T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

“But I’ve never — I mean, I’ve never even had a speeding ticket.”

“I know, I know. But just let it go. I’ll take care of everything, okay?” She paused, waiting for Alma to protest, then, in a softer tone, she said, “Listen, why don’t you go take a walk on the beach, go to a movie, anything. What about Tim? Have Tim take you out to dinner.”

There was so much wrong here Alma couldn’t begin to put the pieces back in place. All she said, her voice dropping to a murmur, was “Okay.”

“It’s nothing, I’m telling you. Just a desperate maneuver on their part. You’ll see. Trust me.”

And now, the phone back in its cradle, the dry cold rumor of the sake lingering on her palate and her mind drifting out of focus, she lifts the glass to her lips and then abruptly sets it down again. What is she thinking? She can’t drink. Not at all, not a drop. And she had alcohol yesterday, only yesterday, as if she were some out-of-control knocked-up teenager in the ghetto. She upends the glass in the sink, thinking fetal alcohol syndrome, cognitive impairment, mental retardation, and her hand is shaking when she sets it down again. She’s got to get a grip. Got to be strong. In command. The only thing is, she doesn’t feel anything but weak and confused and hurt.

It’s just past ten in the morning. Though she slept in the boat on the way back, it was a hazy intermittent sleep, and every time she opened her eyes Toni Walsh and the two girls were staring at her as if she were their jailer and they were only watching for the chance to make their escape, as if they could fly or walk on water, and now she can feel the tiredness seeping into her, an exhaustion so complete it deadens her legs till they feel as if they’re detached from her, and she has to pull out a chair at the kitchen table and sit heavily. For a long while she just sits there staring out the window, and then, inevitably, humiliatingly, uselessly, she reaches for the phone and dials Tim’s number.

She’s expecting nothing. He’s on the Farallones, in the field, where there’s no cell service — she knows that as well as anybody. But then maybe he’s gone into San Francisco, for supplies, for R & R, and he’s just arrived, just stepped off the boat, which is why he hasn’t called her yet, and he’ll answer, he’s got to answer, because she wants to hear his voice, has to hear it. . Her stomach turns over. One knee begins jittering under the table. But she’s expecting nothing and nothing is what she gets. The phone rings twice, there’s a distant faint click, and then the line goes dead.

In the morning she puts on her navy blue suit over a white silk blouse fresh from the cleaner’s, slips into her stockings and heels, and appears in court, Maria Campos at her side, and nothing much happens, except that she wastes an entire morning sitting there listening to one case after another until she gets her two minutes in front of the judge, who barely glances at her before releasing her on bond to appear again the following month. When she finally does get to the office, Alicia is nowhere to be seen — an emergency came up and she’s taking one of her personal days, that’s what Suzie Jessup, in the adjoining office, tells her — and there’s a sea of paperwork to get through and a string of e-mails half a mile long. Work. It’s what she needs — it’s what absorbs her — and it isn’t until half-past two, when she’s beginning to feel the urge for a tall iced tea with lemon and maybe a bite to eat, that she leaves her desk and heads down the stairs to the walkway along the marina, thinking to get something at the Docksider. She’s strolling along absently, trying to clear her head, when suddenly she catches herself. There’s something different here, something out of the ordinary, but what is it? She scans the walkway (tourists, strolling), the Park Service building (tourists, milling, passing in and out to gape at the relief map of the islands and the other first-floor exhibits) and finally the broad expanse of the parking lot (sunshine glinting off the glass and chrome of the cars parked in their neatly aligned rows) before it hits her: the protestors are gone.

It’s astonishing. As if she’d awakened in her concrete hut in Guam to step outside and see the jungle vanished overnight. The protestors are gone . No more chants, no more defamatory signs, no more graffiti. Have they given up? Finally? At long last? The thought comes to her — the happy thought, rushing through her in a surge of exhilaration — that they’re gone because their motive force is gone. Because Dave LaJoy is behind bars or out on bail or lurking in an alley someplace pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head like a mafioso or a disgraced senator. He’s made the fatal misstep. He’s done. Finished. And the pig hunt is progressing so far ahead of schedule that by the time he does surface again the project will be over and done with and he’ll have nothing to protest. Won’t that be sweet?

The idea fills her with light. Everything around her seems to glow as if it’s been re-created from dross, new and shining and bright. The mood carries her all the way up the walk to the Docksider, and she finds herself nodding at people she vaguely recognizes and pausing to smile over a young mother and her toddler sharing a floating pink cloud of cotton candy, but then, mounting the stairs, she feels the heaviness creeping over her again, the weight inside her as immovable as a brick — how she’d love to tell Tim the news, radiate her joy, share the sweet taste of victory and vindication. But there is no Tim and the lunch crowd has gone back to work and the place feels vacant and vaguely depressing. She’s just one for lunch, just one, thanks, and when the hostess tries to steer her to an undersized table in the middle of the room, she insists on a booth by the window that’s usually reserved for parties of four or more, and why not? She’s tired of being pushed around. Tired of everything. Just tired.

Staring at the menu, trying to decide whether she’ll have a cup or bowl of the clam chowder with her crab Louie, it takes her a moment to realize that the Korean woman from the variety store downstairs is standing there beside the table. Mrs. Kim. She has a newspaper in her hand, the Press Citizen , and she’s holding it out in offering. “You have seen this yet?” she asks.

Alma hasn’t seen it. She was in such a state this morning, what with the tension of having to get to court and worrying whether she could leave the blouse untucked so as to hide the fact that her jacket would no longer button across her midsection, that she’d forgotten all about it. Half the time she runs right over the paper anyway, remembering it only when she pulls into the driveway at night to see it lying there scuffed and torn. Which doesn’t really matter because it’s a rag in any case, blustering and cocksure and half-competent and on the wrong side of just about everything she believes in. Tim used to call it the Press Critizen .

“No,” Alma says. “No, why?”

Mrs. Kim, an erect tall woman in her mid-seventies who once startled Alma by remarking, after a casual exchange of greetings, You Nihon-jin, eh? lays the paper on the table and with a smile of complicity gently pushes it to her. “You going to like what they print today. Free copy. You take.”

Before the thank-you is out of her mouth, she fastens on the headline: Death on Santa Cruz. And below it: Questionable Tactics on Part of FPA Lead to Death of City College Sophomore by Toni Walsh.

Mrs. Kim backs away slowly, giving an abbreviated bow, which Alma, seated, returns as best she can. “No more protestor, eh?” the old woman says, winking. “Bad for business anyway. You business, my business too.”