When he was done he spread a couple of handfuls of leaves over the ground; sat down nearby, and smoked while he waited for Bobby to come back.
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan had found a run-down-looking gas station at the end of the exit, just two miles outside of Fort Drum. An old rusty Chevy truck, with a newer-looking Holmes 220 wrecking unit mated to the back, was pulled part way into one of the bays with its hood sticking up into the air.
Not good, his mind told him, not too good at all.
It turned out to not be bad at all though, at least not with the wrecker.
"Just lookin' her over, friend," the old gray-haired attendant, and as it turned out, owner, said.
“‘Placed the plugs, is all. Just checkin' the timing to boot."
The old man had disconnected the timing light and slammed the hood back down with a rusty protest.
"Yuh, she's jess fine," he said, "What can I do ya for?"
He had taken Frank back to the car, hooked it from the rear; turned it around, and towed it back to the station. His young son had watched the station while they were gone.
Getting the car back had been no problem. Getting the tire replaced had been. He'd had to send the kid into the city to pick up a replacement, and the kid had seemed to take forever.
Frank supposed he was lucky though as the old man had just gotten the tire place on the phone before they closed, and had persuaded them to stay open until the kid could get there. The old man had said he could call a cab if Frank wanted him to, but Frank decided to wait for the car. After all, he thought, I probably won't get there any quicker.
It was full dark by the time the kid got back with the new tire, and after 11:00 pm. before the car was off the lift and ready to go.
The old man gave him directions to the house after Frank had paid the $250.99 bill. No wonder the tire place stayed open late, Frank thought.
He pulled the small car out on the road, and two blocks down, made a left on Main, and began looking for the house. When he reached 6620, he pulled the small car into the driveway and parked it in the rear, in the old garage. He once again picked up the laptop case, along with one battered suitcase he had brought with him, and headed for the rear door.
The key would not fit in the lock.
Frank tried the knob, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door swung open into the shadowy kitchen area. He set down the suitcase, and felt along the wall with his hand until he located the old-style push button, and thumbed the switch on.
The kitchen floor was wet, he noticed, and a sharp pine odor lingered in the house, mingled with something else he couldn't quite place. Must have just finished cleaning, he thought, maybe they didn't have time to change the locks yet.
He picked up the suitcase once again, and nudged the door shut with the toe of one shoe as he walked off into the house.
Much nicer than I thought it would be, he marveled as he entered the front hallway from the kitchen area. He climbed the staircase to the second floor and tried the first door he came to.
It opened on a large bathroom, and an old claw foot tub stood gleaming in one corner of the room. The room was finished in an off-white color. The narrow wooden slats that comprised the lower wall, were broken about four feet from the floor with a decorative molding, and then finished to the tin ceiling above him with contrasting flowered wallpaper. Frank closed the door and moved further down the hallway.
The next door opened on a huge bedroom, decorated in the same style as the bathroom had been. A large four poster bed dominated the room, flanked on either side with dark oak dressers, which matched the bed. The linen, as promised, looked fresh.
Frank set the suitcase down and placed the briefcase on one of the dressers. He stripped off his jacket and hung it on one of the corner posts. Pulling his cellphone out of his pocket he muttered as he noticed that he had no service. “Figures” he muttered, and then headed down the stairs to see if the phone was working.
He wanted to call Maggie and talk to the kid's tomorrow. He had called that morning before he had left, and Tim had extracted a promise that he would call as soon as he could. They're in bed by now, he realized, looking at his watch.
He wasn't sure if there were two or three hours difference, but he knew it was earlier there than here. Either way it didn't make much difference, he decided, they would probably either be in, or getting ready for, bed, so there wouldn't be any sense in calling tonight. The phone call could wait until tomorrow morning, he was beat. His body felt it as well, he realized as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
When he had come through the front entrance-way, on his way upstairs, he had turned on the lights as he went, and he could see another set of switches by the front door. Must be a three way switch, he thought.
