52 pickup

7

At ten after nine Mitchell called his wife. He was still at the plant and had not seen her or spoken to her in four days.

"I want to make sure you were home," he said, "or if you're going to be home this evening. I want to stop by and get some clothes."

She said, "Are you moving out?"

"Well, I thought under the circumstances. It might be easier. Give you some time to think."

Barbara's voice said, "What am I supposed to think about?"

"All right, give us both time to get our thoughts together. Are you going to be home?"

"I'll be here."

"I was wondering-" He paused. "You didn't get anything in the mail? Some pictures?"

"Pictures? Of what?"

"Never mind. I'll be leaving in a few minutes," Mitchell said. "I'll see you about ten."

"I can hardly wait," Barbara said, and hung up.

Shit. For the past few days he had felt pretty good, but now he was tired again and wondered if he should go home. Maybe wait a while. And then said to himself, You started it. Let her have her turn.

Going out through the plant, past the rows of machines, he saw John Koliba in the Quality Control room. Mitchell paused, went over and stuck his head in the door.

"Second shift agreeing with you?"

"Yes, I don't mind working nights," Koliba said.

"It's where we need you, John. Keep the goddamn place from falling apart. Any problems?"

"Not a thing." Koliba held up a small metal part that fit in the palm of his hand. "We been running switch actuator housings since three-thirty. Every one's up to spec."

Mitchell didn't smile, but he felt better again. He said, "That's the eye, John," and continued on through the plant and out the rear door.

There were two spots above the door on the wall of the plant and light poles at the far end of the yard where a cyclone fence enclosed the plant property: bleak lights that laid a soft reflection over the rows of cars in the parking area. Mitchell unlocked the Grand Prix and opened the door. He was sliding in behind the wheel before he realized the interior light did not go on-though the goddamn buzzing noise sounded as he turned the key and kept buzzing until he slammed the door closed.

Beginning to back out he turned to look past his shoulder. The face with the stocking over it was staring at him from less than three feet away. When the.38 Special appeared the stocking face leaned in somewhat closer and the barrel of the revolver touched his right shoulder.

Bobby Shy said, "Keep your head on, man. Everything will be cool. Go west to Seventy-five. We going downtown."

On Metropolitan Parkway, Mitchell reached up to adjust the rearview mirror. Bobby Shy said, "That's fine. Look all you want, you know I'm still here with my eyes stuck to the back of your head. Hey man, and no smoking. Don't reach inside your clothes for nothing, not even to scratch yourself. You listening to me?" But Mitchell didn't answer or speak until they had turned onto Interstate 75 and were moving south in the light freeway traffic.

"My wife didn't get any pictures yet."

"We didn't send any," Bobby Shy said. "It was an idea, you know? I told them shit, guys fool around all the time. Names you read about. Man could be President of the United States, fucking somebody, nobody gives a shit. So the man's getting something on the side, everybody say he probably needs it, don't get enough at home. No, it was an idea is all. So we scratch it and make you another offer."

"Why don't you do yourselves a favor," Mitchell said. "Get into some other business. I don't think you guys could sell water to somebody on fire."

Bobby Shy laughed. "Try us one more time. I think you going to dig this trip."

"Tell me what you've got," Mitchell said.

"You got to see it."

"Another movie?"

"Only better. More excitement in it."

"I should've brought some friends," Mitchell said. "Or some guys from the plant. We don't like the movie we make you eat it."

Bobby Shy laughed again. "Hey, I know you not going to like it. That's why you don't want to have anybody with you. I mean you wouldn't want to have anybody in the whole fucking world to see this flick but you, man, and that is absolutely word of honor, no bullshit."

They turned east onto Jefferson and after a few minutes, passing the Uniroyal plant and the Belle Isle Bridge and the Naval Armory, Bobby Shy hunched forward to study the street, a continuous row of dark storefronts.

"All right, pull in, anywhere this block."

"It's no parking along here," Mitchell said.

"Man, stop the fucking car, will you, please. Go in that gas station, it's closed."

Get a ticket now, Mitchell thought. That would be something. What're you doing around here? Well, you see this guy with the gun's taking me to see a movie. Oh, you're going to see a movie. Yeah. Well, where is this movie?

"Cross the street," Bobby Shy said.

They crossed Jefferson toward a theater marquee, Mitchell thinking of the policeman and then of his lawyer, Jim O'Boyle. I saw another movie, Jim. This time in a theater. A closed theater. In a closed theater, uh? It sure looked closed, with its bare marquee and dark foyer that was like the boarded entrance to a mine tunnel. A car passed on Jefferson, a faint sound behind him that faded to silence.

"Go on in," Bobby Shy said.

Mitchell tried one of the doors-the handles showing between the protective sheets of plywood-then the other door and stepped inside, into a deeper darkness.

