by David Wiltse
“Anyway, the point is, Tony didn’t want Harper to drive. He knew that he was no good just by looking at him-you know. Harper?”
“Is he the one who looks like the loser in a headbutting competition?”
“Not the kind of man you want working undercover, unless you’re investigating a convention of hit men. So anyway, the clown who thought he had brains…”
“Tony.”
“Tony. He doesn’t want Harper and he does this eeny-meeny-miney-mo business with the rest of us. I was one of us whose badge was showing, and he picked me. Said at least he knew who I was. I didn’t even know who I was at that point, so what chance did he have? Anyway, he patted me down and patted Terry down and off we go to the airport, me driving, Tony next to me, Terry Dwyer next to him in the front seat because Terry has developed this “rapport” with him. Sal, with the eyes, is sitting behind me with an assault rifle pointing at my head as if I was going to suddenly drive him straight into the holding cell at the next precinct.
“I told him, ‘Sal, if we hit a bump and you pull the trigger, we’re all going to die.’ He just stared at me for about a minute. His eyes were as big as a deer’s and just that frightened, but boy, let me tell you, he saw things. He wasn’t like his pal, Tony. He didn’t have any illusions that he was center stage in a drama starring himself He knew he was in the middle of a police convoy on the way to the airport with about a thousand locals and feds and several SWAT teams all waiting for a chance to jump on him. Finally he pointed the gun down, but I had to keep checking him in the mirror all the way to the airport because his instincts kept telling him to hold that gun on my head and it just kept drifting up. He had great instincts. He was just too dumb to trust them.
“The plan was to take them when we got to the airport and they thought they’d made it and relaxed a bit. Dwyer was going to freeze Tony in place, which shouldn’t have been a problem because he was waving to the crowds along the way, and I was going to get the. 45 that was under the door covering-the armrest was rigged to come down and I could pull it out and take care of Sal. But halfway there, Tony got a little bit smarter. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly he tells me to stop and he opens the door and kicks Terry Dwyer onto the highway and off we go again. So much for the rapport. Maybe there weren’t enough cameramen on the highway, so Tony had a chance to remember he was in deep shit. Whatever, all of a sudden I have Tony’s shotgun in my ribs and Sal’s got the Kalashnikov right back where it belonged.
“We get to the airport, and I am driving very carefully now, believe me. I keep working on Sal, asking him to keep the AK-47 pointed away but he’s not buying it anymore, and when we hit the tarmac with all the airport lights and about a thousand more cops and the roar of the jets and the hostages in the back starting to wail because it looks like they’re going to have to escort our boys to Libya, old Sal’s discomfort level goes up about ten more notches. If I had sneezed, he would have blown my head off.”
Becker stopped abruptly and returned to the window. After staring blankly for a few moments, he turned to Gold.
“That should do it for today,” he said.
“What happened just now?” Gold asked.
Becker said, “This has been at least an hour; that’s enough for now.”
“What made you stop? What did you remember?”
After a pause, Becker said, “I saw Sal’s eyes. In my mind, I saw them very clearly. Clearer than yours. I haven’t had any reason to study yours.”
“And?”
“You know the most distinctive thing about his eyes? It wasn’t that they were scared or concentrated or dangerous. They were trusting. They didn’t trust me, or the situation, but you could see that this was the kind of guy who would normally trust people, things, life. He trusted his nitwit friend, Tony. He trusted in the ability of the assault rifle to intimidate me and everybody else. It wasn’t that he expected events to take an orderly progression; he’d been on the short end all his life, but even on that end, there were things you could trust. You could trust that might makes right, for instance. You could trust that a man with a weapon in his ribs and an automatic rifle point-blank to his head is not the man who is going to try anything to harm you… Once a man trusts you, once he thinks he knows what you’re going to do, he’s yours.”
Becker started toward the door.
“What did you do?” Gold asked.
“It’s in your file.”
“The file just says you shot him.”
“That’s all I did.”
“But why?”
“Why? He was in the act of committing a felony with a deadly weapon. He was kidnapping eight American citizens, he was…”
“But why you?” Gold interrupted.
“I was supposed to.”
“If Dwyer had been with you to take care of Tony. But even then you had contingency plans; there were snipers all over the place. The copilot was an armed agent, so was one of the stewardesses…”
“That’s not all in the file. You did a little research.”
“I told you, I wanted the assignment. Why did you go ahead with it? You could have just let them get out of the limo, and no one would have blamed you. Why did you do it?”
Becker grinned at him from the doorway. “You’re going to have to work harder than that,” he said and left the room. He eased the door closed behind him.
Dyce was startled to find the man lying in his living room. His mind had been so filled with his encounter with Helen that he had forgotten about the presence of the man. Even his resolve while shopping that he would not do this again had slipped his mind. The girl-woman-he did not know what to call her, how to think of her. She was probably not as young as he thought; women weren’t for some years. It was only when they reached their forties that women began to look their age and men looked younger. But there was something so trusting and simple about her character that he suspected some part of her would always remain a girl.
