Nightlife (19 page)

23

E
xcept when he was desperate to get somewhere quickly, Calvin Dunn liked to travel by car. Today he was driving a new one, a customized coal black Lincoln Town Car. It had steel plates fitted into the door panels and a front end that had been reinforced with steel bars. The rear seat sat on a false floor so that he could carry a few extra pieces of equipment without subjecting them to public scrutiny.

The extra space permitted him more ways of administering rewards and punishments. At the moment it contained fifty thousand dollars in cash, eight pairs of plastic restraints, a set of night-vision goggles, three pistols, a short-barreled shotgun, and a 7.62-millimeter rifle with a four-power scope.

His customary attire included a black sport coat with thirty hundred-dollar bills zipped into an inner pocket and a ten-millimeter Smith & Wesson pistol in his shoulder holster.

He was in a good humor today. He was in the business of doing things nobody else would do, so usually his ego didn’t get much involved, but Hugo Poole had given him the sort of compliment that meant something to him: a great deal of money and the promise of more.

It was a pleasure for Calvin Dunn to work for a man like Hugo Poole. He didn’t have to explain the things that every adult male ought to know. Dunn had not needed to say, “You will pay what you owe me on time and in cash, or I’ll have to come take it and leave your body in the desert for the coyotes.” Hugo Poole had not needed to say, “If you rat me out, I’ll find you in prison and drive a sharpened toothbrush through your temple.” They both knew how business was done.

Hugo had given him the names the girl had used so far, and this morning Calvin Dunn had driven to the police station in the Kern County town of Paston, where he lived, and obtained a photocopy of the police circular. The circular had good photographs taken from driver’s licenses and her accurate height and weight. There was some confusion about eye color, but if he got close enough to see that, the job was as good as done.

Outside the police station he studied the printed information on the circular, then started his engine. He knew where to begin the hunt. He drove to Los Angeles County and found the address in the San Fernando Valley near Topanga where the girl had lived under the name Nancy Mills. He parked his car where he could easily see it from the windows at the front of the apartment building, then went inside and knocked on the door of the building manager’s apartment.

The man who opened the door had a short beard that looked like a permanent three-day growth. Calvin Dunn held up a small leather case with an identification card in it that had his picture in an official-looking format and an embossed gold badge under it that had no insignia and didn’t say he was anything in particular. But Calvin Dunn was tall and had muscular arms, so he looked like a cop.

“My name is Calvin Dunn, and you are—?”

“Rob Norris.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’d like to ask you a few questions about a tenant, the young lady who called herself Nancy Mills.”

Calvin Dunn’s stare transfixed the manager. Dunn’s pale gray eyes appeared to be focused on a point two inches deeper than the manager’s forehead, inside the manager’s skull. It was an uncomfortable feeling for him, and he felt an urge to close the door.

“Can I come in?”

The manager had no desire to let him in but no confidence in his power to stop him, so he said, “Okay.” He stepped back just in time to prevent Calvin Dunn from colliding with him. When Calvin Dunn arrived, violence was not a remote possibility but something already present in the room with him. The manager sensed that his task was to keep it from becoming overt.

The manager watched Dunn standing in his small living room, his hands clasped behind him as though to emphasize the difference it might make if they weren’t clasped, and rocking toe to heel on his shoes. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you some of the questions you already answered,” said Dunn.

“Okay.”

“Tell me about Nancy Mills. Why did she decide to live here? Did she know anybody here?”

“No. She just called up and said she liked living near the mall.”

“How did she pay for the rent? Did she have a credit card?”

“She gave me cash. It was a lot of money, when you add up first, last, and security deposit. Over three thousand bucks. I had to deliver it to the company that owns the place that day, because I didn’t want to keep that much around.”

“Just like that? Didn’t you do a background check to see if she was a problem tenant?”

“What do you mean?”

Dunn was patient. “A deadbeat, who skipped on her last landlord. Or a drug dealer, or a prostitute. That’s the kind of person who has lots of cash.”

