Damnation Street

  There was a double bed in here with a white crocheted bedspread skewed to one side. There was a closet with a few skirts and blouses hanging in it, two pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers on the floor. There was a faint scent of a woman coming off the clothing. Her scent. That got to him too.

  He went in the bathroom. There was makeup all around the sink. A toothbrush in a dirty glass. A hairbrush. Strands of hair in the bristles. Julie's red-gold hair.

  He went back into the bedroom, switched off the lights. Now the light in the living room was the only light still burning. Weiss went to the threshold between the two rooms. He stood there, looking over the living room again.

  He could feel her presence in the house—Julie's presence. She'd made sure he would know she'd been here. The lipstick on the coffee mug, the hair in the brush, the scent: she had not been gone long. Weiss felt almost as if she were standing next to him, speaking to him, trying to tell him something. She had been here and she had gone out, waiting for him to come—waiting to make sure he was the one who came. Then she would return and draw out the killer. That's how he figured it. That's what he figured she was trying to say.

  But there was something else too. His eyes kept scanning the lighted room. There was something else she wanted him to know. He could feel it. The lipstick on the coffee mug, the hair in the brush ... She'd had time to choose this place, this house. She had chosen it knowing he would come, knowing it was where they would finish it. She had chosen it for a reason. She had left him something, something he could use.

  Then he saw the trapdoor. It was cut into the wooden floor. It was hard to make out. It blended with the floorboards and only a small section of it stuck out from under the braid rug. It ended just in front of the coffee table. The mug—the mug with her lipstick on it—marked the spot.

  He stepped to it. He stooped down. He found the iron ring embedded in the wood. He lifted the trap. The smell of damp earth came up to him from the square opening.

  There was a steep, rickety wooden stairs. He had to back down it, as if it were a ladder. A string brushed his face as he descended. He pulled the string. A naked bulb went on. He looked over his shoulder and saw a dirt cellar. There were some empty boxes down there, an empty suitcase. Nothing else.

  He killed the light. He climbed back up. Closed the trapdoor. He left the rug askew so that the trap was easier to find, easier to get to.

  He went to the wall and pressed the light switch down. The little house settled back into darkness. There was silence except for the rain pattering softly on the roof.

  Weiss felt his way across the room until his fingers lit on the ridged upholstery of the armchair, next to the phone table.

  He settled himself into the armchair, facing the front door. He reached into his trench coat and drew out his .38.

  He waited.

  48.

  The man who called himself John Foy waited. He was in the brown Taurus parked on the street. He had watched Weiss arrive. He had watched him go inside the gray house. Now he was sitting motionless in the dark, watching the house through the rain-streaked windows of his car.

  He had his briefcase open on the seat beside him. He had the computer on. He had the monitor light turned low so it would not give him away. He could see Weiss's heat outline on the infrared readout. He could see Weiss sitting in the armchair, see him right through the walls. He could see that Weiss was alone.

  He waited for Julie Wyant. He knew she would come soon. Already, he could imagine the touch of her skin and the scent of her. He could almost hear the sound of her sobbing and taste her tears. He was excited. There was a sort of low thrumming through his whole body.

  It was a good feeling. He was not afraid at all. He knew he was going to die soon, but somehow it didn't bother him. It wouldn't be tonight anyway. Tonight he would kill Weiss. He would make Julie watch while he did it. He would make Weiss into something that disgusted her and then he would finish him. Then she would know he was all there was for her. He was everything in her life.

  Then he would take her away. He had a place all ready for her. It was a cabin in Colorado, in the mountains, in the woods. He had used it before. No one ever came near. He would keep her there for as long as she lived. Days, weeks. She might last for months even, if he did it right. Then she would die and, when he was done with her, he would die too. It would be good, he thought. They would die there together. He was excited about it. It was the reason he had done everything he had done.

