Meeting Evil (12 page)

John’s bluff had effectively been called. He could not properly protest again in view of the apology, though the same objection remained: he was still being asked to serve. Of course, Richie held the gun.

“I’ll help,” Sharon said brightly and jumped up from the couch.

Richie whirled around as if in danger from an attack, though he had been presenting his back to her for some moments. John, just embarking on the quest for the bottle, was taken unaware and lost an opportunity to jump him, which Sharon had probably intentionally provided. She had so much more energy than he.

She now ignored Richie’s menacing posture and went to open the little cabinet used as an end table at the extremity of the couch farther from the fireplace. There was nothing inside but a yellowed newspaper and an empty ceramic vase.

John opened the closet near the front door. On a high shelf stood a box of mothballs. Coats of several lengths hung from the rod, and on the floor below was a pair of green boots in rubber or plastic, in either a woman’s or a boy’s size. He closed the door.

Richie had taken a seat on the arm of an overstuffed chair from which he could keep an eye out the window. The butt of the gun was on the floor, the barrel between his knees.

Sharon headed for the adjacent dining room.

“Where are you going?” Richie shouted angrily.

“I’m looking for your liquor. I’ll try that sideboard.”

“Just don’t get out of my sight.” He asked John, “Do you think maybe when we get out of this you might invite me over sometime? You don’t have to go to any trouble.”

It now occurred to John that the most effective way of dealing with the man would be to pretend to be his friend and abandon the sporadic antagonism that had, after all, been unsuccessful all day. He had waited so long before coming to this conclusion because he was basically averse to hypocrisy in social relations. In real estate it was another matter. Naturally you presented a property in its best light and tried to divert a customer from asking about apparent flaws and, if questions were asked, gave answers that avoided candor.

He took in more air than he would normally have needed and said, “Well, why not?”

“You mean it?”

John could see that Richie was prepared to be gleeful, and though his intention had been to string him along with a simulation of friendship, he balked at affording him genuine satisfaction. “We’re not out of this yet.”

Richie’s mouth went slack. “You
don’t
mean it.”

“Of course I do, but frankly I can’t think of much of anything at the moment but—”

“All right,” Richie cried warningly into the dining room. “Get back in here.”

“Wait a minute,” Sharon called back. “I think I found some.”

She was squatting, in her short tight skirt, at one of the lower compartments of the big old sideboard, a period piece that covered most of its wall.

“Excuse me,” Richie said to John. “You were talking about having me over to your house for a meal or something. I tell
you, I want to meet your wife. I think I know you fairly well by now, and we’ve been through some rough times together—which is the only way to know anybody—and I’m just curious about what kind of woman you’d want to connect yourself to on a permanent basis.”

For an instant of panic, John saw no means of sustaining his new strategy. Richie’s view of their association was unacceptable; he could not permit it to stand. But in the next moment he was able to remember that his previous vocal rejections of alliance had had no effect whatever. Richie’s reality was wholly self-created.

John almost bit his tongue, but he actually managed to say, with justice, “She’s very sensible. She’s better with money than me, for example. She’ll look for the best price. I’m too impatient. She has good ideas. She’s smart.”

Richie was seemingly studying the rag rug. He nodded slowly. “Still, I imagine there are times when you’d like to kill her, right?”

John had not forgotten he was speaking to a special kind of man. “No,” he said levelly. “No, I don’t, ever. But I would kill anybody who tried to hurt her. But if you mean do we argue from time to time and sometimes get mad enough not to speak to one another for hours, then sure, that happens.”

Richie considered the statement briefly, his head at a quizzical-dog angle, but when he spoke it was to call abusively to Sharon, “Get back in here, pig!”

“I thought you hated rudeness.”

Richie smiled and said, “But the truth is the truth.” Sharon had come back with a bottle in her hand. He gestured at it.

“Sherry,” said she.

Richie took the bottle and twisted the cap off. He tilted his head back and drank. Then he leaned forward and spat the mouthful on the rug. He hurled the bottle at the fireplace.
It got only as far as the hearth and broke, releasing a flow of wine that spread to the wood floor.

