The woman made him a sandwich. He ate it slowly, savoring every bite. She gave him more of the hot liquid to drink.
When he finished the food, the man brought a notebook and a ballpoint pen. He handed them to Goncharov, pointed to Goncharov’s chest, then widened his hands before him in the universal gesture of a question.
A name, Goncharov thought. He wants my name.
But what is it?
Startled, his eyes widened as he realized he didn’t even know who he was.
He picked up the pen, made the point go in and out, examined the white paper, but for the life of him he could think of nothing to write.
“He doesn’t know his own name,” Linda Fiocchi said heavily.
“Apparently not,” Basil Jarrett agreed.
“So what should we do?”
“Damn, woman, I don’t know.” Jarrett went to the woodstove and opened it. He wadded up a sheet of newspaper from a nearby pile, added kindling, and struck a match. When the paper caught, he closed the door and adjusted the draft.
What should we do with a man who is obviously suffering from some kind of severe mental confusion? Not that Linda or I know a solitary thing about mental illness. Boy, you come to the cabin for a quiet, restful weekend, some fishing, reading, wine, and lovemaking… and you’ve got a mental patient on your hands.
When Jarrett turned around, Linda was sitting beside the older man holding his hand. The man seemed to be paying no attention. He stared fixedly at something far, far away.
Civilization had reached Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, I decided as I cruised slowly through, checking out the scene. The Wal-Mart was huge, spanking new, and had a couple of acres of parking lot. Inside would be 9 mm and .38 Special ammo, not to mention underwear and jeans, socks and shirts. All the necessities for classy, with-it guys like me.
The house I was looking for was about a mile south of downtown on the beach side of the highway, on a dead-end street. It looked about as I remembered it, a medium-sized two-story bungalow with a large screened-in porch and a crushed-seashell parking area big enough for four cars. I wheeled in, killed the engine, sat looking it over. Only two of the other bungalows on this street that dead-ended at the dune had cars parked beside them.
“Whose house is this?” Dorsey O’Shea asked from the back seat.
“Guy I know.”
“One of your friends you are about to curse with your presence. Do you have permission to stay here?”
“Uh, he won’t mind.”
“So the answer is no.” She harrumped. “I thought not.”
I turned in my seat to face her. “I’ve had about enough of your lip. I’m sorry you had to shoot that bastard this morning, but I’m not real damn sorry. He came to kill all three of us. It was him or us. He was a rotten cop and he fell in with rotten people.”
“You knew him?”
“I know his name, yes.”
“Jesus, Tommy, I don’t want to have to kill people, for any reason at all. Ever again.” Her voice had a hard, brittle edge to it. “Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“What kind of man are you, anyway? You kill a man at my house, watch another die before your eyes, and you drive all afternoon with your arm out the window and the radio playing, like you don’t give a good goddamn.” The pitch and volume of her voice were rising. “What kind of animal are you, anyway?”
“I can answer that,” Kelly Erlanger said calmly. “Yesterday morning Tommy Carmellini ran into a burning building and dragged me out, saving my life. Men like the ones this morning went through that building shooting everyone they could find, then set the place on fire to burn the bodies. Last night he went to my house and got me out of it just before more men arrived to kill me.”
She turned in her seat so that she, too, could see Dorsey. She held up a handful of paper. “These are copies the KGB archivist made of the files in his custody. He spent twenty years copying these files and smuggled them out of Russia after he retired. Never in my life have I read such a chronicle of evil. Tommy Carmellini? He’s one of the good guys.”
She got out of the car and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone with Dorsey.
Dorsey wouldn’t look at me. After a bit she said, “I know there is evil in the world, but I don’t want to live with it. I don’t want to fight it. I don’t want it bleeding to death in my foyer. What’s so wrong with that? Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I told her. “But you’d better keep that pistol handy. You may need it again if you want to keep breathing.”
It only took me a couple of minutes to pick the lock on the front door of the bungalow. I opened the door, went through turning on lights, then went back to the car to carry in the weapons and baggage. The women came inside. After they used the facilities, they walked through the house examining everything.
“You really do know the owners?” Dorsey asked sharply.
“Yes.”
“They won’t mind you using this place?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why don’t you call them and ask? There’s the phone.”
“I would rather not. The fewer people who know we’re here the better. If there’s a problem, I’ll make it right with the owners later on.”
Kelly took a deep breath and announced, “I’ll take the bedroom on the left, upstairs. I saw a swimsuit up there that looks like it might fit me. Dorsey, would you like to go for a walk on the beach?”
Dorsey’s shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said. “I guess I would.”
While they were changing clothes I rooted through the kitchen drawers until I found a spare house key. I gave it to Kelly as they trooped past on their way out, with borrowed towels over their shoulders.
I stood beside the car watching them walk down the street. After they disappeared across the dune, I got in the car and headed for Wal-Mart, which even had groceries.
That Kelly… she had her share of guts. I liked that.
The sheriff was a man in his fifties, balding, with a modest pot gut and a quiet voice. He stood in front of the cabin listening to Basil Jarrett explain about the man they had found when they arrived midday, the man who had spent most of the afternoon asleep near the woodpile.
When he had told him everything he could think of, Jarrett led the sheriff inside. He sat down beside Mikhail Goncharov, asked him his name, where he was from, all the usual questions. For his troubles he received a blank stare.
The sheriff took the pad, wrote his name upon it, and held it up so the man could see the similarity between the name on the pad and the sheriff’s name tag above his left pocket, just below his badge. Then he offered the man the pad and pen.
Goncharov took them, examined the pen, stared at the white paper, and finally laid them in his lap. The sheriff rescued the pad and pen and wrote out two questions. What is your name? Where do you live? Goncharov didn’t appear to even read them when they were held in front of him.
The sheriff sat for a bit more, chatting with Goncharov and receiving no response, then finally arose from his chair and motioned to Jarrett and Fiocchi to follow. Standing in front of his cruiser, he said, “He’s not from around here. Never saw him before.”
“Do you want to take him with you?”
“Well, about all I could do would be take him to the county lockup for transport to the regional jail. We could get some prints, send them to the FBI, see if they can figure out who he is. Gonna take a while, I suspect.”
“You’d leave him in jail while the bureaucrats are piddling along?”
The sheriff settled his hat onto his head and looked searchingly at each of their faces. “Seeing as how he’s apparently incompetent, the mental health commissioner will have him examined by a psychologist or psychiatrist, hold a hearing. If the commissioner finds he’s incompetent, regardless of who he is, he’ll send him to the state mental institution for treatment.”