by David Martin
48
When the electricity in Cul-De-Sac went out Jake Kempis pulled a flashlight from his utility belt and it worked just fine … but he wished he had an even bigger one, an even brighter one.
The man he and Camel had shot was not dead, Growler had regained consciousness to scream at Kempis who went over and tried to figure out if he should do something for the guy, take him to a hospital or at least try to stop the bleeding from the bullet wounds or what.
“Hey look at this,” Growler said indicating the front of his trousers. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and Kempis could see enough of the tattoo to know what was being depicted. “Better let me loose or the ol’ debil get you nigger.”
Jeez, Kempis thought, right away with the nigger … assholes like this were so goddamn predictable. Kempis turned and walked down the corridor, no longer feeling guilty about leaving the bastard cuffed to a radiator … while Growler called after him, “Ol’ debil live in dese walls, you listen, you hear him scratching to get out.”
It was while Jake was searching for a stairway that the electricity went out and he started second-guessing himself about how he placed the cuffs on Growler … maybe he didn’t tighten them sufficiently, maybe the bastard got loose and turned off the electricity.
Coming around to the front of the building Kempis saw the double doors to the outside and thought about leaving … but he’d promised Camel he’d find Annie and Kempis intended to keep that promise.
What’s to worry about anyway, he had the flashlight in his left hand and he was well armed, the .38 revolver he’d used to shoot Growler was in Kempis’s right hand and the 9mm Camel had dropped to the floor was tucked in Kempis’s belt … but he wished for even more guns, even bigger ones.
Jake turned toward the stairway.
Mrs. Milton was supposed to be in a corner room on the second level, Kempis almost to the first step when he heard a noise behind him, like something hard tapping along on the wood floors, almost as if an animal was following him, its nails clicking on the floor … it could’ve been hooves but most likely it was Kempis’s imagination. He turned, shined his light, saw nothing, and headed once more for the stairs … there it was again.
“Mrs. Milton?”
No answer.
He wanted to be a state trooper, all his life Jake Kempis had been a ballsy guy, very little frightened him … but now he wished for even more courage, even bigger balls.
49
Camel awoke with a start, a muscle twitch like when you’re coming out of a dream about stepping off a cliff. He was in a hospital room, lying on a bed but atop the covers and dressed except for his shoes which had been removed and his sports coat which was on a nearby chair. Camel’s first thought was of Annie … she’s okay, Kempis has already taken her to The Ground Floor. Then he thought of Elizabeth Rockwell and wondered if she’d made it.
The only injury to himself that he was aware of initially was the one to his pride, the embarrassment of having fainted, but when Camel sat up he got reminded of everything else that hurt … burns high on his chest and above the belt-line, his stomach still sore from where he’d been sucker-punched by McCleany, his right bicep aching where the golf ball had hit, and most especially his nose, swollen and bandaged as if doctors had grafted an eggplant onto his face.
Adrenaline and a focused concentration had masked these various injuries while Camel dealt with everything that happened at Cul-De-Sac, with getting Elizabeth to the hospital, but now as he swung around to sit on the edge of the bed he felt each individual source of pain.
His shoes were there on the floor, Camel slipping off the bed and sitting in the chair to put them on. How long had he been out, were Kempis and Annie waiting for him at The Ground Floor … had Kempis already notified the state police about Parker Gray’s death?
I’m going to get nailed for that, Camel thought. Even if it eventually comes out that Gray helped frame Growler for the murder seven years ago, that’s not going to let me off the hook for killing Gray. It’ll look like I did it because he pushed to have me arrested for shooting Paul Milton, like I did it for revenge.
Camel closed his eyes and put his head back to think. Gray was the first man he’d killed without wanting to, the first man he’d killed who didn’t need killing … and Camel felt sick to his soul. But he didn’t intend to go to prison over it, Camel would repent on his own schedule.
