But Mama was still talking. “They said that one turned fairy up there in the prison. He let them use him like a girl.”
Leroy Fleck leaned out into the hallway, partly to see if the voice which sounded like a cop really was a cop. It was. He was standing beside the receptionist and she was pointing down the hall. She was pointing right at Leroy Fleck.
Elkins had always told him he was naturally fast. He could think fast and he could move like lightning. “It’s partly in your mind, and it’s partly in your reflexes,” Elkins had told him. “We can get your muscles built up, build up your strength, by pumping iron. But anybody can do that. That quickness, that’s something you gotta be born with. That’s where you got the edge if you know how to use it.”
He used it now. He knew instantly that he could not let himself be arrested. Absolutely not. Maybe he’d come clear on the Santillanes affair. Probably not. Why else were those two Indian-looking cops dogging him? But even if they didn’t make him on that one, as soon as they matched his prints, they’d make him on something else. He’d worked for Elkins on too many jobs, and been on the prowl in too many airports and nightclubs, to ever let himself be arrested. He’d survived only by being careful not to be. But now the Fat Man, that fat bastard, had put an end to that. He’d have to get even with the Fat Man. But there was no time to think of that now. Within what was left of the same second, Fleck had decided how he would talk his way out of this. It would help that the Fat Man wasn’t here to press his case. The receptionist apparently had orders to call the law anytime he showed up, but she was minimum-wage help. She wouldn’t care what happened next.
Fleck moved back into the room and sat on the bed. “Mama,” he said softly, “you’re going to have some more company in just a minute. It’s a policeman. I want to ask you to just keep calm and be polite.”
“Policeman,” Mama said. She spit on the floor by the television set.
“It’s important to me, Mama,” Fleck said. “It’s awful important.”
And then the policeman was at the door, looking in.
“You Dick Pfaff?”
It took Fleck the blink of an eye to remember that was the name he’d used when he’d checked Mama in here.
Fleck stood. “Yes sir,” he said. “And this here is my Mama.”
The policeman was young. He had smooth, pale skin and a close-cropped blond mustache. He nodded to Mama. She stared at him. Where was his partner? Fleck wondered. He would be the old hand on this team. If Fleck was lucky, the partner would be resting out in the patrol car, letting the rookie handle this pissant, nothing little complaint. If they thought there was any risk at all of it being serious they would both be in here. In fact, Fleck suspected the police rules probably required it. Somebody was goofing off.
“We have a complaint that you caused a disturbance here,” the policeman said. “We have a statement that you threatened to kill the manager.”
Fleck produced a self -deprecatory laugh. “I’m ashamed of that. That’s the main reason I came today—to apologize for the way I behaved.” As he said it, Fleck became aware that Mama was no longer watching the television set. Mama was watching him.
“That’s a pretty serious offense,” the officer said. “Telling a man you’re going to kill him.”
“I doubt if I really quite said that,” Fleck said. “But you notice how it smells in here? My Mama here, she hadn’t been properly cleaned up. She had bedsores and all that and I just lost my temper. I had told him about it before.”
Clearly the policeman was aware of the smell. Fleck could tell from his face that he’d switched from cautiously hostile to slightly sympathetic.
“If he’s got back yet, I’ll go out there and apologize to him. I’m sorry for whatever I said. Just got sore about the way they was treating Mama here.”
The policeman nodded. “I don’t think he’s here anyway,” he said. “That woman said he was off somewhere. I’ll just check you for weapons.” He grinned at Fleck. “If you didn’t come in here armed, I’d say it’s a pretty good argument on your side since he’s about four times your size.”
“Yes sir,” Fleck said. He resisted the prison-learned instinct to spread his legs and raise his arms. The cop would never find his shank, which was in the slot he’d made for it inside his boot, but getting into the shakedown stance would tip off even this rookie that he was dealing with an ex-con.
“What do you want me to do?” Fleck asked.
“Just turn around. And then lock your hands over the back of your neck,” the policeman said.
“Get down—” Mama began. Then it broke off into a sort of incoherent stammer. But she kept trying to talk and Fleck looked away from the policeman and looked at her instead. Her face was filled with an expression of such fierce contempt that it took Leroy Fleck back to his childhood.
“—and lick his goddamn shoes,” Mama said.
He had made his decision even before she forced it out. “Now, Mama,” he said, and bending down, he slid the blade out of his boot into his palm. He gripped it flat-side horizontal and as he stepped toward the policeman he was saying: “Mama had a stroke—” and with the word “stroke” the blade was driving through the uniform shirt.
It sank between the policeman’s ribs with the full force of Fleck’s weightlifter muscles behind it. And there, in that terribly vulnerable territory Elkins had called “behind the bone,” Fleck’s weightlifter’s wrist flicked it, and flicked it and flicked it. Cutting artery. Cutting heart. The officer’s mouth opened, showing white, even teeth below the yellow mustache. He made a kind of a sound, but not very loud because the shock was already killing him. It was hardly audible above the shouting that was going on in “The Young and the Restless.”
Fleck released the knife handle, grabbed the policeman’s shoulders, and lowered him to his knees. He removed the knife and wiped it on the uniform shirt. (If you do it all properly, Elkins would say, the bleeding is mostly inside. No blood all over you.) Then Fleck let the body slide to the floor. Face down. He put the knife back in his boot and turned toward Mama. He intended to say something but he didn’t know what. His mind wasn’t working right.
Mama was looking at the policeman, then she looked up at him. Her mouth was partly open, working as if she
