Part 34 (2/2)
”They're bored,” Tom said. ”They like the feeling of having a little edge.”
The big car drove into the parking lot. Close up, the machine shop looked like the police station that clung to the side of Eagle Lake's town hall-it needed another building to complete it. Fritz said, ”I'm not getting out of the car. In fact, I think we ought to leave right now and go swimming in the lake.” He looked at Tom. ”I don't like this at all. We shouldn't be doing this.”
”They shouldn't be doing it,” Tom said. shouldn't be doing it,” Tom said.
”Hurry up,” Sarah said.
Tom patted her knee, got out of the car, and walked to the front of the machine shop. Above the door was a stenciled sign that said PRYZG.o.dA BROS. TOOL & DIE CO PRYZG.o.dA BROS. TOOL & DIE CO. He leaned forward and peered into a window beside the door. A green chair with padded arms was pushed against one of the walls of an otherwise empty office. A few pieces of paper lay on the floor.
Tom turned around and shrugged. Fritz waved him back to the car, but Tom walked around to the side of the building, where a row of reinforced windows sat high in the wall. Some of the brown paint had separated cleanly from the concrete, and leaned out away from the wall, as stiff as a dried sail. The windows came down to the level of his chin. Tom looked in the first of them and saw only geometrical shadows. Most of the interior was filled with boxes and unidentifiable things stacked on top of the boxes.
Tom put his hands to the sides of his head and bent closer to the window. One of the objects stacked on top of the first row of boxes was faced with brown cloth framed by an inch of dark wood. On top of it, half lost in the darkness at the top of the room, sat another object like like it. Then he recognized them: stereo speakers. Tom turned his head and grinned at Fritz and Sarah, and Fritz swept his hand back toward himself again: Come on! Come on!
Tom moved down to the next window in line, blocked his face with his hands, and leaned forward. Propped against the row of boxes, the faces of Roddy Deepdale and Buzz Laing looked up at him from the chairs in which they had been painted by a man named Don Bachardy. Tom lowered his hands and stepped back from the window, and in that moment, an overweight figure in a grey suit too small to contain a watermelon belly walked around the back of the tall boxes, shaking something in an open cardboard box and peering down into it like a man panning for gold. Tom jumped back from the window, and a row of white rectangles reflected in Nappy's sungla.s.ses as he looked up.
Tom bent beneath the windows and ran toward the car. He threw himself into the open door, and Fritz scattered dirt and stones with the back tires, yelling ”They saw you! Dammit!” The car jolted forward. Tom reached for the open door and pulled it shut as they shot out on Summers Street. ”Duck,” Tom said to Sarah, and she bent forward beneath the dashboard. Tom slid down on the seat and looked out of the back window. Fritz stamped on the accelerator, and the Lincoln's tires squealed on the blacktop. Nappy LaBarre threw open the front door of the building and ran heavily into the parking lot on his short legs. He waved his short thick arms and yelled something. In a second the wall of trees cut him off.
”He saw us,” Fritz wailed. ”He saw the car! You think he doesn't know who we are? He knows who we are.”
”He's alone,” Tom said, helping Sarah sit up straight again. ”There wasn't any phone in there, I don't think.”
”You mean he can't call Jerry,” Sarah said.
”I think he was putting some of the stuff in boxes for their next trip,” Tom said. ”Unless he walks back, he has to wait until Jerry comes by to pick him up.”
Fritz turned left on another unmarked road, trying to find his way back to the village and the highway.
”The further adventures of Tom Pasmore,” Sarah said.
”I want to say something,” Fritz said. ”I had nothing to do with this. All I wanted to do was go back to the lake, okay? I never looked in the windows, and I never saw any stolen stuff-I don't even think I saw Nappy.”
”Oh, come on,” Tom said.
”All I saw was a fat guy.”
”Have it your way,” Tom said.
”My Uncle Ralph is not just an ordinary guy,” said Fritz. ”Remember I said that, okay? He is not an ordinary guy.”
Fritz drove along the b.u.mpy road, gritting his teeth. He turned right on a three-lane road marked 41 and drove through a section of forest. Thick trees, neither oaks nor maples, but some gnarly black variety Tom did not know, stood at the border of the road, so close together their trunks nearly touched. Fritz ground his teeth, making a sound like a file grating across iron. They burst out into emptiness again.
”I didn't see Nappy,” he said.
There was another long term of silence. Fritz came to a crossroads, looked both ways, and turned left again. On both sides muddy-looking fields stretched off to rotting wooden fences like match sticks against the dense forest.
The road went up over a rise and came down on a glossy black four-lane highway across from a sign that said LAKE DEEP-DALE-DEEPDALE ESTATES LAKE DEEP-DALE-DEEPDALE ESTATES. Fritz ground his teeth again, cramped the wheel, and turned in the direction of Eagle Lake.
”I don't know what you're so upset about,” Tom said.
”You're right, you don't. You don't have the slightest idea.” He turned into the narrow track between the trees that led to the lake, and when they reached the bench, he stopped the car. ”This is where we picked you up, and this is where we're dropping you off.”
”Are you going to call the police?” Sarah asked Tom.
”Get out of the car if you want to talk like that,” Fritz said.
”Don't be a baby,” Sarah snapped at him.
”You don't know either, Sarah.”
Tom opened the door and got out. He did not close the door. ”Of course I'm going to call them,” he said to Sarah. ”These people have been robbing houses for years.” Fritz gunned the engine, and Tom leaned into the car. He looked at Fritz's furious profile. ”Fritz, if you knew you had to see someone again, right after you learned something that made you pretty sure they'd committed murder, what would you do? Would you say anything?”
Fritz kept staring straight ahead. His teeth made the file-on-iron sound.
”Would you try to forget about it?”
Sarah gave him an anxious smile. ”I'll come over tonight-I'll get put somehow.”
Fritz pulled ahead, and Tom waved at Sarah. Fritz pushed the accelerator, and the car left Tom standing on the side of the road. After a couple of seconds, Sarah reached over to close the door. The car picked up speed as it went over the rise, and then it disappeared.
As soon as he got back to the lodge, Tom went into the study and found the number of the Eagle Lake Police Department in the telephone book.
A male voice answered, and Tom asked to speak to Chief Truehart.
”The Chief's out of the office until tonight,” said the voice, and Tom saw Spychalla leaning back in his boss's chair, pumping his muscles to make his belt creak.
”Could you give me a time?”
”Who is this?” Spychalla asked.
”I want to give you some information,” Tom said. ”The stereo equipment and everything else stolen in the burglaries this year is being stored in an old tool and die shop on Summers Street. There's a Polish name over the door.”
”Who are you?” Spychalla asked.
”One of the guys is still there, so if you go to Summers Street you can get him.”
”I'm unable to respond to anything but emergencies, on account of being alone here, but if you'll leave your name and tell me how you got this information....”
Tom took the phone away from his ear and stared at it in frustration. He heard Spychalla's voice saying, ”This is that kid out at Eagle Lake, isn't it? The one who thinks the Chief's mother is a burglar.”
He put the phone to his mouth and said, ”No, my name is Philip Marlowe.”
”Where are you, Mr. Marlowe?”
Tom hung up. He wanted to go upstairs and hide under the bed.
He locked the front door, then walked across the length of the lodge and locked the door to the deck. Then he walked nervously around the sitting room for a time, and when the house made its noises, looked out the front windows to see if Jerry had come up on the porch. He went back into the sitting room and called Lamont von Heilitz, who was not at home.
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