Slightly Abridged (27 page)
Authors: Ellen Pall
He leaned far across the nicked pine table. “I'd like to sit beside you, but I don't want you winding up in hot water with your husband,” he murmured into her ear. He opened his jacket but left it on; despite the griddle and the crowd, it was surprisingly chilly here. He was glad Ruby's served lunch, but he couldn't help wondering why the windows of its main room looked out on the road instead of the woods that must be behind it. Maybe for the light. As it was, he was currently being treated to a view of the sleepy parking lot of Four Seasons Power Equipment, where a thick man in green overalls, a dark jacket, and worn boots knelt behind a pickup truck, apparently laboring to detach a neon orange snowmobile from it.
He turned back to Cindy and found her eyeing him discontentedly.
“Someone could see us and tell Tom,” he reminded her.
She seemed more irritated than appreciative. “My husband has our phone tapped so he can keep tabs on me,” she told him, none too softly. “He deserves any news he gets.” That shudder he had seen go through her in the car recurred in her shoulders before she
went on, “Why don't you just forget Tom, okay? I'm trying to.”
went on, “Why don't you just forget Tom, okay? I'm trying to.”
He raised an eyebrow. “He seems like a nice enough guy to me. What'd he do to piss you off?”
He saw her suppress an impulse to answer him. Instead, she leaned forward and said huskily, “Tell me about New York City. What's it like where you live?”
“Tell you in a minute.”
Two laminated menus sat in a rack by the window; Landis picked them up and handed one to her. Something Tom had done was certainly bugging her. If Landis could just get her slightly off balance, he thought he would manage to get the rest of the story.
“I'm not hungry,” she said, sulky once more.
Murray studied the menu. When Ruby came, he ordered chicken-in-a-basket and a Michelob. Cindy asked for vodka, Stoli, straight up. A few moments later, he felt her foot arrive on his upper leg. Hurriedly, he put his napkin over it. He supposed he was lucky she had removed her boot.
“I bet New York is incredible,” she said, leaning forward again and resting her head on her hands. “What part do you live in? SoHo?”
Murray smiled. “Where did you hear about SoHo?” he asked.
“It was in that movie with ⦠Richard Gere, I think it was, aboutâ” she began.
But Murray was not destined to learn which movie Cindy had in mind. Something behind him had stopped her speaking, made her pull her foot out of his lap, changed her expression entirely. Landis turned around to find that the man in the dark jacket and green overalls who had been kneeling in the parking lot across the road a few minutes ago was now standing in Ruby's doorway, his eyes trained on Cindy, then on Landis himself.
Tom Giddy was ready for lunch.
In the Woods
In the four or five seconds between the moment he recognized Tom
Giddy and the moment Tom Giddy flung himself upon him, Landis had just long enough to curse himself for not sitting next to Cindy, not making her switch places with him on whatever pretext. He couldn't even grab his gun out of the ankle holster; the table was so wide and the booth so narrow, when he dived down to get it, all he did was smack his own jaw against the pine. Now Giddy had the upper hand, not only because he started out standing while Landis was sitting down, but also because he had had those few first moments to take stock of the situation. While Landis, fool that he was, had sat on all unawares, wrestling with a foot in his lap and Richard Gere's filmography.
Giddy and the moment Tom Giddy flung himself upon him, Landis had just long enough to curse himself for not sitting next to Cindy, not making her switch places with him on whatever pretext. He couldn't even grab his gun out of the ankle holster; the table was so wide and the booth so narrow, when he dived down to get it, all he did was smack his own jaw against the pine. Now Giddy had the upper hand, not only because he started out standing while Landis was sitting down, but also because he had had those few first moments to take stock of the situation. While Landis, fool that he was, had sat on all unawares, wrestling with a foot in his lap and Richard Gere's filmography.
He did not have long, however, to indulge in self-examination. Giddy's large hands grabbed at his neck with a wrestler's practiced efficacy, his powerful thumbs on his opponent's trachea. In seconds, Landis could feel the trapped blood throbbing in his head. As if from very far away, he heard Cindy scream her husband's name, then call shrilly for the police. At the same time, he managed to get his own knee up from under the table and ram it sharply enough into Giddy's chest that the man's grasp briefly loosened. But a second later, he heard rather than felt his own head thud against the hard wooden
bench of the booth as Giddy laid him out flat, then jumped on him with both knees.
bench of the booth as Giddy laid him out flat, then jumped on him with both knees.
Meanwhile, Cindy's voice was shrieking. “Tom, let go of him. Nothing happened. Tom! You crazy fucker! Somebody stop him! Tom, let him go!”
