Liar

by Jan Burke

  He glanced at it and said, “Rachel—holy shit, some kind of a dago name even J can’t read.” A sound in the distance made him suddenly look around. “No use standing out here where God and everybody might come by—you cover her while I get the boy inside.”

  I tried not to think about the sounds I was hearing as Spanning took Travis inside the house. Despite little gestures from Rachel, meant to calm me, my nerves were rubbed raw by the time I heard Gerald speak again.

  “Okay, give me the shotgun,” he said to Deeny. “I’ll take her in. You gather up all this shit you took out of her pockets and lock it up in the garage, and while you’re there, make sure she hasn’t already been in there.”

  She began to argue with him, apparently unwilling to let him be alone with Rachel.

  “What, after you’ve been boning Richmond?” he said.

  “I have not!” she screeched.

  He slapped her. “Keep your voice down.”

  She held a hand up to her face where he had hit her, and gave him a sullen look, but said nothing more to him. I wanted to hide, knowing she was about to come into the garage. At the same time, I didn’t dare move yet; if I bumped into something in the dark, I’d be shouting out my presence.

  Gerald and Rachel went in the house. Deeny stood with arms crossed, watching them. She added to her rebellion by taking out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one up.

  I risked the narrow beam of the flashlight, holding it low and taking a path back toward the door. I moved to the workbench, avoided touching the bent and bloodied bumper, searched quickly and found something that would help me create a distraction—a red china marker. I said a little prayer of thanks and made my way to the passenger side of the Camry. I marked the window with three red, slanting slash marks, then stood near the door.

  It seemed to me as if I waited a long time, but I know it could not have been more than a few minutes before I heard Deeny cussing at the lock as she tried to open it. It took her longer with a key than it had taken Rachel to pick the lock. I finally heard it give, and quickly moved farther back behind the door. She seemed to take a long time with the knob lock as well, but finally, the door opened slightly.

  She fumbled for the light switch and snapped it on; after the darkness, the single overhead bulb seemed to make the room very bright. I had a sudden sensation of being visible to her, even though the door was between us. But as she stepped farther into the garage, her arms full of Rachel’s tools and other paraphernalia, I saw that her attention had been caught by exactly what I had hoped would catch it: the hobo sign on the Camry window. She moved closer to it.

  Carefully closing the door enough to block the view from the house, I stepped forward with one lunging step, like a batter meeting a ball and—trying not to shut my eyes as I did it—swung the back end of my flashlight and the weight of all those D cells down on the back of her head. My D cells won out over her brain cells, and I caught at her as she pitched forward, not able to keep her from falling, but slowing it, and guiding her away from the most dangerous objects she might have struck on her way down. I quickly turned and shut the door all the way, hoping Gerald had been too busy to notice the noise made when her armload of Rachel’s tools went clattering to the floor with her.

  I locked the knob, and after assuring myself that I hadn’t killed her outright, went back to the workbench. I found a roll of duct tape, pulled out my Swiss Army knife and went to work. Within a few minutes, I had tied the gag in her back pocket over her mouth, then bound her wrists and ankles with the duct tape.

  It would have been nice to feel a sense of triumph at that point, but I didn’t. Her face already swelling from the place where Gerald struck her, pale from the blow I had given her, she seemed more a pathetic foolish girl than a vanquished worthy adversary.

  Then I thought of the sounds I had heard Travis making, remembered that Ulkins had been tortured, and decided I would have to indulge in sympathy for Deeny some other time.

  I wondered where I could leave her that would not be too close to sharp objects; ones she might use to free herself. I searched her pockets, found her pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from the Wharf on one side, a pair of shotgun shells in the other. I took both of these objects. I searched the items on the floor and found her keys. I found the Camry key, unlocked the car and opened the passenger door. I lowered the seat back and—with some effort—dragged her into the car. I rolled the windows down a little, locked the doors and took the keys with me.

  I quickly studied Rachel’s tools, didn’t see anything of much interest to anyone who wasn’t breaking into a building. I didn’t know how to use them, so I left them there.

  Time was running out, I knew. Sooner or later, Gerald would notice that Deeny had been absent too long. She had made things worse by stalling. I looked around the garage, gathered together a few pieces of wood, a canister of oily rags, five cans of spray paint and a can of charcoal lighter fluid. Nothing like your average garage when you’re on the hunt for a good set of fire hazards.

  I turned out the light, waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, then crept outside with my hands as full as Deeny’s had been coming into the garage. I forced myself to overcome a paralyzing certainty that Gerald was watching my every move, shotgun in hand. Crouching low, I made my way toward the old bathtub on the back lawn. I set all the combustible materials—save the matches and the cartridges—into the tub, trying to stack the wood up so that it would burn well. I opened the can of lighter fluid, sprinkled a goodly amount of it over the wood, tossed my now flammable latex gloves on top it of all, then moved as quietly as possible toward the house.

