The Listener

by Robert R. McCammon

  It was a warm night. Pearly felt the sweat trickling down under his arms. He felt a damp sheen on his forehead beneath the brim of his white straw fedora. The insects were starting to whisper and thrum again, and it sounded to him as if the night were asking him a question: What are you going to do…to do…to do…to do…?

  “Help me,” Ginger said, and pressed the flashlight against his right hand.

  Did he remember taking it? Or did he just remember how her face looked in that moment, as if she already knew everything about him, everything he tried to hide, all the secrets? When she looked at him with those champagne-colored cat eyes he thought she could see right to his beginnings of being the baby that everybody hears about but nobody knows, the kid left in a basket on the church steps a couple of hours before early Sunday service, and then on into the maelstrom of foster families, one after the other and none of them worth a damn, on into the never-ending storm of being a beautiful boychild that some people wanted to use and some people wanted to use others with, and on and on into the early and terrible realization that no one was on your side in this world, nobody gave a shit about you and nobody was going to feed you when you were hungry or hold your hand when you walked where the angels feared to tread, so mama don’t give this man no money because no one was to be trusted and mama don’t give this man no money because the only value of a name was as a disguise and so he had gone through many of them, many disguises and many masks, and down deep where the ashes lay ever-smouldering in the burnt-out cellar of his soul he had the satisfaction of being smart and quick, a survivor to the core.

  When he took the flashlight from Ginger into his own hand and followed her to where the doc lay dying it was just a natural progression of the survival instinct that had been doubling and redoubling itself since he’d been old enough to steal a box of stogies and sell them to other kids for twice their value, earning money to get out of that house in Waycross, Georgia, where the old man with the white beard and the old woman with the constant cough dressed him up as a cripple with two small crutches and paraded him from country church to country church to beg for donations to their non-existent Poor Orphans’ Home. And at night the old woman came upon his bed with her toothless mouth and her crazed eyes and the old man rasped with whiskied breath that if you didn’t act your part and do it right two broken legs were the least you’re gonna get.

  And he meant it, which was why on that last night the boy whose name then was simply Sonny hit the man in the head with a clothes iron while he was sleeping and when the woman woke up and started to shriek he threw a handful of salt in her eyes because he’d known she would awaken, and then he bashed her in the forehead and got out before he knew they were dead or not but there was no time for that, no time, no time at all…

  “Sixty-two dollars, two quarters, three dimes, three nickels and sixteen cents,” said Ginger, after she’d gone through Honeycutt’s wallet and his pockets. “Not bad.” On the ground the doc was still trying to crawl away, but his efforts were as weak as if he were attempting a mile-long swim through mud.

  The man who had accepted the name of Pearly heard himself say, “I want half of that. And the car.”

  “Do tell. He’s owed me for the last four shows, ten bucks each.”

  “I don’t care. I said I want half of that and the car.”

  She cocked her head at him. Her tongue came out along her lower lip as if she were tasting something surprisingly tangy. “You do know I’m the one holdin’ the gun, right?”

  “Wouldn’t dare forget. But this is business after an act of mercy by one of God’s true saints, isn’t it? So share your manna with the heathen, half-and-half.”

  She smiled. The light glinted off her front teeth. “Earn it,” she said, and she offered him the pistol grip-first.

  He hesitated, staring at the gun.

  “Lady Nevins says they lock up at ten-thirty sharp,” Ginger said. “I believe her. We don’t have time to dawdle, with the things that have to be done. We don’t want to wake anybody up to get into that house, do we? And sure as hell we can’t walk in together.”

  “You’re crazy! I’m not shootin’ anybody.”

  “Can’t just leave him here alive, Pearly. You know that.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot him in the head? Christ A’mighty, he might get a second breath and walk out of here!”

  “Doubtful, but possible. And I didn’t shoot him in the head,” she said, “because I told him you were gonna kill him. And you are, Pearly. You’re gonna finish the job and you’re gonna do it quick and earn your split, so we can get back to that house within an hour and we don’t get locked out.”

