Night Kills (15 page)

    After finishing his meal, he wheeled his chair into the living room and put on a new videotape he'd bought from a mail order house in Missouri, run by a mysterious man who wrote very good and very disturbing horror fiction. The man's second book had given Wagner nightmares for several weeks after he finished it.

    The name of the tape was The Falcon in Danger. Even though the Falcon movies of the forties had been dismissed by the critics of their time to be little more than B-movie action fodder, Wagner found them endlessly fascinating and nearly always charming. He especially liked the ones with Tom Conway, who had replaced his more famous brother, George Sanders, halfway through the series run. Conway was more boyish and vulnerable than the somewhat cynical Sanders, and for all of Sanders's drollery, Conway was the more believable ladies' man of the pair. The only thing Conway couldn't do with much credibility was throw a punch. In The Falcon in Mexico he knocked out a man with the worst movie punch Wagner had ever seen. Without meaning any disrespect, Wagner had laughed out loud when he'd first seen the punch. It was that memorably bad.

    He watched the new Falcon tape the way he watched all his tapes at night, with all the lights out and only the TV screen providing illumination. He liked the warm glow the screen gave off. Knowing that it was snowy and cold outside and that he was safe and warm inside with a fine movie to watch always made him feel snug and cosy. He supposed it all reminded him of his early boyhood, when his parents had bought a twenty-one-inch Sylvania monster with a glowing frame around the screen. He could still recall how whitely the frame radiated, how soft and pleasant its radiance had seemed in the I Love Lucy darkness.

    He never would have seen the girl if he hadn't needed to go get another Diet Coke. He had no idea how long she'd been standing on the kerb across the street, leaning against a tree, staring at the duplex.

    On his way back from the kitchen he saw her out the front window, through the part in the curtains. She couldn't have been there too long. The bitter temperature wouldn't have permitted it.

    At first he tried to dismiss her. She was probably waiting for a ride. She was probably staring at the duplex because there wasn't anything else to stare at. Anyway, she was just a girl, a teenage girl, and she didn't have anything to do with him at all.

    The Falcon in Danger proved to be a real treat. It was better than a locked-room mystery; it was a locked-aeroplane puzzle. The associate of a leading industrialist was found dead after the plane on which he was riding crash-landed at an airport-without anybody else aboard, including a pilot. Where had everybody gone? As usual, Wagner made mental note of all the character actors. He liked most of them even more than he liked the big stars. For one thing, character actors usually had juicier roles, and for another, they were fun to follow from one picture to another. The same man might play, in 1942, say, a Mexican assassin, a Nazi spy, and a notorious western gunslinger. His favourite character actor of all was Elisha Cook, Jr., who usually stuck to film noir roles.

    After a trip to the bathroom and after pouring another Diet Coke, Wagner came back to the living room for act three. He liked to know how long the running time was in advance and divide by three. It was amazing how most films-especially B-movies-broke down into the three-act pattern.

    Before pressing the freeze-frame button off, Wagner pushed over to the window and looked out. He hadn't forgotten about the curious girl standing there, so solitary in the bitter cold.

    She was gone.

    He looked up and down the street-light traffic going by, exhaust pipes emitting grey-blue plumes behind them-but he didn't see her anywhere.

    So, he'd been right She hadn't been watching his place at all. She'd just been waiting for a ride.

    Then he did forget about her. He went back to the third act of the Falcon and had himself a very good time. This time he'd even brought along a small bowl of popcorn to munch on. The popcorn had been air-popped and was therefore low in calories. He congratulated himself on his remarkable self-restraint

    The only thing he wondered about was when Brolan was going to call. Wagner was excited. He had some hard facts to offer Brolan, hard facts that might lead to the real killer. He had decided that Brolan wasn't the villain after all. Wagner knew it was foolish to go on a hunch like this, but when you came right down to it, what did you have to rely on but your instincts about somebody? You trusted him, or you didn't trust him. Simple as that.

    The third act was a doozy. It was by far the most complex mystery Wagner had ever seen in a B. There were four leading suspects, and they kept Wagner guessing right up to the very last It all reminded Wagner of a John Dickson Carr plot, Can-being a mystery writer he liked particularly, especially the atmospherics.

    Just as the movie was ending, Wagner heard the noise on the back porch.

    A less suspicious man might have put the sound down to wood creaking and groaning in subzero temperature. Houses made the same kind of complaints human bodies did in cold weather like this.

    But somehow Wagner didn't think this was the case. Hair bristling on the back of his neck, he clicked the TV set off. He sat there in the darkness and the quiet. The only sounds were of electric appliances humming and of a car going by on the street out front.

    He listened.

    The sound came again. This time he knew for sure that it was not merely the house creaking and groaning.

    Somebody was on the back porch.

    He wheeled into the kitchen, where, in the centre drawer of the cabinet, he kept a fancy.45, one beautifully blued and pearl-handled. He had always wondered what it would be like when the day finally came-the day when he'd have to use the gun to protect himself-and now he was about to find out.

    He eased his wheelchair up to the kitchen door. He listened, waiting; the gun felt both odd and comforting in his small hand.

    

    

    Denise knew she'd made a mistake as soon as her shoes crunched through the ice on the back porch. They made such a noise, it sounded like a section of wall pulling loose or something.

    There on the shadowy moonlit back porch, she stopped, heart pounding. She wished she were back in the big empty house she'd left an hour ago or so. She'd been about to open the freezer and get herself something yummy to eat when the cab horn started blaring. She'd had no choice but to hurry out of the house before the cabbie informed too many neighbourhood people of his presence.

    And she was here, at the address given by the man on the phone machine.

