“What’s your name?” he said.
The man did not answer.
Marvin, watching the pair, suddenly realized that Harry had his back to him. He almost reached for the bottle of thinner on the shelves, and then realized that Clyde was sitting on the workbench and that any move would be seen by him immediately.
“I said, What’s your name, mister?” Harry said.
“What have you done?” the man asked suddenly. “Hijacked a Coast Guard cutter?”
Harry turned toward Clyde quickly, his eyes opening in surprise. Clyde got off the bench and moved toward where the man was sitting on the floor, standing opposite Harry so that one of them was on either side of the man. Marvin kept watching them carefully. Harry’s back was still to him. Clyde was only half turned away from him.
“You must’ve seen quite a little bit out there on the beach, huh, mister?” Harry said.
“I saw enough.”
“What’s your name?” Harry said.
Again the man would not answer.
“Get his wallet,” Harry said to Clyde.
“Cummings,” the man said. And then, very quickly, so quickly that Marvin knew at once he was lying, the man said, “David Cummings.”
“Sometimes, Mr. Cummings, it ain’t healthy to see too much.”
“Sure, listen to the gangsters,” Tannenbaum said. “Talk from gangster pictures with James Cagney.”
“Shut up, Doc,” Harry said. “Just what’d you see out there, Mr. Cummings?”
“What do you want with that cutter?” Cummings asked, ignoring the question.
“Clyde,” Harry said.
Clyde took two steps toward Cummings, his hand going up high over his head at the same time, and then descending in a long swinging arc that seemed almost a part of his forward momentum. Marvin, watching Clyde, frightened and fascinated, almost missed his opportunity to grab the half gallon of thinner. He saw Cummings’ head snap back, and he heard Cummings grunt in pain, and then suddenly realized that Clyde’s back was to him. Quickly he slid to the end of the bench, rose, turned, grabbed a bottle from the shelf, put it down behind the bench, sat, and then turned toward the three men again, his heart pounding. They had not seen him.
He realized all at once how idiotic his sudden move had been. They could have turned at any instant. They would have beaten him up the way they had Costigan, who sat now with a bloody handkerchief to his nose, the way they were doing with this new man Cummings.
“Well?” Harry said.
Cummings got to his feet. “Let’s get something straight here,” he said.
“Only thing we want to get straight is—”
“No, you just—”
“—what you saw outside.”
“—listen to me a minute.”
The men stood facing each other.
“Mister,” Harry said, “we’re gonna have to hurt you.”
“Will that change what I saw outside?”
Harry grinned. “Clyde, I think you’d better—”
Cummings took a step backward and clenched his fists. “This time I’m ready for him,” he said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Clyde said.
“This time, you’d better kill me.”
“How brave you gonna be when he hits you with that gun butt?” Harry said.
“Ask him to try it.”
“Mr. Cummings,” Harry said, “we’ve got nothing to lose.”
“Then you know how serious this is.”
“How serious what is?” Clyde said.
“The hijacking of a government vessel.”
“Is that what we did, Mr. Cummings?”
“They’re comedians, mister,” Tannenbaum said. “They crack jokes from vaudeville.”
“Pop, keep quiet,” Marvin said, and Harry turned toward him, and fear crackled into his skull. Could he see the bottle of thinner behind the bench? Was the bottle showing?
“What’s the penalty?” Clyde asked, grinning.
“What do you mean?” Cummings said. “Penalty?”
“For hijacking.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the penalty? Ten years? Twenty? Life? The electric chair? What?”
“I don’t know. Hijacking a cutter isn’t exactly an everyday occurrence.”
“Is that right? You hear that, Harry? I thought cutters did get hijacked every day. You mean they don’t? Tch, tch.”
“If you want my opinion,” Cummings said, “I think you ought to go to whoever’s in charge of this little adventure, and ask him to forget it. That’s my opinion. Get off that ship and out of this town before you’re all in more trouble than you ever imagined.”
“Us?” Clyde said, and burst out laughing. “In trouble? Man, we’ve been in trouble since six o’clock this morning.”
“What are you doing here anyway?” Bobby Colmore said suddenly. “Why’d you come here?”
“To hijack a cutter,” Clyde answered immediately.
“The cutter’s out on the water,” Costigan said. “Why do you need the town?”
“How’s your nose, Mr. Costigan?” Clyde said.
“My nose is fine. Why do you need the town?”
“Tell him, Harry.”
“I’m telling him nothing, Clyde. You want my advice, you better shut up right now.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“Just cool it, that’s all.”
“Why won’t you let him talk?” Amos said.
“Sure, Harry, why won’t you let me—”
“Clyde, shut up!” Harry shouted. He jerked his rifle up. “Now, shut up. I mean it, man. I mean it. One more word—”
“Hey, come on,” Clyde said, and grinned.
“Man, you say one more word, and you’re dead, man. I mean it.”
Clyde flushed crimson, and then caught his breath, nodded, and said, “Sure. Take it easy.”
“How come he ain’t laughing now?” Amos said.
Harry still had not lowered the rifle. It was pointed at Clyde’s middle. Clyde, his face red, kept staring at the muzzle of the gun.
“I thought he laughed at just about everything you said. I thought you got along just like two brothers,” Amos said.
“We get along fine,” Harry answered, not taking his eyes from Clyde. Quickly he lowered the rifle. Clyde nodded again, and then walked directly past Harry without looking at him. He boosted himself onto the workbench, sat, and put the rifle across his lap. He closed his eyes at once, as though he were enormously weary after a long, grueling ordeal.
“Just what did you see out there?” Costigan asked Cummings.
“Luke, don’t—” Samantha began.
“I want to know,” he said.
“Go ahead, tell him,” Clyde said, his eyes shut.
Cummings hesitated a moment. Sighing, he said, “I saw them moving armed men out to that cutter. And bringing men here, locking them up in the other building.”
“The storage locker?”
“If that’s what it is. The one without any windows.”
“Then that’s why they needed the town,” Costigan said. “So they’d have a place to bring that cutter in and transfer their men to it.”
“But why?” Tannenbaum said, and turned to Clyde. “Why are you stealing a boat? For scrap iron? For what?”
“For war,” Clyde said, his eyes still shut.
There was, for the space of a heartbeat, silence in the shop. Clyde’s words hung without malice, almost without meaning, in the empty stillness. The silence seemed longer than it actually was. Clyde did not move from the bench. He kept leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed and a faint smile on his face as the silence turned in upon itself, second lengthening into second after second after second, all compressed and compacted into a split instant.