“How am I supposed to get in?”
“There’s a key under the mat.”
“Joe—”
“Get goin’.”
“I just wanted to thank you.”
“All right, you thanked me. Now go.”
Recevo racked the receiver before Boyle could have a chance to say anything else. He leaned back against the wood of the booth. He closed his eyes.
Jimmy Boyle got his service revolver from his dresser, checked the load, watched his hand shake as he sighted down the barrel. He spun the cylinder of the .38, wrist-jerked the cylinder back in, wedged the gun barrel-down behind the waistband of his trousers. He stuck it on the left side of his gut with the grip facing in so he could cross-draw with his right hand. Then he practiced the drill in the hall mirror, as he had done so many times before.
Boyle put a carcoat on over his street clothes. He reached into his side pocket, found the vial of Benzedrine there, dry-popped the last pill on his way out of his apartment. He took the stairs two at a time, blowing by an old woman who pressed her back against the wall to let him pass. A moment later he was out on the street and running, full speed, toward his old coupe.
36
At 13th and Euclid, Boyle slowed his Buick coupe to a crawl in the middle of the street, double-checked the scrap of notepaper beside him on the seat. He pulled over, parked behind a late-model sedan, cut the engine. He looked around the block of three-story row houses, some crowned with grand turrets, some plain and nondescript. Two starlings lifted off the roof of the corner house, their black wings spread as they glided down to the asphalt to pick at the open skull of a dead squirrel. No one was out on the street; the slate-gray veil of night had fallen. The cold cut right through Boyle’s carcoat, hit his face with the shock of a hornet’s sting.
Boyle got out of the car, felt the finger-dance at the back of his head. He had come to know it well in the last week. The pep pill gave him that; and it gave him a powerful and unquenchable thirst. Taking the steps at a bounding trot, he tried to raise spit, found that he could not.
Jimmy Boyle had a sudden image of a lifeless naked boy lying on a concrete slab. The image had not entered his mind since he himself was a child, and here it was again. It had begun to haunt him the day his father had brought home the shoes from the morgue. His father had removed the shoes off the corpse of the boy just the night before, and early the next morning had laid them neatly side-by-side at the foot of Jimmy’s bed. Jimmy Boyle awoke that morning to the sounds of his parents in the adjoining room, their voices raised in argument. “Let’s be practical, honey,” his father had said. “You know we ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and Jimmy needs shoes. That boy got hit by that flatbed, he can’t use them shoes today any more than he could use a shirt collar on his broken neck. We gotta be practical!” Jimmy Boyle had closed his eyes then, tried not to picture the boy, lying on that slab with his bruised and twisted neck. And Boyle wore those shoes, all that summer and into the next. But for a long time, he could not stop that boy from entering his dreams. Eventually, the image of the dead boy went the way of all his childhood nightmares, buried and forgotten, but sleeping, not dead. Now, as he walked through a common foyer towards Gearhart’s apartment door, the image was back.
“Stop it!” said Boyle aloud, his voice echoing in the hall.
He shook his head vigorously. The dead boy was gone. He knocked on the door. He knocked again. He bent down, lifted the straw mat that sat before the door: no key.
Boyle stood, turned the knob. He pushed lightly on the door, let it open halfway. He looked around the foyer, stepped into the living room, closed the door behind him.
A woman lives here, thought Boyle, or a fancy kind of man. The place was neat and orderly, clean smelling, with magazines stacked on side tables and books shelved fussily in order of ascending height. A Lawson sofa, covered in wine matelasse, sat in the center of the room. A Duncan Phyfe loveseat, mahogany-framed with a beige striped fabric, sat facing the sofa. Between the two was a long mahogany table, its top brilliantly waxed and finely beveled, with intricately scrolled feet. Next to the sofa sat an RCA Victor Crestwood model radio-phonograph console, also constructed in rich mahogany wood.
Boyle walked quickly across a rose, tone-on-tone broadloom rug. The thickness of it muted his steps. He moved into a hall past two open bedroom doors. The hall ended at another open door leading into a bathroom. He moved toward the bathroom; queerly, it seemed to move toward him.
And then he was in the bathroom. The layout was simple: a sink and a toilet and a bathtub. The tub was large and sat free. Its feet were fashioned as lion’s paws, heavily clawed and leafed gold. A white curtain was drawn around the tub, hung from a semicircular rod. The mirrored wood medicine cabinet sat flush in the plaster of the wall, centered above the sink.
Boyle looked in the mirror at the black circles ringed around his eyes. His flesh sagged gray on his face. My God, he thought: Is that me?
He reached for the cabinet, winced at the shake in his hand as his fingers grabbed the handle. He pulled back on the door, opened it, looked inside. He saw a pack of Feenamint, some Eno salts, a styptic pencil, a tube of Kolynos toothpaste, a brush, a bottle of Mistol nose drops, a bar of Old Spice soap, a jar of Pond’s Cold Cream... no razor. And for the first time he thought: It stinks a little in here. Rusty, kind of, like some guy just took a big shit.
Boyle closed the cabinet door. The outline of a man flashed in the mirror. He turned to the right.
The man was in the doorway — a huge man in a flannel suit with a sickening grin spread wide across his fat face. The brown handle of a straight razor was tightly grasped in his upraised fist.
My ear. That goddamned bum ear of mine. I didn’t even hear him coming down the hall.
“I’m a cop,” said Boyle.
The man said, “Then you must be looking for this.”
The man brought the razor down violently. Boyle felt as if he had been pushed with a hammer. He stumbled back, turned to grab the bath curtain, saw a diagonal line of blood splash against the white curtain as he turned.
“Momma,” said Boyle.
The curtain ripped free from its rings. Boyle tumbled into the empty tub. His head hit the porcelain. He heard the sound, like the sound of a muffled bell, but he couldn’t feel a thing. He couldn’t feel it because of the other pain. There was the other pain now and it was pulsing and horrible and somewhere else. The air had gotten to the cut.
The fat man walked toward Boyle.
“I’m a cop,” said Boyle, his voice rubbery and weak.
The fat man laughed.
Boyle fumbled his right hand to his left side. The hand was numb, clumsy. He found the grip of the .38. His hand slipped off the slickness there.
“I’m sorry, you know.” The fat man raised the razor.
Boyle reached, found the grip. He pulled the gun, slipped his finger inside the trigger guard, fired the gun as the man’s hand slashed down, fired again, screamed something as he fired a third time, watched the revolution of the cylinder through the smoke that had exploded into the room.
The fat man hit the floor, bucking in convulsion, the heel of one brown-and-white shoe kicking wildly at the tiles. Boyle aimed, put a round through the sole of the shoe. The fat man stopped kicking.
Boyle laughed senselessly, pulled the trigger, watched the dead man jump from the force of the lead. He pulled the trigger again. The hammer snapped on an empty chamber.
Jimmy Boyle dropped his service revolver as his head lolled to the side. He heard a splashing sound. A steady high note rang in one ear. It was all warm below his waist. His hand fell away, touched the wetness at the bottom of the tub. It was warm there, too. Boyle’s eyes began to cross.