Eleven Hours (29 page)

He took a deep drag on his cigarette and looked measurably calmer. “God, that's good. I blame you,” he said. “You came into my life, and look at me.”

Rich said, “You can't have just one, they say.”

“Don't I know it,” said Scott, pulling out a pack of Marlboros from his load-bearing vest.

Rich smiled. “Some quitter,” he said.

“Don't let anyone say I'm a quitter,” said Scott, jumping off the car to pick up a photo that had fallen out of his vest.

“What's this?” Rich asked.

“My son.” Scott showed Rich the laminated picture. “I don't want to be shot in the middle of boondock, Texas, and have the last face I see before I croak to be that of a total stranger. I want to look at someone close to me.”

“What'd you have it laminated for? Don't want to bleed all over your kid?”

“Exactly right,” said Scott.

Rich was quiet. “The last face you'll see will be mine,” he said at last.

“Hey, I could do a lot worse,” said Scott.

They waited.

Scott said, “Maybe, after this is over, we can play a round or two of golf?”

“I don't think so,” said Rich, and saw Scott sink into himself a little bit. “After this is over, we're going to need a drink.”

They waited.

“Why did you go into the FBI, Scott?” Rich asked.

“You know why I went in?” Scott replied, rubbing the machine gun. “Because there are bullies in this world, and I knew a bunch of them. Take you, you look like a nice man, a good man. Your wife is a good woman, and yet someone out there wants to do her harm—hurt her, maybe kill her. And I want him to know that I represent a force equal to or greater than him. I'm here to stop him. And I take my job very seriously. I don't like bullies—hurting helpless people. I don't like being helpless myself. I come prepared for him. I'm here to protect your wife against the bullies.”

*   *   *

Neighborhood people came out to inquire about the commotion. Scott politely told them to go back inside, there was nothing going on, the police just wanted to talk to the Blecks. Yes, everything was fine, no, there was nothing anyone else could do. Except maybe tell them where the Blecks were. But no one knew.

“How can no one know? What kind of nosy neighbors are these?” Rich whispered to Scott as he sat back down on the hood. “Where we live, our neighbors from across the street have nothing better to do but to look out of their kitchen windows and see how many times the UPS truck comes to our house.”

Scott was quiet. Then he asked, “Does it come often, man?”

Rich nodded. “Come to think of it, my wife is on a first-name basis with the UPS man,” said Rich. “She calls him Benji.”

“That's really special,” said Scott, smiling.

“Every time she buys something for herself or the house or the kids, she buys something for me, too. That makes it okay.”

“Of course it does.”

Rich smiled.
I love my wife,
he thought. I don't care if she buys out the entire fucking Spiegel catalog as long as I get her back.

10:00 P.M.

“I have a story to tell you, Lyle,” Didi said. “Are you listening?”

“I'm listening, Didi.” He seemed morose. “We don't have a lot of time,” he said.

Didi's throat became dryer. “Don't we?”

Shaking his head, Lyle said, “No, uh-uh. We don't.”

Didi was quiet. She had managed to move the cuff off her wrist and now it was firmly lodged on the bone at the base of her thumb.

Water. If only she had a little water. And a tiny bit of soap.

“Tell me your story, Didi.”

There was no time. Her baby pain was in her belly again. Through this pain Didi tried to move the cuff farther down her hand; there was no feeling anywhere in her body except in her belly. She could have cut off her hand and not felt it.

The cuff stayed put, and when the baby pain was over, Didi felt liquid pain in her hand. She must have cut her wrist with the cuffs.

She watched him carefully. He had his left hand on the cop's revolver, and his right on the Colt with which he'd shot the officer. The dead officer's uniform looked awkwardly and unevenly pasted to his body. He sat still.

“Once,” Didi said haltingly, “there lived an old woman who hadn't done anything nice in her life for anyone.”

“Is this someone you know?” Lyle asked.

“No,” said Didi, fingering the broken glass, holding it tighter to make sure she didn't drop it. “When the old lady died, she headed straight to hell—”

“Naturally.”

