When Old Men Die (5 page)

There were three quick shots, two of them scoring the floor and the third one glanced off the flashlight and sent it spinning crazily.
 
It kept right on shining, though, which just goes to show that it pays to buy good equipment.
 
That anodized aluminum is good stuff.

By the third shot I was on my feet and lurching toward the door.
 
I should have been moving more smoothly, but I was doing the best I could, considering that my knee was threatening to collapse under me at every step.

I told myself that I should have been lurching away from the shooter.
 
That would have been the smart thing, especially since my stomach was still in knots, but there was something about being shot at that made me mad.
 
Being mad made me stupid.

I went through a doorway into the next room, but there was no one there.
 
I could hear footsteps echoing off the concrete walls as someone ran through the building.
 
They weren't my footsteps.
 
I was wearing an old pair of Nike Air Spans with rubber soles.

I didn't know why the shooter was running.
 
Maybe he thought I had a weapon after all.
 
Maybe he was out of cartridges.

I heard noises coming from the room next to me and realized that he'd doubled back.
 
I didn't know anything about the arrangement of the rooms, but I knew that there was only one stairway.
 
If I just retraced my steps, maybe I could beat him to it.

I almost did.
 
I came into the room a little behind him, but I didn't get much of a look at him.
 
It was too dark, and he was nothing more than vague, bulky shape.

I made a grab for him, and just about then my knee went out.
 
As I was falling, I got a handful of his shirt, nearly ripping it off his back.

"
Sonofabitch
," he said.

Then he whirled around and hit me in the face with his pistol.

I was already down, and he was off balance, so he didn't hit me as hard as he might have.
 
I felt the skin on my cheek tear, though, and for just a second I couldn't hear, see, or feel anything at all.

By the time I shook my head to clear it and tried to stand up, the shooter was clattering down the stairway.

Just to prove that I hadn't learned anything from getting my face bashed, I tried to follow him.
 
Luckily, I got most of the way down before the knee went again, so I didn't have far to fall.

The ground was soft, but I was little slower getting up that time, and when I did the shooter was gone.
 
I didn't know which direction he'd taken, and he was out of sight in the waving sea oats.
 
There was no sound of splashing from the lagoon, so he'd probably gone around the end.
 
It wasn't a long way.
 
Or he could be lying out there in the oats, waiting for me.

I stood there for a while leaning on the stair rail, hoping that a car would start up somewhere and give me a clue, but nothing happened.

I touched my fingers to my face.
 
I was still bleeding, but not much.
 
There was a loose flap of skin, but nothing that would need stitching up.

A few cars passed by on the road above me, but that was all.
 
There were lights on in a lot of the condo windows, and I wondered if anyone down there had heard the shots.
 
There wasn't much chance of that.

After about fifteen minutes, I went back up the stairs.
 
This time my knee held up, but I was going pretty slowly.
 
My flashlight was still shining, but the aluminum casing was severely dented.

No one bothered me while I looked in all the rooms of the old building.

I found a few more signs that Harry, or someone, might have stayed there, but it was hard to say just how recently that had been.
 
The flat tins had held tuna, all right, and there was a fleck or two of meat left in them, but it was hard and dry.

In another room there were some more old newspapers that someone might have used to stuff in his clothes for warmth, but there was no way of knowing for sure if they'd been used for that purpose.

And that was all I ferreted out.
 
Not even a rock, a leaf, or an unfound door, as Thomas Wolfe might have put it.
 
I wondered if anyone besides me even read Thomas Wolfe anymore.

I left the building, went back to the Jeep and sat for a minute, resting my forearms on the wheel and wondering whether I should try looking at The Island Retreat.
 
It didn't take me long to decide that wasn't a good idea.
 
I'd already been shot at once, and I wasn't going to take a chance on its happening again.
 
Besides, my knee was hurting and my head was throbbing.

I decided that I'd go home and try to get some sleep.
 
Tomorrow, I'd have a little talk with Dino.

I
t had gotten a lot cooler while I was chasing around, though I hadn't noticed it until I started driving the Jeep.
 
The old vehicle had one real disadvantage:
 
it was completely open, so there was no protection from the weather.
 
If I folded down the windshield, there would be nothing between me and the wind at all.
 

There was a thin crescent of moon now, and the stars were icy in the black sky.
 
The temperature must have dropped at least fifteen or twenty degrees in the last hour.
 
No wonder Ro-Jo had been tying down his pants legs.
 
At least the cold wind took my mind off being shot at.

I had to drive practically the length of the Island to get home, and by the time I got to the house I was thoroughly chilled.
 
I parked the Jeep and looked around for Nameless.
 
He wasn't in sight, and he didn't come when I called.
 
Probably out terrorizing the lizards that lived in the bushes.

I got my copy of
Look Homeward, Angel
out of the passenger seat and started inside.
 
There was a food bowl by the front door with a few Tender Vittles still in it, so I supposed that Dino had been there.

I went in and lit the gas heaters in the bedroom and bathroom.
 
Then I checked my face in the bathroom mirror.
 
