The Throat

13

I don't know how long Tom and I sat waiting in the dark theater. After I started thinking about John, I got restless. I stood up to stretch and pace the aisle. Tom never left his seat. He sat without moving for long periods, as if we were at an opera. (Even when I am at the opera, I have trouble sitting still.) After two or three hours in the dark, I could make out most of the stage and the great hanging weight of the curtain, without being able to see individual folds. When I looked back, I could see the shape of the double doors into the lobby. All of the seats more than four or five rows ahead of me congealed into a single object. I got back into my seat and leaned back, thinking about Fee and John and Franklin Bachelor, and after half an hour had to get up and swing my arms and walk down toward the stage and the curtains again. When I got back into my seat and settled down, I heard a noise from the other side of the theater—a creak. 'Tom,' I said.

'Old buildings make noise,' he said.

Half an hour later, the back door rattled. 'What about that?' I asked.

'Uh huh,' he said.

The door rattled again. Both of us were sitting up straight, leaning forward. The door rattled a third time, and then nothing happened for a long time. Tom leaned back. 'I think some kid saw that the chain was unhooked,' he said.

We sat in the dark for another long period. I looked at my watch, but the hands were invisible. I crossed my legs and closed my eyes and was instantly in Saigon, the restaurant not the city, trying to tell Vinh about John Ransom. He was working on the accounts, and he wasn't interested in John Ransom. 'Write a letter to Maggie,' he said. 'She knows more than you think.' I came awake with a jerk and felt under the seat for the thermos. 'Me, too,' Tom said.

The ceiling ticked. A footstep sounded in the lobby. The ceiling ticked again. Tom sat like a statue. Write a letter to Maggie? I thought, and realized to whom I could write a letter about John Ransom. She was probably a person who shared certain of Maggie's gifts. Time wore on. I yawned. At least an hour passed, second by slow second. Then the alley door rattled again.

'Wait for it,' Tom said.

There was an unendurable silence for a few seconds, and then a key slotted into the keyhole. The sound was as clear as if I stood on the other side of the door. When the door swung open, Tom eased out of his seat and crouched beside it. I did the same. Someone walked into the space between the alley door and the theater exit. The exit door cracked open an inch, and gray light filtered through the crack. It opened wider, and a man stepped into the column of gray light and became a silhouette. He turned to look behind him, exposing his profile in the column of gray light. It was Monroe, and he had a gun in his hand.

14

Monroe stepped forward and let the exit door close behind him. The dark shape of his body moved a few steps alongside the stage. He stopped moving to let his eyes adjust. Tom and I crouched behind the seats, waiting for him either to take a seat or to check to see if his caller had already arrived. Monroe remained standing in the far aisle, listening, hard. Monroe was good—he stood next to the stage for so long that my legs began to cramp. The hot circle below my shoulder blade started to throb. Monroe relaxed and pulled a police baton from his belt. A beam of light flew from the end of the baton and darted from the middle of the front seats to the rear doors on his side, then to the wall six or seven feet down from John and me.

Monroe walked up the aisle, training the light along the rows of seats. He reached the wide central passage that divided the front seats from the rear and paused, working out if he'd be wasting his time by going farther. Tom noiselessly lowered himself to the floor. I sank to my knees and kept my eyes on Monroe. The detective moved across the divide between the seats and went up another two rows. Then he scanned the light in long sweeps across the seats in front of him. If he walked up another five rows, he'd have to see us, and I held my breath and waited for the cramp in my legs to subside.

Monroe turned around. The beam of light flitted across the wall beside us, traveled over the folds of the curtains, and struck the exit door. Monroe started to move back down the far aisle. I watched him reach the side of the stage, turn around to stab his light in a long pass back over the seats, and then push through the door. I sat down and stretched out my legs. Tom looked up at me and put his finger to his mouth. The alley door opened. 'He's getting away,' I whispered. Tom shushed me.

The back door opened and closed in a flurry of footsteps. The exit door swung in. Monroe and a man in a blue running suit came back into the theater. Monroe said, 'Well, I don't think anyone got in.'

'But they unlocked the chain,' said the other man.

'Why do you think I called you?'

'It's funny,' said the other man. 'I mean, they take the chain off, and then they lock the door! Only but two other people got the keys.'

'Church people?'

'My deacon has one. And the owner's got one, that's for sure. But he never shows his face—I never even met the man. Did you look at my office?'

'Do you keep any money in there?'

'Money?' The other man chuckled. 'Holy Spirit is just a little storefront church, you know. But I keep the hymnals, choir robes, that kind of thing, in my office.'

'Let's have a look, Reverend,' Monroe said, and they set off up the aisle, the flashlight trained straight ahead of them. I lowered myself to the carpet and heard them pass by on the other end of the long row of seats and open the doors to the lobby.

As soon as they had left the theater, Tom slid into his row and I into mine, scooting along the cool concrete floor. The murmur of voices from the lobby ceased when the two men went into the office. I flattened out on the dusty concrete, my face an inch from a patch of fossilized gum. I could see the bushy outline of Tom's head and the pale blot of his left hand through the seat supports. The lobby doors swung in again.

'It doesn't make sense at all to me, officer,' said the reverend. 'But tomorrow, I'm getting the locks changed, and I'm buying a new padlock for that chain.'

I stopped breathing and tried to disappear into the floor. My cheek flattened out against the wad of gum. It felt like dead skin. The two men came down the far aisle. My heart accelerated as they approached my row. Their slow footsteps neared me, passed me, continued down the aisle.

'How did you come to check us in the first place, officer?'

'Some lunatic called me this afternoon, asking me to meet him here this morning.'

'In here?' They stopped moving.

'So I thought I ought to come down here, take a look at the place.'

'The Lord thanks you for your diligence, officer.'

The footsteps resumed.

'I'm putting that chain back on the door and getting new locks tomorrow. The Lord doesn't favor fools.'

'Sometimes I wonder about that,' Monroe said.

Their shoes clicked against the concrete beside the stage. The exit door swished open, closed. The door into the alley clanked open. I got to my feet. Tom stood up in front of me. From the alley came the sound of the chain rattling through the brackets. I exhaled and began brushing invisible dust off my clothes.

'That was interesting,' Tom said. 'Monroe turns out to be a good cop. Do you suppose all three of them will come down?'

'I hope the two don't show up together.'

'Which one do you think is Fee?'

I saw Ross McCandless's seamy face and empty eyes leaning toward my hospital bed. 'No hunches,' I said.

'I have one.' Tom stretched out his arms and arched his back. He swatted his jacket and brushed off his