The Walking

by Bentley Little

  "Guess I didn't read that one," Miles admitted.

  Hal shook his head. "Great. I have about a gazillion calls to make."

  "Better break out those quarters," the receptionist said sweetly "I can't tie up my line." 'Thanks." Hal lumbered off toward his cubicle.

  Naomi picked up the handset. "Oh," she said to Miles, almost as an afterthought. "You have a client. She's been waiting about ten minutes. Said Phillip Emmons recommended you."

  Miles nodded in thanks as she pressed a button on the phone and began talking once again. He strode down the wide central aisle toward his workstation. Phillip Emmons.

  Old Phil could always be counted on to throw some work his way. It had been awhile since he'd seen his friend, and he promised himself that he'd give Phil a call later in the week and the two of them would get together.

  The woman waiting in the client's chair of his cubicle sat perfectly still, staring out the windows of the office at the Hollywood hills. A pretty brunette; wearing a tight blouse with no bra and a short trendy skirt, she saw him coming and stood at his approach, extending a hand.

  Raymond Chandler time.

  "My name's Marina Lewis." He shook her hand. "Miles Huerdeen." The first thing he noticed was a wedding ring, and his hopes, faint as they were, faded. He smiled, motioned for her to sit. "What can

  I do for you, Ms. Lewis?"

  "Call me Marina."

  "Marina." '

  She waited for him to Settle in behind his desk, then took a deep breath. "Phillip Emmons recommended you. I mentioned to him that I was looking for someone that I needed some help..."

  "What's the problem?" Miles said gently.

  She cleared her throat. "My father is being stalked, but the police refuse to do anything about it."

  Miles nodded calmly, professionally, but inside he was

  revved up. Finally a real case. In pulp fiction terms: a gorgeous dame and a targeted old man. What more could he ask for? "Who's after your father?" Miles asked.

  "We don't know. That's what we want you to find out." "How do you know he's being stalked?"

  "We weren't, at first. I mean, there were little clues. He'd come home and the back door would be unlocked, though he was sure that he had locked it. Stuff like that. Things that could have been imagination or coincidence. But last week, right before we came out here to visit him, he got a phone call from a woman who said he was marked for death. She described the inside of his house perfectly, like she'd been there, and said she was going to kill him in his sleep.

  And then, a few days later, she called again and started saying weird stuff about things that no one would know but people in our family.

  Then, two days ago, he was nearly run over by. a black car with blacked-out windows that swerved to hit him as he was crossing the street. He only escaped by leaping onto the sidewalk and jumping into the doorway of a jewelry store."

  "You told this to the police? She nodded. What did they say?"

  She opened her small handbag, drew out a card, and passed it across the desk to him. "I talked to this guy, Detective Madder, and he said there was nothing they could do until something more concrete occurred.

  He wrote down the information about the phone call, took a description of the car, and then basically told us that it was going in a file and wasn't going to be acted on. Then he gave me this card and told me to keep him informed. My father didn't even want to go to the police, I convinced him to, and after that he became adamant about handling this by himself. So I'm here on my own. He doesn't know anything about this."

  "We can't provide protection," Miles said. "We're an investigative firm, not a security company--"

  "I know," she interrupted. "I just want you to find out who's doing this and why. After that we'll either go to the police with what we have or... or figure out something else."

  Find out who's doing this and why.

  As juvenile and stupid as it was, he felt energized. He was in his own movie now, and this made up for all those boring bureaucratic cases he was ordinarily forced to handle. He took out a pen and notebook.

  "Your father lives where?"

  "Santa Monica. 211 Eighth Street."

  "And you and your husband?"

  "Arizona. We're only out here for a few weeks. My husband's a writer, and he's meeting with some movie people about optioning his book."

  "So how much longer will you be staying in California?" "Probably another week or so." She paused. "Unless something else happens. I'm a teacher and I'm supposed to be back at work on January second, but if my dad's in danger... "We'll try to clean this up quickly." Miles smiled at her and she smiled back. "Your husband's a writer, huh? I assume that's how you met Phil Emmons."

  Her face brightened. "Yes! Phillip's been a godsend. Gordon met him at a horror convention in Phoenix last year, and he's the one who helped him find a movie agent. We're only out here today because of Phillip."

  Miles smiled. "Yeah. He's quite a guy."

  Marina cleared her throat embarrassedly. "He mentioned something about 'reasonable rates." I don't know how much you charge, but we can't afford too much. If you could give me an... estimate, let me know what we're looking at..."

  "Don't worry, about it. We"

  Naomi stuck her head around the corner of the cubicle. "Miles, phone."

  He raised his hand. "I'm with a client. Get a number and tell them that I'll call them back."

  "Miles, it's an emergency. Your father. He's in the hospital."

  He was instantly up and out of his chair. "Take care of her!" he shouted to Hal, motioning back toward his cubicle as he ran up the aisle toward the front desk. His heart seemed to have stopped, and his chest hurt by the time he reached Naomi's chair because he'd been holding his breath. He let out a huge exhalation of air, reached over the desk, and grabbed the phone, pressing the blinking light on the console. "Hello?" .... "Mr. Huerdeen

  His heart was pumping again. Not just pumping, pounding. He could barely hear over the sound of the blood thumping in his head. "What is it? What's happened?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Huerdeen, but your father has had a stroke."

