Into the Night (25 page)
"Mary Lou?" she asked.
Muldoon answered. "Sam's wife."
"But I know better," Don continued. "They want my house, so they can watch him. But I won't let them in." He looked at his sister, alarm in his eyes. "Did you lock the door behind you?"
"Yes, I did," she said.
He rocked harder, starting to work himself into a lather. "Are you sure? You're absolutely sure?"
"How about if I go check?" Muldoon said.
Joan nodded at him as she reached for her brother's hand. "Donny, it's all right," he heard her say as he pushed himself to his feet and slipped out of the closet. "You're safe. I promise. Mike's here, right? He's not going to let anything bad happen. He promises me that all the time."
The house was eerily silent as he made his way back to the front door and threw the half dozen or so extra bolts that Joan hadn't bothered to lock after coming in.
A clock ticked in the living room from its place on an end table alongside a standing photograph of a young, dark-haired woman with a chubby-cheeked toddler laughing in her arms and a big-eyed, pinch-faced boy standing solemnly at her side.
The woman—Joan's mother, had to be—was kneeling beside the boy—Don. Her other arm was around him, and her attention was focused on him, despite the much younger child on her hip.
Don DaCosta's mental illness had, no doubt, not been a whole lot of fun for anyone.
Muldoon went back down the hall, back into the bedroom. He knocked softly on the closet door.
Joan opened it and stepped outside, trouble in her eyes.
"Don's willing to take the medication—except for the fact that he's afraid it will make him fall asleep," she reported. "Apparently his experience with meds is that they usually make him drowsy."
"He looks like he's at the point now where just about any change in his state will put him to sleep," Muldoon told her. "He's probably starving and needs to go to the bathroom, too, but he's afraid if he's any less uncomfortable ..." He could relate. He'd been in that place a time or two while on recon. "Look, is the grandfather he's talking about the one who lives nearby?"
"Has to be. We never knew my mom's parents," Joan told him. She sat down on the edge of Don's bed. "What are you thinking?"
"Call him," Muldoon told her. "See if he can get over here within the next few hours and plan to stay maybe even overnight. If he can do that, I can stay and, you know, stand guard so to speak until he gets here. That way Don can take the pill and get some sleep."
She was already shaking her head. "I can't ask you to do that."
"Yeah," Muldoon said. "I know. But you're not asking. Just call him, all right? And if he really wasn't a frogman—that's what the SEALs would have been called back when he probably served—tell him to keep it to himself. Between the two of us, we can let your brother get a solid night's sleep, which might help calm him down."
Joan took out her cell phone and dialed. "You know," she said, "I'm beginning to understand exactly why all of the admirals' wives want to have sex with you."
Hey, hold that thought, Muldoon was just about to say, but she held up one finger, then spoke into her phone.
"Yeah, Gramma, it's Joan. Sorry I'm calling so early, but I'm over here with Donny, and ... Yeah. Yeah. I know. He's going to be okay, though. I promise. Listen, is Gramps around?"
Vince didn't have time to do more than shake the young man's hand before Joan hustled Lt. Mike Muldoon back into his truck.
"He's got to be back on base in twenty minutes," she gave as the explanation, but he knew better. Despite the "This is my friend" introduction, Joanie liked this man, and thus couldn't deal with the idea of introducing him to her extended family.
Yes, he knew the girl well. Took after her grandmother, God help them all—particularly Lieutenant Muldoon, poor guy.
Joan looked good. A lot more energized than he would have thought considering she'd spent most of the morning in Don's little airless hidey-hole. She had a new hairdo that made her look really pretty—and a lot like her mother.
"I'll call you soon," she promised, after giving both him and Charlie a quick hug and kiss.
Charlie went inside to check on Don while Vince spent a few minutes inspecting the flowering shrubs he'd put in on the side of the house three months ago. This batch was going to survive. Of course, it would help if they'd get just a little more rain.
"Mr. DaCosta."
He turned to see a young woman stepping out of the kitchen door of the house next door. She was wearing some kind of restaurant uniform and carried a child—a little girl from the looks of the ribbons and curls—in her arms.
"I'm Mary Lou Starrett." She introduced herself in that same thick southern accent he'd noticed on the phone. He moved closer, because she was hard to understand. "I'm the one who called you. How's Donny?"
She was ridiculously young, hardly old enough to leave her own mother, let alone be one.
"Well, it's too soon to say that he's back on his medication, since he's only had one dose, but he has had that one. It's a start," he told her. "Thanks so much for looking out for him."
"It's no trouble," she told him. "He's a friend." Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. "An unusual friend, but ..: he's a good guy. I feel badly for not calling you as soon as I noticed he was acting strangely—more strangely than usual, I should probably say."
"It shouldn't have to fall on you," Vince told her. "We call Don every day, but he only wants us to visit once a week. I'd suspected he'd gone off his meds, but I didn't try to push it because disrupting his schedule sometimes makes things worse. Sometimes he just goes into a decline and comes back out on his own. I guess we were just doing a lot of wishful thinking."
She opened the door of her car and put the baby into a car seat in the back, and he completely lost her reply.
"What's that?" he said.
She straightened up, smoothing down her shirt from where her daughter had grabbed hold of it. "I said, that's understandable. I have to get to work, but please don't hesitate to call me anytime—even for little things, like ... what to get him for Christmas."
Vince had to smile at that. "Well, thanks, but that's an easy one. Stock in an aluminum foil company."
She laughed as she got into her car and said something that he didn't catch.
"What's that?" he asked, bending down to look into the passenger window.
"I said, it was nice meeting you. You have a nice day, now, Mr. DaCosta."
"You, too, dear," he said, stepping away from the car so she could back out of her driveway.
