The Big Bounce

15

A FEW MINUTES BEFORE NINE Nancy undressed and put on a pair of shorty pajamas. She left a lamp on in the bedroom, then went downstairs and turned off every light on the living room level, including the kitchen; she made sure the back door was double-locked. The door of the activities room, downstairs, was also locked. The only unlocked door in the house was the sliding door from the sun deck into the living room. She slid it silently open and closed it again.

Now the big chair with the ottoman. She pushed it over a little so it would be more in line with the door, closer but still in shadow, then worked the ottoman over. It was big and square and heavy, without casters; she could sit down in the chair and prop her feet against the inside edge of the ottoman and it was heavy enough that it wouldn’t move away.

She sat down now and put her hand on the table next to the chair. She took her hand away and put it on the table again and moved the lamp over a few inches.

He could come anytime now. She had told him 9:30. He could be late if he had gone to The Pier and had to walk back or had trouble getting a ride. On the other hand there was a good chance he would be early. Eagerly early. There was no question in Nancy’s mind that he would come. He had been coming back since Tuesday night and after last night she considered Jack Ryan nailed down. He could pose and declare his independence, but he was like all the rest of them basically and she couldn’t imagine him passing up a sure thing.

She began thinking about tomorrow and tried to imagine the look on Ray’s face when he heard what happened. She could picture his expression when he walked in, the grim look. It would be hard not to laugh, or at least smile.

Right now, though, she’d better look alive and be ready and keep her eyes on the yard beyond the dark shape of the swimming pool. The only outside light was the orange bug lamp. He would pass through it as he approached the house.

“Hey, where you going?” Mr. Majestyk was standing at the edge of his front lawn. Behind him, past the thin birch trees, the spotlight held the flamingoes and painted stones in silent glare.

“I thought it was you,” Mr. Majestyk said.

Ryan walked over. “I was just going up the beach.”

Mr. Majestyk was lighting a cigar, puffing on it and shaking out the kitchen match. “The ball game’s on. I was watching it over to Fishers’, but they’re putting the kids to bed.”

“Who’d you say, Baltimore?”

“Boston.”

“That’s right, McLain’s going. Maybe I’ll stop in later.”

“No score in the second,” Mr. Majestyk said. He added, almost without a pause, “Your buddy was here about an hour ago.”

“Who’s that?”

“Bob Junior.” Mr. Majestyk drew on the cigar, watching Ryan. “He says he saw you up at the hunting property and thought you were trespassing.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He says you told him you worked here and he was checking on it.”

“You tell him I did?”

“You work here, don’t you? I told him you and him should have a couple of beers sometime and cut out the crap.”

“I can see that happening.”

“He isn’t a bad guy.” Ryan was silent and Mr. Majestyk said, “What about the property? What do you think of it?”

“I don’t know. It looks okay.”

“You see the possibilities?”

“Well, he said he got himself a buck right there with an O-three, so maybe it’s a good spot.”

Mr. Majestyk squinted in his cigar smoke. “What were you doing, for Christ sake, fighting or having a conversation?”

“I guess it was a funny situation,” Ryan said.

“It sounds it. Listen, I want to see the ball game, you stop in if you want.” He puffed on the cigar a couple of times, watching Ryan walk off into the darkness. Finally, taking his time, he crossed the lawn to his house.

Ryan walked past the vacant frontage a good fifty yards before he had thought about it long enough and stopped. He looked out at the lake, at the distant pinpoints of light. He looked back toward Mr. Majestyk’s house, at the garden and the flamingoes in the glow of the spot. He could see the side window, a square of light, where he and Nancy had looked in. Not a Western tonight, the ball game, the guy sitting there with a beer and not taking his eyes off the set. Ryan waited a couple more minutes before making up his mind.

He cut across the vacant frontage then and approached the side of the house, hearing the TV and recognizing the announcer’s voice-George Kell, with the faintly down-home Arkansas drawl-before he reached the window and saw the picture and Mr. Majestyk watching it, his short legs stretched out on the fold-out ottoman.

Boston was at bat. McLain was pitching, looking in and taking his windup and coming in with a hard overhand fastball, grooving it past the hitter before he could swing. George Kell, sounding pretty relaxed, said it was McLain’s fourth strikeout in three innings. He said boy, when this youngster was on, you just didn’t hit him. Ryan watched the Tigers go out one two three in the fourth. With Boston coming to bat and McLain taking his warm-up throws, he decided, what the hell, sit down for maybe a couple of innings. There wasn’t any rush.

