Tony and Susan

SIX

Nocturnal Animals 24

They stood in Bobby Andes’s camp while the echo of catastrophe died in the woods: the girl named Susan in her miniskirt, Ingrid with a dish towel, Tony Hastings with his unused gun, all in shock by the table. Bobby Andes full of police work fixing his pants, holding the gun he had used. Lou Bates outside on the grass with a bullet hole through his brain.

“Shit,” Bobby said. “What happened, Tony, gun wouldn’t work?”

The rage Tony wanted to feel was smothered by the shame of not knowing what he was supposed to do, so he said nothing.

Bobby looked at Susan. “Sorry I scared you. I saw a bat.”

“A bat, Bobby? You were shooting right at us.”

Andes’s face changed. He put his gun on the table and went out the back door. They could hear him heaving like a seal. He came back. “Christ of all fuckin times to be sick.”

He sat down at the table and took deep breaths. “Got to move,” he said.

“Bobby,” Ingrid said, “there’s that man you killed out there.”

“Give me time.”

She looked at Tony and Susan, they all looked at each other.

“Bobby? What are we going to do?”

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s under control.”

“What are we going to do? You killed that man.”

“Right. He tried to run away.”

“You deliberately killed him.”

“He was trying to escape.” He looked at her. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“You shot him a second time. You shot him in the head.”

The room was still, everyone looking at him, the sound of peeping frogs once more down the river. He ran his hand across his head, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind.

“Why did you do it?”

“Because I didn’t get him the first time. Jesus.” He felt in his pocket and brought out his car keys. “I’ve got to go.”

“Go where, Bobby?”

“Telephone call.” She touched his shoulder, he brushed her off. “Don’t touch me, I’m all right.”

“Can’t you send Tony?”

This alarmed Tony, but Bobby looked as if she were crazy.

“Tony can’t do it,” Bobby said.

“Can’t do what? He can deliver a message to the station. What more do you want?”

“I want to catch that bastard when he gets out to the road.”

“Oh no, Bobby.”

“Oh yes, Ingrid. I have to catch that bastard.”

“And leave us here by ourselves?”

He stood up, straightened himself, walked to the door. She cried out. “Bobby!”

“Relax,” he said. “Tony’s got a gun. If he can remember how to use it.”

“There’s that man lying out there.”

“Leave him lay. Don’t touch him. Stay inside and hope no early morning fisherman trips over him.”

He went out. They heard the car go. Ingrid said, “Damn him to hell.”

Susan asked, “Was that legal, what he did?”

“Shooting him?”

“Is a policeman allowed to do that?”

“He was trying to escape. However,” Ingrid added. “That second shot in the head. There was no need for that.”

“Will he get in trouble for that?”

“Also.”

“What?”

“He had no legal grounds for holding the other man.”

“You mean Ray?”

“That was against all rules,” Ingrid said.

“Will that get him in trouble?”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Maybe if we don’t tell.”

“They’ll know,” Ingrid said. “The wounds in the body will tell. The question is, will the buddies rally round?”

Tony’s shock was turning rancid.

“What was he trying to do?” Susan said. “I mean, when they find out, won’t it ruin him?”

Ingrid’s half laugh. “When who finds out?” She said, “I don’t think he cares. I think he decided if the District Attorney wouldn’t go after him, he’d do it himself.” Ingrid trying to figure Bobby Andes out. “What I don’t understand is, how he could have been so careless.”

“Was he careless?” Susan said.

“Fiddling at that table. Expecting Tony to stop them. That’s not like him.” She looked at Tony. “I guess you’re glad that man is dead.”

He couldn’t think about it, distracted by the question of what Bobby expected when Ray made his dash to escape. The death of Lou Bates seemed unimportant, as if he had ceased to be Lou Bates. It had no satisfaction for Tony, no more than had the death of Turk. Time had redefined the crime, and the only criminal who mattered was Ray. It was all Ray and Ray alone, and once again Tony had been afraid and let him go.

“Are you sure he’s dead?” Susan said.

“He was shot through the head,” Ingrid said.

