by Ken Douglas
Ann grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into Susan Spencer’s Diner. The only other soul in the restaurant was Jesse Hernandez, the morning cook. He was dressed in kitchen whites, long hair in a bun under a cook’s hat and headphones, his back was facing the door and he was singing at the top of his lungs about being dazed and confused.
Like spies in the night, they walked through the diner, past booths with blood red Naugahyde and into the corridor that led to the back exit, past the women’s, past the men’s, past the pay phone, and out through the open door in back as Lola, the morning waitress, exited the woman’s restroom, never knowing that Ann and J.P. had passed by.
Ann looked left, then right. They were in the alley between First and Second Avenues. The east side was dotted with dumpsters and trash cans situated near the rear doors of Second Avenue’s merchants. The west side fronted on the garages and fenced backyards of the modest homes on First.
“ Is he still coming?” J.P. asked.
“ I think so,” Ann said.
Then they heard the front door of the diner crash open.
“ Is there anybody here?” Someone yelled in a raspy voice.
“ Nobody’s been here for the last half hour,” Lola answered.
“ Are you sure?” The raspy voice boomed loud.
“ We’re going over,” Ann whispered. She hoisted J.P. up to the top of a five foot brick fence. He grabbed on, rolled over the top and dropped into the yard on the other side with Ann right behind him.
Ann took J.P. by the hand and led him across the backyard to the back door of a two story house. Checking the door, she found it unlocked and they quietly went inside. Ann locked the door behind them. They heard the sound of a shower and a woman’s voice humming a tune Ann wasn’t familiar with. Putting her index finger to her lips, indicating to J.P. to be quiet, Ann looked through flower print curtains and saw the man coming over the fence.
“ He’s still coming,” she whispered, taking J.P.’s hand again and leading him through a modern kitchen, then a dining room, then a sitting room, then an entrance way and finally out the front door as they heard the man banging on the back.
Once they were out the front they turned left and sprinted down First. Without slowing, they crossed Kennedy, back into the Elms, back across the football field and the baseball diamond, back onto Seaview Avenue, and back up the hill toward home.
Once they were back at Judy’s Ann felt safe, at least for a few minutes, she told herself. She was exhausted, the cancer stealing her strength. She had to lay down, just for a few seconds. She literally fell on the sofa.
“ Are you all right?” J.P. asked.
“ I’m fine, I just need a little rest.”
“ Okay.
J.P. settled back in his mother’s favorite chair, remote in hand, and channel surfed, changing channels at least three times a minute, but he couldn’t get that Ragged Man out of his mind. How could Ann rest at a time like this? She must really be tired. He didn’t want to think about it, so he decided to get something to eat, but before he got to the refrigerator, he heard an animal sound from outside. He pulled a kitchen chair over to the sink, climbed up and looked out the window and saw the black shape of a big dog slide into the bushes that grew between the garage and the house.
J.P. loved to play in there.
Like a flash he was off the chair and through the kitchen to tell Ann. Halfway to the sofa he heard the scratching at the front door and screamed, “Annie, something’s outside!”
“ What?” she said, nerves taught.
“ Listen,” he whispered.
Ann heard the scratching at the door.
“ It’s the Ghost Dog,” she said. “It belongs to the Ragged Man.”
“ What are we gonna do?”
“ Sit tight for a second,” she said.
For the longest minute in her life, Ann sat, J.P. by her side, listening to the scratching and scraping at the door. Then whatever was out there growled a low rattling, rasping whisper, barely heard by the duo inside. “Smell-your-fear.” A hideous phlegm-filled gurgle.
“ That’s the Ragged Man,” Ann whispered.
J.P. shuddered.
Ann’s adrenaline was flowing before her feet hit the carpet, her racing mind taking her back to the night with the dingoes in Australia. She was afraid then and she was now, afraid that fear meant death and she wasn’t ready.
“ Are you okay, Annie?”
