Extenuating Circumstances

by Jonathan Valin

  Len gave me a long look.

  “You’re not going to do Janey any good by getting yourself killed,” I said.

  “I’m not doing her much good alive,” he said softly.

  “Look, whatever’s wrong between you two is something you’ll have to work out on your own.”

  “And if it can’t be worked out?”

  “Then you’re going to have to live with it, Len. Just like the rest of us do. But if you have any real feeling for that girl, you won’t put her through another nightmare. Or do you think she can survive your murder on top of Lessing’s?”

  He flinched visibly, but all he said was, “I’ll think about it.”

  ******

  I went from Len’s place back to the office. I knew I was going to have to be clear-headed and strong to do what I had to do late that night. I knew I needed sleep. I lay down on the office couch, shut my eyes, and listened to the late-afternoon sounds of traffic coming through the open office window. In a matter of moments I drifted off.

  I woke up around eleven—woke up to darkness, like a guy on third shift.

  The night was still full of life. Traffic sounds, voices, music from bars floated up from Vine Street. The nightlife would begin to wind down in a couple of hours. And a couple of hours after that I’d have my meeting with Tommy T.

  I walked down the hall and rinsed off in the john. Glanced at myself in the mirror—at my weary, busted face. I didn’t look too long, though. I didn’t want to start asking myself questions.

  When I got back to the office I went over to the safe, opened it, and took out an oily chamois I’d kept inside for years—since I’d been an investigator on Walker Parsons’s staff at the D.A.’s office. Wrapped inside the oily cloth was a silencer made to fit a .45 automatic. I’d taken it off a thug in the Sheraton-Gibson Hotel and locked it away, oiled and unused. A souvenir with a purpose. I’d never thought that purpose would arrive for me. On that night I felt it had.

  I cleaned the thing out with a gun rod and a pad soaked in Break-free.

  I left it sitting on the desk, in the desk light, while I went down to the street—to an all-night coffee shop on Sixth—and had a sandwich for dinner. It was the first thing I saw when I got back. Heavy, chromed, snub, gleaming in the light like a drain pipe.

  The Reds were on the Coast, playing the Giants—the tail end of another off season. I listened to the game for an hour or two and thought of my grandfather, who would keep box scores of each game during the summers, fanatically recording every out, as if he were keeping the casualty list of a distant war.

  Around two-thirty the night noises outside my window began to die down. By three, all that was left were siren sounds, occasional hoots of drunken laughter, and the clip-clop of the carriage horses heading back to the barn on Central. I flipped off the radio, went over to the desk, picked up the silencer, and fitted it onto the barrel of my Gold Cup. The piece was too long for a holster, so I stuck it in my belt, around back, where a jacket would cover it.

  I got a sports coat from the rack, put it on, turned off the desk light, and went out.

  36

  IT WAS five after three when I stepped onto the street. I headed south to the underground garage, down Vine to Fifth. There were still a few late-night types wandering the sidewalks. The heavy drinkers who close the bars and the ones who stay for the company. Bums with grocery carts full of ragged clothing, wheeling their belongings down the sidewalks. In a half hour they’d be gone—home or into the night. And then, if Trumaine did what I’d told him to do, it would just be me and Tommy T.

  I picked up the car in the garage, circled around to Fifth Street, and then to Lytle Place. I parked on Fourth, directly across from the park. The ornate facade of a residential hotel rose on my left, its canopied entryway dimly lit by brass lamps fixed to the building. On my right the park grounds shimmered in the moonlight—lawns and sidewalks turned silver, the ginkgo trees powdered with the same silvery light. There was no one moving around—no one I could see.

  Reaching behind me, I took the Colt out of my belt. There was enough street light falling through the windshield for me to see the piece clearly—the blued barrel with the thick chrome snout of the silencer on the tip. I cocked it, locked it, put it down on the seat.

  Around three-twenty a patrol car turned onto Fourth. I ducked down in the seat as it cruised by. Through the open window I could hear the amplified static of its radio, and then the burst of the dispatcher’s voice sending out a call on Vine. The police car sped up, rumbling down Fourth.

