Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy

He could not remember having pulled them up. Had Claire done that for him? On impulse, he put his face close to hers. She was also resting on her back, mouth open, making faint snoring sounds; the position of her body, Augustine thought, was almost exactly as it had been after she had come into the berth with him.

Looking at her, he felt a sudden unease. What if she had not, after all, come awake during the time he was making love to her? What if she failed in the morning to bear witness to his success, even questioned that it had happened at all? What if she considered it a kind of wish-fulfilling dream on his part?

What if she was right?

The thought was abrupt and jarring. He rejected it instantly-and yet, while he recalled the sensations of the act clearly, the physical details were blurred, as in a memory of something which took place long ago. As in a dream The sensations.

He slid a hand beneath the covers, touched the front of his pajamas. And felt dampness, a faint stickiness. No, he thought, not at my age, not after all those nights of failure.

But it was true and he knew it.

A dream. It had all been nothing more than a wet dream…

Justice sat in his dark compartment and told himself he ought to go to bed, get some sleep, because it was after midnight now and he would have to be up at six. But he did not move, only continued to look out the window at the black shapes of mountains and cutbanks and tree-covered ridges: the Presidential Special was moving now through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, somewhere northeast of Stockton. High running clouds obscured the moon and part of the sky, but stars winked here and there like tiny watching eyes.

There’s just nothing I can do, he thought. Mr. Harper shouldn’t have come to me, he shouldn’t have tried to put any of the burden on me. It’s not up to me, I’m just a Secret Service bodyguard, a civil servant with no authority and no influence. What can I do to help the President that I haven’t already done?

He kept on sitting there, watching the eyes in the sky that seemed to be watching him.

The observation car is empty when we come into it from the club car, but through the door-window opposite we can see the dark silhouette of a man standing outside on the platform, the red-embered tip of a cigar like a hole burning in the darkness beside him. Wexford? It must be, we think. We have been to his compartment in one of the forward cars and found it empty, and we have not located him anywhere else on the train.

We cross to the door, slide it open. Cold night air surges against our face, spiced with the fragrance of spruce and pine, and the magnified clacking hum of steel on steel buffets our ears. The man at the far railing turns, and in the outspill of light behind us we can see him plainly. The muted thunder of the wheels seems to lift into a throbbing, wailing cadence, like a voice in the night.

Wex-ford, Wex-ford, Wex-ford…

We close the door, walk over next to him at the railing. He is wearing an overcoat buttoned to the throat and his hair is rumpled from the wind. Night-shadowed, his florid face has a waxy cast. He does not look dangerous, he only looks old and meek, like a benign grandfather. False illusion. We know him for what he really is, and our hatred for him glows as bright as the tip of his last cigar.

“Oh,” he says, “it’s you.”

“Yes,” we say. Like him, we have raised our voice in order to be heard above the chanting of the wheels.

“Train upsets my stomach so I can’t sleep,” he says. “I thought some fresh air might help. Couldn’t you sleep either?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. Not for a while.”

“It’s pretty cold out here. You ought to have a coat.”

“I don’t mind the cold. It’s the heat that bothers me.”

“Heat?”

“Yes,” we say, “the heat.”

Wexford frowns slightly, raises his cigar and draws on it until the tip shimmers cherry red and the wind strips away its dead ash. We can see the glow of it reflected in his eyes.

The car lurches as the train moves into a long curve and we put out a hand to grasp the rail. Our fingers brush the back of Wexford’s hand; we jerk them away because we do not want to touch him, not that way. As we look at him his mouth puckers and his throat works-a silent belch, as if the sudden lurch-and-sway has made him nauseous. He peers distastefully at his cigar, then flicks it out over the railing where the wind catches it and hurls it into the night amid a shower of sparks. His mouth opens and we watch him breathe deeply several times.

Then we say, “You don’t like trains, do you?”

“No. I never have.”

“They’re an integral part of American history, you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“Just like treachery,” we say.

That startles him. “What?”

“There have been traitors in Washington for two hundred years,” we say calmly. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”

“Exactly what is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. You’re a traitor, Julius-just as Briggs was. But you’re even worse because you’ve hidden your treachery behind a mask of friendship and personal trust.”

He glares at us, his mouth pinched with aggrieved anger. “What kind of wild talk is that?” he says. “I won’t stand for it.”

We shrug. “The truth is always painful.”

“I demand an apology.”

“Demand all you like.”

He stands flustered, at a loss for words. “We’ll see about this,” he says finally, and starts to move past us.

The voice of the train says, Wex-ford, Wex-ford, Wex-ford. We look back through the door-window; the observation car is still empty. In the darkness, then, we take from our jacket pocket one of the train’s standard White House heavy glass ashtrays which we had picked up in our compartment. We cup it upside down in our palm, holding it along our hip where he cannot see it.

“We have a little something to make you sleep,” we say.

He hesitates, half-turning toward us. “What’s that?”

“To make you sleep,” we say again, and we thrust the ashtray straight up against the bridge of his nose with such force that pain erupts in our armpit and chest.

A sharp cracking thud, a gasp that strangulates almost instantly in his throat. Wexford’s hands flutter up toward his face, spasm, then fall limply as his legs give way and he drops bull-like to his knees. We sidestep quickly, watch him topple over against the railing and lie still, lie silent.

Lie dead.

Another execution, another act of mercy completed.

We check the observation car another time, but no one has come inside in the past few seconds. Then we hurl the ashtray into the night, bend to grasp Wexford under the arms. In death his features seem to have softened, to have lost form and definition like gray wax melting. The skin of his face is cold against our bare wrist; but we don’t mind it now because we are not touching him, we are only touching a lifeless shell.

He is much heavier than Briggs was and it takes us a minute or two of straining effort to lift him across the railing so that most of his bulk is tipped forward and hanging down toward the tracks below. We step back then and take his ankles, heave up once, push once-and he slides away from us and is gone.

We lean forward on the railing, trying to see where he has landed. We seem to see him bounce and roll across the tracks, off the right-of-way, but the train is moving so rapidly and the night is so dark that we cannot be sure. Not that it matters. On or off the tracks, he’ll be found eventually by searchers; this is not a wilderness area of gorges and deep ravines that might hide forever the body of an old traitor. The main thing is, his death, too, will appear to have been a tragic accident.