Crowe slumped down carefully until he was sitting, legs splayed and hands on the carpet. It didn’t feel any better than standing.
“You wanna know how I found you?” Wills said. “It was amazingly easy.”
“Not really interested.”
“Aw, come on. Don’t you wanna hear about how the dumb-ass redneck cop tracked down the oh-so-clever crook?”
Crowe thought for a moment, and said, “Rad’s Pontiac. GPS device or something, yeah?”
Wills looked disappointed, and Crowe couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, Wills, that’s really clever, boy. You sure did outsmart me.”
He stood up, took one long stride across the room, and kicked Crowe in the gut with his bare foot. Crowe doubled up on the floor, not able to breath, and everything went dim around the edges.
While he struggled for breath, Wills said, “The stroke of genius was in knowing
who’s
car you’d be in. Get it? You and Radnovian, you been like pigs in a poke. I figured you’d turn to him eventually. So after you killed that little piece of ass of yours, I—“
“Didn’t kill her,” Crowe said. “You know… you know I didn’t…”
“What? I didn’t hear you, Crowe, on account of I was talking. As I was saying, while everyone else in town was scouring the streets for you, I just turned my attention to Radnovian. And you didn’t disappoint. You turned up there in no time at all.”
Crowe managed to sit up straight again. The room was cool, almost cold, but sweat ran down his face and pricked under his arms. His perspective was off; Wills looked like a long, narrow giant looming over him. Crowe was getting vertigo looking up at him.
“Okay,” Crowe said. “Hooray for the cop.”
Wills laughed a sort of throaty, sick laugh and turned around and went to sit down on the bed again. He perched on the edge, legs splayed, so Crowe could see the bad cut of his slacks stretched along the thighs. There was a hole in one sock, and his little toe stuck out of it. He said, “I was thinking that maybe you were my ticket to seeing Vitower locked up. I’ve been waiting for a long time for that, you know. Something, anything, to pin on that bastard. And the minute you came back to town… scratch that. Not the minute you came back to town, but the minute you showed up at Vitower’s club, I started getting my hopes up. Crowe, I thought, wouldn’t be seeing Marco Vitower without a good reason. And the fact that ole’ Peter Murke was about to be transported to Jackson, well… it just all came together, didn’t it?”
Crowe didn’t answer, and Wills didn’t look as if he really expected him to. He set his gun on the bed next to him, reached for a pack of cigarettes sitting on the nightstand, lit one up, and, sucking smoke, gazed at Crowe thoughtfully. Finally, he grinned again and said, “But it didn’t really. It didn’t come together at all. You haven’t given me anything, Crowe. Nothing to pin on Vitower. Oh, sure, I could take you in and the prosecution could work up a good case against you on something—if not your bitch’s murder, then something else—but what good would that do me? I still wouldn’t be any closer to Vitower.”
“See, now you’re making me feel bad.”
Wills snorted. “Yeah.”
“What’s your mad-on with Vitower anyway?”
“He’s a crook. I’m a cop. Do the math.”
“There’s plenty of crooks. You’ve made it your private mission to take Vitower out. It’s not just the job. There’s something personal there. Right?”
Wills’ face went dark, and his eyes glittered with alcoholic fury. He said, “You need to mind your own business.”
“Yeah, okay. Sure. But you know, if you really want Vitower, you could always try to convince me to turn state’s evidence or something.”
“You seen too many cops and lawyers shows. There’s nothing you could give me.”
Crowe drummed his fingers on the carpet. “Maybe, maybe not. But as it happens, I was at the scene when Murke got busted out. It’s possible that I could tell you a thing or two about that.”
Wills shook his head. “You really are a major league dumb-ass, Crowe. You think I don’t know you were there? But lucky for you, there was nothing at the scene that could officially connect you or any of Vitower’s people to it. And even if there was, it still wouldn’t do me any good. The state cops are handling that investigation now. If you got busted, it would be
their
break, not mine.”
Crowe laughed weakly. “Well, that’s some hard luck, Wills. You got me, but now you don’t know what to do with me. Like a dog chasing a car.”
“Oh, I got some ideas about what to do with you, Crowe. Don’t you worry none about that.” He took a last long drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt in Crowe’s direction. It bounced off Crowe’s leg and on to the carpet, where it immediately started burning a hole.
