11/22/63: A Novel Read online

  As I closed in on Neely, that sense of being stuck in time’s echo chamber was very strong. I kept thinking about the two Fratis, one with a wife named Marjorie, one with a daughter named Wanda.

  Marjorie: Is that a bet in regular talk?

  Wanda: Is that a bet when it’s at home with its feet up?

  Marjorie: I’m J. Edgar Hoover, my son.

  Wanda: I’m Chief Curry of the Dallas Police.

  And so what? It was the chiming, that was all. The harmony. A side effect of time-travel.

  Nevertheless, an alarm bell began to ring far back in my head, and as I turned onto Neely Street, it moved up to the forebrain. History repeats itself, the past harmonizes, and that was what this feeling was about … but not all it was about. As I turned into the driveway of the house where Lee had laid his half-assed plan to assassinate Edwin Walker, I really listened to that alarm bell. Because now it was close. Now it was shrieking.

  Akiva Roth at the fight, but not alone. With him had been a party-doll in Garbo sunglasses and a mink stole. August in Dallas was hardly mink weather, but the auditorium had been air-conditioned, and—as they say in my time—sometimes you just gotta signify.

  Take away the dark glasses. Take away the stole. What do you have?

  For a moment as I sat there in my car, listening to the cooling engine tick and tock, I still had nothing. Then I realized that if you replaced the mink stole with a Ship N Shore blouse, you had Wanda Frati.

  Chaz Frati of Derry had set Bill Turcotte on me. That thought had even crossed my mind … but I had dismissed it. Bad idea.

  Who had Frank Frati of Fort Worth set on me? Well, he had to know Akiva Roth of Faith Financial; Roth was his daughter’s boyfriend, after all.

  Suddenly I wanted my gun, and I wanted it right away.

  I got out of the Chevy and trotted up the porch steps, my keys in my hand. I was fumbling through them when a panel truck roared around the corner from Haines Avenue and scrunched to a stop in front of 214 with the leftside wheels up on the curb.

  I looked around. Saw no one. The street was deserted. There’s never a bystander you can scream to for help when you want one. Let alone a cop.

  I jammed the right key into the lock and turned it, thinking I’d lock them out—whoever they were—and call the cops on the phone. I was inside and smelling the hot, stale air of the deserted apartment when I remembered that there was no phone.

  Big men were running across the lawn. Three of them. One had a short length of pipe that looked to be wrapped in something.

  No, actually there were enough guys to play bridge. The fourth was Akiva Roth, and he wasn’t running. He was strolling up the walk with his hands in his pockets and a placid smile on his face.

  I slammed the door. I twisted the thumb bolt. I had barely finished when it exploded open. I ran for the bedroom and got about halfway.

  15

  Two of Roth’s goons dragged me into the kitchen. The third was the one with the pipe. It was wrapped in strips of dark felt. I saw this when he laid it carefully on the table where I had eaten a good many meals. He put on yellow rawhide gloves.

  Roth leaned in the doorway, still smiling placidly. “Eduardo Gutierrez has syphilis,” he announced. “It’s gone to his brain. He’ll be dead in eighteen months, but you know what? He don’t care. He believes he’s gonna come back as an Arab emirate, or sumshit. How ’bout that, huh?”

  Responding to non sequiturs—at cocktail parties, on public transportation, in ticket lines at the movie theater—is dicey enough, but it’s really hard to know what to say when you’re being held by two men and about to receive a beating from a third. So I said nothing.

  “The thing is, you got in his head. You won bets you weren’t supposed to win. Sometimes you lost, but Eddie G got this crazy idea that when you lost, you were losing on purpose. You know? Then you hit big on the Derby, and he decided you were, I dunno, some kind of telepathic gizmo who could see the future. Did you know he burned down your house?”

  I said nothing.

  “Then,” Roth said, “when those little wormies really started to bite his brain, he started to think you were some kind of ghoul, or devil. He put out the word all over the South, the West, the Midwest. ‘Look for this guy Amberson, and bring him down. Kill him. The guy is unnatural. I could smell it on im but I didn’t pay attention. Now look at me, sick and dying. And it’s this guy’s fault. He’s a ghoul or a devil, or sumshit.’ Crazy, you know? Toys in the attic.”

