Winter Tides

by James P. Blaylock

  The girl stood absolutely still, her hair and clothing unruffled by the night wind, the dense fog sharpening her features rather than veiling them, as if she were a creature spun out of darkness and mist.

  He took another step toward her, holding out his hand, his heart racing. He had to do his part, approach her as insistently as she approached him. She gazed back at him, though, as if she were completely blind, as if she sensed him but couldn’t see him. A sudden breeze off the ocean blew through the fog, which swirled and lifted around them. The oil well out in the lot appeared out of the mist, its sagging chain-link fence surrounded with high weeds. In that moment the girl’s image flickered in the patchy fog, and she was gone.

  Edmund stood staring at the place she had been, but he was looking at the murky lights of the doughnut shop on the corner now. Feeling exposed, he turned back toward the warehouse, spotting Collier out on his front porch, leaning against the railing, smoking a pipe. His front door stood open, and light from the television glowed through the open door. Certain that Collier hadn’t seen him, Edmund hurried on beyond the corner of the building, where he stood waiting in the darkness, wondering if the girl would return.

  There was the sudden howl of brakes out on the Highway, a long screech, a car thudding into something, another screech, and then the sound of the car smashing into a building. There was the immediate blare of a horn and the simultaneous sound of glass breaking. Collier came down off his porch, and Edmund moved back out of sight, watching as the shadowy figure of the old man hurried toward the corner, compelled to see the wreck. And Jenny wasn’t with him, either, so he had left the girl home alone. That would be another one for Social Services, although Edmund might find somebody else to phone in the complaint, since he’d been working that angle pretty hard lately.

  The wind died down now, the fog drifted back in, and Edmund was once again alone in a sea of gray. He reentered the warehouse, shut the door behind him, and returned to the storage room, where he carefully slid the painting back into its paper casing, cut a new strip of masking tape, and resealed the package. He set it back among the others, then stood looking at the unpacked dolls. He realized right then that he coveted the dolls. He had rarely encountered anything that stirred him so deeply. There was a good chance that Anne wouldn’t pay any attention at all to the closed-up boxes. Taking a few of them wasn’t any kind of a risk. And anyway, later on he could pull the boxes open, toss the contents around, and report that someone had broken into the room and torn things up.

  How many? He decided to take four, at least for the moment. The number simply seemed right to him—three of the females and one of the males. What he would do with them he couldn’t say, but he had faith that something would be revealed to him, perhaps in the sanctuary of his bedroom.

  There was the sound of voices beyond the open window now—little-girl voices. He stepped to the window again and looked out, but could see nothing. He headed back out through the warehouse again, carrying one of the male dolls with him. The vague idea of showing it to someone drifted into his mind like the fog through the window. Of course, if he showed it to Jenny or to the girl in the fog, he wouldn’t uncover its sexual organs; he wanted simply …

  … He wanted simply to gauge the doll’s immediate effect on a perfectly naive audience. He hurried out the door again, through the murk along the edge of the vacant lot, making out the lights of the bungalow, the misty porch lamp, watching out for the girls. He saw no one, heard no voices, but he had the distinct impression that he wasn’t alone in the night, that someone waited nearby, watching him. He could feel those staring, vacant eyes….

  He saw the boxy shadow of Collier’s old International Harvester parked near the edge of the lot. Nearby lay a tumble of trash and old wooden pallets that Collier had recently cleared out of the rear of the old theatre, and which would probably lie there until doomsday, given the half-assed way Collier went about his business….

  He caught the sound of footsteps on the night air suddenly, and he stopped and squinted into the gloom. There was movement ahead of him now—a growing, darkening shadow beyond the pile of debris, as if someone were approaching, or as if the fog itself were growing more solid and substantial. The figure of the little girl he had seen earlier stood before him, still half obscured by mists. He glanced around to make sure he was alone.

