Move to Strike

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “You need to build that leg up slowly . . .”

  He and his nurse went on for quite a while. Paul tried to listen, but found himself admiring the nurse, thinking about Susan and Nina, and his two wives, along with other miscellaneous girlfriends. All these women, beautiful, mostly, great fun in bed, all. Some relationships that cut deep.

  Susan wasn’t cutting deep. The night before had been a romp, and they both had had a good time. That was it.

  Once again, because of Nina, he was in trouble. He’d gone back up to Tahoe supposedly because he needed the money, then blew most of it on a down payment for his new car. Stupid, stupid, stupid. A psychologist could have some fun with this pretense, and would rapidly conclude he had not gone up to Tahoe for the money at all, but had gone up to Tahoe vainly hoping for a resumption of relations between him and Nina. Nothing he did ever moved the pointed chin and piercing brown eyes very far from his mind.

  Sitting there getting his cast off, he had to face it. He was still in love with her.

  He had to get away from her for good. He had sacrificed any chance of her loving him, unless he lied and went on lying to her, and he didn’t think he could be close to her and keep up the lie forever. And if the truth was told, she would—what? Turn him in, maybe. Turn away from him forever, certainly.

  As the doc shook his hand good-bye, he thought, after this case, I’m gone. He’d stay strictly away from her and away from Tahoe.

  And Susan? Two days in a row was too much Susan. Susan bored him. Bored him stiff, he thought and had to smile, because that was exactly how the relationship had gone, good sex, no relationship. Tonight she wanted to make dinner for him, probably already had the greens out and washed and ready to go. He would call her and tell her it was over.

  Forgetting everything the doctor said, he took a hard step forward and cursed. The nurse ordered a wheelchair and insisted he sit in it until they could dump him at the door.

  The nurse hung over him. “Where’s your ride?” she asked, not about to let him just get up and walk away, although he was perfectly capable. She might even call the police on him if he tried to drive. Half-registered words had warned against it, earlier.

  He got up. “Right here,” he said, pointing toward a Buick driven by an older man that was parked at the curb. He walked gingerly over, grabbed the door handle on the passenger side, and waved her off.

  Whipping the wheelchair around, she turned away.

  “Who the hell are you?” said the man. “Get your hands off that door or I’ll blow ’em off.”

  “My mistake,” Paul said, backing away. He took his time getting to his car, then drove straight to what was left of his office in Carmel.

  Same scene, getting musty. Deano hadn’t been back. Deano’s techno-industrial furniture wore a dusting of cigar ash here and there.

  Paul descended carefully into his chair, which bore unfamiliar indentations from Dean’s ass. Okay, he needed a new chair anyway.

  The mail had been coming through the slot for a long time unattended. He had to get up again and pick it up off the floor. He made a stack on his desk and looked at it for a while. The bills-to-checks ratio was about ten to one. Finally he picked up the phone.

  “Ez? Don’t hang up.”

  Good old Ez said, “Don’t bother me again. You are terminated long since.”

  “So’s Deano,” Paul said. “He’s been spreading some mighty nasty rumors about me around town, trying to get my business away from me.”

  “Like hell. Dean showed me the papers. I know all about you.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. Ez was talking.

  “So he showed you the papers?”

  “The letter from your probation officer.”

  Paul couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.

  “What’d I do?” he said. “Which crime was it?”

  “I’d prefer not to talk about it.” Ez’s voice went down to a whisper. “I’m as liberal as the next guy, but . . . I never would have guessed . . . you seemed so . . . You go have that operation if you have to. Maybe that will calm you down, keep you out of trouble in public rest-rooms, but don’t expect me ever to call you Paula.”

  Paul enjoyed the afternoon. Now that he knew what had happened, he made a few more calls.

  Paula!

  Good old Dean. He wasn’t quite finished with Deano yet.

  Along with paying the down on the car, he had paid bills and sent money to the folks with the first good check from Nina. He was broke again, but the business was wobbling to its feet like a newborn calf.