Crowe picked it up and crushed it out between his fingers and tossed it away. “When did you become such a bad cop?” he said.
Wills stood up very suddenly, gun back in his hand, and for a second Crowe thought he was going to shoot him right then. His face tight, Wills said, “I’m not a bad cop. I’m the good guy here, Crowe, you understand that? I’m the one trying to stop the bad guys.”
“Well, you haven’t done such a hot job so far, have you?”
“It’s not my fault that the system works in their favor. People like your boss, they’re well-protected in this fucking city. They know the ins and outs. They know the right people. It makes my job goddamn difficult.”
“So what’s your solution, Wills? You gonna shoot me and leave me for dead here?”
“You wouldn’t be the first gangster found in a seedy motel room, killed under mysterious circumstances.”
“There wasn’t anything seedy about this room before you got here, Wills.”
Teeth clenched, Wills pointed the gun at Crowe’s head and Crowe forced himself to not look away, to stare him right in the eyes. Seconds went by that felt like minutes, and Crowe’s heart pounded.
After an eternity, Wills lowered the gun and said, “Boy, have you got some kinda death wish? Or are you just stupid? You don’t talk like that to a man with a gun. Especially a man who already wants desperately to just kill you and be done with it.”
“If you really wanted to kill me, Wills, you’d have done it by now. As lousy a cop as you are, you’re still not good with killing a man in cold blood, are you?”
“I wouldn’t presume so much if I was you.”
Crowe shook his head. “It’s not in you. Or rather, it is in you, but you don’t want it to be. This city has made you sick, Wills. Sicker than the bad guys.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think I do. I think Vitower did something to you, something that hit you in the guts, and you haven’t been able to think straight about him since. What was it? What did he do to you?”
For a long moment he looked torn—Crowe could see all of it in his face. Wills may have been a tough one, but booze makes even the toughest bastard a weakling. An open book. Anger flickered through his features, then doubt, and then fear, the kind of fear a little kid has, unreasoning and panicked. He said, “You… I mean, you don’t…”
Crowe waited him out, and finally Wills took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “The Old Man… your old boss, I mean… he and I had an understanding. He wasn’t a bad guy, not like the gangsters now.”
“You mean he wasn’t black.”
Wills shook his head hard. “No. That’s not it. Typical stupid Northerner assumption. You think I hate Vitower ‘cause he’s black? No, I hate Vitower because he…”
“Because he what?”
“Because he killed the Old Man. It wasn’t no heart failure. Vitower killed him as sure as I’m standing here.”
“What do you care?”
“What do I care? That’s a helluva question. What do I care, he says. Goddamn sonofabitch.”
“The Old Man was just another gang boss. No better or worse than Vitower.”
Wills’ face twisted and he spat, “That’s a lie. You say that again and I will shoot you, Crowe. The Old Man was decent.”
“Yeah. The most decent guy who ever ordered a hit. The most decent guy to ever sell drugs to kids or pay strong-arms to break people’s legs.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“What a sweetheart he was.”
Wills screamed then, and it surprised Crowe so much that he jerked his head back and hit it on the door. “He raised me, you smart-mouthed punk! He was like a father to me!”
“What?”
“He treated me like his own flesh and blood, and you think you can bad-mouth him, can defile his memory?”
“What?”
Wills was breathing heavily, the gun still gripped tight in his fingers. His face had gone purple, and the broken capillaries in his nose showed white. He said, “My father… my real father… died when I was a kid. He worked for the Old Man, and he… he tried to go behind the Old Man’s back and do some drug deals on his own. He got killed by a bunch of dealers from Nashville. You’d think the Old Man would say ‘good riddance’ to a guy who tried to double-deal him. But he didn’t. He… he took care of me and my mom. He gave her money. He made sure I went to school. He—“
“He did this,” Crowe said, “without anyone knowing?”
“He wanted me to be a cop. I don’t… I don’t know why. But that’s what he wanted. And so that’s what I did.”
Crowe threw his head back against the door again, on purpose this time, and laughed out loud.
“What the hell’s so goddamn funny?”
