“Don’t you see?” she said, but she kept her own eyes closed. “He’s using Pam. Not just me, not just my house or Stan or even Marty. He’s using Pam, making her innocence hide his—filth.”
“You feel violated,” Dr Godden suggested.
She opened her eyes, studied the patterned carpet as though the twisting lines would only form letters and words and sentences if she could but look at them right, as though the carpet could tell her something of great importance that would make everything clear and easy and possible. But the pattern remained only twisting lines.
“Not violated,” she said, “not exactly violated. It’s as though I didn’t matter, as though whether I was even alive or not had no meaning at all. He doesn’t care. I’m a worm to him, less than a worm. Nothing to him. Not even worth feeling contempt toward.”
“In other words,” Dr Godden said, “for the first time you’ve met someone else who has the same attitude toward you that you have. The attitude you think is the only thing you deserve.”
She frowned at the rug. “Is that it?”
“Of course,” he said. “But when you treated yourself that way, you always knew you had the choice, you could stop treating yourself that way whenever you wanted. But when this man Parker gives you the same treatment it’s out of your control. He isn’t even doing it to expiate your guilt. Your guilt has nothing to do with the way he acts.”
“He doesn’t care what I think,” she said. “He doesn’t care. Everybody cares. You might hate somebody, but you care what they think, you want to know what they think.”
Dr Godden let the silence stretch this time, and she knew that meant she was supposed to look inside and see if there was anything else there, anything she was trying to hide from herself. “It isn’t really Pam I’m angry about, is it?” she said. ”It isn’t even me, not the real me.”
“No?” he asked gently. “What is it, then?”
“The mask I’m wearing,” she said. “Motherhood. You know, the good mother bit, the whole cop-out to make up for everything I’ve done wrong all my life. You know, how now I’m a mother and I hide behind that. And Parker doesn’t pay any attention to the mask. He goes ahead and puts the guns in Pam’s closet and doesn’t even ask me. The whole mother mask doesn’t mean a thing to him.”
“You think he sees through it?”
“I think,” she said, “I think he doesn’t give a damn.”
“What about Stan? Do you think he cares about Stan?”
“Parker? He doesn’t care about anybody except his own sweet self.”
Dr Godden said, “Then perhaps he’ll arrange the robbery so he’ll be the only one to get away.”
“Do you think so?” she said, alarmed.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
She studied the question, trying to be fair, and finally said, “No, that isn’t how he’d be. He’s cold and ruthless and he doesn’t care about anybody, but that’s because he cares about things. Not even the money, I don’t think. It’s the plan that really matters to him. I think the thing that counts is doing it and having it come out right. So he wouldn’t want anybody else to be caught.”
“It would be unprofessional.”
“Yes. Oh, they found a hideout.”
“Did they?”
“Out Hilker Road. A hunting lodge up near the border that got burned down a couple of years ago.”
“Andrews’ Lodge?”
“I don’t know, I guess so. They went up there yesterday to look it over.”
“Then the plan is set?”
“Not entirely, I don’t think. Maybe in Parker’s mind it’s all set, but they haven’t talked about it all yet. I guess they’re waiting for the others to come in.”
“How many more?”
”Three. They’re supposed to come in by Monday night, I think. So I guess I won’t have much to tell you next time. But lots on Wednesday.”
“That’s when they’ll be doing it.” Dr Godden said.
Ellen shivered.
8
Jake Kengle unlocked his way into his furnished room, threw his briefcase on the bed, and got the bottle of whiskey out of the bottom dresser drawer. He went to the bathroom for a glass, half-filled it, and sat down on the bed to ease his feet while he slowly drank. The briefcase sat beside him, fat and black, sternly demanding he go back to work.
The hell with it. The double hell with it. He sipped at his whiskey, he looked moodily out the window at the airshaft with its gray brick wall five feet away, and he found some small pleasure in anticipating how good it was going to feel when he finally bent over and removed his shoes. His feet tingled inside the shoes, enjoying already their coming freedom. The liquor burned warm down his throat, slightly watering his eyes. The tension across his shoulders very gradually eased.
When he did at last bend forward to remove his shoes he saw out of the corner of his eye the briefcase again, still squatting there on the bed. In sudden rage he picked it up and hurled it across the room, generally in the direction of the window and the airshaft. His aim was way off; the briefcase hit the front of the dresser and thudded to the floor. Kengle left it there.
The briefcase contained something called a “presentation”. A lot of brightly colored sheets of glossy paper, that meant; two expensive-looking loose-leaf folders, all telling how great some damn encyclopedia was.
Why would anybody buy an encyclopedia? Kengle didn’t know. He’d been ringing doorbells day and night since Tuesday on this damn job, and here it was Saturday afternoon, and he hadn’t yet found anybody stupid enough to fork over three hundred bucks for a bunch of books. And the commission on zero sales is zero dollars.
It was a stinking way to make a buck, trying to sell things door-to-door on commission. But the good ways to make a buck, the soft and easy ways, they didn’t show up all that often for the guy with a record. “In your employment resume, Mr Kengle, you give no employer for the last fifty-two months. Why is that?”
