Gecko

by Ken Douglas

  Jim watched while the boy finished filling the tank. That car looks like it can fly, he thought. Boy probably has rich parents. It was the kind of car every teenage kid wanted. The boy replaced the pump when he finished, got back in the Boxter, started it and Jim heard the unmistakable rumble of a car that was more at home at a hundred on the highway than thirty in the city.

  He envied the kid. Then he saw the red lights in the rear view mirror. He shut the engine off.

  “ Now what?” she asked.

  He reached into the side pocket of Turnbull’s filthy jacket and withdrew the eye patch. Which eye, he thought, the left or the right? Have to take a chance. He slipped it on and covered the left eye.

  “ Right eye,” Donna thought, and he moved the patch over.

  “ Step out of the car please.” An amplified voice said from the police car.

  Glenna opened her door, stepped out and was caught in the spotlight. Her long curly hair caught the light rays giving her an angelic appearance. He blinked and his heart fluttered. She was stunning. He opened his door, without taking his eyes off of her, and hesitated. He had to think of something to say. Would Eddie’s license work? Would it fool a pair of small town cops? How to explain his appearance? He was in the shit now, both figuratively and factually. He spent another five seconds drinking in her face, smiled, then slid out of the car.

  He felt the spot moving from her to where he stood. In another instant the light that made her glow would rake over him and his filthy appearance and it would be all over. He had no story to explain away how he looked. He might as well just call it quits. He was too old to be running around like a TV private investigator bent on revenge. Better to give up, get a warm bed in a quiet jail, and sleep. Let the authorities handle it.

  He started to raise his hands, but the Boxter squealed out of the gas station before the light played over him, rear wheels smoking like a dragster’s, the roaring engine cutting up the night. The car slid out of the driveway onto the access road, laying a hundred foot strip of black rubber on the pavement as it shot toward the Interstate and the spotlight stopped its arc.

  The police car screamed into life and bolted after the hot rod. In a flash of an instant both pursuer and pursued were out of sight, swallowed up by the Interstate.

  “ Let’s get out of here!” Glenna jumped back in the car.

  “ We won’t get very far without gas.” He eased himself back in the car, felt the sweat on his palms as he slid his hands over the wheel. It had been a close call. If the youth in the Boxter would have waited a second longer before stomping on the gas, he would have been caught in the spot and he might have intrigued the police more than a spoiled teenager on a hot Friday night.

  He started the car, pulled up to a pump. Glenna ran into the office, laid down the forty dollars, came out and pumped the gas. The Explorer ate thirty-seven dollars and seventy-six cents worth of fuel. They left without going back for the change.

  “ Turn right,” she said. “Let’s see what this town has to offer.”

  He looked at her, but said nothing.

  “ You need something to wear as soon as possible,” she said. “Oh my gosh, I think I just felt my heart slip.” She turned and locked onto his eyes. “What I’m about to say goes against everything I believe in. I’m a policeman’s daughter. I believe in the law, right and wrong. But difficult times require difficult solutions, so we’re going to see if we can’t get you some clean clothes.”

  “ At this time of night?”

  “ We’re going to steal them. There, I said it and lightning didn’t strike.”

  He turned right and a mile from the Interstate the two lane road turned into the main street of a small town. Two blocks of small shops surrounded by a residential community of less than a thousand. The street was poorly lit, two out of three street lights out, and poorly kept, a third of the stores were vacant. Jim Monday wondered if the town had ever seen better times-was it a dream waiting to happen or a dream that died?

  “ Look, there!” Glenna pointed.

  He drove slowly past a men’s store called Today’s Man. It was dark, like the rest of the town. The street was bare. Doors were barred. Blinds were drawn over locked windows. A tumbleweed blew across the street in front of them.