  I said nothing.

  “Carmo, I don’t think my friend Georgie’s listening. I think he’s dozing off. Give him a wake-up call.”

  The man in the yellow rawhide gloves swung a Tom Case uppercut, bringing it from hip level to the left side of my face. Pain exploded in my head, and for a few moments I saw everything on that side through a scarlet haze.

  “Okay, you look a little more awake now,” Roth said. “Where was I? Oh, I know. How you turned into Eddie G’s private boogeyman. Because of the syph, we all knew that. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been some barbershop dog. Or a girl who jerked him off too hard at the drive-in when he was sixteen. Sometimes he can’t remember his own address, he has to call someone to come get him. Sad, huh? It’s those worms in his head. But everybody humors him, because Eddie was always a good guy. He could tell a joke, man, you’d laugh until you cried. Nobody even thought you were real. Then Eddie G’s boogeyman turns up in Dallas, at my shop. And what happens? The boogeyman bets on the Pirates to beat the Yankees, which everyone knows ain’t gonna happen, and in seven games, which everyone knows the Series ain’t gonna go.”

  “It was just luck,” I said. My voice sounded furry, because the side of my mouth was swelling. “An impulse bet.”

  “That’s just stupid, and stupidity always got to be paid for. Carmo, kneecap this stupid sonofabitch.”

  “No!” I said. “No, please don’t do that!”

  Carmo smiled as if I’d said something cute, plucked the felt-wrapped pipe from the table, and swung it at my left knee. I heard something down there make a popping sound. Like a big knuckle. The pain was exquisite. I bit back a scream and sagged against the men who were holding me. They yanked me back up.

  Roth stood in the doorway, hands in pockets, smiling his happy placid smile. “Okay. Cool. That’s gonna swell, by the way. You won’t believe how big it’s gonna get. But hey, you bought it, you paid for it, you own it. Meanwhile, the facts, ma’am, nothing but the facts.” The goons holding me laughed.

  “The facts are nobody dressed like you was on the day you came into my store makes a bet like that. For a man dressed like you was, an impulse bet is ten dollars, a double sawbuck at most. But the Pirates came through, that is also the facts. And I’m starting to think Eddie G might be right. Not that you’re a devil or a ghoul or an ESP gizmo, nothing like that, but how about maybe you know somebody who knows something? Like the fix is in and the Pirates are supposed to win in seven?”

  “Nobody fixes baseball, Roth. Not since the Black Sox in 1919. You run a book, you must know that.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You know my name! Hey, maybe you are an ESP guy. But I ain’t got all day.”

  He glanced at his watch, as if to confirm this. It was big and clunky, probably a Rolex.

  “I try to see where you live when you come in to collect, but you hold your thumb over your address. That’s okay. Lotta guys do that. I decide I’m gonna let it go. I should send some boys down the street to beat the shit out of you, maybe even kill you so that Eddie G’s mind—what’s left of it—can be at rest? Because some guy took shit odds and beat me out of twelve hundred? Fuck that, what Eddie G don’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, with you out of the way, he’d just start thinking about something else. Maybe that Henry Ford was the Annie Christ or sumshit. Carmo, he’s not listening again and that pisses me off.”

  Carmo swung the pipe at my midsection. It struck me below the ribs with paralyzing force. There was pain, first jagged, t
hen swallowed in a growing explosion of heat, like a fireball.

  “Hurts, don’t it?” Carmo said. “Gets you right in the old kazeenie.”

  “I think you ruptured something,” I said. I heard a hoarse steam-engine sound and realized that was me, panting.

  “I hope he fucking did,” Roth said. “I let you go, you dumbbell! I fucking let you go! I forgot about you! Then you turn up at Frank’s in Fort Worth to bet the goddam Case-Tiger fight. Exact same MO—big bet on the underdog and all the odds you can get. This time you predict the exact fucking round. So here’s what’s going to happen, my friend: you’re going to tell me how you knew. If you do that, I take some pictures of you like you are now and Eddie G’s satisfied. He knows he can’t have you dead, because Carlos told him no, and Carlos is the one guy he listens to, even now. But if he sees you fucked up … aw, but you ain’t fucked up enough quite yet. Fuck him up some more, Carmo. Do the face.”