Over the years, he had replaced a lot of things in the house back in Richmond Beach, and light switches had been among them. You can't own a house and not learn about maintenance, he thought. After Janey had died he had kept up the house himself, rather than call a repair man every time something wore out, or became broken. His eyes slipped down from the switch-plate, and he noticed a small cardboard box sitting on the floor by the front door, and walked over to investigate.
The box contained a screwdriver, and two new-looking lock-sets. He picked up the screw driver.
Nice multi-bit job, he thought, bet whoever left it is wondering what the hell they did with it.
Frank tried the keys he had been given to the house, and they fit in the new locks that were in the box.
He sighed, "Whoever they sent to clean up and put the locks in, forgot the locks," he said aloud.
To hell with it, he decided, I'll swap the locks out myself if I can.
At first he was a little pissed off that they had forgotten the locks. They did do a good job on the cleaning though, he thought, and I would probably only get the guy in trouble if I called Bud and complained.
Frank used the screw driver to remove the old locks, and after examining them, switched the cylinders and replaced them. The holes were new, and the dead bolts were the same brand, so it was an easy job to accomplish.
He put the screwdriver back in the box, along with the old locks and pushed it back into the corner where it had been below the light switch.
Whoever left that screwdriver will probably come back. At least for that, Frank thought. Maybe I'll give Bud a call tomorrow, I don't have to mention the locks, I'll just tell him whoever he sent left some of their tools here.
The thought reminded Frank that he had come down to check the phone. He walked into the living room and picked up the old rotary dial phone to check for a dial tone. A familiar hum told him that it did indeed work. He replaced the receiver on the hook, and, turning the lights out as he went, climbed the stairway to the bedroom. He was beat, and sleep came quickly, even in the unfamiliar surroundings.
He met old man Peters, who lived across the road, the next morning.
Willie Lefray
Los Angeles
Twenty feet away from Junior's Palace on Beechwood Avenue, the prostitutes were just beginning to show up in force, waiting for the early morning traffic. Willie Lefray sat with his back against the wall of an alley: A needle ready, and a speed-ball cooking over a tin of shoe polish. There was a bum sleeping a little further down the alley. Willie ignored him, watching the mixture in the blackened spoon begin to bubble, melting together.
Two days before he had been sitting in a diner off Fourth avenue south waiting for his world to end. He had paid for the bottomless cup of coffee the place advertised, but ten cups had done nothing to improve his situation. He was still sick. He was still broke, and he needed something to take the edge off the real world, which had been sucking pretty hard at that point. A trucker had come in and ate his dinner just two stools away from Willie, but every time he had worked up the courage to ask him for a couple of bucks the guy had stared him down so hard that he had changed his mind.
He had just made up hi
s mind to leave: Even the waitress was staring hard every time he asked for more coffee, the cops couldn't be far away, when the trucker had reached back for his wallet, pulled it free and took a ten from inside and dropped it on the counter top.
Willie watched. It was involuntary. One of those things you did when your head was full of sickness and static. Just a place for your ever moving eyes to fall. The wallet was one of those types he had seen bikers and truckers use. A long chain connecting it to the wide leather belt he wore. Hard to steal. Hard to even get a chance at. The man stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Sloppy, Willie saw, probably because he knew the chain was there and so if it did fall out he would know it. He turned and put his ass nearly in Willie's face as he got up from the stool. The wallet was right there. Two inches from his nose, bulging from the pocket. The leather where the steel eye slipped through to hold the chain frayed, ripped, barely connected. The man straightened and the wallet slipped free. The chain caught on the pocket, slipped down inside, and the wallet came free, the leather holding the steel eye parted like butter, and the wallet fell into Willie's lap. He nearly called out to the man before he could shut his mouth. His hand closed over the wallet and slipped it under his tattered windbreaker. The waitress spoke in his ear a second later.
“Listen... Buy something else of get the fuck out. You hear me? Otherwise, my boss,” she turned and waved one fat hand at the serve through window, “Says to call the cops.”