  Before he left, he called Deano’s Monterey number. A disconnect. He was thinking about whether to hunt him down like a dog through his investigator’s license when his eye fell on an emergency number Dean had once given him. Dean’s mother in Atascadero. He nodded slowly. And called the number.

  “Hello?” An elderly lady.

  “Mrs. Trumbo?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Rod Stricker with the Internal Revenue Service.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I’m trying to locate a Dean Jay Trumbo.”

  “Dean doesn’t live here.”

  “You’re a relative?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Do you know where Mr. Trumbo is?”

  “I have no idea,” said Mrs. Trumbo stoutly.

  “Well, we are trying to find Mr. Trumbo. We have sent a number of letters to his Carmel office and his apartment since he missed his audit appointment.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “We are going back to 1995, and there are serious problems. I mean, serious. If you have any contact with Mr. Trumbo in the future, would you please give him this audit number and tell him to come into our Los Angeles office to avoid further proceedings.”

  “Yes, of course. What is the number?” He heard scrambling.

  “ZXCVBNM3347,” Paul said.

  “I can’t find a pen! What was that again?”

  “ZSFJRTX3347.” He hung up. It really was sweet.

  Late that night after tossing and turning for a few hours, Paul packed a duffel and got on the road for Tahoe. The empty gray highway soothed him in a way his bed could not. He liked going somewhere. Action in any direction was enough to silence those bothersome night goblins.

  His first stop was the casino. He hit the tables with a furious, frantic energy, and because his leg ached and his mind felt uncommonly disgruntled, he hit the bottle of Louise’s red elixir a few more times than was probably judicious. He lost steadily, and it was only after he found himself tossing four-of-a-kind down without a bet that he realized the atmosphere had undergone a subtle metamorphosis. What started off as the usual night-owl crowd, pasty-faced and determined, was suddenly looking greener. He checked out the overhead lights, and sure enough, more green. Turning back to the dealer, he opened his mouth to comment on the strange cost-cutting measures of the casino, but shut it again as her scaly hair crawled wildly over her shoulders and down to the table, separated from her scalp and scampered over the table, now changed into small, mean lizards, red tongues flicking at the flying cards.

  Holy shit, he thought, feeling bubbles of laughter bursting inside. Didn’t something like this happen to Hunter Thompson in Vegas?

  As he turned to remark upon it to the man seated next to him, he stopped himself with a fist to his mouth, stifling what would have been a startled shout. The man’s face was swelling—his eyes rolled over into opaque marbles, his teeth grew spear sharp, and from beneath his white T-shirt, like a dinosaur hatching from an egg, a tail began to emerge, glinting in the turmoil of green light that now shined down in distinct beams, alien light on a reptilian hell . . .

  The whole thing was so damned funny! He nearly busted a gut laughing, until the pit boss stood him up and firmly but gently steered him out of the room, inviting him to leave.

  Ducking the man’s bulging eyes, which were making a beeline across the heads of the patrons toward him, Paul staggered to the ne
arest rest room giggling hysterically, and, not entirely without regret, forced himself to upchuck. Pulling himself to the sink a few minutes later, he was afraid to look in the mirror, but he did, and what he saw did not surprise him. A sweating man. A grinning, gibbering idiot.

  Sitting on a stool, door closed, he gave himself a long time to recover, unhappily monitoring the nocturnal comings and goings of his fellow gamblers. Coming out later, he rinsed his face, entered the casino gingerly, and found things restored to the more usual bright lights and pleasant amusements.

  Cursing himself, he headed straight out to his car and drove to Nina’s house on Kulow. One light knock and Bob answered the door.

  “It’s Sunday morning,” Bob said, squinting into the darkness to see. “And really early, isn’t it?” In spite of the hour, he looked combed and unrumpled.

  “Right,” Paul said. “Sorry. Your mom home?”

