“Neil!” I called. I rapped the bottom of my glass against the oakwood. “Neil-o! Neil-o-rama!”
Neil was the owner but a bartender by nature, and he was tending bar tonight. A lean, pale man with a thin, aesthetic face behind round wire-rimmed spectacles, he looked like Jean-Paul Sartre a little, only with a ponytail and a flowered shirt. He left his post under the TV and snagged a bottle of Johnnie Walker as he came toward me.
“You hear that ice clink, man, and you gotta come running. For mercy’s sake,” I said.
He tipped the bottle over my glass, poured out a generous helping. “You’re working at it tonight, Ev,” he said in his quiet, even voice. “I hope you left your car at home.”
“Hey,” I said. I lifted the glass, swirling it under my nose. “I am the greatest driver on the continent.”
“Uh-oh.”
“On any continent.”
“I’m talking to a dead guy,” said Neil. “Would you leave me your stamp collection?”
I drank and set the glass down. Laid a finger on the rim of the empty pretzel bowl. “Madder music and more munchies,” I said. And I drank again.
He swept the empty bowl away and replaced it with a full one. I grabbed a handful of pretzels.
“Haven’t eaten hardly all day,” I said.
Neil glanced longingly at the ballgame. Then, resigned, he leaned against the bar and did his best to concentrate on me.
“Too busy, that’s why,” I told him. “Too busy ruining my wife—my life, I mean. My wife and my life. And my job.”
“All in one day? You are a busy guy.”
“A tragedy should take place within the walls of a single city on a single day,” I told him. “Aristotle said that.”
“Yeah, he’s always in here saying that. Kooky old Aristotle, we call him. Crazy A.”
“Life imitates art.”
“Yeah. Does a pretty good Sophie Tucker too.”
“Right,” I said. I had no idea what either of us was saying but I nodded profoundly. Then I lit a cigarette. Then I drank some more scotch. “Did you hear the ice clink?” “Nope.”
“I thought I heard a little tinkle, a little … Ah, maybe not. What was I about to say?”
“You were about to tell me that women were different from men.”
“Oh yeah. Women and men, man—completely different.”
“Really?” said Neil. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“True,” I said. “Completely.” And I waved my cigarette around vaguely to show how different they were. “A man, see, his dick stands up, his head buries itself in the ground. That’s all he cares about. In and out. Done. Finished. A woman, see, she thinks it’s all supposed to mean something.”
“Probably because they have children,” said Neil, stifling a yawn with his hand.
“It’s cause they have children,” I said, pointing the cigarette at him. “Makes em worry alla time. Makes em think everything’s gotta be a certain way. Right and wrong, good and bad. What difference it make? Does it make. We all die anyway. We should have fun. Tomorrow we may die.”
With a glance at the TV, Neil nodded. “You’re a profound guy, Ev. I’ve been tending bar most of my life and no one’s said that to me since nine-thirty.”
“So I fucked the boss’s daughter—no, his wife this time. No, wait, his daugh—yeah, his wife, yeah. So what does that mean? That mean I gotta lose my job? That mean my wife gotta throw me out?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Naaaaaah,” I said. “S’judgmental … ness.” I drained my glass and set it down hard to make the ice shake. “That time.”
“Yeah, I heard it.” He brought up a scoopful of ice from the bin beneath the bar. Dumped it in the glass as he upturned the scotch bottle. I held the cigarette to my lips and watched the operation through curling smoke.
“Judgmental,” I said again. “Everybody saying this one’s right, this one’s wrong. You killed somebody, you gotta get the needle. You fucked somebody, you gotta get the shaft. All bullshit. All bullshit, Neil-o. Makes everybody unhappy. Nothing’s good or bad but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare. Billy Big-Boy said that himself.”
“He knew a thing or two, all right.”
“Judge not lest you be judged. That was Jesus Christ, for Christ’s sake, wasn’t it?”
“Old Mr. J. Haven’t seen him around here much lately.”
“See, that was the problem with my parents. My dopted parents,” I said. “Big lawyers. Big liberal muck-a-muck-a-mucks. A-mucks. Always knew the right thing, always knew who was the bad guy, who was the good guy. Always on the side of the angels. And how do they know? See what I’m saying? Wha’s right, wha’s wrong? How do they know? Who told them?”
