“Hush, Mr. Amberson.” He sounded amused. Sadie was no longer screaming, but I could hear her sobbing. “She’s all right. She’s bleeding pretty heavily, but that will stop.” He paused, then spoke in a tone of judicious consideration. “Of course, she’s not going to be pretty anymore. Now she looks like what she is, just a cheap four-dollar whore. My mother said she was, and my mother was right.”
“Let her go, Clayton,” I said. “Please.”
“Iwantto let her go. Now that I’ve marked her, Iwantto. But here’s what I already told her, Mr. Amberson. I am going to kill one of you. She cost me my job, you know; I had to quit and go into an electrical-treatment hospital or they were going to have me arrested.” He paused. “I pushed a girl down the stairs. She tried to touch me. All this dirty bitch’s fault, this one right here bleeding into her lap. I got her blood on my hands, too. I will need disinfectant.” And he laughed.
“Clayton—”
“I’ll give you three and a half hours. Until seven-thirty. Then I’ll put two bullets in her. One in her stomach and one in her filthy cunt.”
In the background, I heard Sadie scream:“Don’t you do it, Jacob!”
“SHUT UP!”Clayton yelled at her.“SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”Then, to me, chillingly conversational: “Who’s Jacob?”
“Me,” I said. “It’s my middle name.”
“Does she call you that in bed when she sucks your cock, cockboy?”
“Clayton,” I said. “Johnny. Think what you’re doing.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for over a year. They gave me shock treatments in the electric hospital, you know. They said they’d stop the dreams, but they didn’t. They made them worse.”
“How bad is she cut? Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“If you let me talk to her, maybe I’ll do what you’re asking. If you don’t, I most certainly won’t. Are you too fogged out from your shock treatments to understand that?”
It seemed he wasn’t. There was a shuffling sound in my ear, then Sadie was on. Her voice was thin and trembling. “It’s bad, but it’s not going to kill me.” Her voice dropped. “He just missed my eye—”
Then Clayton was back. “See? Your little tramp is fine. Now you just jump in your hotrod Chevrolet and get out here just as fast as the wheels will roll, how would that be? But listen to me carefully, Mr. George Jacob Amberson Cockboy: if you call the police, if I see a single blue or red light, I will kill this bitch and then myself. Do you believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m seeing an equation here where the values balance: the cockboy and the whoregirl. I’m in the middle. I’m the equals sign, Amberson, but you have to decide. Which value gets canceled out? It’s your call.”
“No!”she screamed.“Don’t! If you come out here he’ll kill both of u—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
5
I’ve told the truth so far, and I’m going to tell the truth here even though it casts me in the worst possible light: my first thought as my numb hand replaced the phone in its cradle was that he was wrong, the valuesdidn’tbalance. In one pan of the scales was a pretty high school librarian. In the other was a man who knew thefuture and had—theoretically, at least—the power to change it. For a second, part of me actually thought about sacrificing Sadie and going across town to watch the alley running between Oak Lawn Avenue and Turtle Creek Boulevard to find out if the man who changed American history was on his own.
Then I got into my Chevy and headed for Jodie. Once I got out on Highway 77, I pegged the speedometer at seventy and kept it there. While I was driving, I thumbed the latches on my briefcase, took out my gun, and dropped it into the inner pocket of my sport coat.
I realized I’d have to involve Deke in this. He was old and no longer steady on his feet, but there was simply no one else. He wouldwantto be involved, I told myself. He loved Sadie. I saw it in his face every time he looked at her.
And he’s had his life,my cold mind said.She hasn’t. Anyway, he’ll have the same chance the lunatic gave you. He doesn’t have to come.
But he would. Sometimes the things presented to us as choices aren’t choices at all.
I never wished so much for my long-gone cell as I did on that drive from Dallas to Jodie. The best I could do was a gas station phone booth on SR 109, about half a mile beyond the football billboard. On the other end the phone rang three times… four… five…
Just as I was about to hang up, Deke said, “Hello? Hello?” He sounded irritated and out of breath.
“Deke? It’s George.”
“Hey, boy!” Now tonight’s version of Bill Turcotte (from that popular and long-running playThe Homicidal Husband) sounded delighted instead of irritated. “I was out in my little garden beside the house. I almost let it ring, but then—”