  “She’s sleeping.” He bent down to pet Hitchcock. “She worked late writing a motion.”

  “Any idea when she’ll get up?”

  “Not really. But you can come in and wait.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” Bob said dubiously, leading the way toward the table. Around a cardboard cereal box, small o’s were arranged into an elaborately layered rectangle. An empty milk container lay on its side nearby.

  “That’s okay,” Paul said. “Allow me.” He opened cupboards until he lined up Nina’s equipment, asking, “You want some?”

  Bob’s eyes opened ever so slightly. “Sure,” he said, voice casual.

  After measuring the coffee with a tablespoon, Paul sprinkled it into the filter basket, loving the smell of hot water soaking through ground beans. He searched farther to come up with sugar. Ladling some into Bob’s cup along with some half-and-half he found in the refrigerator, he said, “You’ve been up a while.”

  Bob nodded.

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  He shook his head.

  “Neither could I,” said Paul. “Nightmares. Things that go bump in the night.” He laughed, and after a minute, Bob contributed his own dry chuckle to the thought.

  “Me too,” he said.

  With his back turned, Paul added instant chocolate to Bob’s cup along with a dab of coffee. He handed it over. Bob took a tentative sip, then another. “Mmm,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t know coffee was so good.”

  “Secret recipe,” said Paul.

  They drank their coffee in companionable peace for a few minutes while the dark outside paled toward morning.

  “What’s your nightmare?” Bob asked. “You don’t have to tell me but . . . do you have one that really scares you, the same one over and over?”

  “My nightmare,” Paul said, thinking. “I turn into a lizard.”

  “Sounds funny.”

  “Trust me, it isn’t.”

  “I didn’t know adults had bad dreams like that.”

  “We do.”

  Bob put a finger in the bottom of his cup and came up with sticky black goo, which he licked. “In my dream,” he said, “there’s someone trying to get into the house. Someone who wants to kill me and kill my mom. I know he’s out there, out in the woods. I can hear him, but I can’t see him. I hunt for him and I feel like he’s right behind me all the time. He’s got a knife. I can hear him getting closer. I get scared, really scared, and I try to shout but nothing comes out. He gets closer . . . and then I wake up and it’s like I died or something, I feel so bad.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “It is.” He nodded. “Yep.”

  “So that’s why you were up so early on a Sunday.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t have to answer this either, but . . . are these dreams something recent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they start after that night at Nikki’s? You know, the night that man chased you.”

  Bob looked startled. “No, not then. Before. Last fall. After . . . you know. That’s when the dreams started, right after he died.”

  Son of a gun. But why was he surprised at the notion that Bob hadn’t forgotten what was probably the most horrible experience of his young life? Just because Nina managed to erect stone wall defenses didn’t mean her son had the same talent. “You tell your mom?”

  “What’s she gonna do about it? That guy killed her husband. It’s worse for her. She gets up in the middle of the night and I hear her walking around in circles upstairs.”

  “She does, eh? And you wake up at dawn. So you just get up and build cities out of cereal.”

  Bob flicked a Cheerio across the table with his fingers. “I can’t watch TV. That would wake Mom up. They never caught him, and they never will. Someday he’ll come back and try to hurt us. So Hitchcock and me keep a lookout.”

  Paul got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. The Tahoe birds, more musical than the seagulls near his condo, were waking up and beginning the morning chorus. Better than any choir, he thought. Out there, just singing and praying louder than Baptists this Sunday morning. “There’s something I want to tell you, Bob, only you can’t tell anyone else, understand?”

  “What?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “My mom says I’m getting to be an expert.”

  Paul let that go by. “That guy . . . the one outside the door. The bad guy. You know who I mean. The real one.”

  Bob hesitated, and his features went to war against each other, the vulnerable boy and the invincible teen vying for equal time. The boy won. “Yes,” Bob said, so softly Paul could barely hear him. Then louder, committed, he said, “The one that did it. The one who tried to kill us all. That’s who I dream about.”

