Part 16 (1/2)

Walker stepped outside and felt a stirring in the air, not a gradual increase in the breeze, but a solid ma.s.s of air that hit him as it pa.s.sed across the blacktop, then was gone. It startled him, a sudden slap from the hurricane, and not a playful pawing. It felt like a test, a first pa.s.s from something that wanted to eat him. He stepped to the car, and as he opened the door the wind arrived, this time like an invisible wall. His hair blew and fluttered, and the colored pennants strung on a wire overhead began to flap and make snapping noises, straining until the wire was as taut as a bowstring. There was a steady hissing sound that he knew was just air whistling across the openings of his ears.

He got in and slammed the door, and there was silence. He brushed the hair out of his eyes, then started the engine and drifted out onto the road. He followed the directions the man had given him, searching for each street sign with extreme care, straining to reach beyond the distance he could see in order to make out as early as possible that one sign had too many letters, the next too few. When he saw Northwest Seventh Street and managed to complete the right turn onto it, he felt his chest swell in grat.i.tude. The man who had gotten him here had said there was only a mile to go, and now it was a straight line, with no possibility of a mistake.

The wind blew harder, the sudden onrush of air making the car rock slightly, and he overcompensated by gripping the steering wheel in surprise, then slowly, tentatively, loosened his grip. He could hear invisible specks of dust ticking against the window beside him as he searched for Tenth Avenue.

He saw it. The low brick building could have been anything-a store, a restaurant. But beside the door he could see a small bra.s.s plate like the one on the agency in Pasadena. He turned into the driveway and continued around the building to a parking lot that looked as though it would hold about twenty cars. There were only two in the lot.

He looked up at the sky, and decided he didn't have time to ponder why there weren't more cars. He could see the underbelly of the storm now, like a dark gray ceiling closing overhead. He opened the car door with surprising difficulty as the wind pushed against it, pounded down the b.u.t.ton, let it shut, and leaned back against the wind to control his speed as he trotted to the door of the building.

He swung it open and slipped inside, then experienced the blessed quiet again. He straightened his collar and pushed back his hair as he looked around. The room had the same aged quality of all the McClaren's offices, as though a single decorator had gone around the country buying up the antique furniture in each city and placing it in the same patterns. His eye caught movement, and he turned to see a short, bald man in his early sixties standing at the window. He had half-turned to place a steady, appraising gaze on Walker. He wore a three-piece suit that must have been tailored for his slim, narrow-shouldered frame, so he looked like a wizened boy. ”I see the wind is up.” The accent was a soft, genteel southern elongation of vowels that Walker a.s.sociated with Charleston.

”It certainly is,” said Walker. He stepped closer. ”My name is John Walker. I'm from the San Francisco office.”

The small man stepped forward in a leisurely way and shook Walker's hand, then stood with his hands clasped behind him and rocked twice on his heels. ”Ah, our reinforcements. I'd been led to believe that there was a bit more to you, numerically speaking. I'm Charles Evans, regional manager.”

”The others flew into Atlanta,” said Walker. ”They should be on their way.”

”I sincerely hope not,” said Evans. ”The storm would catch them out. Have you ever been in a hurricane?”

Walker glanced toward the window. He thought he heard the wind picking up. ”Not yet.”

Evans said, ”Well, this one won't be as bad as it could be.”

Walker brightened. ”No?”

”That's the whole premise of our business, isn't it? It's never as bad as it could be. If it ever were ...” He left Walker to complete his sentence. ”You came at a calm moment. When the front rolled into sight, people stopped calling insurance companies and turned to conveying their concerns to the Almighty. I sent home everybody who lives close enough to get there. Miss Turley and I are the only ones left, so you may as well ride it out with us.”

Walker said, ”I'd be happy to have something to keep me occupied. Is there any paperwork I can get started on?”

Evans looked at him through the corner of his eye, amused. ”McClaren's has had a presence here since the turn of the century. As soon as hurricane season begins, we prepare all the paperwork.”

”You go to all that trouble just in case?”

”I can see you really haven't been in a hurricane. The first thing that happens is that the power goes off. You're returned to a more primitive era, without computers or copiers.”

”Of course,” said Walker. ”I'm sorry. They called me in the middle of the night, and I guess it took most of my brainpower to get here.”

”Well, you're here now, so all we've got to do is wait it out.” The sound of the wind began to mount noticeably. Evans turned and stared out his window. ”Here it comes.”

Walker stepped closer and looked. He could see a line of rain like a curtain sweeping toward them across the parking lot, turning the pavement dark and s.h.i.+ny with a hissing sound, throwing a thousand little splashes on the hood and roof of his rental car, then exploding against the office window like the spray of a hose.

Evans reached to the side of the window and pressed a b.u.t.ton, and a metal shutter slowly lowered to cover the gla.s.s. Then Evans went to the other windows on that side of the building and repeated the process. ”That should do it for the present,” he said. ”The winds move clockwise, so it's possible that later on they'll hit the building from the other side.”

The lights gave a small, sick flutter, and then went out. ”Ahead of schedule,” said Evans.

Walker went to the other side of the room, where there was a small unshuttered window, and stood looking out at what had replaced the late afternoon. The sky was an opaque dark gray, and below it a sourceless twilight, as though light had simply been trapped there when the sky closed up. Puddles seemed to Walker to rise up from the ground, with the wind sending wrinkly wavelets across it, then lifting spray off the surfaces to add it to the rain.