She couldn’t answer, because she wasn’t okay, her hands were trembling, her skin was clammy with sweat and a searing pain was ripping through her chest.
She knew the end was near. She wished she could see Rick and his beautiful smile one last time, but instead all she saw was the glint of the summer sun reflected into her eyes from the silver, shiny blade of the Jim Bowie knife the Ragged Man was holding up for her to see, just outside the window.
J.P. picked up the phone. “Annie, the phone doesn’t work,” he whispered and she heard the fear in his voice. “Someone cut the line.” He looked Ann in the eyes and she saw the boy fight the fear away. “I’m going for help.” He dashed to the door, slid the bolt and screamed when he saw the Bowie knife sitting on the front porch. Then he jumped over it and ran.
Jaspinder Singh watched as Sheriff Sturgees cradled the phone, then turned to Rick Gordon and Judy Donovan. The phone call had done something to him. The straight shoulders now sagged. The hard set of his jaw was gone. His glaring eyes were now dim. In thirty seconds the call had transformed him from a steaming battleship to a lumbering barge. He started to say something, then stopped. He turned away from Judy as he fished out some bills from a shirt pocket and faced Jaspinder Singh behind the counter.
“ Can I have a pack of Camels?” he asked, handing over the money.
“ It’s that bad?” Singh knew the sheriff only smoked when he was severely upset.
“ It can’t get any worse, Mr. Singh,” the sheriff said. It was plain for them all to see that the Sheriff was suffering some kind of mental anguish. He was fighting hard to control the tremor running through his hands and it took him a few seconds to get the pack open, and a few more to get a cigarette from the pack to his mouth, and still a few more to get it lit.
“ They’re here,” he said, exhaling a cloud of blue-gray smoke as an ambulance was parking out front.
“ Isn’t it a little late for that?” Rick said.
“ We don’t have an undertaker, don’t even have a morgue. They’ll transport both bodies to old Doc Willets in Palma. Doc will do the autopsies and sign the death certificates.”
They watched as the two attendants rolled Gundry’s body onto a stretcher with no more concern for his earthly remains than they’d have for a dog in the gutter.
After they were gone and it was just the four of them again, the Sheriff again looked like he’d swallowed something bad, then Jaspinder Singh thought he’d cry and he fought the tears as he listened to the Sheriff tell Judy Donovan that her brother-in-law, his wife and daughter had been found dead in the Wetlands.
As soon as he’d finished the horrible telling, the phone rang again. This time it was the boy, J.P. Donovan. He was out of breath, wanted to talk to the Sheriff and Jaspinder Singh knew, as he handed the phone over, that it was more bad news, so he wasn’t surprised when the Sheriff said, “It’s J.P. He’s calling from your house, Mr. Gordon. He had to break a window to get in. Seems like there’s trouble up there.”
Rick jumped from the police car and ran into the house. Ann was stretched out on the sofa, looking ashen. “I’m here, Annie,” he said, brushing the damp hair from her face.
“ Judy,” Ann whispered. She was fading fast and she knew it.
“ I’m here,” Judy said.
Ann struggled, held out her hand.
Judy took it and gave her a gentle squeeze.
“ Thank you.” Ann sighed as she took her hand back. Everything was going to be all right now.
“ Annie, what’s wrong?” Rick said.
“ Come
closer, Flash.” She reached out, rubbed her husband’s cheek. “Give me your scar,” she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. He bent his head low, offering the scar under his ear and she ran her tongue along it. “Smile for me one last time.”
He did and she died.
Chapter Five
Six hours till Sherry. Evan was lost in the thought of her. The creamy brown eyes and full lipped smile hung in the haze of his memory as he rolled the hundred dollar bill.
Smiling with anticipation, he bent over the table, put the rolled bill to his nose, and inhaled. Then he sat back and felt the calm course through his body. The first line was always the best. He listened to the sounds of the Stones playing low in the background. For a few seconds he was one with the music. He was completely aware.
