“It can’t be a big factory,” he told Amy, who sat on the bed with her Biggie-sized french fries and watched Melissa McCarthy on TV. “She said it closes at 5:00 every day. That means one shift only. She also said that it’s out in the country on an old road that nobody uses anymore.”
“I guess,” Amy said.
“This would be a lot easier if you could remember her last name.”
“She didn’t tell me her last name. I already told you that.”
Rudy shrugged. “She also mentioned that there’d be chemicals. So, whatever the factory makes, it requires chemicals of some kind. Toxic chemicals. The kind it would cost more than 50 grand a year to deal with legally.”
“Sounds right,” Amy said.
“Here, listen to this. McManus Specialty Wood Products, 487 Old Pike Road. According to the county map,” and he flipped to the front of the telephone book, “it’s about two, almost three miles out of town. This could be it!”
Amy squeezed a glob of ketchup onto a french fry but her heart just wasn’t in it. She sat staring at the french fry longer than any french fry deserved.
“It’s either that or the Bisque Barn,” Rudy told her. “But I wouldn’t call a barn a factory, would you?”
Beside her right thigh lay a spicy chicken sandwich, Value Meal Combo #7, still in its wrapper. She had no appetite for it either, and the french fries were not doing a thing to quiet her stomach.
“It’s just not worth it,” she said. “You could get hurt.”
“Just what is bisque anyway? Do you know?”
She sniffled and blinked at the TV.
“Nobody’s going to get hurt,” he said.
“Nobody?”
“It’s $50,000, Amy. How long would you have to work to earn $50,000? After taxes—how long would you have to work?”
“I don’t care,” she said.
“Two years. Two fucking years, that’s how long.”
“Please don’t swear at me.” She had started to cry again, that sticky, whimpery kind of weepage that set his nerves on edge.
“I’m sorry, you’re right. I apologize.” He turned away from her and focused on the phone directory again.
A few minutes later she said, “It’s pottery.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bisque. That’s what bisque is. It’s pottery.”
“You don’t make that in a factory, do you?”
“I wouldn’t call it a factory, no.”
He closed the phone directory and climbed up beside her on the bed and snuggled against her. “This is why I love you,” he said. “You are so damn smart. You’re practically a genius.”
* * *
The last Friday of the month. Approximately 2:00 in the afternoon. Amy sat cross-legged on the bed, hugging a pillow, while Rudy hitched and hiked to McManus’s Specialty Wood Products on Old Pike Road. His route was a deliberately circuitous one, more than twice the true mileage from the motel. The last leg of the trip took him through a stretch of woods and across a shallow creek, but eventually he emerged on the western side of Old Pike Road, directly across the highway from the gravel lane that led to the factory.
Old Pike Road might have once been a two-lane concrete thoroughfare but now its pavement was broken and pot-holed, irregularly patched, the shoulders overgrown with scrub grass encroaching from the woods. The factory, some 50 yards away down a wide gravel lane, consisted of three adjoining structures. A rectangular steel building at least 40 feet long; attached at its northern end, a lean-to that housed the planning board and a few other pieces of equipment; at the southern end, a cement-block office building, painted green, three rooms at the most. The entire structure sat in a spacious clearing surrounded on all four sides by woods, second growth maples and oaks and now and then the shiny white trunk of a statuesque birch.
Rudy hunkered down behind a thick black pin oak across the road from the factory. He counted nine cars in the parking lot. He glanced at his wristwatch. Four-ten. He set down the Walmart bag he had been carrying and then turned it over and dumped its contents onto the leaf-matted ground. Two roast beef sandwiches from Arby’s, a paintball mask, steel mallet, four packets of horsey sauce, one paper napkin.
* * *
5:10 p.m. One vehicle remained in the parking lot. A red Cherokee, this year’s model. Rudy crumpled up his sandwich wrappers, empty sauce packets, napkin, plastic bag. Crumpled them all into a tight ball, scooped a hole five inches deep from the soft earth, buried the ball and tamped down the dirt. From a hip pocket he pulled a pair of black batting gloves and laid them beside the mallet and mask. A squirrel chittered in the branches above him.
