Nightscape

by Stephen R. George

  “That’s fine, I’m not pushing. How is everything?”

  “Fine,” Bonnie said, and then remembering, asked, “did Evan have his shirt off yesterday when you went canoeing?”

  In the kitchen, Evan stiffened. Bonnie turned away from him.

  “His shirt? No. Why?”

  “He’s got a rash on his stomach and chest. He said he thought it might be poison ivy.”

  “We didn’t even hit shore. I think he’s pulling your leg.”

  “Must be,” Bonnie said softly. “Well, anyway, thanks for asking us over. Maybe some other time.”

  “Sure thing. Any time. There’s one more thing.” His tone turned a bit cagey. “You haven’t cashed the check I gave you.”

  Bonnie bit her lip. “I just haven’t had time. I was going to do it tomorrow.”

  “Please, do. And spend it. Don’t be shy, Bonnie. If you need more, let us know. You need support when you’re raising a child, and like it or not we’re the only support you’ve got.”

  “I will, I promise, thank you.”

  They ate steaks for supper, which Bonnie barbecued in the back yard. She heated up some garlic toast in the oven. Afterward, they sat outside for a little while, until the stars began to appear, and the temperature turned cool, then they came inside and watched some television.

  Evan wanted to go to bed earlier than usual. Bonnie let him go. When she was alone she opened a beer and drank it, giving him a few more minutes. After she had finished she went to his room and knocked on the door.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas waiting for her.

  “Tired?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “The fresh air will do that. How’s the rash?”

  “Better.”

  “Let me see.”

  Reluctantly, realizing that there would be no arguments tonight, he unbuttoned the pajama top. Bonnie kneeled beside him and spread the two sides of the garment. Evan’s stomach was pink and crusty from the Calamine Lotion. Where he had peeled skin away, there were little white streaks. It looked like a sunburn, but wet and slightly swollen.

  “That looks like it hurts.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  The discoloration rose as far as his chest, and disappeared into the pajama bottoms.

  “How far down does it go?”

  “Not far.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Mom!”

  “I said let me see.”

  Even more reluctantly, he stood and pulled down his pajama bottoms. He was wearing underwear. The rash disappeared into the underwear and reappeared on his thigh.

  “Tell me if it’s under there or I’ll pull them off,” she said.

  “Just a little. It doesn’t itch or anything. I told you, it’s getting better.”

  “What’s that smell?”

  She had smelled it the moment she had entered the room, and more so once she had opened his pajamas. Sweet, almost sickly. Like honey and butter, or fruit left in the sun too long.

  “I put some of your hand cream on it. Before it starts to peel.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t think that would hurt. Perhaps that was why it was so moist. “Well, I’m making an appointment for you to see my doctor. I’m phoning his office tomorrow morning.”

  “But, I’m okay.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Evan looked down and buttoned up his pajama top. He pulled up the bottoms.

  “Now, let me see the finger.”

  “I just changed the dressing.”

  “I’ll do it up again. Come on, let’s unwrap it.”

  More reluctantly than ever, he began to unwrap the bandage. When the dressing lay uncoiled on the bed, Bonnie held his hand and stared at the finger. Something was different.

  When she had first changed the dressing, the finger had been shorter, hadn’t it? Cut off nearly at its base. Or had it? Had she misjudged the extent of the cut? Now, the finger seemed almost normal. Just a bit short. Pink, glistening. Healing.

  “See, it’s okay,” Evan said.

  “I thought it was worse than that.”

  “Nope.”

  She helped him wrap it again. “Well, the doctor can look at it when he checks the rash.”

  Evan fell back into bed and pulled the sheets up to his neck.

  “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “Good night, sweetheart.”

  ‘“Night, Mom.”

  She turned out the light as she left the room. She got another beer from the fridge, then sat on the front porch steps and drank it. The rash bothered her. She had never seen anything like it. And yet, it didn’t seem uncomfortable to Evan.

  Well, the doctor would settle all that. She would call tomorrow morning.

  She spent another couple of hours in the living room reading, then retired to bed. She fell asleep quickly, drained by the day outside.

  She was not sure what woke her. She’d been out for awhile.

  It was nearly 2:00 in the morning. The house was silent. Outside the window, the breeze rustled the branches of a tree.

  There had been a noise. A cry.

  She sat up in bed, listening. Nothing.

  She rose, went into the hallway, stood outside Evan’s bedroom. No sound from within.

  She opened the door. In the darkness, she could just make out his form on the bed, a lump beneath the sheets. For a moment, in the darkness, he looked not so much like a boy, as some tumor rising from the mattress. She listened for his breathing. When she heard it, she closed the door, relieved, and went back to bed.

  She lay awake a long time, and did not know why. It came to her as she finally drifted under. Watching Evan, she had got the impression that the boy was not sleeping. That he was simply pretending. That he was waiting. Waiting for something to come to him.

  Bonnie phoned Dr. Lewis’s office first thing Monday morning and made an appointment for Thursday. It was the soonest Lewis could see Evan.

