The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (14 page)

"You know me sax man, Jakey Ross?"

"I'm sorry," Peggy said.

The car started to roll again. She put the wrist-watch on the seat beside her, and with her shoulder and hand she banged at the door. It was heavy, but she had it open before the limousine had fully accelerated again.

She hit the street hard, and in the fall she lost her shoe. But she didn't turn around for it. Instead, she ran back toward Central Park West, and at the corner, to make speed, she kicked off the other shoe.

***

"You will do as I ask you," the woman said.

"No," the boy said.

"You will do it," the woman said, the color in her eyes deepening to a lurid orange.

"No!" the boy said, backing up, his eyes not wavering from her riveting stare.

"I gave you a chance to be good, young man. But now I shall have to punish you for your defiance," the woman said, and started toward him.

"Val!" he screamed. "Granddad! Granddad!"

When the man with the patch over his eye came shuffling along the hallway, he had a dish towel flung over his shoulder and a sponge in his hand. He saw the woman lurch out of the boy's room.

"Something wrong?" the man said, looking at the woman and then back to the closed door.

"It would appear," the woman began, a smile unfurling across her face, "that our Sam is having himself a bit of a tantrum."

"Sammy?"
the man said. "You don't say. Don't believe I've ever seen the boy act up before. What set him off, do you think?"

The woman said nothing. She stood gazing at the man, smiling bloodlessly, her nose lifting as she turned to look back at the locked door.

"Sammy boy?" the man said.

He shifted the sponge to his other hand and tried the doorknob.

"You open up now, lad," the man ordered. "Come on, boy. You got your teacher out here and I don't think she's going to like it if you make her mad."

No sound came from the room.

Again the man tried the door.

"You hear me, Sam boy?"

"You see?" the woman sniffed, her nose thrusting at the air.

The man rattled at the doorknob.

"Now that ain't like you, son," he called through the door. "Sammy? You listening to me? You're okay, aren't you, son?"

But there was no reply, just the deep silence that poured through the hall.

"Ah well," the woman said. "It's all right," She laughed a small laugh. "As the prophet says, boys will be boys. Do you suppose you could persuade him to open up? All I want is my briefcase."

"Val! Don't listen to her, Val. Make her get out of here!"

It was the boy's voice, a terrified, pitiable wail.

"You see?" the woman said again. "Virtually hysterical. It seems our young gentleman is greatly overtired. It happens, you know—ask any teacher. Fatigue can turn the poor things into absolute demons. If you'll forgive me for saying so, the child shouldn't be kept up so late."

"We were only playing Go—"

But the boy was screaming again.

"Granddad! Please!"

The man turned back to the locked door, twisting the knob back and forth.

"Sam boy," he shouted, "you're testing my nerves now, son!" Again he worked at the doorknob, twisting it with real force. "Now I'm telling you for the last time, Sammy, quit it and take this damn lock off this door!"

"West Virginia!" the woman sang out merrily, smiling pleasantly when the man turned suddenly to face her. "I thought so," she said. "I should say Webster or Randolph County."

"How's that?" the man said, letting go of the doorknob.

"Where you were born and reared, Mr. Potter—in 
West Virginia. Which was it? In Randolph or Webster County?"

"Webster," the man said, amazed. "Place called Boggs."

"Yes, of course," the woman said, grinning triumphantly, moving almost imperceptibly closer to him.

"Val!"
the boy screamed—a single, deafening shriek.

"Now hold on," the man said, moving with lazy speed to jiggle the doorknob again. What in God's name ailed the boy, anyway? But his hand never made it, and he never spoke again.

She already had the pencil out and the point driven through his windpipe before she extracted the yellow shaft and inserted it once again, this time puncturing the carotid artery on the right side of the dead man's neck.

She ran for Seventy-second Street and made it to the uptown subway entrance just as the sky shattered and the rain came again, a gusting torrent pelting at her back as she took the steps two at a time in stockinged feet. Breaking her pattern near the bottom to skip a step strewn with glass, Peggy plunged for the turnstile, slammed a token into the slot, and pushed through onto the deserted platform, her feet already aching from running on concrete.

She kept within sight of the token booth, leaning out over the tracks and peering into the downtown direction to see if a train might be coming. Almost immediately an express screamed by from the wrong direction, and then a downtown local. When the local pulled out, she looked across the tracks to watch the passengers as they made their way toward the exit, some with umbrellas, others with newspapers held over their heads.

It was then that she saw what might have been an old woman or an old man lying curled on a bench across the way, a shopping bag, its sides bulging, propped against the armrest like a pillow.

Again she leaned over the tracks to look down the tunnel for an uptown train—and when she saw nothing, she turned back to the tile wall and tiptoed along, studying the posters. At length she faced around just in time to see three teen-agers in hooded sweatshirts under khaki raincoats vault the turnstile on the downtown side. She could hear the man in the token booth shouting after them and the boys' vicious laughter as they ran up the platform. When they saw her, they came back down the platform and called across to her.

As if it was what she had meant to do anyway, Peggy faced around again and moved up close to the wall, her eyes on a poster but not really seeing it.

"Hey, white mama!" she heard from behind her, "motherfucker don't give you no shoes?"

She edged slowly toward the uptown token booth, her face turned to the wall as if she were deeply absorbed in reading the posters, her heart listening for the approach of an uptown train.

"Cat here got a juicy black dick for you, honky bitch! Come on, mama, time you has some real pipe laid in you! Hey, white mama, you catching up on you reading, bitch?"