“I don’t do that kind of checking. I think that the company does sometimes. On the application they ask for a lot of information. They want the last three addresses and phone numbers. They ask for references too, including an employer they can call.”

“Do you have her application here?”

“No,” said the manager. “The company gets it as soon as the place is rented.”

“I’d like you to see if you remember anything at all about her that might help me find her. Does she like to wear particular colors or a special style of clothes, for instance?”

“She has a nice little body, so she tends to wear pants and tops that are sort of snug. Not tight, exactly. Fitted. I never saw what she wore when she went out at night, but the picture from the hotel camera looked like the kind of thing I always saw on her. It was pants and a yellow top, and a matching yellow jacket thing over it, with something written on it.”

“You mean like a brand?”

“You know, there’s always some smart-ass thing written on it, like to tease you. Maybe the brand is mentioned, maybe not.”

“Oh. Any friends, anybody she talked to a lot?”

“I don’t think so. I guess she must have talked to Mary Tilson, the woman across the hall from her.”

“Nobody else? No guys?”

“None that I ever saw. If you’re an apartment manager, you have to kind of watch for that too. You get a sweet-faced little babe into an apartment, and then all of a sudden there’s a boyfriend living there and his drinking buddies are in and out all the time, making noise and pissing off the other tenants.”

“What did she do all day? Did she work?”

“I don’t know. She used to go out for a run in the morning, then come back. After that, I guess she would go for the day. Now and then she’d come home with bags from stores.”

“Interesting. I’d like it if you’d let me into her place now, so I can have a look around.”

“I’m not really supposed to do that. The police won’t let me rent it out or anything yet.”

Dunn said quietly, “If you help me, I’ll pay for your cooperation. If you don’t, I’ll still get what I want, but you won’t.”

The manager noticed again the strange way that Calvin Dunn looked at him, his eyes appearing to focus on a point inside the manager’s forehead. “All right.”

They went to the apartment, and Dunn waited while the manager unlocked the door, then ducked under the yellow police tape across the doorway and into the room. Dunn looked at everything closely, and sighted along the woodwork where the police had dusted for prints. There didn’t seem to be any spots where they had put tape down and lifted a print. Then he examined the furnishings. “Did she pick out this stuff, or did it come with the place?”

“It’s furnished. The company buys it in lots, I think. It all looks the same. They have a lot of other buildings.”

Calvin Dunn spent a few more minutes looking for anything that Nancy Mills might have left, carefully opening and closing cabinets and drawers with the edge of his hand, but looking only experimentally, to be sure the police had already searched. Then he said, “Let’s go back to your place.”

When they were in the manager’s apartment again, Calvin Dunn reached into his inner coat pocket and handed the manager three hundred-dollar bills. “This is for your cooperation.”

“Thank you,” said the manager.

“You’re welcome. Now get me the application.”

“I already told you—”

Calvin Dunn held up his hand to interrupt. “I want you to think about it. You just saw that I’m a truthful man. No harm came to the apartment and you got a reward. Look at me. Do you want me to be your friend, or do you want me to be your enemy?”

The manager said, “I can’t give you that.”

Dunn lunged forward, his right arm across the manager’s chest, and flipped him backward over his hip so that he landed facedown on the floor. Dunn held the manager’s wrist with both hands and placed his foot against the manager’s back. “You keep a copy of the application. Where is it?”

Norris gasped. “In the desk. Over there.”

“Thank you,” said Calvin Dunn. He released the manager, walked to the desk, pulled open the deep file drawer, and found the applications filed alphabetically. He took the photocopy of the one that Nancy Mills had filled out, and examined it closely. Then he set it on the desk. “That will do it for me. Don’t worry, your arm will be okay in a day or two.” He stepped to the door. “You look too smart to say anything to anybody about my visit. Are you?”

The manager looked up from the floor. “Yes.” And then Calvin Dunn was out the door and gone.

