Gecko

by Ken Douglas

  Jim hit the power button on the remote as his picture was shown on the screen and the television flicked off. He didn’t want to hear anymore.

  “ How did they know about you?” he said to Roma.

  “ They found the car, wrecked.”

  “ And when Eddie, that’s my boy,” Edna said, “found the bodies and called the police they assumed, since Roma’s car was near my house and since you had just killed three people in the police station less than an hour earlier, that you might be connected with the two dead men in my living room, so they checked for your fingerprints.”

  “ How do you know all this?”

  “ We didn’t turn it off before the end of the story,” Roma said.

  “ I keep getting in deeper.”

  “ Well, I can damn sure set them straight about the dead men in my house. I’ll just ring up the police and tell them what happened. I’ll tell them that I’m still alive, too.”

  “ What do you think, Jim?” Roma said.

  “ I think Edna’s right, you two should go back and explain it all to the police. Once they see that you’re still alive and you explain about the two dead men in Edna’s living room, and how it was self defense, they’ll know I’m no serial killer. And once they find out those two attorneys were fakes, they’ll know they came into the police station to kill me, and that would be self defense, too.”

  “ What about the dead policeman?” Roma asked.

  “ If you can make them believe someone is trying to kill me, then they’ll believe those men killed the policeman.”

  “ So all we have to do is go back and tell our story and everything will be okay?” Roma said.

  “ Should be.”

  “ Then why don’t you come with us?” Roma said. “That seems the smartest thing to do. If you’re guilty, you’d never turn yourself in. With us as witnesses and your surrender, they’d have to believe us.”

  “ I’d like nothing better, but someone sent those men after me and he’ll do it again. I believe it was Bernd Kohler. I can’t prove it and until I can, I’m not turning myself in.”

  “ He’s right,” Edna said, “but you’re still going to need help.”

  “ I have to do this on my own. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to either of you.”

  “ I know one way I can help,” Edna said. “I can get you some identification and credit cards. You don’t look that much like my son, but you have the same nose and you both have blue eyes and he has that bushy beard. It might work.” She went to the phone.

  “ Who are you calling?” Jim asked.

  “ Why Eddie of course,” she twinkled. “He’ll come right up with his passport, drivers license and credit cards.”

  “ How do you know he won’t call the police?”

  “ For the same reason that I’m helping you. He got home because you stayed on the ground, alone, covering that chopper. Like me, he owes you a debt that can never be repaid.”

  Jim didn’t try to stop her as she made the call, because he knew she was right. Without ID he wasn’t going to get very far. He sat on the bed next to Roma as Edna made the call and watched a gecko dart across the wall.

  “ It will be all right,” he told Roma, as Edna Lambert talked in the background.

  “ I hope so,” she said. “I really hope so.”

  “ Oh, and Eddie,” they heard Edna say, “bring a spare eye patch.” She hung up and faced the couple sitting on the end of the bed. “He’s leaving right now, he’ll be here in four hours.”

  They spent the next hour going over all their options, but in the end they agreed that Jim was right. The best thing would be for the women to return to Long Beach and try to clear him. Once it was decided, there was nothing more to be gained by discussion. The women went back to their room to rest and wait for Eddie Lambert.

  Jim lay on his bed and stared at the connecting door. He half wanted Roma to come through it and he half feared she would. Twice he got up and started for it and twice he went back to the bed.

  He could only imagine what was going through her mind. Was she eager and afraid? Or did she regret what had happened? Was she watching the door from the other side, like him, and, like him, was she thinking about her twin sister.

  He closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep.

  “ Go to her,” Donna thought.

  “ I can’t,” he thought back and then he shut Donna out of his mind.

  The phone woke him from a restless sleep a few hours later.

  “ Hello.”

  “ Eddie’s here,” Edna said.

  “ I’ll be right over.”

