Death's Door (2 page)

Her mother sighed. “No.”

“You just wanted me to get out of the way, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Her mother didn't answer.

“Because somebody was coming that you didn't want me to see, that's right, isn't it? It was somebody—”

“I've got to go. Good-bye, Herculeah.”

Herculeah hung up the phone and stepped out of the booth to face Meat.

“It makes me so mad when she does that. Anytime it's something interesting, she doesn't want me involved.”

“Maybe she's protecting you from something dangerous.”

“This couldn't be dangerous. My hair hasn't started to frizzle.” Herculeah's hair had a way of sensing danger. It seemed to get larger, the way an animal's fur puffs up to make its body look more threatening.

“I'm going home and I'm going to find out who my mother saw in my absence.”

Herculeah and Meat started walking in the direction of home. Meat glanced sideways into various store windows to admire himself in his uncle's hat. “I'm going to have to get one of these things. What do you think?”

Herculeah's mind was on another matter. “So, what store was your mom named after?” she asked.

Meat's feet took a double step as if to get him away from having to answer.

“Quit admiring yourself and answer me. What store was your mother named after?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Why not?”

“My mom doesn't want anyone to know.”

“Is she ashamed of it?”

“Maybe, a little. I don't know.”

“Then tell me.”

Meat shook his head. “I promised.”

“I'm going to get it out of you. You know that don't you?”

He nodded dumbly.

“So save us time and effort.”

Meat did not answer.

“What store was your mom named for?”

Meat walked, observing his shoes as if with deep interest. “Would cowboy boots be too much?” he asked. He knew Herculeah would not be distracted and she wasn't.

“How bad can it be?” Herculeah asked thoughtfully. “K-Mart? Bi-Lo? Budget Shoes?”

“Stop it. Don't make fun of my mother.”

“Pic-way? Exxon?”

“Stop! Anyway, Exxon isn't a store.”

“Then tell me. That's the only way you're going to get me to stop.”

Meat hesitated. “If I tell you, you have to promise you won't laugh.”

“I promise.”

Then Meat said one word, delivering it to his shoes rather than to the girl beside him.

“I didn't hear you.”

Meat lifted his head.

“Sears,” he said.

The gunman moved swiftly up the staircase of the old abandoned building. He moved in a crouch, taking the steps three at a time.

He had a duffle bag over one shoulder. His rubber-soled shoes were silent.

He was a big man with powerful shoulders and arms. He moved with the sinewy ease of a large animal.

He paused on the landing. He lifted his head, as if he were sensing the air. His eyes, set back beneath his brow, were small and brown. Yet there was a reddish hue there, as if he had been caught in a bad photograph. He was known as the Bull.

He glanced down the dim hall. His eyes seemed to see through the doors. He made a decision.

Quickly, without a sound, he went up one more flight of stairs to the third floor. There he paused as if in decision. This felt right. He moved away from the stairs.

He tried one of the doors which led to a front office that would overlook the street. The door was locked.

The Bull drew a knife from his pocket. He flicked it open and slid it into the lock. The door opened with a faint click.

The Bull stepped inside.

This office was old. It had not been used in years. It had closed even before the building had been condemned a year ago.

There was still some furniture—a metal desk, old filing cabinets, their drawers pulled out and empty. A three-year-old calendar hung crookedly from the stained wall—a Christmas scene—December.

The gunman shoved the desk chair with his foot. The chair rolled across the warped wooden floor and stopped with a muted thud beneath the window. He followed and stood beside it.

He leaned against the windowsill, bracing himself on the knuckles of his doubled fists, taking in the scene from the window. He liked what he saw. There was the house and the sidewalk in front of it. That was all he needed for a clear shot of his victim.

Satisfied, he sat down and opened his duffel bag. He took out his M16 rifle. As he readied it, he began to go over his instructions in his mind.

“How am I going to know the guy?” he had asked, holding the victim's picture under the light.

He had been in a back booth of a restaurant. He was there because he was a hired killer. The two men opposite him were there because there was someone they wanted killed.

The man pulled a newspaper picture from his pocket and shoved it across the table.

“This is no good,” the Bull said, “I can't even see the guy's face. The brim of the hat hides it. I could take out the wrong guy.”

He had shoved the picture back across the table in disgust. He drained his bottle of beer and signaled the waitress for another.

“You got to get me a better picture.”

“You don't need a better picture. The hat's enough. He never goes anywhere without it. You'll know him by the hat. You see that hat and—” The man made a gesture as if firing a gun.

The gunman had picked up the picture again and had taken another look at the hat. He memorized it until he would know it anywhere. It was a cowboy hat with a tall crown, a dark band, and peacock feathers tucked inside the brim.

“There's only one hat in this town like that, and only one man who would wear it.”

“What's this guy done—the cat in the hat?”

“He seen something he shouldn't.”

“Maybe he's already told.”

“At that moment he don't realize what he seen. I want him gone before he does.”

The gunman's eyes had narrowed. “An innocent by stander?”

“Something like that.”

“Why don't you do it yourself?”

The man shrugged. “I'm not as lucky as I used to be. I tried a little series of accidents and none of them worked. You'll do it?”

“My pleasure,” said the gunman.

When the gun was ready, he took out a radio from the duffel bag. He prepared for a long wait.

The news was on. “Investigation continues in the attempted shooting of the mayor last Thursday. Police reported...”

He turned up the volume.

