The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [62]
I know his question isn’t a question so much as a demand. I glance up at Barbaro, hoping for a cue, but he just nods and shrugs, tears pooling in his chocolate eyes. I could easily wheel myself, but Barbaro rushes to push me down the white linoleum-tiled hallway, following the cop. Penance, or something like it.
In the waiting room, a pudgy white guy who looks more like a gangster than a cop asks me the questions. The tall one stands by like a guard, arms folded. “Did you see the person who shot you, Frances?”
“No.” Those hot and blinding lights that eradicate the audience. “I was onstage.”
“Do you know anyone who would want to harm you, Frances?”
“No one in particular,” I tell him. My head hurts.
“I understand that you never talked to the investigator from the Sacramento Police Department after the pipe bomb was found under your car, Frances?”
I hate those people who tack your name on the end of every sentence. “No,” I say. “No one contacted me.”
“Is there anyone you owe money to, anything like that? Old vendettas, Frances?”
Money? Old vendettas? I can’t tell if his questions are ridiculous or if it’s me who’s cloudy headed. “It’s just—I’m assuming it’s just they don’t like my show.” As soon as I’ve said it I realize it sounds just as preposterous as anything he could come up with. “I don’t even know that many people,” I add dumbly.
The tall cop shakes his head, doesn’t say anything.
The white cop narrows his eyes. “Someone would have to dislike your show an awful lot to try to kill you in two separate cities, don’t you think, Frances?”
It seems strange that he’s trying to find something particularly off about a guy with a gun. Like there are certain paths of logic that would make it okay to try and kill someone in two separate cities—normal, in fact. “Was it the same person?”
“Do you think it was the same person, Frances?”
“How would I know?” If my body wasn’t so heavy in my chair, I might start getting defensive. It’s like he thinks I know something. It’s like he knows this is all my fault.
“Where were you the night they found the bomb under your car, Frances?”
I clear my throat. Where was I? “Lying low.” I regret the words as soon as I’ve said them, but I don’t know how much these guys already know and I don’t want to tell them about the tunnel or the old minister, about the terror on TV or the phone call. “I didn’t hear about the bomb until I saw it in the paper,” I lie, just praying it was in the paper at all.
“And when you did hear about it, you didn’t think it would be a good idea to contact the Sacramento Police Department, Frances?”
“I haven’t had a chance,” I say honestly, but of course it sounds like a lie.
“Why haven’t you claimed your car, Frances?”
“It’s not really my car,” I admit. “I was just driving it that day…I—”
“Do you know this man, Frances?” the cop shoves a picture in my lap. It’s the man from the newspaper, but this one’s a mug shot. A round-faced scowl. That strange countenance made of clay. I imagine rubbing away the layers to reveal his child-face. Why would God tell a guy like that to kill me? Maybe God really is some kind of an asshole, waking people up in the middle of the night and commanding them to commit murder.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life. Or, well, I saw him in the paper this morning.”
“And I suppose you don’t know whose car is sitting unclaimed in Sacramento, Frances?”
I didn’t know the car was left. The little red hatchback with New Mexico plates and stolen tags because Lupe didn’t want to go back through Albuquerque even to renew the registration. My duffel in the trunk. I say, “Am I in trouble?” You never know when they’ll come for you, and here I am wearing nothing but a white hospital gown.
“Why would you be in trouble, Frances? You’re the victim, right, Frances?” He says the word victim with all this venom on the vic, spitting it out, leaving the second syllable to a whisper.
I say, “I really don’t know what