  “Hello,” he said, stepping forward, holding the doll out in front of him. The doll’s body heat was more intense than ever, as if it were playing a hot-and-cold game, and Edmund were getting closer to some as yet undefined goal. The aptness of this notion emboldened him, and he smiled and nodded at her. The girl said nothing, just stood and stared at him, her eyes vacant. He reached his free hand forward and crooked a finger at her. “Do you want to see the dolly?” he whispered, tilting his head with sincerity …

  … And at that moment the doll burst into flames in his hand. Gasping with surprise, he dropped it on the asphalt and kicked it away. The burning doll flew beneath the chassis of Collier’s Harvester, instantly igniting the oil-slick pavement beneath the old truck. Edmund stepped back away from it, watching in disbelief as it burned, the stuffed nylon blazing with a ferocious white heat. The doll’s eyes stared straight at him, its arms curling upward so that it seemed to clutch at its own chest as its flimsy cloth robe burned away.

  When Edmund glanced up, the girl was gone. He looked wildly around, realizing now that flames were licking the undercarriage of the truck, and already he could smell burning rubber from one of the tires. He glanced at the door of the bungalow, watching out for Collier, who was probably down at the doughnut shop still, trying to cadge a free cup of coffee.

  Impulsively, he stepped across to the trash pile, slid one of the wooden pallets free of the pile, swung it around, and crammed it under the bumper of the truck. He grabbed an-other one, tilted it against the back edge of the first one, and kicked at it, jamming it under there, dancing back out of the way of the fire when it leaped out along the dry wood and ran up the back end of the trunk, the old orange paint bubbling and scorching.

  Edmund turned and ran back along the side of the building, into the warehouse and up to his office, where he unlocked his filing cabinet and pulled out three or four issues of the most salacious pornographic magazine he owned. Quickly he picked out a couple of choice issues that he didn’t care much about any more, and then ran downstairs again, stopping long enough by the loading dock door to dial 911 and breathlessly report the fire. He dashed out again, running back around the building to where the truck burned spectacularly, smoke billowing up into the fog. Right then a big stuffed-animal alligator in the back seat burst into flames, and the rear window broke in a clatter of glass. Edmund pitched the magazines onto the floor in the rear of the truck, then ran across the lawn and unrolled the garden hose. He cranked the spigot on, spraying water toward the truck, hauling the hose around behind it and directing the water in through the shattered rear window to soak down the magazines. He could hear a siren in the distance now, the siren’s whine drowned out by a sudden shouting as Collier lumbered into view, back from the doughnut shop and the wreck. Lit by the front porch lamp, the look on his face was worth a fortune.

  18

  DAVE CROSSED WALNUT STREET, HEADİNG BACK TO THE warehouse and carrying takeout Chinese from Mr. Lucky. Everyone else had gone home long ago, and the Earl of Gloucester was mostly dark, the depths of the warehouse lit only by the night lamps in the ceiling—a half-dozen incandescent globes that cast a dim yellow glow through the skylights, which seemed to float in the lowering fog like hovering alien vessels. He walked down 6th Street to take a look behind the warehouse, straining to see through the fog, and then back around the front to check the theatre parking lot. There was no reason to think that last night’s arsonist would be back tonight, but there was no use being careless.

  Collier’s truck had been uninsured, of course. Dave had offered to loan him the money to buy something else, just to get him around, but Collier
had told him that right now there was no place he wanted to go. He could walk to the market and the doughnut shop. What else did he need? Social Services, of course, would think that maybe Jenny needed more than the market and the doughnut shop, and although Dave didn’t point this out to Collier, this morning he had driven his own car over, parked it in the theatre lot, and given Collier a set of keys. Dave walked to work anyway; he could as easily walk down and fetch his car if he needed it, and in the meantime Collier would have access to a car.