“But the archangel Gabriel wanted to spare her an eternity of damnation, so he went to God and pleaded for the old woman's life. And God said to him, ‘If you can find one good thing that she's done, then I will spare her and let her ascend to heaven.'”

“God is so charitable.”

Didi squeezed her right wrist between the handcuffs, but the wrist hurt and wouldn't move any farther. She continued quickly, “So Gabriel searched through the old hag's life and finally found one kindness: the old woman had given an onion out of her garden to a hungry man. And God said to Gabriel, ‘Take that onion and hold it out to the old woman. If it's strong enough to pull her out of hell, then she shall rise to heaven.'” Didi felt the rumblings of a tightening stomach. She held herself together. “Lowering himself into the firepit, Gabriel extended the onion to the old woman and said, ‘Hold on, and I'll pull you out.' She grabbed the onion, and he started pulling. However, when the other sinners saw one of their own being saved by Gabriel, they grabbed on to the old hag's skirts and arms and legs, hoping the onion would pull them out too.”

Lyle laughed. “That's exactly what I would do,” he said. “Wouldn't you?”

Didi moaned and went on, “The onion was strong and the onion would have pulled them all out. Except the old hag started cursing at the other sinners, prying their fingers off her and shrieking, ‘It's my onion, it's my onion, let go, vermin, it's my onion.'”

“She is so selfish,” Lyle commented.

“That's when the onion broke, and Gabriel, with great pity, watched the old woman and the other sinners fall back into hell for eternity.”

Didi couldn't hear Lyle respond, as she panted heavily, trying to work her way through baby pain, through the tunnel.

Then Didi heard Lyle laugh softly. “Did you hear me, Didi?”

“No, Lyle, I'm sorry. What did you say?”

“The park is so quiet. No one but me is talking. How could you not hear me?” His voice sounded petulant.

“I was trying to swallow. My throat is hurting. I really need a drink. Sorry. Could you say it again, please?”
You bastard.

“I said,” Lyle repeated impatiently, “that I don't see how that story relates to me. Unless you're talking about yourself as the old woman. Which I don't think you are. Am I right?”

“You're right. I'm not.”

“Didn't think so. Well,
I've
done plenty of good things in my life. See, that's the whole problem. I've been a good person all my life. I don't see why God had to punish me.”

“I don't see why
you
have to punish
me.
”

“I'm not punishing you. God is.”

“God is too busy to be punishing me. And I don't deserve to be punished,” said Didi, shifting on the bench. Her legs were falling asleep from sitting in one position.

“I didn't deserve to be punished, either,” said Lyle.

“But you weren't punished by me, Lyle,” Didi exclaimed. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Nothing. That's my point. What did
I
ever do to God? I wasn't that old woman.”

Oddly, that had been precisely what Didi had been thinking.
What did I ever do to God?
Then she felt—resigned? No, but a feeling of failure began to wash over her, and failing a discovery of meaning in these old woods, Didi, struggling to believe in something, began to believe in her own death.

“And Didi, don't fool yourself. God led you into my hands. It wasn't a coincidence that it was you I found today. It was fate. It was divine providence, yours and mine, that our lives became tangled. Why didn't I find another pregnant woman—”

“What does being pregnant have to do with anything?” Didi said, desperation in her voice.

“Don't interrupt!” Lyle shouted, and she fell quiet immediately. They were unevenly matched—she pregnant and handcuffed, and he with two guns, a knife, and an agenda.

“Why did I go to the NorthPark Mall, the richest of all the malls, and why was the first thing I spied with my little eye as I got out of my car your belly in the yellow dress? I saw you and I said to myself, bingo. Bingo. Why didn't I find another pregnant woman?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Because God wasn't looking after me.”

“Damn right. Because it was your fate. When our fate comes calling, the only thing we can do is follow limply along.”