5:46 p.m. A vehicle approached from the south. Rudy checked his position behind the tree, adjusted to the north. The vehicle, a metallic gold Bonneville with its sunroof open, was not moving fast, maybe 40 miles per hour, but it slowed to half that speed as it passed the factory lane. Rudy slid around the tree, as smooth as a shadow, but not before he caught a glimpse of the Bonneville’s driver sitting hunched forward over the steering wheel while eyeing the factory, black ski cap on his head, black turtleneck, black driving gloves clenched around the steering wheel.
Rudy chuckled to himself. “Amateur,” he said.
5:49 p.m. The Bonneville returned from the north. Without slowing, it passed the gravel lane. For a moment Rudy thought the driver had chickened out and was turning tail for home. But then, suddenly braking, the car veered to the left, onto the shoulder, came to a stop. The brake lights did not go out. The driver remained inside the car, forehead against the steering wheel, building up his nerve. Finally the brake lights went out and the back-up lights came on and the Bonneville backed all the way past the gravel lane, then stopped, jerked forward, and progressed, as if trying for stealth, to park on the opposite side of the red Cherokee.
Rudy stood up behind the tree. Leaned as far around it as he dared.
The man in the Bonneville climbed out, dressed head to toe in black. Walking quickly toward the office door, he glanced over his shoulder toward the highway, faced the factory again, yanked the ski mask down over his face. Standing at the door, he fumbled for his key ring, couldn’t find the right key. In the end he tried the door and found it unlocked. Stuck his right hand under his sweater, pulled out a small black handgun, looked toward the highway, opened the door and slid inside.
Rudy bent down behind the tree. Pulled the batting gloves on. Slipped the paintball mask over his head. Picked up the steel mallet at the hilt, glanced up and then down Old Pike Road. Stood up. Took a deep breath. Then sprinted in a half-crouch across the road and down the lane.
Rudy’s intention was to stand just outside the factory door and then conk the tennis instructor when he exited. But his paintball mask fogged up and he was lucky to have the red blur of the Cherokee to guide him as he ran. He crouched at the rear bumper, yanked the mask off and attempted to wipe away the fog. But there was some kind of protective film over the clear plastic lens, and another strip over the vented area for his nose and mouth. He fumbled for a corner of the protective film but could not grasp it with his gloves on. He removed one batting glove and peeled the protective film off the lens and that was when he heard a gunshot, dull and muffled but echoing throughout the metal shell of the factory.
“Sonofabitch works fast,” Rudy said.
He pulled the paintball mask on again and then yanked on the batting glove and with his first breath the lens fogged because he had not removed the protective film from the nose and mouth vents. He tore the mask off again and now the front door of the factory office swung open, banged back against the concrete wall. The quick crunch of footsteps on gravel. Rudy raised himself up a few inches, peeked through the Cherokee’s tailgate window. The tennis instructor was coming quickly toward his car, brown attaché case in left hand, handgun dangling from his right.
At the Bonneville’s door the tennis instructor reached for the door handle but the handgun banged against it. The tennis instructor jer
ked away suddenly and looked at the gun as if seeing it for the first time, an awful thing, abhorrent, seeing it apparently as something like a giant booger judging by the way he shook it off his hand and flicked it onto the gravel.
Rudy saw the handgun laying not far from his feet and he thought, What the hell. He stood up without his mask on and came out from behind the Cherokee. The tennis instructor had the car door open now, but at the sound of Rudy’s approach he jerked his head around and saw Rudy and froze for a moment, his eyes, Rudy thought, like Al Jolson’s behind the ski mask. Then the tennis instructor turned as if to run back to the factory but Rudy reached out with the mallet and swung with a short downstroke against the back of the man’s head.
The tennis instructor went down on his knees. Rudy grabbed him underneath the arms, pulled him backward a few feet, shoved him through the open door of the Bonneville.
