Velocity

“Defense against what?”

“Whatever. Billy, listen, I don’t have a perfect ten card.”

“What’s a ten card?”

“My force record card, my performance file. I’ve gotten a couple negative reports.”

“What’d you do?”

Lanny’s eyes squinted when he took offense. “Damn it, I’m not a crooked cop.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I’m forty-six, never taken a dime of dirty money, and I never will.”

“All right. Okay.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Lanny’s pique might have been pretense; he couldn’t sustain it. Or perhaps some grim mind’s-eye image scared him, for his pinched eyes widened. He chewed on his lower lip as if gnawing on a disturbing thought that he wanted to bite up, spit out, and never again consider.

Although he glanced at his wristwatch, Billy waited.

“What’s true enough,” Lanny said, “is I’m sometimes a lazy cop. Out of boredom, you know. And maybe because…I never really wanted this life.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations,” Billy assured him.

“I know. But the thing is…whether I wanted this life or not, it’s what I’ve got now. It’s all I have. I want a chance to keep it. I gotta read that new note, Billy. Please give me the note.”

Sympathetic but unwilling to yield the paper, which was now damp with his own perspiration, Billy unfolded and read it.

If you don’t go to the police and get them involved, I will kill an unmarried man who won’t much be missed by the world.

If you do go to the police, I will kill a young mother of two.

You have five hours to decide. The choice is yours.

On the first reading, Billy comprehended every terrible detail of the note, yet he read it again. Then he relinquished it.

Anxiety, the rust of life, corroded Lanny Olsen’s face as he scanned the lines. “This is one sick son of a bitch.”

“I’ve got to go down to Napa.”

“Why?”

“To give both these notes to the police.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Lanny said. “You don’t know that the second victim’s going to be in Napa. Could be in St. Helena or Rutherford—”

“Or in Angwin,” Billy interrupted, “or Calistoga.”

Eager to press the point, Lanny said, “Or Yountville or Circle Oaks, or Oakville. You don’t know where. You don’t know anything.”

“I know some things,” Billy said. “I know what’s right.”

Blinking at the note, flicking sweat off his eyelashes, Lanny said, “Real killers don’t play these games.”

“This one does.”

Folding the note and tucking it in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt, Lanny pleaded, “Let me think a minute.”

Immediately retrieving the paper from Lanny’s pocket, Billy said, “Think all you want. I’m driving down to Napa.”

“Oh, man, this is bad. This is wrong. Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s the end of his game if I won’t play it.”

“So you’re just going to kill a young mother of two. Just like that, are you?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Then I’ll say it again. You’re going to kill a young mother of two.”

Billy shook his head. “I’m not killing anyone.”

“‘The choice is yours,’” Lanny quoted. “Are you going to choose to make two orphans?”

What Billy saw now in his friend’s face, in his eyes, was not anything that he had seen before across a poker table or anywhere else. He seemed to be confronted by a stranger.

“The choice is yours,” Lanny repeated.

Billy didn’t want a falling-out between them. He lived on the more companionable side of the line between recluse and hermit, and he did not want to find himself straddling that divide.

Perhaps sensing his friend’s concern, Lanny took a softer tack: “All I’m asking is throw me a line. I’m in quicksand here.”

“For God’s sake, Lanny.”

“I know. It sucks. There’s no way it doesn’t.”

“Don’t try to manipulate me like that again. Don’t hammer me.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry. It’s just, the sheriff’s a hardass. You know he is. With my ten card, this is all he needs to take my badge, and I’m still six years short of a full pension.”

As long as he met Lanny’s eyes and saw the desperation in them, and saw something worse than desperation that he didn’t want to name, he couldn’t compromise with him. He had to look away and pretend to be speaking to the Lanny he’d known before this encounter.

“What are you asking me to do?”

Reading capitulation in the question, Lanny spoke in a still more conciliatory voice. “You won’t regret this, Billy. It’s going to be all right.”