  When he went over he was introduced to Eddie Lambert. His wild hair, beard and muscular build made him giant looking, but he was no taller than Jim and his eye patch gave him a menacing look, till he smiled and the twinkle in his single eye glowed. He dressed in Levi’s, running shoes and a flannel shirt, the kind surfers wore. His handshake was firm and friendly. Jim liked him immediately.

  “ Mom explained the whole thing.” He handed Jim a passport, credit cards, driver’s license and an eye patch. “With this on and your short hair, you could probably pass for me. Anybody looking at the picture would have a hard time figuring out what I really looked like under all this hair.” He had a low easy voice.

  “ I hope this doesn’t get you in too much trouble.” Jim flipped the passport open and agreed. It would be hard, at first glance, to tell that Jim was not the same man in the photo. If he wore the eye patch, he could probably pass all but the most thorough of inspections.

  “ Naw, if anything happens because of it, I’ll just say I thought I left my wallet at work. That’s why I didn’t report it missing.”

  “ I’ll pay you back for anything I might have to charge on your cards.”

  “ It’s not necessary. I owe you.”

  “ I appreciate it, but I can afford it and I’d feel better if I could pay you back.”

  “ If it’s what you want, but you don’t have to.”

  Jim looked at Eddie’s running shoes.

  “ I’ve got a pair of shoes that are about a size too tight and they’re killing my feet.”

  “ Mine are eights. Sorry,” Eddie said, looking at Jim’s large feet.

  “ They looked small, but I had to ask,” Jim said.

  The group spent a few minutes making small talk, before Jim retold the events of the last two days for Eddie’s benefit.

  “ So if it was you,” Jim asked Eddie, “would you go after Kohler or go to the police?”

  “ Go after Kohler,” he said, without hesitation.

  “ That’s how I feel. I just wanted to hear somebody else say it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after having decided that Eddie would take the girls back at first light, Roma asked Jim to take a walk with her.

  “ Where to?”

  “ To the mini market on the other side of the highway. I’ve got a sweet tooth that I very rarely indulge, but tonight I feel like a candy bar.”

  A walk across the highway in tight shoes was the last thing he wanted to do, but Roma was going to be spending the remainder of the night with Edna and he was going to be bunking with Eddie, so it was probably the last time they’d get to spend together till this was all over.

  “ I feel kind of like I’m having sex behind my momma’s back,” Roma said as soon as they started out.

  “ We could get our own room.”

  “ No, then I’d feel cheap.”

  He put his good arm around her and felt a little rebuffed when she shrugged away, laughing like a little girl.

  They walked across a grassy lawn to the Inn’s main building, where they cut across the parking lot to the highway, then they crossed on the overpass and then on to the all night mini market. A quarter mile in all. A silent quarter mile.

  They entered the market and Roma picked up two Snickers while Jim went to the magazine section and flipped through Business Week. Roma held up the candy bars for him to see and beame
d a smile at him. Then she screamed and jumped back as a gecko went scurrying across the floor.

  “ I’ve never seen anything like that in here,” the girl behind the counter said, screwing up her face and accenting her pimples. “Looked like a slimy lizard.”

  “ I saw one in my room, over at the Inn,” Roma said.

  “ Wait till I tell Dad,” the girl said. “He thinks he knows everything there is to know about every kind of animal we’ve got out here, but I bet he’s never seen slimy lizards.”

  “ It’s only a gecko.” Jim said, thinking it strange. This was the second one he’d seen, so far away from where they were supposed to be.

  “ Let’s go back,” Roma said, clearly embarrassed by her outburst. Jim paid and she put the candy bars in the handbag she’d gotten from Edna, next to the gun.

  They walked back over the interstate, stopping to watch the late night travelers and truckers tunnel through the night below. White headlights approaching, headed toward San Francisco, red tail lights receding, going south to Los Angeles.

  Jim moved closer to Roma, looked up as the full moon found a hole in the clouds, briefly brightening the night.

