by Mark Joseph
“This is really fucked up,” Nelson said.
“We’ll bury her and go home and nobody says anything, ever.”
“The right thing,” Nelson said. “The right thing is to tell the truth.”
“If the world was a fair and decent place, then yes. But it isn’t,” Alex insisted. “Caryl Chessman died in the gas chamber, and he didn’t kill anyone. What do you think they’ll do to us?”
“We have to stick together, whatever we do,” Charlie said.
An airplane droned overhead, lights blinking, heading for Sacramento. The river flowed. Insects buzzed.
Alex said, “Charlie’s right. We’re the royal flush. Bobby, too. He’ll understand we have to stick together. We have to decide what to do and then do it. I don’t want to go to jail, I don’t want to talk to cops, and I don’t want to ruin the rest of my life because somebody has a big mouth. We bury her and say it was an accident. Dean?”
“Okay.”
“Charlie?”
“I guess so.”
“Nelson?”
Nelson looked at his tattoo, rubbed it, and said, “I don’t know.”
“C’mon, Nelson,” Alex prodded. “Don’t you want to go college and live a normal life?”
“It’s not normal anymore, not after tonight, and it will never be normal again. This isn’t just another prank, Alex.”
“But you didn’t do anything. Why pay for what you didn’t do?”
“What about her? What’s fair to her? If we bury her, then we are guilty of something.”
“Yes. Saving our own lives. If we talk about this, your mother will be so ashamed of you, Nelson, she’ll never get over it.”
Nelson slowly and solemnly nodded his head, acknowledging that truth. “All right, but you and Dean have to tell Bobby what happened.”
“Okay, we’re all agreed,” Alex said. “And no one ever talks about this, right? To anyone, ever. No parents, no friends, no one for the rest of our lives.”
“That’s going to depend on Bobby, isn’t it?” Nelson said. “We can agree but if Bobby doesn’t, there won’t be anything we can do about it.”
“I’m scared,” Charlie mumbled, and began to weep again.
“We’re all scared,” Alex said, punching Charlie in the shoulder, “but we can’t sit here crying all night. The sun is going to come up and there’ll be fishermen.”
“Look, we have to tell Bobby, so let’s do it,” Dean said. “Let’s pick her up and take her over to the tent.”
Awkward and embarrassed, each boy took a limb and they carried Sally’s body into across the island. On the way Dean stumbled and dropped her and fresh blood from the cut on his leg smeared across her forehead. They had to stop again when Dean was overcome with nausea and had to vomit. By the time they arrived at the tent they were in tears again.
Alex went in and shook his sleeping, snoring friend.
“Bobby? Bobby, wake up.”
“Huh? Wha—”
“You’d better come outside.”
“Where’s Sally?”
“Outside.”
“What’s going on, Wiz? What time is it?”
“Still dark. Come outside.”
“Ow, my head. Christ, let me put on my pants.”
Grinning, Bobby guessed maybe they’d figured out she’d cheated at cards and were calling him out for a showdown. The deck was stacked, fellas, and I’m sorry ’bout that but them’s the breaks. Let’s have a beer for breakfast.
“Sally?” he shouted. “What’s happening, babe?”
When she didn’t answer, he looked at Alex, whose tear-streaked face was barely visible in the dark interior of the tent.
“Alex? What’s happening?”
“Come outside.”
She was cold, turning blue, dead, with blood streaked across her forehead and matted over her right temple. Bobby’s upper lip began to quiver and muscles in his face began to twitch.
The first thing he did was rip down the tent and cover her. Then he walked away a few yards and sat down on a rock and remained very still, looking at them, evil thoughts crashing through his mind like a stampeding herd of wild horses. He didn’t want to talk to them or hear what they had to say. He wanted to kill them and was trying to decide how.
The four stood together muttering among themselves.
“You have to talk to him, Alex,” Nelson said.
“Go get the shovel, Nelson. We gotta do this quick.”
