Richard Russo - Everybody's Fool

Well, this much was true, a stigmata blooming where he’d gouged the skin with the cap of that Bic. “Shit,” he said, wiping his palm on his pant leg. Examining the wound more closely, he was surprised by how deep and angry it was, while Miller chuckled nastily.

“What’s so funny?” he snapped, pissed off that it struck the other man as amusing.

“Sorry?” Miller said, and Raymer understood from the startled look on his moronic face that he hadn’t laughed at all. The chuckle had come from somewhere else. No need to wonder where. “You okay, Chief?”

Raymer ignored him. “I think we’re going to need an ambulance,” he said.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Miller said, still mesmerized by the bloody palm, or perhaps that anybody could unwittingly damage himself so badly.

“Not for this,” Raymer assured him.

Miller looked around curiously. “For what, then?”

“For what we’re going to find in the woods.”

“You’re not making sense, Chief.”

“You see where those weeds are all flat?” Raymer said. “Don’t walk there. In fact, after you radio for the ambulance, just stay on my footsteps.”

He didn’t have to go far. Joe Gaghan lay on a bed of brown pine needles, amazingly still alive, his respiration just strong enough to blow a tiny blood bubble from the nostril that wasn’t completely plugged. Raymer knelt beside him and checked his pulse, which was barely there. A moment later Miller came crashing through the brush.

“Oh my God,” he said, pulling up short. “That’s a body.”

Raymer made a mental note to take Miller with him everywhere. When it came to inspiring confidence in others, he was really without equal. “Did you call the ambulance?”

“On its way,” he said.

In fact he could hear it, far off. “Good,” he said. “Somehow the guy’s still alive.”

Miller took a cautious step closer and took in the sickening, grotesque angle of Gaghan’s left leg, bent so unnaturally at the knee. “I can’t believe he made it so far on that leg,” he said.

“He didn’t,” Raymer confirmed. “He was dragged down here by whoever hit him.”

“You mean—”

“Right. He was left to die here.”

“Who’d do such an awful thing?” Miller said.

Really, Raymer thought, his palm throbbing now, the pain as intense as the itch had been. Take him with you everywhere.

STAGGERING UP the street like a drunk, his head still ringing from the skillet, Roy wasn’t expecting to catch a break, not with his fucking luck, but he’d gone only a couple blocks when he heard a horn toot — with just one ear still functioning, it sounded far away — and there was fucking Cora behind the wheel of her shit-bucket of a car, waving him over. In another minute or two there’d be cops everywhere, all looking for a skinny, tattooed longhair in a neck brace, a description that would fit Roy and Roy alone.

Cora had inherited this ride — an ancient Ford Pinto — when her grandmother croaked, and this pissed off her mother, who’d been expecting to inherit the worthless piece of shit herself. Yellow on one side, purple on the other, it was impossible to know what was original and what had been cannibalized from even-worse beaters at the junkyard. Wearing her Mets cap as usual, Cora leaned across to unlock the passenger door and called, “Hey there, Roy. You partying already?” Only when he tumbled inside did she get a good look at him, his ear half severed, one whole side of his face red and swollen. “Roy,” she gasped. “You’re hurt!”

“Goddamn it, Cora, tell me something I don’t already know,” Roy said, jerking the rearview mirror around to assess the damage. That fucking Sully. Fucking, fucking, motherfucking Sully. “Son of a bitch damn near took my whole ear off, the cocksucker.”

“Who? Who done this to you, Roy?”

“Fuck it,” he told her, “just go.” From experience both deep and broad, Roy knew how quickly things headed south in the aftermath of one of his legendary bad impulses. It was a miracle, really, that he wasn’t already cuffed and secured in the backseat of some cruiser. Even with the help of this dim-witted bitch, he’d end up in one before long.

“You want me to run you out to the hospital?”

“Fuck no,” he said. The cops would be all over the hospitals, both here and in Schuyler.

“You need somebody to sew that ear back on. It’s just dangling there.”

He swiveled the mirror back in her direction. “I noticed that, Cora.” In fact, the sight had made him a little sick to his stomach. Worse, his equilibrium was clearly fucked, even sitting down. And his own voice sounded as tinny and far away as this idiot’s, which made him wonder if the skillet ear was permanently fucked. How had such a gimpy old fuck managed to sneak up on him like that anyhow? Well, to ask the question was to answer it. His blood had been up. Not just up, but roaring-in-his-fucking-ears up. Every time he’d punched his mother-in-law — the same cunt who’d tried bribing him to leave town the day before — it had crashed like a wave on a beach. Of course he hadn’t heard Sully coming up behind him. He wouldn’t have heard an army of Sullys on horseback.

“Where do you want to go, then?” Cora said.

Good question. Part of him thought Gert’s. Just slip into one of those dark booths along the back wall and start a tab. Drink one beer after another until the fucking cops thought to stop in and haul his ass off. Let Cora pick up the tab, or Gert himself. The fuck did he care? No tabs where he was headed. The problem was the cops would dope this out right quick. And there was another, too. Gert wasn’t what you’d call squeamish, but seeing Roy’s ear he might tell him to take a hike and not come back until he looked presentable, which at his shithole meant not bleeding freely. Or he might not let them run a tab; the prick had a sixth sense about that. Besides, holing up in some bar and waiting for the fucking cops to come collect him just didn’t sit right with Roy. He ought to at least try to make a run for it, right? He was going down hard for this one, no question. He’d be away for a long time, which meant he had a moral obligation to take full advantage of his last few hours of freedom. What he needed was some kind of a plan, but Sully, the fucker, had scrambled his brain. “Take me to that CVS out by the highway,” he told Cora.

“The Rexall’s closer,” she pointed out.

Fucking woman, Roy thought, yanking the rearview back again to see if his injuries could possibly be as bad as they’d appeared thirty seconds ago — and they were. “Will you just do like you’re fuckin’ told?”

“Why you bein’ so mean to me, Roy? I’m just trying to help is all. I’ll do anything you want. Just treat me nice, okay?”

He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, Cora, okay. See how nice I’m treatin’ you? See how nice? So can we fuckin’ go now?”

He expected her to drive around the block, but instead, being a dipshit, she did a three-point turn in the middle of fucking Main Street and headed back where he’d just come from, right past Hattie’s, the very place he was trying to escape. A small crowd had gathered outside to watch the EMTs load his mother-in-law on board. A uniformed piece of shit was trying to explain to Janey why she couldn’t ride in the back with her mother, but being a total cunt she just shoved him aside and climbed in anyway. Then he spotted Sully, half a head taller than the other assholes, and the sight of him gave Roy something like an idea, though it was gone again almost before it arrived. Never mind. Roy knew that once something occurred to him it wouldn’t take long to reoccur, and right now he had more pressing concerns, like the cop car speeding toward them. He slumped down in his seat as it screeched to a rocking halt at the curb.