  They rolled past a used clothing store, Yesterday’s Clothes, on the right, a pharmacy, The Doctor’s Drug Store, on the left, past a shoddy Chinese restaurant, a shoddier Mexican restaurant called Francisco’s, which blared the slogan in faded yellow paint, La Comida Mas Fina, and between Francisco’s and The Handy Laundry and Dry Cleaners, was a small dirt parking lot.

  “ Pull in there.” She pointed and he obeyed.

  “ We have two choices, the used clothing store or the men’s shop. Me I prefer the used clothing place. Less chance of an alarm.”

  “ You’ve done this before?” he asked, nervous.

  “ No, never.” She sat and stared at Francisco’s fading yellow sign, like she was looking for courage. After a few seconds she found it. “Scared?” she asked.

  “ A little. You?”

  “ Terrified. Let’s go.”

  They got out of the car, walked half a block back to the used clothing store. He scratched his head, then his side. They stopped, looked in the window, straining to see in through the dark, but all he could see was the reflection of the barren street with its ghostly shadows and it sent a tingling feeling through him.

  “ Let’s go around back,” she whispered.

  She led the way, squeezing between the store and the Chinese restaurant. He didn’t like being cramped between the two buildings. The weeds and loose dirt crunching under his shoes only served to remind him how tight they were and how much his feet hurt.

  “ Look.” He pointed, once they were at the back entrance. “Alarm tape on the windows.”

  “ Do you know how to get in without setting off the alarm?” she whispered.

  “ No.”

  “ Let’s try the men’s store.”

  “ Let’s get out of here.” He was in enough trouble, serious trouble. It would be plain stupid to get picked up for breaking and entering in a dump like this. If they got caught, they’d probably be shot on sight. Everybody in this kind of town had a gun and knew how to use it.

  “ As long as we’re back here, let’s try the men’s store.” Once again she led and once again he followed, scratching himself along the way.

  He felt like he was back in Vietnam, with lice crawling around his body. He itched between his legs. He could feel the dirt underneath his nails and the sweat pouring under his arms. A hot wind blew by and he felt nauseated by his own smell.

  He hurried to catch up to Glenna. She was at the back door of Today’s Man by the time he caught up to her, staring at the silver alarm tape around the back window and the sign that said, Protected by Signal Security.

  “ Time to go.” This time he took the lead. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this. We can check into a motel. You can get the rooms, so nobody has to see me, and tomorrow you can go out and simply buy me some clothes.” The answer was obvious, he should have seen it earlier.

  “ Of course,” she said, obviously ignoring him, “a laundry. It was staring us straight in the face.” She took off at a slow jog and as much as he wanted to scream at her, to tell her they could get clothes and shoes tomorrow, he didn’t. He followed.

  “ No alarm,” she said, panting and staring at the cleaner’s back door, “and no bars on the windows.”

  It figured, he thought. Who in their right mind would break into a laundry and dry cleaners in a small town. Can’t wear anybody else’s clothes, because not only does everybody know everybody else, but everybody knows everybody’s clothes as well.

  Centered in the top half of the back door was a screen covered sliding window. The screen was weatherbeaten, rusty and worn. It came apart in her hands. She lifted the window, it wasn’t locked. She reached in and unlocked the door from the inside. Not even a dead bolt. Ju
st a simple lock.

  “ Come on,” she whispered as she opened the door and went in.

  He followed her inside, closing and locking the door after himself. Then the dark room started blinking on and off with the red glowing light coming through the front window from the flashing lights of the police cruiser that pulled up and parked out front.

  “ Down!” he said, and they dropped to the floor, hiding behind the counter.

  “ It’s that Explorer from earlier.” A not very friendly voice from outside said.

  “ What’s it doing here?” A less friendlier voice answered.

  “ Dunno.”

  “ God that girl was something else, wasn’t she?”

  “ She was, did you get a look at the other one?”

  “ Couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but I’m thinking it was a girl.”

  “ Give me a break.”

  “ Coulda been.”

  “ Well, we got ’em now. Where do you suppose they are?”