  “Here’s what I want you to know and this is what you can’t tell anyone, not Uncle Matt, not Aunt Andrea, not Troy . . . nobody, ever, okay?”

  “My mom?”

  “Definitely not your mom.”

  “I don’t like keeping secrets from her.”

  “She can’t know this. Ever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . your mom is an officer of the court. She might feel obliged to do something. It might hurt me. Keeping her out of this protects her from involvement.”

  Curiosity broke through his doubt. “All right,” Bob agreed. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “You promise me?”

  “I swear.”

  “Okay. Listen up, Bob. The bad guy is gone. He’ll never, ever come back. I’m not saying this just to comfort you. I am not shitting you,” Paul said, using the language intentionally, knowing Bob would understand he was being treated like an adult entrusted with serious information. “He’ll never come back. He isn’t out in these woods waiting to get you and your mom. He isn’t hiding somewhere else and waiting for his chance to come forward. You’re safe. Don’t waste another second worrying about that bastard coming after you. He won’t. He can’t. Got that? He can’t. You have my word.”

  Bob looked directly into his eyes, and Paul saw belief beginning to dawn in the face that was lit by the foggy light now pouring through the window. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” Bob said.

  “I do.”

  Holding his cup out for a refill, Bob gave voice to a final, loitering suspicion. “Well, but if he isn’t anywhere, where is he?”

  “Which piece?” Paul said. Then he picked up his cup and started some eggs.

  And on the stairway above, now past enjoying the songs of the birds and the comforting murmur of Bob and Paul in the kitchen, Nina pulled her robe tight around her and reeled back against the bannister. Paul said what he said to comfort Bob as he had comforted her once, but somehow the assurance in his voice, the sheer arrogant confidence, hit her differently this time. He sounded so absolutely certain.

  She went back to her room and lay down on the bed, putting her thoughts together.

  Ten minutes later, she went down to the kitchen in her kimono. She acted surprised to see Paul, ate t
he eggs he set before her, and told him all about the rock shop owner and Dennis Rankin, with the claim next to Nikki’s. Paul was at loose ends and agreed right away to go out to the desert, although he insisted they make a quick stop to drop something in the box at the Post Office on the way out of town. Bob said he had homework and opted to stay behind.

  Nina dressed and packed water and sandwiches. They stopped in Zephyr Cove for gas, and as they were leaving the mountains, rushing down toward the flat desert floor on the twisting freeway, she allowed herself to take one swift look at Paul, sitting beside her rubbing his leg and wearing his sunglasses.

  And it seemed to her that she had met the real Paul for the first time when she heard him talking to Bob in the kitchen, the real Paul who was an utter mystery, masking himself with joking and pranks and systematic underachievement. He was as unreadable as a—what was that mythical lizardlike animal who could kill with a look?—a basilisk! And having seen the mystery in him, she was filled with horror and wonder and unable to speak of it.

  CHAPTER 23

  WHILE THEY SAT stuck in traffic on McCarran in Reno, Nina took time out from her driving to observe how Paul massaged his leg. He seemed much better, but the leg must still be a bother. She puzzled over his urgent insistence that she rush Louise’s red “mixture” to Ginger for immediate analysis before they could leave town.

  “But why?” she had asked.

  “Let’s just say, nothing that much fun is ever innocent,” he had said wryly.

  She turned her mind away from that and back to traffic while passing between trucks. Paul broke into her thoughts. “You got hold of Dr. Seisz?”

  “Yes,” she answered, “but call him that and he’ll probably die of surprise. I warned Tim we were coming. He was a big help in my last—my last murder case. He’s expecting us and a fat check for his time, too. I hope this isn’t pointless,” Nina said. “We may never find Rankin.”

  “We won’t if we don’t look,” said Paul.

  Nina found an opening in the traffic and went for it, passing on the right of a stalled car and skipping through a yellow light to get across the next big intersection. “Nikki gave us a good idea where to look—”