D"anzello said, "Cape, you"re a d.a.m.n fool."
"I won"t argue with that."
"Six times over. You could be dead right now."
"I know it."
"Why"d you go after Lacy Hammond like that, with the gun in your face? You think she wouldn"t fire?"
"I told you why," Cape said wearily. "I told the DA why. It"s all there in my sworn statement."
"Tell me again."
"I"d had enough, that"s why. It was either jump her or let her kill me."
"You could"ve waited until you were outside. Used the cover of darkness to make your play."
"Better odds if I could rattle her enough so she"d lose her cool. She really didn"t want to do it inside the house."
"You were lucky. Beat the odds."
"Sometimes you do, sometimes you don"t."
"Pretty offhand reaction," D"Anzello said.
"I"m not trying to be offhand or smarta.s.s, Captain. I"m tired... h.e.l.l, exhausted. Are you going to let me leave here pretty soon?"
"I don"t know yet. I could charge you with any number of felonies, you know. Withholding evidence, breaking and entering, car theft, a.s.sault."
Cape said thinly, "Lock me up in a cage. Is that what I get for handing you three cold-blooded murderers?"
"I didn"t say I would charge you. I said I could."
"I was being used. Boxed in. Everything I did was because of that."
"And you"re a man who hates being boxed in."
"That"s right. Look, you"ve got my statement and my apology. Stacy Vanowen confessed; it looks like Tarles is going to make it, and you"ll get a confession out of him if he does. You don"t need me anymore. It won"t do anybody any good to take away my freedom."
"True enough," D"Anzello admitted. "The DA pretty much agrees. He"s licking his chops over the two sisters; he"s not interested in you. He left it to my discretion whether to charge you or not."
"Well?"
D"Anzello leaned back in his desk chair, tapped the edge of a pen against a front tooth. "You don"t strike me as the hero type, Cape."
"Me? I"m not."
"Took a lot of guts to do what you did. Most men wouldn"t"ve been able to rush into the muzzle of a gun like that, even to save themselves."
"Are we back there again?"
"Most men wouldn"t have gone up against a purse s.n.a.t.c.her with a knife, either, the way you did in New Orleans."
Cape sighed. "I didn"t know he had a knife when I chased him."
"Police report says you had no weapon, that you disarmed the man bare-handed. Sounds pretty heroic to me."
"Reflex, that"s all."
"Just being a good citizen."
"Trying to be."
"Good citizen, good Samaritan, hero-all wrapped up in one package."
"If you say so."
"But the Matthew Cape who lived in Rockford, Illinois, the one we ran the background check on, wasn"t like that at all. Quiet salesman type, Mr. Average. What changed that Matthew Cape into this one?"
Silent shrug.
"Come on, now," D"Anzello said. "What made you quit your job, leave your wife, buy a Corvette, start gallivanting all over the country? What gave you the sudden horror of being boxed in? What changed Clark Kent into Superman?"
"Superman. Jesus."
"Answer the question."
"Midlife crisis," Cape said. "Everybody has one, they tell me."
"I don"t buy it."
"All right, then. I needed a change. I"d had enough of the dull life, I craved some excitement."
"That doesn"t explain going up against knives and guns. Mild-mannered salesmen don"t grow a new set of b.a.l.l.s overnight."
"Maybe I just got tired of all the injustice and suffering in the world, decided to do something about it in my own small way."
"c.r.a.p."
"Or maybe I"m atoning for past sins."
"Uh-huh. Storing up points in heaven."
"Something like that."
"I want a straight answer. What makes Cape run?"
"I"m not running."
"I think you are," D"Anzello said.
"Listen, Captain, I"ve got to have some sleep. Either charge me, or let me go. Get it over with."
"I"m not going to charge you. You can leave, but not until you come clean about yourself. And give me some kind of guarantee that you can be found to appear as a prosecution witness when the case goes to trial in three to six months."
"I can"t do that."
"No? Why not?"
Cape took a breath, dribbled it out. Then, "Okay. Okay, you want to know why I quit my old life and took up the new one, I"ll tell you. I did it for the same reason I went up against the knife and the gun, the same reason I have the horror of being boxed in, the same reason I won"t be available to testify at the trial, the same reason I hope to G.o.d you let me out of here quick. Because I"m living on borrowed time, and what little I have left is running out fast."
"Borrowed time? What-"
"I"m dying," Cape said. "I"ll be dead in less than a year, maybe as soon as four or five months."
Long silence. "From what?" D"Anzello asked in a different voice.
"Rare blood disease. One hundred percent fatal."
"Sweet Jesus."
"Specialists in Chicago pa.s.sed sentence nine weeks ago. I"ll give you their names if you want them."
"No, I believe you." D"Anzello leaned forward, tight-lacing his fingers on the desktop. "What, uh..."
"Symptoms? Headaches, back and joint pain, increasing fatigue-you really want the whole list?"
"No."
"I can function more or less normally until the last stages, they tell me. Then it"s a hospital bed, painkillers, last rites." Cape bent a smile in half. "Maybe I won"t get that far."
"Is that what"s really behind the heroics? Looking for a way to get yourself killed quick?"
"h.e.l.l, no. I want as much time aboveground as I can get. But if it happens suddenly, I won"t shy away from it."
D"Anzello said slowly, "What about your wife? Your family?"
"What about them? They don"t know."
"You didn"t tell any of them? People who care about you?"
"I made d.a.m.n sure none of them found out. You"re the only one besides the doctors who knows."
"Why not your family?"
"My wife, my sister and her family, my father, all have their own problems. They don"t need mine to make their lives any worse than they are. You didn"t talk to any of them personally, did you? Tell them where I am?"
D"Anzello shook his head. "You just walk out on your wife? Is that why she"s divorcing you?"
"No," Cape said. "I set it up so she caught me s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g another woman in our bed."
"... That"s pretty d.a.m.n cruel."
"Not the way I look at it. The marriage was over anyway, hanging together by a thread. If I"d told Anna about my condition, it would"ve made her life even more miserable. She"d have tried to hang on out of duty, right to the end. She"s a nurse-she wouldn"t walk out on a terminal patient."
"There must"ve been another way-"
"What way? Disappear? She"d have worried herself sick, blamed herself, tried to find me-put her life on hold. Same thing if I"d told her the truth and then walked away. I couldn"t let her suffer like that. I loved her once. Part of me still does."
Penetrating stare, as if D"Anzello was trying to cut away skin and bone to see inside his head. "I can"t figure you out, Cape."
"Look at it this way. One quick hurt, and you heal pretty fast. Long, slow hurt, and the wound stays open, maybe never really heals at all."
"All right. I see your point, even if I don"t agree with it."
"Same goes with the rest of the way I"m handling my death sentence, right? You don"t agree with the traveling, the lifestyle. Well, I"ll tell you, I"ve packed more living into the past few weeks, found out more about myself and this world, than in all my previous thirty-five years. And I"m hungry for more of the same."
D"Anzello opened his mouth, shut it again.
"There"re a lot of different ways of dying," Cape said. "But when you boil them down, they amount to only two."
"You think so?"
"I know so. Hard and easy. I"m doing it easy."
"Doesn"t sound so easy to me. Not the past few days anyhow."
"Even those were better than moping around Rockford, waiting pa.s.sively for the Big Dark." He bent another smile, pushed back his chair. "Can I leave now?"
"Go ahead."
Cape went to the door, turned, and came back a couple of paces. "Think about it, Captain," he said. "See what kind of answer you come up with."
"Answer to what?"
"If you knew you had only a few months to live, what would you do?"
Also by Bill p.r.o.nzini.
BLUE LONESOME.