  Stroke.

  It was not something he had expected, not anything he had ever thought about or even considered. Miles' mouth felt dry, and for a second he was afraid that he'd forgotten how to speak, but the words finally came out, weak and fearful. "How... how did it happen?"

  "He was at a grocery store when he collapsed. The manager immediately called the paramedics, and they rushed him here. We found your name and this contact number in his wallet."

  "Oh, God," Miles breathed. "Oh, Jesus." He leaned back against the wall for support, closing his eyes. He had a sudden picture in his mind of his father reaching for a can of soup and failing on the linoleum floor, taking shelves of groceries down with him, dying among strangers who had come

  to the store to buy food and were now dispassionately watching an old man take his last breath on their way to the produce department.

  "He's stable right now, but he's not conscious, and we're keeping him monitored in the CCU. He's most likely suffered some brain damage, although we won't know the extent of it until--- ..... "What hospital?"

  Miles demanded.

  "St. Luke's on--' ....... I'll be right there." Miles slammed down the phone just as Naomi reached her desk. "Have Hal take over that client for me." He hit the elevator's Down button. "I'm not sure when I'll be back."

  "Is your father all right?"

  "He's had a stroke." Miles slammed his palm against the button again, as if trying to hurry the elevator, but when there was no immediate response, he sprinted toward the stairwell door. "I'll call!" he yelled back to Naomi.

  And then he was in the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, leaping the last few to each landing. On the ground floor, he dashed through the building's lobby and out to his car in the 'adjacent lot.

  St. Luke's. That was over on Winnetka, close to home. His dad had probably been shopping at
Ralph's.

  Somehow, knowing where it had happened, knowing the physical layout of the location, brought it home to him, made it more immediate, less abstract, and the panic flared within him. Thankfully, though, it did not seem to impair his judgment or coordination. He did not have to fumble through his key ring to fred the car key, did not have to work with shaking hands to get the car started. If anything, he seemed to be thinking clearer than usual. Everything seemed to be in sharp focus, he had total control over his movements and thought processes, and he sped out of the parking lot, past

  a Salvation Army Santa, and onto Wilshire, zooming effortlessly into a convenient hole in the traffic.

  His luck did not hold.

  All of the streets leading to the Ventura freeway seemed to be under construction, and it was like one of those horrific stress dreams. He'd sit in congestion for two blocks, then finally turn down a side street until he hit another major thoroughfare, only to have the same thing happen all over again. It took him twenty minutes to drive six miles, and by the time he reached the freeway, he was a nervous wreck. His jaw hurt from clenching his muscles, and through his mind ran the dozens of death scenarios he'd imagined while waiting for stoplights to change.

  It was clear sailing from then on out, however, and ten minutes later, he was in the hospital elevator, heading up to the Critical Care Unit.

  His chest felt tight, and though he knew it was only from stress, he could, not help thinking that if he was having a heart attack, this was the best place for it to happen.

  There was a nurses station backed by a wall of monitors just past the elevator, and Miles quickly walked over to the one person who looked up at his entrance, a young Asian man wearing blue scrubs. "I'm lookhg for my father, Bob Huerdeen. He had a stroke and he's supposed to be in the

  CCU."

  It came out as a single frightened sentence, and he was half expecting to be told the worst, but the man was nodding before he'd even finished speaking, walking quickly around the counter to join Miles. "He's in room twelve. Follow me."

  Room twelve was halfway down the hallway and, like seemingly all of the other rooms on this floor, had a big window opening onto the corridor so that the medical personnel passing by could do instant visual checks on the patients inside. Miles saw his father before he even walked

  into the room. The old man was hooked up to machines, IV tubes had been inserted into one extended arm, and he lay there, still and unmoving, eyes closed, as though he was dead.

  Miles followed the--intern? doctor? nurse? attendant?--through the open doorway into the room. He'd steeled himself for an onslaught of emotion, but none came. There was no sadness, no tears, no anger, only the same fear, dread, and panic that he'd been experiencing since Naomi first told him his father was in the hospital.

  Inside, the room was silent, the only sound the persistent beep of heart-monitoring equipment. Miles cleared his throat before speaking, and the noise was deafening in the stillness. When he spoke, his voice was a reverent whisper. "Are you the doctor?"

  The other man shook his head, whispering also. "I'm an intern. The doctor is on his rounds. He should be back in fifteen minutes or so, but I could get him if you want."

  "So there's nothing.." life-threatening? I mean, my dad doesn't have to have emergency surgery or something?"

  "Your father almost died. Could have died. As it is, he may have suffered some serious brain damage. But we have him on a blood thinner, and he's being given medication that will break down any clots."

  Miles shook his head. Look I don't understand. Is that what caused the stroke?"

  "A stroke usually occurs when blockage in one of the arteries breaks off, travels through the bloodstream, and becomes lodged in one of the blood vessels of the brain. This is what happened to your father.

