After murdering Professor St. Croix in her Victorian hideaway, Chubb Coy had revealed the existence of factions in this bewildering conspiracy, but perhaps he’d meant to convey more than that to Bibi. Some of the things he’d said were not phrased as Chubb Coy would say them. Certain expressions were not characteristic of his speech. In fact, she had recognized three instances where he seemed to be making literary allusions, which was the last thing she would expect from him. By all evidence, he wasn’t a bookish man. He seemed more likely to quote a sports star than to toss off a line from Shakespeare.
Bibi wondered if, in that Victorian parlor, Coy felt monitored, if in fact he knew that he would always and anywhere be overheard by some dangerous authority while in her presence. It was as though he knew that she herself—not her purse or her clothes, but her very body—was wired for transmission of everything she said and heard. That was a wildly paranoid and deeply unsettling thought. Absurd. Preposterous. But she couldn’t think of another reason why he would speak to her in code, which was what she suspected he had done. His code consisted of veiled references that he must have prepared in advance to use the next time he encountered her, which happened to be on the third floor of St. Croix’s house. References to works of literature that he seemed to think she would know.
Before opening the three volumes that she had bought at the bookstore in Fashion Island, she sat at the motel-room table with a pen and the small spiral-bound notebook that she carried in her purse. Searching her memory, she tried to recapture and write down, as best she could recall, the pertinent things Coy had said. Ten minutes later, they were before her on the page, in her neat script.
The first instance. After shooting Dr. St. Croix, he had said, She would have been a better woman and teacher if someone had been there to shoot her every morning of her life.
Bibi knew where that one could be found. She opened The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor and located one of the most terrifying short stories ever written: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” She turned to the last page of the piece, after the merciless murderer had killed the last member of the family, and she read silently the applicable sentence: “She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
The similarity in phrasing and sentiment between what Coy said and the line from the story couldn’t be accidental. He must have spoken those words with the intention of snaring Bibi’s attention and by indirection transmitting to her some vital piece of information.
The second instance. When Bibi had asked why Ashley, a mere child of twelve or thirteen, had to die, Coy had said, Why does anyone? Some say we’ll never know, that to the gods we’re like the flies that boys kill on a summer day.
Thornton Wilder. The volume contained three of his short novels. She turned to The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a story concerning the five people who died in July of 1714, when the finest footbridge in all of Peru collapsed and dropped them into an abyss. Bibi scanned the last few pages, but eventually she found what she wanted much earlier in the story, at the end of the first chapter: Some say that we shall never know and that to the gods we are like the flies that boys kill on a summer day….
Again, the similarity required intent.
The third instance. Bibi had asked if Coy might be allied with Terezin, and he had replied adamantly that he despised the fascist creep. When she had suggested that the enemy of his enemy—meaning her—might be his friend, Coy rejected her and said, Accept the inevitable, girl. You’re easy prey. As a boy, Terezin was a dog, now he has gone back to the wild. He’s a wolf now, like and yet unlike all other wolves, always running at the head of the pack. He dreams of turning the world backward, of a younger world, which is the world of the pack.
Jack London. The lead story in the volume was “The Call of the Wild,” which concerned a good dog named Buck, half St. Bernard and half Scottish shepherd. He was torn from a cozy life in California and sold into a kind of slavery as a sled dog in the Klondike, during the Alaska gold rush of 1897. Abused, he adapted to his new rough existence, came to understand the essential wolf in himself, and escaped to a better life in the wilds, where he paid back humanity for its cruelty.
In this case, part of Coy’s allusion was to the plot of the story itself, the device of the dog reverting to its fierce inner wolf. The actual quotes from the text were smaller than in the first two instances, but in the final paragraph Bibi found this: …he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight…as he sings a song of a younger world, which is the song of the pack.