He opened his eyes and bent to inhale the second line, when he heard the bell. He inhaled quickly, annoyed that the anticipated rush was being interrupted.
“ Who is it?” he called downstairs.
“ Rick.”
“ Come on up.” He heard the door open and footsteps on the stairs. He covered the residue on the table with a magazine and stuffed the rolled hundred into his shirt pocket.
“ I thought you would be jogging,” he said, as his friend came into the living room.
“ Not today,” Rick Gordon said, “I’m going back to California.”
“ You know you can stay as long as you like.”
“ Hey, New York’s great, but I belong somewhere on the Coast. Besides, I’ve been abusing your hospitality for almost six months. It’s about time I got on with my life.”
“ You’ve been paying rent on the apartment. If it wasn’t for you, I’d probably be renting the downstairs to starving students. You know the kind, always late on the rent. Parties, girls, noise.”
“ I gotta go, Evan.”
“ When are you leaving?”
“ Tonight, I’m going to stop in L.A. for a few days and see Christina, then it’s back to Tampico. I was hoping you’d give me a ride to the airport.”
“ I can’t, I got a date with Sherry. I’ll get my father to do it.”
“ You sure?”
“ I think he likes you better than me. He’ll be glad to do it.”
Evan Hatch walked across the room to the phone and tapped the buttons.
Rick dropped on the divan, closed his eyes and listened to Mick Jagger’s voice coming out of his friend’s speakers.
“ You can’t always get what you want,” repeated the chorus, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”
Very true, he thought, before Ann’s death, he’d managed to get anything he’d ever wanted out of life. And he hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d earned what he’d wanted. He was no stranger to hard work. He’d taken risks and they’d paid off. But since Ann’s death, the only thing he wanted was her back, and the only thing he needed was food and water and a place to sleep.
“ What time you wanna be picked up?” Evan’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.
“ Two, my plane leaves at 5:00, that should be plenty of time.”
“ Can you be here by 2:00?” Rick heard him say, then he watched him hang the phone up.
“ Thanks,” Rick said.
“ You sure you’re ready?”
“ I’ve got to go back. I have to put the house on the market, deal with her things and sell the Jeep.”
“ You sure that’s the best?”
“ I can’t live in that house without Ann. Everything there reminds me of her, the house, the furniture, the Jeep. I have to shed it all.”
“ Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, being reminded of her. She occupied a large chunk of your life.”
“ What time you seeing Sherry?” Rick asked, changing the subject.
“ Lunch at one.”
“ When are you going to let it go?”
“ Never.”
“ Jeez, you gotta get her out of your mind.”
“ I can’t. It must be love.”
Evan had been in love with Sherry Quilvang since a cold New York winter day in 1986 when he’d stumbled into her at the Record Rack. He had been making a cold call and she had been the girl behind the counter. Although he had fallen in love with her at first sight, she had been in love with her employer, who also happened to be her husband. Over the years he’d become her friend and confidant, and, during her rocky marriage, had spent many an hour over a bottle of wine acting the big brother.
“ I gotta pack.” Rick offered his hand and Evan grasped it. “Thanks for the use of the place, you’re a good friend.”
“ You’d do the same for me,” Evan said.
“ Will I see you before I go?”
“ No, I have to go to the Village and drop off some CDs before I meet Sherry.”
“ Good luck.” Rick turned and went down the stairs.
“ I’ll see you in California next month,” Evan yelled after him.
“ Looking forward to it,” Rick shouted back, then he was out the door.
Alone again, Evan removed the magazine, laid out two more lines, then inhaled them. Feeling as good as he thought he was going to get, he donned a black leather jacket and bounced down the stairs and out the front door. He walked around to the back, flicking the button on the garage door opener and climbed into his BMW. He was halfway down the street before the door thudded shut.
