“A slow news day,” he explained. “If you really want airtime, you try to do your thing on a slow news day.”
She squinted, moved her lips. “Executions? Oh. They’re against the death penalty, huh.”
“There,” he said, pointing to one placard. “Ruesette Argo’s name. I’ll be damned, she has fans.” He noticed Lisse’s puzzlement and nodded toward the recorder. “She was the one I talked to this week. Poisoned over a dozen people. Thirteen, to be exact.”
Lisse shuddered. “Lord, she must be nuts.”
He leaned back on his elbows, the remote resting on his stomach. The protesters marched in a ragged circle. Chanting. Singing. Apparently led by a pair of young Catholic priests, augmented by at least a half-dozen nuns dressed from the traditional to the contemporary. The commentator noted the abrupt increase in state executions over the course of the last two years, to such an extent that death chambers, in some states, were now being used as much as once a week. And they still couldn’t keep up.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, the average stay on death row now was little more than two years.
The camera panned to the street.
There were no hecklers, and the light traffic didn’t slow down.
The police on duty looked monumentally bored.
If there was any public support, it wasn’t in Baton Rouge.
“No,” he said at last.
Lisse started. “What?”
“Ruesette Argo. I don’t think she’s crazy.”
“She has to be.” She jerked her chin toward the screen. “All those people dead? You can’t do that and be normal.”
John tucked his lower lip between his teeth and considered for a moment. Then he said, as if surprised himself, “Yeah. Yeah, I think you can.”
* * * *
3
The room is silent except for the faint buzz of cartoons on the TV. A fly caught between the curtains and the pane buzzes angrily because it can’t find a way out. Outside the warped door, a neon sign buzzes, four letters missing.
“Mom?”
“Hmmm?”
“These cartoons are silly.”
“I know, dear. That’s what makes them fun.”
“They’re not fun, they’re silly.”
“Then find something else to watch. Better yet, young man, turn the set off and read.”
“There’s nothing to read.”
“I bought the Sunday paper. Read the comics.”
“I don’t want to. They’re silly, too.”
“Then go outside and play.”
“In the parking lot?”
“Joey, you’re the one with the cowboy suit, not me. Pretend ... oh, pretend it’s a prairie and you’re hunting for Indians, or guiding a wagon train to the mountains. Or... or you’re a lawman on the trail of a real desperado.”
“What’s a desperado?”
“A badman. A crook. Pretend he’s robbed a bank and you have to bring him in.”
“Do I have to kill him?”
“You’re the one with the gun, honey. You have to do what’s right. Maybe he’ll come quietly, maybe he won’t. You have to decide what to do.”
“But it’s not a real gun.”
“I know. That’s why you pretend.”
“I don’t have to pretend, Mom.”
“Yes. I know. So then what do you want to do?”
“Maybe... go home.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”
“But...Joey. Honey. What about your father?”
The fly; the neon.
The TV switched off.
“Joey?... Joey?”
* * * *
4
John knew he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, but he couldn’t help it. A rare charge of surprising energy galvanized him to his feet as he said, “Yes, of course you can be normal. Of course you can. It’s ... Jesus, there’s stuff I have to do. God, this is amazing. This is—” and he grabbed her by the arms, pulled her to her feet, kissed her quickly on the lips, and said, “You are a genius, Miss Montgomery. Come on, we’re leaving the batcave, I need fresh air.”
He laughed at the stunned look on her face, but was not so carried away that he didn’t remember the taste of her lips.
“Do you know someone down in the office? Someone who isn’t above making some extra cash on company time? Kind of under the table?”
Stunned she nodded.
“Good. Great. That’s great.” He shut down the computer, closed the lid, and stared for a second at the tape recorder before shaking his head once. “No, that’s silly.”
“What’s silly?”
“Nothing, nothing, don’t worry about it.” He tucked the laptop under his arm, looked around the room as though checking to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, then took her arm and led her to the hall.
“Key?”
She patted her jeans. “Still have it. But—”
“You’ll see, you’ll see.”
Scattershot.
Maybe. Maybe he was still a little drunk. Maybe, when he really thought about what he was doing, he’d realize what an idiot he probably was.
Still...
Avoiding the day manager was easy. At the Royal Cajun, on a Sunday in October, there wasn’t a whole lot of things to do, and the man apparently spent most of his time in his office. With the door closed. Sometimes locked. Nobody had ever asked; nobody had ever really cared.
