Cage of Night (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

About twenty minutes before closing time, everybody in the store would start to get bundled up for the trip outside into early winter. Halloween had barely passed and now jolly snowmen with cocked top hats and knowing smiles kept sentry duty all over town. Yellow road graders with big yellow insect eyes roared through the night. And young people who were in love had snowball fights up and down the nighttime streets.

After I counted the money and took it upstairs to the accounting department, I finished closing up the shoe department for the night.

I was just pushing the fitting tools underneath their chairs, so the cleaning lady wouldn't have to bother with them when she was vacuuming, when the stout and unfriendly woman who worked in women's apparel came over to me.

She was sixty going on thirty. When I was little she'd been the local femme fatale. She and her husband used to drive around in big ass cars like local celebrities. They still had that air about them, being special and important. She had hair that had been peroxided so much it had the dead, dry texture of a wig. She usually wore cream colored suits meant to hide her bulges. And she effected a kind of Marilyn Monroe gush when she spoke, all dramatic whispers. I managed to hate her and feel sorry for her at the same time. Her feelings for me were much simpler. She just hated me.

"You had a visitor. I forgot to tell you."

"A visitor?"

"A girl."

"A girl. Did she have a name?"

"That cute one who was Homecoming Queen."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't like that tone of voice."

I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her.

"When was she here?"

"Over your dinner hour."

"What did she say?"

"That she was looking for you and would I give you that message." A coy smile: "I'm kind of surprised she'd stop by, knowing the kind of guys she could get."

She'd always be in high school, this one, where the popular kids never had truck with the unpopular ones. I walked away.

It was cold in the parking lot.

I spent two minutes scraping rough ice from my windshield. In the meantime, I let the motor run so the car would get warm. Dad had loaned me enough money to buy an old junker Chevrolet. It'd get me back and forth to college. If the heater never exactly warmed up, I had an old blanket on the back seat I could throw over my legs when the thermometer hit zero.

The seat was cold on my butt and legs, and the motor kept dying, but I got out of the parking lot and onto the street. Though the plow had been down here, the wind was blowing snow hard enough that I had to use windshield wipers. The mercury vapor lights gave the downtown a flat, sterile look. With all the empty storefronts, it resembled one of those places in the rust

belt where towns just collapsed after the steel mills shut down.

I fishtailed to a stop at every light. There wasn't much traffic. I passed a cop car parked at a corner. I could see a cop-shape inside but I couldn't make out the face. I wondered if it was Garrett. His first night.

I didn't want to go home. I had absolutely no place else to go but ever since I'd heard that Cindy had stopped by, a terrible restlessness had come over me. I wanted to tell somebody about her. I'd never had a girl come and ask for me before, and certainly never one as beautiful as Cindy.

But where would I go?

I passed a Pizza Hut. The parking lot was crowded with the kind of cars kids drive. I pulled in. In high school, I never went to the places where the popular kids hung out. It always embarrassed me to sit in a booth and watch the golden ones having their fun, as if I'd do anything just to be near them in some way. I was pathetic enough then.

But Cindy had stopped by for me. That gave me a kind of prestige, even if nobody else knew about it.

I had a
right
to go in the god damned Pizza Hut and sit there with the popular kids. I had a right.

The experience was pretty much the same as it had been back in my high school days. I took a two-seat table in the back and sat there and ate a small cheese pizza by myself. From what I could see, I was the only person in the whole place alone. People looked at me skeptically, as if I had a disease or was going to mug them in the parking lot. The really popular kids merely

looked through me. I lived in another dimension. I wasn't there.

He came in just as I was finishing the pizza. He threw the door back and stood just inside, glaring around. He had a lot of snow on his hair and the shoulders of his letter jacket. He was pretty pissed, no doubt about it.

He started walking up and down the aisles, searching. When he got to me, he just sort of snorted and shook his head. I wasn't even worth real contempt. He smelled of cold air and hot sweat and expensive after-shave.

By now, a lot of people were watching him.

Not every night a football star like David Myles comes into the Pizza Hut storming up and down the aisles, looking as if he's ready to kill someone.

When he got to the back of the place, he walked straight up to the women's toilet, tore open the door and stalked inside.

A few seconds later, a frightened but silent older woman came out, tugging her skirt down.

The manager looked at the assistant manager and then the manager gave the assistant manager a little shove.

You go tell him to get the hell out of there, I could hear the manager saying. Bravely.