“Well, Lyle, isn't it so convenient for you to be so fatalistic when it comes to my bad fortune and so rebellious when it comes to your own?” Didi said sarcastically.

He was quiet a second and then said, “What are you talking about?”

“Why do you think it's my fate to have met you but not your fate to have your wife and child die?”

“Because that was not fate. That was God's way of saying ‘Screw you.'”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” she exclaimed. “And this isn't God's way of saying ‘Screw you' to me? If this isn't, Lyle, I don't know what is,” she added. “My point is, bad things do happen. They happen to everyone—”

“Except you—”

“Now, even to me,” Didi retorted. “This awful thing had happened to you, but instead of healing and coping and going on, you decided to turn on me. And what if you kill me, Lyle? And then my husband goes nuts and kills someone else? Some poor innocent fool who never knew what was coming to him? And what if the wife or husband of Rich's victim kills someone else? Think about it—it all started with you, Lyle. All with you.”

“Not with me,” Lyle said. “With God.”

“No, Lyle, with you. God was testing your faith, or looking the other way. But you actively
sought
me out to hurt me.”

“He had sought out my wife and son—”

“Oh, my God. No. Your wife got sick, and your son was too small to save. Think of how many small babies God saves—”

“Think of how many He doesn't. Mine He didn't.”

Didi stood up in her agitation and said, “First you say you don't believe in Him, then you say He wasn't looking your way, then you say He actually tried to hurt you. Well, which is it, Lyle? It can't be all three, you know.”

Lyle said, “Sit down, Didi. I don't like you to get so excited near me. You might hit me again.”

Sitting back down, Didi continued, “That was my point, that was my whole point about the woman and the onion. With one good deed, she could have saved so many people. But you with one bad deed can harm just as many. You've already got the blood of two people on your hands, Lyle. One of them a police officer, probably with a wife and a couple of kids. That's what you did to his life and to her life, and to the life of his kids. You single-handedly ruined all of them forever. That's your legacy—”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” And he jumped up, ran up to her, and smashed the Colt hard into her face. Didi's nose felt as if she had run full force into a concrete block. “Shut up,” he said, much quieter, “or I swear I will kill you now.”

She choked on her blood, which flowed freely into her mouth from her nose, and started to cough, but she felt nothing, except another baby pain that wouldn't stop for a broken nose, for a gashed head, for lacerated fingers, for a murdered cop. For nothing.

When the contraction was over, she wiped her nose with the top of her hand, hiding the broken bottle underneath. She tried to hold the nose between her fingers to stop the bleeding, but it hurt too much. So she bent forward and let the blood drip on the ground. At that moment Didi knew her dying wasn't going to stop her baby from forcing his way into the world.

“What do you want with me, Lyle?” Didi whispered, spitting blood out as she spoke. “What do you want with me?”

10:05 P.M.

Rich was in a frenzy. “I can't believe we're just sitting here, sitting here doing nothing. What if the Blecks are away on vacation? How long are we going to sit here before we realize we're too late, or they're not coming, or they don't have any answers? How long?”

“We are the ones just sitting, Rich,” Scott said. “The rest of my men are all over this town. They're not sitting, and they will find him. Maybe Lyle and Didi are eating dinner somewhere, maybe they went to the movies. The cops are looking everywhere.” Scott's face was drawn, but Rich observed fierce resolve. “We'll find him, Rich,” Scott said. “And we'll find her.”

“Don't you feel helpless sitting here waiting for something?” Rich said in a broken voice. “I thought she needed me to take out the garbage and to help with the kids and to get the jars off the high shelf and to speed her up a little when she crossed the street, but I see that she needs me to save her life, and I can't do it.”

“I know, Rich.” Scott said. “Today I hate my job.”

“Today I hate my life,” said Rich.

“Why don't you call home? Talk to your kids. It'll make you feel better.”

Rich looked at his watch. “You're kidding me, right? The kids are in bed, and my mother is sitting at the kitchen table chain-smoking and picking up the phone every few seconds to see if it's still working. What am I going to tell my mother?”