  Gerald had turned a light on in what I soon realized was the living room. I moved from window to window until I found one with a blind that didn’t reach the bottom of the sill. Once again I found myself looking through a narrow, slotted view, this one horizontal. What I saw made me wish I had waited a little longer to take a look.

  Gerald was in the process of smacking Travis hard across the mouth. Travis’s gag was no longer in place, and Travis and Rachel were each tied to wooden ladder-back chairs. The blood from the wound on Travis’s forehead had dried, but now fresh blood came from a split lip. I took some solace in the fact that Gerald had not thought either of them dangerous enough to tie their feet or legs, and had not set up any electrical torture devices.

  Gerald was talking—loudly, it seemed, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  I moved to the back of the house, thought of lighting the fire, hesitated. I crept up the back-porch steps, slowly put what I hoped was the right key into the lock and turned it. It opened with a click that sounded like a shot to me, but apparently Gerald didn’t hear it over his own voice. Slowly, cautiously, waiting for a creaking noise that would send him gunning for me, I opened the back door. There was no squeak of hinges. I made myself breathe again, and I went inside.

  I was in the kitchen. I could now hear Gerald very clearly.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” he was saying. “Your daddy used to look at me like that. ”Don’t hurt me.“ Don’t hurt him! You know what I did for him? You know what I did? Everything. I fed him. I put clothes on his back and a roof over his head. I read for him. I wrote for him. You know that? You know your own father couldn’t read or write?”

  “Yes,” Travis said wearily. “I knew.”

  “Well, then! Maybe he told you who it was that was always doing everything for him! Always giving up everything for him! I raised him, tried to make sure he stayed out of trouble. And he was always in trouble! I had to go in and spend my time talking to the teachers when he was flunking everything. I was the one who saved him, you see? Whenever he was in trouble, I saved him. Then I had to find something to do with his sorry ass when he dropped out of school—didn’t even finish elementary school!

  “Old Papa DeMont, he used to try to teach him things just by talking to him. If it weren’t for Papa DeMont, he wouldn’t have known a thing. That sweet ol
d man used to let him follow him around like a pup. Taught him all kinds of things. I’m not saying Arthur was stupid, he wasn’t. He was about as dumb as a fox, and twice as sly. I’m out there working my ass off, and Arthur’s running around in Papa DeMont’s pocket, soaking up everything that old man will show him or teach him.

  “And you know how he repaid that kindness? By fucking the man’s daughter! That’s how! Now, I’ll admit, he was just a kid, and he can’t bear the blame entirely, because she was always tempting him. That was her way, to tempt and tease a man.”

  “Sounds like you wished you’d got there first,” I heard Rachel say.

  There was an ominous silence, then Travis shouted, “Don’t hurt her!”

  Gerald laughed. “Listen to him. ”Don’t hurt her!“” he mimicked. “I want to, but I got plans for that dirty mouth of yours, you wop slut, so I’ll teach you some manners later.”

  I moved slowly toward the door that led from the kitchen to the living room. It was open, but I flattened myself against the wall. I had my flashlight ready. If I had the chance, I’d give Gerald the same treatment I gave Deeny.

  “You once thought of marrying Gwendolyn?” Travis asked, distracting him from Rachel.

  “Before I learned what she was really like, yes, I did. I loved her once.”

  He stopped talking, then suddenly said, “You look so much like him. Your daddy. For a bastard, I’m surprised how much you come up looking like him. Nobody on earth I loved as much as him. Not even her, and I proved it. I always looked out after him, protected him. I made sacrifices. I told Arthur, he had to protect her like I protected him, against Horace DeMont and his brats. Course, he wasn’t man enough to do it.”

  “But he made his own fortune,” Travis said, “and he provided for her from that.”

  “For her?” Gerald said. “Or for a whore and the bastard he got off of her?”

  “For all of us,” Travis said. “Even you.”

  There was another sound of a blow. I must have moved, because the floor suddenly creaked beneath my feet. I got the flashlight ready.

  “Why do you keep beating on him?” Rachel asked. “Just ‘cause he reminds you of his dad? I mean, what the hell is the point of all this? Is this all because we were looking for the El Camino?”

  “He knows what it’s about!” Spanning said.

  “I don’t—” Travis said, but there was another blow. I wasn’t sure I could stand by, just listening, if Spanning kept at it.

  “You know, this is getting us nowhere,” Rachel said. “If I knew what the hell it was you wanted, maybe I could help you out.”

  He paced. “Where’s Deeny?!” he shouted.

  I could hear him moving, heard him open the front door, heard the squeal of the spring on the screen door as he opened it. In a soft voice, he called, “Deeny! Deeny!”

  “She’s gone off on one of her pouts,” he said, coming back in, the screen slamming shut. There was the sound of the front door being shut. “Shouldna hit her, I guess.”