Nelson ran off toward the boat, and Alex took a step toward their stricken friend.
“Bobby, we’re sorry,” he said.
Bobby continued to stare, saying nothing, then looked away, gazing over the falls and the river gurgling at his feet. A card bobbed in the water, the seven of hearts, and he watched it break loose and float away.
He was certain one of them had hit her and smashed her head, and that one had to pay. Which one? Dean? He could catch Dean, maybe knock him out and drown him, but the others would get away. Maybe he could run one more down, but not all of them. He felt sick. The violence welling up inside him turned his stomach, but he forced down the rising bile and refused to give in to the impulse to throw up.
“Bobby, we have to do something,” Alex said.
After a long pause, voice choked with venom, Bobby said, “Looks like you already did.”
“It was an accident, Bobby. She was dancing naked in the river, and we saw her and tried to get her out of there, but she slipped and hit her head.”
“Charlie, what happened?” Bobby demanded.
“Just what Alex said.”
“Dean?”
“When Alex pulled her out of the river, she was already dead.”
The detonation, the psychic grenade. Bobby’s mind ripped loose from its moorings. Past and present and future disappeared in a blaze of white heat. Belief vanished. Right and wrong evaporated. Friendship atomized and disappeared. Love died. They were lying. All that remained was hate and violence, biology without humanity. They took Sally away from him, in body and in spirit. His life shattered like a race car slamming into a brick wall. Deranged, with all his senses gone awry, he saw his friends as unspeakable monsters.
“You’re a lying motherfucker.”
With a roar he leaped off the rock and attacked Dean, swinging wildly and landing a punch to the nose, which started bleeding again before Alex and Charlie pulled them apart. Bobby collapsed on the ground, pinned by Alex and Charlie and writhing with rage.
Just then Nelson returned with the shovel and asked, “What’s going on?”
“Bobby went nuts,” Charlie answered.
“What’re you gonna do with that?” Bobby demanded of Nelson.
“Up in the woods, I think,” Nelson said to the others. “The ground is softer, not so many rocks.”
“What the fuck are you gonna do?”
“We’re going to bury her,” Alex said. “We have to.”
“You cocksuckers. What do you mean you’re going to bury her?”
“We can’t tell anybody, Bobby. They’ll put us in jail. They’ll say it was rape and murder.”
“They’ll put us in the gas chamber and kill us no matter what we say,” Dean said.
“Good idea. You first, Dean.”
“Bobby,” Alex said. “We’ve known each other since we were little kids. We’re the royal flush. We have our entire lives ahead of us. We didn’t do anything, but we know no one will believe us. We have to bury her and get out of here right now.”
“You didn’t do anything? You didn’t do anything? Don’t tell me you didn’t do anything.”
“Bobby—”
“Shut the fuck up, Alex. You pricks. You can’t get away with this. You can’t go back to San Francisco like this never happened, like Sally never existed. She was—”
Clenching his teeth, his mind exploding into incoherent fragments, he couldn’t go on.
“Yes, we can,” Alex said. “We have to. Even if they believe us, our lives are ruined if we
tell anyone.”
“He’s gonna tell,” Charlie said.
Nelson dropped the shovel and walked away, banging himself in the head and swearing to himself that he’d never drink again as long as he lived.
“Do you really want to turn us in?” Alex asked. “Do you want to go to jail?”
“No,” Bobby snarled. “I want to kill you, and if I don’t get out of here right now, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Get off of me!”
Alex and Charlie let him go and he stood up, eyes red as rubies, his mind on fire. Sally’s essence still clung to him, and he shuddered and felt his skin go cold.
Without another word Bobby stepped over to the collapsed tent, lifted a corner and took one last look at Sally. Her eyes were open but he didn’t touch her. He grabbed his shirt and tied it around his waist, took a deep breath, and jumped in the river. Without turning back he swam to the other side, pulled himself up on the bank, climbed the levee and disappeared into the peach orchard.