Willie stared at her in disbelief. He was sure that every one in the diner had seen the wallet fall into his lap. He swallowed. “Yeah... Okay... I'm leaving,” he said with his croaky voice. Sometimes, getting high, he didn't speak for weeks. It just wasn't necessary. When he did he would find his voice rusty, his throat croaking out words like a frog. Sometimes he was right on the edge of not even being able to understand the words. Like they had suddenly become some foreign language. He cleared his throat, picked up the cup of cold coffee and drained it. “Going,” he said.
He got up from the stool, kept one hand in his pocket holding the wallet under the windbreaker and walked out the front door.
Robert Peters
"Christ, don't say nothin' bad about 'em while they're around," Robert Peters said.
"Why's that?" Frank asked as he chuckled.
Frank was sitting on Peters' front porch which overlooked the large house he had rented across the road; leaned back in a cane backed chair with a cold bottle of beer in his hand at 9:15 in the morning.
Frank had met Peters that morning as he had exited the house. The old man had been peering through the dirty windows of the garage at the small red car inside. He'd seemed pretty embarrassed at getting caught, and had told Frank that he was just, "Checkin' on the house," as he usually did.
"Didn't 'spect to see no one 'round here! I wasn't told that the old place had been sold."
The old man was of course fishing, and Frank knew it. Frank figured that the old guy probably saw himself as the unofficial caretaker of the place, and he had seemed to be harmless, so Frank had told him he was only renting the place for a couple of weeks.
"S'spected somethin' was up," Peters said, "There's been one hell of a lot going on over here the last couple of weeks. I been sort'a watching the place for the last couple years, you know, so the kids don't break into it and ruin it... ...When'd ya get in?"
"Yesterday... Well, last night, I guess," Frank replied, "drove down from the airport in Syracuse."
Peters nodded. "Yep, thought I saw some lights on over here last night. Thought maybe it was the same crowd twas here just after dark...Raised a hell of a ruckus, and nearly scared the bejesus out'a me. Thought somebody was gittin' killed or something."
Frank had eyed the old man.
"Well I think I can set your mind to ease on that. When I got in last night I noticed that somebody from the agency had been here, cleaning the place up. In fact, the kitchen floor was still wet," he said.
"Yep." Peters said, "you got that right, seen him my-own-self. Joe, I think his name is. Young kid with blonde hair. But, I ain't talking 'bout him. There was a couple other guys’ here too. They were here before he was. The kid left with 'em too. Sounded like they had themselves a little fight first though. Say, it's damn hot already, what's say we go kick back on my porch a bit? I got some cold ones in the General?"
The old man had caught the suspicious reporter in him, so here he sat at 9:15 AM with a cold beer in his hand, wondering what the old guy had actually seen.
The beer wasn't bad, despite the early hour. He'd expected some off brand or something, the Coors was a nice surprise. Social Security, which was what the old man said he lived on, must pay a lot better than it used to, Frank thought.
"Really," Peters was saying, with a big grin on his face, "they'll get ya fer it. They really will."
He continued. "I 'member this one time when I said something to Old Jay." Old Jay was Peter’s mangy looking orange and white cat. "He's an uppity old cuss, thinks his shit don't stink, ya know?"
Frank couldn't help but laugh.
"No shit," Peters bellowed over the top of the laughter.
"Son-of-a-whore shit in my shoe."
That was it for Frank, and he let the laughter roll out of his belly unchecked.
"Well fuck you," Peters said, a stern look on his face. "I'm just trying to tell ya, that animals’ kin understand, when ya say somethin' bad about 'em. That bastard shit right in my shoe. If I'd a caught him he'd a been a sorry little bastard too."
Frank just laughed and shook his head. What could you say to a man who thinks his cat can understand him?
Peters chuckled a little, right along with him.
