I told him — as much as he needed to know right away. It took him a couple of minutes to believe me, but when I showed him the photostat of my investigator’s license and told him what he would find in the wreckage, he was convinced. He left me to use his car radio, because the other cop was still at the wrecked VW and yelling for an ambulance and a tow truck; Paige and his partner were wedged inside, and he couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive.
I was pretty shaky for a while, but by the time the ambulance and the tow truck arrived I was all right. A couple of guys went to work on the VW with blowtorches. When they got Paige and the other one out, they were still alive but cut up and unconscious; Paige had a broken leg, too. The ambulance took them away to the nearest emergency hospital.
The county officers escorted me to the police station in South San Francisco, where I made a formal statement. None of the cops was too pleased that I had given chase after the robbery, instead of notifying the law like a good citizen was supposed to do, but they didn’t make an issue of it. They let me go on home after a couple of hours.
I had bad dreams that night. But they could not have been any worse than the dreams Judith Paige would be having...
In the morning I learned that Paige was an ex-con — four years at San Quentin for armed robbery — who’d figured that his job as a real estate salesman wasn’t paying off and wasn’t likely to. Two months ago, he’d reestablished contact with another armed robber he’d met in prison, and they had worked out the liquor store heists. The other guy’s name was Stryker.
The rest was about as I’d figured it. Stryker, alert and strung out after the holdup, had spotted me coming out of the lot after them. They’d figured me for a heroic-citizen type, and at first they’d thought of trying to outrun me; but the VW didn’t have all that much power, they had no idea how good a driver I was and they didn’t want to risk alerting a cop by exceeding the speed limits. So they’d hit on Cynthia Street — and although they refused to admit it to the police, they would have killed me if they’d succeeded in forcing me off the road.
As for why Stryker had been on foot that night — and why they’d used Paige’s VW, with its distinctive WALLY P license plate, instead of Stryker’s car — the reason was so simple and ironic that it made me laugh sardonically when I heard it. Stryker lived down the Peninsula, near South San Francisco, and he was married, and his wife had insisted on using their car to attend an audition: she was a singer, and there was a job she badly wanted in the city. So he’d given in, notified Paige and then had her drop him off at the shopping center on her way into San Francisco.
Crooks, I thought. Christ!
There was irony, too, in the fact that Paige had apparently been faithful to Judith all along. He had married her because he loved her, or had some kind of feeling for her. If she hadn’t suspected him of playing around, and come to me, he and Stryker might have carried on their string of liquor store heists for quite a while before they screwed up and got themselves caught.
The police had been the ones to break the news to Judith Paige last night; better them than me. But I knew I had to see her again anyway: it was one of those things you have to do. So I drove out to the Parkside district late that afternoon and spent twenty minutes with her — twenty long minutes that were not easy for either of us.
She told me she was going to file for divorce and then go home to Idaho, which struck me as the wisest decision she could have made. She would meet another guy there someday, and she’d get remarried, and maybe then she would be happy. I hoped so.
I would never see her again in any case, but the future would still bring another Judith Paige. There is always another Judith Paige for somebody in my business. One of these days she would walk into my office, and I would hear the old story again — the old, sad, sordid story.
Only that next time it would probably be true.
I Didn’t Do It
Well, I keep telling you I didn’t do it. I don’t care how much evidence there is. You got to believe me. I didn’t do it.
Sure, I was out there that night. I already admitted that, didn’t I? I went out there to see Mr. Mason about a job. He gave me a dollar in town that day. I told him I was homeless, down on my luck, and he gave me a dollar and said come out and see him and maybe he could put me to work doing something on his farm. He told me his name and where he lived, said it was only about half a mil outside of town. So I walked out there that night. It was a hot night and I didn’t have nothing to do in town, nowhere to go, no place to sleep, so figured why not go out there and see Mr. Mason instead of waiting until the next day. I figured maybe he’d give me something to eat and a place to sleep. SO I went out there. How was I to know he’d gone off to Springville on business and wouldn’t be home until after midnight?
Well, I come onto his property about nine o’clock. Just after dark, so it must have been about nine. Wasn’t nobody around, but lights was on in the house. It was a hot night, quiet, and when I got up near the porch I heard them sounds plain as day. Did I know right off what they was? Well, not right off. They was just moaning sounds to me at first, like maybe somebody was hurt. So I went around the side of the house, through the garden, to see if that was what it was, somebody hurt. That’s how come you found my footprint over by the bedroom window, where I stepped in the mud from the sprinklers. I never said I wasn’t in the garden, did I? But I never went up close to that window. No, sir. I’ll swear it on a Bible. I never went close to that window and I never looked inside that bedroom.
I recognized them sounds, that’s why. I knowed then what was going on. Him and her in there, making all that moaning noise, making them bedsprings squeak and squeal like a soul in torment. I knowed what they was doing. So I beat it right out of there, you bet I did. Fast.
Did I know it wasn’t Mr. Mason in there with Mrs. Mason? Well, I guess I did. I guess I knowed it, all right. I heard the fellow’s voice plain, some of the things he was saying to her... no, I ain’t going to say what them things was. I don’t even want to repeat them things in my own mind, let alone out loud. But I heard his voice plain and it wasn’t Mr. Mason’s voice so I guess I knowed it wasn’t Mr. Mason in there. But I didn’t know who it was. She didn’t call him by his name. No, sir, not by his name.
No, I didn’t go back to town right away. I told you that. It was a hot night and I didn’t feel like going back to town right away, on account of what was I going to do once I got there? I didn’t have no money or no place to go. What I did, I walked down by the river. River runs close to Mr. Mason’s farm — runs right through a corner of it, didn’t you say? Well, it was a hot night and I thought maybe I’d go for a swim.
But before I got there I seen this car parked in amongst the trees betwixt the river and Mr. Mason’s house. Big fancy car, parked right in there under the trees, off the road so you couldn’t see it unless you was walking by like I was. Well, I knowed it was his car, the fellow in the house with Mrs. Mason. Who else’s car was it likely to be?
Sure, I looked inside. Door was unlocked, so I figured I might as well. But it wasn’t my intention to steal nothing, even if there’d been something to steal. Which there wasn’t. Big fancy car like that and not a thing in it that anybody’d want to steal. Not a thing you could of got fifty cents for at a hock shop, let alone a few dollars to buy you a decent meal and some new shoes and maybe a room to sleep in for a few nights.
I sure didn’t wait there for him to show up. No, sir, you’re wrong about that. I went on down to the river just like I said before. I went on down to the river and took off my clothes, all except my underpants, and I went for a nice cool swim. Then I lay on the bank a while and dried off. It was peaceful there on the bank, and I thought I’d stay right there the whole night. No point in going back to town, I says to myself. Might’s well just stay right there for the night and then in the morning go and see if Mr. Mason had come home from wherever he was and ask him for that job he promised. I didn’t have no intention of telling him about his wife fornicating with some other man. Not if he give me a job like he promised, and a place to sleep. I wouldn’t hurt a good man that way. No, not a good man, I wouldn’t.