  Even as she worried about asking Mike for the time off, the phone rang. After the call, Bonnie hung up and sat quietly back at the table. Evan, mouth full of cereal, stared at her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. That was my boss. He told me to take the day off.”

  She no longer felt like eating, or drinking. Mike didn’t want her in the store. He had said take the day off, but she knew that he meant until she was absolutely, positively over whatever was bothering her.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “That’s okay. Dad used to say it, too. He said it was okay to say it if you were really angry, but not just for fun. Are you angry?”

  “I guess I am. I wanted to go into work.”

  “You could spend the day with me if you wanted.”

  She smiled at him. “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. I had better call your grandparents.”

  They spent another hour dawdling at home, and then drove downtown. Bonnie had some errands to run, and besides, she could spend some of the money that the Laws had given her. Buy some things for Evan and herself. Cheer herself up. She deserved it.

  They spent an hour cruising through some stores off the skyway system. To get back at Mike, she bought two books at the B Dalton in the Crystal Court. Evan looked at her strangely.

  “Revenge is sweet,” she told him.

  In a sporting-goods store Evan stopped and studied the bikes.

  “Do you have one at home?”

  “I was going to get a new one this summer.”

  Bonnie studied the prices. The cheapest was $179. She whistled.

  “That’s okay. I don’t really need one,” Evan said.

  “Need one schmeed one,” Bonnie said, “C’mon, let’s go to the bank.”

  At First National she waited in line for a teller, Evan at her heels. When the light flashe
d, she dug the endorsed check out of her purse and carried it to the counter.

  The teller looked at the check, looked at Bonnie, and said, “Of course, there will be a ten day hold on the funds until the check clears.”

  Bonnie stared at her. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, with personal checks, like this, it’s the bank’s policy.”

  “But I’ve had an account here for five years.”

  “Yes, I see, but there are not sufficient funds in the account to cover the check should it fail to clear.”

  “This is crazy. Couldn’t you call up the other bank and make sure the funds are in the account?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t really. If you wanted to take it and get it certified, it would only cost a few dollars, and then I could put it through immediately.”

  “But that’s across town.” Bonnie’s voice was rising rapidly, and other tellers were looking over. Her own teller had a smugly satisfied look on her young face.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “Well, what’s the balance right now? How much could I take out?”

  The teller looked at the computer screen. “Twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents.”

  “But I’ve got a little boy here who thinks he’s getting a goddamned bike.”

  Any sympathy the teller might have had disappeared right then.

  “I’m sorry. It’s policy.”

  Evan tugged at her sleeve. “It’s okay, Mom.”

  Bonnie pulled back the check. “I’ll get it certified,” she said.

  Blind with rage and embarrassment, she turned and stalked out of the bank, Evan trailing behind. In the skyway she leaned against the glass and looked down into the street.

  “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She ruffled the boy’s hair and made herself calm down. “This has not been a good day,” she said. “How about an ice-cream cone? I think I’ve got enough for that.”

  “Sure.”

  She had turned around, heading back toward the Crystal Court, when Evan stopped moving. Bonnie, holding his hand, was yanked back.

  “Evan?”

  The boy’s look of alarm made her heart thump. He was staring straight ahead, eyes wide. Bonnie turned to see what had frightened him.

  Standing at the end of the skyway tunnel, flanked on either side by young men with narrow, intense faces, smiling in the vague, self-satisfied sort of way that she remembered so well, was her ex-husband, Harris Laws.

  It was all happening too quickly. Bonnie and Evan were panicking.

  Shep dropped his half-finished coffee into a trash canister and moved into the skyway.

  He’d followed them from Bonnie’s house, and had known within minutes that he was not the only one following. He had dropped back and allowed the gray sedan to move in, wanting to see what was going to happen.

  Downtown, there had been others waiting, as if they’d known, somehow, that this was where the woman and boy were coming. Shep had parked in an expensive hotel parking lot, and had managed to pick up Bonnie and Evan before they entered the skyway system.

  “Careful, you two,” he muttered.

  A security guard stared at him as he talked to himself. Shep gave him his best cop glare and moved on.

  Bonnie and Evan spent a lot of time in the Crystal Court, a shopping and restaurant annex at the base of the IDS tower. Shep grabbed a bench, crossed his legs, and observed.

  Bonnie and Evan were watchful, but not nearly watchful enough. They never spotted him, and they never even came close to spotting the others.

  At first Shep was surprised. There seemed to be five or six of the intense, watchful faces wandering around, all dressed nicely, all looking like they belonged, all dogging the steps of the mother and child.

  Shep cursed under his breath.

  A store clerk, standing beside him smoking a cigarette, glanced his way and smiled nervously. Shep paid her no attention. When he said something else, she stabbed out her cigarette and walked briskly away.

  Five or six, hell. There were at least ten. They were all over the fucking place. Standing in corners, staring in shop windows, somehow finding places in the stores that Bonnie and Evan hadn’t even entered yet. There was nowhere they could go without being followed.

  And, damn it, he’d left the Beretta in the car. He hadn’t expected this. Had underestimated his adversaries, yet again.

