So we smiled. Or tried to, anyway, but right now all I could think about was what a clever sonofabitch Cushing was, one hell of a lot cleverer than I ever would have thought.
And when the reporters were through with us they concentrated on Cushing alone. They sounded like high school girls cooing over Elvis.
“Were you scared going into that dark warehouse when you knew somebody like Roy Danton was in there?”
“Well, scared, sure, but that’s what the folks in this community pay me to do.”
“How’d you finally bag him, Detective Cushing?”
Another self-effacing shrug. “Just kind of snuck up on the closet where my two good friends Tom and Barney told me he’d be. Then I just told him that I was giving him twenty-five seconds to come out with his hands above his head or I’d be coming in.”
“He say anything to that?”
Boyish grin. “Well, yes, he did say something to that but it sure isn’t something I could repeat here.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, a policeman’s only as good as his word. I’d warned him that I’d be coming in and that’s just what I did. I kicked the door open and went in.”
“Is that when he shot at you?”
He nodded. “One shot was all he had time to get off. That’s when I killed him.”
Barney and Clarence and I stood there and watched this Academy Award performance and I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing. Good ol’ Cushing was going to have it every which way he wanted it. He’d killed a man in cold blood and he’d stolen nearly $50,000 in cash yet he was being treated as a hero.
And the only two people who could testify against him couldn’t say a word because by now nobody would believe them. They were all running after Cushing like kids after a Fourth of July float.
I couldn’t take any more. I just kept thinking of Roy and how eternity had talked back to me. I said to Clarence, “I’m going home.”
I was about to say something else when people started turning their heads to the old white Buick ambulance slowly making its way around the far edge of the town square.
It was headed to the hospital. With Roy inside.
If Cushing saw it, he didn’t let on. He still stood at the top of the stairs, showing his gun to reporters and letting them get close-ups of it. The chief just walked around shaking everybody’s hand as if Cushing had given birth to a fifteen-pound baby or something. Just then Cushing did look up. He stared right at me. Ordinarily, what I saw in his eyes would have frightened me. But right now I didn’t care. Right now all I could think about was Roy.
He held my gaze for a long time, giving me a full dose of his threatening look. Then he went back to a reporter who was snapping yet another picture.
More people kept coming. By now all the parking spaces around the square had been taken up. Some people didn’t even seem to know what was going on. They’d just heard the noise and seen the lights and drifted over from their humid summer beds. It all reminded me of the scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers where all the people in town come to the square so they can be made into pod people. I guess I was pissed off enough at the moment to think of Somerton that way — exulting in Detective Cushing’s bravery without questioning it for a moment. Or wondering how it was that an already badly wounded man had needed to be shot to death. No, they didn’t know these things but in their frenzy to have a hero, they wouldn’t listen to them, either, even if I’d brought them up.
I went down to my bike and rode home.
Mom and Debbie were up in the living room. I went over and kissed them good night and started up the stairs. “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?” Mom asked.
“Dad’ll tell you,” I said. “I just really don’t want to talk.”
In my room, I turned off the lights and sat next to the window and smoked a Lucky. This way I could blow the smoke out the screen. Mom was less likely to notice the smell.
I used Roy’s lighter to get my cigarette going and then I just sat there a long time, three or four cigarettes long, and thought of how much I hated Cushing. I could still see him smiling for the cameras. I could still see him pointing the gun dramatically for the reporters.
I Shot Jesse James. There was a film made with that title once, a good film as I remembered it, and Cushing was just as much of a fink as Bob Ford — the man who shot Jesse in the back — had ever been.
Roy hadn’t needed to die. Hell, he’d been unconscious. But if he’d lived, he would have been able to tell Chief Pike that Detective Cushing had stolen the money.
Finally, I went to bed. I tried to stop thinking about Cushing by thinking about the new girl everybody said was coming to school this fall. I’d always had this dream that this really elegant girl, like Audrey Hepburn say, would come to our school from some real sheltered background, a convent or something like that, and she wouldn’t judge boys by the standards the other girls used — good looks or money or status or muscles — she’d just judge them by what was in their hearts. And so guess who the new girl, at least in my dreams, always fell madly in love with? Right.
I lay there a long time that night thinking about the new girl.
A long time later, the three of them came up and went to sleep. I waited until I thought it was safe and then I went into Debbie’s room and put a silver dollar beneath her pillow. She snored in a cute little way and muttered something far below my ability to hear. I kissed her on the forehead and went back to my room, done with my job as Tooth Fairy.
When I got up in the morning, Clarence was there.
Usually, Clarence would have been at work by now but this morning he’d waited for me.
I had Wheaties and wheat toast and orange juice (or “Or” as Debbie called it) and a vitamin and half a cup of coffee. I felt exhausted. Coffee helped sometimes.
“The governor’s coming next Tuesday.”
“The governor?” I said.
“The governor,” Clarence said. “There’s going to be a picnic for you and Barney and Cushing in the square and then the governor’s going to give you each some kind of award.”
“You know Cushing’s got the money?”
“I know.”
“And you know he killed Roy in cold blood?”
“I know.”
“And you’re not mad?”
“Son,” he said, glancing up at Mom. “Son, your mother and I had a good long talk last night.”
Whenever Clarence and Mom had a “good long talk” about anything, it always meant that I would have to do something I didn’t want to.
“More Wheaties, hon?” Mom said.
I shook my head.
“We think you should go along with everything, Tom,” Clarence said.
Mom came over and put her hands on my shoulders. “If Cushing had told the truth, you’d be in a lot of trouble, dear. A lot of trouble. This way—”
“This way, Cushing gets away with murder and gets to keep all the money!” I pushed back from the table and stood up, looking at them in disbelief and disgust.
“You aren’t any better than Cushing! You’re willing to go along with lies, too!”
“Tom, listen—” Clarence started to say.
But I was already on the far side of the banging screen door off the kitchen.
I got on my bike and rode over to Barney’s. About halfway there I started feeling badly about yelling at my folks the way I had. They weren’t perfect, true, but then I’d heard rumors to the effect that I wasn’t perfect, either. Hard as that was to believe.
People always call Barney’s area “the poor section” but I actually like it better than where we live. I guess it’s the bluffs, all the woodsy hills that run right up to the backyards of most of the houses. Of course, the houses themselves aren’t the best — old frame jobbies long in need of paint and roof shingles and uncracked window glass. But I would happily have traded our fancy new carport for just one of those bluffs.