Again John found it impossible not to protest. “Was that necessary? To damage this house? Nobody here did anything against us.”

Richie squinted. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Will he do something like that when he comes to my house, if my wife serves him something he doesn’t like?’ I know regardless of what I said about manners, you suspect I don’t have any. Well, that’s just something I’ll have to prove.” He had looked solemn, but now he resumed his smile. “But listen: I just came up with the idea we need to get out of here in one piece. It won’t matter how much this place is messed up, spilled drinks or whatever. We’re going to torch the dump!” He stared gleefully at John and spun the gun on its butt-end. “Simple as that, create a diversion. By the time the local volunteers get up here, it’ll have taken real hold. They’ll be occupied for hours, and the cops will have their hands full with traffic, firemen coming in their own cars, rubberneckers, and so on. We can slip out through the woods and down the hill and get out of the area before they’re back to thinking about us.”

A blackened poker leaned against the outer wall of the fireplace. John was wondering to what point they had to go before he could actually seize the poker and swing it at Richie’s head—and this fantasy did not allow for any self-defense on Richie’s part, by gun or any other means, being constructed purely for the purposes of judging what damage John was capable of doing to another human being—but he stuck to his resolve to keep calm.

He now even managed to produce a false laugh. “That’ll only call attention to us. And bring in more people than ever
to clog the roads. We’d hardly be inconspicuous, out here where you can bet everybody knows everyone else.”

Richie winked at him. “One minute you’re a regular guy, husband and father, and next you’re thinking like a bandit, John. This stuff agrees with you!”

Uncomfortable with such praise, John added, “And they’ll find the car soon enough.”

“So?”

“It’s registered in Sharon’s name, isn’t it?”

“It’s not in either of
ours.
We don’t have any connection with her.”

It was true that discovering Sharon’s identity could lead to nothing: they were three strangers who had been brought together by chance. John was momentarily in the grip of an awful conviction that, in Richie’s context, he had no effective argument against burning down a house—any more than he had been able to make clear his objection to running a man down with a car. The best thing he could come up with now was, “Look, my business is selling houses, not burning them down!”

“All right, John, if you feel that way. All you ever have to do with me is state your wishes. You don’t want to set a fire, you don’t have to.” Richie yawned, throwing his arms wide. The gun could have been snatched from between his knees at this point had John been close enough, but of course he wasn’t, being instead near the poker, which he had already rejected as a weapon, for it could deliver too fearsome a wound. He would do anything he could to get the problem solved without any further hurt to anyone, including Richie. Nothing was more important than avoiding violence.

Richie stood erect, the gunbarrel over his left forearm, the butt in his armpit. “I’m willing to do all the dirty work and
take responsibility for it, but it would just be nice if I got a word of commendation once in a while. Let’s face it, I could have run off hours ago, leaving you in the lurch. What’s keeping me around? Am I making any money?”

John could not help saying, “I really do appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

He had not gone too far. Richie seemed sheepish. “Well, okay. That’s all right.” He strolled to the couchside cabinet, bent, and removed the yellowed newspaper. He found a little box of matches on the mantelpiece. John could have kicked himself for overlooking them, for they might have been useful. Richie went to the staircase, where he set fire to the balled sheet of newsprint and threw it onto a step.

During most of this sequence, taking advantage of the distraction, John was looking at Sharon and trying to get across to her, through facial expression alone, that patience and caution were needed.

But looking past him, she now cried out.

He turned and saw the flames, which were only blackening the riser of the step that held the loose ball of blazing paper. The latter was already almost consumed. He felt a sudden triumph over Richie, who was too ignorant of the basic rules of reality to know that you could try all day in vain to burn a house down in that fashion: arsonists always use an inflammable liquid.

Richie suddenly peered up the staircase and raised his gun to the ready. “Come on down here!”

It was the boy. He descended the steps, displaying no fear even though the gun was pointed at him. When he came to the blackened ash, still glowing at points and in more or less the same balled shape in which it had been formed, he stamped it into fragments and asked straightforwardly, “Why are you trying to burn this house down?”

