Nightrunners (12 page)

"No, that's all right."

"I don't mind."

"I know, but it's okay."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm going to watch the late movie, give me something to do."

"One of those Japanese monster flicks, no doubt?"

"No
Way to Treat a Lady,
something like that."

"All right, but don't be surprised if I come back knocking on your door. You look like a forlorn pup."

"Really, I'm all right. No need to worry. I'm going to listen to Ray Charles a bit, then when the movie comes on I'll watch that. Might even blow my diet and make some popcorn."

"That's incentive enough for me to stay."

"I'm all right, really, Eva. I'm a big girl now."

"Okay, don't share your old popcorn . . . It's just with the things that have been happening, the Rapist Ripper stuff . . ."

"Hush, hush, I don't need that on my mind."

"Sorry."

Becky walked Eva to the door.

"Listen, Beck. You get lonely, call me. Anytime of the night, got me?"

"Got you."

"Promise?"

"For Christsakes, I promise."

"Bye, Beck, and good night . . . and don't be surprised if I get as far as the parking lot and decide to come back and make you let me stay."

Becky smiled, opened the door. A hot wind hit the air-conditioned apartment. The contrast made Becky's stomach turn.

"Christ," Eva said, "you'd think we were having one of those California devil winds, what are they called? Santa Anas?"

"Be careful."

"I will. Later."

Becky watched Eva walk along the outside landing and start down the steps. Just before she disappeared down the stairs she smiled back at Becky and waved.

Becky returned the smile and the wave, closed the door.

EIGHT

9:26 P.M.

The black '66 killed its lights, coasted onto the apartment lot like a metal shark on a concrete sea.

"This is the place?" Loony said.

"No," Clyde said. "I just thought I'd stop here for the hell of it."

"Okay," Loony said, "I wasn't thinking."

"You're never thinking," Brian said.

"I didn't mean nothing by it, I was just talking."

"Shut the fuck up, Loony," Clyde said.

Clyde cut the engine, and it was as if a million locusts had suddenly stopped beating their wings; it was abnormally silent. They sat in the darkness, the hot wind blowing through the open windows. They passed the bottle around. No one spoke.

A woman swirled out of the apartment Clyde was watching, came down the stairs walking fast, entered the shadows, was swallowed by them then regurgitated into one of the alternating lights along the railing. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. Every few seconds her blue and white polka-dot dress shone in the light like the wings of a great moth, then she would be a form in darkness, the dress suddenly dark as bat wings.

"How about her?" Loony asked.

"No. I have someone else in mind."

The woman moved to a small car, opened the door. The interior light glowed, the moth wings shone momentarily as she swung inside, then the door slammed and there was darkness followed by the hum of the engine. Headlights came on, and then she was gone.

"What's it matter who?" Loony said. "She looked good enough for me. All pink on the inside, ain't it?"

"I got my reasons," Clyde said. "I like the way the teacher looks. One time she was nice to me, and I haven't forgot it."

Loony laughed. "She was nice to you so you're going to rape her and cut her throat. Boy, I like that."

Clyde turned around in his seat where he could look at Loony. Loony's face became as expressionless as Stone's. "I'm going to tell you this once, dung ball, just once.

I got the say-so here. What I say, we do, and if I'm not around to say it Brian says it. That simple.

You got it, dung ball?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

"Good. You keep the thought and hold it like a baby holding a teddy bear. Don't let it go, Loony, 'cause so help me, I'm going to give this car a red paint job—with your blood.

"I said I got you, I got you."

"Good." Clyde turned around.

A hot wind blew through the car and curled the hairs on their necks and heads.

Out somewhere in the sticky night void, a car honked and a dozen motors gunned away from a red light.

"We're going to do it this way," Clyde said. "Me and Stone are going up this time, and you two are going to watch."

"Hey, it's my turn," Loony said. "Stone went up last time."

"Stone doesn't act like a dung ball," Clyde said. "Now shut up and take the shotgun. I want you by the stairs. Hear me?"