"This way," a voice said. Not a voice he had heard before, or a face to go with the voice, only a small flashlight beam at knee height, pointing to the foot "You come through here." The light began to recede.

Mitchell followed it into the theater, past an empty candy counter to the right-side aisle. The voice told him to hold it there, facing in toward the seats.

Then the black man with the stocking must have taken the flashlight, because as the beam made a spot down the aisle in front of him, it was the black man's voice, close behind him, that said, "Where you like to sit, man? Take a seat."

Mitchell wondered if one place was better to sit than another. If it made any difference. If he was going to sit here or if he was going to do something. He walked about a third of the way down the aisle and into a row, taking the second seat. Behind him, maybe two rows, he heard a seat go down, hitting hard.

"I'm right here, baby, case you 'fraid of the dark."

A voice from above them, a familiar voice, coming from the projection room, said, "Can you hear me all right?"

"We hear you," the black man said.

Mitchell looked around. The black man was seated, head and shoulders without features. High on the back wall two squares of light showed the projection room.

"Turn the fuck around," the black man said. "You make me nervous."

For several minutes there was dead silence in the theater. Mitchell sat in darkness that had no form and reached to nothing, wondering what he was doing here, wondering if he could get up and walk out. He said to himself, They won't shoot you. They get nothing by killing you. But he was here now and he knew they would keep him here if he tried to leave. Probably. Unless he hit the guy first. The black guy. If he could get to him and belt him.

But Mitchell didn't move. In the moment he might have, if he was ever going to try it, a bright square of light appeared on the screen and he could see the rows of empty seats now in front of him and the pale, high walls of the theater.

"Titles would go here," the familiar lazy-sounding voice said. "And credits. Slick pictures presents… Tit in the Wringer. Or, how Harry Mitchell agreed to pay one hundred and five thousand a year and found happiness. Note, I said a hundred and five a year. Not just the first year, not just the second. No, every year of your life. But wait… here's the star of our picture, little Cynthia Fisher, not having any idea what the fuck is going on."

The girl's face, in color, nearly filled the screen, her expression puzzled, changing, frowning, nearly obscuring the look of fear in her eyes.

Her lips moved and the narrator said, his voice slightly higher and almost in sync with the screen, " 'What is this? Come on, what're you guys doing? I told you, I don't want to be in a movie.' "

The camera began to pull back, out of the close shot of the girl's face. "Some people," the narrator said, in his natural, lazy tone again, "you got to tie down to convince them they can act. I told Cini she's a natural. But, as you can see, she's very modest."

Mitchell was looking at her full figure now. She was sitting in a straight chair against a vertical pipe; a cement wall in the close background; a basement room brightly lit. He could see that her hands were tied behind her. A rope circled her waist tightly and seemed to go around both the chair and the pipe. She was wearing a print blouse that he recognized and faded blue jeans.

"Next," the narrator said, "to keep your interest or whatever up, a little skin."

The girl's eyes raised expectantly as the camera began to move in again. She was looking off to the side of the camera and her lips said, in silence, "What're you going to do?"

The camera held on her face. The picture on the screen moved unsteadily and the camera dropped to her blouse. Two hands came in from the side-hands and forearms in a dark shirt-clutched the front of the girl's blouse and ripped it open to her waist, then pulled it back tightly over her shoulders. One hand lingered, lifted a bare breast and let it fall.

"Not a lot there," the narrator said, "but then this is a low-budget flick, done on pure spec. Next scene…"

Mitchell was looking at a square of what seemed to be half-inch plywood, the size of a newspaper folded once. Hands, the same hands as before, lifted the square from where it was leaning against the cement wall and turned it around.

"No marks on either side, right? Right."

The hands raised the sheet of wood. Again there was a close shot of the girl's breasts before the tan, grained surface of the wood appeared, filling the screen. The camera pulled back, unsteadily, and Mitchell was looking at the girl again from perhaps ten feet: the sheet of plywood resting upright on her lap, covering her from waist to shoulders, the upper end propped beneath her chin.

"Now what have we here?" the lazy tone said.

For a moment Mitchell wasn't sure what he was seeing.

"A reverse angle," the narrator said. "We're now looking past Cini from behind, over her shoulder, to see what she sees. And what is it?"

The camera began to zoom slowly toward a table fifteen feet away.

"Right. A gun."

The revolver was mounted in a vise that was clamped to the edge of the table.

"You recognize it?"

Mitchell recognized it.

"Let's see it from the side. There. A thirty-eight S and W. You ought to recognize it, sport. It's yours. The box of thirty-eights on the table? Yours. The piece of paper? That's your permit."

As Mitchell watched, an arm extended a sport coat into the frame and dropped it on the table.