52
“And after you went over the levee, we didn’t see you again for thirty-two years, until last night,” Charlie said, his voice breaking under the strain.
With the burden of silence lifted, the mystery of Shanghai Bend revealed, the mood in the Caruso Suite was tense and subdued. The tale had gushed out in bits and spurts, the bulk of the narrative supplied by Dean and Charlie with frequent additions from Alex and Nelson.
Silent and attentive during the telling, when the story ended Bobby lit a cigarette, poured a fresh glass of soda and methodically squeezed in some lime juice He considered laughing in their faces.
He remembered sitting on the curb for two hours across the street from the Marysville Police Department. The building was small, he recalled, made of gray stone and constructed in such a way that it tried to look bigger and more important than it was. The Yuba County courthouse next door was more imposing. Blind justice and her scales were carved into the cornice. His vivid imagination conjured up Dean being strapped into the green gas chamber at San Quentin.
The cops coming to work early in the morning looked like deer hunters. He saw a judge, or a man who looked like a judge, enter the courthouse. The judge wore a suit and straw hat and was skinny and dignified, a symbol of all that was right and good and lawabiding.
She was dead and no judge could change that. Oh, Jesus, did they kill her? What really happened? He could never be certain. Should they die? What was justice? Who should decide? The cops? The judge? Him? He’d never see her again, never show her San Francisco, never sit with her in a café talking to beatniks.
He believed they’d get away with what they’d done if he didn’t tell the police, and telling wouldn’t bring her back. They wanted to pretend nothing had happened, but he couldn’t pretend. If he told, he’d be part of—what had Sally called it? The system. She said he was part of the system, and the system was right there across the street. He didn’t want to be part of any system, and he didn’t want to go to jail, either. If he walked into the police station, he wouldn’t walk out.
He wasn’t a snitch. After a lifetime of friendship, he owed them that, but he couldn’t be their friend anymore, not after this. Sally had showed him another world, and he wasn’t going to find it in Berkeley or any place else he knew. He wanted to be on the other side of the world—the French Foreign Legion occurred to him—and never see anyone he knew ever again.
He walked away, stuck out his thumb on the highway, and a truck driver told him about the induction center in Oakland. He didn’t have to go to France. He could join the Army and get a free ticket to West Germany. That sounded far enough away.
In the Enrico Caruso Suite, Bobby snapped out of his reverie, and after a long minute picked up Nelson’s revolver and paced around the room, reloading the gun as he spoke.
Click, one round.
“So it was you,” he said to Dean.
“Yeah. It was me.”
Click.
“And you pulled her out,” Bobby said to Alex.
“I tried to save her. I failed.”
Click.
“What have you guys been saying? If we hang, we hang together. How noble. Summary executions all around.”
Click.
“Very dramatic, just like in the movies.”
Click.
“Would the world be better off without you in it?”
Click, the sixth and final cartridge. Bobby shook his head. “The world could care less. We’re just card players. Me, I’ve got something to live for, a game in Biloxi on Wednesday night. As for the rest of you, you lost everything, and if you want to kill yourselves, or me, or each other, be my guest.” He looked at Nelson and said, “This is a ridiculous gun.”
With a hollow chuckle Bobby stopped pacing and laid the big Model 29 on the table.
“Anyone want a bloodbath?” he asked, backing away from the table and throwing up his hands. “Anyone want to cover up one murder with another? Anyone think I’m such an asshole for beating you that I deserve killing? Want to make me pay for my sins?”
No one moved.
“You sure? Dean? Here’s your chance to end your guilt forever, but I’m not going to do it for you.”
Dean buried his head in his hands.
“Don’t you think your story is self-serving?” Bobby asked.
After a long pause Charlie replied, “I imagine it is, but it’s still the truth. Alex pulled her out of the water and tried to resuscitate her, which was more than the rest of us could do, but her head was busted open. If we’d known what we were doing, we might have saved her. None of us was a paramedic.”
