by Ed Gorman
We went in the kitchen. I made us a couple of highballs and we sat there and discussed finances.
"I came up with six thousand," he said.
"I got five."
"That's eleven grand," he said. "It's got to be more cash than this creep has ever seen."
"What if he takes it and comes back for more?"
"We make it absolutely clear," Neil said, "that there is no more. That this is it. Period."
"And if not?"
Neil nodded. "I've thought this through. You know the kind of lowlife we're dealing with? A) He's a burglar which means, these days, that he's a junkie. B) If he's a junkie then that means he's very susceptible to AIDS. So between being a burglar and shooting up, this guy is probably going to have a very short lifespan."
"I guess I'd agree."
"Even if he wants to make our lives miserable, he probably won't live long enough to do it. So I think we'll be making just the one payment. We'll buy enough time to let nature take its course—his nature."
"What if he wants more than the eleven grand?"
"He won't. His eyes'll pop out when he sees this."
I looked at the kitchen clock. It was going on nine now.
"I guess we could drive over there."
"It may be a long night," Neil said.
"I know."
"But I guess we don't have a hell of a lot of choice, do we?"
As we'd done the last time we'd been here, we split up the duties. I took the backyard, Neil the apartment door. We waited until midnight. The rap music had died by now. Babies cried and mothers screamed; couples fought. TV screens flickered in dark windows.
I went up the fire escape slowly and carefully. We'd talked about bringing guns then decided against it. We weren't exactly marksmen and if a cop stopped us for some reason, we could be arrested for carrying unlicensed firearms. All I carried was a flashlight in my back pocket.
As I grabbed the rungs of the ladder, powdery rust dusted my hands. I was chilly with sweat. My bowels felt sick. I was scared. I just wanted it to be over with. I wanted him to say yes he'd take the money and then that would be the end of it.
The stucco veranda was filled with discarded toys—a tricycle, innumerable games, a space helmet, a Wiffle bat and ball. The floor was crunchy with dried animal feces. At least I hoped the feces belonged to animals and not human children.
The door between veranda and apartment was open. Fingers of moonlight revealed an overstuffed couch and chair and a floor covered with the debris of fast food. McDonald's sacks. Pizza Hut wrappers and cardboards. Arby's wrappers, and what seemed to be five or six dozen empty beer cans. Far toward the hall that led to the front door I saw four red eyes watching me; a pair of curious rats.
I stood still and listened. Nothing. No sign of life. I went inside. Tiptoeing.
I went to the front door and let Neil in. There in the murky light of the hallway, he made a face. The smell was pretty bad.
Over the next ten minutes, we searched the apartment. And found nobody.
"We could wait here for him," I said.
"No way."
"The smell?"
"The smell, the rats, God; don't you just feel unclean?"
"Yeah, guess I do."
"There's an empty garage about halfway down the alley. We'd have a good view of the back of this building."
"Sounds pretty good."
"Sounds better than this place, anyway."
This time, we both went out the front door and down the stairway. Now the smells were getting to me as they'd earlier gotten to Neil. Unclean. He was right.
We got in Neil's Buick, drove down the alley that ran along the west side of the apartment house, backed up to the dark garage, and whipped inside.
"There's a sack in back," Neil said. "It's on your side."
"A sack?"
"Brewskis. Quart for you, quart for me."
"That's how my old man used to drink them," I said. I was the only blue-collar member of the poker game club. "Get off work at the plant and stop by and pick up two quart bottles of Hamms. Never missed."
"Sometimes I wish I would've been born into the working class," Neil said.
I was the blue-collar guy and Neil was the dreamer, always inventing alternate realities for himself.
"No, you don't," I said, leaning over the seat and picking up the sack damp from the quart bottles. "You had a damned nice life in Boston."
"Yeah, but I didn't learn anything. You know I was eighteen before I learned about cunnilingus?"
"Talk about cultural deprivation," I said.
"Well, every girl I went out with probably looks back on me as a pretty lame lover. They went down on me but I never went down on them. How old were you when you learned about cunnilingus?"
"Maybe thirteen."
"See?"
"I learned about it but I didn't do anything about it."
"I was twenty years old before I lost my cherry," Neil said.
"I was seventeen."
"Bullshit."
"Bullshit what? I was seventeen."
"In sociology, they always taught us that blue-collar kids always lost their virginity a lot earlier than white-collar kids."
"That's the trouble with sociology. It tries to particularize from generalities."
"Huh?" He grinned. "Yeah, I always thought sociology was full of shit, too, actually. But you were really seventeen?"
"I was really seventeen."
I wish I could tell you that I knew what it was right away, the missile that hit the windshield and shattered and starred it, and then kept right on tearing through the car until the back window was also shattered and starred.
But all I knew was that Neil was screaming and I was screaming and my quart bottle of Miller's was spilling all over my crotch as I tried to hunch down behind the dashboard. It was a tight fit because Neil was trying to hunch down behind the steering wheel.
The second time, I knew what was going on: somebody was shooting at us. Given the trajectory of the bullet, he had to be right in front of us, probably behind the two dumpsters that sat on the other side of the alley.
