Mystery

Nappy leaned forward from the back seat. “What’s this Cornerboy stuff, huh? Where do you come off, with this Cornerboy stuff?”

“Just keep quiet, will you?” asked Jerry. “And you too, Pasmore. I want to talk about some stuff before we get back.”

“Good,” Tom said.

Jerry rubbed his face and glanced at him. “A long time ago, you came to my house. My sister and me came out to talk to you. When my friends turned up, you ran away and you got hurt. Nobody meant for that to happen.”

“I don’t think you were deliberately trying to kill me,” Tom said. “I got scared when I saw these two guys waving knives.”

“Everybody should have handled things in another way,” Jerry said. “The main thing was, my father sent me out to see what you wanted.”

“I realize that now,” Tom said.

“I mean, there’s already enough excitement,” Jerry said.

“Right,” Tom said.

“So what was that about the dog?” Jerry asked.

Robbie snickered.

“I heard something scream.”

Nappy said, “I guess we all make mistakes, huh?”

“Nobody says another word about that,” Jerry said. “You hear me?”

“Dog,” Robbie said, and Nappy made a little uh oh sound that ended almost as soon as it had begun.

Jerry took his hands off the wheel and whirled around so fast that he seemed nearly not to have moved at all—Tom saw only a blur—and then Jerry was leaning over the back of the front seat, whacking Robbie with both hands.

“ASSHOLE! SHITHEAD! FUCKING RETARD!”

Robbie held his hands up before his face. “You hit my—you got my—”

“YOU THINK I CARE? GODDAMN YOU, I TOLD YOU—”

The Lincoln drifted slowly into the oncoming lane. Tom grabbed the wheel and steered it back. The return of Vic Pasmore, he thought. Jerry smacked Robbie once more and turned around and grabbed the wheel away from Tom. His face was a deep red.

“Okay? Okay? We got that straight?”

“We got it straight,” Nappy said.

“We damn well better have that straight,” Jerry said.

“You busted my shades,” Robbie said.

Tom looked back over the seat. Nappy was staring straight ahead. He looked like a man on a bus. A smear of blood slid down Robbie’s cheek. A cut on the bridge of his nose bled toward its tip. A bow had been snapped off his sunglasses. Robbie stared at the two broken pieces. He glowered at Tom, then rolled down his window and tossed the sunglasses into the road.

“All right,” Jerry said. “Now we’re all straight.”

He swung the car into the bumpy track that led to the lake.

Tom expected them to pull up before the compound, but Jerry rolled past it without even a sideways glance. They continued past the Spence lodge and stopped in front of Glendenning Upshaw’s. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go in and finish this bullshit.”

All four of them got out of the car.

“You first, sport,” Jerry said. “This where you live, right?”

Tom rounded the car. Nappy and Robbie put their hands in their pockets and looked up at the big lodge as if they were thinking about buying it for a vacation home. Robbie had wiped the trickle of blood from the bridge of his nose, but two red stripes lay on the side of his face like warpaint. Tom went up the stone steps. Jerry crowded him from behind, and the other two sauntered toward the steps after them, looking up and down the path.

“Wipe the side of your face, for Chrissake,” Jerry said.

Tom swung open the screen door, and Jerry held it while he opened the front door. They walked inside. Jerry still crowded him from behind.

Buddy Redwing stood up like a jack-in-the-box from the sofa that faced the door. He was wearing a stretched-out pale green polo shirt and wide khaki shorts. “You took enough time.”

“We had to look all over the place for him.” Jerry placed the tips of his fingers on Tom’s shoulders and gently urged him forward.

Nappy and Robbie wandered to opposite sides of the big sitting room. Nappy sauntered to the door of the study, opened it, and peered in. Kip Carson, in only a faded pair of cut-off jeans and flip-flop sandals, walked through from the kitchen, holding a red can of Coca-Cola. He raised the can in a salute.

“What are you doing here?” Tom said.

“That’s pretty good, coming from you,” Buddy said. “As far as I know, you’re a total charity case. You have no business being up here at all. You’re nothing but a serious pain in the ass.”

“Buddy, I wish you and your friends would get out of this lodge.”

Buddy threw out his arms and turned from side to side, appealing to both sides of the room. “Oh my God, he wishes we would get out of this lodge. That’s so … so fucking decisive, I hardly know what to say.”

Nappy chuckled on cue, and Kip Carson took a slug of Coke and sat on the sofa behind Buddy to enjoy the show. Jerry and Robbie wandered around the room. When Buddy turned to them, they tried to look attentive. “I mean, this is really rare.” He turned back to face Tom. “Let’s get this straight. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just this guy who all of a sudden appeared. You’re a jerk. You don’t understand anything—you don’t know how things work.”

“Are you finished?” Tom said. “Or is there more?”