“Not really offering, Harry.”
“Got to understand, this is some scary shit to me, Kayla, and I don’t want to do it, but I think maybe I should. Think it’s the way I can find my way out of all this, or at least find some kind of goddamn point to it all. Understand?”
“Mostly.”
“About the friend?”
“Bring him.”
Harry called Tad and drove over to Kayla’s place.
When Tad arrived, Kayla opened the door. Tad said, “There’s a goddamn dog standing on my car. That your dog?”
“Nope. That’s Winston. He belongs next door.”
“He’s on my Mercedes.”
“He doesn’t stay long.”
“Damn well better not. Sorry. You must be Kayla.”
“Yep.”
“Nice perfume. Plenty of it, but nice.”
Tad looked back over his shoulder. “Now he’s on the roof,” he said.
“He’ll do that,” Kayla said.
“He’s lucky I like dogs.”
Tad came inside and shook Kayla’s hand. “You are just as pretty as Harry said you were.”
“He said that?”
“If he didn’t, he should have. He also said you smell nice.”
Kayla closed the door and looked at Harry, who stood embarrassed nearby. After more formal introductions were made and more coffee was prepared, Tad wandered nervously about, said, “I see you play darts. Mostly you miss. Your door looks like Swiss cheese.”
“Do you play?”
“With others not so well, but darts, some. My guess is, though, you didn’t bring me here to play darts. Am I right?”
“No,” Harry said. “We didn’t.”
Tad strolled over to the bear with the block of darts between its ears. He pulled the darts out, swiftly tossed them at the target. He rapidly shifted the darts from his left hand to his right. He seemed to merely flex his wrist. The darts crowded the bull’s-eye.
“Good grief,” Kayla said.
“Martial arts,” Harry said. “This guy is good.”
“Thank you,” Tad said.
“He doesn’t just know how to whip your ass, he knows how to throw things at you. Incidental weapons, he calls it. Isn’t that right, Tad? Darts. Rings. Blades.”
“That’s right. And I do a pretty good Jimmy Durante impression.”
“Who?” Kayla asked.
“Well, one thing,” Tad said, “I don’t do a good one, you wouldn’t know…. Before your time, gal. Almost before mine. Forget it.”
“You can have the darts and the board, you want them,” Kayla said. “Me, I’m just sticking them in the door. I’m serious, you leave, take them with you. They just tempt me.”
“Thanks,” Tad said, and dropped the darts into his coat pocket. “So now do we discuss dominoes or tiddlywinks?”
Harry shook his head. “What I need, Tad, is a little favor.”
“Name it, kid.”
46
Darkness was creeping along the edge of the skyline, sliding shadows through the trees, when they arrived at the garage in Tad’s Mercedes.
It wasn’t much. Just a big tin building. There weren’t even any electric wires attached to it. It sagged on one side.
When they got to the door, breathing cold air out in white blasts, Kayla gave Harry her flashlight, used a key to open the padlock, and, with Tad’s help, slid the door back.
It was dark inside and very cold and it smelled like dried grease and dust. The last of the day’s light dropped inside like a dead man falling. Kayla took the flashlight back and flashed it around.
There were long tables with car parts and fan belts and rubber hoses on it, a grease rack to the right, and a pit beneath it. The beam filled with dust motes. She poked it at the grease pit. It was as Harry expected it would be: dark and greasy. Roaches scattered.
“You’re asking a lot, lady,” Tad said. “The kid’s got enough bugs in his head without you helping to put more there.”
“I realize what I’m asking,” Kayla said.
“Yeah,” Tad said. “I’m not so sure.”
“It’s okay, Tad,” Harry said. “Got this problem, ought to do something with it besides be afraid all the time. Turn it into a gift if I can. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Gives me some kind of meaning.”
“Your call, kid,” Tad said. “Just think Kayla ought to know what she’s asking.”
“I know why I’m asking,” Kayla said.
