Stagger Bay (23 page)

Karl had always forced himself to sniff at our scores like a leopard examining possibly poisoned bait. Still, it had been easy enough for them to make him die alone with no one to notice or care except Sam and I.

As for me? I figured I was a little too high profile right at the moment for them to feel comfortable about taking me out quite yet, unless I really pushed them. Heck, I’d given them every reason to feel safe; they had to be thinking I was no threat at all.

I was a buffoon; a cage-rattling blowhard that woofed on TV, made a few soapbox speeches to curry favor with Stagger Bay’s underbelly, and talked some inconsequential smack to their faces. After it blew up on me with little Mai, I know they had to have been laughing their asses off – hell, I would have mocked me if I was them.

When I made my move, its speed and suddenness after my previous inactivity would be doubly appalling to them. Underestimate me some more, fools – it felt good they did so.

‘Unrealistic expectations,’ Sam had said. But wasn’t that what life was all about? Stumbling along, doing our best to hypnotize ourselves into believing we could make some kind of difference?

Chapter 53

Down the block a man shouted something incoherent, his leonine roar piercing the night for a moment before being cut off abruptly. A woman howled, and I picked up the phone and dialed Elaine’s cell. Her voice was wide awake when she answered; she hadn’t been sleeping either.

Sam mumbled something behind her and she made unhappy noises aimed away from the mouth piece; there were fumbling sounds as Sam grabbed the phone from her and came on line: “Yeah?”

“Get your butt over here right now, boy. It’s going down.”

Then I was out the door, locking it behind me and checking the knob before heading on. The gun was in my hand pointing at the ground as I rolled up on the bungalow the howling had come from.

It was easy enough to spot: the front door was wide open, all the lights were on, and what looked like every adult male in the Gardens was milling around it. I went inside: a tiny black woman in a nightgown knelt on the floor cradling Big Moe’s bloody head.

“My baby,” she sobbed, staring out the open back door.

I ran out that way and joined the flood of men running toward the brush-line. “He went in there,” somebody yelled, and I followed the herd into the chaotic dark of the undergrowth, people cursing and stumbling, my face getting whipped and stung by branches springing back from the progress of all those ahead. Somebody started shooting, the muzzle flash from one round after another lighting up the shrubbery in front of me and to my left.

“Stop that, idiot,” Mackie shouted somewhere behind me in the dark. “Either you’ll hit the kid or one of us.”

That’s when the Cougar’s engine kicked over somewhere in front of me: He must have come in from above and coasted his car down one of the fire lanes cut through the underbrush surrounding the Gardens, maybe one we hadn’t even known was there. Then he’d ninja-ed his way into the Gardens and taken his prey in a smash-and-grab.

I heard road gravel kicking up as the Driver peeled out, and there were cries of dismay from that direction – his closest pursuers must have gotten pelted in the face by the Cougar’s rooster-tail.

I turned and clawed my way back through the undergrowth. As I was right by the entrance there was still a chance.

I charged full bore across the avenue and down one of the phantom courts, hopping the curb to keep running on the flattened earth of the prepped lot beyond. As I wove my way between surveyor’s stakes, the Cougar’s roar grew clearer and louder behind me as it emerged from the narrow over-grown entrance to the fire lane and gunned out onto the avenue.

The Cougar’s tires screeched as it took the first corner but I just kept running. He rounded the second corner as I neared the Caterpillar, gloating that I’d be in place to take my shot.

That’s when I tripped and fell flat on my face, the pistol spinning from my hand to disappear somewhere in the weeds. I leapt up and took a despairing glance around for the pistol, but it was nowhere in sight.

So much for your grand plan, the unforgiving part of my mind sneered. I ran around the contractor’s hut, to do what I don’t know: throw myself on the hood and scrabble my way inside with my bare hands maybe.

I rounded the hut just in time to see taillights as the Cougar ramped up the access road, turned left onto Moose Creek Road, and headed home to party. I ran up the access road even though my legs were already trembling underneath me, and turned left into the piney woods like I stood a chance in hell of catching up on foot. Even though I doubted I’d do any better this time than at the Arcade with Mai, I still had to try.