And she liked him, she clearly liked him. He was no expert, but he could see that. He wasn’t entirely certain how it made him feel to have her respond to him so unambiguously, but he was certain he hadn’t misread her feelings at least. There had been mistakes in the past. Dyce had allowed himself to become infatuated with girls who did not reciprocate, girls who ultimately weren’t worthy. Such episodes always left him feeling ashamed of himself for being so gullible, and renewed his resolve to remain alone. But he was not mistaken about Helen, that much was certain. She had remembered his name, she had thought about him-she had told him that!
Working in a state of distraction as he thought about his meeting with the girl, Dyce prepared himself for what he had to do. It was time, in any event, whether he had resolved to stop or not, whether he now had new interests or not. The man had been dead for three days, and it was time to get rid of him. His coloring had begun to change and the odor, despite repeated washings, was getting hard to ignore.
Dyce lit the incense that he had placed in saucers around the room. He did not like the smell of incense, but it was more effective than the modern deodorizers and Dyce didn’t approve of using aerosols anyway because of the ozone layer. The incense, however, added smoke to the already-murky aspect of the room and gave the whole proceedings an oriental feel which he thought was inappropriate. It would take several days to air out the house after he was done, which meant removing the soundproofing from the windows, a step that made Dyce nervous even when there was nothing to hide. Disposal had always been a problem.
The man’s body was surprisingly heavy in comparison to his ethereal appearance. He should have weighed no more than a ghost, but his body seemed to struggle against Dyce’s strength as he carried it to the bathroom, as if it wanted to remain in the place where it had spent the last ten days, alive and dead, or as if the body was resisting the final insult that awaited it in the bathtub.
Setting the showerhead to a fine spray, Dyce adjusted the pressure so that the body was enveloped in a lukewarm mist. T
he trick was to make the water warm enough to aid in the dissolution of liquids but not so hot that it would bum Dyce, who would be working in the mist. With the water running, Dyce filled his thirty-gallon, restaurant-sized stock pot halfway and turned the stove burner to high flame. If his tuning was accurate, the water would be aboil by the time he needed it.
When Dyce returned to the bathroom with his knives, the mascara was running down the man’s cheeks and coloring the stream of water that swirled down the drain. In the brighter light of the bathroom, the lipstick on the man looked harsh and cheap and shameful, as if he were a transvestite who had been caught in mid-transformation, frozen forever in his gender confusion. Dyce felt a moment’s disgust as he regarded the man. He was not worthy, after all. Dyce had been wasting his time admiring the beauty of the man. He felt momentarily soiled and ashamed, as if he had just discovered he had made love to a harlot with a virgin’s mask. You are better than this, he told himself. You deserve better for yourself, and you must stop acting this way.
He undressed, kneeled, and leaned into the shower’s spray. Droplets formed immediately and dripped from the blade of the chefs knife. Filled with resolve to make this the last time, to change his life and live in a better, purer, more self-sufficient way, Dyce set to work.
Helen was frantic. She knew she shouldn’t do it, she knew it was precisely the kind of thing that drove men away, but she couldn’t help herself She actually said it to herself, I can not help myself, as if it were permission. She liked to think of herself as someone who was swept along by irresistible forces, a victim of her own tempestuous emotions. The winds of compulsion blew and raged and she was cast helplessly before them, rudder broken, the sails of her spirit swollen to the ripping point by the great force of her wild passions.
At the same time she knew perfectly well that it was this same compulsive behavior that frightened men away. In her sober moments she yearned for some measure of self-control that would keep her from hurling herself off cliffs of impulse, into the arms of strangers. But when the turmoil of passion gripped her, she forgave herself everything. She felt she must continue to throw her heart until someone caught it.
She had found his house with no problem but she hesitated at the door, trying to calm herself a bit, at least. Sometimes when she felt this way, it was all she could do to breathe, and her body would quiver with excitement. Surely, surely, the world could sense the urgency and rightness of what she did when it sent such strong vibrations to her.
There were no lights coming from the house, but his car was in the garage so he must be home. She did not know much about him, but she was certain Mr. Dyce was not the kind of man to be off with friends on a week night.
Glancing at the other houses on the block, she confirmed that it was not too late to call. The whole row of houses, each with its little lawn and full front porch, was lighted brightly, almost festively. Greenish pictures jerked and shifted on television screens and bulbs shone from upstairs bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms. People moved openly and in silhouette behind screens, and at the end of the block two children were still at play, yelling at each other in the night.
It was a family neighborhood, a sane place, secure, not affluent, exactly, but certainly comfortable. A strange location, perhaps, for a single man, but a sign that he valued the right things in life. For a moment, Helen wondered if maybe Mr. Dyce had a family after all, if the lights were out because he and Mrs. Dyce were making love, if even a family of children, in-laws, pets awaited on the other side of the door. He didn’t seem to be connected to anyone. He had not mentioned anyone at the coffee shop when she had given him the opportunity; he had all the earmarks of a lonely man. Helen could not believe that she had misjudged him so completely. His compassion was real; there was no mistaking that, and she would rely on that if nothing else. If she had made an error in coming here, at least his compassion would keep her from suffering too much for it. She knew she could count on him.