  As I straightened up on the seat I caught sight of someone in the rearview mirror coming down Pike Street at the east end of the park. I ducked again as he crossed Pike into the park grounds. When he plopped down on a gaslit bench I could see him clearly—Tommy T. His dirty angel’s face looked nervous. But then there was a lot of money at stake, and he had to know how much Len hated him.

  Hunched down on the car seat, I watched him through the rearview mirror. If I’d been a crack shot, I would have gotten out of the car, braced my arm on the roof, and taken him out where he sat. But I wasn’t a good enough marksman with a pistol to pin it all on a seventy-yard shot in the dark. I didn’t want to take the chance of rushing him, either—not when he was obviously expecting trouble. It was much better to take him by surprise, when he was feeling good and safe and rich with all of Ira Lessing’s money loading him down.

  I wasn’t worried about catching him alone after the payoff. I wasn’t even worried about taking him on my own. It was Len who worried me. The whole plan was predicated on Trumaine’s doing exactly what I’d told him to do. If he screwed up—if he started feeling brave again, started feeling that need to redeem himself in Janey’s eyes—he could get killed. And Chard could get away.

  When I left his apartment I thought I had Len convinced that my way was the only way to ensure what he wanted—an end to Tom T. Chard’s reign of terror. But hunkering down in that seat, sweating out the last few minutes before the red Volvo would round Pike onto Fourth, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d made a mistake—if I shouldn’t have tried to make the pickup on my own. Chard knew my face, but it would have taken only a moment to drive up to him and fire.

  I stared nervously into the rearview mirror—at that kid sitting in the gaslight, at the street corner across from him. Two or three minutes passed—slowly. And then I saw the red Volvo turn onto Pike.

  The kid saw it, too, straightening up in the bench and putting his right hand in his jacket pocket. I was sure he had his razor there, that he was fingering it nervously—ready to protect himself, ready to slash and run if Len tried to double-cross him. I said a silent prayer for Trumaine and held my breath as he turned onto Fourth, coasted down to the gaslit bench, and came to a stop beside Tom Chard.

  For a moment Chard didn’t move. He looked both ways, up and down the block. He looked behind him. Then, very slowly, he got to his feet and went around to the passenger-side door of the Volvo. He glanced to each side again and opened the door. He still had his right hand in his coat pocket as he got in.

  ******

  I couldn’t see inside the Volvo through the rearview mirror. All I could see were the headlight beams of the car knifing through the darkness, and the plume of exhaust coming from the tailpipes of the idling engine. The car sat there for what seemed an eternity, although it couldn’t have been more than five minutes of clock time. And then I heard the engine rev up.

  I waited for Chard to get out. But he didn’t get out. Instead the car started down Fourth.

  “Jesus, Len,” I said under my breath.

  I hunched farther down on the seat as the Volvo passed me. When it had gotten a couple of blocks ahead, I started up the Pinto and began to follow.

  The traffic lights were all flashing yellow at that time of the morning. So there was no chance of losing Len at a stoplight. I watched the Volvo’s taillights dancing in and out of the shadows of the tall buildings along Fourth. At Vine a taxi cab
coasted in between Len and me, but I could still see the Volvo clearly enough to keep track of it.

  We went all the way across town, all the way to Central Avenue, before the Volvo came to a stop. The taxi cab went on ahead, turning right onto Central and heading uptown. I pulled over to the curb a block and a half behind the Volvo, doused my headlights, and squinted to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside Len’s car. But I couldn’t see anything at that distance except the silhouettes of two heads.

  Perhaps Chard had gotten scared. Perhaps he’d feared a trap. Perhaps he’d ordered Len to drive around to shake a tail. Whatever the reason, the trip across town wasn’t part of the plan. I knew that if they kept going, I could lose them. The entrance to the expressway was right across Central from where Len had parked. If they got on the interstate, it wouldn’t be easy to follow—not if I intended to hang back. Even at that hour of the morning there’d be enough traffic on 75 for the Volvo to get lost in it. And I could come away with nothing.