It didn’t take long to make arrangements for some of his computer files to be printed. He didn’t think about the cash he paid out or the cash he would have to give if it was all done by dinner. That wasn’t his problem; he would square it with George later.
Once that was done, Lisse, still bewildered but giggling at his infectious excitement, agreed to put together a lunch for them both. To go.
“A picnic,” he said.
“A picnic? We don’t have a basket.”
“Use a paper bag.”
“Some picnic.”
“It’s the thought,” he said sternly, pushing her gently toward the kitchen. “And I thought the thought was, you were hungry.”
As soon as she left, glancing at him over her shoulder, he sat in the lobby. Stood. Sat again and stared at the ceiling fans.
He had no real idea why he felt the way he did. He only knew there was an urgency, that whatever he was doing had to be finished soon. Very soon. And he didn’t think it had anything to do with completing the book.
He stood, took a few hesitant steps toward the café, and sat again.
His fingers tapped his thighs; he counted the number of revolutions a ceiling fan made in sixty seconds; one heel tapped the floor; he stared so long and so hard at the bank of telephones by the front desk that his eyes began to water, his vision began to blur.
He neither lowered his gaze nor dried the tears.
Floating.
He was floating.
Voices murmured, footsteps were muffled, a giggling couple on the mezzanine sounded like tiny bells, the hushing slide of an elevator’s doors sounded like surf, and the shadow that suddenly stood in front of him terrified him so much he scrambled out of the chair, nearly knocking it over.
“John!”
Panting, he held up a hand.
“John, are you crying?”
“No.” He shook his head, blinked rapidly, finally used a sleeve to dry his face. “No.”
Lisse held a large, bulging paper bag in her arms, mounds of wax paper rising from the top. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He looked from the phones to the entrance and back again. “Yeah.”
Uncertain, she hefted the bag. “I’m ready. I’ve got—”
“Good,” he said. “Great.” His left hand pulled at his neck; his right hand slapped his leg nervously. “Yeah. Great.”
“Now wait a minute,” she said angrily. “If you’re—”
He walked away.
“Hey!”
“A call,” he said over hi
s shoulder.
“But I thought—”
“Lisse, it won’t take a minute. I have to make a phone call”
* * * *
5
There are dents in the walls where bottles and fists have been thrown by previous tenants. Near the bottom of the door is a splintered gouge where a kick landed. The headboards are scratched. Flakes of dull paint drift into the bathroom sink.
On the floor beneath the window, the fly twitches silently as it dies.
At the foot of the single bed farthest from the window a young boy stands, shaking the covered feet of the woman lying facedown on the mattress. He wears faded jeans tucked into a pair of gleaming tan boots, a dark leather belt around his waist with a plastic gun in a tasseled holster, a dark shirt perhaps a half size too large, and a hat that hangs down his back by the braided strap around his neck.
“Mom! Mommy! Mommy, come on!”
The woman groans as she rolls stiffly onto her side, propping her head up with one hand. Her face is creased where it pressed against the pillow, pale from lack of sleep. Her shirt and jeans are on the floor, her socks balled up in her dirt-smudged sneakers. She pulls the thin sheet up under her chin, and stares at him blearily.
He shakes her feet again until she swipes at his hands ineffectually, until she focuses.
“Mom, get up, get up!”
“Oh, Lord,” she moans, “what is it now?”
He steps away from the bed, hands at his sides. “We have to go, Mom.”
“What?”
“Come on, Mom!”
”Now?”
“Now, Mom. We have to go now.”
“Oh, but Joey, I’m—”
“Now, Mommy. Come on.”
* * * *
6
“His name,” said John, “is Casey Chisholm.”
In an admittedly feeble attempt to mollify her hurt feelings, he let her choose the site for their lunch. It had been a toss-up between Jackson Square and the Canal Street ferry, but she had finally opted for the river instead of the tourists. There were chairs and benches scattered around the top, deserted open deck; without discussion they pulled two to the railing, propped their feet up, and watched a pair of tugs nose a cargo ship into the channel downriver.
“A friend of yours?”
“No. Not really. I met him only twice, at Rahway State Prison, in New Jersey.”
“Lord, he’s not one of your killers is he?”
“No. He’s a priest.”
* * * *
7
Joey stands outside the door, beneath the corrugated plastic overhang that runs the length of the motel. Ten feet to his left is the office, its neon vacancy sign still buzzing. On the far side of the narrow, empty parking lot, the ground rises to a weed-cluttered embankment; on the top a freight train lumbers past, clanking, creaking, its cars peeling and old.
