"Did you talk to him?"
"Not personally, but it's all done. I 'magine you'll have a few things to say to your friend, too. I'd like to hear what he's telling people, how he got the cut in his head."
She was thinking, Could it actually be happening this way? Go home, pick up where she left off. It was what she had been thinking about just before. Walking in the house and seeing Frank, saying, Hi-I'm-fine-how're-you--?
She said again, "I don't believe you. It doesn't happen like this."
"What doesn't?"
"It doesn't happen as if it never happened, for God sake. You can't kidnap somebody and take a million dollars and that's the end of it."
"It is if it works," Louis said.
"Do you have the money?"
Louis hesitated. "I told you, yes."
"You've seen it?"
"Look, take my word. You're going home."
Her voice rose. "No!" Then was quiet again, though with an edge to it. "Something's going on. It doesn't happen this way. And you don't know any more than I do. The other one went to Freeport, didn't he?"
"I got to go downstairs," Louis said.
"He called you and said my husband gave him the money? It was that simple?"
"I'll be back for you," Louis said.
"To kill me?"
He stopped, his hand on the door. "Take it easy, okay? I say you're going home, you're going home."
In the kitchen Louis said, "The one thing I don't understand, why he didn't ask to talk to me."
"He was in a phone booth," Richard said.
Louis waited, but that was all the explanation he was going to get. "What did he say exactly?"
"I told you."
"I mean his exact words. Like if you were writing a police report."
"He said, it's all set."
"All set, uh?" What did "all set" mean. It could mean anything. "You should've called me to the phone."
Richard tightened up. "He said I could tell you it was all set and take the woman home, and then about getting a car and putting her in the trunk, that part, that was all he said. He didn't say anything else, goddarn-it!"
"What're you getting mad about?"
"I ain't mad," Richard said. "I say something, it's the truth." With his face red, his mouth a tight line, looking as though he was going to punch somebody out.
Big dumb fuckhead Nazi gunfighter to handle, to keep calm, keep him busy making his fucking noodles. Louis said, trying to sound like Ordell, "Hey, it's cool, Richard. Nothing to be upset about, man. I believe you. I just want to make sure I understand it. You know what I mean?"
"He said it was all set, he had the money."
"Ah," Louis said. "I must've missed that part. He did get the money. Good. See, I was wondering about that." You dumb fuckhead. "So, what I want to do now, I want to use your car for a little while. Line up some transportation for tonight."
"How long you want to use it?"
"Half hour maybe. That okay?"
Richard guessed it was, but took his time giving Louis his keys. Then told Louis when he came back, he was to back the Hornet in the driveway like he found it. Richard liked it headed out at the street, ready.
Louis almost told him to stay away from the lady: they didn't want to get her mad and upset now that it was over. But he thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. He'd hurry instead.
In fact, Louis decided, once he was out on Woodward Avenue in the Hornet, he might be able to get back in about five minutes.
His original plan was to go north into Ferndale and Royal Oak; but then he got the restaurant idea and couldn't think of a good one north, with valet service, within ten miles. There was a good one about a mile and a half south though, the Paradiso. He could walk there from Richard's house, later on when it was dark. Go in the parking lot, spot a car in the back row, describe it to the parking guy and hand him a buck. It was a lot easier than crossing wires. And he wouldn't have to go scouting around and leave Richard alone with the lady.
What he'd do, check the distance to the restaurant on the odometer to make sure it wasn't farther than he thought or had burned down or anything. If it was still there, he should be back in about five minutes easy.
Try it again. You walk in the house--Mickey pictured it, opening the door, seeing the familiar black-and-white tile. You go into the kitchen. There's a sound from the den. Frank comes out. He sees you, stops. His hands come up. He says ...
Quietly--no, gravely, his hands at his sides. "How are you?" And you say, "I'm fine, thank you." Very coolly, looking him right in the eye. "And how was Freeport?" And Frank says ... "Not bad. I shot a seventy-two at Lucaya yesterday. The greens were slow, otherwise--"
"Do you want something to eat? I haven't been to the store this week, but we must have something." She goes to the refrigerator.
Her mother was there, somewhere, saying, "Oh, Margaret, don't be silly. Frank wouldn't do that. Frank's a wonderful husband and father." While her dad, holding his pipe, watched. "No, mom, really. Things are not as nice as they seem. Nothing is." But why bother? It would require too much of an effort to tell her mother, to tell her friends at the club. And for what? Assuming they would let her go. She would sit and wait and see and if they did she couldn't tell anyway. Frank would go to jail.
Try that.
"Keep your mouth shut, Frank. You say one more word about your golf game, I'll turn you in." It was getting better.
Richard entered his mother's room without the monster mask on, without knocking and telling the woman to turn out the light first. He walked in, looked at her sitting in the rocker and then at the tray of food on the bed. Sure as hell just what he thought, she hadn't touched it.
He said, "You didn't eat your ham."
"I'm not hungry."
"I forgot you're not allowed to eat it."
He lifted the tray and took it over to the dresser, Mickey giving him a funny look. "Why aren't I allowed to eat it?"
"Your religion, if you want to call it that. I call it something else."
She wondered if it was worth asking him what he was talking about ... and why he'd left the light on and wasn't wearing the rubber Frankenstein face she had seen once through the uncovered eye of her mask. She watched him come around to the near side of the bed--in his policeman pants and a white T-shirt, hands on his hips, the armpits stained gray--and tried not to breathe.
"He tell you, Louis, you're going home?" Louis. "Yes, he did." The nice one was Louis. "I'm gonna miss you around here."
"I'll miss you too," Mickey said. "I've had a lovely time." The wrong thing to say, making fun of him. Seeing his nose tighten, seeing Richard's hard-eyed look-right-through-'em look.
He pulled her up by the arms and threw her on the bed, moving in over her as she tried to twist free, as she strained, turning her head from the red face looking down at her, feeling his knee between her legs. He was telling her now he had been wanting to see something and he was gonna see it, goddarn-it, and he was gonna do whatever he wanted and she was gonna lie there and not move or holler or anything or he would kill her right now, right here on his mother's bed, and not wait till after. Her eyes were closed. She was trying to get her breath and trying to remember what she was supposed to do that it said in books and on the women's page. Fight him. Kick him in the balls. Or was it don't fight him? Let it happen. She could not imagine letting it happen. She could not imagine that it would be possible for it to happen. He would tear her, injure her--
He rose, pulling her to a sitting position on the side of the bed. "Take your clothes off or I'll rip 'em off you," Richard said, and began unfastening the heavy, gold-plated Wells Fargo buckle on his belt.
Mickey looked down unbuttoning her shirt, chin to chest, seeing the whiteness of her bra, still snowy white, and the tiny pink bow between the cups. Little Mickey sitting there. The real Mickey perched above watching, thinking, The pink bow is too much. Thinking, The poor girl. Seeing Frank come in naked from the bathroom with a towel over his arm. Seeing 6-4 Marshall Taylor stoop-shouldered naked, vaguely, Marshall there and gone. Thinking, What would Susan Brown-miller do? Thinking, Get it over with. She took her shirt off.