Velocity

because of his inaction, and in Cottle’s case because of the refusal to act.
    In the choice between a lovely schoolteacher and a charitable old woman, the deaths seemed equally tragic unless you were biased toward the beautiful and against the aged. Making an active decision resulted in neither less nor greater tragedy than did inaction.
    When the possible victims had been an unmarried man “who won’t much be missed by the world” or a young mother of two, the greater tragedy had seemed to be the death of the mother. In that case, the choice had been constructed so that Billy’s failure to go to the police ensured the mother’s survival, rewarding inaction and playing to his weakness.
    Once again, he was being asked to choose between two evils, and thereby become the freak’s collaborator. But this time, inaction was not a viable option. By saying nothing, he would be sentencing the redhead to torture, to a protracted and hideous death. By responding, he would be granting her a degree of mercy.
    He could not save her.
    In either case, death.
    But one death would be cleaner than the other.
    The running audio tape produced two more words: “dis… thirty seconds…”
    Billy felt as though he couldn’t breathe, but he could. He felt as though he would choke if he tried to swallow, but he didn’t choke. “… fifteen seconds…”
    His mouth was dry. His tongue grew thick. He didn’t believe that he could speak, but he did: “Waste the bitch.”
    The freak hung up. So did Billy.
    Collaborators.
    The masticated ham and the bread and the mayonnaise turned in his stomach.
    If he had suspected that the freak might actually communicate by telephone, he could have been prepared to record the message. Too late.
    Such a recording of a recording wouldn’t be persuasive to the cops, anyway, unless the body of a redhead turned up. And if such a corpse was found, planted evidence would most likely tie it to Billy.
    The air conditioner worked well, yet the kitchen air seemed to be sweltering, stifling, and it cloyed in his throat, and lay heavy in his lungs. Waste the bitch.
    Without any memory of having left the house, Billy found himself descending the back-porch steps. He didn’t know where he was going.
    He sat on the steps.
    He stared at the sky, at the trees, at the backyard.
    He looked at his hands. He didn’t recognize them.
     
     
     

Chapter 35
     
    He left town by a circuitous route and saw no one following. With no corpse burrito in the Explorer, Billy risked exceeding the speed limit most of the way to the southern end of the county. A hot wind quarreled at the broken-out window in the driver’s door as he crossed the Napa city limits at 1:52 P.M. Napa is a quaint, rather picturesque town, for the most part naturally so, not by dint of politicians and corporations conspiring to reconceive it as a theme park on the model of Disneyland, a fate of many places in California. Harry Avarkian, Billy’s attorney, had offices downtown, not far from the courthouse, on a street lined with ancient olive trees. He was expecting Billy and greeted him with a bear hug. Fiftyish, tall and solid, avuncular, with a rubbery face and quick smile, Harry looked like the spokesman for a miracle hair restorer. He had a head of wiry black hair so thick that it looked as though a barber might have to tend to it daily, a walrus mustache, and such a thatch of crisp black hairs on the backs of his big hands that he looked as if he might be prone to hibernate in winter.
    He worked at an antique partner’s desk, so that when Billy sat opposite him, the relationship didn’t seem like that of attorney and client but like that of friends engaged in a business enterprise.
    After the usual how-ya-beens and talk of the heat, Harry said, “So what’s so important that we couldn’t do it by phone?”
    “It’s not that I didn’t want to talk on the phone,” Billy lied. The rest was true enough: “I had to come down here for a couple other things, so I figured I might as well sit down with you in person and ask about what’s troubling me.”
    “So hit me with your questions, and let’s see if I know any damn thing about the law.”
    “It’s about the trust fund that takes care of Barbara.” Harry Avarkian and Gi Minh “George” Nguyen, Billy’s accountant, were the other two trustees on the three-member board.
    “Just two days ago, I reviewed the second quarter’s financial statement,” Harry said. “Return was