Scratch Fever (13 page)

Till that afternoon last year when Julie showed up at the bar.

She had looked strange. And beautiful, of course. She was wearing a clingy blood-red sweater and slacks. She had a wild look, her eyes aglitter, her hair slightly disarrayed. An animal look. And there was good reason: she was on the run.

“Do you want me back?” she whispered. Just like that. Leaning across the bar. There were only a few customers in the place. Jody’s, like most Gulf Port establishments, was a night spot primarily. But she whispered.

“You know I do,” he said.

“Can you get somebody to relieve you here?”

“For a few minutes?”

“For until I say different.”

“I’ll make a call.” He did. “The relief guy will be here in twenty minutes. Can it wait till then?”

“Yes,” she said, and took a table near the bar.

The new girl, Doris, a blonde of about twenty-five with dark roots and a nice frame and a pleasant, pockmarked face, waited on Julie; Julie ordered coffee. While Doris was off getting it, Julie came to the bar.

“Who is she?”

“Just some transient gal.”

“Transient?”

“Divorcee. No kids. Got an ex-husband in Ohio she’s on the run from.”

“Why?”

“Cause he still loves her. Ever hear of that?”

“What did he do, beat her?”

“I guess.”

Julie nodded and went back to the table. Doris brought the coffee.

Julie said, “You’re new here, huh?”

Doris smiled, said, “Just collecting a few paychecks, honey. I’m on my way to California.”

“Oh. Relatives there?”

“No. My folks are gone and I was the only one. I got a couple of old boyfriends out there, though. That’s better than relatives.”

“Any time. How’s your paycheck collection coming along?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to Los Angeles. Just stopped here to look up my ex-husband. He’s that good-looking bartender over there.”

“Harold’s your ex? No kiddin’!”

She sat down.

“Say, I was mostly saving for my bus fare and such. If you can use a rider, somebody who can help you drive, I’ll turn in my apron and hop in your car.”

Julie smiled and extended a hand. “It’s a deal.”

Shortly before three o’clock that morning, Harold was in the Mustang, and Doris was behind the wheel. Harold, in the passenger’s seat, was steering, because Doris was unconscious. Julie had put Seconal in some coffee Doris drank a few hours before. Harold was off on the shoulder, waiting for Julie. There was some snow on the ground, but no ice on the highway. It was cold. Harold was sweating.

She came over the bridge, driving his old sky-blue Dodge Charger, the one he’d had since college, and she blinked her brights. That meant the truck was coming. He pulled the Mustang across the mouth of the narrow bridge, left it in park, got out and ran to hop in Julie’s waiting car. They were half a mile away when the small bridge behind them seemed to blow up, in a huge orange ball, as though a shell had hit it.

HE FINISHED
the Manhattan and went out to her. It was chilly in the parking lot; there were no lights on out here, but the full moon provided some unreal-seeming illumination. She was standing with Ron, standing close. He pulled her away from Ron, who stood and watched them, that permanent, pouty snarl on her face.

He told Julie about the call from Infante.

They were talking about it when Ron noticed that kid, Jon, making a break for it, crawling away from her car toward the woods. The lez ran after the kid, dragged him back to the car, tossed him in.

Then Ron came back and said to Julie, “You oughta let me . . .”

“No,” Julie said. “Take him to your place and sit on him.”

Ron shrugged. “Okay,” she said, and sauntered off to her ’57 Ford and rumbled off.

“You’re not going to kill that boy, are you?” Harold asked Julie.

“No.”

“You mean Ron’ll do it for you.”

“I need him alive at the moment. Till we find out what Logan’s up to.”

“He’ll come here. He’s probably on his way right now.”

“I can handle him.”

“I don’t think so. He sounds like one man you can’t handle.”

“We’ll put this Infante to use.”

“He doesn’t sound like much. Some poor sappy kid. I’m afraid his partner was the smart one.”

“He’s the dead one now.”

“True. Very true.”

“Well, Harold. There’s always you.”

“I won’t kill for you, Julie.”

“Right,” she said. She put her arm in his. “Let’s lock up and go home. We can talk about it.”

11

COOL CLOTH
touched his face. It was soothing. Jon opened his eyes.

And looked into Ron’s face.

For a moment the face looked almost human: the pouty mouth, the close-set eyes, were in a sort of repose, the nastiness set aside. Then she saw that he was awake and, with just a subtle shift, the features turned ugly again.

She stopped dabbing his face with the damp washrag; she pulled back.

“Don’t stop,” Jon said. “Feels good.”

