James Burke - Light of the World

She pulled off her latex gloves and dropped them on the floor. “Bill Pepper drugged and sexually tortured me.”

“I don’t know anybody by that name.”

“I believe you. You know why?”

“Because I’m telling the truth?”

“No, because you blinked after you spoke.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“When I asked you the previous questions, you widened your eyes so you wouldn’t blink. That means you were lying, Tony,” she said. “We’re back to square one. You remember what square one was, don’t you? On square one, you were the rapist who attacked Wyatt’s friend. For me, that makes you the kind of guy who deserves anything that happens to him. I don’t want you to misunderstand. I’m not trying to scare you. I just want you to know what your victims feel about you and what they’re capable of doing when they get the chance. Am I getting through?”

“No,” he said.

“There was this mobbed-up guy named Bix Golightly who forced his cock into the mouth of a six-year-old girl on her birthday and told her he’d kill her if she ever told her mother. The little girl grew up and found this guy in New Orleans sitting behind the wheel of his van. She parked one in his forehead, one in the middle of his face, and one in his mouth. It was pretty messy. See, the shooter was using twenty-two hollow-points. They don’t exit, they bounce around inside the skull. As I recall, Bix Golightly’s brains were running out his nose.”

Zappa’s lips were gray, his elongated eyes sweeping around the room, as though an answer to his situation lay inside the shadows.

“Wyatt is not the person you need to worry about,” she said. “I want to pop you and do it in pieces. I hope you keep lying. I’ve got a feeling you’ve hurt lots of women, and all of them will be cheering when we drop you in a Dumpster. Want to clear your conscience?”

“I’m a gardener. I stacked time when I was young. I got a good job in Carson City and cleaned up my act. If you know everything, check my sheet. I work for the Youngers, but I never talk to them. The old man is in his helicopter or in his library with his guns. The daughter-in-law acts like her shit don’t stink and we don’t exist. Caspian hands out the chores through the head groundsman.”

“Let me show you something, Miss Gretchen,” Wyatt said. He positioned himself in front of Tony Zappa and ripped open his shirt, popping off all the buttons. Then he tore the shirt off his shoulders and peeled it down his arms. “See that bruise on his forearm? That’s where I hit him with a cottonwood limb. See that gold hair on his chest? It was sticking out of his shirt when he come at me with the knife he took off me.” Dixon looked down at Zappa. “I told Miss Bertha I was gonna bring her your ears. She cried. That’s the kind of lady y’all ripped the clothes off. You smiling at me, boy?”

Wyatt picked up the telephone book and swung it with both hands into Zappa’s head. The chair toppled backward, Zappa falling with it hard against the floor, the back of his head thudding against the concrete beneath the carpet. He stared at the ceiling with the empty look of a man who had plunged backward to the bottom of a well. “I wasn’t smiling. I wasn’t doing anything,” he said. “Do to me whatever you want. I heard talk about a guy you’re not gonna like meeting.”

“Maybe the guy who did Bill Pepper?” Gretchen said.

“They say this guy can’t die. I’ve heard about what he’s done to some women. I hope you meet him. I hope I’m there to watch it.”

Gretchen squatted on her haunches so she could look directly into Tony Zappa’s face. She could smell the weed on his clothes and the beer on his breath and the deodorant layered under his armpits and the sunblock he had rubbed into his scalp and cornrows. She took her Airweight .38 special from her side pocket and flipped out the cylinder and removed four of the five rounds loaded in the chambers. “You were one of the guys who attacked Wyatt and his friend, weren’t you?”

“I never saw the guy. Why should I want to attack him?”

“Earlier tonight you were worried about a cowboy with a limp and a cut on his head. That’s the man you’re looking at right now. How could you describe him to me if you never saw him?”

The blood drained from Tony Zappa’s cheeks. Gretchen rotated the cylinder of the Airweight with her palm without looking at it, then snapped it back into the pistol’s frame. “Do you know who Percy Wolcott was?”

“No.”

“He was my friend. I think someone you know sabotaged his plane.”

“I never heard of him.”

“I had a feeling you might say that. Are you good at math?”

“What are you doing to me, lady?”

“There are five chambers in this revolver. Only one of them is loaded. On the first trigger pull, there is an eighty percent chance the hammer will come down on an unloaded chamber. To be honest with you, I don’t feel good about tormenting a man whose hands are taped behind his back. I’ll start the process, and maybe you’ll do the right thing and our situation will be over. If not, we’ll have to take it from there. You with me so far?”

“No,” he said, swallowing as he spoke.

She pulled back the hammer and placed the muzzle of the Airweight against the side of her head and squeezed the trigger. Her face jerked when the hammer snapped on an empty chamber. She heard Wyatt release his breath. “Miss Gretchen, don’t do that again,” he said.

“It’s your turn,” she said to Zappa.

“Lady, don’t do this to me,” he said.

“The chances are one in four that the next chamber is loaded. That means you have a seventy-five percent chance of being okay. Are you following me?”

“You’re going too fast.”

She touched the barrel to his temple and cocked back the hammer.

“Please,” he said. “You don’t know everything involved. I didn’t have a choice.”

“About hitting a man in the head with a baton?” she said. “About gang-raping a woman? You didn’t have a choice about that? You’re starting to piss me off.”

“Kill me. I don’t care.” Tears were welling in his eyes. “I saw pictures of what this guy has done. Go online. Somebody sold them to a guy who makes snuff films. Maybe it was the guy who sold them.”

“What guy? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I’m a gardener!” He squeezed his eyes shut and kicked his feet and ground his teeth.

Gretchen heard the roar of a truck engine on the other side of the wall, followed by someone pounding on the door and shouting: “Hey, asshole! Your Harley is being towed! Come outside and see how it’s being towed!”

Gretchen pulled back the curtain and looked outside. The clerk had backed up a wrecker to the handicap zone and attached a steel hook and cable around the Harley and hoisted it into the air so it was hanging at an angle, upside down, the handlebars and gas tank and engine partially on the concrete parking pad.

“Did you hear me, shit-breath?” the clerk shouted, pounding the door again. “I want to thank you for helping me quit this job! Put your plunger back in your pants and watch the show!”

The clerk climbed into the cab of the wrecker and shifted into gear and clanked forward into the street, dragging the Harley over the curb and banging it against a light pole. Then he gave the wrecker the gas and roared down Broadway, the Harley bouncing end over end, skittering off a fireplug, metal screeching, sparks geysering in the dark as he made a wide turn at the intersection.

Gretchen and Wyatt were standing at the window, dumbfounded, the curtain peeled back. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

“This ain’t too good, Miss Gretchen,” Wyatt said.