"I hear," Loony said. He bent, picked a pump 12-gauge from the floorboard, laid it in his lap. The barrel struck Stone in the balls, and without saying a word, Stone pushed it aside with the palm of his hand.

Loony turned to look at Stone, saw that he was frowning. He moved the shotgun so that it was pointing at the roof of the car. Loony felt exasperated and mad. He couldn't do anything right tonight.

"You guys stay in the car a minute," Clyde said. "Got to talk some private shit to my main man here."

Clyde opened the door and got out. Brian followed suit. They walked around in front of the car.

"Main man," Loony hissed under his breath. "Goddamn butthole buddies."

Out in front of the car Clyde said, "I'm not slighting you."

"I know. We're taking turns."

"Not just that. I want a good man downstairs. Loony's too full of glue tonight. I need some brains down here. Stone does as he's told, but I need more than that."

"No sweat. Fuck her for me."

"1 will, and I'll cut half her throat for you."

"That part about her being nice to you. That true?"

"Yeah. Long time ago. She kept some big kid off me in a school fight. I could have licked him though. But I've wanted her ass ever since."

"Dreams come true."

Clyde took a switchblade from his pocket, flicked it open. "Guess they do."

NINE

9:38 P.M.

Raymond Caldwell was constipated and the poodle needed to shit.

Typical.

The wife didn't give a damn that the crap had dried up inside of him like a goddamned concrete pillar, but she was next to hysterically urgent when she thought the pink-toed poodle with the curly, shampooed hair might be a few seconds late with its bowel movement, and of course he was the one that had won the honor of taking MeMe out for a dump.

Swell, he had a boulder hung in his ass, and prissy mutt needed to drop a load.

And right when it was time for the wrestling matches, and he's waited all week for them too.

Tonight was the night the Raider was going to give that kraut bastard Eric Von Stropper the old what for, twist his ugly head right off of his ugly shoulders. Probably be blood and the sound of cracking bones all over the place—and guess who needed to shit?

Guess where he'd be when the blood started flying?

Downstairs watching a poodle lose a noodle.

Good old MeMe, that dog was a hundred years old. Why didn't she die? The goddamned dog was going to outlive him. Here he was seventy and next year his chair would be empty and the goddamned dog would be laying there watching wrestling.

"Christ, Selma, can't you take the dog out to shit? It's almost time for the matches,"

"Ray, such language. MeMe can't go to the toilet like we can."

"So who's going to the toilet these days. I feel like I got a cork in my ass."

"Ray, I will not stand for that sort of language in this house."

"This isn't a house, it's a goddamned apartment."

"Ray."

"Don't give me that Ray crap. Every time you get that tone in your voice it means I'm not going to get any. Big deal. Ten years ago it was still a big deal. Not now. Hold out if you want, I couldn't get this old salami up with a crane."

"Ray, you take MeMe out this instant."

"It's embarrassing for a grown man to stand around and watch a goddamned poodle leave its calling card. I feel like everybody's getting snapshots. If we're going to have a dog, why don't we get something like a shepherd, something with some dignity.

Not this rat with a hairdo."

"I can be very hard to live with, Ray."

"Believe me, I know it. You're hard to live with now. Look here, for Christsake, the matches are coming on."

She looked at the television. "They still have to call each other names for a while and there's always a couple of commercials first . . . You know I can't go out there. A woman alone—"

"Yeah, yeah, all the guys are just hanging out of windows to get a look at you."

"I wasn't so bad in my time."

"So the dinosaurs are dead now, Selma."

"And you're a year older than me."

"Oh, for crying out loud. Give me the goddamned leash and let me get it over with."

"And don't forget the poopy scooper."

"I'm not scooping up no fresh dogshit."

"You can't leave it just lying around. Someone will step in it. You got to take it to the dumpster."

"Oh hell, give me the goddamned poopy scooper."

TEN

9:47 P.M.

Becky put on a Ray Charles album, moved the needle to her favorite, "Born to Lose."

There was a knock on the door.

She smiled. That darn Eva, she thought. She went to the door, opened it with a jerk.