She rang the bell, waited, then rang it again too soon, unable to stop herself There was not a sound from the house, and she decided that the bell did not work. A large iron knocker was in the middle of the door, a decorative relic from a pre-electronic time. She opened the screen door and lifted the knocker and let it fall against its metallic stump. That was not loud enough, so she rapped it several more times, holding it in her hand.
Nervously, Helen watched the neighboring houses to see if there was any response to the knocking, which seemed to clang like a shovel slammed against a car. She could hear nothing from within the house, even with her ear pressed against the door. It occurred to her that Dyce might be injured, he might be lying on the floor, unable to respond, the victim of a stroke, a heart attack. She could almost see him groping toward her with outstretched hand, mouthing her name and a cry for help.
Helen tried the door knob. He would want to know she was here. He would not want to miss her because he couldn’t hear. Perhaps he was listening to music with earphones on. What sort of music? she wondered. The knob twisted in her hand, but the door did not budge.
Her hand was still on the knob when the door opened suddenly and without a sound of warning. Dyce stood there in a bathrobe, blinking at her, looking startled.
“Oh, Mr. Dyce,” she said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I hate to bother you but I was so unhappy, I just started thinking about my poor mother again and I couldn’t stop and it was driving me crazy and I knew you would understand…”
She brushed past him and into the house before he spoke. He reached out as if to stop her, then relented. She knew he would want to see her. She waited for him in the little foyer just inside the door. From where she stood she could see into the living room and a portion of the kitchen and her eyes roved curiously as she spoke.
“I just had to come. I knew I shouldn’t, but then I said to myself, Mr. Dyce will understand, he has been through it…”
He still had not spoken. His hair was wet and plastered to his forehead and his face dripped water into the bathrobe. There was something perplexed about his expression, as if he could not believe she was there-or worse, did not remember her.
“I got you out of the shower,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, breaking his silence for the first time. “Yes, I was in the shower.”
“I knew you were here but just couldn’t hear me,” said Helen. The shower was running in the background and she could hear water boiling and a lid clattering in the kitchen. The shower explained why he hadn’t heard her, but the house seemed alive with noise and Helen wondered why she had heard none of it from the porch.
“What do you want?”
“I had to see you. I just didn’t know where else to turn, I didn’t know who else to go to, this is a lovely house…”
She entered the living room and swept the panorama with a little turn of admiration. “Oh,” she said. “It’s so nice. You’ve done this so nice. And it’s so much bigger than my place. Look at those curtains. It’s unusual for a man to have curtains, I mean, such nice, big ones like that. I mean, men tend to just live with what they have, don’t they, but floral curtains- someone must have put a lot of thought into that, I bet.”
Dyce moved to the other side of her so that he was standing between her and the hall leading to the bathroom. He could not imagine what was going on with her or why she was here. What did she mean about his curtains?
“It’s lovely, it really is. And what is that you’re burning? Incense? Is that incense?”
She leaned over one of the saucers and waved the fumes to her nose.
“I never really knew what incense smelled like. That’s such a nice touch, it really is, Mr. Dyce. You’ve done everything up so nicely.”
She ran a finger across the table draped with white silk.
“Did you have help?”
“What?” Dyce asked dully. His mind was racing with priorities, possibilities, and necessities. Nothing she said made any sense to him.
“Did you hav
e help decorating at all?” Helen swept an arm around the room. Dyce followed it, trying to imagine what she saw.
“It looks like a woman’s touch.”
“I don’t know what… what did you want?”
“I just had to see you tonight. I’m sorry, I would have called, but you only had your address on your checks, not your phone number. I just felt so awful. I know we don’t know each other very long, but I feel that I know you. Am I wrong? I feel I can talk to you in a way I can’t to anybody else. There’s something between us. I know it, I just know it.”
She stopped speaking abruptly and stood in the middle of the room, trembling. She had said it. This was the moment: He would either laugh at her or throw her out, or, worst of all, treat her with pity.
Dyce’s expression was still one of confusion, but she noticed his chest was heaving as if he were reacting with strong emotion-or struggling to control himself.
“Would you like me to go now?” she asked at last.
“I don’t think I can let you go,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Dyce!” She took a step toward him, then stopped herself It was better to let them make the first move, if they could ever be coaxed into making it. But he cared, he clearly cared!
“I’ll wait here if you want to turn off the shower,” she said, seating herself in the overstuffed chair that she knew must be “his.”
“Yes,” said Dyce. “The shower.” He left the room, then came back almost immediately. He gave Helen a very peculiar smile.
“Don’t go away,” he said and for the first time that night there was animation in his voice.