car. There was a particular anger on his face, a genuine anger that I had seen on him only once.
I ducked the window and moved back out into the hall. The locked door was still locked. I entered the bathroom and flushed the head. Then I ran cold water into my cupped hands and splashed it on my face. There was towel rack next to the sink but no towel. I opened a wall cabinet and pulled a white washcloth off the top of the stack. Small silver objects came out with the washcloth and fell to the tiled floor. They made a metallic sound as they hit. I bent down and scooped three pieces of jewelry-a ring and two earrings-up into my hand. I put those in the pocket of my jeans. Then I replaced the washcloth, stepped quickly out into the hall, walked through the living room, and bolted out the front door and onto the porch. The frantic cry of an animal mingled with the whir of the wind.
Billy was in the driver’s seat of the Maxima, staring straight ahead. I moved to his window and made a roll- down motion with my hand. He pressed his thumb to a togglelike switch, and the window slid down.
“Gimme a smoke,” he said. Some red had bled into the azure blue of his wide eyes.
“Sure.” I shook one from my pack. Billy took it by the filter and pushed the lighter into the dash. “Crane tell you anything, Billy?”
Billy bit down on the cigarette as he lit it and spit some smoke out the window. He shook his head. “That son of a bitch knows where she is, Nick.”
“I know.”
“Well?”
“Stay here. I’ll give it one more shot.”
The crippled black shadows of the oak pointed toward the compound. I followed their direction. The frenzied animal scream increased as I pushed past the gate, walked across the yard, and entered the sty.
Crane was by the back door. He had tied the ropes of the pulley to the hind legs of the white sow. She hung suspended above an empty trough, her head jerking as she wheezed and screamed. I stood before Crane.
“We’re taking off,” I said.
Crane jerked his hand inside his black vest and pulled out a. 38 snub-nosed revolver with a nickel finish. He passed the short barrel across my chest as he moved it to his right hand. I felt the blood drain from my face and then a flush of raw anger as I watched Crane smile. He rested the muzzle of the. 38 between the sow’s eyes.
“You look a little shook, Stefanos. Ain’t you never seen an animal slaughtered?”
“I’ve never seen a man like it so much,” I said.
Crane’s smile turned down. He looked toward the sow and back at me. Then he ran his left hand down the sheath strapped to his leg. “What I like is the efficiency, friend. Only takes one shot. Then this stickin’ knife, straight in ahead of the breast bone, six inches deep. They die quick, believe me, and they bleed right out into the trough. No mess.”
I said, “If April doesn’t show up in a few days, I’m coming back down here to talk to you, Crane. Got it?”
Crane lowered the. 38 and held it by his side. He looked me over slowly. “I don’t see a man who can back that up. All’s I see is a two-day drunk. It’s over, pal. April’s gone. Now, you get gone too.”
He began to raise the pistol. I backed up and walked away and didn’t look back. Out in the air, I breathed deeply as I headed for the car. Billy reached across and opened the passenger door. I slid into the cold leather seat and stared ahead.
“Well?” Billy said.
“Nothing,” I said as the sow’s scream ripped the air. “Close your window, okay?”
Billy hit the toggle and the window closed tight, sealing out the death cry from the sty. “What about in the house? You find anything?”
“Nothing,” I said, touching the jewelry through the pocket of my jeans. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here. Let’s go.”
Billy started the engine. As we neared the trees I heard the dull thump of a pistol shot, then tasted the bilious remains of alcohol and breakfast surge up in my throat. I swallowed it and shut my eyes. There was only the hum of the engine then, and the steady sob of Maybelle from the backseat. I pushed the lighter into the dash and fumbled in my jacket for a smoke. We followed the gravel road back through the trees, heading west for the highway.
SIXTEEN
High gray clouds chased us into D.C. Billy and I didn’t speak much on the way in. An hour and a half after we left Crane’s property, we parked the Maxima in front of my apartment in Shepherd Park and cut the engine.
Billy looked out at my yard and exhaled with control. “So what’s next?”
“You tell me. You want me to keep going, I’ll do it.”
Billy’s said, “You gotta push Crane, is what you gotta do. You know that, don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat. “Maybe just pushing a guy like him won’t do much. I need something on him.”
“You see anything in his house?”
“I saw a lot of things. But I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
“What did you see?” When I didn’t answer, Billy raised his voice. “Come on, man, I’m paying you… I’m paying you to tell me.”
“All right, Billy,” I said evenly. “Here it is. Crane’s a greenhead. He’s also into porn-rough trade. April’s doctor told me there was evidence she’d been tied up-that wasn’t you, right?” Billy shook his head and opened his mouth stupidly. “So it was Crane that was giving it to her the hard way. Want me to keep going?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I found some clothing in his dresser, maybe all belonging to the same woman. And I saw some jewelry. April wear much?”
“Jewelry?” Billy pushed some blond hair off his forehead and thought it over. “Well, her wedding ring.”
“What else?”
“A cross. A gold cross on a gold chain, with a small diamond in the center of it.” He paused. “And a ring on her other hand, on her pinky finger. A ruby in a silver antique setting.”
“She wear that stuff all the time?” I said.
“Most of the time, yeah.” Billy looked in my eyes. “You find any of that at Crane’s?”
I shook my head and looked away as I did it. “No.”
Billy put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, Nicky…”
I pulled away from him, opened my door, and put a foot to the curb. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t drop it.”
“Call me,” he said.
“I will.”
I watched his car turn off my street. Then I walked around the side of my landlord’s house and picked up the mail off the stoop that was my entrance. I called for my cat as I unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The red light on the answering machine blinked next to the phone on the table that end-capped my sofa. I moved to the machine and pushed down on the bar, then listened to my messages as I looked over the general solicitation that was my mail.
The first message was from Jackie Kahn. She called to remind me about Sunday night, and to “bring a bottle of red, and not that cheap Spanish shit.” Dinner was at 7:30, she said, adding, “Be here by seven.” The second message was from a collection agency. I finished glancing at the mail during that. The third message was from the security guard, James Thomas.
Thomas’s confession was rambling, soaked in the moaning self-pity that comes only at the final inch of a deep night of whiskey. I got what I could from the quiet pauses and the long, low sobs that followed. The sound of a man gone to the bottom is more frightening than the tears of any woman, and I was only thankful that I wasn’t there to see it, to see his cubbish head lowered into his thick hands and the spasmodic, infantile shake of his broad, round shoulders. “I did what yIthatou said I did… I took the money, and… now I’m fixin’ to take more… I’ll be gone after that… I want you to know I didn’t kill that boy… That boy sure didn’t deserve to die… The man from the orange and red-”