“I was in prison.”
“Oh? Mmmmmmmm.”
He’d gotten out the first of September, and here it was the twenty-sixth already, and so far he’d landed two jobs, one peddling a food-freezer plan on commission and now this book thing. He’d been lucky the second day with the freezer plan, found a family that had just moved into this stinking town and had friends with a freezer plan, so they were what the boys called pre-sold. Sixty bucks commission. Then he’d gone the next ten days without a nibble, got into a stupid argument with Nettleton, the sales manager, and that was the end of that.
And how long is sixty bucks supposed to carry a guy? Monday they’d start bitching about the rent on this place, and he just didn’t have it. So then what?
The trouble was, he wasn’t a penny-ante boy. He could hustle into a big-time caper, cut ten or twenty thousand for himself, handle his action with no trouble. But cop some old lady’s purse in the park for six dollars and thirty-seven cents? He’d never done it, he had no taste for it, and it seemed to him an ignominious thing to get the collar for. So it looked as though he was going to sit here in this room—or out in the street, if they threw him out of the room—and starve, because he couldn’t turn an honest dollar and wouldn’t turn a dishonest nickel.
The briefcase lay on the floor like a legless bug on its back. The sales manager—Smith, this one’s name was, and as phony a bastard as Nettleton—had told him the weekend was always a hot time for book sales, because of husbands and kids being home. Well, it had been crap so far today, and here it was three in the afternoon. So should he go fight it some more? Who the hell works on Saturday afternoon? Or Saturday evening, or all day Sunday? Ex-cons trying to make a commission buck, that’s who.
If that bastard lawyer hadn’t used up every penny of his stake in useless appeals things wouldn’t be so bad now. He could sit back, relax, live small but comfortable until somebody showed up with something. But no. He had to hustle books like some baggy-pants straight man in burlesque.
Weren’t they going to wait till Monday? All set to blow his top, Kengle went over and opened the door, and there stood a tall skinny kid in an undershirt. “Phone for you,” he said, and trotted away down the hall.
This was a sweet place. One telephone on each floor, in the hall near the elevator, and a pay phone at that. When it rang it was up to anybody who heard it to go answer it and pass the word to whoever it was for. That was the kind of privacy Kengle loved.
Kengle locked his door and walked down the hall to the phone. Maybe it was Smith, checking to see if he was out hustling those books. If so, screw Smith. The voice said, “Jake?”
Kengle recognized it, and a heavy weight seemed to lift off his back. The voice belonged to Ed Dant, who ran a fleabag hotel in Atlanta and who was Kengle’s permanent address. Anybody in the business who wanted to contact him knew to call Ed Dant, who did the same thing for half a dozen other guys. When he’d moved into this place here Kengle had telegraphed Ed the address and phone number right away, because when the break came it would be coming through a call from Ed.
Keeping all trace of excitement out of his voice, Kengle said, “What’s new, pal?”
”Nothing much. Just to say hello, glad to hear you’re out see how you’re doing.”
“Fine. Got a steady job.”
“Glad to hear it. Ran into an old friend of yours the other day. Remember Marty Fusco?”
“Sure. How’s he doing these days?”
“Working here and there. He thought he might drop by and see you tomorrow. I wasn’t sure I had the address right, so I told him I’d call him back.”
Kengle reeled off his address.
They talked a little more, saying nothing, and then ended the conversation. Kengle was grinning from ear to ear when he walked back down the hall and unlocked his way into his room.
One corner of his brain said, What if the set-up’s no good?
Aloud he said, “It’s gotta be better than peddling books.”
He made one concession to good sense. He opened the window before throwing the briefcase into the airshaft.”
9
Maybe I ought to tell the police,” Ellen said. She was hugging herself so hard her arms hurt.
“I don’t think you should,” Dr Godden said carefully. “I think you’re carrying around enough guilt feelings as it is.”
“It’s tonight,” she said. She was shivering, trembling, no matter how hard she hugged herself.
“If Stan had had his way,” Dr Godden reminded her, “it would have been happening right now.”
“Nobody has their way against Parker,” she said. “I hate him.”
“I believe we correctly analyzed Stan on Monday,” Dr Godden said. “He wanted a daylight robbery so that he could not be asked to take an active part in it.”
“If I told the police it was going to happen,” she said, “but didn’t tell them who was going to do it, and then somehow I let Stan know they knew about it—”
“You couldn’t do it,” he told her. “Not without implicating yourself. And then Stan would merely hate you.”
“But there’s no way out! If they get caught, that’s terrible, and if they don’t get caught he’ll want to do it again and that’s terrible.”
“We still can’t be sure he’ll want to do it again,” Dr Godden said, his voice soothing her though she still trembled. “After all, if he didn’t want to take an active part this time it means he’s had some second thoughts already, he’s somewhat afraid now. After the reality of the experience he may decide he never wants to go through anything like that again. We can’t tell one way or the other until he’s actually gone through it.”
”But what if they get caught?”