24

T
he boy drove Nicole Davis to a long, one-story suburban ranch house with a low rail fence at the sidewalk and a small rustic wooden sign on the lawn that said
THE GILMANS.
The boy used an automatic garage-door opener, drove all the way in, and closed the door behind them before he got out of the car.

Nicole Davis looked around her at the garage in the dim light. It was big, made for three cars, and the little Mazda seemed lonely in the center of it. When the boy went to the wall and switched on the overhead light, she could see a workbench along the back wall with a vise, and a pegboard with outlines of hand tools traced on it, most of the tools in their places. She got out of the car. “The Gilmans. Is that you? Are you a Gilman?”

“I’m a Gilman. I’m Ty. That’s for Tyler.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Don’t worry about them. They’re at Lake Havasu right now. They won’t be back for almost a week. On the way home they’re going to swing by my grandmother’s house in Scottsdale.”

He went to the side of the garage, unlocked it, and let her into the kitchen. She took in everything quickly. It was small and a bit worn. There were dishes in the sink and the floor was dirty. He wasn’t coming in with her. She looked back to see him going to the car. He noticed her watching. “I’ve got to get back to work now. I’ll be home around eight. Make yourself comfortable, but don’t let anybody see you. Okay?”

“Okay.” She closed the kitchen door, then listened while he opened the garage door, started the car engine, backed out, and closed the garage again. She went through the kitchen to the living room, knelt on a chair, and moved the curtain aside a quarter inch to watch him drive off.

She looked around her and had a feeling of unreality. Being here was strange and sudden. She had been rushing to get on the bus, and now she was here, alone in this quiet suburban house. He had said he’d seen her on television, so she went to search for a television set. The living room was the kind that she suspected the family seldom used. The furniture had awful patterns on it that looked defiantly fresh and clear, and there wasn’t a book, magazine, or anything else on the coffee tables.

As she explored the house she wondered about the boy. She felt sympathy for his awkwardness. He looked to her as though his hands and feet had grown too fast and the rest of him had not caught up yet. His sandy blond hair had been cut short and tousled with his hands instead of combed, which unintentionally accentuated his baby face and thin neck. She could almost see his ribs through his shirt, and his pants seemed to be barely held up on his hips. He had earnest, open eyes, and his chin and cheeks were still smooth and looked soft, because his beard had not been shaved enough times to make it bristly and rough.

He had saved her life a few minutes ago. That horrible girl at the hotel had undoubtedly told the cops about her call, because it had taken them practically no time to head for the bus station. They had probably stopped the bus and dragged the people off it looking for her.

What had Ty seen on television that had induced him to get in the way of that? She kept looking for the television set. Had she missed a small one in the kitchen? No. There was a cookie jar that looked like a fat puppy on the counter. The clock in the wall was supposed to look like a sunflower, so the dark part in the center had hands on it. It said five o’clock. She went to a door past the pantry and found a kind of den, a room with only one window high on the wall, a couch, an easy chair, and a big television set.

Nicole located the remote control and turned it on, then worked her way through the channels until she found a local news show. The newswoman assumed a fake-sorry face and said something below hearing. As she was replaced by another young woman, this one dark-haired, standing in front of the Sky Inn, Nicole turned up the sound.

“. . . a murder suspect who police say was on the run from California. She apparently arrived in the Flagstaff area last evening and was scheduled to stay a second night at the hotel, but became suspicious at some point and fled, leaving her suitcase. Police have made photographs of her available.”

The scene was replaced by two pictures that Nicole recognized. One was the Illinois driver’s license she had gotten years ago in the name Tanya Starling, when she had been given her first car. The other was the California license of Rachel Sturbridge. The excited voice of the young woman said, “She is five feet five inches tall, approximately a hundred and twenty pounds. When last seen she had brown hair and blue eyes, but she has been known to wear colored contact lenses and dye her hair to alter her appearance. If you see her, call the police immediately. The number is at the bottom of your screen. Do not try to apprehend her yourself.”