When he rounded the first corner, a red Toyota started and followed. It stayed with him all the way to the train station.
Sitting across from Sherry in the restaurant, he felt the tension, something was different. She kept changing the subject and fidgeting with the menu, and the way she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs was putting him on edge. He wondered what was bothering her.
“ Would you like to start with a drink?” the approaching waitress asked.
“ I’ll have a double vodka martini, straight up, no olive,” Sherry said.
Evan was taken aback. She usually only drank wine. Something was definitely up.
“ And you, sir?” the waitress asked.
“ Make it the same.” If she was going to drink doubles, then he was, too.
The waitress left and Sherry buried her face in the menu.
“ What’s up?” he asked her.
“ Nothing.” Her perfect teeth barely squeaked through a loose smile. He noticed a drop of sweat making its way from her hairline down her forehead. She was wound up tighter than Mick Jagger’s pants.
“ You sure?” he asked her.
“ You know, we’ve never been on a real date.”
“ I don’t think your husband would appreciate it.”
“ You’re probably right, but I don’t think I care anymore.”
Evan was stunned, he felt like he’d been hit with a hammer. In all the years that he’d been having lunch with her, she hadn’t once suggested that she was interested in anything more. Greg and Sherry were the perfect couple. He was a great guy, confident and sure of himself, allowing Sherry to have her own friends. The man hadn’t once hinted that he objected to his twice a month lunches with his wife or their frequent phone calls. If Sherry was his wife, he’d watch over her like the environmental wackos watched over the California gray spotted owl.
“ We took in a mint copy of London Roundhouse last week, the original Trade Mark of Quality version,” she said.
“ Really?” she had his full attention. He had one of the best collections of Rolling Stones records in the world, but he was missing that one.
“ That’s the second TMQ Stones record, isn’t it?” she twinkled.
“ No, the third, European Tour was the second.”
“ And Rick really didn’t save any copies of his stuff?”
“ No.”
“ Doesn’t he know that some of the original TMQ records are worth hundreds of dollars?”
“ He doesn’t care.”
“ He sh
ould, he could have made a fortune by just hanging onto three or four copies of every record he made.”
“ He has enough money.”
“ It must be nice.”
“ He has problems, like everybody else,” Evan said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Excuse me, I have to go to the restroom.” She smiled at him as he rose. God, he loved her, he thought, as he made his way through the restaurant toward the men’s room at the back.
He pushed open the swinging door, glad the restroom was empty. He took the first stall, flipped down the toilet seat and sat without taking down his pants. Anticipating the rush, he took a small paper bindle out of his shirt pocket, carefully opened it and set it on his knee. Then he eased a crisp hundred out of his hip pocket and rolled it into a tight pencil thin tube. Already loose, he lifted the bindle of white powder and, with the rolled hundred to his nose, he inhaled twice, once in each nostril. Feeling better than he had in years, he closed the bindle and put it, with the hundred, into his shirt pocket.
If he was going to be drinking doubles, he’d need the coke. The white powder kept him sober, but it was a delicate balancing act, walking a thin line between the stimulant and the depressant.
On his way out of the bathroom, he stopped by the wash basins to check his hair. He quickly ran a comb through it, making sure there were no tangles. Then he bent forward, into the mirror, to inspect a pimple forming at the bridge of his nose.
“ Those are the worst kind,” a voice from behind said.
“ You don’t know if you should pop them or leave them alone.” Evan checked out the voice’s owner in the mirror.
“ I pop them,” the man said.
“ I tend to leave them,” Evan said.
“ You’re Evan Hatch, aren’t you?”
“ Do I know you?”
“ We met at Beatlefest, last year.” Beatlefest was the yearly gathering of New York’s Beatle fans. They swarm into the Hilton Convention Center to buy, swap, and sell Beatle collectibles. Like the Star Trek conventions, which Evan also attended, they got bigger every year.
“ I met a lot of people there, it’s hard to remember them all.”