  He had never felt the same things other men felt. He knew that. Passing unseen, invisible, down streets, through parks, through malls, he'd seen how other men were with women. He'd seen men holding women's hands, kissing them, leaning toward their lips across a table. He'd seen men in movies, their faces moving toward a woman's face on screen. He knew there was something they were feeling that he didn't feel, something they were doing that he couldn't do. He tried not to think about it, but he did think about it. Sometimes it felt as if he never thought about anything else.

  Then he met Julie. She was like someone he had made up for himself. She was like someone he thought about when he was alone in his room. He could hardly believe how perfect she was, how much she was what he wanted. That time he was with her—that one time—it was exactly like daydreams he'd had. Watching her twist in his hands, hearing her cry out, he had thought: now—now, he was feeling what other men felt. And he knew even at that moment, he would do anything to feel that way again.

  He had begged her to come with him. He had told her he loved her. She had laughed. Still sobbing, she had laughed. Then she had run away. And he knew he would do anything to find her.

  He watched the house. He watched the computer. Weiss sat still, sat where he was. That was good. The man who called himself John Foy had checked the house out before Weiss arrived. There were only two doors, the front door and the one in the kitchen. He didn't think Weiss would have time to get to the kitchen but if he did, Foy would get him when he tried to come back in the front. Meanwhile, he was glad to have Weiss's company. They were in this together. Waiting for her together.

  It didn't take long. A movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned and looked down the street. A car came toward him, headlights off. He couldn't tell what make it was. It parked half a block away against the opposite curb. The door opened. The top light went on. He saw a woman slipping out from behind the wheel.

  As she rose from her seat, he could see it was Julie Wyant.

  He only glimpsed her for a second. She had a kerchief tied around her head. She had a raincoat with the collar pulled up to her ears. He could see her face. He could see her hair beneath the kerchief. Then she stepped out of the car into the night. She closed the car door and the light went out.

  The man who called himself John Foy had to breathe deep to steady himself. The sight of her brought images into his mind in a dizzying rush. It was too much. It made him feel weak and unsteady. He wanted to climb into his tower and breathe the high, blue air until the rush of pictures and emotions went away.

  But there wasn't time. She was walking toward the house. He could hear the heels of her shoes on the pavement. She was walking quickly, her body tense, her eyes scanning the night. He smiled. She knew he was here and she was frightened.

  The man who called himself John Foy took a last look at the monitor. Weiss was still there, still alone, still sitting where he had been. He knew he had to time this right, just right. He had to give Weiss no chance to move, no chance to try anything.

  Julie Wyant reached the house's front walk. She turned onto it. She walked quickly toward the door, glancing left and right and over her shoulder.

  The killer watched her. He felt strange, light-headed. He had waited for her so long—and he loved her.

  Now she was at the house. At the front door. Reaching for the knob.

  The man who called himself John Foy drew the 9mm out from beneath his overcoat. He opened the car door silently.

  49.


  Jim Bishop opened his eyes. He had to get to Weiss. He had to get to the house in the middle of nowhere or Weiss would die.

  He didn't know where he was at first. He had come from darkness into darkness. He had come from somewhere black inside himself into a room that was deep gray with shadow. He was aware of vague rhythms. The click and whisper and peep of machines. His own body, heartbeat, pulse, and breath. He felt he had been away from all this for a long time.

  Now things came clear. The rhythms, the noises, the blurred shapes in the shadows. There was a bed, tubes, chairs. He was in a hospital room. There was a woman in one of the chairs. She had a newspaper on her lap. Her head was down on her chest. She was sleeping. He recognized her. Sissy.

  Bishop felt a rush of energy. The sight of Sissy reminded him who he was. He remembered how he had come to Phoenix, how he had been shot in the hotel. He remembered the fall from the hotel window, the certainty that he was dying, dying.

  But he had not died. That was the point. He was alive in the shadowy room.

  And he had to get to Weiss. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did. He didn't know how he knew about the house in the middle of nowhere, but he knew that too. And he knew it was urgent. Everything depended on him. He had to get to the house or Weiss would die.

