Wilderness

throat was stiff. 'And if anyone catches me I hand them the card.'

Hood pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. 'Not bad,' he said. 'But you look too good.'

He reached into the glove compartment and brought out a felt fishing hat. 'Try the crusher,' he said. 'Just put it on and let it be as wrinkled and mangy as it is. Don't smooth it out.'

Newman put the hat on. 'Okay,' Hood said. 'And we'll have to do something with the shirt.' He took the skinning knife from his pocket and opened the blade. 'Mind if I ruin the shirt? I'll cut the sleeves off almost at your shoulders.' 'Go ahead,' Newman said. His breath was short.

Hood cut the sleeves off. When he finished Newman leaned over and rolled his pants legs up over his ankles. His bare legs were pale above his blue Pumas. He put the deaf-mute card in his hat band.

'I'll go in first,' Hood said. 'I told them I wanted to shop around and I might be back. Then you come in and head for the back left.

You'll see the stairs.'

Newman nodded.

'If there's trouble, start yelling. I'll be up in half a second. And don't be afraid to use the gun. That's what you got it for.'

'Okay.'

Hood grinned. 'Okay, I'm going. You come right behind me.'

'Okay.'

Hood grinned again. Made a thumbs-up gesture and got out of the car.

Newman sat in stillness. He felt thick, as if there were insulation around him and reality were distant and unclear. Hood went into the store and Newman got out of the car and went to the store behind him.

The store was shabby and the furniture was cheap and garish, imitation plush in bright reds and blues. Wooden love seats with small print slip covering that pretended to be colonial. To his right as he went in, Newman had a sense of Hood talking to a salesman. In the far right back corner of the store another salesman bent over a table, writing in a notebook. Newman walked straight to the back left and up the stairs.

Nobody said anything. At the top of the stairs there was a balcony that ran off at right angles to the stairs across the back of the store. There were three frosted glass doors at intervals in the back wall of the balcony. The salesman who'd been writing was now out of sight under the balcony, the other was still talking with Hood.

Newman felt disconnected. His jaws hurt and he realized he was clenching his teeth. He relaxed his jaw. He couldn't seem to feel the gun against his groin as he had before. He ran his left hand over the area as if scratching a bite. The gun was there. He waited for the surge of reassurance but nothing came.

Promptly he moved onto the balcony and opened the first glass door. The room was windowless and empty. The only light came through the open door and the frosted glass partition that separated it from the next office. There was a gray metal conference table and five folding chairs in the room. On the table was a newspaper and an empty cardboard pizza box in which a few crusts of pizza remained. Two paper coffee cups were near the box. In the corner of the room there was a stand-up electric fan. There was nothing else in the room.

Newman closed the door as quietly as he could. Every movement he made he had to think of. Nothing was natural. Nothing automatic. He stepped back from the door. There was light in the next office. I could tell Chris I tried and it was locked and that there was no one up here. I could turn now and go down and out and go home. And be safe.

He stepped to the next door. There was light behind it. He could hear a voice. From the floor below a voice said, 'Hey, what the hell are you doing?'

His fear saved him. He was numb and slow with it and didn't react.

Instead, mindless' and terrified he turned the knob and walked in.

Adolph Karl sat at a desk facing the door with his feet up and his coat off talking into the telephone. I could shoot him now. To his left, at a small table against the wall, the two men who'd been with him all day were playing cards. In front of each there was a card up and a card down. Blackjack, Newman thought.

Karl said into the phone, 'Hold on,' then he put the phone down on the desk and swung his feet down onto the floor. He looked at Newman.

'Yeah?' he said.

The two men against the wall both turned toward Newman. One stood up and took a gun from under his coat and held it against his leg. The man with the gun had thick lips and a long face. His hair was curly, and his skin was very white. The other man, still seated, was immense.

Three hundred pounds, Newman thought. His chest was vast. His stomach stretched tight against his white shirt but it looked hard, like a Russian weight lifter's. His shirt sleeves were rolled back two turns over his forearms, and his wrists were as thick as cordwood. He stood up too and took a step toward Newman. He was tall and his back arched slightly. He was clean-shaven and his hair was slicked back and shiny.

He looked very clean.

'The man asked you a question, douche bag,' he said. Newman knew the voice.

There were no windows in this room either. Just a cinder-block back wall painted yellow. In the left corner a gray metal file cabinet.

There was no rug on the floor. The only light was an overhead hanging fluorescent. The huge man took another step toward Newman. The man with thick lips stood without movement, the gun held against his right thigh.

Newman took the card from his hat band and held it out to the big man.

The man read it.

'It's a fucking dummy, Dolph,' he said. 'He's scrounging.' The big man handed the card to Karl. Karl read it.

'Throw him the fuck out,' he said. He crumpled the card and threw it on the floor. The big man took hold of Newman's shoulder and turned him around.

Karl said, 'Tell those fucking assholes downstairs that if anybody comes wandering up here again I'm going to cut their balls off.'

The big man held onto Newman's shoulder with his left hand and shoved him out the door. Newman made no resistance. He was afraid he might fall. His legs had no feeling. The big man shoved him along the corridor and down the stairs, moving him faster than he wanted to walk, so he stumbled and had to hold the banister going downstairs. Newman had a sense of Hood's presence to the left of his periphery.

The big man stopped at the front door, opened it, planted his right foot against Newman's buttocks, and shoved him sprawling, face first, into the street. He let the door close.

Newman lay a moment face down on the sidewalk, feeling the roughness of the concrete against his cheek. He felt as if he might urinate right there, lying down on the sidewalk. He was out of there. He was alive.

They hadn't hurt him. He'd done it and survived.

He got up and walked down Portland Street to Hood's car. He got in the passenger side and sat as still as he could. His heart thumped in his chest the way it did after intercourse. He waited for it to quiet. He pressed his open hands on the tops of his thighs. His hands felt sweaty and swollen.

Hood came out of the store and walked down to the car. He got in, took the keys from above the visor, and started the car. They drove down Portland Street, away from the Union Furniture Store.

'You all right?' Hood said.

'Sure,' Newman said. 'Sure.'

CHAPTER 11.

'So how do you get him?' Janet Newman said.

They sat in the Newmans' kitchen with beer and wine and sandwiches.

'We wait,' Hood said, 'and watch. We'll see the chance. Killing him's easy. Getting away with it is the hard part.'

'Janet, you wouldn't believe what it was like to walk in there on them,' Newman said. 'The guys that tied you up, one was huge and kind of slick-looking?'

'Yes, and the other had thick lips and a long face. We already went through this.' 'That was them,' Newman