A Maidens Grave

had to send out for Cliff Notes. I was camped out in the backseat of an unmarked car, talking on a hard-wired throw phone to this maniac who thought he was Hitler. Wanted to dictate a new version of Mein Kampf to me. I still have no idea what the hell we talked about all that time.”
    Actually, the man hadn’t claimed to be Hitler but Potter felt the urge to exaggerate, to make sure Handy was amused.
    “Sounds like a fucking comedy.”
    “He was funny. His AK-47 was pretty sobering, I have to say.”
    “You a shrink?”
    “Nope. Just a guy who likes to talk.”
    “You must have a pretty good ego.”
    “Ego?”
    “Sure. You gotta listen to somebody like me say, ‘You scurvy piece of dogshit, I’m going to kill you the first chance I get,’ and then still ask him if he’d like Diet Coke or iced tea with his burgers.”
    “You want lemon with that tea, Lou?”
    “Haw. This’s all you do?”
    “Well, I teach too. At the military police school at Fort McClellan. In Alabama. Then I’m head of hostage and barricade training at Quantico in the Bureau’s Special Operations and Research Unit.”
    Now Henry LeBow offered an exasperated expression to Potter. The intelligence officer had never heard his fellow agent give away so much personal information.
    Slowly Handy said in a low voice, “Tell me something, Art. You ever done anything bad?”
    “Bad?”
    “Really bad.”
    “I suppose I have.”
    “Did you mean to do it?”
    “Mean to do it?”
    “Ain’t you listening to me?” Testy now. Echoing too frequently can antagonize the hostage taker.
    “Well, the things I’ve done aren’t so much intentional, I suppose. One bad thing is that I didn’t spend enough timewith my wife. Then she died, pretty fast, like I told you, and I realized there was a lot I hadn’t said to her.”
    “Fuck,” Handy spat out with a derisive laugh. “That’s not bad. You don’t know what I’m talking about.”
    Potter felt deeply hurt by the criticism. He wanted to cry out, “I do! And I did feel that I’d done something bad, terribly bad.”
    Handy continued, “I’m talking about killing somebody, ruining somebody’s life, leaving a widow or widower, leaving children to grow up alone. Something bad. ”
    “I’ve never killed anyone, Lou. Not directly.”
    Tobe was looking at him. Angie scribbled a note: You’re giving away a lot, Arthur.
    He ignored them, wiped the sweat from his forehead, kept his eyes focused outside on the slaughterhouse. “But people have died because of me. Carelessness. Mistakes. Sometimes intent. You and I, Lou, we both work flip sides of the same business.” Feeling the overwhelming urge to make himself understood. “But you know—”
    “Don’t skip over this shit, Art. Tell me if they bother you, some of the things you’ve done?”
    “I . . . I don’t know.”
    “What about them people dying you was talking about?”
    Take his pulse, Potter told himself. What’s he thinking?
    I can’t see a thing. Who the hell knows?
    “Yo, Art, keep talkin’. Who were they? Hostages you couldn’t save? Troopers you sent in when you shouldn’t’ve?”
    “Yes, that’s who they were.”
    And takers too. Though he doesn’t say this. Ostrella, he thinks spontaneously, sees her long, beautiful face, serpentine. Dark eyebrows, full lips. His Ostrella.
    “And that bothers you, huh?”
    “Bothers me? Sure it does.”
    “Fuck,” Handy seemed to sneer. Potter again felt the sting. “See, Art, you’re proving my point. You’ve never done anything bad and you and me, we both know it. Take those folks in the Cadillac this afternoon, that couple I killed. Their names were Ruth and Hank, by the way. Ruthie and Hank. You know why I killed them?”
    “Why, Lou?”
    “Same reason I’m putting that little girl— Shannon —in the window in a minute or two and shooting her in the back of the head.”
    Even cool Henry LeBow stirred. Frances Whiting’s elegant hands moved to her face.
    “Why’s that?” Potter asked calmly.
    “Because I didn’t get what I was owed! Pure and simple. This afternoon, in that field, they fucked up my car, ran right into it. And when I went to take theirs they tried to get away.”
    Potter had read the report from the Kansas State Police. It looked as if Handy’s car had run a stop sign and been hit by the Cadillac, which had the right of way. Potter did not mention this fact.
    “That’s fair, isn’t it? I mean, what could be clearer? They had to