David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

The second time she said, “Harold,” using his proper name, which was what he preferred, not Harry, which he hated and the younger women insisted on. “Harold, you’re going to have to shut that prick off.”

“Eric?”

“The asshole.” Eric was slouched in his chair, his left leg stretched out so it nearly tripped anyone who passed, his right leg draped over another chair. “The one sitting in two chairs.”

“Eric Brandauer,” said the bartender. “This is only his third drink.”

“His third here,” said Ginny. “He’s been swilling something stronger than white wine spritzers somewhere. Either that or he’s just naturally as pleasant as a molting snake.”

“Eric’s always had a mean streak,” said the bartender, hoping he wouldn’t be called on to do anything. Eric not only had a reputation for being mean, he was awfully quick to use his hands. And his boots. Tending bar was not the same as bouncing, and Harold had no desire to take up a new career at this stage in his life.

“If he gives you any more trouble, let me know.”

“I’m letting you know now, Harold. If he touches me again, or even looks at me like that, I’m through serving him.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Harold, placing the wine spritzer on Ginny’s serving tray. She added a napkin.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” she said. “You keep an eye on me.”

The bartender watched as Ginny put the wine on the table in front of Brandauer. He affected a hat, not quite a Stetson, but something semi-Western, that he wore very low over his eyes. Thinks he’s Clint Eastwood, Harold thought. Or no, someone else, some other actor. Who was it he looked like, not quite a star but well known, a character actor, foreign. Harold remembered him from a Redford movie where he had been a CIA killer, and then he had seen him only the other night in an old movie where he played Jesus or John the Baptist with a Swedish accent. The planes of his face were the same, the high cheekbones, the long, slightly horsey look. Funny that the Swedish women all looked good enough to eat, and the men had these thin, long faces with the big jaws. Max Von Sydow, that was it. He looked like a young Max Von Sydow. Or like Max Von Sydow pretending he was Billy the Kid.

Knowing just how far to push it and when to stop, Eric Brandauer let Ginny pass without incident, but his eyes under the brim of the hat looked at her with the kind of malevolent interest that Harold usually saw on television only when the punk was about to do something rash. Harold prayed that Eric would save his rashness for the parking lot where Harold wouldn’t have to know about it until he read the police report in the local paper.

Dyce waited until ten thirty. His favorite classical music station was playing one of the Beethoven symphonies-he wasn’t certain which, he had missed the announcement, but he thought it was the Seventh- and he was nearly as comfortable in the car as he would have been at home. When the driver of the car to the left of the station wagon finally left, Dyce pulled into the spot, carefully leaving just enough room so that he could open the passenger door all the way. He would wait for fifteen more minutes.

At a quarter of eleven, Dyce gave up and drove home. He wanted to be there before Helen called. Explaining his absence at that hour of the night would simply take too much effort. Seeing that he wasn’t jealous, Helen had decided to assume the role herself and she acted as if Dyce were this wild-eyed ladies man who couldn’t be trusted out of her sight for so much as an hour. He didn’t know what he was going to do about her.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, he saw Brandauer come out of the bar. For a moment he considered pulling back in, taking a chance, improvising something. He could take the man and still get home in time for the call-but then the man was in his own car and it was too late.

Dyce drove home to await Helen’s call. There would be other nights, as many as he needed, and things would be all the better for waiting.

“It’s happening again,” said Becker.

“What’s happening again?”

Becker was at the window once more, peering out through the Levolors.

“You need a new view.”

“You could try looking at me for a change,” Gold said.

“You think that’s an improvement?”

“What’s happening again?” But Becker had clearly changed his mind about discussing it, whatever it was.

“I was with this girl, this woman, the other night. We were talking about crawling into lions’ dens… She has thirty-seven freckles on her cheeks and across her nose.”

Gold drew a vertical line down the margin of his notepad. He did not note the number thirty-seven. He was not a numerologist.

“Bearding the lion in his den. Where did that expression come from? Lions don’t have dens. They live on the open savannah. The expression conjures up this picture of the hon in a cave with the bones of all its prey scattered all over. They don’t live that way. Bears don’t have bones in their caves, either. They don’t eat and they don’t excrete all winter long and the rest of the year they live outdoors. Why do we think of the beast hunkered down with the bones of its victims around it, waiting for us?”

“Is that what we think?”

“Carnivores don’t live that way. At least not mammals.”

“Dragons do,” said Gold. “As long as we’re dealing in symbols. Dragons are surrounded by skeletons and treasure.”

“Did you have to go to school for this?” Becker asked.

“Why do you have such contempt for the psychiatric profession?”

“I see you don’t take it personally. Why is that?”

“What happened after you shot Sal?”

“He died.”

Gold began the serpentine line that intersected the vertical one.

“Sorry,” said Becker. “I’ve got to learn to let the easy ones pass

… I had a reaction.”

“That’s normal.”

“I saw a shrink for a while.”

“There’s no record of that in your file.”

“I didn’t use a Bureau man.”

“You went to a private therapist for help? Why is that?”

Becker was silent.

“Why not use a Bureau therapist?… They’re experienced in that kind of trauma… They’re free.”

“Spiders do that,” said Becker. “They keep the corpses around them. They paralyze them, suck than dry, and leave the husks hanging there.”

“What were you afraid the Bureau would find out about you?”

Becker returned to the window. Gold started to fill in the parabolas on his notepad.

“I don’t respect you because you can’t really fix anything. You can drug the violent ones or put diapers on the bed wetters or talk the mild cases into giving up out of boredom, but when they’re really wrong, you can’t make them right, can you?”

“What do you mean by really wrong?”,

“Some people are wired differently. They like to hear people scream or make them bleed or make them die-and you can’t do anything about those people, can you? You can’t change the wiring.”

“What do you think should be done with such people?”

Becker laughed. “Oh, doctor,” he said. “Now really.”

Eric Brandauer felt like killing somebody. The bitch whose lawn he had just finished mowing had paid him with her nose cocked as if he smelled. He wanted to thrust her head into his crotch; he’d show her what smelled.

The damned weed trimmer had given out on him and he’d had to use a hand sickle that he hadn’t needed in years, and he took a gouge out of his knee while working around the bitch’s flower beds. She told him he should have it looked at but didn’t offer to look at it herself, didn’t come up with iodine or bandages or invite him m. He had a good mind to put on his ski mask and come back there after dark to pork the shit out of the bitch and smash things up a little. Just to teach her a lesson. Just for old times’ sake. He wondered if he could even find the ski mask anymore.