The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

by Laird Koenig

  "Her Bentley’s in front of her office."

  "Maybe they took the prospect’s car."

  Rynn wished she could turn and show Mario the confidence his answer inspired.

  But the officer demolished that confidence.

  "If you knew Mrs. Hallet, you’d know she never rides in a stranger’s car. She only takes her own. Ask me why, I might even tell you."

  "Thinks somebody’s going to rape her?" Mario chuckled.

  "She takes her own car because on her side of the front seat she carries a forty-five Magnum."

  Mario shrugged to show his cool. "She got a license? Bet she hasn’t. Bust her!"

  "Zitti!"

  "Italian for shut up." The boy tapped Rynn’s shoulder. "Police brutality, see?" To his uncle he said, "I got a witness."

  Again Miglioriti tried to ignore his nephew and talk only to Rynn. "Hallet reported you called. Something about his mother coming over here to pick up some glasses for jelly-making."

  Both Miglioriti and Mario waited for her answer. The girl glanced at the carton against the wall. "They’re still waiting for her."

  Miglioriti drew the carton from the wall and opened the lid. The glasses clinked as his foot pushed the carton back.

  "She never came by?"

  "After I called," the girl said, "I didn’t leave the house." She thought back. The truth was, she had left the house only to take the walk. No one had seen her but the kids coming back from the football game, and their car had not been close enough that they would remember seeing what she looked like. Her lie would hold.

  "I was here all the time."

  "I called Hallet back about half an hour ago," Miglioriti said. "His wife said she still wasn’t home."

  "So you came looking for her here?" asked Mario.

  For a long moment neither of them thought the officer was going to answer the question.

  "No. I came here because I thought Rynn might be alone."

  It was Mario who asked what they both were thinking.

  "And you figured that creep might decide to come out here?"

  Miglioriti’s big blunt fingers plowed through his hair.

  "So I took the patrol car. Okay with you, smartass?"

  Mario spread his hands as a magician would to show that nothing was concealed. "Only she’s not alone."

  "I may be a cop, but I can still see."

  "Thank you," Rynn said.

  Miglioriti poured another splash of wine.

  "Everything okay?"

  "Fine," the girl said.

  "Uncle Ron?"

  The officer drank the wine and put the glass on the table.

  "I know. You don’t want me to tell your mom and dad you were here,"

  "Like if you didn’t"—the boy grinned—"I mean would that automatically mean the collapse of Western Civilization?"

  "If you want my help, don’t be a smartass,"

  Mario’s spread fingers flattened against his chest—the innocent unjustly accused.

  "Who’s a smartass?"

  The officer spoke to Rynn. "I don’t know. Maybe you can teach him some manners."

  Suddenly Mario sounded like a little boy. "You won’t tell Mom and Dad? They think I’m at this birthday party—"

  "Because that’s what you told them? You’ve already incriminated yourself." Miglioriti was smiling again, but the smile was for Rynn alone.

  "In a good cause." His smile faded. "About Mrs. Hallet. I’d appreciate any help you can give."

  "I know," Rynn said, every bit as serious as he. "I only wish I could help...."

  If Miglioriti wasn’t satisfied with the answers, he had nothing further to say. "Thanks for the wine."

  The man moved quickly through the parlor and out the door.

  Rynn ran after him and called from the porch.

  "Good-night!" In the cold, her voice turned to mist, and Mario pulled her inside. He shut the door, holding a silencing finger to his lips. They would wait in silence long enough for the policeman to reach his car and drive away.

  Only when he heard the engine start did Mario let his pent-up fear explode.

  "Wowie! What was it like for you? Scary, uh? I mean wasn’t it. . ."

  But Rynn had turned away from him and seemed to be calmly pouring a glass of wine. She held it out to Mario who grabbed it and gulped.

  "I mean how’s a guy going to know who it might be out there. Right?"

  The girl picked drops of wax from the table beneath the candlesticks.

  "There was no reason to be frightened."

  Mario blinked and shook his head to show he could scarcely believe she could sound so calm.