"Can you keep down and drive this sonofabitch at the same time?"
"I can try," Neil said.
"If we sit here much longer, he's going to figure out we don't have guns. Then he's gonna come for us for sure."
Neil leaned over and turned on the ignition. "I'm going to turn left when we get out of here."
"Fine. Just get moving."
"Hold on."
What he did was kind of slump over the bottom half of the wheel, just enough so he could sneak a peek at where the car was headed.
There were no more shots.
All I could hear was the smooth-running Buick motor.
He eased out of the garage, ducking down all the time.
When he got a chance, he bore left.
He kept the lights off.
Through the bullet hole in the windshield I could see an inch or so of starry sky.
It was a long alley and we must have gone a quarter block before he said, "I'm going to sit up. I think we lost him."
"So do I."
"Look at that frigging windshield."
Not only was the windshield a mess, the car reeked of spilled beer.
"You think I should turn on the headlights?"
"Sure," I said. "We're safe now."
We were still crawling at maybe ten miles per hour when he pulled the headlights on.
That's when we saw him, silver of eye, dark of hair, crouching in the middle of the alley waiting for us. He was a good fifty yards ahead of us but we were still within range.
There was no place we could turn around.
He fired.
This bullet shattered whatever had been left untouched of the windshield. Neil slammed on the brakes.
Then he fired a second time.
By now, both Neil and I were screaming and cursing again.
A third bullet.
"Run him over!" I yelle
d, ducking behind the dashboard.
"What?" Neil yelled back.
"Floor it!"
He floored it. He wasn't even sitting up straight. We might have gone careening into one of the garages or Dumpsters. But somehow the Buick stayed in the alley. And very soon it was traveling eighty-five miles per hour. I watched the speedometer peg it.
More shots, a lot of them now, side windows shattering, bullets ripping into fender and hood and top.
I didn't see us hit him but I felt us hit him, the car traveling that fast, the creep so intent on killing us he hadn't bothered to get out of the way in time.
The front of the car picked him up and hurled him into a garage near the head of the alley.
We both sat up, watched as his entire body was broken against the edge of the garage, and he then fell smashed and unmoving to the grass.
"Kill the lights," I said.
"What?"
"Kill the lights and let's go look at him."
Neil punched off the headlights.
We left the car and ran over to him.
A white rib stuck bloody and brazen from his side. Blood poured from his ears, nose, mouth. One leg had been crushed and also showed white bone. His arms had been broken, too.
I played my flashlight beam over him.
He was dead, all right.
"Looks like we can save our money," I said. "It's all over now."
"I want to get the hell out of here."
"Yeah," I said. "So do I."
We got the hell out of there.
vii
A month later, just as you could smell autumn on the summer winds, Jan and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary. We drove up to Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, and stayed at a very nice hotel and rented a Chris-Craft for a couple of days. This was the first time I'd been able to relax since the thing with the burglar had started.
One night when Jan was asleep, I went up on the deck of the boat and just watched the stars. I used to read a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a boy. I always remembered how John Carter felt—that the stars had a very special destiny for him—and that night there on the deck, that was to be a good family man, a good stockbroker, and a good neighbor. The bad things were all behind me now. I imagined Neil was feeling pretty much the same way. Hot bitter July seemed a long ways behind us now. Fall was coming, bringing with it football and Thanksgiving and Christmas. July would recede even more with snow on the ground.
The funny thing was, I didn't see Neil much anymore. It was as if the sight of each other brought back a lot of bad memories. It was a mutual feeling, too. I didn't want to see him any more than he wanted to see me. Our wives thought this was pretty strange. They'd meet at the supermarket or shopping center and wonder why "the boys" didn't get together anymore. Neil's wife, Sarah, kept inviting us over to "sit around the pool and watch Neil pretend he knows how to swim." September was summer hot. The pool was still the centerpiece of their life.
Not that I made any new friends. The notion of a midweek poker game had lost all its appeal. There was work and my family and little else.
Then one sunny Indian summer afternoon, Neil called and said, "Maybe we should get together again."
"Maybe."
"It's over, Aaron. It really is."
"I know."
"Will you at least think about it?"
I felt embarrassed. "Oh, hell, Neil. Is that swimming pool of yours open Saturday afternoon?"
"As a matter of fact, it is. And as a matter of fact, Sarah and the girls are going to be gone to a fashion show at the club."
"Perfect. We'll have a couple of beers."
"You know how to swim?"
"No," I said, laughing. "And from what Sarah says, you don't, either."
I got there about three, pulled into the drive, walked to the back where the gate in the wooden fence led to the swimming pool. It was eighty degrees and even from here I could smell the chlorine.
I opened the gate and went inside and saw him right away. The funny thing was, I didn't have much of a reaction at all. I just watched him. He was floating. Face down. He looked pale in his red trunks. This, like the others, would be judged an accidental death. Of that I had no doubt at all.
I used the cellular phone in my car to call 911.
I didn't want Sarah and the girls coming back to see an ambulance and police cars in the drive and them not knowing what was going on.