  “But…why even go back there?”

  “Because I want to see the Nevins before they turn in, and I want to tell ’em that Doctor Honeycutt got real drunk and real sick and it’s best he sleep in the backseat of his car tonight because he’s already puked once. They won’t be askin’ where he is, and they won’t be amblin’ out to the car either.” She glanced down at her victim. “Somebody’ll find him, by and by. I just want it to be later than sooner. Got it?”

  Pearly didn’t answer. He did get it, but he realized he had just stepped into a swamp that could very well suck him under…though, strangely, he enjoyed the weight of the gun in his hand, and the sight of the helpless man on the ground and the enticing woman in the red dress standing next to him, whose perfume smelled like charred roses.

  “I’m goin’ to get somethin’ out of the trunk. Just hold off a minute,” she said, and she walked away.

  When Ginger came back she had the blanket and the gas can. She put the can on the ground, folded up the blanket and put it over Honeycutt’s head. “There you go. One shot through the nuthouse. Don’t want to get anything on that nice white suit.”

  “Have you done this before?”

  “I read The Police Gazette. One shot only. More than that, any farmer around here might come lookin’.”

  “This is…it’s crazy…”

  “It’s necessary. The car and half the money. Doin’ Willie a favor, really. He’s been gone a long time.”

  “Crazy,” Pearly repeated, and he had the thought that this must be a scam, it must be a variation of the old blackmail dodge, where you lured somebody into doing something that you could hold over them for the rest of their lives, and in this case the bullets in the gun were blanks and Honeycutt had squeezed a red dye capsule all over his side and the next shot would be a blank too, and afterward Honeycutt and Ginger would meet up and laugh over how that sucker had fallen into the trap, and now they had him on the hook and he would never ever get away from—

  Pearly fired one shot into the blanket over the doctor’s head.

  Smoke spooled up from the hole in the blanket. Honeycutt’s legs jerked a few times, as if running against his onrushing death. Then the movement ceased, and as smoke curled from the pistol’s barrel up into Pearly’s face the sound of the night insects rushed in to fill the silence.

  He stepped back as Ginger took the flashlight from him and leaned down to lift the blanket.

  “That got him,” she said with a sudden release of the breath she’d been holding, and he looked over her shoulder at the dark hole in the back of Honeycutt’s head that was oozing red in the light’s cold beam. His heart was pounding so hard he feared it would burst through his chest; his stomach pitched and rolled, and he had to walk away a few paces and make a couple of circles before he realized the sickness had passed and he was all right.

  “We’ve got some work to do,” Ginger told him. “Better take your hat and suit coat off, put ’em in the car. We’ve got to strip the body.”

  “What?”

  “Get his clothes off him. Bundle ’em up, put ’em in the trunk and dump ’em somewhere a couple of miles away. Make sure we don’t get blood on our hands or on the car. Then…you got a lighter? If not, there are matches i
n the glovebox.”

  “I’ve got a lighter. Why?”

  “We need to put the blanket on his face, pour some gas on it and light it up.”

  “Light it up? What for?”

  She parked the flashlight’s beam somewhere between them. A dog was barking but it was in the distance, way off through the woods. “We have to burn his face,” she said, as calmly as if talking about setting fire to a pile of trash. “You know what I’m sayin’,” she went on, when he didn’t respond. “Melt his face, I mean. So when they find the body they can’t figure out who it was.”

  Pearly was staring down at the dead man. He had the quick mental image of puppies burning on a gas-soaked blanket, making the point that he was no longer a helpless child tottering on crutches he didn’t need. He said, “Thought all this through pretty well, huh? How’d you know I’d go along? I could’ve been anybody.”

  “But you’re not just anybody. One of my gifts is bein’ able to read people. I can size ’em up real quick. Know what they want, what they’ll do and not do. Know their price, too. You fit the bill and the time was right.”

