Free Meeting Evil by Thomas Berger Page A

amazed, and given the situation, as pleased as he could be, with his ability to think clearly and effectively, he who had no experience of crime. He did not even care for the fictional cop shows on TV (to which for some reason Joanie was addicted), with their excessive discharge of ammunition that never found its mark if directed at the good guys but was unerring with the bad.
    Richie was sucking at the mouth of the vodka bottle.
    “Why’d you have to steal that?” John asked him angrily. “Can’t you see it hurts our argument that we broke into the place only to call for an ambulance?”
    “Who would begrudge us a drink?” Richie asked. “I’d of just had one there if you hadn’t run out so fast. I’m all shaken up. I need something.”
    John might have welcomed this expression of human vulnerability had he believed it genuine. “You’ve really got me into something now. I should have stayed back there with the truckdriver and flagged down a car. I should have stayed at the house till the police came. But I panicked. I’ve never been in trouble before in my entire life. I’m panicking now, and I can’t help it. I don’t know why I’m driving away like this.” Nevertheless, he saw a quiet road of the kind he was looking for and turned onto it. After a stretch of field on either side, woodland took over. Nobody else was on the road, but in the left-hand field a distant figure was riding a piece of farming equipment.
    “I’ll tell you why,” said Richie. “It’s self-preservation. We didn’t do anything wrong, but you realize the cops would throw the book at us, for something we didn’t do.”
    “Didn’t
do?
“
    “You know what I’m talking about. We didn’t do anything wrong. That guy was going to beat your brains out with the tire iron: we only did what we had to do in self-defense.”
    “It wasn’t
we
,” John said vehemently. “It was
you.
“
    Richie lowered the bottle. “Tell me I’m in error, John,” he asked quietly, “but what did I personally get out of it?”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “Then what
is
, for heaven’s sake? You’re not making any sense. I don’t want to make a lot of myself, but some would say I saved your life back there on the road. Then going to that house: whose idea was that? Who had to get to a phone? Why you cared whether that big fat sack of shit was dead or dying, I don’t understand: he was going to kill you. Think he would care if the situation was reversed?”
    John realized he was trying to reason with someone whose principles were different from his own, and he understood why he himself was endeavoring to keep away from the police: because of an instinctive conviction (shocking in a member of a civilized society) that the cops would listen to him with no more comprehension than Richie displayed now. Whatever his own motives, he had served as an accomplice in an intentional hit and subsequent run, and then a breaking and entering of a private dwelling place, which was furthermore occupied at the time, and by a woman who sounded as though she might be aged or ill or both. But theft of a pint of vodka was hardly serious burglary. Perhaps foolishly, should the truckdriver die, John sought mitigation.
    “Did you take anything else?”
    But Richie had turned and was leering into the rear. “Hey, you! Want a drink?”
    John had momentarily forgotten about Sharon. He tilted the mirror to see her. She rose slowly from the supine, lookingthe worse for wear. There seemed to be a question as to whether she was aware of what had happened during the last half hour.
    Richie snorted. “You look like a pig.”
    “Cut that out,” John said. “We’re all in this together.” He was immediately sorry he had put it that way, which served to confirm Richie’s position. To Sharon he said, “Anything we can do for you?” The question was hypocritical, of course, for he would hardly have stopped the car at this point.
    Sharon gave the impression of trying