Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

I watched for fifteen minutes or so while the taller one grunted and sweated and clutched and grabbed. When he tired of the front he turned her over and tried it from the rear. When he tired of that he used her mouth. At first, she said, “Don’t” several times, but he slapped her across the mouth and after that she didn’t say anything. She lay perfectly still and let him rape her. I got to watch her disintegrate, to watch the fear in her eyes grow until it melted away into a kind of resigned madness.

When he was through, he stood up, shook it a couple of times as if he had just taken a pee, and then pulled his trousers back up. He took the revolver from his pocket and turned his head slightly to look at the shorter man whose gun was still pressed against my ear. The shorter man must have nodded because the taller one shot Beverly twice. Once in the right cheek and once through the forehead. It slammed her up against the headboard of the bed. The taller of the two turned his revolver on me. I waited, but the only thing that happened was that the shorter man removed the barrel of his revolver from my ear. He went to the foot of the bed so that I could watch him shoot Beverly in the right breast and stomach. He didn’t have to do that, of course. She was already dead. Still wearing their Halloween masks, they backed out of the room. I watched them leave. Neither had made a sound except the taller one, the one who had raped Beverly without taking off his mask. Or shoes. He had grunted a few times. They backed into the living room, and a moment later I heard the screen door slam. Another moment later I heard a car speed away. I looked at what had been Beverly and clinically noted how the right side of her face had been torn away and how white the bone was. There also seemed to be a vast amount of blood.

Carmingler arrived at four that morning after the police had gone and after they had taken Beverly away. I don’t remember much about that except the confusion and the noise. Carmingler came in without knocking and I didn’t look up until he cleared his throat. He told me who he was and I noticed that he carried a copy of the Washington Post.

He was younger then, of course, only twenty-nine or thirty, but he already wore a vest and diddled with his Phi Beta Kappa key. He also smoked a pipe, but was polite enough then to ask if he could light it. He never asked me that again.

“The colonel’s dead,” he said after he got his pipe going. He never seemed to say anything important until he had lighted the pipe.

I said, “Oh.” I wasn’t really interested.

“The story’s here in the Post,” he said and tapped the newspaper.

I said nothing.

“The police are calling it suicide. They say he shot himself because of what happened to Beverly.”

“But it wasn’t,” I said, “and he didn’t.”

“No. We got the police to say that and it took a little doing. Somebody shot him, of course. They tried to get to him through his daughter. They must have told him what was going to happen to her; probably had it timed down to the minute. He was supposed to break. They even let him make that phone call to you so that he could be sure she was home.”

“He just sat there and let it happen,” I said.

“He couldn’t do anything else. There was always the chance that they were bluffing. When it didn’t work, they gave up and killed him. Not much point to that, really.”

“What about my wife, goddamn it?” I yelled. “What was the point there?”

Carmingler was unruffled. “He might have cracked when they were halfway through. If so, he’d have to talk to her — she’d have to tell him what — well, that’s how it happened.”

“Who was it?” I said.

“The colonel had been in the East.”

“East what?” I said. “East Baltimore?”

“Europe,” Carmingler said. “Someone from there probably, but we’re not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“No.”

“You want a drink?”

“No.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“We have to know about you.”

“What about me?”

“If you’re coming with Section Two?”

I stared at him. “Jesus, you’re a cold-blooded shit.”

He shrugged. “Not really. We just have to know.”

“Why?”

Carmingler made a vague gesture with his pipe. “With the colonel dead, there’ll be a shake-up. Top to bottom. The Section’s a small, specialized organization. He was counting on you heavily. We want to know if we can.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “He never counted on anyone in his life except his daughter and she’s dead.”

“Have it your way,” Carmingler said. “But are you in or out? We have to know.”

I looked around the room and at the things in it that had once been ours. When they were ours they had looked fine. Now that they were mine they just looked old and worn and used up. I examined the carpet on the floor and noted how shabby it looked. I didn’t think about my answer; I just said it. “I’m in.”

“Good,” Carmingler said. “We’ll be in touch.”

I looked up as he rose, moved to the door, and paused. “By the way,” he said, gesturing toward the chair he’d sat in. “I left the Post in case you’d like to read about the colonel.”

“You’re too kind,” I said and kept some of what I felt out of my voice.

“Not at all,” he said.

I didn’t attend the colonel’s funeral, but Carmingler said that a lot of people were there. I wondered who they were. Beverly didn’t have much of a funeral. She’d once said that she didn’t want one, so it was just a hearse and a limousine from the funeral home that carried Smalldane, Carmingler and me to the cemetery. There was no graveside service either. Some men in blue overalls lowered the casket and I stood there watching for a time, but it seemed to take them forever, so I turned away and walked back to the limousine. Carmingler was still there. He hadn’t approached the grave.

The three of us rode back to town in silence. Carmingler got out first. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, and I said all right.

Smalldane didn’t look at him but stared through a window instead. Finally, he said, “Fuck it.” I nodded and he seemed to understand that I knew what he meant. I don’t think that I ever did introduce him to Carmingler.

Victor Orcutt didn’t like my idea and he was telling me why not as we sat there in the living room or parlor of the Rickenbacker Suite on the top floor of the Sycamore Hotel. Only three of us were sitting really, Carol Thackerty, Necessary and I. Orcutt glided about the room, picking up ashtrays and putting them down, straightening pictures that weren’t crooked, and talking endlessly.

“They just won’t believe you,” he said for what may have been the fifteenth time. I had lost count.

“They won’t or you don’t?” I said.

“Oh, I have perfect faith in you.”

“That’s why you’ve been tearing it to pieces for the past thirty minutes.”

“It just won’t work,” he said.

“Sure it will,” Necessary said.

“It’s all conjecture,” Orcutt said. “Sheer conjecture.”

“All right,” I said. “You get me inside if you’ve got a better way.”

Orcutt walked over to a gold-framed mirror and admired himself for a moment. He patted a stray curl of blond hair into place.

There are those who sneak furtive glances at themselves in every mirror that they pass and most seem afraid of being caught in their act of self-love and admiration. They look quickly and even more quickly look away, either reassured or disappointed. Orcutt liked what he saw and he didn’t care who knew it.