“Let’s go over the plan,” he said, “and see if we can find any loopholes, anything Parker and the others haven’t thought of. We’ve discussed various parts of the plan from time to time, but we’ve never taken it through from beginning to end. Let’s do that now.”
“All right,” she said. Her voice began to drone.
10
Dr Godden stood in the doorway, watched Ellen Fusco go out through the outer office, and then motioned to the slender young man on the Naugahyde sofa to come in.
The young man, whose face was covered with acne, got to his feet, said nastily, “Ralph’s late again,” and sauntered into the inner office. He sat on the sofa there, spread his legs out, folded his arms and said, “Ralph’s always late.”
Dr Godden shut the door, controlled his impulse to speak harshly, and went over to sit in his accustomed chair at the end of the sofa. “That’s a problem of Ralph’s,” he said. “Perhaps after a while he’ll get over it.”
“Soon everyone will be perfect,” said the young man. He always strove for sarcasm but never attained anything other than petulance.
His name was Roger St Cloud, he was twenty-two years old, militarily unsuitable because of some problem with his inner ear, the only son of well-to-do parents—his father had a controlling interest in Monequois First Savings—and a classic bundle of insecurities and neuroses masked by a juvenile nastiness of manner. The clothing he wore—sneakers without socks, filthy chinos, a ratty turtleneck sweater—was intended to infuriate his parents, and it succeeded. It was the positive relish with which Roger’s parents rose to every bait the boy tossed them that made Dr Godden’s work so much more necessary and at the same time so much more difficult. If he could get the parents in here for regular treatments it might have some good effect on the son, but of course they’d never agree to anything like that.
Well, for the purpose at hand what was needed was not the parents but the son. Dr Godden said, out of the sense of duty that had been troubling him of late, “While we wait for Ralph, is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
Roger shrugged carelessly, which always meant yes, always meant there was something he felt about so strongly that the feeling embarrassed him and therefore had to be denied. “Had another dream,” he said.
“The Dragon?” That was the dream about his mother.
“No, none of the usual. A new one.”
“Ah? What was it?”
“I was walking down a rifle barrel. It was like a tunnel, you know? But it was a rifle barrel, and I was walking toward the bullets. I could look back the other way and see daylight at the hole. It was very realistic, with the shiny metal color and everything. It was cold in there. Then I looked back and there was an eye down at the far end looking at me. It was my father, and he said, ‘You’ll never get away.’ But he was big, he was normal size for the rifle, so he couldn’t get at me. But he kept looking in, his eye there, and I shouted, ‘Get out of the way! You’ll be killed when the gun goes off!’ But he wouldn’t believe me. Then there was a boom, like an explosion. Not like a rifle shot at all. A real explosion. And I looked and there was a bullet coming toward me. It looked like a train in a tunnel, except it filled it all the way around, there wasn’t any place to squeeze in and let it go by. And the front was all fat and squashed. I started running away, but I was slow, it turned slow-motion, you know, the way they do. But the bullet was slow, too, it was just behind me but it couldn’t catch up. And my father’s eye was still up at the other end, he wouldn’t get out of the way. I kept hollering at him, but he wouldn’t get out of the way.”
In the course of telling all this, Roger’s voice had lost its usual whine, his expression had calmed, and he had shown briefly who it was he might have been if things had been different. But now his face twisted back into its usual expression, the whine came into his voice again, and he shrugged negligently, saying, “That’s when I woke up.”
”Not hard to interpret, that dream,” Dr Godden suggested.
“Easy. I’m afraid of getting caught and I’m afraid of getting killed.”
“And you�
��re also afraid that if you do get caught your disgrace will also ruin your father.” Roger shrugged.
The door burst open and Ralph lumbered in. A tall, heavyset, very strong man of thirty-two, he gave an appearance of flabbiness and weakness that was totally misleading. His strength was hampered by clumsiness, his appearance altered by the way he stooped and shambled, but within the self-negating mannerisms was a strong and capable body waiting to be unleashed.
“I ran,” Ralph said, panting, and thudded over to drop heavily onto the sofa beside Roger.
“You always run,” Roger commented.
Ralph never took offense at Roger’s comments. Why should he, when he believed he deserved them? Ralph believed that he was stupid, and that stupidity was a crime. Any asset he might have, such as a strong body or a handsome face, had to be denied because it would be improper for him to enjoy anything while still committing the crime of stupidity. What had driven Ralph to Dr Godden was a girl friend who had made it a condition of their continued relationship. but what had driven him to the set of mind that he lived by Dr Godden hadn’t as yet been able to learn. It was somewhere in the early years, and Ralph’s blankness on that period was itself a strong indication that Dr Godden was on the right track.
Now, Ralph’s reply to Roger was only a sheepish grinning, “I’m always late.” Then he sat there and panted.
Dr Godden looked at them, his assistants, and he found himself envying the man Ellen knew as Parker. When Parker made a plan he knew the parts of it would be carried out by professionals, solid reliable men who did this sort of thing for a living. Dr Godden would have preferred to work with professionals himself, but according to Ellen these people did have loyalty among themselves and in the normal way of things wouldn’t steal from one another. Honor among thieves apparently did exist after all.
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