  "You can say that now. But you were scared. Man, you were scared shitless!"

  Why was she refusing to share the thrill of this moment? Mario threw his cape over his shoulders. He clapped his silk hat on his head. He waved his abracadabra cane.

  "How did you like the way I made your father disappear?"

  "You lied."

  "Bet your ass. What did you want me to do?"

  He could not think why she would refuse to share his excitement, why she would withhold credit for the way he had held up under his uncle’s cross-examination.

  Angrily he adjusted his cape, set his hat at a rakish angle, and smacked the floor with his cane. He was marching the few steps toward the door when Rynn said, "Where do you think you’re going?" If she was fighting panic her voice betrayed none of it.

  He neither turned nor answered. He knew she was watching his every step and he used his cane to make his way, as straight as he was able, directly for the door.

  Rynn rushed after him.

  He turned. His grin was huge.

  "Just testing. Like you don’t really want me to go or anything, do you?"

  She shook her head no.

  "Righto," he said in his cheeriest English voice. As his arm slipped around her, Rynn threw her head back and burst into giggles that she let grow into roars of laughter. She knew he was looking at her chipped tooth, but she went right on laughing. Mario began to laugh too. Soon both were laughing till they fell into each other’s arms and clung together.

  Mario was the first to stop.

  "Listen!"

  Rynn, too, heard the knock at the door.

  "Jesus," the boy said in a whisper. "He’s back!"

  Rynn stopped at the door with one hand on the latch. She waved to Mario to. watch her handle the officer.

  She threw the door wide. Frank Hallet stood on the porch.

  11

  SHE FOUGHT to cover her rush of fear. She fought, too, to make some sense of what had happened. The policeman had come to this same door, but he had driven off down the lane. The shadow that flickered across the curtain had not been the officer’s. All the time Miglioriti had been drinking wine with Rynn and Mario, Hallet had been at the house. Hallet had been waiting.

  The man in the doorway smoothed long strands of tangled hair over his gleaming bald head. His watery blue eyes betrayed his share of surprise at the sight of the bicycle in the hall. His eyes shot to the sitting room to find the boy in the cape.

  Hallet made no move. Behind him, out in the black night, the bare branches moved in the wind, scraping and clacking together.

  Rynn prayed the man could not see how her legs shook under her caftan. Usually so quick to take action, so calm, so inventive with answers, she had no move to make, nothing to say. When she heard the tap-tap of Mario’s cane, when she remembered that unlike every other night, she was not alone tonight, she blessed Mario in silence.

  Mario tapped his way to stand at her side.

  Hallet made the first move. Neither Rynn nor Mario knew how to stop him.

  Now it was too late to shut him out.

  He made no sign, no gesture, he uttered no command, but at each step he took into the hall, Rynn and Mario stumbled back. He was here. He needed to do nothing more to show them he was master of this place. At the strong scent of cologne Rynn stifled a wave of nausea. />
  Hallet’s hands, usually pink, now glowed an angry red from the cold, and he kneaded them together as he approached the bicycle. He stared at the machine as if such a thing had never been seen in a house.

  Rynn and Mario found themselves retreating into the parlor, moving when the man moved, stumbling back when he advanced.

  Not until Hallet stood on the braided rug did he stop. Here he drew the tiny tube of ointment from his pocket and slid its shine over his heavy lips. In the same way he had stared at the bicycle, he now glanced around the room, focusing first on the couch, then the rocking chair, the woodbox, the table, as if this were the first time he had looked at these things. Almost unconsciously he smoothed a wrinkle from the braided rug with his suede shoes. One step took him to the wall and the cardboard carton. The suede shoe prodded the box. Glasses clinked.

  "Jelly glasses?" he asked without turning to look at the girl.

  She nodded yes.

  At the table he picked up one of the pewter candlesticks and a pink finger probed the still warm wax. He turned the pewter in his hand before he set it down beside the two dinner plates, the wine glasses, the stained and crumpled napkins.

  "Only two for dinner?"

