Ride a Cockhorse (34 page)

“With this shindy out of the way,” she was saying, “I'll be in a position to work some useful changes around here. This region has everything.” She gestured at the wilderness beyond the windows. “Beautiful countryside, good utilities, a professional work force, railroads, interstate highways, universities nearby, and the best of it, a half dozen little banks ripe for the picking.” She listened to herself citing names. “The South Valley, the Citizens, the Smith's Ferry Institute. What do you think they'll do when I push my way in? They'll welcome me with open arms.”

“They'll thank their stars it was you,” said Matthew.

“With them in my pocket, I'll build myself a financial fortress, from Worcester to Albany, with the reins in these two hands. If those big-city metropolitan banks want a fight then, won't I give them a bloody nose!”

Eddie whooped and raised his glass mug. The others reacted noisily. Emily Krok, who didn't like the way the bartender was gazing over in fascination at Mrs. Fitzgibbons, spoke out to him in surly fashion. “Go back to work,” she said.

“What's he doing?” said Howard.

“Looking funny at the Chief.”

“Don't think that tonight won't be a lesson to everyone,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was declaiming. “Nobody's exempt. Not even you people. Everyone hews the line.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons sat as straight as a ramrod, with her breasts up, her eyes fixed on Julie Marcotte.

Abruptly, Julie blurted out, “I'm so worried about Mrs. Brouillette.”

“Pull yourself together!” Mrs. Fitzgibbons reprimanded the young woman.

“I'm sure he's hurting her,” Julie protested. “And I feel so bad for Howard.”

Here everyone looked at Howard Brouillette, whose long white raincoat was, in fact, shaking to an extent that could not be explained by the draft coming from the windows. He showed his friends a sickly smile. His shiny eyeglasses glittered like the eyes of an insect.

“What if she can't
get
to a phone to call us?” Julie cried. “What if she's trapped out there and being abused?”

“If you don't stop,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, reiterating a threat once leveled at her by a nun, “I'll have you taken from the room and thrashed.”

“Dolores is a professional,” Matthew offered as solace to Julie.

“I'd like to have a wife like that,” said Eddie.

“I can't believe she's really out here,” Julie persisted.

“I'd like to be in her boots,” Emily contributed. “Wouldn't I like that!”

“That will never happen,” Eddie said.

“Look at me.” Julie showed her hands. “I'm shaking all over.”

“The telephone is ringing,” Eddie announced.

“Get that.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons commanded Howard.

While Mr. Brouillette made a beeline for the pay phone, Eddie, sitting in the chair next to Mrs. Fitzgibbons, capitalized on the opportunity to compliment his mother-in-law. “You should see yourself, Frankie,” he whispered privately. “You look really scary. You look like one of those Oriental Nazi dragon ladies in the movies,” he said. After a moment, he added, even more softly, “I think Barbara is beginning to understand. She knows I work evenings for you now, and that you have our best interests at heart.”

The gathering tensions had strung out Mrs. Fitzgibbons's nerves. A hammer beat away on her brain; her presence of mind came and went.

“I know she's your daughter,” Eddie went on, covering his mouth with his hand, “but ever since you took over at the bank, she's become like the walking dead.” He leaned close to Mrs. Fitzgibbons, still whispering. “She knows she can't cut it. She knows that you're the kingpin.”

“It's Dolores,” Matthew spoke up to affirm.

Through the window of the telephone booth, Mr. Brouillette was flashing the high sign. Mrs. Fitzgibbons nodded austerely and got to her feet.

Eddie kept close to her ear. “She just wants a house,” he said. “That's all she talks about. A little bungalow someplace. She doesn't suspect that I plan to get rid of her.”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons strode to the door, tying her belt. “Assert yourself.” She showed Eddie a compact fist. “Give her a good drubbing.”

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” Eddie exclaimed hastily. “She's pregnant.”

Emily Krok scooted in front of Mrs. Fitzgibbons and opened the door for her. Outdoors, night was falling fast. Although a light flurry of snowflakes was dropping softly, the sky to the east was clear and moonlit. Mrs. Fitzgibbons's troop of followers waited by their car doors as she paused on the porch and took her measure of the night. It was just the sort of icy, windless night, she imagined, on which significant events were meant to be settled. Descending the steps, she paced rigidly across the frozen ground. Mrs. Fitzgibbons enjoyed putting on a very stern look at such times, as she had discovered this week that it aroused an unholy fear in others.