  So Carmo hammered my face while the other two held me. He broke my nose, closed my left eye, knocked out a few teeth, and tore open my left cheek. I kept thinking, I’ll pass out or they’ll kill me, either way the pain will stop. But I didn’t pass out, and at some point Carmo quit. He was breathing hard, and there were red splotches on his yellow rawhide gloves. Sunshine came in through the kitchen windows and made cheery oblongs on the faded linoleum.

  “That’s better,” Roth said. “Get the Polaroid out of the truck, Carmo. Hustle, now. I want to finish up here.”

  Before leaving, Carmo stripped off his gloves and put them on the table next to the lead pipe. Some of the felt strips had come loose. They were soaked with blood. My face was throbbing, but my abdomen was worse. There, the heat continued to spread. Something was very wrong down there.

  “One more time, Amberson. How’d you know the fix was in? Who told you? The truth.”

  “It was just a guess.” I tried to tell myself I sounded like a man with a bad cold, but I didn’t. I sounded like a man who’d just had the shit beaten out of him.

  He picked up the pipe and tapped it against one pudgy hand. “Who told you, fuckface?”

  “Nobody. Gutierrez was right. I’m a devil, and devils can see the future.”

  “You’re running out of chances.”

  “Wanda’s too tall for you, Roth. And too skinny. When you’re on top of her, you must look like a toad trying to fuck a log. Or maybe—”

  His placid face wrinkled into rage. It was a complete transformation, and it happened in less than a second. He swung the pipe at my head. I got my left arm up and heard it crack like a birch-branch overloaded with ice. This time when I sagged, the goons let me drop to the floor.

  “Fuckin wiseass, how I hate a fuckin wiseass.” This seemed to come from a great distance. Or a great height. Or both. I was finally getting ready to pass out, and ever so grateful to go. But I had enough vision left to see Carmo when he came back in with a Polaroid camera. It was big and bulky, the kind where the lens comes out on a kind of accordion.

  “Turn im over,” Roth said. “Let’s get his good side.” As the goons did so, Carmo handed Roth the camera, and Roth handed Carmo the pipe. Then Roth raised the camera to his face and said, “Watch the birdie, you fuckin spunkbucket. Here’s one for Eddie G …”

  Flash.

  “… and one for my own personal collection, which I don’t actually have but which I may now start …”

  Flash.

  “… and here’s one for you. To remember that when serious people ask you questions, you should answer.”

  Flash.

  He yanked the third shot out of the camera and threw it in my direction. It landed in front of my left hand … which he then stepped on. Bones crunched. I whimpered and drew my hurt hand back to my chest. He had broken at least one finger, maybe as many as three.

  “You want to remember to strip that in sixty seconds, or it’ll get all overcooked. If you’re awake, that is.”

  “You want to ask im some more now that he’s tenderized?” Carmo asked.

  “You kiddin? Look at im. He don’t even know his own name anymore. Fuck him.” He started to turn away, then turned back. “Hey, asshat. Here’s one to grow on.”

  That was when he kicked me in the side of the head with what felt like a steel-toed shoe. Skyrockets exploded across my vision. Then the back of my head connected with the baseboard, and I was gone.

  16

  I don’t think I was out for long, because the oblongs of sunlight on the linoleum didn’t appear to have moved. My mouth tasted of wet copper. I spat half-congealed blood onto the floor, along with a fragment of tooth, and set about getting to my feet. I needed to hold onto one of the kitchen chairs with my one working hand, then onto the table (which nearly fell over on top of me), but on the whole it was easier than I thought. My left leg felt numb, and my pants were tight halfway down, where the knee was swelling as promised, but I thought it could have been a lot worse.

  I looked out the window to make sure the panel truck was gone, then began a slow, limping journey into the bedroom. My heart was taking big soft walloping beats in my chest. Each one throbbed in my broken nose and vibrated the swelling left side of my face, where the cheekbone just about had to be broken. The back of my head throbbed, too. My neck was stiff.

  Could have been worse, I reminded myself as I shuffled across the bedroom. You’re on your feet, aren’t you? Just get the damn gun, put it in the glove compartment, then drive yourself to the emergency room. You’re basically all right. Probably better than Dick Tiger is this morning.