    When she'd first stood across the street, she'd thought nobody was home. There were no lights apparent on either side of the duplex. But once she'd reached the back porch, she saw the glow of the TV set, faint but warm and inviting.

    She wondered if the man who tried to kill her was inside already. But she didn't think so. She didn't see his car in either front or back. She wished idly that she'd taken Polly's advice and forgotten the whole thing. She was too young and too dumb to pull off something like blackmail. It was one thing to think about something like that; it was another actually to do it

    Calmer then, convinced that nobody inside had heard her after all, she turned and started to leave the small screened-in porch. She still had quite a bit of cash in her pocket, even after paying for the expensive cab ride. Enough left to buy a few really good meals and some warm clothes for winter. And then that'd be that; she'd never see the guy again, and good riddance. He'd go back to being one more creep and she'd go back to… she wasn't sure what she'd go back to being, but that didn't bother her so much. She just wanted to get away.

    She was just putting her hand out for the screen door when the back door inside was flung open, and a small male voice said, "I've got a gun pointed right at your back. Don't think I'm afraid to use it."

    The quality of the voice baffled her. It was male and mature, but it didn't seem to have as much… volume as most mature male voices.

    The voice said, "Turn around."

    She heard her teeth chattering, and she knew it wasn't from the cold. It was the idea of a gun. Within the past twenty-four hours one man had tried to strangle her to death-or something like that-and another man was pulling a gun on her. She was just a simple little Catholic farm girl. Why were so many people picking on her all of a sudden?

    "Do you really have a gun?" Denise heard herself say.

    "I really have a gun."

    "But I mean, you wouldn't shoot me, would you?"

    "And why wouldn't I? I found you on my back porch. I assume you were about to break in."

    "But I'm a girl."

    "Girls can be dangerous, too."

    "I'm from a farm."

    "So?"

    "Farm girls aren't like that."

    A hint of amusement played in the small voice. "Oh, they're not, eh?"

    "Huh-uh. Honest."

    She realized suddenly how weird this conversation was. She was standing on a stranger's back porch looking out on a backyard silver with ice and moonlight in a neighbourhood she'd never been in before, talking to a guy with a little voice, who (a) held a gun and her, and (b) seemed to find her funny in some strange way.

    "If you're from a farm, what're you doing here?"

    That was a good question. She wished she had a good answer. She panicked, thinking maybe she'd gotten the wrong address or something. "I, uh, was looking for somebody."

    "Who?"

    "Just a guy."

    "Oh, a guy, huh? You don't sound old enough to have a guy."

    That remark kind of irritated her. "I'm sixteen."

    "That isn't old enough."

    She wanted to ask him what was he, a priest or something? But she kept thinking about the gun. "Do you really have a gun?"

    "Right in my hand."

    "Will you put it away?"

    "Why would I do that?"

    "Because guns scare me. My brother shot himself in the leg once, when he was messing around with one of my dad's pistols."

    "I'm sorry to hear that."

    "So, would you?"

    "Would I what?"

    "Put the gun down. I'm not dangerous. I promise."

    The amusement was back in his voice again. "I guess you don't sound particularly dangerous."

    "Really I'm just a farm girl, like I said."

    "A farm girl who stands in front of people's houses and then sneaks up on their back porches, eh?"

    "Well."

    "Maybe does a little B&E on the side."

    "What's B&E?"

    "Breaking and entering."

    "No, huh-uh, honest." She shivered. "Also, I'm getting real cold."

    "You weren't cold standing across the street all that time?"

    "I kept walking back and forth. I wasn't standing still like this."

    "How does some hot chocolate sound?"

    "What?" She couldn't be sure she heard him right. One minute he was holding a gun on her and talking about B&E, and the next minute he was asking her how chocolate sounded. "It sounds great."

    "Well, I'll make you a cup if you promise me."

    So, here it was; the old trade-off. You promise me you'll do all these nice moist things to my body, and I promise you I'll give you something. In this case a cup of hot chocolate. "Promise you what?"

    "Promise me that you're not dangerous."

    "That's all?"

    "Of course. What else would I make you promise?"

    "I guess I was just thinking of something else." He paused. "Why don't you put your hands above your head?"

    "Like this?"

    "Exactly."

    "Just like on TV," Denise said.

    "Just like on TV."

    "And then what?"

    "And then turn around very slowly and face me."

    "Like this?"

    "Like that."

    So, she turned all the way around and faced him.

    And then-shocked-she saw why his voice was so small. Here was a man sitting in a wheelchair, holding a gun in his hand.

    Then he said about the goofiest thing he could say, considering the gun. "You like marshmallows in your hot chocolate?"

    

    

    CULHANE SOMETIMES DRANK in a bar out by the airport. It was a place where the middle management level of advertising people went to sulk about how bad the top level of management was. A nautical motif lent the place the look of a fashionable steak house in the 1950s-a little long on cute, a little short on taste.

    Brolan and Foster had come here many times back in the days when they'd been employees and not employers. But as soon as they departed Cummings and Associates, they were no longer viewed by the gang here as reliable. They'd sold out. They were bosses. It was never anything as formal as a dig or a punch in the mouth… but soon enough they detected the subtle but certain way the boys viewed them. And so they started hanging out where top-level management folks were supposed to go. It was a caste system rigid as India's, except nobody would admit it existed.

    Brolan found Culhane's ten-year-old Mercedes sitting in the lot. Despite the recent cleansing snow, the car still needed a wash.

    Brolan got out of his car and stood for a moment taking fresh night air into his lungs. Several times that night he'd thought of giving this all up and just calling the police and telling them what had happened. Maybe they'd believe him after all. The problem was that having a woman in his freezer did not increase his credibility as a witness.