Arthur Hailey - Overload

With shock and horror Nancy stared at what was exposed.

What had been a hand was an ugly red-white mess of weals and scars. Two fingers were gone, with uneven stubs remaining and loose flesh protruding. The other fingers, while more or less complete, had jagged portions missing. One finger was grotesquely bent, a dried yellow piece of bone exposed.

Nancy said, sickened, "My God! What happened to your hand?"

Yvette glanced down, then realizing what she had done, covered the hand hastily.

Nancy persisted, "What happened?"

"It was . . . I had an accident."

"But who left it like that? A doctor?"

"I didn't go to one," Yvette said. She choked back tears. “They wouldn't let me."

"Who wouldn't?" Nancy felt her anger rising. "Birdsong?"

The girl nodded. "And Georgos."

"Who the hell is Georgos? And why wouldn't they take you to a doctor?"

Nancy reached out, gripping Yvette's good hand. "Kid, let me help you! I can. And we can still, do something about that hand. There's time."

The girl shook her head. The emotion had drained from her, leaving her face and eyes as they had been earlier-empty, dull, resigned.

"Just tell me," Nancy pleaded. "Tell me what it's all about."

Yvette let out her breath in what might or might not, have been a sigh.

Then, abruptly, she reached down beside her to the floor and lifted up a battered brown purse. Opening it, she took out two recording tape cassettes which she put on the table and slid across to Nancy.

"It's all there," Yvette said. Then, in a single movement, she drained what remained of her beer and stood up to go.

"Hey!” Nancy protested. "Don't leave yet! We only just got started. Listen, why not tell me what's on those tapes so we can talk about it?"

"It's all there," the girl repeated.

"Yes, but . . ." Nancy found she was talking to herself. A moment later the outer door opened, briefly admitting sunlight, then Yvette was gone.

There seemed nothing to be gained by going after her.

Curiously, Nancy turned the tape cassettes over in her band, recognizing them as a cheap brand which could be bought in packets for a dollar or so each. Neither cassette was labeled; there was just a penciled 1, 2, 3, 4 on the various sides. Well, she would play them on her tape deck at home tonight and hope there was something worthwhile there. She felt let down and disappointed, though, not to have got some definite information while Yvette was with her.

Nancy finished her beer and paid for it, then left. A half hour later she was in the Examiner city room, immersed in other work.

When Yvette told Nancy Molineaux, "I'm not afraid anymore," the statement was true. Yesterday Yvette had reached a decision which relieved her of concern about immediate affairs, freed her from all doubts, anxiety and pain, and removed the overwhelming fear-which she had lived with for months-of her arrest and life imprisonment.

The decision yesterday was simply that, as soon as she had delivered the tapes to that switched-on black woman who worked for a newspaper, and who would know what to do with them, Yvette would kill herself. When she left the Crocker Street house this morning-for the last time-she carried with her the means to do so.

And now she had delivered the tapes, those tapes she put together, carefully and patiently, and which incriminated Georgos and Davey Birdsong, revealed what they had done and what they planned, and disclosed the scenario of destruction and murder intended for tonight or rather 3 am tomorrow morning-at the Christopher Columbus Hotel. Georgos hadn't thought she knew about that but all the time she had.

Walking away from that bar, and now that it was done, Yvette felt at peace.

Peace, at last.

It had been a long time since she had known any. For sure there had been none with Georgos, though at first the excitement of being Georgos' woman, of listening to his educated talk and sharing the important things he did, had made everything else seem not to matter. It was only later, much later, and when it was too late to help herself, that she began wondering if Georgos was sick, if all of his cleverness and college learning had become in some way . . . what was that word?...perverted.

Now she truly believed it had been, believed that Georgos was sick, maybe even mad.

And yet, Yvette reminded herself, she still cared about Georgos; even now, when she had done what she had to. And whatever happened to him, she hoped he wouldn't get hurt too badly, or be made to suffer much, though she knew both things could happen after the black woman played those tapes today and told whoever she decided to-the police most likely-what was on them.

About Davey Birdson, though, Yvette didn't give a damn. She didn't like him, never had. He was mean and hard, never showing any of the little kindnesses Georgos did, despite Georgos being a revolutionary and not being supposed to. Birdsong could be killed before today was out or rot in jail forever, and she wouldn't care; in fact, she hoped one of the two would happen. Yvette blamed Birdsong for a lot of the bad scenes that had happened to her and Georgos. 'ne Christopher Columbus Hotel thing had been Birdsong's idea; that was in the tapes too.

Then she realized she would never know what happened to Birdsong, or Georgos, because she would be dead herself.

Oh God-she was only twenty-two! She had hardly started her life and didn't want to die. But she didn't want to spend the rest of it in prison either. Even dying was better than that.

Yvette kept on walking. She knew where she was going and it would take roughly half an hour. That was something else she had decided yesterday.

It was less than four months ago-a week after that night on the hill above Millfield when Georgos killed the two guards-that she realized just how much trouble she was in. Murder. She was guilty of it, equally with Georgos.

At first she hadn't believed him when he told her. He was merely trying to frighten her, she thought, when, on the way back to the city from Millfield, be had warned, "You're in this as much as I am. You were there, a part of it all, and you killed those pigs just as if you pulled the knife or fired the gun. So whatever happens to me happens to you."

But a few days later she read in a newspaper about the California trial of three men charged with first-degree murder. The trio had broken into a building together and their leader shot and killed a night watchman.

Though the other two were unarmed and did not participate actively in the killing, all three were found guilty and given the same sentence-life imprisonment without possibility of parole. It was then Yvette realized that Georgos had been telling the truth and, from that moment, her desperation grew.

It grew, based on the knowledge that there was no going back, no escaping what she had become. That had been the hardest thing to accept, even while knowing there was no alternative.

Some nights, lying awake beside Georgos in the darkness of that dreary Crocker Street house, she had fantasized that she could go back, back to the farm in Kansas where she had been born and lived as a child. Compared with here and now, those days seemed bright and carefree.

Which was bullshit, of course.

The farm was a rocky twenty acres from which Yvette's father, a sour, cantankerous, quarrelsome man, barely scratched enough of a living to feed the family of six, let alone meet mortgage payments. It was never a home of warmth or love. Fierce fights between the parents were a norm which their children learned to emulate. Yvette's mother, a chronic complainer, frequently let Yvette-the youngest-know she hadn't been wanted and an abortion would have been preferable.

Yvette, following the example of her two older brothers and a sister, left home for good as soon as she was able, and never went back. She had no idea where any of the family were now, or if her parents were dead, and told herself she didn't care. She wondered, though, if her parents, or brothers and sister, would hear or read about her death, and if it would matter to them in any way.