Twisted

said. “S’been a long night. These things happen.”
    “I’m sorry, man. Really.”
    “Yeah. Maybe you better go spend the night in the garage or something. Or upstairs. I don’t want to see you around for a while.”
    “Sure.”
    And the funny thing was, just then, Weller gave this little snicker or something. Like he knew what was coming. How’d he know that? I wondered.
    Toth went to pick up a couple magazines and the knapsack with his gun in it and extra rounds.
    Normally, killing somebody with a knife is a hard thing to do. I say normally even though I’ve only done it one other time. But I remember it and it was messy and hard work. But tonight, I don’t know, I was all filled up with this . . .  feeling from the drugstore. Mad. I mean, really. Crazy too a little.And as soon as Toth turned his back I got him around the neck and went to work and it wasn’t three minutes later it was over. I drug his body behind the couch and then—why not—pulled Weller’s hood off. He already knew my name. He might as well see my face.
    He was a dead man. We both knew it.

    “You were thinking of holding me for ransom, right?”
    I stood at the window and looked out. Another cop car went past and there were more flashing lights bouncing off the low clouds and off the face of the Lookout, right over our heads.
    Weller had a thin face and short hair, cut real neat. He looked like every ass-kissing businessman I ever met. His eyes were dark and calm like his voice and it made me even madder he wasn’t shook up looking at that big bloodstain on the rug and floor.
    “No,” I told him.
    He looked at the pile of all the stuff I’d taken from his wallet and kept going like I hadn’t said anything. “It won’t work. A kidnapping. I don’t have a lot of money and if you saw my business card and’re thinking I’m an executive at the company, they have about five hundred vice presidents. They won’t pay diddly for me. And you see those kids in the picture? It was taken twelve years ago. They’re both in college now. I’m paying major tuition.”
    “Where,” I asked, sneering. “Harvard?”
    “One’s at Harvard,” he said, like he was snappingat me. “And one’s at Northwestern. So the house’s mortgaged to the hilt. Besides, kidnapping somebody by yourself? No, you couldn’t bring that off.”
    He saw the way I looked at him and he said, “I don’t mean you personally, Jack. I mean somebody by himself. You’d need partners.”
    And I figured he was right.
    That silence again. Nobody saying nothing and it was like the room was filling up with cold water. I walked to the window and the floors creaked under my feet and that only made things worse. I remember one time my dad said that a house had a voice of its own and some houses were laughing houses and some were forlorn. Well, this was a forlorn house. Yeah, it was modern and clean and the National Geographics were all in order but it was still forlorn.
    Just when I felt like shouting because of the tension Weller said, “I don’t want you to kill me.”
    “Who said I was going to kill you?”
    He gave me his funny little smile. “I’ve been a salesman for twenty-five years. I’ve sold pets and Cadillacs and typesetters and lately I’ve been selling mainframe computers. I know when I’m being handed a line. You’re going to kill me. It was the first thing you thought of when you heard him”—nodding toward Toth—“say your name.”
    I just laughed at him. “Well, that’s a damn handy thing to be, sorta a walking lie detector,” I said and I was being sarcastic.
    But he just said, “Damn handy,” like he was agreeing with me.
    “I don’t want to kill you.”
    “Oh, I know you don’t want to. You didn’t want your friend to kill anybody back there at the drugstore either. I could see that. But people got killed and that ups the stakes. Right?”
    And those eyes of his, they just dug into me and I couldn’t say anything.
    “But,” he said, “I’m going to talk you out of it.”
    He sounded real certain and that made me feel better. ’Cause I’d rather kill a cocky son of a bitch than a pathetic one. And so I laughed. “Talk me out of it?”
    “I’m going to try.”
    “Yeah? How you gonna do that?”
    Weller cleared his throat a little. “First, let’s get everything on the table. I’ve seen your face and I know your name. Jack Prescot. Right? You’re, what? About five-nine, a hundred fifty pounds, black hair.