“He might not be dead though. Maybe we should go see.”

“He’s dead. No doubt about that.”

“I think someone should look at him just in case.”

“Not me.”

Not me either, Tony’s thought repeated when she turned to him. They stood in the door and watched while the policeman’s young cousin whom he and Ray had both considered a prostitute but who seemed to be rather only a kind of child in her miniskirt went out with the flashlight and gingerly approached the dark shape by the river and watched while she crouched down courageously and studied him, her knees pale in the black. They saw the spot from the flashlight as she moved it over the man’s body and saw her hands touching his face. When she came back her face was wan. “His eyes are open,” she said.

“That’s what they do when they die,” Ingrid said. “They open their eyes but can’t see.”

Things go sour. Food spoils, milk curdles, meat rots. In the dim light of the camp there’s this feeling of accident and breakage. The death of Lou Bates was not a right death. Tony wondered if he had caused it by having failed to stop Ray and Lou with his gun. But the only way to stop them would have been to shoot them, which would have made him rather than Bobby the killer, and that would have been worse. Therefore it wasn’t his fault. The reason for his dumb rage burst into light: if Bobby had intended him to be the executioner of Ray and Lou. The question was intolerable. Whatever went wrong, he insisted, he was only a witness, not an actor.

Susan yawned again. Tony remembered how he walked through the woods and along the roads without sleep a whole night until he found a farmer getting up in the earliest dawn.

“You want to go in the bedroom, lie down?” Ingrid said.

“I can’t sleep with him out there,” Susan said.

“Me neither,” Ingrid said. “Bobby’ll be back soon.”

“Will he? I thought he was going to try catch that guy.”

“If he does that, I’ll kill him.”

But Bobby Andes was already back. They heard the car in the driveway, the sweep of its headlights through the window again, the car door. They saw Bobby Andes striding up to the cottage, fast into the room, transformed.

“That was quick,” Ingrid said. “Are they coming?”

“I got to go to town,” he said.

“No, Bobby, not again.”

Notice the change in him, leather face, no debilitating liquid sickness now, only the harder more permanent kind.

“Wickham’s got the phone. I got to see Ambler myself.”

No panic, but urgent. Everything under control, but effort needed to keep on course. No catastrophe if we keep our heads.

“Before I go,” he said. He looked around at the three of them, as if waiting for their attention, though he already had their attention. “You need to know what happened tonight.”

“What happened?”

“What happened here. What you saw.”

“I saw what happened,” Ingrid said.

“Did you?” He gave her a look.

“Oh,” she said. A silence, queasy.

“You want us to lie?” Ingrid Hale said. “Please, Bobby, don’t make us lie.”

“You don’t want to lie? You want to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God, everything you saw tonight? That what you want?”

She looked miserable. Tony was full of palpitation. She said, “Oh Bobby, dear.”

Bobby dear had droopy bloody eyes, his mouth gaped like a fish for air. It always had, but Tony had not noticed it before.

“I don’t give a shit,” he said. “I thought you’d like to have a story. If you don’t want one, the hell with it.”

She slumped in her chair. “All right. So what story are we supposed to tell? Are you going to tell us?”

“That was Ray Marcus who shot Lou Bates. Shot him twice. Once in the body, once in the head.”

“My God,” Ingrid said.

“Shot him because Lou had agreed to testify in court.”

Quiet while they think this over. Ingrid gave Tony a desperate look, help, help, though he avoided it.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ingrid said.

“It makes all the god damn sense you’ll need.”

Tony was trying to visualize Ray Marcus shooting Lou Bates.

“You want to know how he did it?” Bobby said. “You do want to know, don’t you? You can’t just have Ray popping up suddenly with a gun when he’s a prisoner here, right? You want to know?”

“You’d better tell us then,” Ingrid said.

“I’ll tell you. He wasn’t a prisoner. I mean he was here but he left. He left after we had a conversation and I dropped him off at the road on my way to pick up Bates. Only he didn’t go home. Or he went home and got his gun, or got a gun somewhere and hitchhiked back, and that’s when he did it. Ambush. Lay in wait outside the cabin, shot him as I was taking him into the house, caught me by surprise, pow pow.”