When a young nurse walked by the room’s open doorway and saw Camel sitting in the chair, she backed up, looked again, and came into the room flashing a big white smile, “How you feeling?”
He opened his eyes and said he felt fine.
She kept smiling, nice teeth like Annie’s.
“How long have I been out?”
She checked her watch and shrugged. “Ten minutes?”
She had to be kidding. Camel said, “You got to be kidding.”
She shook her pretty head and hit that toothy smile again … Camel liked looking at her.
“Always darkest before the dawn,” she said, apropos of what, he wasn’t sure. She felt his pulse, placed a cool hand on his fevered brow, Camel understanding then why rich old men bequeath everything to their nurses. This one’s name tag said she was Crystal Packard, Camel figured her at barely twenty.
“We di’n’t even take off your clothes,” she informed him. “Just your shoes so they wouldn’ dirty up the bed. But we di’n’t put you in a hospital gown and all … doctor said you’d be coming around in a few minutes. He was right, huh? He fixed your nose. I di’n’t hear if it was broken or not but you’ll have two black eyes I’m sure.”
Camel asked about Elizabeth Rockwell.
“You’ll have to talk with doctor.” Like many in the health profession Crystal consistently dropped articles when referring to doctors … the way other people drop articles when referring to God.
“Are you saying you don’t know whether she made it or not … or you don’t want to tell me?”
“Was she your wife?”
“Was? She’s dead?”
Crystal had a little bobbed nose and small brown eyes, over-dyed blond hair arranged in a short, perky style … when she tried to force this button-cute face into a somber expression the result came across as an exaggerated pout. “I could get you some counseling.”
“What?”
“Counseling. You want some?” she asked, as if offering ice water.
“No.” Camel stood and put on his sports coat.
She told him he couldn’t leave just yet.
“Why not?”
“Doctor has to say it’s okay.”
“I haven’t been admitted, I don’t have to be discharged.”
“I think you better wait right here,” she insisted, turning on low nonmarking heels and walking out of the room, Camel watching her go. The word “pneumatic” came to mind.
And then right behind pneumatic … Elizabeth Rockwell came to mind. He had always harbored a private dread of being burned and seeing it happen to Elizabeth was like experiencing a childhood nightmare, unable to wake up and make it stop. Checking the scorches on his chest and above his belt-line he saw they were no worse than bad sunburns, then he touched his face again, the bandaged nose felt both numb and painful if that was possible. He had an axe-in-the-skull headache … and knowledge of more to come.
Camel stopped at the doorway to the room and looked down a corridor to see Nurse Packard talking with a state trooper in full uniform, an impossibly young man whose face was bland and gentle, eyes brown and bovine, hair dark and thinning … he’d be bald before he was forty. Seeing them standing together like that Camel thought the trooper and the nurse made a breeding-program-compatible couple except the trooper’s nose was even smaller than Crystal’s and you had to wonder if their babies would have any noses at all.
She pointed back toward Camel’s room.
He didn’t want to start answering questions yet, Camel still didn’t know what to say about Parker Gray and he still wanted to make s
ure Annie was okay.
He hurried to the bathroom, flipped on the light, opened a tap, then stepped out and closed the door, returning quickly to hide behind the door to the room just as the trooper walked in.
With Camel close enough to touch him the trooper stood there looking at the room’s three empty beds, then at the closed door to the bathroom. A light was shining under that door and you could clearly hear water running. When the trooper headed for the bathroom Camel slipped out.
Luckily Crystal wasn’t at the nurses’ station when he walked by, Camel taking the steps down because he didn’t want to chance waiting for an elevator.
Evading that trooper was probably stupid he thought as he left the hospital … but he was working on a plan how he might avoid being charged in Parker Gray’s death and to make it fly he needed to have a very serious talk with Jake Kempis.
Camel was heading for the street, looking for a cab, when from behind him someone called his name.
50
“Mrs. Milton?”
Hearing her name being called from the other side of the closet door Annie screamed to be let out … she didn’t care who was there, which man it was this time, she wanted out.