Impatiently he says, “Mom, come on.”
“Just hold your horses, cowboy,” she snaps. “I’m not leaving anything behind, okay? I don’t want anything here they can use to trace us.”
He looks at her over his shoulder, grinning.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” she says, smiling for the first time in several days. Then she shakes a mock-severe finger at him. “But just because they haven’t yet doesn’t mean they won’t.”
He turns away as he whispers, “Yes, it does. Yes, it does.”
He watches the train. He waits. He doesn’t move when Patty steps out of the room and closes the door behind her.
“Joey?” A soft voice. “Honey?” She smoothes his impossibly blond hair with a palm. When he looks up at her, she smiles. “Home, right?”
He doesn’t answer, and the smile dies as she closes her eyes.
He takes her hand, and they walk toward the highway.
He doesn’t speak.
But he smiles.
* * * *
8
John felt the boat’s vibrations through his rump and soles, watched the city’s tourist center lurch away to the left as the ferry barged through the water toward the opposite bank. A faint breeze worked across the deck, and on it he could smell exhaust and food and the warmth of the sun and something Lisse wore that he couldn’t put a name to.
The bag was on the deck between them, and as she handed out the food, he told her about Casey.
A fascinating man, he said. Big. Not fat, but big. Tall. Wears black all the time, as far as I can tell, even when he isn’t wearing his white collar. I was there to interview a guy named Mercer. Mercer Prince. Who wasn’t one, believe me. He had robbed a convenience store in Trenton, shot the pregnant clerk through the head when she didn’t deliver fast enough, then took the police on a high-speed chase clear down to the Delaware River. There was a gun-fight on the bridge there. He shot four cops, two of them died. He was ... evil, believe it or not, is too good a word for him. Pure nasty, that’s all I can say.
Anyway, Casey was there visiting a relative of one of his parishioners, and we kind of fell into talking a little, before and after visiting hours.
You have to know this, Lisse: I am not a terribly religious man. My mother used to take me to revivalists. Whoever was in town, it didn’t matter who; they came, we went. I grew up thinking the world was doomed, I was doomed, and nothing I could do was going to change it. I was not, you might say, the most sunny kid on the block. That changed when I was a teenager. Mom took to going to the nearest church—Presbyterian, as it happens—because her legs weren’t so good anymore, and my father took the car when he walked out. Meanwhile, all these guys—Swaggart and Baker, guys like that—were going down for the count, and that just proved to me that no one, especially preachers, had a clue, you know what I mean?
But this Episcopal priest, he was something else.
I can’t tell you what it is even now, but he impressed the hell out of me. So to speak. He’s special, Lisse. I don’t know why, but he’s really special.
Anyway, you remember last year, part of the year before? Everything seemed to be going to hell? Towns exploding, violence all over the place, people blaming terrorists and gangs and the Mafia and whatever?
Well, Casey got caught in it. I don’t know what happened, exactly, but the town he works in became part of the pattern. He ended up in the hospital, nearly died. I call him now and then to see how he’s doing. Most of the time I get the doctor, or his lady, whose name is Helen.
But the last time I talked to him—not today, about two months ago—he was in some pain, physical therapy was almost worse than his original injuries, so we couldn’t talk very long. I asked him how he was, we talked a little about getting together if I got back East again, and then he was quiet for the longest time.
For a change I didn’t say anything, I just waited.
Then he said, “They’re here, John. I know because I saw one. I was marked, and I saw one.”
That’s all. I didn’t get a chance to ask him who he was talking about because the nurse took the phone then.
Then today . . .
Now understand this, Lisse, if you can: He is a priest and a big man, like I said. But he has this voice that... I wish I could tell you ... describe ... a voice, Lisse. He has a voice.
His doctor was there today and didn’t want me to talk to him. But I could hear Casey in the background, arguing, and when the doctor finally let him talk, all he said was,
“You’re marked, John.
“God help you, you’re marked.”
With that voice, Lisse.
With that voice.
* * * *
9
1
L
isse took a bite of her sandwich and said nothing.
To the left, a hundred or so yards downriver, she watched what seemed to be a tour group gathered on the broad top of the levee, taking pictures of the water, the three spires of St. Louis Cathedral behind them, maybe even the chugging ferry. A shay with a tasseled cover rode past them, drawn by a mule whose ears poked through a straw hat. C
ameras swiveled. Tourists taking pictures of tourists.
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 8