young woman would probably not be attracted to convicts, it was more of a twisted spinster thing. Why a young woman? She had to be a daughter.
But presume, he told himself, since the daughter route appeared to lead nowhere, presume she is not a daughter or a sister or a relationship.
She is a young woman. She is involved with convicts. What would involve her with convicts, other than her relations?
What?
He paused.