Nicole switched the remote control to move from channel to channel. “The manhunt continues for—” There was her picture again. “. . . is considered to be armed and—” This time it was a pudgy middle-aged man in a police uniform standing at a podium outside a building she didn’t recognize. “. . . will be cooperating with law enforcement authorities in California, Oregon—”

She turned off the television set and realized she was hearing an unfamiliar sound, then recognized it as her own breathing, coming in shallow huffs, amplified by the intense silence in the house. She had to think. She had to make a plan, invent a way to get herself out of here.

She couldn’t collect her thoughts, and she knew that the plan had to be based on knowing what the police were doing, so she turned the television set back on. The pudgy cop was saying, “. . . are now completing a building-to-building search of the blocks around the bus station where she was seen. We ask that people take alternate routes to avoid that area until we’ve given the all clear. We know that she purchased bus tickets to both Phoenix and Santa Fe, so authorities in both cities have been notified.”

He looked attentive while he listened to a question from a reporter, then said, “She may have just been getting some sleep so she could go on to the next place.”

Nicole said, “Then why are you chasing me, you fat asshole?”

She turned off the television again. All it was doing was making her so agitated that she couldn’t think. Things were bad out there, but she wasn’t out there anymore. She was in here, thanks to Ty.

She spent the next half hour examining the house to learn about him. What she saw confirmed her first impression. There was a mother. She had more sweatpants than a track star, and about four or five outfits for going out, besides whatever she had taken with her. She was at least three inches taller than Nicole, but thin, like Tyler.

The father seemed to have a job that involved more physical labor than paperwork. He had three pairs of brown ankle-high boots with steel toes, and several pairs of dark blue pants that looked like the work pants that janitors and mechanics sometimes wear—almost a uniform, but not quite.

Ty’s bedroom was at the far end of the house. It contained relics of his childhood—his baseball glove and bat, trophies for various sports, a row of three-inch robots on a shelf. But he was growing up. She saw a DVD player with headphones, a computer, huge posters of female rappers striking provocative poses as they danced and shouted openmouthed into wireless microphones. Ty had quite a few more expensive gadgets than Charlene had owned, but things had not changed too much.

She wandered the house to satisfy herself that everything conformed to what she had seen so far. When she reached the kitchen again, she drew the curtain on the window over the sink, just in case some neighbor had a view across the backyard. Then she washed the dirty dishes.

She could tell that they had accumulated over a couple of days, at least. There was sour-milk residue in the bottoms of half a dozen glasses, and egg yolk hardened on two plates. She decided she liked Ty’s laziness and disorganization. He was still a kid and would wait until his parents were practically pulling into the driveway before he washed a dish. After a time she began to regret waiting so long to start the housework, because the sunlight was getting dimmer, and she did not dare turn on a light.

She found a bucket and mop in the laundry room off the kitchen and mopped the kitchen floor. She took a sponge and got down on her hands and knees to wash the most neglected and dirty areas near the sink and the cooktop. When she had finished the floor, she looked at the sunflower clock again and saw that she still had an hour before Ty would return.

She knew it was not a good idea to turn on the television again before his car was in the driveway, because the screen would throw light that the neighbors could see. It didn’t matter. She had driven for a day without stopping, had had a partial night’s sleep, had walked all over town, and had been afraid for so many hours that she was too tired to be afraid anymore. She lay on the couch in the television room, listening to the unrelieved silence in the empty house. Then she was asleep.

She awoke, startled. The light was in her eyes, and a big male shape was standing over her. She quickly rose to a crouch, and heard his voice. “It’s only me.”

“Oh,” she said. “I guess I fell asleep.”

“Yeah, I guess you did.”

She rubbed her eyes and smoothed her hair with both hands to be sure it wasn’t horrible. She made herself smile. “How did everything go, Ty? Your job and everything.”

“No problem. When I went to find you I was on my three o’clock lunch break. I made it back and nobody paid much attention.”

“Where do you work?”

