Revolution Number 9 (28 page)

The driver extended one of his feet, pivoted the howling machine, and skidded to a stop in front of Charlie. He backed off on the throttle, reducing the noise to a rumble, and raised his visor.

“You’re not having much luck are you, Charlie boy?” It was Svenson.

Across the street the ice cream man was saying, “Mother of
God, Mother of God.” A car had stopped next to his wagon. A Chinese man got out, a tiny man, not much bigger than a child.

“Best be moving on,” Svenson said, lowering the visor. “Unless you’re ready to call it quits.” Charlie looked into the blackness of the visor and said nothing.

Svenson revved the engine, pointed the front wheel toward the road. The Chinese man was on the sidewalk now, gazing down at Brucie. He turned on Svenson.

“What the hell did you do that for? I had him by the balls.”

“I’ll bet you did,” said Svenson, bumping the motorcycle onto the street.

The Chinese man ran after him in fury. “What kind of answer is that? Who the hell are you?” He smacked Svenson on the back of his helmet.

Svenson laughed, then gunned the engine; but as the motorcycle shot into the street, the Chinese man dove at it, caught hold of Svenson’s collar, held on. The motorcycle wobbled, then veered across the street, smashed through the ice cream wagon, knocking the Chinese man high into the air and twisting Svenson almost backward in his seat. The bike kept going, into the park, into darkness. Then came a boom, a rending of metal, and silence.

The ice cream man’s lips were moving, forming the phrase “Mother of God,” although no sound came. He moved off down the sidewalk like a sleepwalker. Charlie ran across the street, past scattered Freeze Pops and Nutty Buddies, past the Chinese man, lying open-eyed on his back, his head at an impossible angle, and into the park.

He found Svenson sprawled at the base of a tree. His head was at an impossible angle too.

Charlie looked back at the trail of bodies: Brucie, the Chinese man, Svenson. Facts on the ground, facts that made happy endings impossible. But hadn’t that been the case since the instant after the fourth bong of the chapel bell? All this was just one of the possible unhappy playouts. It never ends, as Laverne had said.

Charlie kept going, through the park, past the church, and onto a busy street—a real place, with lights and people.

· · ·

The door beside Fazool opened. Nuncio came out. He spent a few seconds looking down at Brucie, a few more over the Chinese man. Then he went into the park, found the man in white, searched him. He found a wallet with money, credit cards, driver’s license, found a folder with a federal ID inside, found an audiotape that said “VHK” on its sticker. He left everything but the tape.

People started coming out of the shadows. Sirens sounded. Nuncio walked back across the street, through the door, up the stairs to his two-floor apartment over Fazool. He picked up a Nutty Buddy on the way. He hadn’t had one in years.

Somewhere nearby a dog whimpered.

N
uncio awoke early the next morning in a good mood. He’d been blessed with resilience, the way others are born to run and jump. The death of an old and valued client, the long police questioning in his living room that followed when said relationship became known, the resulting late bedtime: all had been, he admitted to himself, exhilarating. He opened his bedroom window and took a deep lungful of the new day.

A man stood outside, examining the chalk figure that had taken Brucie’s place on the sidewalk. He wore Harold Lloyd glasses and a dark suit. Nuncio could hear him talking.

“Boy oh boy,” the Harold Lloyd man was saying. He repeated it a few times.

The Harold Lloyd man walked to the front door and pressed the buzzer. Nuncio put on a terrycloth robe with “Hedonism Negril” blazed in scarlet on the back and went downstairs. The buzzer sounded again just as he was opening the door.

The Harold Lloyd man stood on the step. Up close, Nuncio saw that the face behind the glasses was nothing like Harold Lloyd’s. It offered no promise of entertainment of any kind.

“Mr. Nuncio?” said the man.

“Uh-huh.”

“My name is Bunting. I’m from the federal government.”

Bunting paused, as though Nuncio might have something to say at that point. Nuncio did not.

“May I come in?”

Had that moron Brucie implicated him in anything? Nuncio tried to imagine possible dangers, and could not. Still, he was a counselor, and counselors counseled prudence. “If it’s about last night, I already told the police what I saw. Which was
nada.”

“Our inquiry has a somewhat different scope.”

Nuncio wanted to check his watch, to give himself some stage business when he said, “I’ve got to be in court in an hour,” but all he wore was the Hedonism robe, so he had to let the words stand by themselves.

