Dill walked Clyde Brattle down the stairs. When they reached the last step, Dill said, “Jake wants to meet. He wants to cut a deal with you.”
Brattle turned and examined Dill carefully. He started with Dill's shoes and worked his way up to the eyes. He seemed to find Dill's eyes particularly interesting. “When?” Brattle said.
“Tonight at ten.”
“Where?”
“My lawyer's apartment. Here's the address.” Dill handed Brattle a scrap of paper on which Anna Maude Singe's name and address were written. Brattle didn't read it. He stuck it into his jacket pocket instead.
“What's it like?” Brattle said.
“The only way up are the stairs and one elevator. Jake's bringing two of his Mexicans. You can bring Harley and Sid. They can all stand around and glare at each other.”
“Who else'll be there?” Brattle asked.
“Just you, Jake, and me.”
“Why you?”
Dill shrugged. “Why not?”
After a moment or two, Brattle nodded his fine Roman head. “I'll think about it,” he said, turned, and went through the door and out into the August evening.
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It was not yet eight o'clock when Dill came back into his dead sister's living room. By walking Brattle down the stairs, he had given the Senator and Tim Dolan time to think up the plot that would enable them to accept Brattle's proposal. But first they would have to ease Dill out. He wondered how they would go about it. He knew they would be devious; he almost hoped they would be clever.
As he came back into the living room, Tim Dolan asked him a question and Dill immediately ruled out clever. Dolan asked, “D'you think he bought our act?”
“Brattle?”
“Yeah.”
“He seemed to,” Dill said.
The Senator smiled. “I think we all played him rather expertly, don't you?” Before Dill could answer, the Senator went on, “Especially when Tim here went into his dumb guy role.”
Dill nodded. “That certainly was convincing.”
“He bought it,” Dolan said, his expression confident, but his tone a trifle dubious.
“He did that,” Dill said and asked the Senator, “What now?”
“Now? Well, now we play him along for just a day or two and then we'll reel him in. I think, though,” he added slowly, letting a wise, thoughtful look spread across that almost perfect face, “I think we should let Tim here handle all negotiations with Brattle from now on, don't you?”
“He's counsel,” Dill said. “It should be his job.”
“Good,” Ramirez said. “By the way, Ben, I want to compliment
you on the way you've handled everything down here. Really excellent. First class.”
“Thank you.”
The Senator had one more question. He asked it as casually as he could. “Do you think it's true?”
“You mean about those four names he gave you of the guys he made rich?”
The Senator nodded.
“Sure,” Dill said. “It's true. If it weren't, why would Brattle bring them up? What good would it do him?”
“My thinking exactly.”
“And mine,” Dolan said.
“Well,” the Senator announced in a too bright, too cheery voice, “I'm starved. Why don't we all go get a big steak somewhere?”
“I'll take a raincheck,” Dill said and noted the small look of relief that appeared on the Senator's face, but which almost immediately changed into one of mild suspicion. Dill went quickly into his explanation. “I'll be going back to Washington tomorrow or the next day and this'll probably be the last chance I'll have to look around here to see if there's anything of Felicity's I wantâfamily pictures, letters, stuff like that. Why don't you all take the car and I'll call a cab later.”
After Dill handed the car keys to Dolan and asked him to leave them in his hotel box, the Senator took one last glance around the living room and said, “Your sister lived here quite a while?”
“No, not too long.”
“Cozy little place, isn't it?”
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After the Senator and Dolan left, Dill carried the kitchen stool back into the bedroom. He slid open the closet door, shoved Felicity's
clothes to one side, and placed the stool in the closet beneath the ceiling trap that led up into the carriage-house atticâor crawl space.
Standing on the kitchen stool, Dill pressed his palms against the trap. It gave way easily. He shoved it over to one side. The kitchen stool was only three feet high and Dill's height brought the top of his head even with the nine-foot ceiling. He grasped the edge of the trap hole, jumped, got his elbows over the edge, and after some frantic scrambling, managed to get a knee up. After that it was relatively easy.
The ceiling joists were covered with pieces of scrap plywood that formed a kind of path. Dill took from a pocket the candle he had found in the kitchen and lit it with a wooden match. He followed the plywood path toward the area of the living-room ceiling. As he crawled along the plywood, he talked silently to the dead Harold Snow: You wouldn't have lied to me, Harold, would you? No, not you. Never. A thousand dollars for fifteen minutes' work. So why would you lie to me?
When Dill reached what he guessed was the center of the living-room ceiling, he stopped, held the candle up, and found that Harold Snow hadn't lied after all. The small voice-activated tape recorder was just where Snow had said it would be. Dill pushed the rewind button, removed the cassette, and put it in a pocket. He left the tape recorder where it was and backed his way along the plywood path to the trap hole. It was much easier going down than coming up. Standing on the kitchen stool once more, he put the trap lid back into place.
After he carried the stool back into the kitchen he stopped and listened. It was not any particular sound that caused him to listen, but the absence of one. He went to the kitchen window and looked out. The view was of the alley, and across it was a backyard that boasted six tall silver poplars. The poplars usually swayed, shivered,
and trembled even in the slightest breeze. They were now perfectly still because there was no windânone at all. Then suddenly it came, down from the north, down from Canada and Montana and the Dakotas. The poplars trembled at first, then swayed, and finally danced madly in the cool hard north wind.
By the time Dill turned off all the lights, made sure the windows were closed, and went down the stairs and out the door, it was 8:33 P.M. and dark. The temperature had dropped 31 degrees in the past thirty-five minutes and was now down to 64. The north wind was beginning to gust. There was the smell of rain. Dill shivered in the sudden chill and found it to be a curious sensation. But then, he thought, so is any cold day in August.