But Myles was out by the time the assistant manager reached the women's door.

Myles glared at all the diners again, and then headed for the exit door.

Then he was gone and everybody put their heads together speculating on who he'd been looking for.

They hadn't done any speculating while he was here. They knew better.

I finished up, left a tip, got out of there.

By the time I reached my junker, snow and ice had buried the roof and windows again. I was in a far dark corner of the lot and the drifts seemed to be worse here. I could barely see for all the blowing snow.

I got the scraper from the front seat and went to work.

A few minutes later, I backed out of the parking lot and drove back on to the street.

I was just pulling up to a stop light when a voice from the back seat said, "Find someplace dark where we can park. I need to talk to you."

I was scared until I realized that I recognized the voice. I looked in the back seat and then on the floor. She'd pulled the cover down over her. Now her head stuck up through the folds of the blanket, a chick being hatched.

"He'll kill me if he finds me," she said. "You have to help me."

CHAPTER SEVEN

It wasn't exactly a great night to drive around, not in an old junker anyway.

I kept to dark side streets. I thought of going out into the country but it would be too easy to end up in a ditch.

We skidded a lot and ran up into curbs and even made a few unexpected U-turns. And we froze. The heater still wasn't working properly. I kept having to scrape off the inside of the windshield.

She stayed in the back seat, tucked in the corner, scrunched down so that nobody could see her from the outside.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this. Now he'll be mad at you."

I was afraid of Myles, no doubt about it. But it was the flattery thing again. I just felt so damned proud to be associated with her in any way—a girl like her asking a guy like me for help—that I was happy to be in the middle of it.

"He really does want to kill me."

"Not actually kill you," I said.

"Kill me."

I glanced in the rearview mirror. "You really think so?"

"You don't know what he's like. Nobody does except me. He's—done lots of things that people don't know about."

"Like what?"

"I'd better not say."

"But serious things."

"Very serious things. The
most
serious things."

Most of the houses were dark. People huddled beneath their winter blankets in their winter beds. The snow kept falling. The only ones who'd be happy would be the kids. There likely wouldn't be school tomorrow, not if the snow kept up this way. There was no greater gift to a little kid than a snow day. A whole free day to sled and build snowmen and have snowball fights.

"Should I take you home?"

"No. That's one of the places he'll be watching."

"Then where should we go?"

"I have a friend—Tiffany Welles. She lives a couple of blocks from here. They've got an open garage in the back that they never use. We can pull in there for awhile."

The garage smelled of car oil and old rotting wood. I had to shut off the motor. With the fumes and all, it was too dangerous to leave running.

She climbed up into the front seat with me.

"You mind if I smoke?"

"Fine."

"You can share mine."

"No, thanks. I'd just embarrass myself."

"How come?"

"In the Army I tried to smoke. You know, big tough guy. All I ever did was cough and get kind of queasy."

"You have to get past that."

I suppose it was kind of funny. I was willing to risk Myles' wrath by hiding her but I wasn't willing to share her cigarettes.

She smoked two cigarettes in a row. She was very nervous. We didn't talk much. Through a dusty garage window I watched the snow fall outside.

I could smell her perfume. It made me yearn for her, ache for her.

"You think you'd ever go out with me?" she said.

I looked at her.

"Are you kidding?"

"Huh-uh."

"Sure I'd go out with you."

"I'm going to break off with David. I really am."

She lay her head back against the seat and took another drag of her cigarette.

"I just don't know why you'd want to go out with somebody like me."

It was a pretty cheap ploy, getting her to tell me what a great and desirable guy I was.

—Who wouldn't go out with you? she'd say. A strong, handsome, sexy hunk like you? You're the quiet kind, Spence, the kind girls don't notice right away. But when they do
notice
you...

But she didn't say that.

"It was your hand."

"My hand?"

"When you touched my eye that night."

"Oh."

"Nobody's ever touched me like that before."

I guess I didn't know what she was talking about.

"It was like for the first time in my life somebody was really touching me. Like they really understood me. Like
you
really understood me, Spence."

I just sat there with my hard-on and my heart scared of being broken and all these crazy dreams about the two of us together.

"You really think we'll go out?" I said.

She laughed softly. "Yes, I really do."

"God."

"I can't wait until David finally leaves me alone."

Then she kissed me.

