“Benjamin could shoot him.”
Miss Mary cracked the beers even earlier than usual after Benson let drop he’d been informed that his services as a newspaper carrier were no longer needed.
“You don’t mope around after getting shitcanned. You celebrate your freedom...” Her words trailed off into a cough so violent that the pink bandanna slid sideways on her shiny pate, giving her the look of a pirate accessorized by Mary Kay.
Velma hustled over with Cheez Whiz and Doritos and the optimism that had kept her married far too long to the asshole. “Now you’ll have more time for your book. It’s going to make you a millionaire. But only if Benjamin kills that jerk George. I’m with Miss Mary: shoot his ass.”
Benson canted his head back, held the Cheez Whiz over his mouth, and jammed a finger against the spout. “Too messy.” He spoke around the gooey blob. “Blood spatter. Same with stabbing. And anyway, George is his best friend. They’re like brothers, always together. He’d be the first suspect. He’d never get away with it.”
“Aw, honey. There’s all kinds of ways to get away with murder.”
Miss Mary made a gun of her hand and aimed it at Velma. “Then why didn’t you murder the dickhead? You’d still have your house.”
“I probably should have,” Velma agreed.
“How?” Benson asked.
“How should I have murdered him?”
“How would you get away with it?”
“Whatever the cops ask you, just look them in the eye and tell the truth. Take your book. Say George is lying on the floor full of holes and Benjamin’s standing over him, blood up to his ankles and a gun in his hand, and Mr. Cop asks, Did you kill that man? What’s the only answer?”
“I don’t know.”
Miss Mary’s fingertips, when she adjusted the bandanna, were blue but for the liverish circles of nicotine. “I’m guessing that’s the wrong answer.”
Velma looked at Benson. He shrugged.
“You say, No sir, I did not kill that man.”
“But he did kill him, right?”
Velma handed him another beer. “No, he did not. The gun killed him.” She and Miss Mary traded fist bumps. “You just got to have the right moves.” Velma’s cheeks hollowed as she sucked Cheez Whiz from a crimson-tipped forefinger. She looked at her watch and executed a slow-motion leg cross. “Know what I mean?”
Benson was pretty sure he did.
Benson angled the Dainty Lady into a parallel-parking space in front of Gary’s place. The Cavalier’s purple ass stuck out about a foot into the street. He didn’t care. Maybe somebody would hit it hard enough to total it. Insurance could pay for a new car. Except that he didn’t have insurance. “Oops,” he said aloud. He said it again when he tripped on the steps. Pages flew from his hand. The Hellgate wind snatched them and hurled them high. They drifted down onto the porch, the patches of grass, the bushes.
“What the hell?” Gary stood in the open doorway.
Benson started to laugh. He couldn’t stop. “My story,” he choked out. “For tonight.”
Gary stalked past him, gathering pages. “There’s no meeting tonight,” he called from the yard. “We changed it. Jesus. How’d you get so plastered on that horse piss you drink?”
Benson stopped laughing. “Nobody told me.”
Gary came back and stood at the bottom of the steps, the pages crumpled in his fist. “I talked to Jeanine last week.”
“Who’s Jeanine? Nathalie’s replacement?”
“The administrator at the writing program. I was trying to do you a solid, find out if you’d gotten funding for next semester.” The Hellgate wind took another try at the papers in Gary’s hand. His fingers whitened around them. “She didn’t know who you were. She had to look you up. She said you’d never gotten in at all.” He thrust the pages toward Benson.
Benson hauled himself to his feet and ignored the unspoken invitation to leave. He walked toward the open door. “She in there?”
“Nathalie? No. Look, you can’t leave your car like that.” He was talking to Benson’s back.
Inside, the fucking fruit bowl sat on the table. Benson selected an apple, turned, and drew his arm back. He was drunk, but not so drunk that he didn’t nail Gary right in the middle of his fat mouth when Gary walked in behind him.
The Dainty Lady took the gravel road like a champ, even after it went to a two-track with autumn-brittle grasses making blackboard screeches along her rusted undercarriage.
The ruts ended atop a cutbank by the river. The water muttered and churned below, nothing like the lazy gleaming expanse that wound through town, its glittering surface festooned with neon-colored kayaks and paddleboards, along with the patched inner tubes from Benson’s neighborhood.
“It’s deep down there,” Gary had said at the bluff weeks earlier. He’d taken Benson fly-fishing, back when he’d thought Benson was still salvageable. “Watch where you step. You end up in one of those holes and lose your balance, the current will take your carcass all the way to the Pacific.”
There’d been no danger of Benson stepping in one of the holes that day. He didn’t have a fly rod and, after an initial venture into the icy water, declined Gary’s offer to share. He climbed back onto the bluff and watched Gary, mentally adding up the cost of his waders and special boots and vest and fly rod and license and even the flies themselves, and figured out that the fish they’d eat that night would be worth a few hundred bucks apiece. Except that they didn’t even eat them. “Catch and release, dude,” Gary had said, as a fish flashed jewel-like in his hand for the moment it took him to snap a photo.
“Catch and release,” Benson said now. He hauled the tarp and its burden from the trunk. He’d considered a blanket before remembering how they were always talking about fibers on those police shows.
He unrolled the tarp. It had been a job wrestling Gary into the waders, the vest, the felt-soled boots. He grabbed him under the arms and dragged him to the lip of the cutbank. The hole below was especially deep. “Where the big ones hide,” Gary had told him that day, although he’d been unable to entice any onto his fly.
“Here’s a big one,” Benson said, and heaved.
The fly rod went next. Benson watched as it caught the current and sailed out of sight. Gary rocked along behind it, bouncing in slow motion off the rocks, making his ungainly way toward the Pacific.
The tarp had required some back-and-forthing, first to the trailer to get it, then the return to Gary’s house, cutting through downtown each way. The streets — lined with restored brick buildings that housed the brewpubs and distilleries where Benson couldn’t afford to drink, the outdoor-gear stores where he couldn’t afford to shop, and the cafés where he couldn’t afford to eat — were deserted except for the bums sleeping it off in doorways, awaiting the return of not-Bensons who might toss a few spare bucks their way. The sky shaded gray as Benson left the river, reminding him of his paper-delivery days. By the time he got back to the Mountain View Mobile Home Park, the sun hung above Sentinel, the M gleaming its promise to the fortunate who lived at its feet. Benson cut the gas and popped the trunk.
“Need a hand?”
He hadn’t heard Velma behind him until she was so close her breasts brushed his elbow when she leaned over to study the contents of the trunk.
“I’m just taking this tarp inside. I’ve got it.”
But she’d already grasped two corners, backing up, motioning him to bring his own two corners in, pulling him toward her until the fold hid the still-damp blotch between them. Their hands touched, Velma so close he could smell the beer on her breath. He’d missed the morning session on Miss Mary’s stoop.