The Bull had been in place at the window for an hour when a man came out of the house he was watching. The gunman tensed and threw down his cigarette. He raised his rifle to the slightly opened window.

The man was hatless, but the gunman followed him through the upper H of the gun sight. He watched as the man paused to look furtively both ways, as he hurried across the street, and, with another look both ways, disappeared into a house.

The gunman hissed his disappointment.

There was a sign in front of the house the man had entered. The gunman telescoped it.

MIM R. JONES

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

A small cruel smile pulled the gunman's lips at one corner. The man was probably his target—his actions had shown how afraid he was—but the gunman didn't want to take a chance. He had been hired to kill only one man. He lit another cigarette and waited.

An hour passed. The man came out of the private investigator's house. Again he looked both ways before hurrying across the street.

“Next time wear your hat,” the gunman said. “You need to protect your head.”

The gunman reached for another cigarette. He lit it. His small reddish eyes glared impatiently at the empty sidewalk. He blew cigarette smoke out of both nostrils.

Anyone seeing him at that moment, even not knowing what others called him, would have had only one thought.

The Bull.

“Your mom's name is Sears?”

“Yes, but don't ever, ever let her know that I told you.”

Meat reached up and felt his hat to make sure it was still there. He ran his fingers over the peacock feathers tucked inside the band.

“Sears?”

“Quit saying it please.”

“You know what's really odd? That I never stopped to wonder what your mother's name was. I mean, I know every person's first name on the street—Bernie, Bessie, Cheri—and all the time I was living across the street from a Sears!”

“Stop saying—” Meat interrupted himself. “Let's don't cut through the park, all right?”

“Why not?”

“I always feel, well, threatened in the park.”

“Yes, but today you've got on that wonderful hat. I thought it made a new person out of you.”

He didn't answer.

“And you're with me. You're always safe with me.”

Meat said, “Huh!” Then he relented. “Oh, all right, I'll go through the park, but not by the giant peach.”

In the center of the park was an enormous peach. It had been given by the Peach Growers' Association for the children to play on.

“What have you got against the peach?” Herculeah said. “I like it. I went in there one time. I used to see these little kids run in and holler, and I did it. Meat, if you go inside and yell your name—or anything you feel like yelling—it will echo a hundred times, no, a thousand.”

“I know.”

“You've done it?”

“Not willingly.” He adjusted the hat as if to reassure himself that it was still in place and he was still feeling manly.

“Go on,” she urged.

Meat sighed. He had already told the biggest secret of his life—his mother's name. There was no reason to hold anything else back.

“This is something I never told you. It was too humiliating, but one time—this was two years ago—I was coming through the park and some boys—Ezra Cunningham, Fox Weir, and some boy about six-foot-fifty in a Falcon sweatshirt—cornered me. The boy in the sweatshirt held my arms behind my back, and Ezra pretended he was going to hit me in the stomach, only he stopped just like one micro-millimeter short.”

Meat could still feel the exact spot where the blow had almost landed. He covered it with his hand.

Herculeah waited. “And?”

“And I fainted.”

“Meat!”

“I couldn't help it.”

“That's the second time I know of that you've fainted in a moment of crisis. Remember the other time in Madame Rosa‘s, when the murderer was coming down the stairs and you were alone in the hall?”

“Yes. I never faint without a good reason,” he said defensively. In Meat's opinion, fainting was the only thing that had got him out of danger.

“So, what did the boys do—run off and just leave you lying there?”

“I wish they had.”

“What did they do?”

“They dragged me over to the giant peach and pulled me inside. Then they left me.”

Herculeah glanced at Meat. Beneath the brim of his hat his expression was pained.

“I woke up and I didn't know where I was. All I could see was the color peach. I thought I'd gone blind. I moaned, and that moan went on—well, like you said, I know it was over a thousand times.

“Finally, finally, a mother heard me and she came over. At first she thought I was that homeless man that sleeps in there sometimes, but finally she shook my foot—my feet were sticking out—and I realized where I was. It's left me with an aversion to peaches.”

“You have to learn to stick up for yourself, Meat.”

“I know. I know.”

“One time Billy Holland came up to me in the hall at school. He said, ‘How's the weather up there, Giraffe?' I said, ‘What did you call me?' He said, ‘Giraffe.' He had this smile on his face like he was being so cute. I said, ‘You got it wrong. Giraffes are peaceful creatures. They would never do this.'

“And, Meat, I let him have it, hard as I could.” She re-created the jab in the air while Meat watched with admiration. “This happened right in front of the girls restroom and all the girls coming out had to step over him.”

She smiled at Meat.

He said, “Why are you smiling?”

“Because we went right by the giant peach. Its shadow was so long it covered the sidewalk, and you didn't even notice.”

“Maybe I'm making progress. But for some reason I still feel threatened. If you want to know the truth, I feel like something terrible is getting ready to happen to me.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the giant peach. He shuddered. He wanted to be home where he was safe.

“Sears,” Herculeah said as they paused at the corner. She was unaware of his feeling of fear. “Sears.”

“Stop saying that. We're getting too close to my house. If my mother heard you say Sears...”

“She'd just think I was talking about a store.”

“Not my mother. She'd know I told.”

They crossed the street and turned the corner for home.

Meat wasn't musical. He could hardly remember a single tune, but now his brain came up with a song. He began to hum.

Herculeah joined in with the words.

“Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?”