Before entering the Buick, she paused in the snowfall and scrutinized Howard Brouillette at point-blank range. His chin was trembling. The man was a sight. “Get a grip on yourself,” she ordered him.

For the next twenty minutes, the two cars, with only their dimmers burning, crept along at a sinister pace over the gravel roadbed, through the snow-cloaked trees, toward the lake. Their wipers were going. Eddie was leading the way in the Honda. Muffled by the snowfall, the two engines rumbled and droned like the echo of a lumber-camp saw. At last, to the right of the slowly moving automobiles, the dark expanse of the lake reached out into the night. A boarded-up summer cottage slid past in the dark. The snowfall was insignificant here. Eddie and Matthew killed their parking lights. The big black Buick gleamed ominously as it followed the battered Honda slowly beneath the whitened trees. Presently, the Honda came to a stop. “We're here,” Matthew said over his shoulder.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons thrust open her door, clambered out, and started forward at once over the hard earth. That she was wearing high heels seemed not to impede her whatsoever. A hundred feet ahead, the gable and roofline of Mr. Hooton's year-round lake house loomed in silhouette. A softly lighted window in the gable shone forth like a portal to another world. The lake lapped icily against the boat dock. Mrs. Fitzgibbons stepped along in the dark as far as the crescent of slender pin oaks that stood like sentries around the flagstone terrace. The others came Indian file behind her. Halted, she surveyed the house and grounds. Mr. Hooton's BMW was parked between the dock and his front porch. A film of snow blanketed its roof, while the dock with its slatted planks jutted out in space like a skeleton. When Howard Brouillette drew abreast of her, his long white coat flapping, like the specter of death itself, she couldn't look at him. He was mumbling imprecations and shivering from head to toe.

Before forcibly entering Mr. Hooton's house, Mrs. Fitzgibbons took account of her charges. She studied them in the weak light. Of them all, Emily and Eddie were the most eager to begin. Emily was wringing her rough-skinned hands and licking her lips. Mrs. Fitzgibbons's own face was as pale as death. She spoke in undertones. “Mrs. Brouillette is being raped,” she said.

“I want Dolores,” Howard implored.

“You'll get Dolores,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons scolded.

“It's too awful,” said Julie, in pain.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons gestured then with a slow, mechanical wave for Eddie and Howard to precede the rest of them onto the porch. “You two,” she said, “go first. Push it in.”

The front door of Mr. Hooton's house swung in at the touch, however, and in less than a moment, Eddie and Howard vanished inside. The events to follow involved such tumult that Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself could scarcely perceive what was happening. Everyone began shouting, and there was a drumming of footsteps on the staircase to the upper storey. Just as Mrs. Fitzgibbons located the banister in the dark, Emily Krok pushed past her, with her elbows going, hollering encouragement to Dolores Brouillette in a raucous voice. Somewhere a vase shattered. Chairs went over in the hall. Eddie was yelling about “this fucking furniture up here,” and in that same instant, just as Mrs. Fitzgibbons arrived on the upstairs landing, a bar of electric light shot slantwise across the corridor. Inside the bedroom, Dolores had leaped from the bed, pulling a long sail of a bed sheet behind her, and was shouting blue murder. “It's the man from the bank, Howard!” she yelled. “He tore off my dress! I couldn't get away! Look who it is!”

Dolores cowered in the corner of the room, with the sheet twirled about her. She looked paralyzed with fear.

“That's my wife! What have you done to my wife?” Howard was beside himself.

“It was awful, Howard. It was horrid. Look who it is.” Dolores was worked up into an incantatory state.

Mr. Hooton in the meantime was sitting up in the middle of his bed. Under the glare of the ceiling light, his fleshy shoulders and fat pink arms created the impression of an inflated toy more than the solid bulk of a man. Atop his rubbery body, the sphere of his head flushed a bright crimson. If he had been sporting an erection at the moment his intruders banged the door in, there was nothing of it in evidence now beneath the roll of his stomach. With his mouth agape, Mr. Hooton stared up at the trim, vindictive figure of Mrs. Fitzgibbons standing over the foot of his bed. The ghastly intensity of her face and eyes expressed a tension born of causes not found in everyday stresses. Indeed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's appearance and mannerisms would have worried anyone upon whom she looked.

