Enough Rope

  “You a hothead?” McLarendon asked him. “You fixing to lean out the car window, shoot a state trooper on your way home?”

  “It doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Then I’ll show you a trick. We just backdate this form and you’ve already had your cooling-off period. I’d say you look cool enough to me.”

  “You’re a good judge of character.”

  The man grinned. “This business,” he said, “a man’s got to be.”

  It was nice, a town that size. You got in your car and drove for ten minutes and you were way out in the country.

  Keller stopped the Taurus at the side of the road, cut the ignition, rolled down the window. He took the gun from one pocket and the box of shells from the other. The gun—McLarendon kept calling it a weapon—was a .38-caliber revolver with a two-inch barrel. McLarendon would have liked to sell him something heavier and more powerful. If Keller had wanted, McLarendon probably would have been thrilled to sell him a bazooka.

  He loaded the gun and got out of the car. There was a beer can lying on its side perhaps twenty yards off. Keller aimed at it, holding the gun in one hand. A few years ago they started firing two-handed in cop shows on TV, and nowadays that was all you saw, television cops leaping through doorways and spinning around corners, gun gripped rigidly in both hands, held out in front of their bodies like a fire hose. Keller thought it looked silly. He’d feel self-conscious, holding a gun like that.

  He squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, and he missed the beer can by several feet. The report of the gunshot echoed for a long time.

  He took aim at other things—at a tree, at a flower, at a white rock the size of a clenched fist. But he couldn’t bring himself to fire the gun again, to break the stillness with another gunshot. What was the point, anyway? If he used the gun he’d be too close to miss. You got in close, you pointed, you fired. It wasn’t rocket science, for God’s sake. It wasn’t neurosurgery. Anyone could do it.

  He replaced the spent cartridge and put the loaded gun in the car’s glove compartment. He spilled the rest of the shells into his hand and walked a few yards from the road’s edge, then hurled them with a sweeping sidearm motion. He gave the empty box a toss and got back in the car.

  Traveling light, he thought.

  Back in town, he drove past Quik-Print to make sure they were still open. Then, following the route he’d traced on the map, he found his way to 1411 Cowslip, a Dutch colonial house on the north edge of town. The lawn was neatly trimmed and fiercely green, and there was a bed of rosebushes on either side of the path leading from the sidewalk to the front door.

  One of the leaflets at the motel told how roses were a local specialty. But the town had been named not for the flower but for Aaron Rose, a local settler.

  He wondered if Engleman knew that.

  He circled the block, parked two doors away on the other side of the street from the Engleman residence. Vandermeer Edward, the White Pages listing had read. It struck Keller as an unusual alias. He wondered if Engleman had picked it out himself, or if the feds had selected it for him. Probably the latter, he decided. “Here’s your new name,” they would tell you, “and here’s where you’re going to live, and who you’re going to be.” There was an arbitrariness about it that somehow appealed to Keller, as if they relieved you of the burden of decision. Here’s your new name, and here’s your new driver’s license with your new name already on it. You like scalloped potatoes in your new life, and you’re allergic to bee stings, and your favorite color is blue.

  Betty Engleman was now Betty Vandermeer. Keller wondered why her first name hadn’t changed. Didn’t they trust Engleman to get it right? Did they figure him for a bumbler, apt to blurt out “Betty” at an inopportune moment? Or was it sheer coincidence, or sloppiness on their part?

  Around six-thirty the Englemans came home from work. They rode in a Honda Civic hatchback with local plates. They had evidently stopped to shop for groceries on the way home. Engleman parked in the driveway while his wife got a bag of groceries from the back. Then he put the car in the garage and followed her into the house.

  Keller watched lights go on inside the house. He stayed where he was. It was starting to get dark by the time he drove back to the Douglas Inn.

  On HBO, Keller watched a movie about a gang of criminals who have come to a small town in Texas to rob the bank. One of the criminals was a woman, married to one of the other gang members and having an affair with another. Keller thought that was a pretty good recipe for disaster. There was a prolonged shoot-out at the end, with everybody dying in slow motion.

  When the movie ended he went over to switch off the set. His eye was caught by the stack of flyers Engleman had run off for him. lost dog. Part Ger. Shepherd. Answers to Soldier. Call 765-1904. reward.

  Excellent watchdog, he thought. Good with children.

  A little later he turned the set back on again. He didn’t get to sleep until late, didn’t get up until almost noon. He went to the Mexican place and ordered huevos rancheros and put a lot of hot sauce on them.

  He watched the waitress’s hands as she served the food and again when she took his empty plate away. Light glinted off the little diamond. Maybe she and her husband would wind up on Cowslip Lane, he thought. Not right away, of course, they’d have to start out in the duplex, but that’s what they could aspire to. A Dutch colonial with that odd kind of pitched roof. What did they call it, anyway? Was that a mansard roof or did that word describe something else? Was it a gambrel, maybe?

  He thought he ought to learn these things sometime. You saw the words and didn’t know what they meant, saw the houses and couldn’t describe them properly.