When the door opened Annie came rushing into the room but still kept the jacket protectively over her head. “Bees!” she shouted. “Bees!” Then she was embraced by whoever had opened the door and he laughed and told her, “No, honey, they’re just flies.”
Cluster flies, the kind that swarm livestock in the summer, that will cover a horse’s face by the hundreds … big fat flies that cluster in hibernation-like swarms inside the walls of buildings and if these clusters are disturbed the flies will buzz loudly like bees and try to reform their clusters. In the closet they swarmed Annie’s face not to attack her but in an effort to find each other and reassemble.
She finally pulled the jacket down from her head and saw that dozens of the flies were still buzzing around her, flies just like those that were behind that rotting window shade she pulled down, that settled on Paul and got caught in his hair. Not swattable little domestic houseflies, these were heavy and loud and if you squashed one of them there’d be a mess to clean up, they were that big.
In Annie’s hair now, she brushed at them wildly and said, “No! No!” Not bees, thank God they weren’t bees, but she still didn’t want them on her, she was still repulsed whenever one landed in her ear or on her lip.
As Annie continued flailing at the flies, ducking her head to escape them, the man who’d let her out of the closet laughed again and grabbed Annie’s wrists. “Honey they’re just flies.”
She looked up at him.
“Just big ol’ fat flies,” he said, brushing at her hair with one hand as he held her right wrist with his other hand. “You remember me?”
Annie did, of course she did.
51
When Camel turned around the first thing Neffering said was, “What happened to your nose?”
“Broke it in a car wreck.”
“Yeah the reason I’m here, got a call about my car being in an accident … how bad?”
“Bad.”
“Totaled?”
“I don’t know, probably.” He handed over the keys which Eddie accepted like the personal effects of a recently departed loved one.
“You come from home or The Ground Floor?” Camel asked.
Eddie kept looking down at the keys.
Thinking of the trooper who was searching for him right at this moment, Camel said, “We got to get out of here.” He started walking, Eddie following slowly. “Come on we got to go now.”
When Eddie caught up he said, “I don’t know where Annie is.”
“It’s okay, she was out at Cul-De-Sac but Jake Kempis took her to your place.”
“She’s been missing since morning, I’ve spent most of the day looking for her … Jake took her to my house?”
“No, The Ground Floor.”
“Teddy I just came from there.”
Camel stopped, checked his watch.
Neffering asked him what’s going on.
“They’ve had plenty of time to get to The Ground Floor … you driving Mary’s Mustang? Where’s it parked?”
“You wrecked the Fairlane.” Neffering saying this to make sure he had it straight, to confirm it was really true.
“Eddie let’s get to Mary’s car, I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Can I see the Fairlane first, where is it?”
“No time.”
“You said Annie’s okay?”
“I thought so but she and Jake should’ve been at your place by now.”
“We got time to take a quick look at the Fairlane?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I just gave a state trooper the slip there in the hospital and any second now he’s going to be coming out here to grab my sorry ass.”
Eddie nodded. “Car’s over there.”
In Eddie’s wife’s new red Mustang, on the way to The Ground Floor, Camel explained some of what had happened … but not everything because he didn’t want to make Eddie vulnerable to an accessory charge.
When they got to the shopping mall’s parking garage Camel thought about showing Eddie the sheet of paper from the notepad, ask him to read it and give an opinion on how he thought Gray intended to finish the statement.
“How much trouble you in?” Eddie asked.
“Lots.” Camel decided he couldn’t let any of that trouble wash over on Eddie … couldn’t tell him about killing Gray. “Let’s go see if they showed up yet.”
Camel and Neffering went into The Ground Floor but Annie and Jake weren’t there, no one had heard from them.
“Something must’ve gone wrong after I left,” Camel told Eddie. “I need that forty-five … and the keys to Mary’s Mustang.”
Neffering looked away, his big brushy mustache drooping.