Since five o’clock Frank Pizarro had finished two bottles of red and almost half a fifth of vodka-vodka because the goddamn store didn’t have any more tequila, the guy saying, “The way you people have been buying it…” Screw the guy, they would leave in a couple of days and the guy would wonder where his business went.

He had meant to save the vodka, to bring a whole bottle, but the goddamn wine made him feel tired an hour later and he used the vodka to get some life back in him. He felt good now and saw everything sharply, the houses in the darkness, the lights in the windows through the trees. He felt good, but he wished he had a cigarette.

The girl would have a cigarette. Plenty. Maybe Ryan would be there and he would have to wait. It didn’t matter. Ryan would leave sometime and Mr. Ritchie’s and Mr. Ryan’s girlfriend would be alone. How about Mr. Ritchie’s and Mr. Ryan’s and Mr. Pizarro’s girlfriend? He could show her something she had never seen before with any Mr. Ritchie or Jack goddamn Ryan.

He would wait and when it was only the girl-what could she do about it? But it would be better if he didn’t have to wait.

He would come out of the shadow of the house and bushes and see the girl in the swimming pool, her dark hair and her body shining in the water. He would take the vodka and sit at the table this time and raise the bottle when she came out of the water.

No, save the vodka. Have her towel. She would come over with her hands on her hips and see him holding the towel. He would get up then and say to her, “Here, let me dry you,” holding the goddamn towel open like a bullfighter.

Jesus, Pizarro thought. He could feel her coming into his arms as he put the towel around her.

Get her nice and comfortable in there. He would be fooling around a little drying her and she would be laughing, putting her head back against his shoulder, and he would mention it to her then. “I want you to give me five hundred dollars.” And she would say, “Why should I give you five hundred dollars?” And you say, “Because if you don’t, I tell somebody what you been doing with Jack Ryan.” She say, “What somebody?” and you say, “Mr. Ray Ritchie somebody.”

But the goddamn house looked dark, like nobody was home. He had parked on the other side of the Shore Road and walked into the Pointe. It was the house, he was sure of that; but no light showed anywhere on this side. Then go around, he told himself.

But what if Ryan was sitting by the pool and heard him? He had been lucky the time before; Ryan wasn’t there. But if he came up from the beach side of the house-sure, he would be able to look the place over better. He could go to the next street and follow it to the beach and come around that way. If she wasn’t home, that might be all right too. He could wait or he could go in and look around. Sure, maybe Mr. Ritchie kept some tequila somewhere.

“You ready?” Mr. Majestyk asked.

Ryan was sitting forward on the couch. He picked up the beer can between his feet and jiggled it. “Not yet.”

“You know where it is.” Mr. Majestyk sat back in his chair to watch the game and for a moment was silent.

“What’s the count?”

“One and one.”

“Two away, a man on second, the tieing run at the plate,” Mr. Majestyk said. “How would you pitch this guy?”

“Probably something breaking. Low and away from him.” Ryan watched the Boston hitter foul off the next pitch, a tapper down to the third base coaching box.

“He’s not going to hit it,” Mr. Majestyk said.

Ryan kept his eyes on the set. “I don’t know. That short left field wall, you lay a fly ball up there, you got two bases.”

And George Kell, a voice coming out of the TV set, said, “You got to pitch to everybody in this ballpark.”

“In tight on the hands,” Mr. Majestyk said. “Back the son of a bitch away. If he swings, he hits it on the handle.”

“He better keep it low,” Ryan said.

When the batter bounced out to the second baseman, Mr. Majestyk said, “I told you.”

George Kell said, “Going into the sixth with a two-run lead, let’s see if the Tigers can put some hits together and get something going. I imagine Denny McLain wouldn’t mind that about now.”

“He’s good,” Mr. Majestyk said. “You know?”

“Kell,” Ryan said. “He was a good ballplayer.”

“You know, he got over two thousand base hits while he was in the Majors?”

“Two thousand fifty-two,” Ryan said.