  I thought about gunning the motor and pulling up alongside the Volvo. I thought about cutting in front of them before they got on the entrance ramp, forcing Len off the road onto the berm. I thought I was a goddamn fool not to have shot the bastard when I first spotted him.

  And then the passenger-side door of the Volvo opened, and Chard got out.

  He was grinning his evil little grin, but he didn’t look nervous and he didn’t look toward me. He half saluted Trumaine, slammed the door shut, and jogged across West Fourth to the south side of the street. Trumaine started up the car and drove off, across Central onto the expressway.

  It all had happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to feel relieved. I watched the kid closely as he sauntered down Fourth toward the Plum Street corner. His windbreaker had large pockets, and I could tell from the way he kept patting those pockets that Trumaine had given him the cash.

  Chard got to the corner of Plum and walked south toward Third. I saw him stop midway down the block and duck into an alcove of a bank building. He stood there for a long time—his upper body in shadow, his legs just visible in the moonlight. And I suddenly realized why he’d had Len drive him across town. Chard had caught a ride to his favorite corner, to his pickup spot. Maybe he was counting his money in that alcove, maybe he was catching his breath. Or maybe he’d gone to that corner to do business—to cap the evening by working over some poor slob like Ira Lessing.

  The longer Chard stood here, the more certain I became that he really was waiting for a car to cruise by. Any car. Anybody. He was feeling mean and brazen and invincible, with enough money in those coat pockets to take him anywhere he wanted to go. He obviously didn’t need the cash from a john. What he needed was the thrill—the ugly thrill of making one more Ira Lessing crawl and beg and plead for him to stop. One last chance to make himself feel big at another man’s expense.

  I was going to give him that chance.

  I watched a car cruise by, slowing up a little at the Plum Street corner before speeding off, and I knew exactly how to go about it.

  I was going to cruise Tommy T. Pick him up, like Lessing had. It was dark on Plum, dark enough so that Chard couldn’t see much of my face inside the Pinto—especially if I turned up the collar of my sports coat and hunched down on the seat. If I kept the car on the west side of Plum, where the shadows were heaviest, there’d be no reason for him to think that I was anyone other than some poor sap looking to get hurt. If he bit and came over to the car, I’d have the gun on him as he got inside. If he didn’t bite, I’d get out of the car and take him where he was standing—right there on the dark, empty street.

  37

  TURNING UP my coat collar, I started the engine, flipped on the headlights, and pulled out onto Fourth. It was just half a block to Plum. I wheeled left onto the dark side of the street and slowed to a crawl just as I came up to where Chard was standing.

  Hunched down in the seat, with the silenced gun in my right hand, I pulled over to the curb, flashed my lights four times—using Carnova’s code—then turned off the engine. After a moment Chard stepped out of the alcove. I kept my face hidden as he crossed in front of the Pinto. He came directly over to the driver’s-side window—a knowing smile on his lips. The car window was unrolled. Still grinning, he ducked his head inside.

  As soon as he saw me his eyes popped. But by then I had the barrel of the silenced gun. pressed against his mouth, right up against that nasty grin. I grabbed his hair with my left hand and pulled his head all the way through the car window.

  “You can’t do this, man,” he shrieked through his mushed-up mouth.

  “Oh, yes, I can, kid. Tonight I’m the law.”

  “Fuck you!” he shouted.

  He threw his right hand up, and I saw the razor catch the moonlight. Even though I had him by the hair, with his upper body halfway inside the car, he managed to bring the razor through the window and flail at me. For a second all I could see was that flashing blade and the kid’s wildly bucking head and shoulders. It was as if I was being attacked by an animal. I felt the razor ripping through my right coat sleeve, cutting into the flesh of my arm. I jerked back and the gun went off with a flash and a muffled pop, straight up into the roof. The car filled with gun smoke.

  I took my finger off the trigger and started using the gun like a sap, clubbing at Chard’s flailing arms and jerking head while trying to keep my grip on his hair. But in the tiny space of the car I couldn’t get any leverage. He kept slashing at me, cutting me again on the right hand before I managed to hit him hard enough on the temple to knock him out.

