Todd glanced over his shoulder at the man in the other bed and then drew his chair
closer to Dussander’s bed. He could smell Dussander’s smell, as dry as the Egyptian
room in the museum.
‘So ask.’
‘That wino. You said something about me having experience. First-hand experience.
What was that supposed to mean?’
Dussander’s smile widened a bit. ‘I read the newspapers, boy. Old men always read
the newspapers, but not in the same way younger people do. Buzzards are known to
gather at the ends of certain airport runways in South America when the crosswinds are
treacherous, did you know that? That is how an old man reads the newspaper. A month
ago there was a story in the Sunday paper. Not a front page story, no one cares enough
about bums and alcoholics to put them on the front page, but it was the lead story in the
feature section, IS SOMEONE STALKING SANTA DONATO’S DOWN-AND-OUTS? –
that’s what it was called. Crude. Yellow journalism. You Americans are famous for it’
Todd’s hands were clenched into fists, hiding the butchered nails. He never read the
Sunday papers, he had better things to do with his time. He had of course checked the
papers every day for at least a week following each of his little adventures, and none of
his stewbums had ever gotten beyond page three. The idea that someone had been making
connections behind his back infuriated him.
‘The story mentioned several murders, extremely brutal murders. Stabbings,
bludgeonings. “Subhuman brutality” was how the writer put it, but you know reporters.
The writer of this lamentable piece admitted that there is a high death-rate among these
unfortunates, and that Santa Donato has had more than its share of the indigent over the
years. In any given year, not all of these men die naturally, or of their own bad habits.
There are frequent murders. But in most cases the murderer is usually one of the
deceased degenerate’s compatriots, the motive no more than an argument over a penny-
ante card-game or a bottle of muscatel. The killer is usually happy to confess. He is filled
with remorse.
‘But these recent killings have not been solved. Even more ominous, to this yellow
journalist’s mind — or whatever passes for his mind – is the high disappearance rate over
the last few years. Of course, he admits again, these men are not much more than
modern-day hobos. They come and go. But some of these left without picking up welfare
cheques or day-labour cheques from Spell O’ Work, which only pays on Fridays. Could
some of these have been victims of this yellow journalist’s Wino Killer, he asks? Victims
who haven’t been found? Pah!’
Dussander waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss such arrant irresponsibility.
‘Only titillation, of course. Give people a comfortable little scare on Sunday morning.
He calls up old bogies, threadbare but still useful – the Cleveland Torso Murderer,
Zodiac, the mysterious Mr X who killed the Black Dahlia, Springheel Jack. Such drivel.
But it makes me think. What does an old man have to do but think when old friends don’t
come to visit anymore?’
Todd shrugged.
‘I thought: “If I wished to help this odious yellow-dog journalist, which I certainly do not, I could explain some of the disappearances. Not the corpses found stabbed or
bludgeoned, not them, God rest their besotted souls, but some of the disappearances.
Because at least some of the bums who disappeared are in my cellar.”‘
‘How many down there?’ Todd asked in a low voice.
‘Five,’ Dussander said calmly. ‘Counting the one you helped me dispose of, just five.’
‘You’re really nutso,’ Todd said. The skin below his eyes had gone white and shiny. ‘At
some point you just blew all your fucking wheels.’
‘”Blew my wheels.” What a charming idiom! Perhaps you’re right! But then I said to
myself: “This newspaper jackal would love to pin the murders and the disappearances on
the same somebody – his hypothetical Wino Killer. But I think maybe that’s not what
happened at all.”
‘Then I say to myself: “Do I know anybody who might be doing such things? Somebody
who has been under as much strain as I have during the last few years? Someone who
has also been listening to old ghosts rattle their chains?” And the answer is yes. I know you, boy.’
‘I’ve never killed anyone.’
The image that came was not of the winos; they weren’t people, not really people at
all. The image that came was of himself crouched behind the dead tree, peering through
the telescopic sight of his .30-.30, the crosshairs fixed on the temple of the man with the scuzzy beard, the man driving the Brat pick-up.
‘Perhaps not,’ Dussander agreed, amicably enough. ‘Yet you took hold so well the
other night. Your surprise was mostly anger at having been put in such a dangerous
position by an old man’s infirmity, I think. Am I wrong?’
‘No, you’re not wrong,’ Todd said. ‘I was pissed off at you, and I still am. I covered it
up for you because you’ve got something in a safety deposit box that could destroy my
life.’
‘No. I do not’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘It was as much a bluff as your “letter left with a friend”. You never wrote such a letter, there never was such a friend, and I have never written a single word about our …
association, shall I call it? Now I lay my cards on the table. You saved my life. Never
mind that you acted only to protect yourself; that does not change how speedily and
efficiently you acted. I cannot hurt you, boy. I tell you that freely. I have looked death in the face and it frightens me, but not as badly as ! thought it would. There is no document.
It is as you say: we are quits.’
Todd smiled: a weird upward corkscrewing of the lips. A strange, sardonic light
danced and fluttered in his eyes.
‘Herr Dussander,’ he said, ‘if only I could believe that’
In the evening Todd walked down to the slope overlooking the freeway, climbed down
to the dead tree, and sat on it. It was just past twilight. The evening was warm. Car
headlights cut through the dusk in long yellow daisy chains.
There is no document.
He hadn’t realized how completely irretrievable the entire situation was until the
discussion that had followed. Dussander suggested Todd search the house for a safety
deposit key, and when he didn’t find one, that would prove there was no safety deposit
box and hence no document. But a key could be hidden anywhere – it could be put in. a
Crisco can and then buried, it could be put in a Sucrets tin and slid behind a board that had been loosened and then replaced; he might even have ridden the bus to San Diego
and put it behind one of the rocks in the decorative stone wall which surrounds the
bears’ environmental area. For that matter, Todd went on, Dussander could even have
thrown the key away. Why not? He had only needed it once, to put his written document
in. If he died, someone else would take it out
Dussander nodded reluctantly at this, but after a moment’s thought he made another suggestion. When he got well enough to go home, he would have the boy call every single
bank in Santa Donato. He would tell each bank official he was calling for his
grandfather. Poor grandfather, he would say, had grown lamentably senile over the last
two years, and now he had misplaced the key to his safety deposit box. Even worse, he
could no longer remember which bank the box was in. Could they just check their files
for an Arthur Denker, no middle initial? And when Todd drew a blank at every bank in
town-
Todd was already shaking his head again. First, a story like that was almost
guaranteed to raise suspicions. It was too pat They would probably suspect a con-game
and get in touch with the police. Even if every one of them bought the story, it would do
no good. If none of the almost nine dozen banks in Santa Donato had a box in the Denker
name, it didn’t mean that Dussander hadn’t rented one in San Diego, LA, or any town in
between.
At last Dussander gave up.
‘You have all the answers, boy. All, at least, but one. What would I stand to gain by
lying to you? I invented this story to protect myself from you – that is a motive. Now I am
trying to uninvent it What possible gain do you see in that?’
Dussander got laboriously up on one elbow.
‘For that matter, why would I need a document at all, at this point? I could destroy
your life from this hospital bed, if that was what I wanted. I could open my mouth to the