Rudy went to where the handgun lay, put down his mallet, picked up the gun. A Glock. “Nice,” Rudy said.
The tennis instructor was moaning a bit as he lay on his side across the front seat, his left arm jerking as if he meant to grab hold of something, pull himself up, time to rise and shine, sleepyhead. Rudy helped him to sit up behind the steering wheel, pushed both feet inside.
The man’s eyes kept opening and falling shut, opening and falling shut. Rudy was leaning halfway inside the car now, his face so close to the tennis instructor’s that he could hear the man’s breath as it rustled through the fabric of the ski mask.
It was then that Rudy suddenly knew what he would do next, what he had always wanted to do anyway, what he had been singled out and chosen to do. In the next second all of his future became clear to him, how this one act would change everything, make everything possible.
With his left hand he lifted up the man’s ski mask, folded it over the man’s nose. Put the barrel of the Glock to the man’s lips and wedged it in, pushing and twisting, until the tennis instructor began to cooperate and opened his mouth wider. Quickly Rudy calculated the proper trajectory for the bullet so that it would blow out the back of the skull where the mallet had struck, but then the tennis instructor ceased his cooperation and began to gag and pull away, so Rudy squeezed the trigger and hoped for the best.
The man’s head flew back against the headrest but then snapped forward and fell heavily against Rudy’s hand, still holding the Glock inside the man’s mouth. Rudy did not like having his fingers nearly inside the tennis instructor’s mouth. He jerked his hand away and left the gun to fall onto the man’s lap.
Rudy had intended not to look into the rear of the Bonneville but he looked anyway. There was a lot of unattractive brain matter stuck to and dripping from the interior roof of the car. Some of it had splattered onto Rudy’s face, little gobs of the man’s former personality, sticky little globs of hopes and dreams and fears.
Rudy gagged and turned away. Horsey sauce burned in the back of his throat.
But afterward, everything was easy. Everything seemed crystal clear. Pick up the attaché case. Gather up the paintball mask and mallet. Stroll back across the road and into the woods, scrub your face with a handful of leaves, then stroll back toward the motel and the fast-food restaurants, depositing all unnecessary accoutrements in various trash receptacles along the way.
He kept reminding himself that Amy was the only person alive who knew he was in Pennsylvania. As for Alex the nerd, screw him and his job in Seattle. Screw his signing bonus. Rudy had made $50,000, tax free, for an afternoon’s work. What could be better than that?
* * *
“There, read that,” Rudy said, and he tossed the morning’s newspaper onto the bed where, at 11:00 a.m., Amy still lay with the blankets pulled to her neck.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Read it and see if you don’t feel a whole lot better.” He was no longer working hard to be polite and patient with her. There was no future in it. Her timidity rankled him. Her dullness was holding him back.
She sat up and read the Tionesta Herald. MURDER/SUICIDE AT MCMANUS, the headline read. The article described how the bodies of a local businessman and a local tennis instructor, both killed by the same weapon, recovered at the scene, had been found at approximately 1:20 a.m. that morning by a sawmill worker named Larry Deible. Acting on a telephone call from Mrs. McManus, who had tried and failed to reach her husband by phone at his office, Deible had driven to the factory from his home a mile and a half away. Local police theorized that the tennis instructor had shot McManus in his office, then returned to his vehicle in the parking lot, where, seized by a fever of guilt, had taken his own life. The motive for the murder was unknown.
“I’ll bet tongues are wagging all over town,” Amy said.
“Let them wag,” said Rudy.
“Can we go home now?”
“You can,” he said.
“Why not you too?”
“I need to hang around a while longer.”
“What for?”
“Because I do. Because... it just makes sense this way. If we split up, I mean. You go back home and I’ll meet you there in a couple of days.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she said.
“Look, you get on the bus—”
“I’m not going! Everybody will right away want to know where you are, why you didn’t come back with me. What am I supposed to tell them—he’s up in Pennsylvania reading the newspapers?”