  He left his bench and followed at a distance as Bonnie and Evan took a skyway to the First National Bank. Again, he took a bench spot and observed. She seemed to be having some trouble with the teller, who in turn seemed to be enjoying herself. In the skyway, the followers gathered, looking like shoppers relaxing.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  What was it about this mother and son that had these people so fired up? And where, for God’s sake, were the big fish? He knew, now, that it would be pointless to pick up one of these others. Either they knew nothing, or they had been trained so well that no amount of coercion would make them talk. He needed the redhead. Or somebody her equal.

  Bonnie and Evan came out of the bank. Bonnie was spitting mad. Shep thought she looked cute.

  Within seconds she had calmed down and was smiling down at the boy. She picked up his hand and headed into the skyway.

  It was the boy who reacted first, stopping his feet.

  What the hell was the matter? Had the kid suddenly realized they were being followed?

  Bonnie looked where the boy was looking. And Shep did the same.

  Standing at the other end of the skyway, was a man whom Shep had never seen. Tall, slim, dark. The man smiled.

  Whoever he was, Bonnie and Evan knew him. Worse, they were frightened of him.

  With a small cry, Bonnie dragged the boy in the other direction. The man followed. Swarming in from all sides, came the others. Jesus, a regular army.

  Shep, who had been on the bank end of the skyway, stepped between Bonnie and Evan and the advancing swarm. He bent to tie his shoelace. When the horde approached, he stood. His shoulder slammed into the stomach of the man who had frightened Bonnie and Evan. He grunted and fell backward.

  The others stopped as if he’d hit each of them.

  “Sorry about that,” Shep said.

  He turned and bolted. Bonnie and Evan had entered an elevator going down. He leaned over the edge of the upper railing and looked down as they exited. They moved toward the street doors. Heading for their car.

  Son of a bitch. They would never make it. Worse, he might lose them, and lose any chance of finding the creche.

  He ran for the escalator.

  One of the others was also going down. A young man in his twenties, calm, watchful. Shep came up behind him. When they reached ground level Shep stuck out a foot and tripped the younger man, who fell forward to the cement floor.

  “Hey, fella, you okay?”

  He bent to hold the other man’s arm. When the surprised face turned toward him, Shep slammed it hard into the ground. Then again. As a pool of blood spread out around the smashed head, Shep stood and moved away. A woman coming down the escalator behind him, screamed.

  But by then, Shep was out on the street, and heading toward his own car.

  “It was Daddy!” Evan cried as Bonnie dragged him along.

  “I know! I know! Come on!”

  She dragged the boy into an intersection against the lights. Cars squealed to a stop. They made the other curb without being hit, miraculously.

  Evan strained over his shoulder.

  “He’s coming! Mom! He’s coming!”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let him get you. I won’t.”

  Running now, she pulled Evan along like a heavy bag. They turned a corner, ran, then turned again.

  Halfway along the next block Bonnie stopped. She glanced both ways, and realized that in her panic she had got them lost. What street was this? Which way was the car?

  Evan cried out. Behind them, Harris e
ntered the street. He walked toward them. He was no longer smiling.

  “Bonnie! Evan!” he cried after them.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  She yanked Evan ahead, then froze again. Two young men who had been with Harris in the skyway were coming from the other direction. Their faces were calm, almost friendly.

  “Mom. It’s them. They’re coming.”

  “Oh, God, what are we going to do?”

  When the car squealed to a stop beside them, Bonnie nearly screamed.

  “Get in!”

  It was Shep Thomas.

  “Get in!”

  Harris was running now, as were the two young men.

  Evan decided for her. “He’s okay, Mom! He helped me!” He tugged her toward the car.

  The door flew open. She pushed Evan in, then clambered in beside him. Before she had closed the door, the car roared and lunged forward, tires screaming. Harris had caught them. His fingers trailed across the passenger door.

  Bonnie cried out. Ahead of them, one of the two young men jumped onto the street.

  “Fuck you, too,” Shep Thomas muttered.

  The left front fender connected with the boy, and he bounced heavily onto the car’s hood. For an instant his face was pressed to the glass, and Bonnie was staring into his eyes. Then he was gone, over the windshield, across the roof with a loud clatter, and off the trunk. She stared at the bloody smear left on the glass.

  Shep turned the corner, tires squealing, and roared away. Five minutes later they were on the freeway, merging with traffic.

  “You guys hungry?” Shep Thomas asked. “I am. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You probably killed that boy!”

  “He might have killed you.”

  “What about the police?”

  To Bonnie’s consternation, Shep Thomas laughed. With one hand on the steering wheel, one out the window, he looked very relaxed. Not at all like a man who may have just committed vehicular homicide. Between her and Shep, Evan sat with his hands in his lap, silent.

  “They pick up their wounded and their dead,” he said. “Never had any trouble so far.”

  “There were witnesses!”

  “Witnesses to what? There’ll be no body lying around, believe me, and nobody to file a complaint.”

  Nevertheless, he exited the freeway a few minutes later and found an automatic car wash. Bonnie closed her eyes as the brushes moved over the windshield. When she opened them again, the bloody smear was gone.