It was
nahce
meeting
yew
. Vince had to laugh. Of course. That was who this Mary Lou had reminded him of. Sally Slaggerty. Whatever little southern town Mary Lou had come from, he would bet big bucks that it wasn't too far from wherever Sally had been born more than eighty years ago.
nahce
meeting
yew
. Vince had to laugh. Of course. That was who this Mary Lou had reminded him of. Sally Slaggerty. Whatever little southern town Mary Lou had come from, he would bet big bucks that it wasn't too far from wherever Sally had been born more than eighty years ago.
Sally Slaggerty, who'd lived upstairs from Charlotte and Edna Fletcher, who'd entertained GIs and sailors in an intimate fashion on damn close to a nightly basis.
Vince grew to dislike poor Sally pretty quickly, because whenever she came home in the evening, gentleman du jour in tow, Charlotte would make a fast exit from his room.
But then there was that one time.
It was late—close to midnight—when ol' Sal got home. Vince had been lying there in the dark for about an hour, thinking about how Charlie had smiled as he'd made his first triumphant trip down the hall to the bathroom just a few hours earlier, when suddenly Sally's radio went on.
He'd learned a hell of a lot about sexual relations over the week or so he'd been there. He'd learned that some men did the deed as if they were running the twenty-yard dash and trying to break the world record for speed. Others—and they tended to be the repeat performers, invited back for two or three nights until they shipped out—kept the bedsprings squeaking and Sally moaning for close to an hour at a time.
An hour could be unbelievably long when there wasn't much else to do but listen—with the knowledge that Charlotte Fletcher was in the next room over, listening to the very same sounds.
Vince would lie there in that bed—her bed—and try not to remember that night that he'd found himself beneath the bed, with Charlie beneath him. He'd try not to remember the way she'd held him as he'd cried, or how sweet she'd smelled, or how soft her lips had felt as she'd kissed his forehead.
That night, Vince tried to focus on the fact that his trip to the bathroom had been a triumph. He was feeling much stronger. It wouldn't be long before he was up and out of bed for good. Which put him that much closer to the meeting Charlotte had set up for him with Senator Howard. It was still some time away, but he wanted to go in there looking strong and capable.
He'd barely recognized his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he was so pale and wan.
He tried to block the murmur of voices coming from Sally's room upstairs, but the crashing sound of breaking glass made him sit up in bed.
It was nothing entirely new. There'd be giddy laughter now ... Except there wasn't. Just that murmur of voices. Sally's low and intense, her words indiscernible, the man's louder, suddenly clear.
"If you're not going to give it back, I'll leave when I'm goddamn ready to leave."
Another crash. And this time Sally cried out in pain or fear, it was hard to tell which.
Vince was up and out of the bed, standing on wobbly legs that hadn't made it farther than the bathroom and back in over a week.
Another crash and another. Jesus, this guy was beating her! Where the hell were his pants? "Charlotte!"
The light went on in the hallway, and Charlie pushed open his door, her mouth grim. "I'm calling the police." Wrapping her robe around her, she vanished toward the stairs.
Upstairs, it sounded as if Sally had locked herself in her bathroom. Her "friend" was now beating on the door instead of her, thank God, but Sally was sobbing, begging for someone, anyone, to help her.
To hell with his pants. To hell with the police, too—they weren't going to get here in time to help at all.
Vince took the stairs down to the front door faster than he should have and fell the last few steps. Charlie was beside him then, all soft flannel and sweet-smelling hair.
"Don't," she said. "Don't, Vince—I'll go!"
"Like hell you will!" He somehow pushed himself up and toward the door. "Call the police and stay here!"
The night air was cold and bracing. Sally's door was around the side of the house and up a rickety flight of outside stairs. It had a wooden railing on both sides, and he was able to pull himself up mostly using his arms, two steps at a time.
By the time he reached the top, Charlie was behind him again, pushing something into his hands.
A baseball bat.
James's, no doubt. Thank you, James, you old son of a bitch.
"Stay back," he told her again as he hobbled toward Sally's door.
But she didn't. She followed him.
The damned door was locked.
He could see through its window, through a gauzy curtain, into Sally's living room. It was a homey, tidy little room with a rocking chair knocked over from its place next to the radio, a braided rug, and a crocheted blanket thrown over the back of the sofa.
The man pounding on the bathroom door was a behemoth, but a behemoth with a swollen, bloody lip—good job, Sal!
"Go back downstairs," he said, trying one more time to convince Charlie. If he was going to have to fight with this giant, he wasn't going to be able to fight fair, and he didn't want her to watch.
She shook her head. "I'm not leaving you, Vincent."
It was a moment he would have liked to savor—with her genuine concern for him filling her eyes, her face scrubbed clean of all makeup, her usually tidy hah- a golden cloud around her staunchly squared shoulders.
But damn, that bathroom door wasn't going to stand much more abuse.
Sally screamed again and Vince didn't hesitate. He swung hard and put that bat right through the window. The crash of breaking glass resonated through the night, and somewhere in the neighborhood a dog started to bark. Across the street, a light went on. Good. The sooner the police got here, the better.
He reached through the broken window, unlocked the door, and went inside, trying his best to sidestep the broken glass, which was pretty much impossible.
"Don't come in," Vince warned Charlie, but of course, she ignored him again. Thankfully, she had slippers on as the glass crunched underfoot.
"Who the hell are you?"
No doubt about it, Vince had definitely caught the attention of Sally's friend. The man was wearing a disheveled but otherwise gleaming new Air Corps uniform with a first lieutenant bar on his shoulder. He was an officer but clearly no gentleman, and obviously far more than three sheets to the wind. He wiped his bleeding lip with the back of one hand as he sized them up, his gaze lingering on Charlie's thin bathrobe.
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