“Uh, Plato?”
I whiffled like a horse.
“Just a guess,” said Neil. “We hadn’t done Plato.”
I took another toke of nicotine, but it had lost its talent to amuse. It seared my throat and I crushed the cigarette weakly in the glass ashtray, left it there bent and fuming. I bowed my head over my glass and studied the ice floating in the amber. I nodded at it somberly. I had reached that stage of inebriation when you start to have Ideas about Life; Life with a capital L, Ideas with a capital I. I had reached that stage when these Ideas seem to link together in a chain of perfect sense or, that is, when the links forged in the smithy of creation become clear to you through the veil of mortality and time. Or something. Anyway, as I sat there, with my neck limp and my chin bouncing lightly above the hollow of my throat, the Idea came to me clearly that Life is a pretty bum affair in which a guy hardly gets a break at all. Happen-stances that, through generations out of living memory, have combined themselves into a history all but unknown, coalesce at the moment of your conception into a clockwork of inevitability. What seem to you like decisions, opinions, revelations, growth are really only the ticking of the mechanism, relieved by the occasional accident or two—if they are accidents—and made sonorous and mournful by the ever-present suspicion that there is no breaking the machinery of fate. Well, it seemed to make sense at the moment anyway. It seemed mournful and profound. And when I imposed this Idea over the events of my existence—as one generally does impose one’s ideas—those events—as they generally do—were forced to fall into line with the Idea which, therefore, seemed to explain everything to perfection.
So I belched miserably. I raised the scotch glass to my hanging head and sucked in the liquor with a slurping noise. “Aaaaaah,” I said, as I let the glass drop back to the bar. “Wha they have ta dopt me for anyway? Who ast em? Where they get me, fer Crissake?” My eyes filled with tears and I asked myself—I asked the whole arena packed with the audience of my imagination—who there could be, anywhere, more pitiful than I? “Always try’n push their things—their notions on me. Tellin me wha was right, wha was wrong. Li’l, gentle instrushins.” I held up thumb and index finger to show how teensy-weensy my parents’ moral instructions were. “Li’l, li’l lectures bout every fucking little thing. Be nice, be fair, be good. Ah Christ it was unbearable shit. Practically see in their eyes which stupid book they’d been reading, which stupid article in which stupid magazine. Who asked them to dopt me in the first place anyway? Where was my real father? Hanh? Thas wha I wanna know. What am I doing here? Where’s my fucking father? Somebody tell me that, why don’t they.”
“Jesus Christ, Everett.” Neil Gordon sighed. “Go the fuck home, will you.”
I laughed oh so bitterly, lifting my heavy head. “Got no home, Neil-o,” I said. “Neil-o-rama. Got no fucking home.” With some difficulty, I reached into my shirt pocket and removed Barbara’s wedding ring. I rolled it between my fingers, holding it up in the dim barlight. “See? An now my son too. Got no father. My boy, my poor boy, my poor little baby, baby boy … What the hell’s he gonna do? Ruin his life. His fate, see, that’s what I’m talking. No fault o his jus …”
I sniffed pitiably. Neil’s mouth puckered as if he smelled something awful. I
held the ring out to him.
“See dat?” I said. “Inside there? Thas her name. Our name. Barbara Everett. Sposed ta be … a fambly! Sposed to be … together. That’s the thing, that’s the heart of … everything. One name. Change yer name ta one. Together, A fambly.” The ring seemed to become too heavy for me to hold up like that and my hand dropped to the bar. As it did, as if I were some sort of mechanical toy with all the parts connected, my other hand rose, bringing the glass to my lips again. I gasped out of the sting of the whisky. I peered into the wavering depths of Neil’s flowered shirt. I did not think I could keep the tears from falling anymore. “I had that name carve into the gold …” I said in a strangled voice. “To be there for … to be there …”
And so I sat, my mouth twisted, gaping, my eyes, full of tears, blinking stupidly into the nauseating whirl of printed flowers. And once again, as I sat, there seemed to be a lifting of the mortal veil, or a drunken skewing of it anyway, to reveal—blurred, unstable, moving toward and away from me at once—the hidden chain of sense behind events. I opened my mouth even wider. My tongue wagged and bulged as I tried to form words to express my revelation.