Dill cut diagonally across the old brickyard that had been transformed into a park. Just as he reached the municipal pool where he and Jake Spivey had learned to swim and Dill had taught himself to dive, the rain beganâbig fat splattering drops that hit the dust and sent up a sweet clean smell. Dill stopped and turned his face up to the rain. The pleasant sensation lasted only a few seconds before the chill set in. Dill hurried through the rain, trotting now. He got wet, then drenched, and by the time he came out of the park near Eighteenth and TR Boulevard, he was soaked, shivering, and wishing it would stop.
There had been a drugstore on the corner of Eighteenth and TR Boulevard for years, Dill recalled. He wondered if it was still there. The King Brothers, he remembered. We Deliver. It had kept its soda fountain even after all the other drugstores got rid of theirs. The King brothers had said they didn't think a drugstore was really a drugstore without a soda fountain. When Dill came out of the park he spotted the old neon sign with its economical abbreviation: King Bros Drugs. He trotted down the sidewalk and ducked into the store out of the rain.
It was a place that still offered a little of everything and the
first purchase Dill made was a bath towel. He used it to dry himself off as he wandered down the aisles looking for a small tape recorder-player. He found one, a Sony Super Walkman, jammed in between the Mr. Coffee cartons and the sets of chrome socket wrenches. Dill took the Sony over to the counter. A man of about sixty stood behind the cash register. Dill thought he might be one of the King brothers, but wasn't sure, and blamed his faltering memory on approaching senility.
The man took the Sony, looked at its price, nodded his appreciation, and said, “Can't beat those Japanese,” when Dill handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
The man put the Sony in a sack and slid it across the counter along with ninety-nine cents change. “I put it in an ice-cream sack,” he said. “It'll keep the rain out.”
“Thanks,” Dill said. “Have you got a pay phone? I need to call a cab.”
“You can call one, but it won't ever come. Not on a night like this.”
“Then I'll call somebody else,” Dill said.
“Phone's right back there,” the man said, nodding toward the rear of the store. He stared at Dill for a moment. “Say, didn't you used to come in here when you were a kid?âhell, it must be twenty-five, thirty years agoâyou and your buddy, who was kinda chubby back then.”
“He still is,” Dill said.
“I remember your nose,” the man said. “Haven't seen you around lately, though. What'd you do, move out of the neighborhood?”
“Moved a little north and east,” Dill said.
The man nodded. “Yeah, a lot of folks are moving out that way.”
Dill dropped a dime into the pay phone and called Anna
Maude Singe at her office. She answered on the second ring. He told her where he was stuck and she said she would come get him. Dill's second call was to Jake Spivey.
After Spivey said hello, Dill said, “It's on.”
“Clyde say he'd be there?”
“He said he'd think about it.”
“That means he'll be there. Who else?”
“Just me,” Dill said. “Better make it nine-thirty instead of ten.”
“Well, it's gonna be one real interesting night,” Spivey said, and hung up.
Dill moved back to the front of the drugstore and took a stool at the soda fountain. He wondered if they still called them soda jerks. Whatever they called them, Dill asked the one behind the counter for a cup of coffee. While he waited, he checked the Sony to see if it had batteries. It didn't, so he bought some, put them in, inserted the end of the earplug into its proper socket, slipped in the cassette, held the earplug up to his ear, and pressed the play button.
The first thing he heard was “Sixty-nine is very fine, testing, testing. Ten, niner, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and we've got ignition. Testing ⦠testing ⦠testing ⦠and fuck you, Dill.” It was the voice of the dead Harold Snow, sounding very much alive. There was a brief silence. Then Dill heard Tim Dolan's voice: “Don't you wanta take your coat off?” And his own reply: “I'm not all that warm.” This was followed by the voice of Harley saying: “Just the three of you?” And again Dill: “Just the three of us.” Thank you, Harold, Dill thought, and pushed the button for stop and then the one for fast forward.
With a judicious amount of backing and filling, Dill soon found the place on the tape he wantedâthe one where the conversation between Senator Ramirez and Tim Dolan took place while Dill was walking Clyde Brattle down the stairs of the carriage house.
Afterward, Dill could never remember the conversation without one word popping unbidden into his mind: illuminating.
Dolan spoke first: He gone?
Then the senator: Yes.
DOLAN
: Jesus.
SENATOR:
You understand it now?
DOLAN:
Sure I understand it now. A kid could understand it.
SENATOR:
I want those four guys, Tim.
DOLAN:
Christ, I don't blame you. You'll get all the ink for handing Brattle and Spivey over to Justice, and those other four guys will be forever asking how high when you say hop.
SENATOR:
There's Dill though.
DOLAN:
You could fire him.
SENATOR:
Not smart.
DOLAN:
Find him a cushy job in Rome or Paris or somewhere. Make him grateful.
SENATOR:
Better. I think I'll start easing him out tonight. Just follow my lead.
DOLAN:
He's coming back.
SENATOR:
Right.
There was the sound of the door being opened and closed and then Dolan asking, “D'you think he swallowed it?” and Dill replying: “Brattle?” After that, Dill pushed the stop button and then the one for rewind. He put the tape recorder and the earplug back into the ice-cream sack. Remembering his coffee, he picked up the cup and tasted it. He'd forgotten the sugar, so he put some in. He sat there at the marble soda-fountain counter, the same counter
he had spent hours at as a child, and thought about the hole he had dug for himself. He marveled at its depth, and at the slipperiness of its sides, and wondered how he would ever climb out of it.