Chapter 54

When I was a kid I loved Creepy Magazine, a horror comic that featured terrifying covers by Frank Frazetta. His paintings always had gorgeous full moons, demons, big-titted vampire women and all kinds of other morbid, beautifully rendered monstrosities.

That’s what the night I ran through looked like: a Frazetta cover. The two-lane blacktop extended ahead of me into dim infinities of towering pines and redwoods, their branches leaning in as they clutched at the air. Overhead a bloated full moon shone down with a light that seemed to say anything could happen beneath its rays.

Ahead the Cougar’s taillights glared like a retreating werewolf as it cruised away, not going fast here in the Driver’s home territory. He had his cruising tunes blasting: the Beach Boys’ ‘In My Room.’ He was enjoying the drive enough to make it last.

My heart pounded fit to burst out of my rib cage, and my breath came in pulses of white-hot agony – the Cougar pulled further and further ahead with mocking ease. I ran slower and slower as my old legs turned to wood beneath my traitor of a body and I finally came to a shuddering halt with my hands on my thighs, rhythmic sobs of pain and anger coming from me unwillingly as I watched the Cougar take a curve and disappear into the wooded night. The music spilled back for a few moments before fading, and I was alone in silence.

I’d failed again, and another child would die a hideous lingering death because of it. I dropped to my knees on the asphalt.

A car was coming up fast from the direction of the Gardens, but I was too beat to get out the way. As it came up its headlights backlit me; my shadow spilled to darken the road ahead in a thin goblin caricature of my silhouette.

I waited, almost hoping whoever it was would just plow over me and put me out of my misery, or that it would be a Stagger Bay cop come to eliminate me for overstepping my bounds. But the car stopped a few feet behind where I kneeled.

“Old fool,” Sam said from inside his Lincoln. “You trying to kill yourself?”

I tottered up, turned, and grabbed the door handle. “Step on it, Sam,” I managed to gasp, before I saw Elaine riding shotgun, right where I’d intended to sit.

“What the hell is she doing here?” I asked.

“You’re wasting time, Markus,” Elaine said.

“You said to bird-dog her,” Sam said as he floored the gas before I’d even closed the back seat door all the way. He turned off the Connie’s headlights but the full moon’s light was more than bright enough for him to drive by.

“I didn’t mean to bring her along on this.”

Luxurious manors lay to either side as we raced up Moose Creek Road, some lit up like Christmas trees, some dark as the tomb. We swooped round the first curve and hit a long uphill straightaway. My teeth ground together and I had to repress a snarl of unbelieving joy as I saw the Cougar’s taillights just disappearing around the next curve.

“You think I was going to leave her alone at the motel?” Sam said, his voice raised. I opened my mouth to bark something back.

“What’s your plan, Markus?” Elaine said, cutting me off before I could speak. She was half turned to me, her profile lit up by the dash indicator lights.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, putting aside any worries about letting her be an eye-witness to what was about to happen. “We keep sharking forward until we can’t any more.”

“Doesn’t sound like much,” Sam said, but he kept the car surging ahead, and the darkling redwoods raced past us in a blur as we rounded the next curve to see the Cougar’s taillights much closer now.

“Yes,” Sam hissed, and all three of us leaned eagerly forward as he ground his foot onto the gas pedal, as if he thought he could squeeze any more speed from the maxed-out old war horse. Catch up!

“Let me know when you come up with a better scheme, boy,” I said, but most of my attention was on those fleeing taillights.

We passed Mr. Tubbs’ house as Sam flew toward where the Cougar had disappeared around another curve. All the lights were on and there seemed to be frenetic activity happening in Tubbs’ junk-crowded yard, but we didn’t stop to pay our respects.

We rounded the next curve. Several hundred yards ahead the Cougar’s taillights turned left and abruptly disappeared.

“He’s pulled off of the main road,” Elaine said. “He’s home now.”

I stuck my upper body out the window and squinted my eye against the wind of our onrushing progress as we neared where the Cougar had disappeared. I couldn’t hear the big block engine, couldn’t hear those surf tunes anymore. We were approaching the most rarefied stretch of Moose Creek Road, meteoring our way up that hill to the very top, to the extreme end of the line.