  “ You know I’ve always loved you,” Roma said as she gently pushed him away, so she could see his face lit up by the passing headlights. Then she asked, “Were you happy?”

  “ I thought we were. I loved your sister with all my heart, like I used to love you so long ago. We wanted the same things, enjoyed the same friends, shopped, spent money. I honestly don’t know where it went wrong.”

  “ I want you, Jimmy,” she said.

  “ Right here?” he smiled.

  “ No, not here. I want you forever.”

  “ We have to give it time.”

  “ No, I don’t want to give it time.”

  “ What about Julia?”

  “ She’s got her doctor. She can’t have you.”

  “ She’s your sister.”

  “ And she loves me and will understand.”

  “ There’s so much happening right now. I really do need some time,” he said. “Time to find out what’s going on. Who’s trying to kill me and why. Right now I believe it’s Kohler, but what if it isn’t?”

  “ Dammit, I don’t want you out there risking your life. Come back with us. Let the police handle it.”

  “ I can’t run away,” he said.

  “ Then come back with us and work with the police. That makes more sense. I don’t want to lose you. I need you.”

  Part of him wanted to go back with her. But the common sense part of him knew it would never work. The press would have a field day. They would hound him unmercifully about marrying his wife’s twin. There would always be talk. Heads would always turn. They would become the fodder for gossip magazines and tabloids. It wasn’t the kind of life he wanted to lead. His privacy would be over.

  “ They would never leave us alone. They’d make our lives miserable.”

  “ We don’t have to let them. We can go away. Someplace where they’ve never heard of you. Spain, maybe, or an island in the South Pacific, or Greece. There’s lots of places where they don’t watch the news or read the Times, places where the sun always shines and it’s safe to go out after dark.”

  She hugged him tightly and he kissed her long and slow and his heart cried out to her.

  “ All right,” he said, breaking the kiss, “I’ll go back with you.”

  “ Oh Jimmy!” She squeezed him like a little girl on Christmas morning. “It’ll be okay. I just know it. Together we can face anything.”

  He smiled at her through the dark and they started back for the inn. Roma, planning a new life and Jim already missing his old one. He loved his country and the thought of living someplace else made him feel like a traitor. He’d fought and paid dearly for America and he didn’t begrudge his country the price she asked. It was worth it and if she asked it again, especially in light of what happened on 9/11, he would pay it again.

  But if he had to decide between his country and Roma, he would have to take Roma and make a life somewhere else. In Europe, England probably. He was too old to learn a foreign language.

  “ We could live in England or Scotland. Maybe in a small town,” he said.

  “ I’d like that.” She leaned into him as they walked under a dark, starless sky.

  They stopped again, halfway between the inn and the interstate and hugged.

  “ Listen!” Donna interrupted Jim’s thoughts.

  “ Don’t move.” Jim tensed up as he whispered in Roma’s ear.

  She froze, sensing the urgency in his voice. She clutched the handbag, looping her finger through the hole and onto the trigger and she remained perfectly quiet. She didn’t have to be told twice.

  “ Something up ahead, between you and the inn, can you hear?”

  He listened.

  “ Yes.” He heard a faint breathing sound, like a man with asthma, trying to hide a wheeze, and it was coming closer, and the wheeze was getting deeper.

  “ Time to move on. Now!” Donna urged.

  Jim squeezed Roma’s arm to get her attention and they backed away from the wheezing, back toward the sounds of the interstate and the brightly lit up mini market on the other side.

  The wheezing moved off to their left and away from them and for a second Jim thought about making a dash for the inn. But he didn’t want to run, to put his back to whatever was out there. He wasn’t afraid of the animal, it was probably only a stray coyote. It sounded sick. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, even without the gun and Roma’s deadeye aim. But it only seemed prudent to move out of the dark and into the light.

  Then the sound faded all together.

  “ I feel like a frightened child,” Roma said. “Like I’m standing in the hall by the fire alarm, in school and the big kids are coming for my lunch money. I want to break the glass and call the firemen, but I’m too afraid.”