“I know, Eddie, I know. You went my bail, I wrecked your Fairlane, now I want your other car and your forty-five … I know I’m being a pain in the ass but this is important, I have to get back out to Cul-De-Sac.”
“I’ll come with.”
“Not possible. Now gimme the car keys or I’ll take a fucking cab.”
“Teddy you can’t make demands like that, not to the only friend you got in the world.”
“Then who can I make them to?”
Eddie shook his head. “I brought the forty-five from home, I’ll get it then I’ll walk out to the car with you.” He waited for a thank-you.
“Come on Eddie I’m in a hurry.”
Camel had the forty-five in one pocket, the keys to the Mustang in another … he and Eddie were just coming off the elevator when they both saw a little guy heading their way. He was five and a half feet tall, wearing a London Fog raincoat, had thinning dark hair, face like a well-groomed weasel.
“Weenie wagger,” Eddie said almost in passing because, with everything else that was happening, catching weenie waggers had fallen low on the priority list.
But Camel reacted differently, seeing the pervert galvanized him into action … running toward the guy, Eddie hurrying to keep up.
At first the weenie wagger looked scared then he realized these were the same two lugs around whom he had run circles last time they met up … the pervert smiling as he skipped backward and sang out, “If it ain’t Slow and Slower … see ya boys!” To mock Camel he shaped his thumb and forefinger into a pistol and pretended to shoot.
Camel raised the .45 and shot for real, two quick rounds into the concrete at the weenie wagger’s feet … made a hell of a noise there in that low-roofed garage, the pervert lucky the bullets didn’t ricochet up into his legs. In fact when chips of concrete peppered him the little guy thought he was shot, yelping and tripping backward to fall on his skinny ass.
Neffering said, “Jesus Teddy.”
Camel walked to the pervert. “You work around here don’t you?”
He didn’t answer, too busy checkin
g his legs for blood, for bullet wounds.
“Better find another job,” Camel told him. “I don’t want to see you again, never again, because if I ever see you again …” Something in Camel snapped loose, he kicked the guy knocking him flat on his back. “I’ll fucking castrate you.” As if to perform that very operation with gunfire he shot repeatedly into the concrete between the pervert’s legs, chips and chunks flying everywhere, the sound deafening. In the echoing aftermath of all that gunfire Camel said, “Never again.” Voice of God, Old Testament.
Eddie grabbed Camel’s gun hand and raised it to point up at the ceiling before telling the pervert, “Better get out of here.”
He didn’t have to be told a second time, the little guy quickly on his feet, running without looking back.
“Like the bad old days,” Eddie said, releasing Teddy’s hand once the pervert was out of sight. “Camel’s back.”
He popped the clip and asked Eddie, “You got more ammo?”
52
Midnight, bottom of the bag, Camel driving up Cul-De-Sac’s lane, dousing the Mustang’s headlights, worried about Annie and wondering about Jake, how deeply he was in on this with Parker Gray. Jake was the one snooping around for information right after Camel started making calls about that old homicide at Cul-De-Sac, Jake used his position as a security guard to get keys to Camel’s office, Jake was the one who turned Annie over to Parker Gray, and Jake wouldn’t take Elizabeth to the hospital, he insisted on staying at Cul-De-Sac to get Annie. As Camel slowly drove up the lane he tried figure it out … Jake did all of this to get an appointment to the academy? Was he in on the conspiracy? Or was Growler still alive, maybe Jake didn’t cuff him after all and Growler somehow …
Camel felt a burning pain in the middle of his chest, like his heart was on fire … the only thing he cared about in this whole mess was Annie’s safety, what did it matter to him that Growler had been framed, that Parker Gray had been living a lie for seven years … people are framing each other and lying and conspiring all the time, fuck ’em, he cared only about Annie, he should’ve seen to her first, made sure she was okay then worry about Elizabeth, then worry about getting off the hook for having shot Gray.