  He had bought a paper on his way into the café, and now he turned to the classified ads and read through the real estate listings. Houses seemed very inexpensive. You could actually buy a low-priced home here for twice what he would be paid for the week’s work.

  There was a safe-deposit box no one knew about rented under a name he’d never used for another purpose, and in it he had enough cash to buy a nice home here for cash. Assuming you could still do that. People were funny about cash these days, leery of letting themselves be used to launder drug money.

  Anyway, what difference did it make? He wasn’t going to live here. The waitress could live here, in a nice little house with mansards and gambrels.

  Engleman was leaning over his wife’s desk when Keller walked into Quik-Print. “Why, hello,” he said. “Have you had any luck finding Soldier?”

  He remembered the name, Keller noticed.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “the dog came back on his own. I guess he wanted the reward.”

  Betty Engleman laughed.

  “You see how fast your flyers worked,” he went on. “They brought the dog back even before I got the chance to post them. I’ll get some use out of them eventually, though. Old Soldier’s got itchy feet, he’ll take off again one of these days.”

  “Just so he keeps coming back,” she said.

  “Reason I stopped by,” Keller said, “I’m new in town, as you might have gathered, and I’ve got a business venture I’m getting ready to kick into gear. I’m going to need a printer, and I thought maybe we could sit down and talk. You got time for a cup of coffee?”

  Engleman’s eyes were hard to read behind the glasses. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  They walked down to the corner, Keller talking about what a nice afternoon it was, Engleman saying little beyond agreeing with him. At the corner Keller said, “Well, Burt, where should we go for coffee?”

  Engleman just froze. Then he said, “I knew.”

  “I know you did, I could tell the minute I walked in there. How?”

  “The phone number on the flyer. I tried it last night. They never heard of a Mr. Gordon.”

  “So you knew last night. Of course, you could have made a mistake on the number.”

  Engleman shook his head. “I wasn’t going on memory. I ra
n an extra flyer and dialed the number right off it. No Mr. Gordon and no lost dog. Anyway, I think I knew before then. I think I knew the minute you walked in the door.”

  “Let’s get that coffee,” Keller said.

  They went into a place called the Rainbow Diner and had coffee at a table on the side. Engleman added artificial sweetener to his and stirred it long enough to dissolve marble chips. He had been an accountant back East, working for the man Keller had called in White Plains. When the feds were trying to make a RICO case against Engleman’s boss, Engleman was a logical place to apply pressure. He wasn’t really a criminal, he hadn’t done much of anything, and they told him he was going to prison unless he rolled over and testified. If he did what they said, they’d give him a new name and move him someplace safe. If not, he could talk to his wife once a month through a wire screen, and have ten years to get used to it.

  “How did you find me?” he wanted to know. “Somebody leaked it in Washington?”

  Keller shook his head. “Freak thing,” he said. “Somebody saw you on the street, recognized you, followed you home.”

  “Here in Roseburg?”

  “I don’t think so. Were you out of town a week or so ago?”

  “Oh, God,” Engleman said. “We went down to San Francisco for the weekend.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “I thought it was safe. I don’t even know anybody in San Francisco, I was never there in my life. It was her birthday, we figured nothing could be safer. I don’t know a soul there.”

  “Somebody knew you.”

  “And followed me back here?”

  “I don’t even know. Maybe they got your plate and had somebody run it. Maybe they checked your registration at the hotel. What’s the difference?”

  “No difference.”

  He picked up his coffee and stared into the cup. Keller said, “You knew last night. Did you call someone?”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. You’re in the witness-protection program. Isn’t there somebody you can call when this happens?”

  “There’s somebody I can call,” Engleman said. He put his cup back down again. “It’s not that great a program,” he said. “It’s great when they’re telling you about it, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Keller said.

  “Anyway, I didn’t call anybody. What are they going to do? Say they stake my place out, the house and the print shop, and they pick you up. Even if they make something stick against you, what good does it do me? We have to move again because the guy’ll just send somebody else, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, I’m not moving anymore. They moved us three times and I don’t even know why. I think it’s automatic, part of the program, they move you a few times during the first year or two. This is the first place we really settled into since we left, and we’re starting to make money at Quik-Print, and I like it. I like the town and I like the business. I don’t want to move.”

  “The town seems nice.”

  “It is,” Engleman said. “It’s better than I thought it would be.”

  “And you didn’t want to develop an accounting practice?”

  “Never,” Engleman said. “I had enough of that, believe me. Look what it got me.”

  “You wouldn’t necessarily have to work for crooks.”

  “How do you know who’s a crook and who isn’t? Anyway, I don’t want any kind of work where I’m always looking at the inside of somebody else’s business. I’d rather have my own little business work, there side by side with my wife, we’re right there on the street and you can look in the front window and see us. You need stationery, you need business cards, you need invoice forms, I’ll print ’em for you.”

  “How did you learn the business?”

  “It’s a franchise kind of a thing, a turn-key operation. Anybody could learn it in twenty minutes.”

  “No kidding,” Keller said.

  “Oh, yeah. Anybody.”