Tad took a deep breath and let it out, and, made a little mushroom cloud that floated off and broke apart.
“How does this work?” Tad said. “This vision business. You’ve told me about how you got to get some kind of noise out of things. But I don’t know that I really get it. Not totally.”
“Have to find the sound,” Harry said. “Kayla’s dad died, and it was violent, most likely he raised a ruckus. That leaves an imprint, and I’m the conduit. Show me the door where he was hanged, Kayla.”
Kayla took his hand. He liked that part. She pulled him into the darkness and flashed the light on a door. It was open and led into a small office that had a glass front. The glass was cracked.
They didn’t go inside.
“Here’s another thing,” Kayla said, letting go of his hand. “Look down low on the door.”
Harry looked. It had dents in the wood.
“That’s where he was kicking his heels,” she said. Then she swallowed big, adding, “Shit.”
“Kayla,” Harry said, “I do this, tell you what happened, it might not be what you want.”
“I know.”
“Kid,” Tad said, “you sure you want to do this? You nearly shit your pants just worrying about running your car into potholes where there might have been an airbag went off.”
“I’m not as bad as I used to be.”
“Yeah, but this is the big time here.”
“Just want the two of you to watch me, make sure I’m okay.”
“You got it, kid.”
“What I’m gonna do, is I’m gonna pull this door back, slam it, see that does anything. It does, I’ll be gone. Just make sure I don’t hurt myself. I might not be able to stand up. Sometimes it’s like getting hit by a train full of emotions. Runs me over, drags me down the track. After a minute, Tad, pick up something, start beating around the parts table in different places, smack the walls—there’s a rubber hose, a fan belt on the table. Use one of those.”
“Hit stuff?” Tad asked, as Kayla played the light on the table.
“Yeah.”
Tad found a rubber hose, slapped it gently in his palm. “I’m ready, kid.”
“Good. Kayla, you keep the light on me. Make sure I’m all right. Gets too much, you two pick me up and carry me out of here. Farther away I am from the event, quicker I’ll get over it. Understood?”
“Got you,” Kayla said.
“Just start whacking shit?” Tad asked again.
“Yeah.”
“This reminds me of that time in the honky-tonk,” Kayla said. “Looking for ghosts.”
“Thing that was different then, I didn’t really think we’d find one…. I need to concentrate a moment.”
Kayla squeezed Harry’s hand, let it go.
The sounds always surrounded him, ready to swoop in and take hold and twist him into a knot, but he told himself what he had been telling himself over and over with mixed results for some time. He found he could keep the sounds pretty much at bay. At least they didn’t leap at him pantherlike anymore if he disturbed one of those imbedded rumbles. They reverberated gently, and the images they held fluttered at the corners of his mind like vampire bats in the shadowy edges of a poorly lit tunnel. He could feel them and almost see them in the creaking sounds that the wind made in the old building, in the shifting of the aluminum siding.
There was something here, all right.
Waiting.
Harry took hold of the door, moved it gently at first to make sure there was play. It m
oved creaky on its hinges, but it moved. He swung it back and forth a few more times, then pulled it forward quick, slammed it toward the wall—
—sound vaulted out of it and with it came all the colors of the world, and then some, and they felt wet and heavy and they jetted into his head and made it swell until it exploded with—
Darkness flapped through his skull, dragging damp wings.
Thud, thud, thud.
A man formed out of the darkness and hung from the door Harry had slammed. It was Kayla’s father, dangling there in bra and fishnet stockings, pink panties with lace, his heels beating a tattoo against the door, his tongue, thick and dark, thrashing like a snake tongue tasting air. The wire around his neck bit deep into his flesh. His hands were tied. So were his ankles. He kept kicking back with his legs, striking the door hard with his heels.
The dark tunnel view broke down, widened.
Another man stood to the side of the door, his head tossed back as he observed. He had on a thick coat and hat. White puffs of cold came out of his mouth in what seemed like slow motion, looked like wads of cotton being pulled skyward on an invisible string.
