Part 27 (1/2)

I pushed open the door to the coach and looked down the rows of Pullman seats. She was there, looking out the window into the darkness. I started toward her, but thought better of it. There were a couple of dozen pa.s.sengers between her and me. I couldn't do anything here, now, anyway. I dropped into a scungy seat, and puffs of dust went into the air.

I slid down and took off my right shoe. The twenty was folded neat against the instep. It was all I'd put aside. But I knew the conductor would be along to punch my ticket. And I didn't want to get caught like Jed Parkman. I wanted my fare to be paid.

We'd see about it in Kansas City.

It was a change. Riding inside.

She went to a phone booth and dialed a place without looking up the number. I waited. She went out to stand in front of the terminal. After a while a car with two women came up, and she got in. I went dark and opened the back door and slid in. They looked around and didn't see anything in the shadows back there, and the heavyset truck d.y.k.e driving said, ”Now what the h.e.l.l was that?” and the pimply one with the plastic hair, the one in the middle, reached over the seat back and thumbed down the lock.

”Wind,” she said.

”What wind?” the truck said. But she pulled out.

I always liked K.C. Nice ride. Even in winter. But I didn't like the women. Not one of them.

They drove out, almost to the Missouri border, toward Weston. I knew a bourbon distillery out there. Best ever made. The truck pulled in at a big house set apart from slummy-looking places on a street with only one comer light. Wh.o.r.e house. Had to be. It was.

I didn't understand, but I'd by G.o.d certainly find out soon. I'd arrived, but Jed was still traveling.

The truck said, ”You pay the girl.”

I picked out the tall, slim one in the harem pants and halter top. She couldn't be smart, I thought.

With a face like that, to wind down in a crib was some kind of special stupid. Or something else.

We went upstairs. The room was like any bedroom. There were stuffed animals on the bed, a giraffe with pink Day-Glo spots, a koala, floppy gopher or muskrat, I can't tell them apart. She had a photo of a movie star stuck in the frame of the bureau mirror. She took off the harem pants and I said, ”We'll talk.” She gave me a look I knew. Another freako. ”That's two bucks extra,” she said. I shook my head.

”Five should cover everything.”

She shrugged, and sat down on the edge of the bed, her thin legs straight out in front of her.

We stared at each other.

”Why'd you send Jed to h.e.l.l?”

Her head snapped up on her neck and she quivered like a hound on scent. She didn't even know how to ask me.

”You get the h.e.l.l out of here!”

”I've got five bucks worth of something coming.”

She bounced up off the bed, and went straight across the room. She was screaming before the door was open: ”Bren! Bren! C'mon, Bren! Help up here!”

I heard the foundations of the house shake and the rumble of artillery on the next hill, and then something big and hairy came at me. He had to come through the door sidewise. I put up my hands and that was all. He carried me straight across the room, into the bureau. My back snapped against the edge of the bureau and he bent me till everything started to slip up toward the ceiling. The girl ran out, still shouting.

When she was gone I ended it for him.

There was a trellis outside the window. I went down until the ivy ripped loose and I fell the rest of the way.

That night I slept on the front porch of the house next door, in the glider, watching the ambulance and then the police cars come and go. There were two unmarked police cars that stayed very late. I don't think they were on duty.

I waited two days, sleeping on the front porch of the house next door. I'd have gone dark more than I did, but there were three empty lots between me and the wh.o.r.e house, and the people with the front porch had gone away for a while. I suppose on a winter vacation, maybe. There was plenty of weed and gra.s.s around, and I let snow melt in an empty milk bottle. At night I'd go dark and steal Hydrox Cookies and milk and beef jerky from a 24-hour market. I don't eat much, usually. Missed coffee, though.