“I’m sure you’re a busy man, Mr. Nuncio,” said Bunting. “I’ll be respectful of your time.”

“Make it quick, then,” said Nuncio, and ushered Bunting brusquely up the stairs. If the man was going to carry on so politely and pronounce
inquiry
“inkwery,” what the hell else could he do?

They sat in the living room, Nuncio in the white leatherette chair with the footstool, his guest on the matching couch. Nuncio opened a pack of El Productors that was lying on the end table. “Cigar?”

Bunting shook his well-barbered head. Nuncio lit up; he preferred not to smoke until his first cup of coffee, but cigars helped him think. He blew a miniature cumulonimbus cloud into the room. Bunting was looking at a videotape box lying on the floor by the VCR. The title was big and garish, possibly visible from where Bunting sat:
Debbie Does It—Up Close and Personal
. Nuncio made a mental note to fire his cleaning lady, or at least dock her pay.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Butting?”

“Bunting.” The man turned to him; his eyes were cold. “Perhaps
you can tell me what Mr. Wine was coming to see you about last night.”

“Was he coming to see me?” How to deal with this jerk, with funny glasses, Mr. Manners civility, icy eyes? Nuncio formed another cloud, not as big as the first.

“Isn’t that a safe assumption? He was your client, unless I’m misinformed.”

“My business is the law, Mr. Bunting. We don’t make assumptions, safe or otherwise.” Nuncio hadn’t lectured anyone on ethics for a long time, if ever. It made him feel good, and he resolved to do it again soon.

“Angelica County College, wasn’t it?” Bunting said.

Nuncio raised his eyebrows.

“Where you got your law degree, I believe.”

Nuncio nodded.

“I’ve had a little legal training myself. Stuck with it right through to a doctorate, in fact. Didn’t have anything better to do, if you want the truth. This was at Harvard.” He took out a handkerchief with the initials RSB embroidered on one corner and blew his nose into it: loudly, violently, disturbingly, like some savage form of punctuation. “Wasted time, really. In my present position the law seems small and far away, if you understand what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Let’s put it this way. Anyone looking forward to a smooth continuance of his or her career would be inclined to agree with my earlier hypothesis re Mr. Wine’s intent last night.”

Nuncio sucked on his cigar, found it had gone out. “Is that a threat?” he said, pulling the Hedonism robe tighter around his body.

Bunting looked surprised. “Of course it is, Mr. Nuncio. I took you for a man of some experience—haven’t you ever been threatened before, or done some threatening of your own?”

Not like this, pisshead
, Nuncio thought. He stubbed out the El Producto; it bent in half.

“After all,” Bunting continued, “isn’t that what the law’s about?”

Yes. Nuncio couldn’t couldn’t argue with that. Threats,
promises, deals, wheedling: that was law, and he knew how to practice it. But because they all played by the same rules, they were all protected—by the law. This little East Coast shit had already made it clear that he was beyond the law in some way. What protection, Nuncio wondered, did he have now? He shrugged. “So Wine was probably coming to see me. So what?”

“Had he notified you he was coming?”

“No. Like I told the police last night.”

“As you told the police,” Bunting said. Was he correcting grammar or just thinking aloud? “And what do you think he wanted to see you about?”

“I don’t know, since he didn’t call me ahead of time and never quite got here. Unless you’ve got another safe assumption that explains it.”

“But I do,” Bunting said. “I assume he wanted to discuss the Wrightman case. Or perhaps we should call it the Wrightman-Ochs case.”

“Don’t know it,” Nuncio said.

“No? It concerns a radical group involved in terrorist bombings in the early seventies. Wrightman was a fugitive who re-documented himself as Ochs and lived undetected for over twenty years. Does that refresh your memory?”

“I didn’t deny knowing the names. But you asked about the case. I don’t know anything about that, except what you just told me.”

“Well argued,” said Bunting with a smile—that is, his face assumed a smiling arrangement. “First-rate.”

Nuncio tugged the robe down over his knees, fat and white.

“How much did you make last year?” asked Bunting.

The question, posed in that Mr. Manners voice, was shocking, almost brutal. “That’s between me and the IRS,” Nuncio said.

“Naturally. But one hundred and thirteen five would be pretty close, wouldn’t it?”

Not really, but it was precisely what he had reported. Nuncio reached for the El Productos.

