My footsteps sounded elephantine on the wood floors. I was six, seven steps down the hallway. The light from the front of the house suddenly died. The hallway was very dark.
I didn’t really see him until it was over.
A silhouette leaned out of a bedroom doorway on the right, near the end of the hallway and two bullets exploded red-yellow from the barrel of a pistol.
I was too busy diving to the bedroom’s carpeted floor to recognize who it was. But of course it was Darin Greene. I got a nice rug burn on my chin. Reminded me of the dates I’d had in high school with Pamela. We’d roll around on her folks’ new carpeting and I’d get a lot of rug burns but very little else.
“I coulda killed you, man,” Greene said from the darkness of the bedroom. “And next time I will. Now you get your white ass outta here.”
“Cliffie wants to kill you, Darin,” I said, putting a hand against the wall to help me to my feet. “You’re making it easy for him.”
“All I want is for this son of a bitch to tell me the truth, man,” Greene said. “That he killed Susan.”
“I didn’t!” Robert Frazier half-screamed. “I would never kill my own daughter.”
“You found out I was sleepin’ with her and you killed her, you son of a bitch!”
So there it was. The reason for the falling out with his old friend Kenny Whitney. There aren’t many ways to alienate a man faster than to sleep with his wife.
“Kenny killed her! Kenny killed her!”
Frazier said again.
I was scared, but it wasn’t a crippling fear.
In ninth grade a kid from a county high school picked a fight with me with no warning. It was at a football game and he’d had a few illegal beers. He lunged at me. And I was crippled, paralyzed. I couldn’t reach my anger. That’s the scariest feeling in the world, when you can’t find the wherewithal to fight back. Three or four friends of mine pulled him off me.
Greene fired off another shot, but all it hit were some perfume bottles lined up along a Hollywood-style makeup table. The bottles sounded delicate as they flew apart. The air was flooded with the high sweet narcotic of expensive perfume.
I rolled past the bed to a place behind a chaise lounge. The bedroom was enormous-the huge canopy bed, the master bathroom off the west wall, two walk-in closets and enough floor space to hold a modest-size meeting.
From behind the chaise lounge, I said, “You don’t want to die, Darin. We’ve got to get you out of this house alive.”
“Sykes’ll kill me anyway.”
“Not if I lead the way out and you’ve got your hands up. Not even Sykes’d be that stupid.”
“He thinks I killed my own daughter,”
Frazier bellowed. “He called me up tonight and said if I’d come out here he’d tell me who really killed Susan. So, like a fool, I came out here and then he accuses me!”
Greene said, “I know I’m a bastard, Frazier. But I wasn’t a bastard to Susan.
Believe it or not, I loved her. And she loved me. I was gentle with her. Real gentle. The way I shoulda been with my wife and kids.”
Until that moment, I’d had a hard time imagining Darin and Susan together. But the soft way he spoke, I could hear why she’d gone with him, especially considering the way her husband had treated her and all.
Then Darin went and ruined everything.
“You made her get an abortion, didn’t you?” Greene said to Frazier. Then he turned to me, “Me ‘n’ her was gonna have a baby.
Kenny couldn’t have no kids on account of his sperm count or somethin’. Anyway, she made the mistake of tellin’ Frazier here what happened and then he made her get an abortion.”
“Yes,” Frazier said, “and that’s when you started blackmailing her.”
Greene hit him. It was one of those blows that you can almost feel; it was so blunt and deadly. I peeked up over the edge of the chaise lounge.
Frazier was sinking to the bed. “Don’t you ever say that again, man. I loved her and she loved me and I wouldn’t blackmail her. No way!”
Frazier, holding his head from Greene’s punch, said, “Then who was blackmailing her?”
“I don’t know, man. But it wasn’t me!”
Frazier raised his head. He looked old now in the spilling light from outdoors, old and baffled and done. Even the anger seemed blanched out of him. “Then you know how I feel when you accuse me of killing my own daughter! I sure as hell didn’t like what she was doing. But I didn’t force her to have an abortion. She did that on her own. And I didn’t kill her, either.”
“Where’d she’d get an abortion?” I said.
“She took care of it herself,” Frazier said.
“At least that’s what she told me. Maybe Greene knows.”
“No, I don’t. She just went and done it’s all I know.”
By this time, I had crawled to the far end of the chaise lounge. I needed something to throw.
There was a small table at the far end of the chaise lounge. On the table was an ashtray, a star-shaped glass ashtray. It could probably fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. No real weight at all. The only thing that made it a potential weapon were the edges. They couldn’t cut deeply, but they could certainly do enough damage to momentarily stun somebody-if the thrower’s aim was accurate.
I snatched the ashtray up and gripped it tight. I’d have to stand up to throw with any accuracy. And then I’d have to follow through.
Hopefully, between Frazier and I, we could restrain Greene long enough to get his gun. The longer we waited, the hungrier that crowd was going to get.
But the first thing I needed to do was distract him.
There was a small cigarette lighter next to the ashtray. That would work.
He went for it. I hurled the lighter against the wall behind him. He whirled. His gun didn’t go off, but he yelped, startled, and shouted my name.
I took aim and flung the ashtray at him.
“Grab his gun, Frazier!” I shouted as the ashtray left my hand.
So much for my big league baseball fantasies. The ashtray got him in the neck, not the head. It didn’t have the impact I’d hoped for. He didn’t drop the gun, but he did turn toward me and, as he turned, he was off balance. Frazier moved much faster than I would have thought possible. He grabbed Greene’s gun and then gave Greene’s wrist a savage twist. I came running. None of this was pretty. Frazier was screaming hysterically, Greene was clumsily trying to rain blows on Frazier’s head with his free hand and I stumbled over my own feet as I lunged for Greene. The gun discharged again. My clumsiness saved me.
My momentum continued to carry me forward. I slammed into Greene and swung a wild punch at his head. It got him in the ear. I doubt it hurt him much, but it sure pissed him off. And when he got pissed, he got sloppy. He lunged at me, the gun dangling from a single finger. Frazier tore it from his hand and then slammed a punch into Greene’s face. He had quite a poke for an older man. And that was it.
“Now you stay right there, you son of a bitch,” Frazier said. He pointed the gun straight at Greene’s face. “I’m going to march you outside, Greene. And I’m going to make sure nobody hurts you. I don’t want this town of mine to get a reputation for having a bunch of trigger-happy bigots in it. I’m going to make sure you get to the jail safe and sound and I’m going to make sure Sykes treats you right or I’m going to kick his ass from one side of this state to the other. And I’m also going to see that you get as fair a trial as possible. And then I’m going to have the satisfaction of you spending one hell of a long time in a cage where you belong. You understand me, son?”
Greene just glared at him. It was over for him and Greene knew it. He seemed smaller now, less menacing, than at any time I’d ever known him. There was defeat mixed with anger now and I think even Frazier sensed this. When he spoke again, his voice was much softer. “I can’t stop you from telling people about the time you spent with my daughter. It won’t do her reputation any good, though, and if you love her as much as you say you do, then you’ll think that over. For her sake.” Then, “And for your son’s sake, too, don’t forget. You really want him to know you were in love with some other woman?”