Scare Tactics (42 page)

The boy got up suddenly and turned to the wall, then looked over his shoulder at Practice. It was a calculating look.

“Lucy’s told me about you,” he said. “You asked her to marry you, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How come she didn’t marry you?”

“I suppose she’s looking for something that I haven’t got,” Practice said.

The boy sat down again, blankly, and looked at his bandaged arm. Abruptly he laughed, almost a sobbing sound, and cut it off within a few seconds.

“Say. Was that you in the garden last night? I mean over at the mansion when the dog jumped me?”

“Yes.” Practice looked sharply at Val, but the boy’s eyes were closed. “I cut him loose.”

“That dog might have killed me, mister,” Val said with a hint of petulance.

“So could I have. Sometimes I carry a gun.”

“How are those dogs? Did they die?”

“One of them’s dead.”

“I never liked dogs.”

“Lucy missed you last night. She waited an hour and you never showed up. Did you forget?”

“No, I didn’t forget. I was all tore up; I didn’t want her to see me. I had the sweats, the stinking bends.”

Practice made no reply to that. So far, Val St. George had been a surprise to him. He had expected some sort of vindictive psychopath, destructive, vicious, unpredictable. The picture he had seen at the state hospital hadn’t prepared him for Val St. George in person. True, he was defensive, deeply bitter, and eager to punish almost anyone who tried to befriend him. But Practice sensed the boy’s intelligence, and something of the passionate energy that ruled him. Energy that had gone wrong and resulted in two murders, Practice told himself, but for the first time he was aware of a doubt that this could be so.

“The bends are no good,” Practice remarked, picking up Val’s terminology. “I have my own variety.”

Val looked up cynically. “Do you?”

“What made you go to the mansion, Val?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you want to see your father?”

Val’s lips parted in a grimace of pain and dismay, as if he had been struck, and he put his hands to his face.

“What are you talking about?” he mumbled.

“I talked to your mother yesterday morning, Val.”

“Damn her! Isn’t she dead yet?”

“Do you want her to be?”

“You get out of here,” Val said threateningly. “Who asked you to come around? Who asked you to meddle? Get out of here!”

Practice stood and reached for his hat. “All right.”

He was halfway to the door when Val said tonelessly, “Wait.”

Practice glanced back. There were tear tracks on Val’s stony face.

“I didn’t mean what I said about my mother dying. I don’t want that.”

Practice sighed and stood with his arms folded. Val wiped at his cheeks, then let his hands fall between his knees.

“I wish I could go ahead and be sick,” he said softly. “But I can’t. I can’t throw up.” He lifted his head. “I don’t suppose she had much good to say about me.”

“How long since you’ve seen her?”

“Years. I don’t know exactly.”

“I think, more than anything in the world, she’d like to see you, Val.”

He tried to feign indifference, but his lips betrayed him. “Well, that isn’t likely to happen, is it?” he said brokenly. “Not now.”

Practice sat down again.

“Why did you go to the mansion Tuesday night, Val? Did you want to see John Guthrie?”

“I’d seen him before. Lots of times. Around the Capitol. On days when he was appearing before the Legislature I’d go early and get a seat in the gallery. Man, I’ve heard him make a lot of speeches. And I’ve seen him at political rallies. One time he shook my hand and smiled at me. For the rest of the day I didn’t know where I was or what I was feeling. Talk about the bends!”

“Tuesday night,” Practice said quietly.

“Sure.” Val lay back on the bunk, his hands behind his head. “I suppose I had the idea months ago, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself. Then gradually it took hold of me, like a spell, until I was walking around in a trance days and dreaming about it at night. I couldn’t think of anything else: he was my father and he was betraying me. I had to make him realize what he had done to me, what my life had been like without him.”

“How were you going to do that, Val?”

“This is the picture I had in my mind. Right out of a Technicolor movie starring Rock Hudson. He’s sitting in his bedroom late at night in a silk dressing gown. Sometimes he’s drinking a whiskey and soda and listening to music or sometimes he’s writing at a desk, working on a speech or something and using a quill pen.” Val smiled sardonically, but his eyes were shining and his hands clenched and unclenched nervously. “How’s that for imagination? Hollywood’s wasting away without me. I knew something of what his room looked like, because Lucy told me. I knew about the balcony outside. Here’s where Val St. George begins to look a lot like Anthony Quinn. He climbs up to that balcony without any trouble at all and then he ...” The boy bit his lip as his voice became a little shrill. “Then he crashes in, I mean
crashes.
He stands in the middle of the Governor’s bedroom, with broken glass around his feet, staring at his father, and his father is pale as a ghost^ but he’s tough, too. He lights a cigar and gets up, walks over to me, and looks me right in the eye. And he says, ‘You’re just the man I thought you’d be.’”

Val covered his face with his hands and gasped.

“God, I went over that scene in my mind so many times I
believed
it; I even believed I could pass for Anthony Quinn. So I walked to the mansion and wandered around the streets for about an hour, just staring at it and wondering how I could get in. Finally I went all the way down to the railroad and crawled up that bluff, and by the time I reached the wall I was out of breath. I was dirty as a pig and shaking scared. I didn’t think about dogs or anything like that. I shimmied over the wall and dropped down into the middle of some bushes, and there was this German shepherd right in front of my face, barking his head off. I almost passed out. I was so scared I couldn’t move. Anthony Quinn! But the dog didn’t jump me; he just stood off about three feet and barked. I looked around for a stick to throw at him. As soon as I picked up the stick he leaped and grabbed it. I thought my arm was next, so I—I took out my knife and—I made a pass at him. I just wanted to scare him off. But he was closer than I thought. The blade cut right through his throat. He just fell over and thrashed around and died. I’m telling you, I was almost sick. I never hurt anything before. Never.”