It wasn't Eva.

9:50 P.M.

MeMe was really hunkered, and Raymond was glad to see the little pooch was having a hard time. Maybe the goddamned dog would strain itself to death. Serve the little bitch right. He nearly died twice a day, and the hemorrhoids, Christsake, like footballs.

Someone screamed—shortly, as if it had been quickly muffled.

Raymond turned. It came from across the way, from the upper deck of apartments.

He jerked on MeMe's leash, began moving toward the stairs. Then common sense got the better of him. Now, just a minute, he thought. Probably it was nothing except some husband with a big poker putting it to ...

Another scream, this one muffled like the first, as if the voice had crept out from behind a hand, and had just as quickly been recaptured.

Definitely upstairs, Raymond thought. He moved off the grassy section of the lot and into the shadows, making his way toward the stairs. He went around the dumpster and saw a form standing twenty feet away, one foot on the bottom stair step. The man was turned so that his back was to him, and Raymond could see that he held a rifle or shotgun.

Raymond let go of the leash and gripping the poopy scooper like a baseball bat, stepped briskly toward the sentry, his heart beating with the rhythmic thumping of a boxer's speed bag.

And then, just as he was even with the steps and there was only the metal stairs and their open gaps separating him from the man with the gun, the guy turned.

It was a kid, and the kid's face jumped into a surprised expression and the shotgun—for he could see now that it was a shotgun—raised... and the kid was starting to point it at him through the stair gaps. Raymond slammed the scooper against the side of the barrel and the gun went hard right and there was an explosion, and he thought, am I dead?

A second later he determined he was not even hit, and he reached the barrel with one hand, and with a quick wrenching action, pulled it out of the kid's grasp and through the steps.

The kid yelled something at him and came around the stairs, teeth bared in a mad-dog smile.

Raymond dropped the shotgun and laid the scooper, with a nice, wind-whistling, both-handed swing, upside the kid's head.

The kid went down.

Raymond swung the scooper again and when he hit the kid's skull, blood jumped up like a dark liquid shadow and fell to the cement lot.

The kid fell forward on his face. Out.

MeMe ran up and began chewing on the kid's leg.

Raymond picked up the shotgun and started upstairs, hoping to locate the source of the scream. Fishy things going on, an ocean full of fishy things.

At the top of the stairs he stopped and looked down. The kid was still out. The poopy scooper lay where he had dropped it in place of the shotgun, and MeMe was chewing on the kid's shoe, jerking and growling savagely. Well, he thought, maybe the little shit isn't so bad after all. "Good dog," he said.

He pumped a round into the 12-gauge.

........

Brian had been standing guard at the car, watching the street entrance. Loony's job was to watch the lot and the stairs. But the sound of the shotgun blast had caused him to turn.

In the shadows, some distance away, he saw two people struggling. He recognized one shape as Loony, and he saw that shape grab its head and go down. The other figure had something in his hand and he was hitting Loony with it, and in a moment he realized that the man now had the shotgun and was going upstairs. A little dog was chewing on Loony's leg.

"Damn," Brian said softly.

He jumped in the Chevy, gunned it to life. Most likely Clyde and Stone had heard the shotgun blast, but if not . . .

He hit down three hard times on the horn.

Raymond, now moving across the landing, listening and watching for who knows what, heard the horn too. He glanced toward the lot, saw lights coming fast toward the apartment building.

Then, to his right, he heard another sound and he whirled.

The door directly to his right burst open and two bodies slammed into him and he fell back against the railing, the shotgun went out of his hands and over and he almost followed.

Fists slammed his head and he slid down to the landing with his back against the rail. All he could see were legs. He could hear music—that black guy, Ray Charles—and between the legs he could see a woman lying on the floor, naked, gagged, her arms stretched out and tied to furniture.

Then the legs he was looking through began to move, kicking at him. Hurting him.

And he remembered Raider and his famous scissor move and how he had once put it on Leroy Jerowsky and how he had brought Jerowsky down so hard he'd cracked his head open.