Different Seasons(89)
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 SANTO DONATO’S DOWN-AND-OUT?—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 Santo 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 hoboes. They come and go. But some of these left without picking up welfare checks or day-labor checks 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 buns who disappeared are in my cellar.’ ”
“How many down there?” Todd asked in a low voice.
“Six,” Dussander said calmly. “Counting the one you helped me dispose of, six.”
“You’re really nutso,” Todd said. The skin below his eyes had gone white and shiny. “At some point you just blew all your f**king 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 pickup.
“Perhaps not,” Dussander agreed, amicably enough. “Yet you took hold so well that 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 I thought it would. There is no document. It is as you say: we are quits.”