Helltown (14 page)

And so he did. Tony did too, given Sarah was with a girlfriend. The four of them drank and smoked, played billiards and darts, and danced to the occasional song. At last call Tony and Beetle invited them back to the Sheraton. The friend was game, but Sarah wouldn’t budge on her “I don’t go home on the first night” policy, and Beetle settled for a telephone number and a brief kiss.

In the weeks that followed Garrison life at Hunter Army Airfield went on as usual. Physical training, paperwork, squad and platoon evaluations, parachute jumps. Beetle never called Sarah. The army was his life. He could be deployed anytime. A relationship would be messy. Nevertheless, the next time he was in Savannah on pass he found himself thinking about her, the fun they’d had, and he discovered he still had her number in his wallet. He called her from a payphone. He expected a snub, but she said she was getting ready to go out with friends and, whatever, if he wanted to come to Congress Street, maybe they could meet up. He got the name of the place she would be at and convinced the guys he was with to change venues. They were all keen except for Tony Gebhardt, who didn’t want to see the friend again. But Tony was outnumbered, and they went.

While searching the Congress Street club, Beetle realized he couldn’t remember exactly what Sarah looked like, and when he found her on the patio out back, he was surprised by how beautiful she was. They were both more sober than they had been at the Irish pub, and they spent the rest of the night at a secluded table, talking, touching, making out. This time it was her suggestion to return to the hotel.

After that they saw each other as often as possible, and they fell madly in love the way only the young and naïve could. Beetle proposed on the anniversary of the day they’d met. They married a short time later on a beach on Tybee Island. He moved out of the barracks, and they rented a house off post together on a cul de sac in a quiet Savannah suburb. Sarah chose it because of the mature vegetable garden in the backyard. The idea of being able to step outside and pick basil or tomatoes or chili peppers delighted her to no end. Also, they had been talking about having children, and the house had a spare bedroom, which they could convert into a nursery.

Sarah found employment as a receptionist at a small law office, while Beetle was promoted to Specialist, then Sergeant, given a team leader position, and eventually his own squad.

Their lives had been near perfect.

Then, in October of 1983, President Regan issued orders to overturn a Marxist coup. Beetle kissed Sarah goodbye in the middle of the night, and within hours he was on an Air Force C-130 Hercules four-engine transport, configured to carry paratroopers, heading for the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada.

Beetle arrived at the motel before he’d realized it. Directly to his left a stand of pines had been cleared to make room for a parking lot, which was currently empty. A sign perched atop a twenty-foot metal pole announced in red and yellow neon: “Hilltop Lodge - Vacancy.” A tacky, flashing arrow pointed to a cement staircase that carved a path through the trees to the top of the hill.

An icy wind blew in from the west, sneaking down the throat of Beetle’s shirt and causing his skin to break out in gooseflesh. Rubbing his arms to generate warmth, he climbed the steps, seventy or eighty in total.

The motel rose two stories behind a grove of twenty-foot fir, which, given their calculated spacing, had been planted some years back. The shiplap siding was rotting in places, though someone had attempted to give it a facelift recently with a rich brown coat of stain. A thick hedge of privet lined the perimeter of the plateau and substituted for a fence to prevent visitors from plunging down the steep slopes. On a clear day those same visitors would have been afforded a sprawling panorama of Boston Mills and the national forest those kids had mentioned, though tonight little was visible behind the drab gray curtains of mist.

Beetle followed a stone path between two towering fir to the reception. A placard in the window read: “Great Rates, Free Movie Channel, Imaginary Friends Stay Free.” He opened the glass door, stepped inside, and wrinkled his nose against a spoiled cheese smell. He crossed the thick-pile, hunter-green carpet to the front desk. It was currently unmanned. He rang the small brass bell on the counter. A moment later a wizened old man emerged from the back room. He wore pastel slacks and a heavy wool cardigan buttoned to the neck. Gray hair curled out from beneath a beat-up Baltimore Orioles baseball cap. A rosy blush colored his cheeks, nose, and ears. He fixed Beetle with bright blue rheumy eyes and said, “Help ya?”