The cut wasn't deep, and it looked worse than it was.
 
I found a little pair of fingernail scissors, cut off the flap of skin and put some alcohol on the place.
 
I had to grit my teeth to keep from yelling.
 
Then I covered it with a bandage and took a couple of ibuprofen for my headache.
 
The sliver of concrete had cut a little place on my ear, but it didn't need a bandage.
 
I looked at my knee through the rip in my jeans.
 
The skin was abraded but not broken, and I decided against alcohol.
 
I'd had enough pain for one night.

I went into the kitchen.
 
I was hungry, but I don't keep much to eat around the place.
 
I'm not a cook, and I usually just eat at a restaurant.
 
Tonight I settled for a peanut butter sandwich with apricot jelly.
 
I made it on whole wheat bread to keep it healthy.
 

I poured a glass of Big Red to wash the peanut butter down and went into the bedroom, which is where most of my furniture is.
 
I have a sprung recliner, a bed, a dresser, and a bookcase.
 
I also have a CD player.

The disc player was already loaded with a two-CD set by The Drifters, a disc by Clyde
McPhatter
, and two by the Coasters.
 
I turned on the amp, set the player to shuffle all discs, and turned on the power.

For a long time I'd resisted buying a CD player, but then I'd discovered that record companies were raiding their vaults and putting everything they had in their vaults on disc.
 
As soon as I discovered that the disc of The Drifters' "Let the Boogie-
Woogie
Roll" had several more tracks on it than the tape did, I was a goner.

The Coasters broke into "Wake Me, Shake Me," and I started feeling better almost immediately.
 
I sat in the recliner and ate my sandwich and listened.

After a couple of songs, I started thinking about what had happened.
 
The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
 
I didn't like being in the dark about what was going on, and I
really
didn't like being shot at.

The question I most wanted an answer to was why someone would shoot at me.

Of course it could have been that the U. S. Government was really serious about keeping trespassers out of their building or out of their lagoon.
 
There was about as much chance of that, I thought, as of the Houston Oilers going to the Super Bowl within my lifetime.

There really weren't many other possibilities.
 
The most obvious was that someone didn't want me to find Harry, which brought me back to another question I would have liked to have an answer for.
 
Why was someone else looking for Harry?

I drank my Big Red and thought about phoning Dino, but he could wait until tomorrow, when I was feeling stronger.
 
If he'd set me up, I was going to try beating the hell out of him.
 
It wouldn't be easy.
 
I was in pretty good shape from jogging, but that mostly helped my legs.
 
Dino was the one who pumped iron and had arms that looked as if they could bend a tire tool.
 
Besides, I had a feeling that deep down inside, he was a lot meaner than I was.

Of course it didn't have to be Dino who'd set me up.
 
Ro-Jo had said that he hadn't told the other person looking for Harry the same things he'd told me.
 
But someone had been waiting in the old building.
 
How had he known to go there unless Ro-Jo had told him?
 
I was going to have to talk to Ro-Jo again, too, if I could find him.
 
For some reason I didn't think it would be as easy as it had been the last time.

Clyde
McPhatter
was singing about the treasure of love when I heard Nameless scratching the front screen door.
 
I went to open it and let him in.

He's big and yellowish orange, with grey-green eyes.
 
He took his time about entering.
 
He looked up at me as if to ask where I'd been all evening, then stretched and gawked and looked behind him before stepping daintily through the door.
 
After that he quickly picked up the pace, tearing through the nearly bare living room like a rocket, speeding through the bedroom door, and then jumping on the bed, where he proceeded to lick his fur in that self-satisfied way cats have.

I followed him into the bedroom.
 
"Is the music all right?" I asked him.
 
It was The Coasters again.
 
"Little Egypt."

Nameless didn't even bother to look at me.
 
He just kept licking himself.
 
He was purring, however, so I assumed that he approved.
 
Then he stuck out one of his back legs, spread his toes, and started biting between them.
 
I had no idea what that meant.

I sat back in my chair.
 
It was going to be harder to find Harry than I'd thought at first, and I wanted to do it even less than I had before.

It was going to be harder, because it seemed certain that Harry wasn't just looking for a warm place to sleep as I'd first thought.
 
He knew that someone was after him, and he had gone into hiding.

I wanted to find him even less than before, because now there was a kind of urgency to the hunt, and I didn't want to fail him the way I'd failed Jan.

And I
had
failed her, and myself, no matter how many times I told myself that I hadn't, and no matter how many times others told me the same thing.

The way I saw it, if I had come back to the Island in time, she wouldn't be dead.
 
I was convinced that it was as simple as that.

Her remains were found in a field not far off the Interstate quite a while after I came back, and despite the Medical Examiner's estimate that her death had occurred long before my return, I would always feel that there was something that I could have done, something that I
should
have done.
 
Whatever it had been, I hadn't done it.
 
I wasn't even the one who eventually found her.

And now Harry had gone missing.
 
It wasn't my fault; it didn't have anything at all to do with me.
 
So why was I already feeling guilty?