Marvin.
“I’m going to do what’s best for the babies, Iris. That’s all.”
“What’s best for them is with me and Marvin.”
“Not anymore,” he told her. “Marvin’s been shucking you, Iris. He steals those babies. Takes them from their parents, parents who love them. He roams up and down the coast stealing children and then he sells them, Iris. Either back to the people he took them from or to people desperate to adopt. I think he’s hooked up with a lawyer named Rasker, who arranges private adoptions for big money and splits the take with Marvin. He’s not interested in who loves those kids, Iris. He’s only interested in how much he can sell them for.”
Something had finally activated Iris’s eyes. “Marvin? Is that true?”
“No, baby. The guy’s blowing smoke. He’s trying to take the babies away from you and then get people to believe you did something bad, just like that time with the abortion. He’s trying to say you did bad things to babies again, Iris. We can’t let him do that.”
He spoke quickly, to erase Marvin’s words. “People don’t give away babies, Iris. Not to guys like Marvin. There are agencies that arrange that kind of thing, that check to make sure the new home is in the best interests of the child. Marvin just swipes them and sells them to the highest bidder, Iris. That’s all he’s in it for.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just give me Marvin’s notebook and we can check it out, contact the parents and see what they say about their kids. Ask if they wanted to be rid of them. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“Iris?”
“What, Marvin?”
“I want you to pick up that pan and knock this guy on the head. Hard. Go on, Iris. He won’t shoot you, you know that. Hit him on the head so he can’t put us in jail.”
He glanced at Iris, then as quickly to Marvin and to Iris once again. “Don’t do it, Iris. Marvin’s trouble. I think you know that now.” He looked away from Iris and gestured at her partner. “Where’s the book?”
“Iris?”
Iris began to cry. “I can’t, Marvin. I can’t do that.”
“The book,” he said to Marvin again. “Where is it?”
Marvin laughed. “You’ll never know, Detective.”
“OK. We’ll do it your way. On the floor. Hands behind your head. Legs spread. Now.”
Marvin didn’t move. When he spoke the words were languid. “You don’t look much like a killer, Detective, and I’ve known a few, believe me. So I figure if you’re not gonna shoot me I don’t got to do what you say. I figure I’ll just take that piece away from you and feed it to you inch by inch. Huh? Why don’t I do just that?”
He took two quick steps to Marvin’s side and sliced open Marvin’s cheek with a quick swipe of the gun barrel. “Want some more?”
Marvin pawed at his cheek with a grimy hand, then examined his bloody fingers. “You bastard. OK. I’ll get the book. It’s under here.”
Marvin bent toward the floor, twisting away from him, sliding his hands toward the darkness below the stove. He couldn’t tell what Marvin was doing, so he squinted, then moved closer. When Marvin began to stand he jumped back, but Marvin wasn’t attacking, Marvin was holding a baby, not a book, holding a baby by the throat.
“OK, pal,” Marvin said through his grin. “Now, you want to see this kid die before your eyes, you just keep hold of that gun. You want to see it breathe some more, you drop it.”
He froze, his eyes on Marvin’s fingers, which inched further around the baby’s neck and began to squeeze.
The baby gurgled, gasped, twitched, was silent. Its face reddened; its eyes bulged. The tendons in Marvin’s hand stretched taut. Between grimy gritted teeth, Marvin wheezed in rapid streams of glee.
He dropped his gun. Marvin told Iris to pick it up. She did, and exchanged the gun for the child. Her eyes lapped Marvin’s face, as though to renew its acquaintance. Abruptly, she turned and ran around the curtain and disappeared.
“Well, now.” Marvin’s words slid easily. “Looks like the worm has turned, Detective. What’s your name, anyhow?”
“Tanner.”
“Well, Tanner, your ass is mine. No more John Wayne stunts for you. You can kiss this world goodbye.”
Marvin fished in the pocket of his jeans, then drew out a small spiral notebook and flashed it. “It’s all in here, Tanner. Where they came from; where they went. Now watch.”
Gun in one hand, notebook in the other, Marvin went to the wood stove and flipped open the heavy door. The fire made shadows dance.
“Don’t.”
“Watch, bastard.”
Marvin tossed the notebook into the glowing coals, fished in the box beside the stove for a stick of kindling, then tossed it in after the notebook and closed the iron door. “Bye-bye babies.” Marvin’s laugh was quick and cruel. “Now turn around. We’re going out back.”
He did as he was told, walking toward the door, hearing only a silent shuffle at his back. As he passed her he glanced at Iris. She hugged the baby Marvin had threatened, crying, not looking at him. “Remember the one in my car,” he said to her. She nodded silently, then turned away.
Marvin prodded him in the back and he moved to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused, hoping for a magical deliverance, but none came. Marvin prodded him again and he moved outside, onto the porch, then into the yard. “Around back,” Marvin ordered. “Get in the bus.”
He staggered, tripping over weeds, stumbling over rocks, until he reached the rusting bus. The moon and stars had disappeared; the night was black and still but for the whistling wind, clearly Marvin’s ally. The nanny goat laughed at them, then trotted out of reach. He glanced back at Marvin. In one hand was a pistol, in the other a blanket. “Go on in. Just pry the door open.”
He fit his finger between the rubber edges of the bus door and opened it. The first step was higher than he thought, and he tripped and almost fell. “Watch it. I almost blasted you right then.”
He couldn’t suppress a giggle. For reasons of his own, Marvin matched his laugh. “Head on back, Tanner. Pretend you’re on a field trip to the zoo.”
He walked down the aisle between the broken seats, smelling rot and rust and the lingering scent of skunk. “Why here?” he asked as he reached the rear.
“Because you’ll keep in here just fine till I get time to dig a hole out back and open that emergency door and dump you in. Plus it’s quiet. I figure with the bus and the blanket no one will hear a thing. Sit.”
He sat. Marvin draped the blanket across the arm that held the gun, then extended the shrouded weapon toward his chest. He had no doubt that Marvin would shoot without a thought or fear. “Any last words, Tanner? Any parting thoughts?”
“Just that you forgot something.”
“What?”
“You left the door open.”
Marvin glanced quickly toward the door in the front of the bus. He dove for Marvin’s legs, sweeping at the gun with his left hand as he did so, hoping to dislodge it into the folds of the blanket where it would lie useless and unattainable.
“Cocksucker.”
Marvin wrested the gun from his grasp and raised it high, tossing off the blanket in the process. He twisted frantically to protect against the blow he knew was coming, but Marvin was too heavy and strong, retained the upper hand by kneeling on his chest. The revolver glinted in the darkness, a missile poised to descend.
Sound split the air, a piercing scream of agony from the cabin or somewhere near it. “What the hell?” Marvin swore, started to retreat, then almost thoughtlessly clubbed him with the gun, once, then again. After a flash of pain a broad black creature held him down for a length of time he couldn’t calculate.
When he was aware again he was alone in the bus, lying in the aisle. His head felt crushed to pulp. He put a hand to his temple and felt blood. Midst throbbing pain he struggled to his feet and made his way outside and stood leaning against the bus while the night air struggled to clear his head.
He took a step, staggered, took another and gained an equilibrium, then lost it and sat down. Back on his feet,