“With that kind of income, you should spring for a better cigar. I’ll send you some.”

“No thanks.”

“A nice income,” Bunting went on, showing no sign of rejection. “Although your expenses have been high. The mining investment was unfortunate.”

That was one way of putting it. Forty grand sunk in Hollow Gulch Mineral Resources and gone, on the strength of a tip from his ex-brother-in-law’s son’s boss’s secretary. Nuncio lit another cigar and tried unsuccessfully to blow the cloud all the way across the room into Bunting’s face. “You’ve made your point,” he said.

“I make no point,” Bunting replied. “I merely hope for cooperation. My information is that late last year Mr. Wine was arrested on various counterfeiting charges and you negotiated an agreement that resulted in the dropping of those charges.”

“Correct.”

“With whom was that arrangement made?”

“The D.A., who else?”

“That’s the question. Did you meet or speak to a man named Francis Goodnow at that time?”

“Never heard of him.”

“An older man. Not in perfect health.”

Nuncio shook his head.

Bunting took out a passport-sized photograph, crossed the room, handed it to Nuncio. It showed a gray-haired man in a bow tie who looked healthy enough.

“Don’t know him,” Nuncio said, giving it back.

Bunting held out a photo of another man: much younger, with blond hair and an angular face. This was the white-suited motorcyclist who’d lain in the park last night, neck broken.

“Never seen him, either.”

Bunting sat back down on the white leatherette chair. He fished out his embroidered handkerchief, held it in his lap, eyes fixed on Nuncio.

After a moment or two, Nuncio said, “If you’re looking for something dirty in that deal, you won’t find it. We make deals like that every day, the D.A. and me.”

“We’re speaking of the federal D.A.”

“That’s right. Counterfeiting.”

“How much time elasped between your proposal and his acceptance?”

“Don’t know. Less than a day. He said he’d have to …”

“Have to what, Mr. Nuncio?”

“Talk to Washington.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah, but so what?”

For an answer, Bunting raised the handkerchief again and blew his nose, not quite as loudly as before. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Nuncio,” he said, and was out the door in thirty seconds.

Through the living room window, Nuncio saw a long black car draw up and take him away. He kept watching until long after it was gone. Then he took a deep breath of El Producto air and sighed it out.

Time to get ready for work, although in truth he wasn’t scheduled in court. His only client that morning was a fat widow who’d been caught selling stolen designer dresses out of her little shop in Sausalito, would probably buy him lunch, and might even want more of his time after. Nuncio’s policy was to bill for lunch, but draw the line at that. He decided on the brown suit with subtle green checks. It hid his paunch nicely.

Turning from the window, Nuncio noticed Bunting’s balled-up handkerchief lying on the leatherette chair. He thought of the way dogs piss to mark their territory. He picked up the handkerchief, dropped it in the trash under the kitchen sink, washed his hands in hot soapy water.

Nuncio went upstairs and changed from the Hedonism robe into the brown suit with the subtle green checks. While he dressed, he clicked on his cassette player and listened to the tape for the third time.

Listened to Hugo Klein say: “Under some interpretations, your presence in this room would render me liable to criminal charges.” Listened to Blake Wrightman say: “But I’d like to know who told you that I rigged that timer, if you haven’t seen Rebecca since before the bombing.” Listened to Klein say: “Do you know a man named Francis Goodnow?”

This was all very interesting, more so since he had kept an
eye on Klein’s ascending career over the years. He had even faced him in court, working as an assistant state prosecutor in his first year out of law school. An unpleasant memory. Yes, it was interesting, but some indefinite distance beyond his comprehension. Because of that, and because he didn’t want visits from Bunting or any like him, and because he knew his own limits, Nuncio decided to destroy the tape.

But how? How to do it and be completely safe? Nuncio popped it out of the player. Ordinary Maxell high bias tape, identical to millions of cassettes in cars and houses across the land, distinguished only by the handwritten “VHK” on the stick-on label. Perhaps all he had to do was peel off the sticker, burn it, flush away the ashes, wipe the tape. But there were rumors that the feds had machines that could reconstruct the electronic whispers left on a wiped tape. Maybe it would be best to wipe it first, then record over it and stick it in his collection. Or better yet, in someone else’s collection. He could just toss it through the open window of any car parked on the street. Not simple, not tidy, not brilliant, but good enough.