"And the coat. I believe you wore that to our first home movie session. Ratty-looking goods, if you don't mind my saying. What I like about it is your name inside. Now then- "Hello, what is that tied to the trigger?"

The camera moved in to feature the revolver.

"Why it looks like a wire. Funny, it extends back someplace, so that if you pull on the wire it fires the piece. That's pretty clever, isn't it? You can shoot the gun without messing up any prints that're on it. We'll let you think about that a moment. Meanwhile, here's our little star again."

The girl's face, above the plywood sheet, showed an expression of fright and bewilderment.

"Looks like she's sticking her head out of a box, doesn't it? Honey, relax. You're gonna do the scene. Don't worry about it."

Mitchell could see it coming. He pays or they kill her. And this is the way they would do it.

So what do you tell them?

He was watching her face. The face he knew and could picture clearly when he wasn't with her; but now he almost didn't recognize her. The awful expression. He could see tears glistening on her cheeks. He didn't understand the plywood, what it was for. He sat in the darkness looking at the screen and didn't know what he was going to do.

"This setup took some doing," the narrator said. "To get the full effect. Back and a little off to the side. So you can see the gun as well as our star. Okay, suspense time is over."

The view was level with the revolver and the wire that extended out of the foreground. Mitchell didn't move. Past the barrel of the revolver Cini seemed to be looking directly at him.

"Ready," the narrator said, "aim… fire."

The wire jerked taut again and again and continued as the lazy voice said, "Bang, bang… bang, bang, bang," as the five splintered gouges appeared in the plywood sheet and as the girl's eyes and mouth stretched open and her head hit against the pipe and fell forward with the last lazy-sounding bang.

In a silence, hearing only the faint sound of the projector, Mitchell sat staring at the screen. He said to himself Unh-unh, come on. He said, People get killed in movies all the time, but they don't get killed. He had experienced the same reaction before in a movie, making something jump inside, believability stabbing him in the belly, and it had never ever been real any of those times. It couldn't be real because people didn't really honest-to-God shoot people in moving pictures.

The narrator said, "Hey, you still there?" He paused. "The thing about Cini that makes her a star, she not only lives her part she dies it. And if you don't believe me, watch."

The camera followed the plywood sheet as it was pulled aside and turned over.

"Note, the bullet holes go all the way through."

The camera returned to Cini. Mitchell looked and closed his eyes.

"Take my word, man, that's real blood, not catsup. Now watch this."

The hand pulled the girl's head up by her hair and laid it against the pipe. Her eyes, wide open, stared out from the screen and continued to stare into the hot light as the hand appeared again and seemed to press against her mouth. After a few moments the hand twisted to show a mirror held in the palm.

"Note, the mirror's clear. No breath to fog it up. Actually we didn't need the mirror," the narrator said. "Look at the eyes. Keep watching. They never blink, do they? That's because they don't see anything." There was the sound of the narrator clearing his throat.

"Now, what we want you to see, sport, is that you got your tit tightly in the wringer and there ain't any way at all to pull it out. No, because we have this package hidden away: the broad's body, your coat with the broad's blood on it, the thirty-eight with your prints on it, the permit, a few snaps of you and the broad on the beach, all in this package where nobody can find it. Not unless we tell them. Like we call the cops and we say, hey, you want to know where there's a dead broad and all? We tell them, hang up. Pretty soon there's about eighteen fucking police cars outside your house and the neighbors are looking out. What the fuck's going on? They read about it in the paper, Christ, imagine, he seemed like such a nice guy. Yeah? Some fucking nice guy. Takes the broad's clothes off and shoots her five times in the left tit. Probably raped her after. Fucking pervert. Should be electrocuted. What does he get? Life in S.M.P. Jackson. He's over there making our fucking license plates we got to put on our car for Christ sake." The narrator paused.

"Or, as I said. You pay us the hundred and five a year the rest of your life or until we say stop, we got enough. Listen to me, sport. No more fucking around. Ten grand tomorrow, ten grand a week from tomorrow, ten grand a week later. Thirty thou in good faith, giving you time to get it together. Then you plan ahead and come up with the balance in cash monthly payments. You got it? Tomorrow night you go out to Metro yourself, personally, with ten big ones. At exactly eleven-thirty you put it in locker two-fifty-eight and put the key in with it. If you hang around, or if you don't show, or if you pull any kind of shit at all, the cops get a phone call.

"Now sit there a while and relax, watch another movie. When it's over, come up and get the reel and the projector if you want. They're rented from Film Outlet, over on Larned. In your name."

Sitting alone in the darkness, Mitchell watched a cartoon cat chase three cartoon mice all over the house. He watched the cat get clobbered, flattened, blown up, set on fire and electrocuted and the dumb goddamned cat hardly ever got close to them. When it was over Mitchell walked across the street to his car. He wasn't sure for a while where he was going.