  With a grunt, he said, “Lucky me.”

  “Come on, we’ve got to strip him first and you don’t want to get any blood on that suit. Don’t want the fire to get too big, either, in these dry woods.” She motioned toward the car. “Get your hat and coat off.”

  “Okay,” he said, but still he stood staring at the body. The gun in his hand felt natural to him, though it had been years since he’d held one and he’d never fired a bullet at a human being before. It was a powerful feeling. He understood why Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker played around with guns, to get and keep that feeling of power. To be able to take a person out of the world, or aim a gun at a person and then decide to let them live…it was nothing short of the power of God.

  “Time’s tickin’,” Ginger said. “We got to get a move on.”

  We? Pearly thought. She kept saying that: we. Never before had he thought of himself and anyone else as a we. He lived alone, ate alone, slept alone…and, had always worked alone.

  Before now.

  We, she said.

  He shuddered. It was not because of the body laid out before him in the brush—and he could imagine it days hence, when the animals of the woods followed the smell and got to work on the meat that the flies and swarms of insects would have by then started breaking down into mush—but because of the moment. Something had changed; something new had come, and as yet he did not understand exactly what it was but his shudder was like the first motion of a reptile shedding old skin, getting ready for the journey ahead.

  “Go on,” Ginger said, but it was a gentle urging. “Better roll those sleeves up too.”

  “Yes,” he answered. He walked to his new Packard with the gun in his hand. He had a strangely serene feeling in his heart and a new focus in his mind, the feeling that he was indeed lucky and the focus that from here on out—starting real soon and maybe this single minute—there was a whole lot of very profitable work to be done.

  Four.

  He was lying on his back in the bed, staring up at the cracked ceiling and smoking a cigarette. A single low lamp burned on the bedside table; he usually didn’t mind the dark, but tonight the dark seemed darker. The time was a little past midnight. He couldn’t sleep. The sound of the pistol shot that had sent the bullet into Honeycutt’s skull was a constant echo.

  He thought also of the conversation he’d had with Ginger—or whatever her name was—in the Packard on the way back from the murder scene. For such a hot looker she was all ice.

  He’d never met a woman like her before—one who was so in control of her emotions, and could make murder sound like what the victim really wanted as an escape from his frail and fading frame. He had killed a man for her, and he’d barely known her thirty minutes or so before the deed.

  But then again, he didn’t know her and he thought no one did.

  When they figure out who he was, Pearly had said on the drive back with the Packard’s steering wheel firmly in hand, they’re gonna come lookin’ for you. It’s your name on all those posters.

  It’s the name of Ginger LaFrance, she’d answered. They won’t be lookin’ for Lana Kay Riley.

  That’s your real name?

  No, but it’ll do.

  What is your real name?

  She’d made a sound that could have been a small laugh but it was hard to tell. She had the window rolled down and one elbow stuck out to jab the ribs of the world. What’s a name, Pearly? It’s somethin’ hung on you, so people think they got a handle. You and me are alike in that way, aren’t we?

  What way?

  We don’t want handles on us, she’d said, and to him that made the most sense of just about anything he’d ever heard in his life.

  So, she’d continued as he had digested this morsel of truth, when we get there park around back, there’s a grassy lot. You walk in, I’ll be behind you by about ten minutes.

  Cuttin’ it close.

  It’ll work out. In the mornin’ just give me a ride to Shreveport, let me out on the corner of Texas and Edwards streets and we’re quits.

  He had allowed a few seconds to slide past. Then: That easy, huh?

  Yep. Just easy-breezy, she’d replied, her voice as light and carefree as if in the last half-hour she’d shrugged the weight of the world off her shoulders.