“You’ve got it all figured out,” Ingrid said.

“It’s enough.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“Naw it ain’t.”

“You can’t get away with it. Can you?”

“What’s to get away with? I got Ambler, I got George. All we need is you guys to agree, not tell more than you need.”

“Perjury?”

“Jesus, girl. Think of it as the potential in the situation. It would have happened, given enough time.”

“Come on, Bobby.”

“What do you mean, come on? I’m offering you scandal-free days for the rest of my life, whatever that may be. If you think that’s perjury, turn me in, I don’t give a shit.”

She looked at Tony, at Susan. “Can you go along with this?”

“Me?” Susan said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You’re supposed to say that Ray Marcus person wasn’t here,” Ingrid said.

“He left before you came,” Bobby said.

She got it. “Oh. And then he came and shot the other guy with the beard?”

“That’s right. If they ask you, that’s what you saw. Only, wait, you didn’t actually see him. You didn’t see the guy with the beard either. All you heard was shots as I was bringing the guy with the beard in from the car.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to say, huh?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to say.”

He seemed relieved and pleased with himself. Tony, thinking if I object to this I destroy Bobby Andes, was scrambling through his mind for questions he could be asked on the witness stand.

Ingrid said, “He’ll deny it.”

“His denial ain’t worth shit. He denied killing Tony’s folks.”

“He’ll go to the police and report it.”

“He’s not that dumb.”

“He’ll go to the police and tell what he saw. He’ll tell everything, Bobby. How you kidnapped him and the handcuffs and how you killed Lou.”

“Nah, he won’t.”

“How do you know? If it was me I would.”

“He won’t because he knows they would arrest him for killing Lou. He knows because he knows me and he knows my friends and he knows you three are witnesses. That’s why he won’t go to the police. But if he does go, that’s what he’ll find. He’ll find out no one believes him.”

“It’s so cynical, Bobby.”

“What’s cynical? Don’t argue with me. If that’s cynical, give me an alternative. Tell me the non-cynical thing to do.” He was melodramatic, full of opera.

As for Tony, full of woe, at fault and to blame for everything, he was groping around in the empty spaces of the story he was supposed to tell, looking for its questions. “Bobby,” he said. “If Ray Marcus killed Lou Bates, when did he leave here?” More. “Where did he go?” Still more. “How did he get his gun? How did he get back here?”

“Let me worry about that,” Bobby said. “He left here when I left. I took him in town. I took him in town, yeah, because I didn’t want to do business with Ingrid here, that’s how it was. God knows what he did then. Got hold of a gun. Hitchhiked back this way. Don’t worry about it.”

He was looking at them like a sick scoutmaster. Have you got it now? Can I leave it with you? Are the gaps plugged?

“Let me recapitulate,” he said. “Shall I do that? Yes. So I brought Ray. When I saw Ingrid here, I took him away again. You waited. Susan came. You wondered where the hell I was. After a while I came back. As I came up to the house with Lou, bang! Two bangs. You ran out and saw this guy lying on the ground, the other one running away. Simple, right?”

Tony thought how galling to have Ray Marcus on the right side of the law against him.

“Don’t worry about Ray,” Bobby said. “He’s liable to get killed resisting arrest. Yes?” To Ingrid. “Did I shock you?”

She didn’t say anything.

“I have a job to do, and I have to find ways to do it.”

No one said anything.

“Shit. You’re all so fuckin honest. You too, Tony? Your wife and daughter murdered and you sit here splitting hairs?”

“Bobby,” Ingrid said, “is this how you always work?” She looked as if she had never seen him before.

“You criticizing the way I do my job?”

They stared at each other. After a moment he yielded. “No, I don’t usually do it like this.” He sounded reasonable now. “No, I never did it like this before.” Regretful.

“You’re a stubborn bastard, Bobby,” Ingrid said. “Why can’t you just say you lost control of a prisoner? Then you lost your head and shot him. Will they kill you for that?”