“At the Taco Rancho restaurant, up by the interstate. That was where I saw you on TV. They have the TV on all day. A lot of people think it makes the day go faster, but usually it’s on some crappy thing like those fake courtrooms where people sue each other and a fake judge bitches at them.”

She smiled. “I hate that too.”

“Well, they cut right into it today—one of those breaking-news alerts. At first everybody thought your picture was up because somebody had kidnapped you.” He shrugged. “I could tell you were wanted, because they showed two pictures of you with different hair.”

She made her eyes wide and innocent, and kept them on his. “I didn’t do it.”

“Do what?”

“What they said I did. I want you to know I’m innocent.”

He looked down at his feet thoughtfully, then nodded. “I brought some food. You hungry?”

“I guess I am,” she said. “You didn’t have to do that, though. I would have cooked us something.”

“It’s okay. Every night I bring stuff home from the restaurant.”

“I hope you didn’t buy too much more than you usually do. Somebody could notice things like that.”

“No,” he said. “I fill my own order, pay for it, and get my own change. I got us two El Pollo Grandes and a bean burrito. We can split it.”

“Sounds great.” She reached for her purse. “I’d like to pay you back.”

“Don’t,” he said. “We can talk about that stuff later. Come on.”

She followed him to the kitchen, where he looked around. “Oh. You washed the dishes, huh?”

“Yes. The floor, too. It appeared as though you hadn’t had time lately.”

He looked at her as though he had not liked the gentle chiding, then turned and opened the cupboard and pulled out two glasses, set them on the table, and got two plates. They sat at the kitchen table and he divided the items from his El Taco Rancho bag with scrupulous care.

“I watched TV after you left,” she said. “They seem to be looking for me everywhere. Did you hear anything while you were at work? Do you think I’ll be able to leave tonight?”

He finished chewing, then said, “I saw a bunch of cops. They’re eyeballing people in cars, and stopping some of them, mostly women driving alone.” He shrugged. “They haven’t given up.”

“Then would it be all right with you if I stay longer?”

“I think you have to. If they catch you, then I’m in trouble too.”

“Why did you help me?”

He stared at her for a few seconds, then looked away. “I saw your picture. I thought you were nice looking. I wanted to do you a favor.”

“You could go to jail for it.”

“I know that.”

After dinner, they sat in the den on one of the couches and watched the television again, but there were no more special bulletins. At eleven, the local news shows repeated the whole story, with the same reporters standing in front of the hotel again, even though there was nothing to see. But one of them also showed a roadblock at an entrance to Interstate 40, where police officers shone flashlights on the faces of women in the cars, then waved them on.

Nicole felt her pulse rate increase again. She stood up and said, “I’d like to take a shower. Is that okay?”

Ty said, “I guess so.” Then he said, “Can I watch you?”

She was paralyzed for a second. “What?”

“Can I come and watch?”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I want to see you naked.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out hollow and false. “Of course not. That isn’t what you really want.”

“Yes. It is what I want,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it since I first saw you.”

“I’m so much older than you are. I’m twenty-eight, twelve years older. It would seem weird. I’d be embarrassed.”

“It’s not much to ask. If I hadn’t come, you’d be in jail now. Or maybe dead.”

“I’m grateful for what you’re doing. I want us to be friends. That’s just not the way.”

His face was darker and grimmer. He was feeling resentful, more and more unappreciated and ill-used, and she could see anger growing behind his eyes. She said, “Haven’t you ever seen a woman before?”

“No. Just movies. Pictures.”

She was desperate, miserable. She couldn’t afford to make him angry and resentful. “Look, Ty. You don’t have to feel rejected, or that I’m just too selfish to give you what you want. I like you. I really do. And I know that what you’re thinking about seems like something you really want, but this isn’t the right time. I’m not the one.”

His eyes were fixed on the wall ahead of him. “It’s not that big a thing to you. You take off your clothes in front of doctors, people like that, people who haven’t done anything for you.”