As the man hung there, another man stood in the shadows, by the worktable that contained the parts. He was in darkness, his face not clear.
The man in the hat slowly took a cigarette out of his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. He produced a lighter from another pocket, lit the cigarette, and there was a snap as the sound of the lighter came alive. Harry could hear Jones’s heels beating big-time; he could even hear the hatted man let out his breath as he released his first drag of smoke. And this time, Harry clearly saw his face.
It wasn’t anyone he recognized.
Slap.
Slap.
Slap.
Harry couldn’t figure where it all came from, the slapping sounds, and the slaps kept coming, the sound slightly different after the first three, as if something different had been struck.
And then it came to him.
Tad.
With the hose.
And the vision wadded up into a black ball and went away, and Harry was facing the office now, and he saw Tad bring the hose up, strike the side of the office, just under the glass front—
Slap.
—the redheaded guy he’d seen before, one in the shelter, it was him, and he was being thrown against the glass by the hatted man, the back of his skull hitting it, cracking it, spiderwebbing it, and he was twisting free of the hatted man’s grasp—
Slap.
—a pocketknife flashing open in the redhead’s hand, cutting at the hatted man’s face. A little dark line of blood spat out of the hatted man’s cheek, hit the glass in beads. The redhead broke free, darted—
—all of it wadded up again, and—
Slap.
Slap.
—leaping images, some of them ghostly and overlapping, not entirely discernible.
The redhead hit the back door with his hands and it flew open. A rectangle of silver light burst into the garage and the redhead ran into it, out the back, up the hill and—
—faded.
His last vision was of the hatted man grabbing at a phone in the office, popping his own knife out of his pocket with a flick, cutting at the phone wire…and then—
Nausea, pain, a twisting of emotions, a crumpling of darkness, a flash of light and the most horrible sensations he had ever experienced, then he was rushing along some bat-ass dark corridor, things reaching out to touch him. He saw light at the end of it all. The light was not very bright, and it was punctuated by little silver dots, and after a moment Harry realized he was lying on his back at the rear of the garage looking up at the stars, gasping in cold air, and then the moon—
—no, Tad’s face dropped down over him, and Tad said, “Kid, you went someplace fucked-up, real quick and real bad. You stopped breathing. Kayla gave you mouth-to-mouth. Just consider, it could have been me, and I need a breath mint.”
Thank goodness for small favors, Harry thought. Then he realized that he was not lying on the ground, but on Kayla. She had his head in her lap. He had been here before. Years before. He liked it then and he liked it now.
She bent forward to look down at him. A tear fell from her eye and landed on his forehead. It felt good and warm out there in the cold air.
“I thought you were dying.”
Finally, after a struggle, Harry said: “Me…too.”
“You were going bug-shit, spinning in a circle.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said.
“Did you see?” Kayla asked.
“More than I ever wanted to see.”
“And?”
“Your father was murdered. Same man that killed the redhead.”
Harry tried to sit up. Kayla and Tad helped him. Harry looked up the hill behind the garage. “The redhead, he got away. He ran out back, started up that hill, then faded out on me.”
“Toward the golf course?” Kayla asked.
Harry nodded. “Think so.”
“And toward the McGuire property, the shelter?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“You actually saw it all?” Tad asked.
“In a fashion,” Harry said. “In a horrible fashion.”
47
Harry wobbled along.
He was between Kayla and Tad, and without meaning to he leaned first on one, then the other as they walked. No wonder he had an alcohol problem. This was just the thing he tried to avoid, the horrors in the sounds of the past, but tonight he had done it to himself on purpose, and it hadn’t been pretty.
They were walking away from the garage to the top of the hill. The hill seemed like something out of a fairy tale, the dead grass at its peak glowed silver in the starlight.
When they reached the top, Harry took a deep breath. The air was cool and burned his throat. When he let his breath out it was white.