"Course...There was this dawg, I once owned. I swear to God that dawg not only knew what I was saying, but worse than that, the little son-of-a-whore knew what I was thinking too. Not always, but most the time mind ya."
Peters raved about the dog for a few more minutes, as Frank got the laughter under control, and did his best to look serious.
He felt Peters was probably a pretty good guy after all, and was still waiting for the old man to get around to the subject that had begun across the road. Whatever the old man had witnessed was probably worth hearing, Frank thought.
Peters got to it eventually, but you wouldn't have known that anything had clicked in Franks mind by the look on his face. Frank had been a reporter for too long to let his face betray what his mind suspected.
The old man had been sitting out on his front porch with a can of Old Milwaukee last evening, when the incident across the street had occurred.
Frank was on his second beer, and the Coors had been replaced with Old Milwaukee. Turns out the Coors had been brought over by the kid Peters called Joe, the previous week, when the work on the old house had been going on.
Peters had liked the kid, so he said, and the kid had taken to dropping by every night and sitting on the wide front porch with the old man.
They, "Watched traffic mostly," Peters said, "that kid didn't have no family, and he wasn't raised up here, so I guess he didn't have many friends to hang around with. Told me he come up from Florida lookin' for work and lucked out. Guess he decided to stay. That's why it struck me kind ‘a funny that he didn't drop over last night. Course it was full dark when him and the others left, and I didn't have the porch light on, so maybe he figured I twasn't to home."
"Ain't a whole hell-of-a-lot to look at here ya know," Peters continued. He seemed to feel the need to defend himself for watching the old house across the street, and Frank nodded his head in agreement as if to say, "Yes indeed, it looks as though it could be pretty boring, and no, I wouldn't consider that being nosy." The nod seemed to put the old man at ease, and he continued his narrative.
"Well anyhow, I was just kicking back with a beer, when I saw Joe's car come down the street an pull in the driveway over there," he flapped his hand towards the large brick house across the street. "Figured that somethin' must a happened to that old piece a s
hit van he usually drives. He didn't wave, so I just figured he probably didn't see me sittin' over here. Never saw the other car till later, but it must have already been there, parked around back, kind ‘a sneaky like, ya know?"
Frank nodded his head as if he did.
"Well anyway, he gits the door open, and just sort'a stood there lookin' in as if he 'spected somethin' to jump out and bite 'im. Looked fer a second as though he might just jump back in that car of his, and hit the road instead a doing whatever it was he needed to do there. But he didn't, he went on in, but I didn't see him come back out. I went in the house a few minutes later to git me a fresh one, and feed Old Jay, and I know his car was a sittin' there when I looked out about an hour later, but after I got up from my nap about of an hour after that, it was gone. I figured he was gone, so I just sat down on the porch and watched the cars go by fer awhile. Just when I got my old ass back inside to get me another beer, is when the hollering started." Peters took a long sip from his beer, before he continued.
"I figured that someone else had showed up over there. Maybe that cheap prick Joe works for, but when I got my beer and went back out, twasn't nobody there. I sat there for another ten minutes or so, when all of a sudden Joe's car come flying out the driveway, along with a big car of some kind. That was strange too, as I ain't never saw Joe drive that car that-a-way. He liked it too much, and it wasn't set up the way some of these kids set their cars up, it was just sort'a regular, ya know?" he eyed Frank speculatively, and Frank nodded for him to go on.
"Anyway, that's it. They went a tearin' off up the road, and then about a half hour later you showed up and pulled around the back. I was thinking 'bout headin' over there, but I ain't one to stick my nose in too far, ya know? I did call up Alan, down the town hall though. Course, that fat piece a shit never did come by. Told me to stop being so damn nosy, and he'd call Bud up the city tomorrow to see what was going on."
"So, I just said to hell with it. That's when I come back out and saw you pull in. Besides," Peters continued, "that fat bastard ain't worth the time a day. I asked Old Jay and he feels the same as I do about it." Peters grinned.
Earth's Survivors Box Set [Books 1-7] Page 170