  He crossed the dark parking lot and let himself in at the door, then took the cardboard food containers out of the bag and set them on the little plywood table that served the warehouse personnel as a writing desk for invoice work. In the silence he could hear the scratching of mice in the newspaper bin by the door, and a cricket started up somewhere back in the darkness under the balcony. He opened the little container of white rice and scooped out a forkful, then bent over and flicked it back behind the paper bin. A white mouse darted out of sight beneath the bin, and Dave watched in silence for a moment as the mouse poked its nose out of the shadows, then walked stealthily toward the rice. Was the mouse surprised that food had fallen out of the sky again? Did Dave share the blame for the sad state of mouse astronomy?

  He opened the container of kung pao chicken and looked inside, happy to see that there were a half-dozen red peppers showing. He found the wooden chopsticks inside the bag, rubber-banded to a fork and a napkin, and slipped them out of their paper cover in order to break them apart. He stopped then, listening. There were footsteps out in the lot, the slow crunching of gravel—just a couple of steps and then a pause, as if someone were hesitating outside.

  There were more footsteps, and he stepped to the door and flipped on the parking lot light, which turned the fog a milky white. Someone stood in the lot, fifteen feet from the door, just a black shadow in the mist. Whoever it was took a step forward, bending sideways at the waist as if peering hard toward where Dave stood in the doorway. He could hear labored breathing, and he could see that it was a man now, an old man with tousled gray hair, dressed in a shabby suit coat. For a moment Dave thought it was the Earl, dead drunk, maybe. But it wasn’t. It could be last night’s arsonist, of course, or some completely new threat, but all in all the old man didn’t look very threatening. It was more likely that he wanted spare change. “You looking for someone?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, I’m looking for someone.” The man’s voice was shot, obviously graveled from years of cigarettes and living on the street. He stepped toward the door now, walking with a limp. Dave recognized him. He’d seen the man around town. Probably homeless, living in the jungle in Central Park.

  “You’re not looking for me?”

  “That other asshole.”

  “That other asshole’s not here,” Dave said. “Maybe I can help you with something.”

  “Not very damn likely. That bastard owes me. You wouldn’t know anything about it.”

  “I guess I don’t,” Dave said, suddenly interested “Can I help? Who is it, exactly, that you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know his name. I knew it, but I forgot. He was a suit. I saw him come out of here this afternoon. I’ll know him when I see him again.”

  “He won’t be in till tomorrow morning.” A “suit.” Clearly he meant Edmund. The term didn’t even remotely describe anyone else who worked for the Earl.

  “Tomorrow’s fine. How about I wait inside?” He nodded at the open door.

  “I’ve got to lock up and go home in about an hour.”

  “That’s good. You do that.”

  “Look, you can’t stay inside. I’m sorry. Maybe I can give you a ride somewhere.”

  “Sure you’re sorry. Everybody’s sorry. But there’s a man I want to talk to, and I’m going to talk to him. We’ll see who’s sorry then.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Looks like an asshole, like I said. Drives a Mar-cedes. Carries a briefcase.”

  “I know who you mean,” Dave said.

  “You know him?”

  “My boss.”

  “I figured he was somebody’s boss. He’s sure as hell not mine though, whatever he might think.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Damn straight. You tell him something for me?”

  “Sure I will,” Dave said. “Whatever you want. Tell me what to say and I’ll give it to him word for word.” He remembered the Chinese food then. “You want something to eat? Come on in.”

  “Depends on what it is.” The old man stepped inside the warehouse and looked around, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw.

  “Kung pao chicken from the Chinese restaurant over on Eighth Street.” Dave went over to the containers of food and picked up the chicken. “Sorry I don’t have a plate,” he said.

  “You got a fork? I don’t eat with sticks.” The man had a slight stoop, and his left hand moved in the pill-rolling tremor common to Parkinson’s patients. “You got anything to drink?”

  “I had an iced tea somewhere.”

  “I know that. I mean a drink.”

  “Sorry. There’s a water cooler upstairs.”

  “I’m not that thirsty.”

  He worked away at the chicken in silence for another moment, then said, “I’m Red Mayhew.”

  “Dave Quinn.”

  “And what’s this asshole’s name?”

