The Throat

'No, she saved that for the car. I want to go into the other room, Tim. I'm a little bit dizzy, okay?'

In the living room, he noticed the bronze plaque on me floor and bent down to pick it up. He showed it to me. 'Is this what you were clobbering me with?' I said that it was, and he shook his head over the irony of it all. 'Damn thing even looks like a murder weapon,' he said, and put it back on me mantel.

'Whose idea was it to go for a ride?'

John looked slightly peevish for a second, but no more than that. 'I'm not used to being grilled. This is still a very touchy subject.'

He went to the couch. The cushions exhaled when he sat down. He drank and held the liquid in his mouth for a moment as he looked around the room. 'We didn't break anything. Isn't that amazing? The only reason I know I was in a fight is that I feel like shit.'

I sat down on the chair and waited.

'Okay. I got everything I thought about that weasel, Dorian, out of my system, and finally I started telling her what I should have said at the beginning—I said I loved her and I wanted to stay married. I said that we had to give ourselves another chance. I said she was the most important person in my life. Hell, I said she was my life.'

Tears spilled out of his eyes. 'And that was true. Maybe I wasn't much of a husband, but April was my whole life.' He got his handkerchief halfway to his face before noticing its condition. He checked his trousers for bloodstains and dropped the handkerchief in a clean ashtray. 'Tim, do you happen to have… ?' I fished mine out of my pocket and tossed it to him. It was two days old, but still clean, mostly. John pressed it to his eyes, wiped his cheeks, and threw it back to me.

'Anyhow, she said she couldn't sit still any longer, she had to go out for a drive or something. I even asked if I could come along. If you want to talk to me, you'd better, hadn't you? she said. So we drove around, I don't even remember where. We kept saying the same things over and over—she wouldn't listen to me. Finally, we ended up somewhere around Bismarck Boulevard, on the west side.'

John pushed out air between his lips. 'She pulled over on Forty-sixth, Forty-fifth, I don't remember. There was a bar down at the end of the block. The Turf Lounge, I think it was.' He looked at me, and his mouth twitched. His glance shot away again, and he made a wild inventory of the things in the room. 'Tim, you remember how I kept looking for a car following us, after we dropped off my parents? I think someone was following April and me that night. I wasn't too straight, you know, I was reallyscrewed up. But I still pick up on things, I haven't lost all the old radar. But sometimes I get that feeling, and no one's there, you know? Doesn't that happen to you?' I nodded.

'Anyhow, there wasn't anybody else on the street. All the lights were out, except in the bar. I was begging for my life. I told her about this place I found in Purdum, good price, fifteen acres, a pond, a beautiful house. We could have had our own art gallery there. I got done telling her about it, and she said, Ross might want me to go to San Francisco. I'd head my own office, she said. Forget that stuffed shirt Ross, I said, what do you want? I've been thinking of taking it, she said. I said, Without discussing it with me first? And she said—I didn't see any point in bringing you into it. Bringing me into it. She was giving me broker talk! I couldn't help myself, Tim.' He sat forward and stared at me. His mouth worked while he figured out a way to say it. 'I couldn't help myself. Literally.' His face reddened. 'I just— smacked her. I reached up and belted her in the face. Twice.' His eyes got swimmy, bleary with tears. 'I, I felt so shocked— I felt so dirty. April was crying. I couldn't take it.'

His voice crumbled, and he closed his eyes and reached a big pink hand out toward me. For an odd second I thought he wanted me to grasp it. Then I realized what he wanted and passed him my handkerchief again. He held it over his eyes and bent forward and wept.

'Oh, God,' he said at last, sitting up. His voice was soft and cottony. 'April just sat there with tears all over her face.' His chest was jerking, and he mopped his eyes until he could speak again. 'She didn't say anything. I couldn't sit in that car anymore. I got out and walked away. I'm pretty sure I heard a car starting up, but I wasn't paying attention to things like that. I didn't think I was going up to the bar, but when I got to the door, I went inside. I never even noticed if anyone else was in the place. I put down about four drinks, boom boom boom boom, one right after the other. I have no idea how long I was in there. Then this sumo wrestler type of guy was standing in front of me, telling me that they were closing and I had to pay up. I guess he was the bartender, but I couldn't even remember seeing him before. He said—get this—'

John's chest and belly started jerking up and down again. He was laughing and crying at the same time. 'He said, 'Don't come back here again, pal, we don't need your business.' ' It took him a long time to get the sentence out. He passed my handkerchief over his face. His mouth flickered in and out of a crazy grin.

'I put a fifty-dollar bill on the bar and walked out. April was gone, of course—I hardly expected her to be waiting for me. It took about an hour to walk home. I was making all these speeches in my head. When I got here, her car was right out in front, and I thought, Oh God, at least she's home. I went upstairs, but she wasn't in the bedroom. I checked all over the house, calling her name. Finally I went back outside to see if she was still sitting in the car. When I opened the door, I almost fell over in a faint—there was blood all over both seats. A lot of blood. I went crazy. I ran up and down the block, thinking I must have hurt her a lot worse than I had imagined. I could see her getting out of the car and collapsing on someone's lawn. Jesus. I went all over the neighborhood, twice, out of my mind, and then I came back inside and called Shady Mount and said that I'd seen a dazed, bleeding woman walking down Berlin Avenue, and had anyone brought her to the Emergency Room? This very suspicious woman said she wasn't there. I didn't think I could call the cops—my story would have sounded so fishy! Down deep, Tim, down deep, I already knew she was dead. So I put a towel over the driver's seat and took the car to Alan's and put it in his garage. A couple of nights later, when I knew I'd really be in trouble if anyone found it, I went back there in the middle of the night and cleaned it up. That night, I went home and waited to hear something. Finally I just went to bed—well, actually, I slept on this couch here. I wasn't sober. But I don't suppose I have to tell you that. The day before you came, I took her car out to this place in Purdum.'

He noticed the handkerchief balled up in his hands and unfolded it and blew his nose in it. Then he dropped it in the ashtray on top of the bloody one.

'At the time, I thought, after Vietnam, this must be the worst night I'll ever have, all my life. Little did I know.'

'And the next day, the police called.'

'Just after noon.'

'When did you learn about the slogan, or the signature, or whatever it is?'

'At Shady Mount. Fontaine told me. He asked me if I had any idea what it meant.'

'You didn't tell him about April's project?'

He shook his head. He looked stunned and resentful. 'She wasn't sharing a lot with me by that time.' The resentfulness went up a notch. 'All I knew was that it was something that creep started her thinking about.'

'Dorian's father was one of Bill Damrosch's old partners.'

'Oh? I suppose that would be interesting, if you cared about that sort of thing.'

He grabbed his drink, swallowed, moaned, and fell back against the cushions. Neither of us spoke for a time.

'Tell me what you think happened after you went into the bar.'

John pressed the cold glass against one cheek, then another. Then he rolled the glass back and forth across his forehead. His eyes were slits. 'First, I have to know that you believe me. You know I couldn't have killed April.'

This was the question I had been putting off. I answered the only way I could. 'I guess I do believe you, John.' As soon as I spoke, I realized that I had told him the truth—I guessed that I did believe him.

'I could have sweetened it up, Tim. I could have said that I just got out of the car and walked away as soon as she started crying. I didn't have to tell you I hit her. I didn't make myself sound any better than I was.'

'I know that,' I said.

'This is the truth. It's ugly, but it's the truth.'

'Do you think you were right about being followed?'