  There's not much we can do about the stroke that already occurred, although the doctor will talk to you more about that when he sees you.

  The anticoagulant and blood thinner he's being administered are to prevent additional strokes. They often come in waves, the clots dislgdging sequentially or in pieces, or dislodging other

  blockages farther down the line, and this hopefully will prevent that from occurring."

  Miles was listening, but he was looking at his father. He turned back toward the intern only when the other man stopped speaking.

  "Would you like me to get the doctor?" "Yes," Miles admitted. "Would you?"

  The intern smiled. I'll be back in a few minutes." There was a chair against the wall by the foot of the bed, and Miles pulled it to his dad's side, sitting down. Lying there, eyes closed, a tube shoved up his nose, the man on the bed did not even look like his father. Not only did he seem older and thinner, but the features of his face appeared to be altered. His nose looked larger than it did ordinarily, his chin longer and more pointed. The teeth that were exposed between pale, partially open lips were much too big and much too white, out of proportion with the rest of the face. Only the single exposed hand, connected to the arm in which bottled nutrients and medication were being intravenously fed, seemed familiar.

  He recognized that hand. The sight of it, for some reason, brought on the tears that previously wouldn't come. Looking at the veined, mottled skin, the bony, excessively lined knuckles, he could conjure up images of the past that were not prompted by the still face, the sheeted body. He saw that hand helping him climb the metal ladder out of the YMCA pool, spanking him when he shot the Werthers' dog in the butt with a BB gun, showing him how to tie knots for his Boy Scouts merit badge, dribbling a basketball.

  It was this that made him cry, that triggered the emotional outburst for which he'd been prepared .......... He touched his dad's hand, patted it, held it.

  And when the doctor came in, five minutes later, he was still crying.

  Then

  The girl sat trembling in the darkness, her frightened features only partially illuminated by the flickering orange glow of the fireplace.

  Her hands were clasped tightly together, and though her fingers moved nervously, they did not leave her lap.

  "There is nothing to be afraid of," William said kindly. He smiled at the girl, trying to calm her nerves, but this only seemed to make her more agitated. "It will not be painful," he told her. "It is a very simple procedure."

  The girl's hands clenched and unclenched in her lap. Under any other circumstances she would probably be very pretty. Now she just looked troubled and scared. She took a deep breath, a sound audible even over the crackle of the burning log in the fireplace. "Will" she began. She coughed nervously, cleared her throat. "Will you have to see me?"

  William shook his head. "Not if you don't want me to," he said softly.

  "But I must warn you that it will come out. I can take care of that for you, but if you do not want me to see you, you will have to get rid of it yourself." He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. "It will be embarrassing for you, but it will be easier if I do it all. I promise I will not look at you as a man. If it makes you feel any better, I have seen many other young women the same way."

  "Who?" the girl asked, her fear temporarily overtaken by curiosity'.

  William shook his head. "I cannot tell you."

  She thought for a moment, then met his eyes for the first time. "You will not tell about me, either?"

  "Not upon pain of death." He stood, went to the window, parted the curtain. The land outside was empty, tall grasses swaying in the chill winter wind that blew across the plains. In the distance, the flickering gaslights of town shone like yellow stars at the edge of the horizon. He let the curtain fall and walked across the room to the series of shelves next to the bed. Taking out a match, he struck it against the log wall and lit a candle.

  He had a bad feeling about this. As he'd told the girl, he'd done this many times before, but this was different. He could sense it. He'd been run out of towns in the past, had been whipped and beaten. But that was not what was coming here, that was not what he f
oresaw happening. No, this was something else.

  And it frightened him. -The girl's name was Jane, and, like all of them, she was in love. She had given herself to the boy, though her father wanted her betrothed to another--perhaps because her father wanted her betrothed to another--and thanks to that one encounter was now with child. She was not yet showing, but: she had not been visited by the menses twice now, and a, innocent as she was supposed to be, she knew what that meant.

  Like many of them, she had en on the verge of kinin herself when a friend of a friend told Jane about him, an

  William had received a hurriedly written note the next day a badly misspelled missive begging him to put an end to her condition. As always, he had agreed to do so. And that had led her here, to his hut, in the middle of the night.

  He knew that what he was about to do was illegal. And he had been beaten and chased in the past not only for per

  forming such an act but for the way in which he performed it.

  For using magic.

  He looked around his little room. He had been here for over a year. It was the longest time he'd spent anywhere since leaving the East, and he liked the place, liked the people. He'd become a member of this community, and the suspicions that had always seemed to grow up around him elsewhere had failed to materialize here. He had helped some girls, even helped a few men, but this was a strongly Christian town, and those mores had kept people from talking.

  That was about to end. He knew it, he sensed it, and that made him sad.

  It was also going to end badly.

  Violently.

  And that scared him.

  William forced himself to smile reassuringly at Jane, who was still sitting primly in the small chair, her hands clasping and unclasping nervously on her lap.

  "I'd like you to move over to the bed," he suggested. "And you'll have to remove your clothing."