I wrote his motto in my pad. “Sort of like Davy Crockett,” I said.
He gave a breathy laugh, rubbed his two hands together slowly. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.” He was already imagining tomorrow’s banner. Downtown Accountant a Modern Crockett. Me-I was imagining my Davy, my son. Jumping around when I came in, too excited to get the words out. Going to the-to the zoo! I didn’t want to be here anymore, talking to this guy about nothing. It was for nothing, it was futile-and I’d known it would be before I came.
I raised my eyes. I felt tired now and depressed. “So there’s no question in your mind that Frank Beachum was the man you saw running out of the store that day?”
The same swaggering half smile. A virile nod of his circular head. “That’s right. No question whatsoever.”
“You saw his face. You saw the gun in his hand.”
“Yes, I did,” he said proudly. “I guess you could say I’m as sure of that as I am of anything in this world.”
“From the entryway in the back of the store. Where the bathroom is.”
“That’s correct.”
I nodded slowly, looking at him. His round, pink and certain features, that smug simper on them. It was a dumb question, I thought. Was he sure? Hell, yes. Of course he was sure. He would’ve had to be. To convince the cops, to go into court. To fend off the business end of a cross-examination. To send someone to the Death House. He was a cock-proud little man maybe, but he wasn’t a bad-guy, after all. He wasn’t a villain. Of course he was sure. I could not for the life of me remember why it had seemed so urgent that I talk to him like this.
We are going to the zoo!
Porterhouse cleared his throat and glanced down at my notebook. Roused, I quickly made a show of writing. As sure as anything … this world. Across from me, the accountant inflated himself with a breath, well satisfied. He brought his hand to his mouth and lightly groomed his small moustache.
“How could you see anything over the potato chips?” I asked him.
The question came out of me suddenly. I had almost given up on asking it. There seemed no point. Then I had asked it anyway without thinking.
I want to describe what happened after that as precisely as I can. Because precisely nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. Porterhouse did not rear back, one hand flung above his pate in a horror of discovery. He didn’t spill his coffee or stutter lies or fidget with his collar in a revealing way. He didn’t blink.
He simply said, after a moment’s pause, “I don’t understand. What potato chips? I had a very clear view.”
And I knew that he was not telling the truth.
How did I know? How can I explain? If it was nothing I saw, if it was nothing he said. What minute signal, what electrical force, what inaudible intonation, what chemical, what smell convinced me-I couldn’t begin to say. All I know is: I sat across from him, sat across the linoleum table at the Bread Factory, and in the moment’s pause before he answered me, I sensed-something-what should I call it? — his spirit-I sensed his spirit guttering like a candle. And I knew he hadn’t seen Frank Beachum running out of that store.
He wasn’t lying. I was almost sure of that. But he was a little man who wanted very much for people to think he was a big man. This, also, I understood-or thought I understood-without a word. He wanted to be a big man, and for a moment, some six years ago, he was. He had been in a store when a young woman was murdered. He had seen a man come into the store and chat with the woman behind the counter. And maybe she had apologized because she owed him money. Or maybe he had said: Don’t forget, Amy, you owe me some dough. And then Dale Porterhouse had gone into the bathroom to take a leak. And he had heard her cry out, Please not that! And the gunshot.
And then the policemen had come. The big, tough policemen with their heavy utility belts and guns. They had asked him what he knew, what he saw. And he wanted them to be pleased with him. He wanted them to clap him on the shoulder and say: Well done, friend, in their big deep voices. And there were the girls back in his office whom he wanted to tell, and the men who would envy him, and the trial … By the time the trial started, I think he believed it himself. I don’t think he would’ve committed perjury. I don’t think he would’ve survived cross-examination if it was not all clear to him by then in his mind. I think he believed it then, and I think he believed it now. I think he believed it all until the moment I asked him about the potato chips. Then, for a moment-for that moment’s pause before he spoke-then, I think, he remembered the truth. His memory stood ajar for that moment and the light of his spirit guttered in the breeze. That’s what I saw. And he remembered that he could not see, that he had not seen anything over the bags of potato chips.
Then, I think, in the next moment, he believed his own story again. It was all as fast as that.
“I saw everything, just as I said,” he told me now. “Obviously, I would inform the authorities right away if there were any doubt.”
I nodded. From the cheap chandeliers above, harsh lamplight glared in the corners of my glasses. Through that reflected glare I looked at him. I thought:
He didn’t, he didn’t see it. They don’t have a thing, not a thing, on this Beachum guy. No one saw him. No one heard the shots. No one could trace the gun. They don’t have a goddamned thing on him. And they’re gonna put him to death tonight.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Porterhouse,” I said, reaching for my coffee cup.
And what if he’s innocent? I thought.
PART FOUR
1
Who gets the roast beef?”
“That’s mine,” said Luther Plunkitt.
“What do they got on there, Russian?” Arnold McCardle asked him. He handed the sandwich over.
“S’posed to anyway,” said Luther. “Isn’t that un-American?” murmured the Reverend Stanley B. Shillerman. He was always making lame jokes in an effort to be one of the boys.
Luther only just managed to turn his bland smile at him. But both Reuben Skycock and Pat Flaherty answered at once, “Not anymore it isn’t.”
They were sitting around the long wood-finished table in the main conference room. From the windowless walls, official photos of the governor and the president looked down. The core of the Execution Team was there: Luther, Arnold and the other deputy director, Zachary Platt, the two maintenance men Reuben and Pat, and the chaplain. Arnold and Zach were pawing through the paper sacks, distributing the sandwiches and sodas. There was a low burr of conversation and chuckling, the crackle of container lids being removed, of food being unwrapped.
Luther sat back against the leatherette seat cushion and watched them, his sandwich unwrapped in his hand. He felt better now, here, with the boys, talking business. The weight on his insides lightened a little. The image of Frank Beachum on the gurney dimmed. He just wanted to get through this day, as he had gotten through all the others. This was what the state of Missouri paid him for.
Arnold McCardle peeked under a piece of rye bread at his corned beef. “Seems like there’s more fat and less meat every time I get this,” he said.
Chewing, smoothing crumbs out of his handlebar moustache, Reuben Skycock said, “Ain’t that the way you order it, Arnold? Hold the meat, leave the fat.”
The enormous McCardle’s jowls colored. But he forced his trademark wink. “S’best part,” he said softly. He hoisted the sandwich, dwarfed by his large hand, and tore into it.
Luther could feel himself relaxing. “Now, Arnold’s all right,” he said. “The more of him the better.”
“Amen to that,” said Reuben.
Reverend Shillerman’s damp eyes strained as he tried to think of some banter to chime in with. In that cowboy shirt, those jeans, thought Luther, watching him from the corner of his eye. Hell, even Reuben and Pat wore ties today.