“So, I was right,” she cried, swinging her gloved fists this way and that in a show of suppressed fury.

Emily Krok was running back and forth in the room, like a ferocious dog.

Julie rushed to help Dolores. “He's torn her dress.”

“Big cocksman from the bank,” said Matthew.

Dolores Brouillette continued to grip the bed sheet to her throat, with only her face and fingers showing. “I thought he was a gentleman,” she whined. “He said he was from my husband's bank. He acted so nice.”

“It's okay, honey.” Howard flapped his hand in reassurance. His breathing made pumplike suction sounds.

“He wanted to show me his home computer,” Dolores explained pitifully. “He promised me a job at the bank. He lured me upstairs. We struggled. I told him who I was. He didn't care! He didn't care, he said. He didn't care who I was. He wanted me.”

“He raped you?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons demanded matter-of-factly.

“Twice, Mrs. Fitzgibbons!”

“Lying bitch!” At last, Mr. Hooton found his voice. He swung about on the bed and endeavored to get up. “Get out of my house!” he bellowed.

As Mr. Hooton attempted to get his legs clear of the bed, Eddie gave him a magnificent shove that sent him sprawling. After that, the language got uglier.

“Break his balls!” Emily shouted, darting back and forth. “Shatter his balls!”

“That's Mrs. Brouillette!”

“Get out of my house!”

“Castrate him!” Emily actually doubled over in a paroxysm of rage; her face was livid.

“I'll have you arrested!” Mr. Hooton argued.

At a sign from Mrs. Fitzgibbons, her three male companions threw themselves on Mr. Hooton and commenced to haul him from his bed. Mr. Hooton bellowed at Dolores. “You fucking criminal. Deceitful, mendacious whore! I'll have you in court. I'll see you in jail. This is my house.”

“I pleaded for my life,” Dolores said.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons gestured perfunctorily. “Get him out of here.”

In passing, Eddie Berdowsky scooped up Dolores's beaded red dress, which was, indeed, torn along the side seam, and waved it at Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “Look, Mom. Look what he did to her dress.”

Mr. Hooton was throwing himself from side to side, expostulating roundly, but in no time began losing some of his fight. The spectacle of the fat, naked Mr. Hooton being alternately dragged and propelled to the door and stairway beyond aroused Mrs. Fitzgibbons's contempt. She followed importantly, as Eddie, Howard, and Matthew negotiated the great walruslike man along the corridor. She waved a hand at him. “This pompous windbag was going to boss me around. And I was supposed to wet my pants.”

“Miserable honyocker,” said Eddie, breathing hard.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons's eyes shone white and insensate in their sockets. “This sac of pus thought it all ended at the bank.”

Dolores had pulled on her coat and was carrying her dress as she followed Mrs. Fitzgibbons into the hall. “I thought he was a gentleman.”

“Well, he's not,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “He's an animal.”

Julie was the last to leave the bedroom. “If it wasn't for the Chief,” she sniffled, “he'd still be attacking her.”

At the head of the stairs, Mr. Hooton must have gotten a second wind, or just better anticipated what was coming, because he resumed his noisy protestations. To the man's credit, he struggled with all his heart, throwing himself back and forth in a rage. It was to the credit of those grappling with him, as well, however, and of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's discipline over them, that no one actually struck the man a blow. The only exception occurred on the landing, when Mr. Hooton, roaring like a pig, dug in his heels and afforded Emily a clear shot at him. Mouthing a volley of curses, Emily thrust her way down between Howard and Matthew and dealt Mr. Hooton a resounding punch to the ear.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons followed the tangled mass of struggling bodies onto the porch. The night air, with the milk-colored moon shining beyond a bank of black storm clouds, heightened her omnipotent feelings, her ability to dominate events, as Howard Brouillette and the others compelled the naked man out across the snowy terrace. Mr. Hooton's flesh gleamed unnaturally in the cold air, like the skin of a flayed animal. In fact, amid the grunts and outcries, the quartet of men formed a frightening, primitive picture, as of prehistoric ritualists struggling with a recalcitrant beast. Dolores immediately banalized this awesome impression, however, with her remark on Mr. Hooton's sexual skills. “He fucks like a pizza,” she said.