  “ Dunno.”

  “ Think they’re robbing the town?”

  “ Get serious J.D. If you stole all the money in every store on this street, you might could buy a cup of coffee, if you was lucky. No, more ’an likely they’re meeting someone here in one a the homes next street over. Selling drugs, I’d guess.”

  “ Then why park here?”

  “ So the car won’t be right in front of the house, stupid.”

  “ Oh.”

  “ Sometimes I wonder about you, J.D.”

  “ What’re we gonna do Mike? Wait till they come back?”

  “ No, dummy, wait here. I’m gonna go and call Jeb down to the Mobil and have him tow that Explorer outta here. Ain’t no way them babes are gonna get outta this town on foot. We’ll get ’em all right.”

  “ But, Mike, we don’t know for sure they done anything wrong.”

  “ Anytime someone sneaks into town in the middle of the night, they’re doing something wrong.”

  Jim and Glenna lay side by side on the floor, suffocating in the silence and the smell of manure. An hour later they heard the sounds of a tow truck as it pulled into the parking lot next door. It hooked up to the rented Explorer and towed it away. The police car followed, leaving them basking in the black night, huddled behind the counter, taking shallow breaths and wondering what to do next.

  “ I’m going to call my father,” Glenna said after they’d gone, “and let him know I’m okay.” She pulled the phone off the counter and sat on the floor.

  “ I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He sat next to her.

  “ Relax, I won’t tell him where we are. I just want to let him know that I’m okay, so he doesn’t worry.”

  She called information, got the number for the Harris Ranch Inn, then called it.

  “ Can I have Hugh Washington’s room please?” she said in a pleasant voice. “Just a second,” she said, after a pause. She cupped her hand over the phone and said to Jim, “He’s not there. Must still be tied up with the local cops. They want to know if I want to leave a message. I want my father to know I’m with you, but I don’t want to mention your name.”

  “ Say you’re playing Monopoly with a friend.”

  “ I don’t understand?”

  “ Your father will.”

  She removed her hand from the mouthpiece.

  “ This is his daughter, remember me? Please tell him I went out to play Monopoly with a friend and that I’m okay.” Then she hung up.

  “ That cop was right about one thing,” Glenna said in a weak whisper. “Ain’t no way we can walk out of here without getting caught.” Then she shut up as the flashing lights went by and she stifled a scream as something ran across her bare arm in the dark.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hugh Washington lumbered through the lobby with sagging shoulders and hooded eyes. Only four hours ago the log cabin motif and big game trophies conspired to make him feel at ease, comfortable. He didn’t feel that way now.

  He was drained and needed rest. He was almost to the other side of the big room when the red headed kid with the green eyes called out to him.

  “ Sir, Mr. Washington. I have a phone message from your daughter. You just missed her.”

  “ What?” He swept the cobwebs from his head. Glenna was supposed to be in her room, asleep, not on the other end of the phone. He steeled himself.

  “ She said not to worry about her, she’s playing Monopoly with a friend.”

  “ She say where she was?”

  “ No, sir.”

  “ She sound like she was okay?”

  “ She sounded fine. She asked if I remembered her. I told her I did and then she gave me the message. Is everything all right?”

  “ Yeah, thanks. She didn’t say when she’d be back?”

  “ No, sir.”

  “ Okay, thanks again.” He continued his trek through the lobby and went straight to his room, his mind working on the possibilities. Either Monday kidnapped her and she was in extreme danger, or somehow she ran across him and went with him on her own accord.

  He voted for her going on her own accord. She had disguised her message so that anyone else, the clerk or the local police, for example, would accept it at face value, but anyone who knew about Jim Monday’s wartime nickname would see the real message buried beneath. She was with Monopoly Jim Monday. Christ, what did she think she was up to?