  He unbuttoned his raincoat, stripped it off, and flung it to the surprised boy. The man’s jacket was of the same rough tweed as his mother’s coat. The high collar of a frayed red turtleneck sweater pressed against his plump chin. His gray flannel trousers were even more rumpled than they had been the evening of Halloween, his suede shoes even muddier.

  Neither youngster answered his question. Apparently he did not expect an answer, for he reached down to the coffee table and the cigarette box. Slowly he lifted out a Gauloise and held it upright in his finger tips. Deliberately, he moved his pink hand with the cigarette closer to Rynn till she recoiled to keep hand and cigarette from touching her face.

  What did he want of her? What did he expect her to do? Hallet was sniffing the air. He turned his head, but he did not detect what he sought.

  "Your father hasn’t been smoking?"

  Was it another question like the first, or did he now expect an answer?

  Hallet sat in the rocking chair. He snapped his fingers at the boy.

  Mario, still carrying the raincoat, limped to the coffee table, found the box of matches, and offered them to the man.

  He shook his head, no.

  The boy struck a flame and brought it to the chair and lit the man’s cigarette.

  Hallet drew deeply of the smoke and let it curl slowly up his face, silent as an idol in front of which incense burned. He rocked slowly.

  Just as Rynn began to wonder if the man would ever speak, he rose from the rocker.

  "It’s cold," he said moving to the woodbox to get a log for the fire. His hand was on the lid.

  Mario stifled a gasp. His eyes darted toward Rynn. He could see the girl staring at the box, rigid with fear, dreading the moment the man would raise the lid, the moment he would find the candy-stripe umbrella.

  Rynn pushed past Hallet to reach the hearth. "Let me put a log on the fire," she said in a voice that betrayed nothing of what Mario knew she felt.

  Hallet shrugged and hearing Gordon’s claws scraping on the wire mesh, moved to the corner.

  Mario crowded onto the hearth to block Hallet’s view of the box. With the girl, he lifted out two maple logs, quickly closed the box, pushed the wood into the fire and poked the embers under the logs into life. Quickly, Rynn maneuvered past him to sit on the woodbox. The smell of smoke was sharp.

  The man lifted the squeaking white rat from his cage.

  "Gordon?"

  The girl nodded.

  "You love Gordon?"

  She nodded again.

  "I asked you a question."

  "Yes.’"

  "Yes what?"

  "Yes, I love Gordon." Her voice was as cold and bitter as the night outside the door.

  Only Gordon’s head poked out from the red fist that held him tight. Hallet raised the tiny animal to the level of his blue eyes till the pink and white nose quivered in the curling cigarette smoke, the little red eyes rolled about wildly searching for a way to escape.

  "I think Gordon loves you," Hallet said.

  With his free hand the man flicked the ash from his cigarette and held it to his shiny lips, drawing in smoke until the end glowed red with fire. With a firm grip on the cigarette, he brought the burning end toward the white rat.

  Rynn strangled a cry.

  Hallet pressed the glowing cigarette against one of Gordon’s eyes.

  The rat screeched.

  Rynn’s hands smothered her scream.

  "Jesus," Mario whispered.

  As the rat screeched again and again and again the girl grabbed at Mario and buried her face in his cape. The boy’s arm, though shaking, went around her shoulders.

  Hallet held the cigarette up and blew on the end till the fire glowed. Only when the tobacco was a bright ember did he press it against the screeching rat’s other eye. For a second he studied Gordon writhing in his hand, then tossed the creature into the fire.

  He flicked the cigarette into the hearth.

  Hallet thrust a hand in front of the girl’s face. Torn marks in the plump palm oozed blood.

  "Son of a bitch scratched me."

  He told the boy to get him a disinfectant.

  "In the medicine cabinet upstairs?" Mario asked.

  Trembling, Rynn could make no answer.

  Mario limped across the room, hung the raincoat in the hall, and climbed the stairs.

  Inspecting the scratches on his hand, Hallet stood before the girl with the air of a man who has satisfied. himself with a good job of work. He lowered himself into the rocker and slowly brought the chair full tilt toward Rynn until he breathed in her face.