“You’ve had thirty-two years to spin your tale. ‘Dean was drunk and crazy and hit her and killed her, but it was an accident. He didn’t mean to.’ I’d say that’s a weak defense for a charge of homicide.”
“There was no homicide,” Charlie protested. “We’re not murderers.”
Bobby glanced at Nelson. “There’s a name for it, isn’t there, Kimosabe?”
“Felony manslaughter,” Nelson replied. “That’s homicide, all right.”
“And for that you were afraid of the gas chamber.”
“Oh, God, yes,” Alex answered. “We didn’t think anyone would believe us.”
“I don’t know why anyone would believe you now. Your story doesn’t prove your innocence. It’s just a story, but burying her indicates guilt.”
“The story is true,” Dean insisted. “It was me and I’m admitting it. It’s not easy.”
“But you did kill her, Studley, and I’d hate to put that to a jury, if I were you.”
Bobby took a drag on his cigarette, blew smoke at the ceiling and gazed at the heroes. Hey, Paladin, he thought to himself, if you rode into their town in your black leathers, would you believe them, or would you kick their asses to kingdom come? He remembered how much he’d wanted to kill them that night, and how many times he’d thought about it since. Now, a different urge was rising inside him. Justice. Mercy. He’d been a better man than them then, and he was a better man now.
“I can guess the rest,” he said without emotion. “You dug a hole, dumped her in, tossed in the queen of hearts, covered her up and placed stones and logs over the grave. You were smart enough to clean up the campsite and as many beer cans as you could find, collect her clothes and radio and suitcase, then you hopped in the boat and went back to San Francisco and started telling lies.”
“That’s right,” Nelson said. “That’s what I told you in the cab last night. I saw your mom the next day when she came over to our house to ask where you were, and I told her I didn’t know, which was the truth. I said you had a fight with Dean and took off. We were really afraid that you went to the police, and it was a huge relief a couple days later when we heard you joined the Army.”
Bobby sipped his drink. He couldn’t undo his life. Knowing the truth didn’t do him any good at all. The truth had not made him free, but it had made him rich and that was good enough. He could afford to be charitab
le.
“So do you believe us?” Charlie asked.
Bobby laughed a wicked little laugh that came from deep inside.
“Why do you care whether I believe you or not, Charlie? You lost your company in a card game and won it back with a nice story. I think you should be more concerned with what that means rather than whether I believe you or not. Ask yourself this: Are you paying for your sins, your bad judgment, or simply your poor ability as a poker player?”
53
Five canvas bags full of money were stacked near the door. The boys from Noë Valley sat around the card table, desolate and silent. Cards and chips lay scattered over the felt, devoid of meaning.
Bobby leaned over the felt and towered above them, eyes blazing Bobby leaned over the felt and towered above them, eyes blazing like an Old Testament prophet. “You’re responsible for what happened to Sally, but not for what happened to me. I ran away from Shanghai Bend, not you. If I’d stayed, things might’ve turned out differently, but we’ll never know. Now, there’s no reason for your lives to be destroyed except you got in over your heads in a card game.
“So be it. You made me the judge, but the jury was the fifty-two cards in the deck. The cards gave you back your lives, and now you’re condemned to live them.
“Dean, you’re going to live the rest of your life on the Feather River with your guilt. You’ll suffer more at the scene of your crime than on death row in San Quentin.
“Alex, you’ll have to go back to New York and face whatever mess you left there. And you’re forbidden to play poker anywhere except this room.
“Charlie, you poor son of a bitch, I don’t think you’ll have any heirs, so rewrite your will and leave Hooper Fish to these guys. And do yourself a favor: don’t play cards for serious money.
“And Nelson, Kimosabe, I want you to be the Lone Ranger. I want you to transfer to the missing persons division of your department and spend the rest of your time as a cop tracking down teenage runaways.”
He gestured toward Nelson’s briefcase full of documents and continued, “If I were you, I’d burn those papers. And if you want to play next year, you have my number. I’m always up for a game if there’s enough money in it.”