Much later, Murray would retain a mental image of the other, liquor-sodden, lunch-sated patrons of Ruby's, evidently frozen in attitudes of wonder. He couldn't see them, of course, but he conjured them up in his mind's eye. If they even spokeâyou would think they would yell “Stop,” or “Take it outside,” or
something,
for Pete's sakeâtheir words didn't penetrate his consciousness. All he could hear was his own blood thwacking through his ears, his own grunts and gasps, and, as at the far end of some lengthy tunnel, Cindy's voice.
something,
for Pete's sakeâtheir words didn't penetrate his consciousness. All he could hear was his own blood thwacking through his ears, his own grunts and gasps, and, as at the far end of some lengthy tunnel, Cindy's voice.
He was fighting back, making some headwayâbut not enough. Giddy was still at his neck, on top of him, still enraged, and at least sixty pounds heavier than he was. Finally, after what seemed a very long time, he felt a new thud. Cindy had leapt onto her husband's back. She was banging at him with her fists, screaming.
“Murderer!” she shrieked. “Murderer! What are you going to do, Tom, kill him, too? You murderer!”
And then, amazingly, blessedly, confoundingly, Giddy was off of him. Landis heard his boots thud across the wooden floor, then the slap of the door against the frame. For himself, he lay panting on the bench, his head pounding, body still too stunned even to register the pain of the blows it had absorbed. When he sat up, his head seemed to lag behind him, like some horrible extraneous burden tied to his neck.
Yet within a minute or two, he had recovered sufficiently to stand up, then follow his attacker out into the cold. Till now he had acted entirely on instinct, self-preservation. And now that he had, somehow, been preserved, he was mad. Not a little mad, furious, enraged. He had heard what Cindy had shouted, that Tom was a
murderer, but that had next to nothing to do with the chemicals pumping through him. All he wanted was to pound the man who had pounded him.
murderer, but that had next to nothing to do with the chemicals pumping through him. All he wanted was to pound the man who had pounded him.
He looked first at Ruby's parking lot, then at the road, then finally spotted Tom's green overalls in the lot of Four Seasons Power Equipment. Too angry even to check for traffic, he sprinted across but arrived too late. Giddy had jumped onto the snowmobile he had delivered just a few minutes before and left on the snowy verge of the Four Seasons lot. Even as Landis watched, the engine roared, the machine lurched forward, and Tom took off around the back of the showroom.
At the same time, drawn by the noise, a salesman came out of the shop, confused and indignant.
“Whatâ?”
In a flash, Landis had his shield out.
“NYPD. This is a police emergency. Give me the key to a snowmobile, then go in and call 911. Tell them a police officer needs assistance.”
The salesman, fiftyish, red-faced and bristle-haired, hesitated, glanced across the road at Ruby's, saw the dozen people in the lot excitedly nodding and exclaiming at him, then reached into his pocket. Wordlessly, he handed over a key, pointing Landis to the corresponding vehicle, a black Ski-Doo. Thirty seconds later, Landis was steering the Ski-Doo in Tom's wake. By now he knew that what he was doing was stupid, purposeless, almost certainly doomed to fail. But he couldn't stop himself. The man's hands had been on his neck, choking the life from him.
Behind the Four Seasons showroom was a small test-track area, then the woods. At first Landis thought he was too late: Trails grooved with snowmobile tracks branched out in half a dozen directions from the test area, and there was no telling which Giddy had taken, if any. He scanned the landscape. He had lost him.
Then he saw a flash of orange through the trees, maybe two hundred yards away, heading into a thicket of tall evergreens.
He dived after it, following a curving path that led circuitously to the thicket. The wind slapped his unhelmeted head, his gloveless hands. Thankfully, the controls were equipped with handwarmers. It crossed his mind to shoot his gun in the air, see if that would bring Giddy to a halt. But more likely it would drive him farther away.
He got to the thicket to find it smaller than he had expected. Three different paths crossed at its farther edge. No neon orange machine showed in any direction. With reluctanceâbut there was no other wayâhe turned off his engine. Success: A droning buzz came to his ears from the east. Giddy had taken a hairpin turn to leave the grove in almost the direction he had come in. Switching on the ignition again, Landis tore after him once more. Not until his momentary stop had he fully realized how cold he was. Despite the protection of the windshield, his face seemed as if it might crystallize and sheer off. In the tall woods, the fallen snow was blinding, the flashing light and shadows dazzling.
He roared forward, asking himself what to do if he did happen to catch up with Giddy. Run his vehicle around in front of the other man's if possible, disable it, get him out of it. But then what? Tom would still outweigh him. And Tom knew where they were. Left alone in this forest, Landis might never find civilization again. Giddy probably knew these woods like the back of his hand. He might circle around for hours, zigzagging off the trails and doubling back before slipping away altogether. By now, Landis knew he had made a very stupid mistake. He had followed Brer Rabbit into the briar patch, and now (he rode on for a minute, then twoâno sign of Giddy), now he was lost. He hoped that guy at Four Seasons had alerted the local authorities.