Somewhere, lost in the steady beat of rain and wind, Walker thought he heard a voice. It grew louder and louder. ”... has reached the mainland with strong winds and extremely heavy rain. The possibility of flooding-” A middle-aged woman with silver hair appeared from the hallway, holding a flashlight and a portable radio. She turned off the radio. ”The phones are dead too.”

Evans said, ”Miss Turley, this is John Walker from the San Francisco office, come to save us from the ravages of nature.”

”Here. Have a flashlight,” she said. ”We've got plenty. If you run out of batteries, they're in the cabinet over there. If you would like some coffee, get it now or it will be cold.”

Walker took the flashlight. ”Thanks,” he said.

”Well, I'm going to see if I can sleep with all this racket,” she said. ”All h.e.l.l has to break loose and knock out the phones before a person can get some rest.” She was still talking when she pa.s.sed too far down the corridor to be heard.

Evans said to Walker, ”I think I'll try to get a nap myself. As soon as the weather lets up, we're all going to be very busy.” As he stepped away, he said over his shoulder, ”There are couches in the offices.”

Walker stayed at his window, watching as more of the hurricane came in. The wind was screaming along the eaves of the building now, and in the street Walker could see it lofting leaves and wet papers and bits of unidentifiable debris high into the air. He could still see an occasional car pa.s.s by on the street, crawling along with headlights on and winds.h.i.+eld wipers flicking back and forth frantically, the tires already making rooster-tail wakes in the puddles. He watched each one as long as he could see it, hoping the person inside was very close to where he was going. After twenty minutes had pa.s.sed, he saw no others. The people had given their city up to the hurricane.

An hour later, the volume of the wind seemed to increase again, and Walker's uneasiness increased with it. He found himself thinking, This is it. This is as high as it goes. Then it would seem to increase again. He began to see objects in motion that he had never expected to see. There was a blue sheet-metal rectangle that gave prices for Regular, Self-Serve, and Full-Serve. It flew through the air for fifty feet, then cartwheeled along the center of the street, fell flat, and lay there, but the next time he looked, it was gone. It was two hours later that he noticed the smaller pieces of debris, dark, flat rectangles fluttering in the air to scatter like leaves. It took more time before a group of them landed near enough for him to see them clearly. They were s.h.i.+ngles. The storm had begun to tear off roofs.

Night did not fall. The darkness simply acquired depth until Walker conceded that he could not see anymore. He turned away from the window and realized the room was as dark as a closet. He felt for the flashlight Miss Turley had given him, then went down the hall until he found an office door that was open. He went to the couch and lay down on it with his jacket as a blanket. He listened to the roar of the wind, and the splas.h.i.+ng of the water rus.h.i.+ng out of the gutters to the ground outside. He tried to feel whether the force of the wind was having any effect on the structure of the building, but he could detect no movement. The storm had reached such an intensity that the sounds had lost their variation. They were just an unchanging roar with no startling rises or falls, and the sameness slowly put him to sleep.

At some point in the night, he awoke to the sound of small objects being hurled against the building in a sudden patter. He sat up for a moment and tried to gauge the strength of the wind, but he could not detect a change. He lay back and thought about the sudden noise that had disturbed him. He wondered if it had been more s.h.i.+ngles. Leaves and trash and even signs blowing around meant nothing. s.h.i.+ngles were different. s.h.i.+ngles meant that somewhere not far from here, somebody's house was filling up with water.

20.

Morning was just the sound of Miss Turley walking past his door in high heels. Walker got up and went to his window. There was a diffuse gray light that let him see. The street outside was a running stream from curb to curb carrying unidentifiable debris, mud, and leaves. Farther up the block he could see three tall palm trees that had fallen, and the water formed unmoving waves where it washed past them.

He heard the sound of a radio, so he followed it to find Evans's office. ”The eye pa.s.sed over south Florida at around four A.M. A.M. The governor has issued a statement that some search-and-rescue teams have been out during the night, and that disaster-relief personnel and equipment from all over the nation are already being a.s.sembled in command centers outside the hurricane's path, ready to move in as soon as conditions warrant.” The governor has issued a statement that some search-and-rescue teams have been out during the night, and that disaster-relief personnel and equipment from all over the nation are already being a.s.sembled in command centers outside the hurricane's path, ready to move in as soon as conditions warrant.”

Evans looked at Walker. ”It's over. They're not ready to say that, but it is.”

”What do we do?”

”These people have been paying us fat premiums for years in the fear that this was going to happen. Now we convince them it was worth it.”

”How?”

”What we need is a policyholder who saw an agent from McClaren's show up like an angel without waiting to be called. And if they need it, we'll take care of them.”

”Take care of them?” said Walker.

Evans nodded. ”If the damage is small, we'll help board up a broken window or two, fill out a claim form, take some pictures, and move on to the next client. But judging from the radio, some of the houses are going to be uninhabitable. Clients will need food, clothes, lodging. We'll be there to cover it. Each policy file already has an envelope with five hundred dollars in cash and a blank, signed check. See what I'm getting at?”

Walker nodded. ”You want friends for life.”

”For generations. A little sympathy, a small advance on a payment we'll have to make later anyway, will make all the difference.”

”When do we start?”

”Now. You'll take some policies and I'll take some. Pretty soon our own people will start making it in one by one, and Miss Turley will send them out.” He pointed to a pile of folders with a camera on top. ”Take that pile. They're all in one zip code.”

Walker glanced at the first address, then at his road map. He checked two more, and he couldn't help noticing the sizes of the policies. ”You've got some pretty expensive real estate on the books.”