  But in his small room, lying on the bed with the cigarette burning down between his fingers and through the haze a canary-yellow sticker on the inside of the door that had No Smoking printed on it, Pearly felt anything but light. He had the key to the Packard sitting atop the dresser next to his wallet. In his wallet was his newfound split of the take. All he had to do in the morning was tell the Nevins he was getting a ride back to Shreveport with Honeycutt and the woman, and then at the garage tell Henry Bullard he’d return for the Oakland in a couple of days but in the meantime there was a box of Bibles he had to retrieve from the trunk. Then on to Shreveport with the woman, in his new Packard.

  Easy-breezy. Or was it?

  He tapped the ashes into a waterglass on the bedside table. The old lady would likely raise hell at him for smoking up the joint, but who gave a damn? Anyway, Hilda Nevins would be as glad to see him leave as she would be to see the doc and the woman in red sway their asses out of Stonefield. Pearly—he liked that monicker, thought he’d stick with it awhile—intended never to come this way again; Bullard could have the Oakland, for the two bits it was worth.

  But damn it all, he couldn’t find a wink of sleep. It wasn’t the killing; that was like putting a sick dog out of its misery, and there was a lot of truth in what Ginger had said about the confidence man’s life being snuffed before the brain went mushy. What did the con man live on but the sharpness of his wits? When those were age-riddled and full of holes, what more was there to living? No, it was a slow fall to oblivion—to nothingness—and Pearly hoped that when—if—he got too old to think straight somebody would put a bullet in his head as cleanly as it had been done to Doc Honeycutt. Well…the shot in the side hadn’t been too clean, and maybe that was what bothered Pearly; Ginger could’ve just whacked the doc in the head with the gun and laid him low that way instead of the rib-buster. She had been mighty fast to push things past the point of no return, so there would be little use—and time—to argue over the execution.

  On the way back from the road where they’d left the body, Ginger had told him to slow down because they needed to find a place to dump the clothes. A little cart track off to the left had led them into more woods and no lights around, so the clothes had gone into the brush. A pour of gasoline had been used to burn the clothes, both of them careful not to get any gas on their hands or their own clothes. Before the fire got too high Ginger had told him to stomp the flames out and he had done so. Then it was on into Stonefield and on with the plan, and Pearly
lay in bed thinking that if he let Ginger out on the corner of Texas and Edwards streets in Shreveport tomorrow morning she would be just a few blocks from his own hideaway at the Dixie Garden Hotel on Cotton Street. It would be a kick in the head if she were living at the Dixie Garden too, but she didn’t want him to know where she was living so that’s why she wanted out on Texas and Edwards. He hadn’t lived very long in Shreveport and for sure had never seen her there, unless she’d been wearing a wig and was dressed down like a farmer’s wife, which he couldn’t really discount.

  An owl hooted in the distance outside his window, a forlorn yet haunting sound that for some reason had always made him feel a kinship to the hunters of the night. The dark belonged to them. It was not a happy place but a place of need and necessity, and he knew it very well.

  Came a soft tapping at his door.

  Tap tap. Tap tap. Then her voice, hardly a whisper enough to be heard: “Open up.”

  He was still mostly dressed, had only taken off his shirt and his shoes before getting into bed and lighting up the fag. He went to the door and paused only a heartbeat before flicking back the latch. Then he peered into her face in the ruddy light that came from a red-tinged glass globe at the hallway’s ceiling. She looked tired, her eyes swollen as if she too had been wrestling with the elusive demon called sleep; her dyed-blonde hair had been released from its tight bondage of combs and the loose curls had boiled down over her forehead to the plucked brows. She wore a lavender-colored gown with a red satin rose embroidered just above the left breast.

  “You gonna just stand there?” she asked, keeping her voice quiet. She lifted her right hand and there in it was the dear dead doctor’s silver flask.

  Pearly stepped back to let her in. She was carrying her purse in her left hand. She put both the purse and the flask atop the dresser. Then she turned around, went past him to the door and pushed the latch firmly home, and after that she looked at him as if she were true to her feline nature and he was a mouse who’d just taken a bath in catnip.