Bobby thought about it. “It’s not so simple,” he said at last. “I don’t lose control of prisoners. I prefer my version.”

Tony was thinking about the hostile officials who would be cross-examining him.

“I’ll explain it to Ambler,” Andes said. “He’ll take care of it. You probably won’t have to say anything at all.”

He rubbed the gun with a handkerchief and went to the door. “Be right back.” They watched him from the porch. He went by the body of Lou where it lay, shadow like roots of a tree, and on down to the river where he flung the gun into the water. When he came back he said, “If you’re worried it’s not the truth, think of it as the intrinsic truth. What happened is what would have happened.” Then, “Tony, I need your help to catch Marcus.”

This scared Tony, and again Ingrid objected. “How can you catch him? He’s in the woods.”

“If he’s in the woods we track him with dogs. If he gets out of the woods, he’ll hitchhike. So we catch him before he gets a ride.”

“He could be anywhere.”

“No he won’t. There’s only two roads he could get to before morning. If we get out there quick enough.” He looked at Tony, Tony full of horror. “If you go in your car and I in mine.”

“Hunting for Ray?”

“Relax.” It was not a laugh. “I want you to go to George Remington’s house. Wake him up and tell him we need his dogs.”

“Do that yourself,” Ingrid said.

“God damn it, woman, I’ve got to see Ambler while he’s still on duty.”

“Why Ambler?”

His look was one of those secret things. “I’d rather report to Ambler than to Miles.”

Bobby Andes went to the table with a piece of paper. He drew a map. “Here Tony. Bang on his door until he wakes up. Give him this note and tell him I want his dogs. Tell him a man got away and a man got killed but don’t say anything until he hears from me. Then come back here.”

Ingrid said, “Leaving Susan and me alone with him out there on the grass?”

“I have no choice.”

She didn’t say anything, but he heard it anyway. “Fuck you,” he said. “Let’s go, Tony.”

Obedient Tony got up, feeling horrible, and at the door Bobby turned around and made a speech. “The next time you see me I’ll have the guys. I’m gonna tell them how Ray killed Lou. If you don’t like it you can tell them any fucking thing because I don’t give a shit.”

He saw Tony trying to hand him his useless gun.

“Keep that, if you see Marcus.”

“Am I likely to?” He had to tell himself, being in the car there was nothing to fear.

“If you see him, pick him up. Stick his hands through the front and back windows and handcuff them together.”

Using the gun which he had not been able to use.

“Where do I take him?”

“Here. Leave him in the car until we get back.”

“What if he tries to run away?”

“Shoot him.”

Tony looked at him.

“Self-defense,” Bobby said. “Shoot him in self-defense.” He turned to Ingrid as if she had spoken. “It’s only a suggestion. He can do what he likes. If he needs to shoot him, do it in self-defense, that’s all I’m saying.” He patted Tony on the arm. “If worse comes to worst, stay put. We’ll find you.”

Tony Hastings and Bobby Andes went out to their cars. Before they went, Bobby tried to have a farewell scene with Ingrid. She turned away and then submitted. Tony got in his car. Bobby came over and leaned on his window. “How do you like that?” he said. “We got the bastard with the beard, that makes two. The one with the teeth, we’ll get him now, you’ll see.”

Trapped Tony saw his urgent last chance taking shape in words, a protest, Don’t make me tell that lying story, but he was too afraid of the violence of Bobby Andes’s scorn to be direct and instead what he said was, “Are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know. I don’t give a shit.”

He sat in his car motionless against an overwhelming resistance. He watched Andes get into his car and start up, lights, then pause, a shout, “What are you waiting for?”

“After you,” Tony said.

As if not trusting him, the man waited for Tony to start his engine, then drove out. But still not trusting, stopped at the turn and waited for Tony to move. As Tony backed out, the headlights swept across the grass and displayed the body lying by the river, looking small, the gray checked shirt, the black beard and white throat turned up. He wondered why he felt no gratification in that death and what had spoiled his fury and righteousness against the other. The clarity of the night stunned him. He had never left a dead man on the ground before.