Fury cooling, Landis slowed, stopped, tried to take his bearings. He couldn't even hear the hum of the other man's machine now. Above the frozen, silent forest, the sun was dropping toward the horizon, casting long shadows to the east. That meant ⦠. He looked south, searched the woods for the likeliest path back to 23a.
No convenient track led straight in the direction he would have liked, butâ
No convenient track led straight in the direction he would have liked, butâ
Faintly, then quickly louder, the drone of a snowmobile came to his ears. Landis chose a path almost at random and slowly advanced. Without warning, just around a winding curve, it led to a straightaway, a place where a path stretched ahead straight as an Oklahoma highway. At the other end, heading away from him and out of reach again, was Tom. Seized again with the mindless wish to grab him, Landis squeezed the throttle out. The machine whipped forward, picking up speed so suddenly he was thrown backward. But Giddy, meantime, seemed to be unaccountablyâslowing? Could it be? He was still moving forward but ⦠however it was happening, Landis was closing in on the other man. Giddy was only forty yards ahead ⦠thirty-five ⦠thirty ⦠twenty-fiveâ
And then Murray got it. Desperate, jealous, believing Landis had come back here with the complicity of his wife, Giddy was planning to turn around and force the other man to collide with him.
Landis let go of the throttle and, frantically, squeezed the brake. He yelled, “Stop, police!” but could hardly even hear himself above the engines. He thought of his gun, but regulations proscribed firing at or from a moving vehicle. Even if a vehicle came at you, you were required to evade it. Frantically, he scanned the sides of the path for a place he could safely veer off. But it was evergreens everywhere, thick as pickets on an endless fence, whizzing past, narrowing as Giddy's orange deathmobile came at him, big as life, bigger, hurtling at him, ten yards away, ten feet ⦠.
Ten feet was about where Landis's memory shut off.
Out of the Woods
As anyone who has ever waited for a patient to wake from a coma
knows, “coma” is a sort of umbrella term that covers many states of being. Sadly, “waking” from one is not much like that wonderful, definitive fluttering open of eyelids (usually followed by the surprised, “Goodness! What happened to me?” or “My, I'm hungry!”) so dear to screenwriters in a hurry.
knows, “coma” is a sort of umbrella term that covers many states of being. Sadly, “waking” from one is not much like that wonderful, definitive fluttering open of eyelids (usually followed by the surprised, “Goodness! What happened to me?” or “My, I'm hungry!”) so dear to screenwriters in a hurry.
A person may respond to pain, follow verbal commands, open his eyes, even speak (though perhaps not intelligibly), and still remain in a coma. A coma is not so much a clear pool from which the victim emerges, stunned and wet but whole, as it is a dismal swamp in which he may struggle for many days, floundering in hidden quicksands and battling savage beasts. Waking, if it comes, is a gradual business, and the degree to which the swamp is finally willing to relinquish its victim may not be clear for weeks, months, or even years.
In the case of Murray Landis, the first sign of recovery was a thumbs-up, feeble but immediately recognizable, performed with his left hand about twenty-six hours after he first lost consciousness. Juliet, who caught the movement from her post in the vinyl armchair in his room at Nathan Littauer Hospital, leapt to her feet, yelled for a nurse, then collapsed on the floor and sobbed. She had been awake thirty-five of the last forty hours and did not even try to control her
tears. When the nurse arrived, she was weeping all over Murray. The wife of the patient in the next bed over had to tell the nurse what was going on.
tears. When the nurse arrived, she was weeping all over Murray. The wife of the patient in the next bed over had to tell the nurse what was going on.
It was another two days before Landis had recovered enough to want to know what had happened to him, and even longer before he was able to retain more than a few bits of information at a time. During this interval, his parents came up from Brooklyn. Juliet hardly knew what to make of Harry Landis, a spare, sharp-eyed, closemouthed pitbull of a man. But she found it easy to talk to Rose. The two stayed a day at the same Holiday Inn where Juliet was spending her short nights, then went home, reassured that their boy was on the mend.
It was left to Juliet to tell him, on the Sunday morning after his injury, the story that had come out in the hours and days since the crash. She drew the curtains around his bed for privacy, then took his hand.
“It was pretty close to what I thought,” she began immodestly. “The manuscriptâ”
“You mean Michael Hertbrooke did it?”
For a second, she thought he was losing clarity again. Then she got it.
“Very funny. As I was saying, as I thought, the manuscript had nothing to do with the murder, except that it brought Ada to New York. Tom believed he'd be less likely to be suspected if she was killed there. And he was right.
“Of course, we only have Cindy's word for that. Sheâ”
“Tom's not talking?” Landis interrupted.