  I was able to go on telling myself that until I stretched my hand up to the closet shelf. When I did that, something first pulled in my guts … and then seemed to roll. The sullen heat centered on my left side flared like coals when you throw gasoline on them. I got my fingertips on the butt of the gun, turned it, hooked a thumb into the trigger-guard, and pulled it off the shelf. It hit the floor and bounced into the bedroom.

  Probably not even loaded. I bent over to get it. My left knee shrieked and gave way. I fell to the floor, and the pain in my guts whooshed up again. I got the gun, though, and rolled the cylinder. It was loaded after all. Every chamber. I put it in my pocket and tried to crawl back to the kitchen, but the knee was too painful. And the headache was worse, spreading out dark tentacles from its little cave above the nape of my neck.

  I made it to the bed on my belly, using a swimming motion. Once I was there I managed to haul myself up again, using my right arm and right leg. The left leg held me, but I was losing flexion in the knee. I had to get out of there, and right away.

  I must have looked like Chester, the limping deputy from Gunsmoke, as I made my way out of the bedroom, across the kitchen, and to the front door, which hung open with splinters around the lock. I even remember thinking Mr. Dillon, Mr. Dillon, there’s trouble down at the Longbranch!

  I crossed the porch, seized the railing in my right fist, and crabbed down to the walk. There were only four steps, but my headache got worse each time I jolted down another one. I seemed to be losing my peripheral vision, which couldn’t be good. I tried to turn my head to see my Chevrolet, but my neck didn’t want to cooperate. I managed a shuffling whole-body pivot instead, and when I had the car in my sights, I realized driving would be an impossibility. Even opening the passenger side door and stowing the gun in the glove compartment would be an impossibility: bending would cause the pain and heat in my side to explode again.

  I fumbled the .38 out of my pocket and returned to the porch. I held the stair-rail and underhanded the gun beneath the steps. It would have to do. I straightened up again and made my slow way down the walk to the street. Baby steps, I told myself. Little baby steps.

  Two kids came sailing up on bikes. I tried to tell them I needed help, but the only thing to come out of my swollen mouth was a dry hhhahhhh sound. They glanced at each other, then pedaled faster and swerved around me.

  I turned to the right (my swollen knee made going left seem like the world’
s worst idea) and began to stagger down the sidewalk. My vision continued to close in; now I seemed to be peering out of a gunslit, or from the mouth of a tunnel. For a moment that made me think of the fallen smokestack at the Kitchener Ironworks, back in Derry.

  Get to Haines Avenue, I told myself. There’ll be traffic on Haines Avenue. You have to get at least that far.

  But was I going toward Haines, or away from it? I couldn’t remember. The visible world was down to a single sharp circle about six inches in diameter. My head was splitting; there was a forest fire in my guts. When I fell, it seemed to be in slow motion, and the sidewalk felt as soft as a feather-pillow.

  Before I could pass out, something prodded me. A hard, metallic something. A rusty voice eight or ten miles above me said, “You! You, boy! What’s wrong with you?”

  I turned over. It took the last of my strength, but I managed. Towering above me was the elderly woman who’d called me a coward when I refused to step in between Lee and Marina on The Day of the Zipper. It might have been that day, because, August heat or no August heat, she was once more wearing the pink flannel nightgown and the quilted jacket. Perhaps because I still had boxing on what remained of my mind, her upstanding hair today reminded me of Don King instead of Elsa Lanchester. She had poked me with one of the front legs of her walker.

  “Ohmydeargod,” she said. “Who has beaten you?”

  That was a long story, and I couldn’t tell it. The dark was closing in, and I was glad because the pain in my head was killing me. Al got lung cancer, I thought. I got Akiva Roth. Either way, game over. Ozzie wins.

  Not if I could help it.

  Gathering all my strength, I spoke to the face far above me, the only bright thing left in the encroaching darkness. “Call … nine-one-one.”

  “What’s that?”

  Of course she didn’t know. Nine-one-one hadn’t been invented yet. I held on long enough to try one more time. “Ambulance.”

  I think I might have repeated it, but I’m not sure. That was when the darkness swallowed me.