Robert Alter - Carny kill

"No," I told her. "It wasn't the same person. The person who fixed Cochrane and Orme does his own dirty-work. This Edward G. Robinson-type ride is someone else's style."

Billie looked annoyed. "I don't understand. Just how many people at Neverland have homicidal tendencies?"

I grinned at her. "One too many. That's what had me going in circles so long. I didn't figure it that way."

"Honestly, Thax. You're the most maddening person I know. Are you going to tell me what it's all about, or just leave me up in the air?"

"Up in the air is one place I'm not going to leave you. Not while there's a nice warm bed waiting ten feet away. Shut up now like a good little girl, huh? And come to daddy."

I didn't want to talk about murder. I had just been too damn close to my own. I had been lucky and now I was full of the joy of living and I had to do something vital and energetic to establish my love of life.

"Really, Thax," Billie said. "Sometimes I wonder about you." But she was smiling.

I took her by the hand and walked the ten feet.

We drove to Neverland around noon. We had decided I should find myself a room somewhere. There were no doors I could lock in Tarzan's hut and it was no longer a very safe place for me to sleep in.

"I've got a couple of clean shirts and whatnot tucked under Tarzan's bed," I told her. "I'll pick 'em up after we close tonight and meet you at the main gate."

"Thax," Billie said, "be careful. Don't trust anyone."

"Stop worrying about it, will you?"

"I can't help worrying about it. We're so close to everything I've ever wanted. In another week we'll be starting out for a glorious new life."

I nodded, thinking about it, looking at Neverland.

"Like conquistadors in a fabled city, plundering the treasure vaults of their frozen jewels," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just something else de Saint-Exupery said about aviators and the stars. It doesn't matter."

Billie looked at me doubtfully.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't see the connection," she said. "But just the same, don't do anything to spoil it."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll take care of myself. See you tonight."

I was never more wrong in my life. I wasn't going to see her that night and someone else was going to take care of me. I had forgotten that a man's will has very little to say about the direction he is going when he is caught in a current.

It was a hot, almost sultry day with no help from the sea, and we had a good crowd. I worked my stand for a few hours but my mind wasn't on it. I kept waiting for something to happen and when nothing did I began to wonder if I'd been wrong.

The way I figured it a crack had to appear in the egg-shell soon so that the chick could show its beak. When it didn't, I started to get nervous.

I stayed at my stand till about four and then I went over to Gabby's gallery.

"Smoke break," I said.

He was agreeable. He said, "Want a snort?"

"No. But let's step around back a minute."

We went around to the little tented area and lit up. There was a small locked shack back there and I knew he kept his twentytwos and live ammo inside.

I said, "Look, Gabby. You mentioned something about if I ever needed a gun."

He gave me a sharp look and forgot to drag on his smoke.

"Has it come to that, Thax?"

I shrugged. "I've got a funny feeling it might."

My funny feeling was a matter of nerves. I was getting spooky with suspense. Nothing was happening when I damn well knew that something should happen. Everything pointed to it.

The corners of Gabby's mouth dipped into points.

"Why don't you use your head, Thax, and cut and run?"

"I'm in too deep. I've got to go along with it."

"You mean you want to go along with it," Gabby said.

I thought about it. Maybe he was right, and maybe he had just put his finger on the cracked keystone of my character. I had been content to drift as a nonentity through a life I didn't understand or like, blaming my inadequacy on fate, when it was actually my own gutlessness that kept me a nothing, a Then person.

This train of thought was more of an emotion than an idea and the emotion had a personification. The picture I suddenly saw of myself made me lonely, empty, and it fified me with distaste.

"Well,"I said defensively, "it doesn't really matter, does it? Because one way or another I'm going to see the end of it."

"Yeah," Gabby said, "and I think you're a goddam sap."

"You ain't alone in that thought. But can you help me or not?"

He made points with his mouth again.

"That's the thing. I ain't helping you any by giving you a gun."

"Look, Gabby. Let's not make with the pseudo-profound platitudes. Let's just call it backass help and let it go at that."

"Well, but you don't want to go wandering around with a twentytwo rifle over your shoulder like a goddam sentry, do you?"

No, I didn't want to do that. In fact I'd been thinking about kicking myself because I'd been so goddarn hasty in throwing away that pistol the night before.

"Look," I said. "A couple of days back you offered me the loan of a gun if I thought I needed one. You weren't thinking about a twentytwo then, were you?"

Gabby scowled at the ground. "No," he admitted. "I've got a Roscoe put away-but you're a damn fool if you try to use it'

"Gabby-let me sweat it, will you? How about it? Do I get the Roscoe?"

Gabby shrugged. "It's your neck."

He unlocked the shack door and went inside and made some noise and climbed out again with an automatic in his hand. He didn't look one bit happy about it when he passed over the weapon.

It was a fortyfive, a Colt. I thumbed the clip latch and extracted the magazine. It was loaded. I palmed it home and pulled the slide and made sure the safety was on. Then I shoved it under my belt and buttoned my jacket over it and nodded at Gabby.

"Maybe I won't have to use it," I said.

He looked at me and said, "I hope not. I hope you figure out another way."

"Maybe somebody will figure out another way for me," I said.

The funny thing was-somebody already had.

Nothing happened. Six o'clock ticked around and I knocked off and went over to the Queen Anne Cottage and had a New York cut and amused myself kidding with the cute waitress over my smoke and coffee.

I asked her what she thought of _Treasure Island_ and she told me she had gone over there one night with one of the college boys who worked on the lot and had she ever had a time fighting him off, and I said no I meant the book, and she gave me a blank look and said huh? Then she said oh and went on to tell me that _Treasure Island_ was just a kid's book.

"You're only half right," I said. "_Treasure Island_ was written for those who won't let youth slip away. For those whose attitude toward life has not been ruined by life."

She gave me a look that was supposed to imply that I just might be some kind of nut.

"I can't imagine what you think you're talking about"

"Neither can I," I said. "Because my attitude doesn't fit in that picture. I've already been ruined for life by sexy young things like you."

Now we were on her ground. She laughed and called me naughty and went rump-twitching on about her business. I spent a few seconds meditating on her locomotion, as viewed from the rear, and then I thought about _Treasure Island_ again.

The big clincher moment in the tale had been when Jim Hawkins and John Silver, George Merry, Tom Morgan and the lad known as Dick arrive at Flint's treasure cache and find that the map they have carefully followed is wrong. The treasure had been moved.

_There never was such an overturn in this world_, Stevenson had written about the pirates' shocked emotion.

I finished my coffee and went back to my stand and still nothing happened. Bill Duff had been giving me peculiar stares for about an hour, and finally around eight or so he strolled over and said hi.