“Intense,” the clerk said, with a long, slow whistle. “You say this is a game?”
“Yes,” Ricky answered. “But not one too many people should be eager to play.”
The ad was scheduled for the following Friday, which gave Ricky little time. He knew what would happen: The paper actually hit the newsstands the evening before, and that would be when all three of them would read the message. But this time, they wouldn’t respond in the paper. It will be Merlin, Ricky thought, using his brusque and demanding lawyer’s tones and obliquely threatening manner. Merlin will call the ad supervisor and work his way rapidly down through the paper’s hierarchy until he finds the clerk who took the poem over the telephone. And he will question him closely about the man who called it in. And the clerk will quickly recall the conversation about the Cape. Maybe, Ricky wondered, the young man will even recall that Ricky said it was where he wanted someday to be buried, a small desire, in a way, but one that will trigger much in Merlin. After he acquires the information he will pass it to his brother. A modest act of insulation, to be sure, but a necessary one. Then the three of them will argue once again. The two younger ones have been frightened, probably more frightened than they have been since they were children and abandoned by self-murder by the mother they loved. They will say they want to join Mr. R. on his hunt, and they will say they feel responsible for the danger, and guilty, too, he thought, for making him take care of them once more. But they will not truly mean it, and the older brother will have none of it, anyway. This is a killing he will want to handle alone.
And so, Ricky thought, alone is how he will proceed.
Alone and wanting to finish once and for all what he had been led to believe had been completed. He will hurry toward another death.
He checked out of the cheap room, scouring it first for any signs of his existence. Then, before departing the city, he performed one other series of tasks. He closed out his domestic banking accounts at New York branches, then went into a midtown office for a bank located in the Caribbean. There he opened a simple checking and savings account for Richard Lively. When he’d completed the transaction, depositing a modest sum from his remaining cash, he exited the bank and walked two blocks up Madison Avenue to the Credit Suisse office that he had passed many times back in the days when he was merely another New Yorker.
A low-level bank official was more than willing to open a new account for Mr. Lively. This was merely a traditional savings account, but it had a single interesting feature. On one day, each year, the bank was to transfer ninety percent of the accumulated funds directly, by wire, to the account number that Ricky provided for the Caribbean bank. They were to deduct their fees from the remainder. The date he selected for this transfer was chosen with a rough sort of haphazard care: At first he’d thought to use his birthday, then he’d thought of his wife’s birthday. Then, he’d considered the day that he’d faked his own death. He also considered using Richard Lively’s birthday. But finally, he’d asked the executive opening the account, a rather pleasant young woman who had taken pains to reassure him of the complete secrecy and compelling sanctity of Swiss banking regulations, and asked her what her birthday was. As he’d hoped, it had no connection to any date that he could remember. A late March day. He liked that. March was the month that actually saw the end of winter and suggested the beginning of spring, but was filled with false promise and deceptive winds. An unsettled month. He thanked the young woman and told her that was the day he selected for any transfers.
After finishing his business, Ricky returned to the rental car. He did not look behind once, as he slid through the city streets, up onto the Henry Hudson Parkway heading north. He had much to do, he thought, and little time.
He returned the rental car and spent the day killing off Frederick Lazarus. Every membership, credit card, phone account-anything having to do with that particular persona was shut down, canceled, or closed out. He even swung around the gun shop where he’d learned to shoot, and purchasing a box of shells, spent a productive hour on the firing range squeezing off shots at a black silhouette target of a man that was easily configured in his imagination to be the man he knew who would close in on him swiftly enough. Afterward, he made a little small talk with the gun shop owners, dropping on them the news that he was expecting to move away from the area for several months. The man behind the counter shrugged, but, Ricky realized, still noted the departure.
And with that, Frederick Lazarus evaporated. At least on paper and in documents. He departed, too, from the few relationships that the character had. By the time he had finished, Ricky thought that all that remained of the persona he’d created was whatever murderous streaks he had absorbed within himself. At least, that was what he hoped still weighed within him.
Richard Lively was a little more difficult, because Richard Lively was a little more human. And it was Richard Lively who needed to live. But he also needed to fade away from his life in Durham, New Hampshire, with a minimum of fanfare and little notice. He had to leave it all behind, but not appear to be doing so, on the off chance that someone, someday, might come asking questions and connect the disappearance with that particular weekend.
Ricky considered this dilemma, and thought that the best way to disappear is to imply the opposite. Make people think your exit is only momentary. Richard Lively’s bank account was left intact, with only a minimum deposit. He didn’t cancel any credit cards or library memberships. He told his supervisor at the university maintenance department that family trouble on the West Coast was going to require his presence for a few weeks. The boss understood, reluctantly told Ricky that he couldn’t promise that his job would wait for him, but told him he would do everything he could to see that it was left open. He had a similar conversation with his landladies, explaining that he wasn’t sure how long he would be absent. He paid an extra month’s rent in advance. They had become accustomed to his comings and goings, and said little, although Ricky suspected the older woman knew he would never return, simply in the way she eyed him and the manner in which she absorbed what he said. Ricky admired this quality. A New Hampshire quality, he thought, one that accepts on the face what another person says, but harbors an understanding of the truth hidden within. Still, to underscore the illusion of return, even if not fully believed, Ricky left behind as many of his belongings as possible. Clothes, books, a bedside radio, the modest things he had collected while rebuilding his life. What he took with him was a couple of changes of clothing, and his weapon. He thought that what he needed to leave behind was evidence that he’d been there, and might return-but nothing that truly spoke about who he was or where he might actually have gone.
As he walked down the street, he felt a momentary pang of regret. If he lived through the weekend, he thought, which was really only a fifty-fifty proposition, he knew he would never return. He had developed an ease and a familiarity with the small world he’d participated in, and it saddened him to walk away. But he restructured the emotion within himself, trying to re-form it into a strength to carry him through what was about to happen.
He caught a midday Trailways bus to Boston, retracing a familiar route. He did not spend long in the Boston terminal, just long enough to wonder whether the real Richard Lively was still living, and half thinking that it might be interesting to head toward Charlestown to see if he could spot the man in any of the parks or alleyways where Ricky had once trailed him so diligently. Of course, Ricky knew he had nothing to say to the man, other than to thank him for providing an avenue into a questionable future. Regardless, he did not have time. The Friday afternoon Bonanza bus was heading to the Cape, and he slid into a seat in the back, excitement picking up within him. They have read the poem by now, he thought. And Merlin has questioned the ad clerk.
At this moment, they are talking. Ricky could imagine the words flying back and forth. But he knew he didn’t actually have to hear them, because he knew what they would do. He glanced down at his wristwatch.
He will take off soon, Ricky thought. He will be driving hard, compelled to find a conclusion to a story that was written differently than he’d expected.