“You got bunged up,” she said. Her tone was strangely apologetic. And almost a whisper. “I was cleaning off the dirt.”

His face did hurt; even without touching it, he could feel the raw patches.

“Go ahead,” he said. “That felt good, what you were doing.”

She shrugged, with her shoulders and mouth both, and started touching his face again. Her touch was gentle. Which struck Jon as weird.

“I . . . I don’t remember passing out,” he said.

“You hit your head,” she said.

“When?”

“When I tossed you in back of my car, after you tried to crawl off. You hit your head on the door. You got a bump.”

He tried to feel his head, and his hand jerked, like a dog on a leash. He glanced over and saw that the hand was cuffed to the headboard of an old brass bed. His left hand was free, however, and he touched the bump on his head; it was sore, but it wasn’t a big bump. On the side of his head, though, where she’d hit him with the gun barrel earlier, there was a real goose egg.

“You don’t got a concussion or nothing,” she said.

He was beginning to get his bearings. He was on his back, on the bed; his right hand was cuffed, and his left leg was, too, by the ankle. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, tending him. The room was dim: the only light on was a shaded lamp on the nightstand. This appeared to be a room in an older home. There was yellow floral wallpaper, faded, and paint was coming off the ceiling in spots, from water damage. Opposite the foot of the bed was an old dresser with mirror; on top of the dresser was a row of trophies of some sort. There was a door to the right; a window over to the left. It was an average-size bedroom. Nothing remarkable about it.

Except maybe for the pictures. The mirror over the dresser was covered with them, pin-ups taped to it, but not of girls: Elvis Presley, James Dean, Eddie Cochran; fifties teen faves, mostly dead. Some of the pictures were faded pages clipped from old magazines, the Scotch tape yellowed and dried; others looked more recent. It was a mirror you couldn’t look into. But the faces on it looked back at you, peeking over the row of trophies.

She yanked the cloth away from his raw face. “What are you lookin’ at?”

“Just the pictures. On the mirror.”

“What about ’em?”

“Nothing. They’re fine. They’re fine.”

Her face lost some of its nastiness, and she said, “You name’s Jon, huh?”

“Right. And you’re Ron.”

“Yeah. Sounds like a poem, don’t it? Jon and Ron.” She laughed.

He found a little smile for her somewhere and forced something out of him that he hoped sounded like a laugh.
God
, this dyke is
nuts
, he thought.

“I’m, you know . . . sorry about this,” she said. Sullenly.

“Sorry?”

She dragged it out of herself. “I . . . got nothing against you, really.”

“You don’t?”

“I used to come listen to you. Your band. You guys were good.”

“Thanks.”

“You played too much sixties. I like fifties.”

“Uh, well, there’s lots of requests for sixties stuff these days. But I like fifties music myself.”

She smiled; the sullenness was gone. “I know. I heard you do ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’.’ Anybody that can do Jerry Lee that good is okay by me.”

“I’m . . . glad you liked it.”

“Look, I know I probably made a . . . bad impression that time, few months ago, when I got on your case for being with Darlene. I know it’s not your fault. Darlene, she’s always hitting on people.”

He tried to think of something to say to that, but couldn’t. He was trying to stay low key and calm, trying not to scream at her. She seemed relatively calm herself at the moment, and he had a feeling that keeping her that way might be to his benefit.

“Are you hungry?” she asked suddenly.

“I . . . hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, are you?” Nastier.

“Sure. Sure. If it . . . wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Naw! Not at all. How ’bout a ham sandwich and a beer?”

“That’d be . . . great.”

“No problem,” she said, smiling, rising. She sauntered over toward the door and out.

What a fucking fruitcake!
he thought, and began to take toll of his situation. He took a look at the headboard of the bed. He was cuffed to one of its brass posts; there didn’t seem to be any way to slide the cuff off the thing. And he certainly couldn’t pull his wrist through the cuff.

He was able to get into a sitting position, but he could stay that way only by supporting himself with his free hand. It allowed him to see that his ankle (his shoes were off; he could see them over on the floor, by the dresser) was cuffed to the brass end rail of the bed.

For having an arm and a leg free, he was pretty goddamn helpless.

If he didn’t feel so weak, he could try to overpower her; maybe knock her out with a punch when she got close, or kick her in the head or something. But then what?

Then she was there with the sandwich and beer, a Coors.

She’d taken off the leather jacket; she was in T-shirt and jeans now, her smallish breasts poking at her T-shirt in a reminder that she was female.