The Quiet Game

I pull my mother's Maxima beside the Vega, set the burglar alarm, and walk up to the door, leaving the Wal-Mart briefcase holding the extortion money in the trunk. Before I can press the bell, the door is opened by a thin young woman I assume is Presley's nurse, though she is wearing a denim work shirt, not a uniform. Blonde and lank-haired, she could be twenty-five or thirty-five. She has the indeterminate look of hill people everywhere: sallow skin and hard angles, though she is pretty in the way waitresses at the Waffle House can be pretty at four a.m. She doesn't speak but leads me into the den of the trailer, which is a time capsule of blue shag carpet and dark, seventies-era paneling.

Presley himself sits on a sofa opposite a large color television tuned to a soap opera, a TV tray before him and a stainless steel intravenous drug caddy standing beside. He looks surprisingly fit for a fifty-six-year-old man with metastatic carcinoma. He has the stringy toughness of a laborer, the long, ropy muscles you see on men working shirtless on highways, shrimp boats, and oil rigs. He wears blue cotton pajama pants and a white tank T-shirt. A grease-stained John Deere cap covers his head, which has been burned bald by chemotherapy, the green bill shading browless eyes that smolder in their sockets.

I glance around the room so that he won't feel I'm staring. The walls are decorated with plaques and photos commemorating a career in law enforcement: certificates from various police societies, a couple of trophies sporting a man aiming a pistol. There's also the usual complement of stuffed deer heads and mounted largemouth bass, along with a fearsome compound bow hanging from a hook. Sliding glass doors open onto a small deck behind the sofa, where a gas grill and a smoker stand rusting in the sun.

"So you're Doc Cage's boy," Presley says. His voice is deep and rough as a wood rasp. "I recognize you from the paper. Excuse me if I don't get up."

"Please don't." It's odd how we revert to the basic courtesies, even when talking to killers, especially if they are ill. My seating choices are a cracked Naugahyde recliner and a pillowy velour monstrosity that looks like a Kmart special.

"Take the La-Z-Boy," Presley advises.

I sit on the edge of the chair so that I can keep my forward attitude. With men like Ray Presley, the critical subtext of any conversation is animal. Even in the silences, everything is territory and dominance, a battle for advantage.

"So you're the one shot his mouth off about Del Payton in the paper," he says, a half-humorous light in his eyes.

"That's right."

"You looking to make a name for yourself?"

"I already have that."

He leans back and regards me with disdain. "I guess you do. But you'd have to go a long way to outdo your daddy." He reaches down and eats a crust of toast from the egg-stained plate on the TV tray. "How come you didn't go to medical school? Grades not good enough?"

This is the ultimate baiting question for any doctor's son who didn't follow his father into the profession. "They were too good. The medical school thought I'd be bored there."

I let Presley chew on this a minute, and it takes him about that to finally decide I am joking. His primitive instincts are finely honed, but his grasp of the larger world is limited.

"I remember you in high school," he says. "You was porking Livy Marston."

I keep my face impassive.

"That was one fine bitch," he goes on, watching my reaction. "Had too much of everything, that was her trouble."

The skin of my face seems to stretch and burn, but I say nothing, unwilling to be drawn into this game. After an interminable wait, he says, "You here to ask me about Del Payton?"

"I'm here because I heard you had a gun for sale."

He picks up a remote control and flips through several channels, finally settling on a fishing program. "You heard wrong."

"I don't think so."

"What kind of gun did you hear it was?" His eyes remain on the screen. "This gun you're talking about, I mean."

"A featherweight thirty-eight. Smith and Wesson."

"That's a damn good piece. Good for close work. How much would you be looking to spend on a gun like that?"

I take a piece of paper from my wallet, write 50,000 on it, then lean forward and pass it to him.

He studies it for a few seconds. "That's a piece of money."

"Cash."

He hands the paper back to me. "Too bad I don't have what you're looking for. I could use a piece of money like that."

"I think you need some air. Why don't we step outside?"

"I don't get around so good anymore."

"I didn't realize you'd lost so much strength."

His pride thus goaded, Presley puts down the remote and stands almost as easily as he must have at age twenty. He walks to the double glass doors, slides one open, and steps onto the little square redwood deck.

I follow.