I called the club and had her paged.
I told her what I'd found. I let her cry. I didn't know what to say. I never do.
In the distance, I could hear the ambulance working its way toward the Neil Solomon residence.
I was just about to get out of the car when my cellular phone rang. I picked up. "Hello?"
"There were three of us that night at your house, Mr. Bellini. You killed two of us. I recovered from when your friend stabbed me, remember? Now I'm ready for action. I really am, Mr. Bellini."
Then the emergency people were there, and neighbors, too, and then wan, trembling Sarah. I just let her cry some more. Gave her whiskey and let her cry.
viii
He knows how to do it, whoever he is.
He lets a long time go between late-night calls. He lets me start to think that maybe he changed his mind and left town. And then he calls.
Oh, yes, he knows just how to play this little game.
He never says anything, of course. He doesn't need to. He just listens. And then hangs up.
I've considered going to the police, of course, but it's way too late for that. Way too late.
Or I could ask Jan and the kids to move away to a different city with me. But he knows who I am and he'd find me again.
So all I can do is wait and hope that I get lucky, the way Neil and I got lucky the night we killed the second of them.
Tonight I can't sleep.
It's after midnight.
Jan and I wrapped presents until well after eleven. She asked me again if anything was wrong. We don't make love as much as we used to, she said; and then there are the nightmares. Please tell me if something's wrong. Aaron. Please.
I stand at the window watching the snow come down. Soft and beautiful snow. In the morning, a Saturday, the kids will make a snowman and then go sledding and then have themselves a good old-fashioned snowball fight, which invariably means that one of them will come rushing in at some point and accuse the other of some terrible misdeed.
I see all this from the attic window.
Then I turn back and look around the poker table. Four empty chairs. Three of them belong to dead men.
I look at the empty chairs and think back to summer.
I look at the empty chairs and wait for the phone to ring.
I wait for the phone to ring.
AFTERWORD
BY DEAN KOONTZ
1. The Origins of the Relationship
Ed Gorman and I met on the telephone and spent scores of hours in conversation spread over almost two years before we finally met face to face. No, it wasn't one of those sleazy pay-by-the-minute "party-line" dating services gone awry. It started as an interview for his magazine, Mystery Scene, but we spent so much time laughing that we began having bull sessions on a regular basis.
He has a marvelous sense of humor and a dry wit. Oh, sure, he can produce faux flatulence with his hand in his armpit every bit as convincingly as Princess Di can, and like the Pope he never goes anywhere without plastic vomit and a dribble glass, but it's the more refined side of Ed that I find the most amusing.
2. How I Wound Up in Cedar Rapids
In 1989, my wife, Gerda, and I drove across country to do some book research, to visit some relatives and old friends, to receive an honorary doctorate at my alma mater in Pennsylvania—and to give a proper test to our new radar detector. The detector worked swell: we left the Los Angeles area at eight o'clock on a Thursday morning and were in eastern Arkansas in time for dinner. We ate at our motel, and the food wasn't all that good, but everyone though
t we were enjoying the hell out of ourselves because crossing six states under four Gs of acceleration contorts your face muscles into a wide grin that remains fixed for eight to ten hours after you get out of the car.
The research was conducted successfully. The visits with friends and relatives were a delight. The address I delivered to the graduating class was well received. I was awarded the honorary doctorate—whereafter I had to decide whether to be a podiatrist or cardiovascular surgeon, a very difficult choice in a world where heart disease and sore feet tragically afflict millions.
Soon we were driving west from Pennsylvania, on our way home, our tasks completed and our lofty goals fulfilled. Our radar detector was clipped to the sun visor, Ohio and Illinois and Indiana were passing in a pretty blur rather like that of the star swarms beyond the portals of the Enterprise when Captain Kirk tells Scotty to put the ship up to warp speed, and we were proud to be participating in that great American pastime—Avoiding Police Detection. Driving in opposition to the direction of Earth's rotation, therefore having to set the car clock back an hour every once in a while, we might have made it to California before we left for the journey east, in time to warn ourselves against that damn salad-bar restaurant outside of Memphis—except we planned to take a side trip to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to meet Ed and his wife, Carol.
3. The First Night of That Historic Visit
After leaving Interstate 80, we passed through gently rising plains and rich farmland, all of it so bland that we began to be afraid that we had died and gone to the twenty-third circle of hell (Dante had it wrong; he undercounted), where the punishment for the sinner is terminal boredom. We couldn't get anything on the radio but Merle Haggard tunes.
Late in the afternoon, we reached Cedar Rapids, which proved to be a surprisingly pleasant place, attractive to more than the eye. As we crossed the city line, the air was redolent of brown sugar, raisins, coconut and other delicious aromas, because one of the giant food-processing companies was evidently cooking up a few hundred thousand granola bars. How pleasant, we thought, to live in a place where the air was daily perfumed with such delicious scents. It would be like living in the witch's fragrant gingerbread house after Hansel and Gretel had disposed of her and there was no longer a danger of becoming a human popover in the crone's oven.