Berger held up two fingers.
'They talked?' Chee had begun wondering where this was taking him. What could Berger know that would be useful?
Berger had taken his hands from the walker. His fingers, twisted and trembling, became two men standing slightly apart. Wagging fingers indicated one man talking, then the other man talking. Then the two hands moved together, parallel, to Berger's left. He stopped them. His lips struggled with an impossible word. 'Car,' he said.
'They walked together to a car after talking. The blond man's car?'
Berger nodded, pleased. His hands resumed their walk, stopped. Suddenly the right hand attacked the left, snatched it, bent it. Berger looked at Chee, awaiting the question.
Chee frowned. 'The blond man attacked Gorman?'
Berger denied it.
'Gorman attacked the blond man?'
Berger agreed. He struggled for words, excited.
Chee bit back a question. 'Interesting,' he said, smiling at Berger, giving him time. He had an idea. He tapped Berger's right hand. 'This is Blond,' he said, 'and the left hand is Gorman. Okay?'
Berger grasped his right hand with his left, began to enact a struggle. Then he stopped, thinking. He grasped an imaginary doorknob, opened the imaginary door, watching to see if Chee was with him.
'One of them opened the car door? The blond?'
Berger agreed. He held his left hand with his right, released it, then pantomimed, fiercely, the slamming of the door. He clutched the injured finger, squirming and grimacing in mock pain.
'Gorman slammed the door on the blond man's finger,' Chee said. Berger nodded. He was a dignified man, and all this play-acting was embarrassing for him. 'That would suggest that Gorman wasn't going to the car willingly. Right? You were standing about here, watching?' Chee laughed. 'And wondering what the hell was going on, I'll bet.'
'Exactly,' Berger said, clearly and distinctly. 'Then Gorman ran.' He motioned past the fence, up the alley, a gesture that caused Gorman to vanish.
'And the blond man?'
'Sat,' Berger said. 'Just a min…' He couldn't finish the word.
'And then I guess he drove away.'
Berger nodded.
'You have any idea about all this?'
Berger nodded affirmatively. They looked at each other, stymied.
'Any luck writing?' Chee asked.
Berger held up his hands. They trembled. Berger controlled them. They trembled again.
'Well,' Chee said, 'we'll figure out a way.'
'He came,' Berger said, pointing to the gravel where Chee was standing. 'Talked.'
'Gorman. About the trouble he was in.'
Berger tried to speak. Tried again. Hit the walker fiercely with a palsied fist. 'Shit,' he said.
'What did Gorman do for a living?'
'Stole cars,' Berger said.
That surprised Chee. Why would Gorman tell Berger that? But why not? A new dimension of Albert Gorman opened. One lonely man meeting another beside a fence. Berger's potential importance in this affair clicked upward. Frail, bony, pale, he leaned on the walker frame, trying to form another word, his blue eyes intense with the concentration.
Chee waited. The woman whose son was coming to see her had posted her wheelchair down the fence. Now she rolled it across the parched, hard-packed lawn toward them. She noticed Chee watching her and turned the wheelchair abruptly into the fence. 'He's coming,' she said to no one in particular.
'Gorman stole cars,' Chee said. 'And the man he stole them for—the man who paid him—got indicted by the federal grand jury. Maybe the reason he went to New Mexico, and the reason somebody followed to shoot him, was because he was going to be a witness against his boss. Maybe the boss…'
But Berger was denying that, shaking his head.
'You don't think so?'
Berger didn't. Emphatically.
'He talked to you about that, then?'
Berger agreed. Waved that subject off. Tried to form a word. 'Not go,' he managed finally. His mouth worked to say more, but couldn't. 'Shit,' he said.
'Not go?' Chee repeated. He didn't understand that.
Berger was still trying to find words. He couldn't. He shrugged, slumped, looked ashamed.