“Did you know they had a sign outside his hometown? Swifton, Arkansas. You’re coming in the sign says ‘Swifton, Arkansas-The Home of George Kell.’ “

Ryan took a sip of beer. “I don’t know if I’d want a sign like that. Some guy comes along, he knows you’re away playing ball, nobody home, he goes in takes anything he wants. Or you’re in a slump and some nut fan throws rocks at your windows.”

“That could happen,” Mr. Majestyk said. “But when a guy is good, like Kell, you got to be able to take a lot of crap and not let it bother you. So a guy throws a rock. So you get the window fixed. Listen, you hit three thirty, three forty like Kell, the pitchers are throwing crap and junk at you all the time and it’s worse than any rocks because it’s your living, it’s what you do. You stand in there, that’s all. When they come in with a good one, you belt it.”

“Or wait them out,” Ryan said.

“Sure, or wait them out. But either way you got to stand in there. Maybe if you’d stayed in,” Mr. Majestyk said then, “I mean, in baseball, maybe they’d be putting a sign up for you one of these days.”

“Sure.”

“I mean if you didn’t have the bad back.”

“You want to know something?” Ryan said. “Even if I didn’t have it, I never could hit a goddamn curve ball.”

Nancy saw the movement at the far end of the lawn: the figure briefly in the orange light and out of it, out of sight for a moment, now moving across the yard to the deep shadows of the pines, and her finger continued to stroke the edge of her hair, down across her brow. She sat comfortably with her feet on the inside edge of the ottoman, her knees up in front of her. She didn’t move. She wondered momentarily why he was being so sneaky about it. All he had to do was walk across the yard to the house. When she saw him again near the swimming pool, her right hand came away from her face.

The hand dropped to the side table and, without groping, curved around the hard, smooth handle of her target pistol.

Nancy waited. She began to wonder if he had circled to the back of the house. There was no reason he would, unless he wanted to look at the garage or the street, just to be sure. There were no sounds, inside or out.

She waited, because she knew he would appear again. She also knew-sitting, facing the sliding glass door that was sixteen feet from the front edge of her chair, her eyes on the glass now and not moving from it-exactly what she was going to do.

There were no sounds. Then a faint sound. A scraping sound on the wooden stairs. She saw his head appear, a dark shape against the sundeck, his shoulders, his body. He stood for a moment looking down at the yard. As he turned to the door Nancy brought the pistol up in front of her and laid the barrel on her raised knees. As he opened the door, sliding the glass gently, and started to come inside, Nancy said, “Hi, Jackie.”

She heard him say, “Is-” or something that sounded like that but no more. With the pistol held straight in front of her at eye level, held on him dead center, she fired four times and continued to fire as he stumbled back to the sundeck and went down, and she would have sworn she heard the sound of glass breaking on the patio, as if someone had dropped a glass or a bottle.

Nancy pulled herself out of the chair she had been sitting in for over an hour. She walked out to the sundeck wondering if his eyes would be open or closed.

“What’re they taking McLain out for? Jesus Christ, a couple of hits and they pull him.”

“They were hard-hit balls,” Ryan said. “Both of them.”

“So they get a hold of a couple.”

“The leading run on second,” Ryan said, “they got to be careful. Say, you know what time it is?”

Mr. Majestyk looked at his watch. “Quarter of ten. I’d leave him in. How many hits they got off him?”

“About six.”

“Six hits. What-all singles? You don’t hit this guy solid.”

They watched the manager walk back to the dugout. McLain remained on the mound, throwing the ball into the pocket of his glove.

George Kell said, “Well, it looks like Denny’s staying in. He’s got his work cut out for him now. Two on, the potential leading run on second.”

Mr. Majestyk was pulling himself out of his reclining chair. “The best part,” he said, “and I got to take a leak. You need a beer while I’m up?”

“I’m all set.”

“You want a highball? Whatever you want.”

“I was supposed to meet somebody at nine thirty,” Ryan said.

Mr. Majestyk swung his feet down. “I thought you already met her.”

“No, I was going to. Then I thought I’d see a couple of innings first.”

“Is she going to be sore at you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you care?”

“Well, I ought to talk to her sometime.”

“It’s up to you.”

“I better do it,” Ryan said. “Get it over with.”

Someone, Nancy decided, should do a piece on Jack Ryan for the Reader’s Digest. “The Luckiest Character I Have Ever Met in My Whole and Entire Life.”