“A room for the night, please,” he said.

“Ranger, huh?” the man said, reading the bars on Beetle’s right sleeve. “Was in ’Nam myself. Spent most my time in a resettlement village, twenty miles southwest of Da Nong, three miles from the 5
^th
Marines Combat Base. Supposed to be hell on earth, target practice for the commies, but I didn’t see no combat my entire tour. Never met no Rangers neither. They weren’t officially incorporated until a few years ago, that right?”

“A room, please,” Beetle said.

The man studied him for a moment, then nodded. “You’re in luck.” He produced a key attached to a piece of red plastic from beneath the counter and dangled it between his thumb and index finger. “Got one room left.”

Beetle thought of the empty parking lot but didn’t say anything.

“It’s a superior suite so a little pricier than the others,” the man went on. “But it got a private balcony and views of the Chaguago National Park you won’t soon forget. Guests say they like to sit out there with their coffee in the morning. If you’re lucky, you might spot a whitetail or elk. Had a few moose about too. You haven’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a buck with a full set of antlers. They shed them each season, you know. The lot simply drop off. Found a set myself few years back. Was going to put them on the wall over there, but couldn’t find nobody to mount them without charging an arm and leg. How many nights you say?”

“One,” Beetle said, taking out his wallet.

“Suit yourself.” The man glanced at the wad of bills in the wallet sleeve. It was a discrete glance, no more than a flick of the eyes, easy to miss. But Beetle didn’t miss much. “That’ll be forty-nine ninety-nine,” the man said reasonably. “Say, I’ll make it an even forty nine, give you change for the soda machine.”

“Forty nine bucks for one night, huh?” Beetle said just as reasonably.

The man nodded. “That’s right.”

“That the going rate, or the sucker rate?”

The man blinked. “Huh?”

“I asked you if that was the going rate, or the sucker rate?”

“The sucker rate?”

“Do I look like a sucker?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why are you treating me like one?”

“No, sir, I’m not—”

Beetle grabbed the old man around the throat, moving fluidly and quickly. He pulled the shylock’s face close to his own. “Let’s do this again,” he said quietly. “I’d like a room for the night.”

“How—?” the man rasped. “How many?”

“One.”

“Nineteen…ninety-five…”
“You didn’t ask me what type of room I’d like.”

“They’re all…same…”

Beetle stared into the shylock’s terrified eyes. They had popped wide, blood vessels webbing the whites. Why he wanted to live so much, Beetle didn’t know, didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore—not even, he realized, getting ripped off in some shitty backwater motel.

Beetle released the old cheat, who stumbled away, wheezing, cowering. Then he slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and scooped up the key.

Without looking back, Beetle crossed the reception to the staircase that led to the second floor. At the top of the stairs a bronze placard on the wall indicated that rooms 200-206 were to the left, 207-210 to the right. The key was labeled 209, so he went right. Pink carpet and floral wallpaper had replaced the hunter-green carpet and paneled wood of the reception. The spoiled cheese smell remained.

At his room Beetle inserted the key into the lock, opened the door, and flicked on the light. The interior was larger than he’d expected and included a kitchenette with wood-trimmed white cabinets. The lavender bedspread matched the upholstery on the armchair in the corner. A TV was bolted to a Formica table, next to a fake flower arrangement. White satin curtains that looked like they came from the inside of a coffin were drawn across the pair of doors that gave to the balcony.

 Beetle upended his rucksack on the bed and messed through his clothes until he found the one-liter bottle of Stolichnaya vodka he’d brought at a Piggly Wiggly in Columbia that morning. He twisted off the cap, took a drink, and set the bottle next to the television set. Next he unzipped a toiletry bag and withdrew a matte black M9 Beretta and a fifteen-round magazine, which he set next to the booze.

