“But after that, Jake?” Dill said. “After Vietnam?”
“After, huh? Well, after that Clyde got greedy, and went bad, and got even richer, and I got out. I had nothing to do with later, but I know what happened. So if all you wanta do is hang old Clyde Brattle — well, shit, fellas, I’ll furnish the rope.” He paused and added in a low hard voice, “But you don’t touch me.”
There was a silence until the Senator smiled and said, “So. I’d say we’ve arrived at an understanding of our respective positions at least, don’t you, Tim?”
Dolan looked at Spivey and grinned. “I’d say we know where Jake stands pretty well.”
The Senator rose. The meeting was over. After Spivey rose, the Senator held out his hand. “You’ve been frank with us, Jake — you mind that? The Jake?” Spivey shook his head. “And we appreciate it. We’ll discuss it among ourselves and I’m sure something can be worked out that’ll make us all reasonably content.” The Senator was smiling as he shook Spivey’s hand. It was a pleasant smile, even warm, but not warm and pleasant enough to guarantee anything.
Spivey smiled back — his quick, brief half-smile — turned, picked up his seersucker jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the door. He stopped at the sound of Dill’s voice. “I’ll ride with you, Jake.”
As they waited for the elevator, Spivey said, “I think I’d better cut myself that deal with old Clyde.”
“I think you’d better,” Dill said.
Chapter 34
At 6 P.M. on that Monday evening, that hot August 8, the outside temperature was still 101 degrees. At a little past six they made love on the large old oak desk. The desk was in her office in the suite Anna Maude Singe shared with a certified public accountant. The CPA had given up and gone home shortly after four o’clock on what had turned out to be the hottest day of the year. The secretary he and Singe also shared lasted until four-fifteen before she, too, gave up and went home.
Dill had signed the papers first. They gave Singe his power of attorney and enabled her to collect on his sister’s life-insurance policy and, if possible, sell the yellow brick duplex. After scrawling his name for the last time, Dill put the ballpoint pen down and touched Singe on her bare tanned arm. Suddenly, they were up and kissing frantically, she working on his belt, he on her panties, sliding them down over her hips and bare legs. She got his belt undone and he paused long enough to shrug out of his jacket. His pants and shorts dropped to the floor with a clank and the pistol fell out of his hip pocket. Neither of them noticed because they were too busy with the mechanics of the thing. But they soon worked that out, and then it was all lunge and thrust and small cries and finally joint explosion and sweet release.
Dill stood up after a while, his pants and shorts still around his ankles. Anna Maude Singe sat up on the edge of the desk, tugging her skirt down over her knees and smiling, obviously pleased with herself. She looked down, prepared to laugh at the pants and shorts puddled around Dill’s ankles. But when she saw the pistol lying on the hardwood floor, her smile went away and she didn’t laugh. She said, “Aw shit,” instead.
Dill reached down and pulled up his shorts and pants, buckled his belt, bent back down, picked up the revolver, and jammed it into his right hip pocket. He then picked up his jacket from where it had fallen and slipped it on.
“Just who’re you going to shoot?” she said.
“Who do you suggest?”
“That’s smartass,” she said, sliding off the desk and moving to a window that looked down on Second and Main six floors below. “I don’t want smartass right now. What we did on that desk top there for five or ten or fifteen minutes, or whatever it was, well, it was the most erotic and satisfying fucking I’ve ever done, which, you might’ve guessed, is considerable.” She paused. “I don’t know why it was, but it was.”
Dill nodded, almost gravely. “I thought so, too.”
“Then I saw the gun lying there and it went away. The after-glow — or whatever. I’ll look at that desk now, and I’ll remember making love to you on it, but I’m not going to remember how tremendous it was. All I’m going to remember is that goddamn gun.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About the gun.”
She turned, sat down at the desk, and opened a drawer. She took out her purse, removed a set of keys, and offered them to Dill. “The one with the dot of red nail polish opens my door.” He took them, examined the one with the red dot, and slipped them into his pocket. She looked at her watch. “You’d better go.”
“I’ve still got a few minutes,” he said.
“You’d better go.”
“All right.”
She frowned. “When can I come home?”
Dill thought about it. “Eleven-thirty, I’d say. No later than that.”
“Will you be there?”
“Sure, if you want me to.”
She was still frowning when she said, “I don’t know whether I do or not.”
“If you don’t, you can throw me out.”
She nodded and said, “You’d better go.”
“Right,” he said, turned, and moved to the door.
“Dill,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I wish you hadn’t had the gun.”
“So do I,” he said, opened the door, and left.
By five minutes before seven that evening the temperature had dropped to 98 degrees. The rented Ford sedan with Dill at its wheel was parked some forty feet from the alley that ran behind the large old house at the corner of Nineteenth and Fillmore. On the alley was the garage apartment or carriage house where Dill’s dead sister had sometimes lived and where he had made the appointment with Clyde Brattle for seven o’clock.
Seated next to Dill was Tim Dolan. In back was Joseph Luis Emilio Ramirez, the Child Senator from New Mexico, whose black eyes glittered with what Dill supposed was excitement.
“What did you say their names are?” the Senator asked, staring at the dark blue Oldsmobile 98 that was parked the wrong way just up the street and on the other side of the alley. Two men were seated in the front seat of the Olds. Their faces were indistinct.
“Harley and Sid,” Dill said. “They work for Brattle. As far as I know, they always have.”
“What do they do?”
“Whatever he tells them to do. Right now, I think they’re making sure the FBI hasn’t been invited.”
“Where’s Brattle?” Dolan said.
“He’ll be along.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two. A taxi turned the corner at Twentieth and Fillmore and drove toward Dill’s Ford and parallel to the brickyard-turned-park across the street.
“I’d say that’s Brattle in the taxi,” Dill said.
Just before it reached the Oldsmobile, the taxi speeded up. By the time it passed Dill’s parked Ford it was moving at fifty miles per hour at least. “That was Brattle all right,” Dill said.
“Why didn’t he stop?”
“He’ll be back. Harley and Sid probably signaled him with the brake lights.” Dill looked at his watch. “Well, it’s one minute till. I guess we’d better go.”