‘Bluh,’ said the cop, holding one smeared hand out to Norman. His eyes didn’t bother; they seemed to have floated away completely.
‘Yes, I know, blood, that goddam bull,’ Norman said, and shoved the cop into the trunk. He lay there limply, with one twitching leg still sticking out. Norman bent it at the knee, loaded it in, and slammed the trunk shut. Then he went back to the rookie. The rook was trying to sit up, although his eyes said he was still mostly unconscious. His ears were bleeding. Norman dropped to one knee, settled his hands around the young cop’s throat, and began to squeeze.
The cop fell backward. Norman sat on him and kept squeezing. When the Beav had ceased all movement, Norman put his ear against the young man’s chest. He heard three heartbeats from in there, random and disordered, like fish flopping on a riverbank. Norman sighed and slid his hands around the Beav’s throat again, thumbs pressing into his windpipe. Now
someone will come, he thought, now someone’ll come for sure, but no one did. Someone called, ‘Yo, muthafucka!’ from the white blank of Bryant Park, and there was shrill laughter, the kind only drunks and the mentally retarded can manage, but that was all. Norman bent his ear against the cop’s chest again. This guy was stage-dressing, and he didn’t want his stage-dressing coming to life at a crucial moment.
This time there was nothing ticking but the Beav’s watch.
Norman picked him up, carted him around to the passenger side of the Caprice, and loaded him in. He jammed the rookie’s hat down as far as he could — black and swollen, the kid’s face was now the face of a troll — and slammed the door. Now every part of Norman’s body was throbbing, but the worst pain of all had once more settled in his teeth and jaws.
Maude, he thought. That’s all about Maude.
Suddenly he was very glad he. couldn’t remember what he had done with Maude . . . or to her. And of course it really hadn’t been him at all; it had been ze bool, el tow grande. But dear God, how everything hurt. It was as if he were being dismantled from the inside out, taken apart a bolt and a screw and a cog at a time.
The Beav was sliding slowly to the left, his dead eyes bulging out of his face like croaker marbles. ‘No you don’t, whoa, Nellie,’ Norman said, and pulled him upright again. He reached in farther and buckled the Beav’s seatbelt and harness. That did the trick. Norman stood back a little and took a critical look. He didn’t think he’d done badly, all in all. The Beav just looked conked out, catching an extra forty or fifty winks.
He leaned in the window again, careful not to disturb the Beav’s position, and pawed open the glove compartment. He expected to find a first-aid kit, and he wasn’t disappointed. He popped the lid, took out a dusty old bottle of Anacin, and swallowed five or six. He was leaning against the side of the car, chewing them and wincing at the sharp, vinegary taste, when his mind took another of those skips.
When he came back to himself time had passed, but probably not too much; his mouth and throat were still filled with the sour taste of aspirin. He was in the vestibule of her building, snapping the light-switch up and down. Nothing happened when he did it; the little room stayed dark. He’d done something to the lights, then. That was good. He had one of the Charlie-David cops’ guns in his other hand. He was holding it by the barrel, and he had an idea he’d used the butt to hammer something. Fuses, maybe? Had he been down cellar?
Maybe, but it didn’t matter. The lights here didn’t work, and that was enough.
This was a rooming-house — a nice one, but still a rooming-house. It was impossible to mistake the smell of cheap food, the kind that always got cooked on a hotplate. It was a smell that seeped into the walls after awhile, and nothing could get rid of it. Two or three weeks from now the characteristic sound of rooming-houses in summer would be added to that smell: the low, intermingled whine of small fans set in many different windows, trying to cool rooms that would be walk-in ovens in August. She had traded her nice little house for this cramped desperation, but there was no time to puzzle over that mystery now. The question right now was how many roomers lived in this building, and how many of them would be in early on a Saturday night. How many, in other words, might be a problem?
None of them will be, said the voice from the pocket of Norman’s new topcoat. It was a comfy voice. None of them will be, because what happens after doesn’t matter, and that simplifies everything. If anyone gets in your way, just kill them.
He turned, went out onto the stoop, and pulled the vestibule door shut behind him. He tried it and found it locked. He supposed he’d picked his way in — the lock certainly didn’t look like much of a challenge — but it was mildly disquieting not to know for sure. And the lights.
Why had he gone to the trouble of killing them, when she would most likely come in alone?
For that matter, how did he know she wasn’t in already?
This second was easy — he knew she wasn’t in because the bull had told him she wasn’t,
and he believed it. As to the first question, she might not be alone. Gertie might be with her, or . . . well, ze bool had said something about a boyfriend. Norman found that frankly impossible to believe, but . . . ‘She likes the way he kisses her,’ Ferd had said. Stupid, she’d never dare . . . but it never hurt to be safe.
He started down the steps, meaning to go back to the cop car, meaning to slide behind the wheel and start waiting for her to show up, and that was when the last flip happened, and it was a flip this time, a flip and not a skip, he went up like a coin flipped from the thumbnail of a referee in a pregame ritual, who to kick, who to receive, and when he came back down he was slamming the vestibule door behind him, lunging into the darkness, and locking his hands around the neck of Rose’s boyfriend. He didn’t know how he knew the man was her boyfriend and not just some plainclothes cop who had been charged with seeing her home safe, but who cared? He did know, and that was enough. His whole head was vibrating with outrage and fury. Had he seen this guy
(she likes the way he kisses her)
swapping spit with her before going in, maybe with his hands sliding down from her waist to cup her ass? He couldn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, didn’t need to remember.
‘I told you!’ the bull said; even in its fury its voice was perfectly lucid. ‘I told you, didn’t I?
That’s what her friends have taught her! Nice! Very nice!’
Tm going to kill you, motherfucker,’ he whispered into the unseen face of the man who was Rosie’s boyfriend, and forced him back against the vestibule wall. ‘And oh boy, if I can, if God lets me, I’m gonna kill you twice.’
He clamped his hands around Bill Steiner’s throat and began to squeeze.
11
‘Norman!’ Rosie screamed in the darkness. ‘Norman, let him go!’ Bill’s hand, which had lightly been touching the back of her arm ever since she had pulled her key out of the door, was suddenly gone. She heard stumbling footfalls — foot-thuds — in the darkness. Then there was a heavier bump as someone drove someone else into the vestibule wall.
Tm going to kill you, motherfucker,’ came whispering out of the dark. ‘And oh boy, if I can, if God lets me — ‘
I’m gonna kill you twice, she finished in her head before he could finish out loud; it was one of Norman’s favorite threats, often yelled at the TV screen when an umpire made a call that went against Norman’s beloved Yankees, or when someone cut him off in traffic. If God lets me, I’m gonna kill you twice. And now she heard a choking, gargly sound, and of course that was Bill. That was Bill in the process of having the life choked out of him by Norman’s large and powerful hands.
Instead of the terror Norman had always roused in her, she felt a return of the rage she’d experienced in Male’s car and then at the police station. This time it seemed almost to engulf her. ‘Let him alone, Norman!’ she screamed. ‘Get your fucking hands off him!’