It happened just that fast, and just that unexpected. She'd managed to put her cigarette out without my knowing it, and then she leaned over and took my face between her two hands, and then she kissed me, her face smelling of cologne and cold and utterly perfect high school flesh, and then she took my right hand and slid it inside her coat and covered one of her breasts with it, and I really thought I was going to lose it right then and there, I was so god damned happy and god damned excited I absolutely didn't know what to do with myself.

And then it was over, far far sooner than it should have been, and she said, "I better go home."

"Won't he be there?"

"Eventually, yeah. But I may as well get it over with."

"You said he'll try and kill you."

"If I can make it inside to my dad, I'll be fine. My dad doesn't want me to see him anymore, anyway."

She leaned back again. "God, I'm just so glad your car was at Pizza Hut when I was running away from him. I saw you riding around the other day and recognized it."

"You jumped out of his car?"

"Yes. And just started running. Then I saw your car."

I started the motor.

"I'm glad you saw my car, too," I said.

I stayed to the back streets, taking her home. She lived in the wealthy area of town. Her father ran the stock brokerage downtown. Even against the snowy night, her Tudor-style house looked imposing and snug.

I took the driveway right up to the front walk.

"I really appreciate this, Spence."

"My pleasure."

She reached over and set her hand on mine. I thought of a colt again, all small-boned and vulnerable.

"I can't wait to see you again," she said.

"My pleasure."

"Night."

"Night."

She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and then got out of the car.

I watched her let herself into the front door and disappear inside. A light went on, outlined by the mullioned window.

I backed out and got righted on the street and started driving home and that's when I saw the headlights behind me suddenly.

I recognized the dark blue Bronco right away. My old friend David Myles.

He didn't wait long.

He swept right up behind me and started banging into me hard enough to send me skidding down the street.

With all his power and traction, he didn't have any problem starting and stopping when he wanted to.

He controlled me perfectly, letting me stop skidding just long enough to regain control, and then crashing into me again.

A couple of times, I tried surprise turns, anything to get away from him, but they didn't work. He was quick enough to see what I was up to so he'd hit me on the edge of my rear bumper just as I was going into the turn. Then he'd send me skidding again, fishtailing, even turning around completely a few times.

The funny thing was, although I was angry and scared, I also saw this as an admission on his part that he'd lost Cindy Brasher. Otherwise he wouldn't be doing this. And that gave me the flattered feeling again. I'd become one of those chosen. Cindy's kiss, and bringing my hand to her breast, had anointed me.

We went several more blocks this way, short dark side street blocks, with nobody to see us.

But then we reached Bush Avenue, which was the second busiest street in town. It was well-lighted and well-plowed.

Just as we reached the intersection, he slammed into me again, sending me spinning around completely.

I just had time to glimpse the same police car I had seen earlier tonight. The number was the same: three. I still couldn't see who was inside.

Then I was backtracking the route we'd just taken, back on the dark side streets, headed toward Cindy's house.

Apparently, Cindy's was where he wanted to go because he kept ramming me in that direction. Even when I'd spin out of control, he'd spin back around so that I was pointed in the direction of her house.

The siren started about a block before we reached Cindy's street. By now, my car wasn't running at all. It was propelled only by his car hurtling into mine.

One siren became two then three.

Myles gave it one last shot. He knocked my car up off the road and on to Cindy's front lawn and right into a snow-laden oak tree.

Lights were on in all the houses.

I saw Cindy and her parents step out on their front porch, Cindy in her street clothes, her parents in pajamas and robes.

I was just climbing out of my car when the door was ripped open and Myles reached in and grabbed me.

He yanked me out of the car, threw me up against the tree, and started hitting me with a tire iron. He got me two times on the side of the head before I was able to hit him in the stomach and get him to back off a little. I ducked the next three swings of the tire iron, landing a good solid punch to his jaw, and then another solid one to his left ear.

I was just getting ready to bring my steel-toed boot up to his crotch when he connected with the tire iron. This blow drove me to my knees. He swung again immediately but I was able to move under the tire iron by no more than an inch.

"That's enough, Myles. Hold it right there."

In my delirium and pain, I recognized the voice.

My old Conan buddy, Garrett.

Officer Garrett.

I was making noises that embarrassed me, mewling sounds I guess. I heard Cindy's voice saying, "Is Spence all right? Is Spence all right?"

And I wanted to stop making the noises—the sounds that revealed me to be a coward—but I couldn't somehow.

Then I was crying, just plain little-kid crying, and that was the worst thing of all.