  He lost consciousness again, faded from the surface of the world. Even then, the sense of urgency stayed with him. He fought his way back. He forced his eyes open. He tried to remember how things were. Some of it tumbled into place and some of it wouldn't. The sickening sense that he had failed—that came back to him, all right. He had been trying to help Weiss, but the Shadowman had set a trap for him, and he had walked into it like a prize idiot. That much came back to him, but the rest ... There was something he had to say, something he had to tell Weiss that would save him. But what was it? And the house. How did he know about the house? How was he supposed to find it? He tried to remember, but there was nothing. All that was gone.

  It didn't matter. He had to start moving. Start moving and he would remember. He would find a way.

  So he tried to move. What a comedy that turned out to be. He felt as if he were a tiny little stick figure Bishop trapped inside a full-sized Bishop, trying to lift the full-sized man with his tiny little stick figure strength. There was no chance.

  But somehow he had to do it. He had to get to the house, to Weiss. He tried again. He focused on his hand. He closed it into a fist. It took a long time, the fingers slowly curling, clenching. Afterward he fell back inside himself, exhausted. It didn't matter. He had to keep trying. He didn't know what time it was, but he knew there was no time to fuck around.

  He went back to work at it. It took ... he didn't know how long. He felt the sweat bead on his forehead. He felt the weakness open at his core like a hole. Slowly, slowly, he filled his hollow muscles with his will. He lifted his arm. He reached across himself. He clawed at the tubes that seemed to snake into his flesh from somewhere in the shadows above him. With a hoarse gasp of pain, he dragged the tubes out of himself. He flung them aside. They sprayed drops of clear fluid and drops of red blood over the white sheets.

  Then Bishop sat up. He found his clothes. He got dressed. It was a desperately long process, desperately long and slow. Lucky for him he wasn't there for a lot of it. It came to him in strobic flashes of consciousness. Between the flashes, there was only weakness, nausea, blackouts. He didn't feel pain—not pain in one place or another. It was all pain. Pain was the air he breathed.

  But now, somehow, it was done. He discovered himself sitting on the edge of the bed. He was panting, sweating, sick—but he had his jeans pulled on and a T-shirt pulled down over his bandages.

  He swallowed. He turned his head. Sissy was still there, still sleeping. She hadn't moved.

  Bishop began to think about standing. It was not a happy thought. He was bigger inside than he had been, bigger than the little stick figure man he was before. But still. It was an awfully long way to his feet. An even longer way to the door. And a long way to fall if he didn't make it.

  Minutes went by. He sat there, sick just thinking about it. He tried to gather his strength for the effort.

  Finally, he wrapped his hand around the rail at the foot of the bed. He pushed himself up. All the pain in the world suddenly spun down in a vortex to center in his belly. Bishop grimaced at the agony, his mouth open, his teeth bare. Bent over, he clung to the bed rail with both hands, trying not to tumble to the floor. He breathed hard. He breathed back the pain. Then, with a low growl, he launched himself in the direction of the door.

  Now he was traveling down the hospital hallway. It seemed a weird and ghostly place. Nurses and aides floated by him like white phantoms. The walls fogged and melted from the edges of his consciousness. The floor sloped down into misty nothing. He stumbled along it as if drawn by gravity. At one point he must've passed a mirror. He saw his own face. Horrible, horrible. Corpse-white with faint under-traces of corpse-green. The eyes had sunk down into two dark holes. He was afraid someone would notice him looking like that, afraid someone would try to stop him and take him back to bed. But no one did. He stumbled on.

  The next thing he knew he was somewhere else, somewhere in the night, moving through the night. Everything was shaking, rumbling. He became aware of nausea, an awful dryness in his mouth, awful pain. Then there was the noise. A rushing, whispered roar all around him. His eyes came open suddenly. He saw a strip of light pass over the leg of his jeans. He tried to lift his head off his chest. He managed to hoist it up, then it rolled back against some sort of seat.

