And he gave this laugh again. Maybe. Or it was just a snort of air. But I was thinking it was a laugh. I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but I didn’t.
“You got any money on you?” Toth asked, and took the wallet out of the guy’s back pocket. “Lookit,” Toth said, and pulled out what must’ve been five or six hundred. Man.
Another squad car went past, moving slow. It had a spotlight and the cop turned it on the driveway, but he just kept going. I heard a siren across town. And another one, too. It was a weird feeling, knowing those people were out there looking for us.
I took the wallet from Toth and went through it.
Randall C. Weller Jr. He lived in Boston. A weekender. Just like I thought. He had a bunch of business cards that said he was vice president of this big computer company. One that was in the news, trying to take over IBM or something. All of a sudden I had this thought. We could hold him for ransom. I mean, why not? Make a half million. Maybe more.
“My wife and kids’ll be sick worrying,” Weller said. It spooked me, hearing that. First, ‘cause you don’t expect somebody with a hood over his head to say anything. But mostly ‘cause there I was, looking right at a picture in his wallet. And what was it of? His wife and kids.
“I ain’t letting you go. Now, just shut up. I may need you.”
“Like a hostage, you mean? That’s only in the movies. They’ll shoot you when you walk out, and they’ll shoot me, too, if they have to. That’s the way they do it. Just give yourself up. At least you’ll save your life.”
“Shut up!” I shouted.
“Let me go and I’ll tell them you treated me fine. That the shooting was a mistake. It wasn’t your fault.”
I leaned forward and pushed the knife against his throat, not the blade ‘cause that’s real sharp, but the blunt edge, and I told him to be quiet.
Another car went past, no light this time but it was going slower, and all of a sudden I got to thinking what if they do a door-to-door search?
“Why did he do it? Why’d he kill them?”
And funny, the way he said
Weller kept going. “I don’t get it. That man by the counter? The tall one. He was just standing there. He didn’t do anything. He just shot him down.”
But neither of us said nothing. Probably Toth because he didn’t know why he’d shot them. And me because I didn’t owe this guy any answers. I had him in my hand. Completely, and I had to let him know that. I didn’t have to talk to him.
But the guy, Weller, he didn’t say anything else. And I got this weird sense. Like this pressure building up. You know, because nobody was answering his damn stupid question. I felt this urge to say something. Anything. And that was the last thing I wanted to do. So I said, “I’m gonna move the car into the garage.” And I went outside to do it.
I was a little spooked after the shootout. And I went through the garage pretty good. Just to make sure. But there wasn’t nothing inside except tools and an old Snapper lawnmower. So I drove the Buick inside and closed the door. And went back into the house.
And then I couldn’t believe what happened. I mean, Jesus …
When I walked into the living room, the first thing I heard was Toth saying, “No way, man. I’m not snitching on Jack Prescot.”
I just stood there. And you should’ve seen the look on his face. He knew he’d blown it big.
Now this Weller guy knew my name.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. Toth started talking real fast and nervous. “He said he’d pay me some big bucks to let him go.” Trying to turn it around, make it Weller’s fault. “I mean, I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t even thinking ‘bout it, man. I told him forget it.”
“I figured that,” I said. “So? What’s that got to do with tellin’ him my name?”
“I don’t know, man. He confused me. I wasn’t thinking.”
I’ll say he wasn’t. He hadn’t been thinking all night.
I sighed to let him know I wasn’t happy, but I just clapped him on the shoulder. “OK,” I said. “S’been a long night. These things happen.”
“I’m sorry, man. Really.”
“Yeah. Maybe you better go spend the night in the garage or something. Or upstairs. I don’t want to see you around for a while.”
“Sure.”
And the funny thing was, it was that Weller gave this little snicker or something. Like he knew what was coming. How’d he know that? I wondered.
Toth went to pick up a couple of magazines and the knapsack with his gun in it and extra rounds.
Normally, killing somebody with a knife is a hard thing to do. I say normally even though I’ve only done it one other time. But I remember it, and it was messy and hard work. But tonight, I don’t know, I was all filled up with this …feeling from the drugstore. Mad. I mean, really. Crazy, too, a little. And as soon as Toth turned his back, I went to work, and it wasn’t three minutes later it was over. I drug his body behind the couch and then — why not — I pulled Weller’s hood off. He already knew my name. He might as well see my face.
He was a dead man. We both knew it.
“You were thinking of holding me for ransom, right?”
I stood at the window and looked out. Another cop car went past, and there were more flashing lights bouncing off the low clouds and off the face of the Lookout, right over our heads. Weller had a thin face and short hair, cut real neat. He looked like every ass-kissing businessman I’d ever met. His eyes were dark and calm, and it made me even madder he wasn’t shook up looking at that big bloodstain on the rug and floor.
“No,” I told him.
He looked at the pile of stuff I’d taken from his wallet and kept going like I hadn’t said anything. “It won’t work. A kidnapping. I don’t have a lot of money, and if you saw my business card and’re thinking I’m an executive at the company, they have about five hundred vice presidents. They won’t pay diddly for me. And you see those kids in the picture? It was taken twelve years ago. They’re both in college now.”
“Where,” I asked, sneering. “Harvard?”
“One’s at Harvard,” he said, like he was snapping at me. “And one’s at Northwestern. So the house’s mortgaged to the hilt. Besides, kidnapping somebody by yourself? No, you couldn’t bring that off.”
He saw the way I looked at him, and he said, “I don’t mean you personally. I mean somebody by himself. You’d need partners.”
And I figured he was right. The ransom thing was looking, I don’t know, tricky.
That silence again. Nobody saying nothing and it was like the room was filling up with cold water. I walked to the window and the floors creaked under my feet, and that only made things worse. I remember one time my dad said that a house had a voice of its own, and some houses were laughing houses and some were forlorn. Well, this was a forlorn house. Yeah, it was modern and clean and the
Just when I felt like shouting because of the tension, Weller said, “I don’t want you to kill me.”
“Who said I was going to kill you?”
He gave me this funny little smile. “I’ve been a salesman for twenty-five years. I’ve sold pets and Cadillacs and typesetters, and lately I’ve been selling mainframe computers. I know when I’m being handed a line. You’re going to kill me. It was the first thing you thought of when you heard him” — nodding toward Toth — “say your name.”
I just laughed at him. “Well, that’s a damn handy thing to be, sorta a walking lie detector,” I said, and I was being sarcastic.
But he just said, “Damn handy,” like he was agreeing with me.
“I don’t want to kill you.”