“But you sent a drawing to the Governor threatening his life.”

“I suppose I—I thought about hurting him sometimes. Kid stuff. That doesn’t mean I could have done it.” Practice studied Val. Had his evasive reaction been due to .shame or fear?

“Did you know those fingerprints on the drawing were your mother’s?”

“Sure, I knew it. I didn’t think it mattered. I’ve had that hook since I was a kid. Stupid thing to carry around with me. I used to crawl up in her lap and she’d read me those stories until the pages were nearly worn out. Even when she—she’d had too much to drink and felt bad, she’d try to read to me. Once she broke the glass she was drinking out of and cut her hand, but she went right on reading to me, turning the pages with her bloody fingers and reading. That was a long time ago. I couldn’t have been more than four.”

“Why did you stay around the mansion after you’d killed the dog? I’d think you would have wanted to get away from I here.”

For a while Val was silent, but Practice didn’t have the feeling that he was searching for some further means of evasion.

“Look,” the boy blurted, “it was
his
dog. All I wanted was to talk to him, and already I—I had killed his dog; and I thought, he’ll never listen to anything I have to say now. I was in a panic. I looked up at that balcony and the lighted windows and I told myself, now, you have to face him now or you’ll always be lost. So I went up the tree and jumped for the balcony and pulled myself over the railing. I tried to open the doors quietly, but they were stuck. I was afraid he’d hear me out there before I could get in, and call the cops, so I smashed the glass and broke the doors down. I called to him so he wouldn’t be scared. I called him ‘Father,’ but I couldn’t say it very loud because I was choking to death at the same time.

“Then I saw the room was empty. He wasn’t there at all. I was just sick. I saw myself for a fool. I realized what I had done, breaking in that way, and I hated him because I had spent half my life trying to get to him and it had to happen that way, with a dead dog down below on the grass and my hands shaking and my stomach heaving. He wasn’t even there!”

“That’s when you wrecked the room.”

“Yes,” Val St. George said despairingly. “I wrecked his room. Then I went down the way I had come in and hid by the wall, where I could see. I wanted to be there when he came in that night. I wanted him to be mad, mad as hell.”

“Why did you go to Dr. Childs, Val?”

“What else could I do? My arm felt numb and I was bleeding bad. I knew what would happen to me if I went to the hospital. I didn’t trust Childs, but I thought if I could talk him into calling Lucy, she’d help me.”

“What story did you tell Fletch?”

“I didn’t tell him anything at first. He wasn’t around when I got there. By that time I felt too weak to move anymore. I sat down in a corner of the porch where nobody could see me from the street. I think I passed out. The next thing I heard were voices and a car door slamming. There was a Cadillac full of men parked out by the curb, all of them gassed, from the way they were acting. Dr. Childs came up the walk. When I stood up I scared him; he nearly jumped off the porch. I started talking pretty fast, telling him that I was a friend of Lucy’s and that a dog had bitten me. He didn’t want to let me in the house. Then he said he’d call a cab for me so I could get to the hospital. I must have pulled another blackout about then, but it couldn’t have lasted for long. When I came to I was inside, and Dr. Childs was on the porch waving the Cad on. He said he’d catch up to them in a few minutes.”

“He took you upstairs to his bedroom and treated the wounds.”

“I hurt pretty bad and asked him if he could give me something. He looked through his kit, but he couldn’t find any morphine, so he gave me sodium pentothal instead.” Practice leaned forward in his chair.

“Sodium
what?”

“Sodium—ah—pentothal. I know that was the name of the stuff'. I read the label on the bottle.”

“And after you were given the sodium pentothal, you went to sleep.”

Val was silent for nearly a minute.

“I must have,” he said quietly.

“When did you wake up, Val?”

The boy stirred restlessly on the cot.

“What’s the use of telling any more?” he said angrily. “You’re not going to believe it.”

“I believe everything you’ve told me so far, Val. When did you wake up?”

“Well ... I wasn’t ever really
asleep.
Almost asleep, I think, because I was dreaming. Honest to God, I dreamed my whole life in just a few minutes. At first I was on a soft bed, and I kept trying to lift myself up and out of that bed, but when I raised my head a bright light would hit me right in the face, and I couldn’t stand it, so I lay down again. Somebody kept talking to me, and ...”

“What, Val?”

“A face. His face. I was always seeing the doctor’s face near me. His lips were moving, but I didn’t hear anything. I just went on dreaming.”

“What did you dream?”

“My life. I told you. My mother was in those dreams, and—my ...”

“Father?”

“Yes. Him, too.”

“But eventually you woke up. Where were you when that happened, Val?”

The boy rubbed his forehead. “I’ve got an awful headache,” he complained.

“Please try to go on.”

“I woke up on another bed in a paneled room. The light was softer; it came from a candle on a shelf opposite the bed. I must have stared at that candle flame for an hour, until the wax had melted half away. My head was too heavy to lift, and my arm was throbbing under the bandages. I wanted a drink of water, but I couldn’t make a sound. Then I heard the voice again, an angry voice this time. There was an argument.”

“You mean you could distinguish two voices? Two men talking?”

Val didn't continue immediately. He massaged his forehead with one hand and stared at the ceiling. Practice studied his face intently.

“There was an argument,” Val said at last. “But Childs was doing most of the talking.”

“Had you ever heard the other man’s voice before?” Again Val was quiet, and Practice felt uneasy, wondering what was in the boy’s mind. Had he suddenly stopped telling the truth?

“No,” Val said in a low voice. “I never heard it before.”

“What were they saying, Val?”

“I was really doped. I don’t ...”

“But you could tell there were two voices. You must have been able to distinguish some of their words.”