This time Andy doesn’t pretend not to know what Morris is talking about, not with his ass on fire and blood seeping out from beneath one hip. ‘I don’t have them!’
Morris drops to one knee, careful to avoid the growing pool of blood. ‘I don’t believe you. They’re gone, nothing left but the trunk they were in, and nobody knew I had them but you. So I’m going to ask you again, and if you don’t want to get a close look at your own guts and whatever you ate for lunch, you should be careful how you answer. Where are the notebooks?’
‘A kid found them! It wasn’t me, it was a kid! He lives in your old house, Morrie! He must have found them buried in the basement, or something!’
Morris stares into his old pal’s face. He’s looking for a lie, but he’s also trying to cope with this sudden rearrangement of what he thought he knew. It’s like a hard left turn in a car doing sixty.
‘Please, Morrie, please! His name is Peter Saubers!’
It’s the convincer, because Morris knows the name of the family now living in the house where he grew up. Besides, a man with a deep gash in his ass could hardly make up such specifics on the spur of the moment.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because he’s trying to sell them to me! Morrie, I need a doctor! I’m bleeding like a stuck pig!’
You are a pig, Morris thinks. But don’t worry, old pal, pretty soon you’ll be out of your misery. I’m going to send you to that big bookstore in the sky. But not yet, because Morris sees a bright ray of hope.
He’s trying, Andy said, not He tried.
‘Tell me everything,’ Morris says. ‘Then I’ll leave. You’ll have to call for an ambulance yourself, but I’m sure you can manage that.’
‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’
‘Because if the kid has the notebooks, I have no more interest in you. Of course, you have to promise not to tell them who hurt you. It was a masked man, wasn’t it? Probably a drug addict. He wanted money, right?’
Andy nods eagerly.
‘It had nothing to do with the notebooks, right?’
‘No, nothing! You think I want my name involved with this?’
‘I suppose not. But if you tried making up some story – and if my name was in that story – I’d have to come back.’
‘I won’t, Morrie, I won’t!’ Next comes a declaration as childish as that pushed-out, spit-shiny lower lip: ‘Honest injun!’
‘Then tell me everything.’
Andy does. Saubers’s first visit, with photocopies from the notebooks and Dispatches from Olympus for comparison. Andy’s identification of the boy calling himself James Hawkins, using no more than the library sticker on the spine of Dispatches. The boy’s second visit, when Andy turned the screws on him. The voicemail about the weekend class-officer trip to River Bend Resort, and the promise to come in Monday afternoon, just two days from now.
‘What time on Monday?’
‘He … he didn’t say. After school, I’d assume. He goes to Northfield High. Morrie, I’m still bleeding.’
‘Yes,’ Morris says absently. ‘I guess you are.’ He’s thinking furiously. The boy claims to have all the notebooks. He might be lying about that, but probably not. The number of them that he quoted to Andy sounds right. And he’s read them. This ignites a spark of poison jealousy in Morris Bellamy’s head and lights a fire that quickly spreads to his heart. The Saubers boy has read what was meant for Morris and Morris alone. This is a grave injustice, and must be addressed.
He leans closer to Andy and says, ‘Are you gay? You are, aren’t you?’
Andy’s eyes flutter. ‘Am I … what does that matter? Morrie, I need an ambulance!’
‘Do you have a partner?’
His old pal is hurt, but not stupid. He can see what such a question portends. ‘Yes!’
No, Morris thinks, and swings the hatchet: chump.
Andy screams and begins to writhe on the bloody rug. Morris swings again and Andy screams again. Lucky the room’s lined with books, Morris thinks. Books make good insulation.
‘Hold still, damn you,’ he says, but Andy doesn’t. It takes four blows in all. The last one comes down above the bridge of Andy’s nose, splitting both of his eyes like grapes, and at last the writhing stops. Morris pulls the hatchet free with a low squall of steel on bone and drops it on the rug beside one of Andy’s outstretched hands. ‘There,’ he says. ‘All finished.’
The rug is sodden with blood. The front of the desk is beaded with it. So is one of the walls, and Morris himself. The inner office is your basic abbatoir. This doesn’t upset Morris much; he’s pretty calm. It’s probably shock, he thinks, but so what if it is? He needs to be calm. Upset people forget things.