  “What is it you’re looking for?” Rachel said.

  “That whore’s the one that had them,” Gerald said. “His mother. Arthur gave them to her. He told me so. Arthur told me he gave them to this little asshole’s mother! You trust a man, you do everything in the world for him and what does he say? He needs protection from me. From me! When I was the one protecting him! They’re proof, you see? I helped Arthur. He was going to divorce her, you know.”

  “My mother?” Travis asked.

  “No! She wasn’t even married! Not really! She was just a whore.”

  “Who then?” Rachel asked.

  “Gwenie. He told me he was going to divorce Gwenie, just to marry that whore and give this brat his name. Gwenie would have taken everything and given it all to her uncle Horace.” I heard him pace to the front door again.

  The door opened, then the screen door. This time, I heard him step outside. I stepped into the doorway of the living room. Travis’s eyes widened, but Rachel shook her head and mouthed the word “no.” She jerked her head toward another doorway—one closer to her chair.

  I moved back into the kitchen just as I heard Spanning open the door again. He was silent. Someone started making stomping noises, and I used that to cover my progress across the kitchen and into the hallway. I was halfway down the hall when I heard Spanning shout, “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “My feet fell asleep,” Travis said.

  “You’re going to be asleep permanently if you don’t cut it out!”

  “Did I ever tell you what happened on the night Gwendolyn DeMont died?” Travis said.

  Spanning was silent.

  “It was a hot July night,” Travis said, his voice taking on a slightly different quality. “So hot. Much hotter than tonight. All the windows were open, but there was no breeze. It was very late. Everything was still and quiet. But in the middle of this still and quiet night, I was awakened by a noise. It wasn’t a big noise, just a soft little noise, but I heard it. I was just a boy, already in bed, in my pajamas. But the noise woke me.

  “I went downstairs, very slowly, and I saw a light on in the study. My father’s study. I was scared until I saw him. He was sitting at his desk.

  “At first, I was so happy to see him, so pleased to think that he had come home. He hadn’t been there in so many days. Every night, I had waited up for him. Every night, I had hoped he would come back. But he didn’t, not until that night. I wanted to run to him, to say, ”Daddy! You’re back! You’re back home again!“ But then I saw that he was crying.”

  “Crying?!” Spanning said.

  “Yes, crying. I ran up to him and hugged him, but it was almost as if I wasn’t there. I asked him what had happened to make him so sad. He said, ”Do you know who loves me more than anyone else in the world?“”

  There was silence, then Spanning scoffed, “You probably said it was your mother, because God knows she had him by the balls.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I said, but I was wrong.”

  “Then it must have been you.”

  “No—you know that isn’t true.”

  “Well, if he said it was me, he was right, but he sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me. He was too busy with you and your mother to bother with me.”

  “But he didn’t see me for a dozen years,” Travis said. “If he loved me so much, he would have done for me what you did for him, right?”

  Spanning didn’t answer.

  “If you love someone, you take care of them and protect them, right?”

  “Of course you do!”

  “You didn’t run away from your responsibilities, did you?”

  “Goddamned right, I didn’t.”

  “You were more of a father to him than he was to me.”

  “Some ways.”

  “He could be selfish, couldn’t-he?”

  “Could be? I never met a more selfish man.”

  “But even so, he loved you. We all knew that. He always talked about how much you had done for him. He knew. In his heart of hearts, he knew. He knew you’d do anything for him. He knew you even gave up the woman you loved for him. She could have had you, and everything would have been fine. But she wouldn’t take you, would she?”

  There was a long silence. “You see?” Spanning said. “You see? You know, don’t you? I thought he might not have shown them to you. You were just a kid. But he came home that night and showed them to you, didn’t he? Now, where are they? I just want them back. Your mother wouldn’t give them to me, so I was going to get them myself.”

  “But then those old biddies at the apartment building called the cops on Deeny, right?” Rachel said.

  “Yeah. And then this cousin—one of the damned Kellys who turned their noses up at him! The whore’s family! A Kelly goes in there and takes everything out of the apartment. But then I see how it works. You planned this, Travis. You’re staying with your cousin. I know you know about them. I even tried to get old Ulkins to tell me. You sa
w what happened to him. Now tell me—where are they?”

  “I wonder how pissed ol‘ Deeny is,” Rachel said, apparently knowing what the follow-up would be if she didn’t distract him from whatever “they” were. “Maybe she’s fetching the cops on you as we speak.”

  He laughed. “She’s in this as deep as I am.”

  But evidently it made him worry, because once again he went to the door. I opened my pocket knife to the sharpest blade. I heard him go out on the front porch again, and I came around the corner of the doorway. I tried to cut the ropes on Rachel’s wrists, but she whispered, “Give it to me and get out of here!” I placed it in her hand, blade side against the ropes. The screen door squeaked open and I pulled back.

  “None of this whispering between yourselves!” Spanning shouted.