At first, looking down at Frank Pizarro, she was startled, disappointed, and finally angry. But, she decided, as she dragged Frank into the living room and slid the door closed, it wasn’t all bad. This one deserved it as much as Ryan. She had to be philosophical, accept minor disappointments like a big girl. She didn’t have Ryan, but she had his buddy, and the buddy should serve the purpose just as well. He was dead and she had killed him.

The trouble was, she wasn’t sure if windows weren’t more fun after all.

She turned on every light in the living room, then the kitchen light and the desk lamp in the den. She picked up the telephone, then put it down and moved quickly to the table next to the big chair. She had almost forgotten the props. She took her wallet, a watch, a pearl necklace, and several pins from the table drawer and stuffed them into Frank’s pockets. In her mind she heard a policeman or someone say, “He was in your room?” And her own voice answering, “I heard him, but I didn’t make a sound. I waited. I didn’t go downstairs until I thought he’d gone. I don’t know what made me take the gun. I’d bought it and I was going to give it to my boss as a present. Mr. Ritchie.” She smiled at this touch. Great. Especially if it got in the papers word for word. “My boss.” Or “Uncle Ray.” That might be better.

Nancy was in the den, once more about to dial the phone, standing just inside the door and looking out into the living room and this time when she replaced the phone, she stepped back inside, out of the doorway.

Wow. Jackie was coming in from the sundeck.

She gave him time to take a good look at Frank Pizarro. She took a breath and let it out slowly and straightened the V-neck of her shorty pajamas and stepped into the living room as Ryan was getting up from his knees. She watched him step over Frank Pizarro’s legs and saw his gaze raise abruptly.

“Late again,” Nancy said. “Aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” Ryan said. “Do you know he’s dead?”

She nodded and was aware of Ryan’s gaze holding on her. “He came to ask for more money,” Nancy said. “If I didn’t give it to him, he said he’d tell the police about you.”

“You had a conversation and then you shot him.”

“When he came at me. After.”

“You happened to have a gun.”

“When he knocked,” Nancy said. “I didn’t know who it was, so I got the gun first.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet.”

“What’re you going to tell them?”

She kept her gaze locked with his. “That I shot a prowler.”

“Then, tomorrow,” Ryan said, “your picture’s in the paper.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“You might even get it in a magazine. Life maybe.”

“Do you think so?”

“You wear dark glasses wherever you go and people point to you and say, ‘That’s the one.’ “

“Really?”

“Somebody in Hollywood sees the nice-looking little girl with the nice little can and the long hair who shot a man in her millionaire boyfriend’s beach house and you’re there.”

“Hey, neat.”

“Ray’s in a mess because his wife and everybody knows what he’s been doing, but you can’t worry about Ray now, can you?”

“Those are the breaks,” Nancy said.

“You wouldn’t need any fifty thousand. You shoot a cucumber picker and find happiness.”

“Sort of a Cinderella story,” Nancy said. “I like it.” She seemed to be picturing it, nodding, as she stepped in front of the big chair and eased into it, sliding low in the seat.

“How many times did you shoot him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t count.”

“You shot him coming in.”

“No, I heard him. But I didn’t come out of my room until I thought he had gone. Then when I got downstairs, he was waiting for me.”

“You shot Frank coming in the door,” Ryan said. “Seven times. He didn’t knock. He walked in.”

Nancy put on a little surprised look. “That’s right. Because I left the door open for you. But he did knock.”

“What I mean,” Ryan said, “you didn’t mean to kill Frank.”

“Of course I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“You thought it was me coming in.”

“Sure.”

“You meant to kill me.”

Nancy sat quietly in the chair. “I did huh-why?”

“I guess there are a lot of reasons,” Ryan said. “But mainly because you thought it would be fun.” He waited, moving to the ottoman and sitting down in front of her.

“Was it?”

“It was all right.”

“But not what you thought it would be.”

“Isn’t that funny?”

Her eyes followed him as he rose now and moved toward the den. “Where are you going?”

“Call the police.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You might get it wrong.”

“You tell on me, Jackie, I’ll tell on you.”

Ryan paused in the doorway. He felt tired and shook his head slowly. He said, “Hey, come on, okay?”