  And what about Monday’s sister-in-law? And the Lambert woman? Whose blood was splashed all over that room? So much blood. When he called the locals he was convinced they were dead. Some cult group had done them in, drained their blood and splashed it around the room, but he calmed down after the police arrived and let his training take over. The room was covered in blood. It was torn apart. The furniture was broken and ripped. It looked bad, but there were no bodies. So for now, no bodies meant no murders.

  They could be alive, though he doubted it. He thought Edna Lambert and Roma Barnes were dead. He thought it was their blood on the walls and he thought Jim Monday might possibly know who killed them. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that Monday was the killer everybody seemed to think he was. The thought was unbearable, especially now that Glenna was with him.

  But even if Monday wasn’t responsible, he had to find him pronto. People around him had a nasty habit of winding up dead. Either way, guilty or innocent, Glenna was in danger.

  He went to the nightstand where he’d left his keys and cringed. They were gone. He swept the room with his eyes, no keys. He started for the door, but was stopped by the ringing of the phone. He turned, lunging for the instrument.

  “ Glenna?”

  “ No, Washington. It’s me, Hart.”

  “ How did you know where I was?” Washington was stunned.

  “ Don’t be stupid. You don’t think you can dial 911, report a possible murder, identify yourself as a police officer and not have the boys up there check with us?”

  “ I guess not. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “ Damn straight you weren’t thinking. Do you know where I am?”

  “ No?”

  “ I’m in my office, that’s where. It’s midnight and I’m not home with my wife and kids. I got called on the carpet, because one of my ex-detectives is off seeking fame and glory, so he can get off the street and worm his way back into Homicide.”

  “ That’s not the way it is.”

  “ I don’t want to hear a word out of you. If you’re not back here first thing in the morning, you’re through. You got that? And don’t think you can go to your captain, he wanted to toss you to the wolves. It’s only because of old times that I talked him into giving you this one last chance. You be here at 8:00.” And that was the last word, because the captain hung up.

  Damn. That wasn’t the way he wanted to leave it. They were his friends, all of them, even Hart. He wanted to leave with a party, a barbecue maybe, everybody wishing him well, patting him on the back, plenty of beer, a few tears. The last thing he wan
ted was for them to think he was a glory hound. He wasn’t that way, never had been.

  He half wanted to go back, but he couldn’t, not now that Glenna was with Monday. He should call Hart back and tell him. Hart was pretty upset though, better to wait till morning and give the man a chance to cool down.

  He picked up a pillow, threw it against the wall. A harmless way to let off a little frustration. He mentally kicked himself, then he hurried out the door and down the walkway to the stairway, taking the steps two at a time. He was afraid that no keys meant no Power Glide, but when he got to the parking lot, the car was there. The only car showing headlights and grill. The only car positioned for the quick get away. All the others faced in, the white Explorer was gone.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, he grabbed his breath and approached his car the way an antique dealer approaches a Ming vase. He rubbed his hand along the smoothly waxed right fender, continuing the caress till his hand was on the right side of the front bumper. He reached under and pulled out the small magnetic Hide-A-Key, opened the case and took out the spare key.

  Monday was on his way to Tampico, probably after Kohler, and Glenna with him. He had no choice, he had to follow. His daughter’s life was at stake. He’d call Hart tomorrow from Tampico and explain. He’d tell him he was quitting too.

  Power Glide started, first try. Thank you, God, he prayed, as he rolled out of the parking lot and turned toward the Interstate and he stayed on it until he turned west toward San Francisco three hours later, listening to Smokey Robinson the whole way, until even Smokey couldn’t keep him awake any longer. He ejected the CD and pulled off the Freeway at Livermore, where he checked into a motel. He asked for a wake-up call at 5:00, allowing himself two hours sleep. He flopped fully clothed onto the bed, pushed his worries out of his mind and fell asleep.

  The wake-up call was on time. He took a quick shower and was on the road by 5:15. Normally he enjoyed early morning driving, when he had the road to himself, but not today, because he was sick with fear for Glenna.