  He was in the cab of a truck. Out through the windshield, he saw two-lane blacktop in the headlights. How had he gotten here? He tried to remember. An image came into his mind. He saw himself stumbling along the side of a road. He remembered how grateful he had been for the cool night air on his cheeks because it kept him from fainting. Now he was in a truck. He must have managed to hitch a ride.

  He rolled his head to one side so he could see the driver. The lights of an oncoming car passed over the cab. He saw the driver in the light. By an odd coincidence, the driver happened to be an alien monster from a comic book he had read as a child. He had yellow eyes and a long red snout with sharp teeth bared in a drooling grin. This worried Bishop in a distant sort of way. Maybe he had died trying to leave the hospital and this demon had been sent to drive him down to hell.

  His head rolled back on the seat. His gorge rose. He thought he would vomit for sure. The light passed and the cab sank back into darkness. Bishop closed his eyes. That couldn't be right about the demon, he thought. That didn't make any sense. He looked again and, in fact, the driver was not a demon after all. He was a fat white guy with a round bald head and a long, wispy red-blond beard. That was better. He lay back again. He closed his eyes again.

  Now all he had to do was remember the other thing. What was he supposed to tell Weiss? It started to come back to him. The hotel. The egg-shaped man in the Hawaiian shirt. The specialist had had nowhere to hide a gun, but he had had a gun. The Saracen.

  That was it. The Shadowman's plan. He was planning for Weiss to outsmart him. He was planning for Weiss to take his gun away, to take two of his guns. But he had a third gun, the Saracen, that he could hide where no one would find it.

  "This the place?"

  The driver's rough voice startled him out of sleep. He felt as if he had slept for a long time. He felt better, stronger. He opened his eyes.

  The truck had stopped somewhere in the dark. Bishop looked out the window. There was a house out there, a silhouette in the night. How had he gotten here? How had he known to tell the driver where to go?

  Confused, he looked at the driver. The driver inclined his bald pate toward the house.

  "That the one?"

  Bishop wiped his lips with his hand. He looked out the window again. Was that the house? How could he know? But he must've told the driver how to get here. He must've known the way in his unconscious somehow.

&nbs
p; "Thanks," he croaked.

  "You take care of yourself," the driver told him.

  Bishop shoved the door open, shouldered it open with a grunt. It took all his strength. He began the long, difficult climb down from the high cab to the pavement.

  He stood in front of the house. He was swaying like a sapling in a swirling breeze. Behind him, the truck drove away into the night. Bishop started up the house's front walk.

  He did not feel like a tiny stick figure anymore. He filled his own body. But there was no strength in him. He was weak, so weak. He drove himself forward step by staggering step. He saw the house lurching and swaying in front of him, looming closer. It was a sickening sight. It filled him with fear. Was he too late? Was it over already? Was Weiss already dead?

  He kept walking. He reached the door. He pushed inside.

  He could see the shapes of things. Furniture in a room. Table, chair, sofa. No one was there. He felt sick, so sick and weak and full of fear. He wanted to lie down on the floor and go to sleep again. Where was everyone?

  Then he saw the door. Somehow, he knew that's where he had to go. How did he know? Who had told him? He remembered a voice whispering in his ear. But whose voice? Who was it?

  He didn't know. But he knew what he had to do. He staggered to the door. There was a handle on it. He grabbed hold of it. The door was heavy, hard to move. He didn't know where he found the muscle power to haul it open, but he did, shouting out with the pain and the effort.

  He stood, panting, on the threshold. He couldn't tell what was real anymore and what wasn't. He was so sick, so weak, so miserable. Everything seemed so weird, so far away. Maybe none of it was real. The cellar stairs, for instance: they seemed to wind down and down forever. He didn't think the stairway was real. He didn't see how it could be. But he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about his tears either. He felt them, hot, streaking his cheeks, but he didn't know if they were really there.