“You, Wills. You’re killing me. That’s the sappiest story I ever heard in my life.”
“It’s not sappy!”
“The benevolent old gangster, taking the poor widowed mother and little boy under his wing. Honestly, tell me you’re pulling my leg.”
“You motherfucker.”
“Your real dad died when he went against the Old Man, yeah? But the Old Man didn’t have anything to do with it. Please, brother. You really believe that?”
“He never would have lied to me.”
“All he ever did was lie to you, Wills! Any moron could tell you the real story: the Old Man had your dad killed, and took your mom in because… well, I don’t know. Was she hot? Did he wanna fuck her?”
Wills took a step toward him and whipped the gun against his skull. Red light exploded behind Crowe’s eyes and he fell to the floor. Blood poured down his forehead and across his cheek, but he laughed.
“You filthy sonofabitch,” Wills said.
“And he… he wanted you to… to be a cop… because that would be just the funniest punch line ever…”
Wills glared, and Crowe saw it finally happen, saw the tether finally snap. Wills extended his arm so that the gun barrel was pushed up hard against Crowe’s head, and his finger tightened on the trigger.
Crowe stopped laughing and kicked out with his left leg and got him hard, just below his right kneecap.
It snapped, an ugly muted sound in the little motel room, and Wills fell to his right, still gripping the gun. It went off, and the bullet kicked up plaster from the wall about six inches from Crowe’s head, and Wills’ skull hit the edge of the little writing desk by the door and the sound that made was even uglier than the snapping bone of his leg.
He dropped on the carpet and was still.
For a long time, neither of them moved; anyone looking in from outside would’ve thought they were both dead.
Crowe kept telling himself he should get up, get out, but he couldn’t will it. The carpet against his jaw felt nice and cool, and even the blood dripping from his scalp where Wills had pistol-whipped him didn’t trouble him much.
He drifted off for a few minutes, and woke up very suddenly, close to panicking over some real or imagined threat. Wills was still where he had fallen. Crowe could see the pulse in his neck, and that surprised him; he’d assumed Wills was dead.
That meant he had no time. Wills would either lapse into a coma and die without ever waking up, or he’d come to, get up, and kick the shit out of Crowe before putting a bullet in his head. Crowe didn’t want to wait around to find out.
Pulling together the little strength he had left, he dragged himself laboriously to the bed. It took about five minutes, according to the little bedside clock on the nightstand. Another four minutes, and he’d pulled himself up and was sprawled with his face in the sheets.
It was comfortable there, and he didn’t move for a while.
When he looked back at the clock, ten minutes had gone by and he said, “Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” and pushed himself up and to his feet. He wobbled a little, but standing helped to clear his head and he went toward the door. Blood dripped in his eye from the fresh wound on his temple; he swiped it away and nearly stumbled over Wills.
Wills groaned, and the fingers of his left hand moved. The gun was still in his right. Crowe thought about leaning over to get it, but the idea of bending down and back up again was too daunting and he let it go.
He opened the door and went out into the cold night.
The Pontiac started up easily and he pulled out without smashing into anything and drove away from the motel.
The Ghost Cat rubbed against his hand and purred. He scratched it behind the ears. The cat liked that. It pushed its head against his hand, arching its back, tail up, and he felt for the first time what it was like to have a friend. The Ghost Cat didn’t hate him because he was skinny and ugly, not like the other kids, not like Mom, who thought he was stupid and worthless. The Ghost Cat liked him.
The cat started to move away, done for the moment with the boy’s attentions. But the boy wasn’t done with it. He grabbed its tail and pulled it back. It dug its claws in the dirt, but the boy pulled harder and grabbed it around the middle and squeezed it to his chest.
Ghost Cat struggled against him, clawing and scratching, and the boy said, Shh, shh, it’s okay, I love you, I just want to love you, but the Ghost Cat wouldn’t listen, was being foolish and obstinate. Shut up, the boy said, and hit it in the face. It hissed, ears back, and that made the boy madder. He hit it again, and again, and one of its teeth broke away in the boy’s knuckles. He gripped it around the neck and threw it against a tree and when it hit the ground it wasn’t moving but the boy was still mad, was still furious at the betrayal and wasn’t done with it yet.