  "Now. Where’s your father?"

  The girl muttered a single word.

  "I can’t hear you!"

  "Sleeping," the girl managed to say.

  "Upstairs?"

  She shook her head.

  "I asked you if he was upstairs."

  "Next room." Her voice was barely audible.

  Hallet pushed the sleeve of his tweed jacket from his wrist and glanced at his wristwatch.

  "He goes to bed early."

  "He was up all night. Translating."

  "Yes?" The man was able to give the word a twist that meant, while her statement might be true, he did not for a minute believe it.

  "Where? That room?" He jerked his head in the direction of the study.

  "Yes."

  “How many did you have for dinner?"

  Rynn could still not bring herself to look at the man.

  "You can see.”

  "I asked.”

  "Two."

  "Only the two of you?"

  Rynn nodded. Before the man spoke sharply, and she knew he would, she added, "Yes."

  "Father?"

  "No."

  "No what?"

  "My father didn’t eat...." She fought back tears.

  "You said he was tired."

  "Yes."

  Mario had come downstairs and noiselessly entered the room. Holding the bottle of disinfectant, he limped toward the man.

  Hallet turned to the boy. "Good dinner?"

  Mario, too, spoke in a voice scarcely more than an audible whisper. "Yes."

  Hallet grabbed the disinfectant.

  "All alone?"

  The boy shot a frantic glance at Rynn as if, in her face, he could read what she had said. But she had turned to face the corner.

  "No.”

  "Alone, but not alone?" The man painted the scratches on his palm with red disinfectant from the tiny bottle.

  "If you’re not alone, where is he?"

  "Who?"

  "Who we’re talking about." Hallet held his hand close to the light. "Her father."

  "He’s in the next room," Rynn, who could smell the disinfectant, said suddenly.

  "Not upstairs?"
<
br />   "No,"

  "You said upstairs."

  "No I didn’t."

  "Not upstairs." Hallet finished painting his hand. He screwed the top back and held the bottle out to the waiting boy.

  "Where he works?"

  "Yes."

  "Not working this time. Sleeping."

  The girl nodded. Quickly she said, "Yes."

  "But not upstairs," the man stated this as one who wants to make it perfectly clear he does not wish to make any mistakes.

  Hallet rose from the rocker that creaked slowly back and forth. At the hearth he picked up the poker and stirred the fire. He spoke to the girl sitting on the wood box, but a jerk of his head indicated the boy.

  "He’s?"

  "I’m Mario Podesta."

  Hallet did not look at the boy. He was facing Rynn. "I asked you."

  "He’s Mario Podesta."

  Slowly he turned to the boy.

  "That right?"

  The boy nodded, but quickly added, "Yes."

  "I’ve seen you around."

  "My uncle," the boy said. "He’s a cop."

  "Yes."

  "He was just here."

  Hallet snapped his fingers for Mario to raise his eyes and look at him. "Why?"

  "He’s coming back."

  "That isn’t what I asked you."

  "Tell him, "said Rynn.

  "Yes, tell me,” Hallet said.

  "He came here because he said you called him. Asking about your mother. Why she wasn’t home. He thought you might come here looking for her."

  "Why would she be here?" A hand, striped with red, signaled Rynn not to answer. He wanted to hear it from the boy.

  "Those jelly glasses over there. She was coming by to pick them up."

  "And there they are," said Hallet.

  "Officer Miglioriti’s coming back," Rynn said.

  "Is that what he said?"

  "Yes."

  "I’m sure," Hallet said carefully settling himself into the rocker, "one day he will."

  12

  HALLET GLANCED at his watch. "Where do you suppose that mother of mine could be keeping herself this time of night?" As he rocked, it could have been a trick of the wavering firelight, but Rynn was certain the man was smiling.

  He held his pink hands out to the fire. "The other night," he said, his face bright red in the firelight, "you said you didn’t have any boyfriends."

  It was not a direct question and Rynn had shown she would speak only when the man made his demands unmistakable. Instead of pressing her, Hallet shifted the question to the boy.