  “ Don’t worry, you’ve got the fire extinguisher in your purse.”

  “ I know,” she said, clutching the gun.

  “ All of a sudden I want a cigarette,” he said, leading the way back toward the overpass and the mini market beyond.

  “ But you don’t smoke.”

  “ I do tonight.” He didn’t know why he needed to smoke, he never had, but the desire was strong and now the mini market was closer than the inn, presenting a safe haven.

  “ It’s me, I want the cigarette.”

  “ But I don’t smoke,” he thought.

  “ You want to go to the market anyway, I can tell, and I really need a cigarette.”

  He cut her thoughts off and stopped as Roma’s fingers dug into his arm. The wheezing coyote was ahead of them, still cloaked in darkness, blocking their path. Stalking them.

  Her grip tightened as it moved around to their left and moved in closer, still in the dark, but Jim could tell by the sounds it was making that it was no coyote.

  “ Come on.” He led her north, parallel to the interstate, but separated from it by a drainage ditch and a chain link fence. There would be no mad dash across the highway.

  “ What is it?” she asked, fright beginning to creep into her voice.

  As if hearing her, the animal responded with a deep throated sound, a cross between a raspy roar and a baby’s cry, that brought the fright rushing full force into her voice.

  “ Come on, quick,” she urged, picking up the pace.

  He hesitated. They had a gun. It made more sense to stand. There was nothing up ahead except cattle pens and they were a good quarter mile away. No, the sensible thing to do was stand and if the animal attacked, shoot it.

  It roared again, louder and Jim changed his mind. Maybe the gun wouldn’t stop it. Maybe it was rabid. There would be someone at the cattle pens ahead. There would be light. He matched Roma’s quick walk.

  The animal stayed behind, out of sight, until the smell of thousands of cows assaulted them. The raspy roars came closer together as they got closer to the pens, a
nd it quickened its pace, forcing the pair into a jog and finally into a run.

  It picked up speed, starting to close in on them. It let out a roar that ripped into the night, waking the cows, causing them to stir silently, resembling large ghost like animals in the murky night. And Jim knew the animal, whatever it was, was going to charge, to come for them, to kill them.

  It roared again, closer. They were running flat out toward the pens, but Jim saw they would never make it.

  “ Jump!” Donna’s thought-scream ripped through him, a lightning-warning. He grabbed Roma’s hand, pulling her with him as he jumped feet first into the ditch that ran along the highway. They landed in the bottom vee of the ditch, Jim on his feet, Roma on her rear, six feet below the beast above and they both shivered as it roared again and moved off. Jim helped her up and they hugged in the dark-cut off from the highway, the cows, the pens, the beast and reality-by the sides of the ditch.

  The dark closed in and the fresh-grave atmosphere of the ditch offered no safety. It would only be a matter of seconds before their stalker came in after them. He took her by the hand and led her, limping and falling in the wet dirt, toward the pens.

  Above and behind them, they heard the sound of sliding dirt and tumbling rocks. It was sliding down the side, coming in after them. They heard it hit bottom and Jim wished they could see, so that Roma could get off a shot. But all he could do was pull her away from the steady machine-like wheezing that was down in the coffin-like enclosure with them.

  When Jim judged they were below the pens, he started to climb, pulling Roma up with him. The animal was coming fast. Roma jerked her arm free from Jim’s grip and turned, with her finger through the hole in the hand bag, on the trigger and waited. The wheezing increased its tempo and lowered its pitch. They felt its strength steamrolling toward them. Then they saw its wide set yellow eyes, glowing fire-bright in the night and Roma fired the weapon.

  The moon peeked through a hole in the clouds, but Roma didn’t need the light, because the flaming yellow eyes presented her with a target too close and too terrifying to miss. She fired three shots between the two glowing yellow orbs and was rewarded with a roar that shook the night. The thing stopped, the light in the eyes dimmed, but didn’t go out.