Comeback

2

Just around the time William Archibald was whistling in the shower, Mary Quindero was beginning to die. She knew it, or suspected it, or feared it, but couldn't warn her murderers because they refused to hear anything except the answers to their questions, and she had no more answers. They, Woody Kellman and Zack Flynn, didn't know she was dying because they had no idea of the cumulative effect of the strangle-and-reprieve, drown-and-reprieve methods they were using to get the answers they felt she was still holding back. And her brother, Ralph Quindero, couldn't know what was happening because he was over at Zack's place, watching an old horror movie on the VCR, unable to be present while his friends pressured his sister, and not realizing just how stupid they were.

"Don't hurt her, or— You know, don't do— She's my sister, you know, I gotta ..."

"Don't worry, Ralph, when she sees we're serious, what's she gonna do? What's her choice? We gotta pressure her a little, that's all, so she knows we're serious. That's all."

That it hadn't worked that way was simply a miscalculation on everybody's part, starting with Ralph, who hadn't believed his pals would actually harm his own sister, and continuing with Woody and Zack, whose knowledge of the world came from movies and TV, which hadn't told them that, in real life, you could kill a person by repeatedly holding her head underwater in a bathtub, and finishing with Mary herself, who was motivated by a foolish desire to protect her dumb younger brother and who couldn't believe until too late that he wouldn't at some point come in and make them stop. But he didn't.

No. Ralph watched the horror movie until the finish, then brooded at the telephone while the tape rewound, wondering if he should call Mary's place, just see what was going on. This was taking longer than they'd expected, wasn't it? An hour and a half. What could take an hour and a half? How much information could Mary have, after all, and how long before Woody and Zack got it out of her?

Without the movie to distract his thoughts, he found himself worrying a little more about his sister in the hands of those two guys. They wouldn't. . . fuck her or anything, would they? No, they wouldn't do that, because they knew she'd tell him about it afterward, and they knew he'd kill them if they went too far, if they even— if they did anything except what they'd already agreed on: Lean on her a little, get whatever else it was Tom Carmody had told her about the guys who were out to grab the preacher's money, then phone him here to go downstairs and wait at the curb.

When Woody realized her eyes were open underwater, and that some new kind of sullen limpness had come over her body, different from the times when she'd passed out, he had an instant of panic, quickly buried. Ignoring the knowledge he already possessed, he pulled her back up out of the tub and stretched her out once again on the white-die bathroom floor. Her eyes stayed open, water drops standing on them, not at all like tears.

"Passed out again," Zack said, disgusted, looking over WoodyV looming back, his view obstructed.

Woody felt a sensation he hadn't known for years, had completely forgotten: Being a little kid on a swing, going too high, until his balls felt like they were being sucked downward right out of him, drawn into the frozen middle of the earth. It had been a scary, exciting, unpleasant but fascinating feeling then; now it only made him sick. "Aw, shit, Zack," he said, and moved to the side, a strong and heavyset but clumsy guy, to let the skinnier tenser Zack have a clear view.

When the tape rewound, Ralph popped it out of the machine and into its box, and considered the rest of Zack's tape library. The three of them, punks in their mid-twenties, inseparable schmucks since high school, were occasional burglars, and Zack loved to break into video rental stores, copping armful after armful of tapes while Ralph and Woody searched the cash register and drawers for chickenfeed.

"How can we call him? Jesus Christ, Zack, his sister's dead!"

"He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that till long after we got the money, till we're gone and history, man."

"Jesus, Zack."

"Call him, goddamit. You wanna run with money, or without?"

Ralph touched the rows of tapes. Was it too early in the day for porn? Nah; he selected a tape, and turned toward the VCR as the phone rang. And now he was almost reluctant to answer.

In the living room of Mary's apartment, the bedroom and bathroom doors both closed, Woody stood holding the phone, while Zack glared at him. They were both sopping wet, and hiding their fear from one another. "Remember!" Zack hissed. "She's locked in the closet! She's okay!"

Woody nodded impatiently and said into the phone, "Ralph? Okay, everything's done here. She's fine, we locked her in the closet, you can let her out when we get back."

Zack stared, wild-eyed, a ventriloquist no longer sure he controls his dummy. Woody said, "Well, she didn't want to tell us for a while."

Zack looked alert, worried, imperiled. Woody said, "You know, she always wanted to keep you out of—wants to keep you out of trouble. You know how she is."

Zack silently pounded the sofa back in frustration, and Woody said, "Well, she seen we weren't gonna take no for an answer, that's all, so then she opened up. She didn't know much more than she already told you, by the way. Not as much as we figured."

Zack nodded in exasperated agreement—so much effort, such a rotten accident, for so little return—and Woody said, "Except the name of the motel where Carmody's supposed to get in touch with them, if anything changes. Yeah, where they're gonna be today. So that was worth it, huh?"

"I don't know," Ralph said, hefting the porn tape in his other hand, thinking about how mad Mary was going to be, even when he came back successful, even when he had more money than God in his hands and all her irritating little doubts and sermons and putdowns were proved for once and all to be wrong, wrong, wrong. "I guess so," Ralph said. "Okay, I'll see you downstairs."

It was a five-hour drive from Memphis to where William Archibald's crusade had latterly taken him; they should get going, if they wanted to be there in time for the robbery. "Ten minutes," Ralph said into the phone. "Right."

He watched five minutes of the porn movie, rewound it, and went downstairs.