“Duuuuuuh …” I said.
Neil shook his head, casting a wistful look at the TV again.
“Locket,” I finally managed to say.
“Hm?” said Neil, interested just barely if at all.
“Duuuuuuuh,” I said. “The locket. That locket.”
With which remark, I slid off my stool, catching myself by my elbows on the edge of the bar and hanging there a moment, my chin floating just above the wood, before I clawed and climbed my way back to an upright position. The fall jogged my mind, cleared it somewhat for some few seconds. I cast my gaze over the shelves of shiny bottles, over the red uniforms moving on the televised ballfield, back again to the cool brown eyes behind Neil’s spectacles, trying desperately to focus through the lenses of my own.
“Doncha see?” I asked him. “She’s still wearing the fuckin locket.”
“Who, man? Who are we talking about now?”
“Miz Russel. Warren’s granmother. Can that be? Is that right?” I ran my hand down over my face, rubbing my eyes hard. But the idea would not go away. I stared at Neil. I reached a hand out and clasped his shoulder. “The locket, Neil-o! Jesus. Jesus.”
“Take it easy, Ev.”
“I gotta go. I gotta go. Where am I?”
“Hold on, hold on, you’re drunk.”
“Christ, I know I’m drunk. What’m I, stupid? I’m smashed outta my fucking head. But thas why he shot her, see?”
“Warren’s grandmother?”
“Amy Wilson!”
“What?”
“Doncha see? I saw him. Her father. He was on TV. I saw him. He said—he said the killer tore the locket off her. The one he gave her when she was sixteen. He said that.” Thunderstruck, my grip on the bartender’s shoulder went weak. I let him go, sliding back down onto my stool. “That’s what happened,” I said. “She’d already given Russel the money, but he wanted the locket and that’s why he shot her in the throat. It all makes sense. They gotta see it. What time is it? Where the fuck am I going here?”
“Wait a minute, let me get you some coffee.”
“No, no, no!” I cried, waving my hand at him wildly. “Neil. Jesus. Listen. Listen! It’s all true.”
“Sure it is, buddy. Everything is true. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.”
“Yeah, but this is, like, true true.” I shook my head, wondering. Even I couldn’t believe what I was saying. I tried to think it out, to make sure it wasn’t just the fantasy life of despair. But it was hard to think straight now. The bar heaved and hoed and my stomach heavehoed with it. “He was holding up the store, right? And she gave him the money,” I said to no one in particular. “But then he saw her locket, he wanted her heart locket with the initials on it. For his grandmother, see. Because they were her initials, the same initials. Angela Russel. And Amy said, ‘Please, not that!’ Not the locket. Porterhouse heard her. And Russel shot her—in the throat because he was pointing at the locket with the gun.” I hauled myself to my feet again. “And she’s still wearing the fucking locket. The grandmother. For him, Warren, to remember him. Jesus Christ. What time is it?”
“Five of eleven.”
“Jesus Christ! Put me in my car!”
I took a step—and I tripped on something—a thick piece of air, I think—and the next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees, my glasses hanging sideways across my face, my stomach bubbling thick as lava. Neil was next to me, kneeling next to me. The other guy was there too—the guy who’d been watching TV. The two of them had me by the shoulders. They were helping me to my feet.
“It was her maiden name,” I was mumbling, drool spilling down the side of my mouth. “Her father gave it to her when she was sixteen. Mr. Robertson. It was her maiden name. A.R. And Russel wanted it for his grandmother.”
I grabbed hold of Neil with both hands now as the two men righted me.
“I could do it with the locket, Neil,” I said. “I could show that to Lowenstein. If I could prove it’s Amy’s, if I could prove Warren gave it to his grandmother. That would do it. That would be just enough.”
“Awright, pal, awright, but now you gotta sit down.”
Neil had me by one arm, the other guy was taking hold of the other. The floor beneath my feet seemed an open drain with all the barroom swirling down into it.