Juliet hesitated. This was news she had been avoiding telling him, uncertain of the best way to explain or how he might take it. Finally, she blurted out, “No. He died in the crash.”
“Oh.” He closed his eyes and was silent a long moment. In that time, a little alarmingly, Juliet saw Harry Landis's tight, tough
face in the face before her. Then his eyes fluttered open and he was Murray again. “So tell me.”
face in the face before her. Then his eyes fluttered open and he was Murray again. “So tell me.”
She told him, stopping often to ask if he wanted a rest, or a pillow, or more water. Threatened with prosecution as an accessory, Cindy had given the police what she claimed was all she knew. According to her, Tom had had the (mistaken) idea that more money would make their marriage happier. When the offer for their farm came from Fairground, they had been ready and eager to sell. Besides benefitting them, it would bring jobs into Espyville.
But their neighbor wasn't interested. For a while they tried to persuade her. She was adamant, maddeningly indifferent to their happiness, the good of the town, everything but her own perfect right to die on the land where she'd been born. Finallyâand unbeknownst to Cindy, according to herselfâTom made up his mind to kill her. Whoever her heir was would gladly take the Fairground deal, he felt sure.
He accomplished her murder the way he did most things: resourcefully, skillfully, calmly. The trip to Manhattan presented logistical difficulties but offered perfect cover. Cindy never knew he had gone anywhere but his cabin that Thursday and Friday. The business of her alibi with the niece and nephew was just luck, but Tom would doubtless have rigged up something to protect her if that hadn't come along.
Now, because he had finally told her, she knew the missing persons investigation had been a cruel trial for Tom's nerves. Naturally, he'd expected Ada's body to be found Friday night, when the Xterra owner left his parking space. Instead, she didn't turn up for days. He worried the bag she was in had somehow been thrown into a garbage truck, that it would never surface, that her estate, consequently, would stay unsettled till long after the Fairground offer expired. When the body turned up at last, Tom's relief was short-lived. Very soon, they knew the Luncefords weren't the heirs, and that Free
Earth wasn't going to sell. This, Cindy claimed, was when Tom had at last let her know what he had done. Apparently, he hoped she would see the desperate daring of the act as a measure of his love for her. Instead, according to Cindy, she was repelled. He realized she was going to leave him; it was only a matter of time. When he saw her with Murray at Ruby's, when she denounced him publicly as a murderer, he must have panicked, decided to end it all.
Earth wasn't going to sell. This, Cindy claimed, was when Tom had at last let her know what he had done. Apparently, he hoped she would see the desperate daring of the act as a measure of his love for her. Instead, according to Cindy, she was repelled. He realized she was going to leave him; it was only a matter of time. When he saw her with Murray at Ruby's, when she denounced him publicly as a murderer, he must have panicked, decided to end it all.
Landis heard the story in silence. Juliet looked at him worriedly. It was a lot to take in even if you weren't recovering from a brain injury and a broken arm and a fractured ankle and a dozen more superficial wounds. And he must realize by now that if he hadn't hared off after Tom, Tom would still be alive.
But Landis remembered enough of the scene in the woods to know this probably wasn't true. In a few words, he described Tom's suicidal charge at him.
They were silent awhile. Then, “What about the manuscript?” he finally asked. “That turn up?”
Juliet shook her head no. “That's the weird thing. Your friend Skelton, I think he still believes Dennis maybe has it. It just vanished.”
“How do you know what Skelton thinks?”
She was annoyed to feel herself blushing. Why should she blush?
“Oddly enough, he told me himself. He and Crowder came up here the night the crash happenedâyou were still out coldâ”
Tears came to her eyes at the recollection of this period, and she blinked them back. She had started worrying about Murray at around four o'clock on Wednesday, when he and Cindy failed to come back from their drive, and she hadn't completely stopped worrying since. The cab driver she'd called to take her to a motel that night had told her about the snowmobile crash between Tom Giddy and “some guy up from New York City.” The next period was still a painful blur.
“Crowder and Skelton sat in on Cindy's interrogation,” she went on. “And later, Skelton came over here to wait with me for a while.”
“And told you Cindy's story.”
“And told me. I guess I'm not a suspect anymore.”
Murray said, “Mmph,” again, then rested awhile, eyes closed. Juliet thought he had fallen asleep again when he murmured, eyes still shut, “You know, I believe Tom really was going to kill me at Ruby's. Cindy snapped him out of it when she jumped on him and started yelling. In a way, she saved my life. She's not all bad, Cindy.”
Juliet felt jealousy leap in her chest, started to make a crack, then closed her mouth. Some day, when he was feeling much, much better, she would like to know just exactly what had happened between him and Cindy Giddy.
But it would keep.
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