‘I hate everyone.’
He and Becky parted at the corner. He tried to discuss the writing on the newspaper, but she didn’t want to listen. She was done with him for the day. Tate watched her go, her tight black skirt clinging to her buttocks and thighs, her breasts high and round under her navy shirt. She was good-looking, Tate would give her that, but he no longer felt any attraction towards her because she scared him so much.
That was the other thing: she might nominally have been his producer, but he had always suspected that she was so much more. She had seemed to defer to Barbara Kelly on the occasion of their first meeting, but in the years that followed he had seen others defer to her, even Kelly herself. Becky had three cell phones, and even when she was in the producer’s chair, ostensibly keeping the wheels of the show oiled, one of those phones would be pressed to her ear. Out of curiosity he had followed her once from the hired studio after they had finished recording a show, keeping his distance, trying to blend in with the crowd. Two blocks from the studio he had watched as a black limousine pulled up at the curb beside her, and Becky got in. He had seen nobody else in back, and the driver had not emerged to open the door for her, instead choosing to remain invisible behind smoked glass.
Three times he had followed her, and on each occasion the same car had arrived to pick her up once she was out of sight of the studio. Producer, my ass, thought Tate, but in a way it had been strangely reassuring. It had confirmed that he was involved with serious people, and the wealth that had helped him to rise was not about to vanish any time soon.
Eventually he might even have a limo pickup of his own.
Now here he was, back in the safety of his apartment building but still feeling contaminated by the stink of the bar, both the taint of nicotine and the musky stench of debased sexuality, and tormented by his knowledge of what might be about to happen to Penny Moss. Maybe he could Google her name, or search for her on Facebook. He could send her a message. There had to be a way to do that kind of thing without revealing his identity. He could set up a temporary account under a false name, but wouldn’t he have to wait for her to friend him first? And how many Penny Mosses were out there?
It was the same problem with making a telephone call: where could he start? He could notify the police anonymously and tell them what he knew: that a girl named Penny Moss was going to be abducted and killed, except he couldn’t say where she lived, or who was going to do the abducting and killing, not without mentioning Becky and, by doing so, giving himself away. He would also lose everything for which he’d worked so hard: his money, his power, his nice apartment, even his life, because there was the small matter of Darina Flores. They’d send her after him, and that wouldn’t be good.
He got in the elevator and stared at his reflection in the glass as he ascended. The evening played itself out before him. He would sit in the dark and argue back and forth about the girl while knowing that, in the end, he wouldn’t do anything at all. Eventually he’d pour a drink and pretend to himself that nothing was going to happen, not really. No girl named Penny Moss would be abducted the next day, and no butcher’s knife with her blood on it would be found on the property of some halal-muncher, some religious fifth columnist who had cloaked himself in suburban normality while secretly hating everything that this country stood for. This would be no innocent, Becky had told him. They had selected a man who was a danger to all, and once attention was drawn to him there would be ample evidence of his involvement in all kinds of viciousness. They were doing the right thing here. And as for Penny Moss, well, it might be possible to achieve their ends without killing her. She didn’t have to shed blood, not really.
Or not much.
But Tate had seen the truth in Becky’s eyes, and he knew that this was just the latest step on the road to his own damnation, perhaps the final one. His progress along it had been gradual, slow at first, but he’d felt his feet starting to slide as soon as the vitriol he was spewing became directed at specific targets, as soon as he stopped caring about whether what he said was even partly true or not but simply served the purpose of setting Americans against Americans and rendering reasoned debate impossible, as soon as lives were ruined, and careers and marriages were forced into collapse.
As soon as George Keys killed himself, because that’s what the dumb bastard went and did. His mother died the week after the union cut him loose, and the combination of the two events broke him. He hanged himself in his mother’s bedroom, surrounded by her possessions. And here was the funny thing: George Keys was gay, but he was so tormented by his homosexuality that he’d been afraid to use the fact of it to defend himself against allegations that he’d slept with the Mexican whore-waitress. There were those who blamed Tate for what had happened, but mostly they did so quietly. Davis Tate was by then well on the way to becoming untouchable.
And damned.
Little steps, little increments of evil.
He put his key in the lock and opened his apartment door. He registered the nicotine stench just an instant too late, his reactions slowed by the beers he’d drunk and his senses dulled by the smell and taste of tobacco that he had carried back with him from the bar. He tried to retreat into the hallway, but a blow caught him on the side of the head, knocking him against the door jamb, and a blade pressed itself against his neck, its edge so sharp that he only realized he had been cut when he felt the blood flow, and with it came the pain.
‘Time to talk,’ said a stinking voice in his ear. ‘Time, even, to die.’
27
Walter Cole drove me to the airport to catch the Delta shuttle flight to Boston. He’d been relatively quiet since we left Nicola’s. Walter was good at brooding.
‘You have something that you want to share?’ I asked.
‘I’d just forgotten what an interesting life you lead,’ he said, as LaGuardia came into view.
‘In a good way, or the Chinese way?’
‘Both, I guess. I like being retired, but sometimes I get twitchy, you know? I’ll read about a case in the newspaper, or see it on the news, and I’ll remember what it was like to be part of that, the rush of it, the sense of, I don’t know . . .’
‘Purpose?’
‘Yeah, purpose. But then Lee will come into the room, and she’ll have a beer in her hand for me, and a glass of wine for herself. We’ll talk, or I’ll help her to cook dinner—’
‘You cook now?’
‘God, no. I tried making stew once and even the dog got ill, and that dog eats deer shit and doesn’t blink. I help Lee by not trying to cook, and just making sure her glass is full. Sometimes one of the kids will join us, and the evening stretches into night, and it will be good. Just
‘So you’re telling me that you don’t want to trade your life for mine? You’ll forgive me if I’m not shocked.’
‘Yeah, that’s about the size of it. I listened to what was said in back of Nicola’s today and I felt the twitch again, but I also felt the fear. I’m too old, too weak, too slow. I’m better off where I am. I can’t do what you do. I wouldn’t want to. But I’m afraid for you, Charlie, and I get more afraid as the years go by. I used to think that maybe you could stop this, that you’d go to Maine and just be a normal guy doing normal stuff, but now I know that it isn’t in the stars for you. I just wonder how it’s going to end, that’s all, because you’re getting older, and so are those two lunatics who walk at your heels. And the people you go up against, they just seem to get worse and worse. You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Yes.’ And I did.
We were coming to the Delta terminal. Taxis crowded, and farewells were made. Now the time was for leaving, I wanted to stay. Walter pulled up to the curb, and placed a hand on my shoulder.
‘They’ll take you in the end, Charlie. Eventually there’ll be one who’s stronger than you, and faster, and more ruthless, or there’ll just be too many of them for even Angel and Louis to help you fight. Then you’ll die, Charlie: you’ll die, and you’ll leave your daughter with only the memory of a father. And the thing of it is, you just can’t do anything about it, can you? It’s like I can see it written already.’