  “Edmund Dalton,” Dave said. “Did you do some work for him, or what?”

  “Or what’s more like it. That’s right, Dalton—I forgot. I drove up Beach Boulevard with him and simulated his father for some cheap notary north of Talbert. Killed over two hours. Afterwards he gave me a twenty and left me to pay for the cab. Cost me half of it to get back down here. I was damned if I was going to walk. I walk too damn much already.”

  “So you ended up with ten bucks for all that work?”

  “I should have asked for more money up front, but I figured that a man driving a car like that wouldn’t be so damn cheap. I admit I was stupid, but I’m goddamned if it don’t piss me off anyway.”

  “I don’t blame you. You simulated his father?”

  “You’re damn straight I did. I signed the man’s name. He couldn’t have got just anyone to do it, either—not somebody that looked like the picture on the driver’s license.”

  “And you want to ask him for more money?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I ended up with ten bucks, minus refreshments, and half my day down the drain. Don’t get me wrong, if I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t ask. But I do need it. I’ve got some debts.” He put the chicken carton down, picked up a napkin, and wiped his face. “Maybe you could loan me five? I’ll pay you back after I talk to your friend.”

  “He’s not my friend,” Dave said, taking out his wallet. He pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it over. “He won’t give you any more money. That’s a cold fact.”

  “He live around here?”

  “Seaview Condominiums up on Seventeenth.” Immediately he wished he hadn’t said anything. Not that he wanted to protect Edmund, but it might easily turn out badly for the old man. Edmund wouldn’t wait ten seconds to call the police … unless the police were a threat to him, because of having the old man “simulate his father.” In any case, it was better if Mayhew got used to the ten dollars and didn’t push for more. “How much do you figure he owes you?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Twice what he paid me. If I would have got back here with thirty bucks, I wouldn’t bother the man. I’d be happy.”

  Dave thought it over for a long minute. “I wouldn’t think about asking him for any more money,” he said. “I happen to think he’s dangerous. He’s also cheap as hell, as you already know. You don’t want a fight over this, and you sure don’t want the police involved. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you another twenty right now, and then you don’t have to bother with him. That’s thirty-five you’ll make, not counting the cab money.”

  “You d
on’t owe me anything, son.”

  “It doesn’t hurt me a bit. And if I can find a way to get it back out of Dalton, I’ll get it back.” Dave found another twenty in his wallet, gave it to the old man, and then walked out through the door with him, into the lot.

  “I’ll pay this back,” Mayhew said. He shook his head.

  “That goddamn punk.”

  “Take my word for it,” Dave said. “You don’t want to bother Dalton for any more money.”

  “The day I can’t handle a punk like that …”

  “Well, what I mean is it’s pointless.”

  “He’s a king hell cheapskate,” Mayhew said.

  “The absolute king.”

  “Well, he cheated the wrong man this time.”

  “I’m glad I could take care of the problem, then,” Dave said uneasily. Somehow this wasn’t sinking in. When the old man walked away, it was west up 6th Street. Dave watched him until he disappeared in the fog, and then went inside to eat what was left of the cold food.

  19

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE NOTARY ON BEACH NORTH OF TALBERT, at least for six blocks or so. Dave drove up and down three times, pulling into strip malls back off the highway to check small offices hidden by fast-food restaurants, parked trucks, and vendors set up along the boulevard. Unless Red Mayhew had remembered it wrong, Right Now Notary had to be the place. There was a Laundromat and a liquor store next door to the notary, and Dave pulled into a slot midway between the two of them and shut off the engine.

  He had thought about Mayhew last night for a while before he’d gotten to sleep, and had concluded a couple of things. First, he wasn’t going to say anything at all to Edmund about the old man coming past the Earl’s. By itself, it wasn’t worth anything—there was no ammunition in it. In fact, it would strike Edmund as hilarious, Dave’s giving him twenty-five bucks. Second, any way Dave looked at it, Edmund had hired old Mayhew in order to pull off some kind of scam. What was it?