“Don’t get fresh with me,” Richie said. “If I was trying to burn a house down, it would look like that paper.”

“Then what
are
you doing?” the boy asked. He had reached the living room, and he saw the smashed bottle and flood of wine.

He had addressed the question to John, who shrugged guiltily and said, “We’re just resting here temporarily, if you don’t mind, and—”

“Well, I
do
mind,” the boy said. “You broke in. You burned the stairs. You’re a gang of crooks.”

“No,” said John. “No, that’s not true. If you had let me explain earlier—”

“You cut the phone off,” said the boy. He now stared at Sharon.

“Hey, John,” Richie said merrily. “You didn’t tell me that!”

Sharon smiled at the boy. “Hi, what’s your name?”

The boy retained his solemn expression. “Tim.”

“Mine is Sharon, Tim. Don’t worry about your house. We won’t stay long, and I’ll clean up that mess if you show me where the mop is.”

“You’re not going to do anything,” Richie told her. “Are you alone here, kid? Don’t lie, you’ll regret it.”

“I’m not lying. My father doesn’t live here since last year. My mother works at the school cafeteria, and then she stays on for the accounting class in adult ed.”

“Don’t you go to school?”

“It’s over for today. The bus just left me off before
he
got here.” He nodded at John.

“Kid, you’re in luck,” said Richie. “If you hadn’t come downstairs and I had to go look for you, you would have got hurt. Just do what you’re told, with no smart-mouth, and you’ll be all right.”

“We don’t have any money,” said the boy. “If that’s what
you’re after. My father didn’t leave any behind when he took off.”

Richie grimaced. “We don’t need to hear your troubles. We just want your house right now. We feel like burning it or throwing wine around, then we’ll do it. We’ll shoot your cows out there if we feel like it.”

“They’re not ours,” said the boy. “We rent out that field.”

“Tim,” Sharon said, “come on over here and sit by me. You’ll be okay.”

Richie smirked at John. “Look who’s talking.” To the boy, who had not accepted Sharon’s invitation, he said, “How’d you like a piece of that, huh? You old enough? You just play with yourself, right?”

“Let him alone,” John said, trying to sound indifferent. “He won’t cause any trouble. We have to think of how we’re going to get out of here.”

Richie nodded, but he seemed fascinated by Tim. “I can remember myself at that age. I lived with these foster parents. He caught me playing with myself—”

“Yeah,” said John, repelled. “What do we do if the police don’t come around? Or if they do, and then go away? Have you figured that out yet? What will we do in the long run?
I
can’t keep running. I’ve got a family to take care of, a job, a life to live.”

“Don’t worry,” said Richie. “I’m always several steps ahead of the situation.” He patted the barrel of the gun, with what significance John could not, and should not have wanted to, understand, and then, without a transitional phrase, went back to his reminiscence. “I tried to stick it back in my pants, but he says, ‘Hey, let me give you some help with that,’ and comes over and—”

“Aw,” John interrupted. “There’s the boy and Sharon.”

Richie barked with laughter. “That’s what she does for a
living!” He swung the gun’s muzzle toward the crotch of Tim’s jeans. “Play your cards right with me, maybe I’ll have her do it to you. Would you like that?” Maybe John could have successfully jumped him then, but the instant came and went.

Sharon had not replied to one of Richie’s verbal assaults all day. Perhaps it was the boy’s presence that caused her to do so now. “No,” she said, “I’m not a prostitute. What you’re saying is not true.”

Richie turned to John as if seeking support. John looked at the rug. “She’s a cocktail waitress. They’re all for sale.”

“That’s a lie!” Sharon cried.

“How about it, kid?” Richie asked Tim, and now he poked him in the groin with the muzzle. The boy bent and backed away. Suddenly he uncoiled and made a dash for the dining room. There was an instant in which John could have made his move, hurling himself at the gun, diverting its aim to the floor so that, if the trigger was pressed, no one would have been hurt. But the next moment Richie was out of range.