  Keller drank some of his coffee. He asked if Engleman had said anything to his wife, learned that he hadn’t. “That’s good,” he said. “Don’t say anything. I’m this guy, weighing some business ventures, needs a printer, has to have, you know, arrangements so there’s no cash-flow problem. And I’m shy talking business in front of women, so the two of us go off and have coffee from time to time.”

  “Whatever you say,” Engleman said.

  Poor scared bastard, Keller thought. He said, “See, I don’t want to hurt you, Burt. I wanted to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d put a gun to your head, do what I’m supposed to do. You see a gun?”

  “No.”

  “The thing is, I don’t do it, they send somebody else. I come back empty, they want to know why. What I have to do, I have to figure something out. You don’t want to run.”

  “No. The hell with running.”

  “Well, I’ll figure something out,” Keller said. “I’ve got a few days. I’ll think of something.”

  After breakfast the next morning Keller drove to the office of one of the realtors whose ads he’d been reading. A woman about the same age as Betty Engleman took him around and showed him three houses. They were modest homes but decent and comfortable, and they ranged between forty and sixty thousand dollars.

  He could buy any of them out of his safe-deposit box.

  “Here’s your kitchen,” the woman said. “Here’s your half-bath. Here’s your fenced yard.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he told her, taking her card. “I have a business deal pending and a lot depends on the outcome.”

  He and Engleman had lunch the next day. They went to the Mexican place and Engleman wanted everything very mild. “Remember,” he told Keller, “I used to be an accountant.”

  “You’re a printer now,” Keller said. “Printers can handle hot food.”

  “Not this printer. Not this printer’s stomach.”

  They each drank a bottle of Carta Blanca with the meal. Keller had another bottle afterward. Engleman had a cup of coffee.

  “If I had a house with a fenced yard,” Keller said, “I could have a dog and not worry about him running off.”

  “I guess you could,” Engleman said.

  “I had a dog when I was a kid,” Keller said. “Just the once, I had him for about two years when I was eleven, twelve years old. His name was Soldier.”

  “I was wondering about that.”

  “He wasn’t part shepherd. He was a little thing, I suppose he was some kind of terrier cross.”

  “Did he run off?”

  “No, he got hit by a car. He was stupid about cars, he just ran out in the street. The driver couldn’t help it.”

  “How did you happen to call him Soldier?”

  “I forget. Then when I did the flyer, I don’t know, I had to put answers to something. All I could think of were names like Fido and Rover and Spot. Like signing John Smith on a hotel register, you know? Then it came to me, Soldier. Been years since I thought about that dog.”

  After lunch Engleman went back to the shop and Keller returned to the motel for his car. He drove out of town on the same road he’d taken the day he bought the gun. This time he rode a few miles farther before pulling over and cutting the engine.

  He got the gun from the glove box and opened the cylinder, spilling the shells out into his palm. He tossed them underhand, then weighed the gun in his hand for a moment before hurling it into a patch of brush.

  McLarendon would be horrified, he thought. Mistreating a weapon in that fashion. Showed what a judge of character the man was.

  He got back in his car and drove back to town.

  He called White Plains. When the woman answered he said, “You don’t have to disturb him, Dot. Just tell him I didn’t make my flight today. I changed the reservation, I moved it ahead to Tuesday. Tell him everything’s okay, only it’s taking a little longer, like I thought it might.” She asked how the weather was.
“It’s real nice,” he said. “Very pleasant. Listen, don’t you think that’s part of it? If it was raining I’d probably have it taken care of, I’d be home by now.”

  Quik-Print was closed Saturdays and Sundays. Saturday afternoon Keller called Engleman at home and asked him if he felt like going for a ride. “I’ll pick you up,” he offered.

  When he got there Engleman was waiting out in front. He got in and fastened his seat belt. “Nice car,” he said.

  “It’s a rental.”

  “I didn’t figure you drove your own car all the way out here. You know, it gave me a turn. When you said how about going for a ride. You know, going for a ride. Like there’s a connotation.”

  “Actually,” Keller said, “we probably should have taken your car. I figured you could show me the area.”

  “You like it here, huh?”

  “Very much,” Keller said. “I’ve been thinking. Suppose I just stayed here.”

  “Wouldn’t he send somebody?”

  “You think he would? I don’t know. He wasn’t killing himself trying to find you. At first, sure, but then he forgot about it. Then some eager beaver in San Francisco happens to spot you and sure, he tells me to go out and handle it. But if I just don’t come back—”

  “Caught up in the lure of Roseburg,” Engleman said.

  “I don’t know, Burt, it’s not a bad place. You know, I’m going to stop that.”

  “What?”

  “Calling you Burt. Your name’s Ed now, so why don’t I call you Ed? What do you think, Ed? That sound good to you, Ed, old buddy?”

  “And what do I call you?”

  “Al’s fine. What should I do, take a left here?”

  “No, go another block or two,” Engleman said. “There’s a nice road, leads through some very pretty scenery.”

  A while later Keller said, “You miss it much, Ed?”

  “Working for him, you mean?”

  “No, not that. The city.”

  “New York? I never lived in the city, not really. We were up in Westchester.”

  “Still, the whole area. You miss it?”