Rudy dropped down on his knees beside the bed and reached under the bed and pulled out the brown attaché case. He lifted out the two stacks of money, too big bricks held together with rubber bands, and tossed them onto the bed. Then he went to the closet alcove and returned to the bed with a suitcase in each hand, one of his and one of Amy’s, still packed with their clothes. These he tossed onto the bed as well, side by side, and popped them open. He laid one brick of money in the corner of each suitcase, covered them with clothing, snapped the suitcases shut.
“I don’t care if you give it all to me,” she told him. “I’m not leaving here until you do.”
He stared at her hard for a moment, wondered what would happen if he struck her. Would she scream? Would she leap out of bed, go running from the room? Well, that would be something, at least. That would be—no, that would be bad. Because she knew. Only she knew.
He picked up both suitcases and marched back to the closet and slammed the suitcases against the wall. “Two days,” he told her. “Two days and we’re outta here.”
“Why can’t we go now?” she whined.
“Two frigging days,” he said.
* * *
The next day was Sunday. A good day to put on a jacket and tie. Besides, he really liked this jacket, this brown corduroy, shoplifted from Walmart in anticipation of the cruise. He felt good in it, rakish and clever. He felt like Magnum P.I.
“How do you think I’d look with a moustache?” he asked.
Amy was still in bed, still in the same pajamas she had been wearing for the past 72 hours. A maid came in and cleaned around her every day, yet still the room stank of cheeseburgers and pizza.
“I don’t see why you have to get dressed up just to go out and buy a newspaper,” she said.
“I’m going to walk around a little bit, listen in on a few conversations, try to hear what people are saying about this thing.”
“You hate wearing ties.”
“Look, it’s Sunday afternoon, people are coming home from church. I’ll look out of place if I’m not dressed up.”
“But you hate wearing ties.”
“I hate a lot of things!” He was facing the mirror when he said this, but she was behind him on the bed, and he hadn’t been looking at his own reflection.
“You promised we’d leave tomorrow.”
“If that’s what I said then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Just so you remember. You promised.”
He cocked his head strangely then and closed his eyes. She could see the muscles in his jaw working. She hugg
ed her blankets.
Finally he opened his eyes, considered his reflection a last time, nodded once to himself, and headed for the door. “Stay put,” he told her.
The door had not yet fallen shut behind him when she said, “You’d look even sillier with a moustache.”
* * *
He found the funeral home without any difficulty. There were only two of them in town, both on Main Street. He went in and signed the guest book as Thomas Dubonnet. Walked around in the front room for a few minutes, admiring the floral arrangements, reading the sympathy cards. Then into the adjoining room, crowded with mourners. And thought to himself, McManus must’ve been a popular guy.
He worked his way through the crowd until he could see into the viewing room, could see the black and chrome casket in its bank of flowers against the far wall. Seated on a blue sofa to the left of the casket was Mrs. McManus, the grieving widow. She sat alone in the center of the sofa. Tongues are wagging, he thought, and tried not to smile.
He approached the coffin then, its lid closed, and stood facing it for a few moments. When he turned she was looking up at him. He crossed to her and reached for her hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said.
She put a hand to his elbow, pulled him closer, put her mouth to his ear. “Find the restroom,” she whispered. “I’ll tap three times.”
He nodded and patted her hand and drew away from her and retreated through the crowd.
The restroom was down a narrow corridor off the foyer. He was a bit surprised to find that it looked like any other private restroom, not particularly funereal, just a sink and a toilet. He drank four Dixie cups of cold water before she tapped on the door.
He unlatched the safety bolt. She opened the door and slipped inside, quickly reshot the bolt, turned to face him. He stood there with the backs of his legs against the toilet bowl, the cold ceramic.
She turned the water on in the sink basin, let it run, a splash and gurgle. She moved closer, almost touched him. “Now I understand,” she said very softly, almost smiling.
Incident on Ten-Right Road Page 17