She heard the roar of an uptown train, but when she faced around, she saw it was an express. It passed through the station like a thundering curtain drawn aside to reveal the three teen-agers busy at the body that lay on the bench.

"Let that person alone!" Peggy shouted.

One of the boys turned around.

"Shut you face, whitey!"

She saw the other two boys roll the body onto the platform. When it hit, it was the sound of meat falling against concrete.

She ran to the turnstile, shouting for the attendant in the token booth.

"Over there!" Peggy screamed, pointing.

But the man kept his face turned away. From where she stood, it looked as if he was reading something.

"There's someone in trouble over there!" Peggy shouted. "Call the police!"

The man in the booth turned around and stared at her.

"Do you hear me?" Peggy shouted. "Over there!"

She pointed. And when she faced around to look herself, she saw two of them pulling off the clothes, and the boy who had called to her was holding a cigarette lighter close to the hair, its tall spout of butane flame shooting up as the lighter moved like a wand.

"Do something!" Peggy shouted at the man in the token booth. She was about to shout again when she heard a train coming in behind her.

She turned. It was an uptown. A local.

Sam,
she thought.

When the doors opened, she got on.

***

She looked up, her eyes livid in the strong light of the hallway. Behind his locked door, Sam was now as silent as Val. Her nose sniffed at the air, and beneath her thin upper lip slight protuberances seemed to appear, as if small tusks were budding from her gums. At Sam's locked door, she lifted her hand to knock gently.

"Samuel?" the woman said. "Dear fellow, this is really quite absurd. Now open up."

It was silent, save for the breathing she could hear on the other side of the door.

"We're all alone now, Sam, and there's no need for us to play little games any longer. I know all about your power—just as you know all about mine. Your father's on my side, you know. He wants you to do as I say. Believe me, he's been rewarded handsomely for the help he's given me. Now you don't want to go and spoil everything by refusing to cooperate, do you? Come on, Sam, let me come in and have you draw a picture for me. Just to prove we're friends."

First she put her ear against the wood paneling, and then the woman reached her hand to the knob, her eyes so crimson it looked as if they bled, while from under her upper lip two worn, brown growths appeared.

***

Rain blasted into her face as she came out from underground at Ninety-sixth. Across the way she could hear the wind thrashing at the trees that bordered the west side of the Park.

She fled under the plastic shelter for the cross-town bus, but the wind drove the rain in after her, drenching her through her coat.

She looked west and tried to study the traffic for the high, wide headlights that would signal the approach of a bus, and then she stepped out onto Ninety-sixth with her arm held above her head, waving it back and forth.

Cars passed her, their spray wetting her through to the skin. Two free cabs went right by her, and then a third cab with its "call" sign lit.

It was when she turned around to step back onto the curb that she saw the pay phone on the corner. No booth, but it wasn't protection from the rain that Peggy wanted.

She opened her purse and dug her fingers in for her wallet, praying. She was in luck.

She dropped the nickels in and dialed the number.

She counted the rings. When she reached twenty, she heard the operator come on and announce the obvious.

"I'm sorry, that number's not answering."

"Operator, operator," Peggy cried. "Please don't hang up. That's my own number. My name is Mrs. Cooper and that's my own telephone and I know there's someone there, operator. Please keep ringing it. My father and my son are there and they must be asleep. Will you please let it ring, operator? Please?"

This time she counted the rings to thirty, and then she gave up.

She looked west. Nothing.

She ran out into the intersection, the rain slapping her in the face as she waved her arms overhead—but the cars simply swerved around her, and the best she did was slow down a driver who yelled for her to get out of the street before she got herself killed.

She stepped back onto the curb, checked west again. But there were no headlights at all now, just the shining asphalt and the silvery rain that blew across it in sinewy pulsations, like sheets of radiant pebbles skidding over ebony glass.

She turned to look back at Central Park, her attention fixed on the road that cut across it at 
Ninety-sixth. If she ran, how long would it take? Ten minutes, fifteen?

The number made her think of a telephone ringing and no one answering. How many times had it rung?

Enough. Enough to make even someone like Val—a heavy sleeper—wake up.

***

She let go of the doorknob, and when she did, the faceted glass spun back with a small, ratchety noise.

"I can hear you, young man," the woman called, her lips up close to the wood. "Can you hear me?"

There was nothing, just the boy's muffled weeping.

"Very well, then," the woman murmured into the wood.

She turned away from the door and went back down the hallway, kicking at the empty suitcases that still lay along the floor. In the kitchen she pulled open the drawers until she found the right one: pads and thumbtacks, rubber bands and balls of string, food coupons piled along one side. She reached her hand in and felt beneath them. First she touched the hammer, then the thing she wanted.

She lifted the screwdriver from the drawer and held it to the light to see if it was an acceptable size. Then, after a moment's pause, she selected a meat cleaver from a wooden rack on the counter. He would draw what she told him to draw—or she'd see to it that he didn't draw at all. Cutting off the hands would be simple enough—once she'd gotten him unconscious.

She got down on her knees in front of the boy's door and aimed the screwdriver into the oval of greenish brass. It took no more than seconds to pinion the screws by their slots and twist them free of the wood. When the key plate fell away from the door, she caught it in her hand and lowered it quietly to the floor. She raised the screwdriver to the hole that was exposed and pushed it through, penetrating just far enough to feel the lever pressing against the vertical plane of the steel.

She held the screwdriver level and touched her cheek to the door, snout swollen, the curve of one small tusk steadying the tool's handle as it turned.