Kayla pointed with the flashlight. “He went up here?”
“Saw him run out the door. Up the hill. Then it all faded. He ran outside the realm of the sounds, I guess. When he hit the back door—Correction. When you hit it with the hose, Tad, you revived him hitting it with his palms. He was scared to death, running fast as he could go.”
“Poor Dad. Poor Vincent. But why?”
“And who?” Harry said.
“Did these men go after him?” Tad asked Harry.
“I saw the hatted man kill Vincent in the shelter. He obviously caught up with him, tied him up with a wire from the phone.”
“This is some creepy shit,” Tad said. “And I, for one, don’t want to see you do that bullshit again. Your fucking eyeballs near popped out of your head. You hit that floor in there, I was afraid you broke something.”
“My shoulder hurts, but I’m okay. I feel weak, kind of sick.”
“I was right,” Kayla said. “Dad was murdered.”
“I didn’t actually see them put the cord around his neck, dress him up, boost him on the door. But what I did see certainly made it seem that way. He still had the ties on his hands and feet. The hatted bastard was smoking a cigarette.”
“Why would they do all that, the bra and stuff?” Tad asked.
“Like Kayla was saying,” Harry said. “They wanted to discredit him. He’s found like that, they don’t question much else. And the redhead…like you thought as well, Kayla. He must have been in the office, heard what was going on up front, panicked, hid in there, then the guy with the hat saw him, and there was a fight. The redhead cut him a little with his knife, broke for the door, went up the hill.”
“Didn’t you say when you saw the redhead in the shelter, he was tied with wire?” Kayla asked.
“Think so,” Harry said.
“Wrapped in a blanket or something?” she asked.
“That’s how it looked.”
“But you saw the face of these guys? The guy with the hat this time?”
“The guy I saw before, in the shelter. I saw his face. But I can’t say I recognized
him, though he seemed familiar.”
Kayla took a breath, said, “It wasn’t Joey’s father, was it?”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“The other guy? What about him?”
“Couldn’t really see him to say yes or no.”
“Could it have been Joey’s dad?”
“It could have been almost anybody. In the dark like that, it could have been fucking Batman.”
“Let’s follow the likely path,” Tad said. “Way the redhead must have had to run to end up at that shelter. You up to it, Harry?”
He wasn’t. Harry felt as if his body had been dampened with vinegar and run through a wringer, hung out to dry, and beat with a duster paddle.
And that was the good part.
Inside his head the images came back to him and moved around and shifted the furniture of his mind in new arrangements that he didn’t care for.
“Do you?” Kayla said. “Feel up to it?”
Harry thought he might be lying when he said: “I can do it.”
Dogs were barking. Lights were on in houses. They stood for a moment looking at the backyards, the clotheslines.
“Clotheslines,” Tad said. “You don’t see as many of them as you used to, but this is a poorer neighborhood, not as many dryers.”
“I beg your pardon?” Kayla said.
“The clotheslines. The blanket the redhead got wrapped in. That’s where it came from. It was hanging out to dry. The hatted guy, he grabbed it, thinking he’d wrap the redhead in it, hold him down. Blanket makes a good weapon. This guy, he might have known what he was doing, or just had a brain flash. You get someone’s arms and legs pinned in that, you can hold them pretty good. And this Vincent, you said he wasn’t a big guy?”
“No,” Harry said.
“Fits,” Tad said. “This hatted guy, the killer, he grabbed a blanket off one of these lines, went after him with it. Got him down, then used the wire he cut off the phone—was the phone, right?”
Harry nodded. “One of the old-fashioned kind.”
“Used that to bind him,” Tad said. “Fits together, don’t it?”
“Why didn’t Vincent just run to a house?” Kayla asked.
“He was so scared,” Tad said, “he just hauled some serious ass, looking for anyplace to hide.” Tad pointed to a line of trees at the bottom of the slope. “Down there would be good.”