“I mean it. I’ll say you were with him. I’ll tell them about the wallets.”

“All right,” Ryan said. “You tell them about the wallets.”

He went into the den and picked up the phone and she heard him say to the operator, “I’m calling the state police.” There was a long silence. She heard him say, “I want to report a shooting,” and a silence again. Then the sound of words: “Out at the Pointe… Ray Ritchie’s place… Huh?… No, you’ll see when you get here.”

As he came out to the living room she said, “All right for you, Jackie. Boy are you going to get it.”

With his foot Ryan pushed the ottoman over to the walnut console model TV that he could get a hundred and a half for and fooled with the dials until the picture came clearly into focus to show McLain still in there. George Kell said, “Two on, two out, top of the ninth.” Ryan eased down on the ottoman.

Nancy leaned over the arm of the big chair to watch him for long seconds, almost a minute.

“Jackie?” she said, and waited. “Jack, you nifty lover, hey. What if I tell them you came in and surprised him and you had a fight. Do you see it? You even look like you were in a fight.”

Nancy waited.

“I’ll tell them you saved my life. You pulled him off me and-listen-while you were fighting I got the gun. Then he was about to hit you with something, the poker, and I had to shoot him.”

Her eyes opened with the little surprised look. “Hey, Jack, then we both get our pictures in the paper. And in Life-a big picture of us wearing real neat sunglasses. And then both of us get in the movies! Wouldn’t that be it?” She opened her mouth and her eyes, faking it a little but actually taken with the idea.

Ryan looked at her. He waited until he was sure she was watching him and listening and he said, “I’ve been in the movies.”

He looked back at the TV set, at McLain bringing up his leg and throwing from the shoulder with a man on base. The son of a bitch was good, but he could sure get in trouble.

“Listen, I’m serious,” Nancy said. “It can work. It would be more fun with somebody else.” She waited, watching him. “Listen to me, will you? Look at me. This could be great. We tell them what happened and in a couple of days we take the car and go-wherever you want, just go. Jack, listen to me!”

McLain looked over at the runner on first, paused, and delivered his pitch. “Fastball inside and a little high,” George Kell said.

“We can make it look good,” Nancy said. She paused, thoughtful, before pushing herself out of the chair. “We’ll say he was violent. In fact”-her hands went to the V-neck of her shorty pajamas-“before I got to the gun, he grabbed me and tore my pajamas off.” Her hands came down, ripping the front of the pajama top to the hem. She held it open and said, “Jackie, look what he did.”

Ryan looked. He nodded and looked back at the set again.

Nancy was thoughtful for a moment. “Then, all of a sudden, he went psycho and started smashing things.”

She used the poker from the fireplace, bringing it up swinging at the painting over the mantel, hacking at it and smashing the light fixture. She destroyed a glass cabinet in the living room and worked her way into the dining room, smashing every piece of glass and crystal and china she saw: vases, ashtrays, figurines, a mirror vanished in a sound of splintered glass. She shattered the entire floor-to-ceiling thermopane that faced the sundeck, chopping away the fragments of glass that pointed jaggedly out of the frame. She saved the lamps until last, smashing them one by one, the room becoming dim and finally dark. Only the flat white glow of the TV picture remained.

A silence followed. Nancy stood near the big chair in her torn shorty pajamas. She stood motionless, the silence lengthened, and the voice of George Kell said, “All tied up in the bottom of the ninth with Detroit coming to bat. If they’re going to put something together now’s the-”

Ryan turned off the sound. He sat hunched in the white glow of the picture tube. Behind him, Al Kaline silently swung two bats in the on-deck circle.

He said to her, “Have you broken everything?”

She seemed to nod. “I guess so.”

“Then, why don’t you sit down?”

“Jackie-”

“No more, all right? If you say any more, I think I’ll bust you one and I don’t want to do that.”

As Al Kaline stepped into the batter’s box and took his stance, touching the end of the bat to the plate and digging a foothold with his spikes, they heard the first thin sound of the siren far up the Shore Road.

“Sit down and relax,” Ryan said. “There’s nothing more to think about.”

Nancy curled slowly into the chair, leaning on one of the arms and resting her face in her hand. She stared out at the swimming pool and the lawn and the orange pinpoint of light against the night sky and a finger began stroking the soft, falling edge of her dark hair.