  I saw his eyes roll back, and then his upper body went limp. The razor dropped from his hand onto the floor of the car. I pushed Chard’s head back out of the car window, and his body slid to the pavement.

  For a second I just sat there, breathing hard. There was blood up and down my jacket—his and mine. He’d been tugging so hard that I’d pulled out a handful of hair. I wiped the blood and hair off my hand, wrapped a handkerchief around the deep cut on my right hand, and got out. The kid was lying on the pavement by the driver’s-side door, moaning and holding his bloody head with both hands. I reached down and grabbed him by the back of his windbreaker, dragging him around to the passenger side of the Pinto.

  “Wha’ the hell?” he said groggily.

  Opening the passenger-side door, I reached inside the glove compartment and took out a pair of cuffs. I flipped Tommy T. on his stomach and cuffed his hands behind him, then tossed him onto the seat, slamming the door behind him. Before getting back in on the driver’s side, I took a close look up and down the street. No one had driven by. There was no one else visible on the block.

  I put the car in gear and drove slowly away.

  ******

  In a few minutes we were on River Road, heading west toward Saylor Park. It started to rain. A slow drizzle that made the headlights glint on the dark, oily tarmac. To the left I could see the river lights guttering in the dark current. On the right the white clapboard houses of Anderson Ferry gradually gave way to gravel pits and open lots.

  Chard had come around by then. He sat still on the seat, head bowed and bloody. “I didn’t do nothing to you,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t.”

  “What about Kent and Kitty, Tommy? What about Ira Lessing?”

  “I didn’t do none of that, either.”

  “Yeah, you were just an innocent bystander.”

  “It was Terry that done Ira. Not me.”

  “You’re lying, you little cocksucker.”

  The kid bucked, like I’d jolted him with a prod. If he could have gotten the razor, he would have attacked me again. “I ain’t no cocksucker,” he screamed. “I ain’t no fag.”

  I laughed. At that moment in his life that was all he could think to say.

  “Terry was the cocksucker,” he said. “Terry was the faggot. Warming up to that rich-ass son-of-a-bitch. Calling him his dad. I told him I could get in that man’s crack anytime I wanted to. But he thought he ha
d something special going. So I just had to show him—thinking he’s better than me, ‘cause he had some faggot that treated him nice.”

  I glanced over at him. “You took Lessing away from Terry?”

  “Shit, yes, I did. Ain’t my fault Terry was too stupid to see what was happening—until Lessing told him. That’s what set Terry off. Hearing his big-deal lover boy tell him he wanted some of what I’d been giving him.”

  “How do you know that?”

  For just a second he looked perplexed. “How do you think?” he finally said. “Terry told me when he picked me up that night. Crying and moaning and talking like he done killed his father—when all he done was kilt some worthless faggot.”

  I slapped the kid with the back of my hand. Hard. Right on his mouth.

  He spit blood on the dash. “You take these cuffs off,” he shrieked. “I’ll hurt you so bad, you won’t ever forget it.”

  “Is that how you used to talk to Ira?”

  “Yeah.” He started to laugh wildly. “I made him cry like a girl. I hurt him so bad he couldn’t walk.”

  He laughed for a long while, until he was sick with laughter. When he’d laughed himself out he sat back hard against the seat.

  “You got the gun, so you think you’re better than me. But you ain’t better than me. You ain’t nothing. Ain’t no man better than Tom T. Chard.”

  ******

  A few miles outside of Saylor Park I turned off the highway onto a gravel access road that led down to the river. Chard hadn’t said a word for some time. He knew what was coming, and he was holding out against it.

  The road ended in front of a broken slab of concrete that had once been the foundation of a house. A little rise surrounded it, falling away in a field of weeds, broken pop bottles, and junk auto parts to a grove of maples along the riverbank.

  It was close to five by then, and the dawn had just begun to turn the eastern sky violet. But the river and the maple grove were still deep in night. I left the headlights on to light the way, then pulled Chard out of the car and pushed him over the rise down toward the trees.