But all the same, I broke away from them. My violent twisting movement took them by surprise, my gym-trained muscles broke their hold on me. I stumbled into the center of the room and swung around to face them. The two men moved in on me, poised to spring. I backed away from them toward the door. I righted my glasses.
“All true,” I said breathlessly.
“You cannot drive, man,” said Neil.
“Gotta try,” I said.
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“Innocent. Guy’s innocent. Gonna kill him, Neil-o,” I said. “Gotta. Gotta.”
“Ev, listen …” said Neil. He moved toward me. The other guy reached for my arm, but I swung it out of his way.
“Else I’m nothing,” I said. “Else I’m just nothing.”
I turned my back on them. I was at the door in two strides. I grabbed the brass handle and yanked it open. The door’s edge smacked into my forehead.
“Ow, shit!” I commented, reeling backwards, clutching my face.
“Ev!” Neil shouted.
But I didn’t let him get me. I charged at the door again, holding my forehead with one hand, grabbing the handle with the other.
I felt the blood, viscous and warm, seep down from my brow and between my fingers, as I staggered across the threshold and out into the night.
PART NINE
STRAP-DOWN
1
Four guards escorted the gurney to the door of the Deathwatch cell. Luther Plunkitt led them. When he reached the door, he paused and gestured to them to wait. The guards stood where they were, two on each side of the gurney. They were heavy men and each carried a black plastic riot shield strapped to his arm, each had a long rubber truncheon dangling from his belt. The men were called the Strap-down Team. They were there to get Beachum dressed; get him onto the gurney and belt him down; and roll him back into the death chamber.
The lead guard was carrying a brown paper package. Tilting his head at the door, Luther tapped the guard on the chest with one knuckle. Then he nodded at the Deathwatch guard and the door was opened. Luther went in and the guard with the package followed him. The other three waited outside with the gurney.
Beachum was sitting on the edge of his cot, his head hung down. Reverend Flowers was on the chair beside him, leaning toward him, hanging over him, murmuring steadily in a low, mournful voice.
“You gotta put your hand in God’s hand,” the reverend was saying. “God is with you, look to Jesus and you can face this thing. He will walk with you, He will walk with you to glo
ry …”He murmured without thinking, the words burbling up from a tarry anguish inside him, a mindless litany with which he nearly succeeded in hypnotizing himself.
Beachum’s hands kept coming up to his face to wipe his dry lips, kept dropping back between his legs again, coming up again. He stared at the floor, shaking his head. “1 swear to God I didn’t do anything, Harlan,” he kept repeating. “Nothing. I swear it. You gotta tell them. Jesus. My Bonnie. Gail My little girl. I didn’t even do anything.”
Long minutes ago, they had both passed the point of reason.
Now the door snapped open, and Beachum made a small, terrified noise; bolted upright as if a jolt of current had gone through him. His eyes darted back and forth between the clock and the door as Luther Plunkitt came in. Eleven, only eleven, it wasn’t time yet, he thought wildly. There was still an hour—a whole hour—left to go.
With a brief nod at Benson, Luther approached the cage. His step was firm, his expression was set in that meaningless smile of his. He was determined, he knew his duty and his mind had entered a zone in which there was only action. It was something he could count on himself to do at times like this: in battle, under pressure, in charge. For the next hour or so, he would be nothing more than the things he had to say, the things he had to do. He would become his job, and he would do his job.
He moved close to the bars. He saw Beachum get to his feet, the reverend beside him get to his feet. He spoke the words he had to speak in the tone of compassionate necessity that he deemed to be the voice of the state of Missouri.
“Frank. I’m gonna ask the reverend here to leave for a few moments, so that you can change your clothes and take care of some things. Then he’ll be able to come back in.”
And he nodded at the reverend, smiling blandly. But he registered, in some sequestered part of his brain, the prisoner’s terror-bright eyes, his mouth working like an insect’s mouth: the dull, scared, weirdly acquiescent countenance of every dead man he had ever seen. And he was dimly aware of the low boil of dread bubbling in his own unillumined recesses. But he ignored it, as he knew well how to do.