Sam stepped on the brakes as we pulled up to a gravel access road. The moonlight made the access road stand out like a white tongue against the darker surrounding undergrowth.

The gash of a driveway led toward a Craftsman-style house on a knoll, hulking dark behind a ragged screen of interposing trees. We stared hard at that house, as though we could will the Cougar to be down this particular road.

In the gravel of the driveway entrance lay two wide tire tracks. As we watched, a trickle of pea-sized stones rattled down to make a little heap in one of the troughs: Someone had taken this access road at speed and recently.

“If either of you thinks this ain’t the place, now just might be the time to say,” I pointed out. As neither of them seemed inclined to disagree, I got out the car. “Wait here a skosh. I’m going to scout it out.”

I crept down the driveway, the house looming larger and clearer with every furtive step I took. As I got closer, I heard an electric motor humming around the corner of the attached garage.

I angled to the side for a better look. The Cougar’s rear end was visible as the garage’s motorized rolling door descended, rattling and clashing as it lowered to hide the car the rest of the way from my sight.

I needed to move quick but I crept just as careful on the way back to the Lincoln. Like the wise man said: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

“This is the house,” I told Sam, my voice gone tight and brassy. “I’m going in, and you’re gonna stay outside.”

“The fuck you say,” Sam said. “You think I’m letting you do it alone, you got another think coming.”

He looked like he wanted to stomp up to the house and kick it in like a puffball, like he thought fury and a just cause would carry him through whatever awaited within. I shook my head at his foolishness, doing my best to appear dismissive and authoritative – the forms had to be observed here, my son was stubborn enough to need the full pantomime.

“You misunderstand me, Sam. I’m going in, but you’re going to be right outside the front door guarding the exit, making sure I can beat feet fast if I have to. That’s how me and Karl always did it, young blood.”

I was telling the truth – but it would also keep Sam out of harm’s way as much as possible for now. After a moment he reluctantly nodded at the sense of it.

I turned to Elaine. “It’s no good if we can’t get away, so you’re driving the car.”

I looked up and down the road. “Find a turn out or shoulder or something, U-turn the car around, and park it out of sight from here but where you can still keep an eye on this spot. No matter what happens or who you see coming, you keep quiet and wait on us and us only. Don’t let anyone know you’re there – you’re our ace in the hole. We’ll probably be in a hurry when we come out, so be fucking ready to pull up the instant you see us.”

Elaine nodded owlishly at my instructions, but she still had me paranoid as ever. Here I was having to turn my back on her to enter the Driver’s lair, still uncertain about the risk she represented.

But it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do; didn’t matter whose side she was on. I was going into that house after that kid even if it was all some kind of trap, and it still had to be me instead of my son.

As we turned to go, Elaine said, “Don’t come back without that child.” She appeared nervous as I probably did but there was also a set, grim expression on her face.

“We won’t,” Sam promised.

The Lincoln idled quietly away behind us as we moved toward the house. I cased the casa as we neared it, watching for signs of activity, figuring my best angle in. I found myself moving slower and slower as I got a better and better look at the place. Sam didn’t seem in any more of a hurry; he didn’t budge from my side.

I was feeling less and less in control the closer we got. There were too many ways upcoming events could skitter away from me like a drop of water on a hot griddle.

To the right of the garage, the grim bulk of the main house extended in a long one-story wing. The porch light was unlit, and I gestured at Sam to take his station there. Sam peeled off and moved in that direction, silent as a tomcat on the prowl.

When I reached the garage I looked past it at a beautiful view: Stagger Bay sprawled beneath the heights this house commanded, street lights and neon in a small-town grid, like a cartoon or some kind of computer simulation. I saw the Hospital and the Gardens; the jail and the courthouse; Stagger Bay Center and the Arcade; Old Town and the Andersen Club and our two water towers. Beyond all lay the Bay and the Pacific, the night surf glowing phosphorescent in the moonlight.

It was a little town, even if it was Sam’s whole world right now. Maybe the folks living in it were no more than bacterium scurrying across the face of an unremarkable planet orbiting a sub-prime star, facing inevitable entropy and death.