Tonight
, he decided in a vague, almost blasé way, not wanting to acknowledge what he was thinking. If he did, if he contemplated, reflected, felt, he would become too emotional, and he wouldn’t do it. And it had to be done. Sooner or later, it had to be done.

Tonight
.

Shrugging out of his fatigue shirt—WALKER written above the right breast pocket, US ARMY above the left—Beetle went to the bathroom and drew water for a hot shower.

CHAPTER 10

“We don’t need a stretcher in there. We need a mop!”

A Nightmare on Elm Street
(1984)

“I just let go,” Noah said monotonously, almost to himself. “I didn’t push him. He was trying to take the hockey stick from me. I just let it go.”

He and Steve were standing a few feet from the dead boy. Both had turned their backs to the body.

“That radiator shouldn’t have been leaning there against the wall like that,” Steve told him. “It was a hazard.”

“Fuck!” Noah ran his hands up and down his face. “
Fuck!
I’m in deep shit, aren’t I?”

“It was an accident.”

“Yeah, an accident…an accident.” He shook his head. “What the hell was he doing, Steve? Attacking us like that? We knocked on the door, didn’t we? We called out, said we needed to use the phone. Robbers don’t do that, do they? So what the fuck was his problem?” He shook his head again. “This is fucked. This is so totally fucked.”

“Listen,” Steve said, “I’m going to go give one last look upstairs for that phone. There were a couple rooms I didn’t get to. If I can’t find it, though, we need to get moving. We can explain what happened here to the cops after we get help for Jeff and Jenny.”

Noah stiffened, his disposition instantly flipping from tempestuous to calculated. “Whoa, hold up a sec, Steve. Slow down. We haven’t discussed this yet. I mean, what are we going to tell them?”

“The cops?” Steve said. “What do you mean? We’re going to tell them the truth—the kid attacked you. He fell and knocked the radiator on his head.”

Noah snorted. “You think they’ll believe that?”

“That’s what happened, man. What do you want to tell them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, I don’t know…but why do we even need to mention the kid?”

Steve stared at him. “Because he’s dead, Noah.”

“I know that! But, look, nobody knows we’ve been here, right? Nobody knows we stopped. We can hide the body in the woods or something.”

“Hide the body?” Steve said.

“He’s already dead.”

“Are you kidding me? Jesus Christ, Noah! We’re not hiding his body in the woods.
This wasn’t your fault
.”

“No one’s going to believe—”

“It was an accident—”

“His teeth marks are in my fucking hand! Look!” Noah thrust his hand out so Steve could see the bloody wound. Several deep teeth punctures formed a half moon in his flesh. “How’s that going to look, huh?”

“He attacked you. You were restraining him. It was self-defense.”

“We broke into his house!”

“We were getting help for Jeff and Jenny. It was an emergency. The cops will understand that—”

“Dude!” Noah exclaimed. “We’re a bunch of boozed-up out-of-towners. Jeff smashes his car while he’s half soused and jumping from coke. Yeah, he was, did a couple lines when you and Jenny were under the bridge. You think the cops are going to have much sympathy for him? Much sympathy for
us
getting
him
help? Then another boozed-up out-of-towner—this one testing positive for pot—breaks into a house and kills a kid who’s trying to protect his home from what he believes are burglars. Shit, Steve, the cops aren’t going to be on our side in this. They’re going to be gunning for us. What I did might not be premeditated murder, but it sure as hell is manslaughter. I’ll go to prison.”

Steve frowned. He hadn’t thought about the full ramifications of their collective actions. But Noah was right, wasn’t he? They’d been drinking. Not only that but Jeff was high on coke and Noah thoroughly stoned. “Fuck, Noah…” He cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s say you’re right. Okay? Maybe you’re right. But hiding his body… It won’t work. They’ll find it. They’ll have dogs.”