“Miss those little bitches,” he said, unlit cigarette still in his teeth. “Go all night, fit like a goddamn glove.”
The Zippo’s flame was blue and the fluid smelled sharp.
Once Schneider had a good lungful of smoke, he expelled it against my shoulder.
“Work ’em right,” he confided, “you’d always leave a little blood on the sheets. . . . Souvenir.”
I watched him put the lighter back in his pocket. Left-handed.
He smiled, raw mouth peeling wide as the skin around his eyes crinkled up.
“Nice tits,” he said. “Bet I could make you beg for it.”
I smiled back. “Why don’t I just go see how those two’re getting on.”
Schneider drew his heels tight. His dismissal was silent, just both hands arcing through a matador’s veronica pass.
I shoved into the crowd. Didn’t start to shake until I got halfway across the sticky floor, praying for a window in that damn bathroom.
Behind me he just laughed and laughed.
CHAPTER 20
There was a window, but there was also an audience: a woman rehabbing her spiral-permed coxcomb with moist fingertips.
I stepped up to the vacant basin. The handicapped stall was latched and I didn’t want to draw attention to any group activity therein. I considered sliding under from next door, but it, too, was ocupado.
Scoping out the window by mirror, I plotted defenestration technique. If you stood on the back of the nearest wall-mount toilet, you could maybe hoist up onto the partition and rotate on your belly to get both feet out. The opening was so chintzy-ass small a five-year-old couldn’t have turned around in the thing, and headfirst was a nasty proposition, that high up.
It could work, if we had the bathroom to ourselves for five minutes. If we tied Vomit Girl to a toilet and taped her mouth shut.
“Jeezum Crow, Arlene,” Perm Doctor called out, “what’re you, makin’ sculpture in there?”
“Them damn tacos,” Arlene lamented.
“Should’ve had the wings,” clucked Perm, touching up the trompe-l’oeil slash of brown beneath each cheek.
Arlene flushed and slammed out of her stall, horning in on the mirror.
“You just better hope Mike and Courtney’re still asleep, out in that car,” said Perm.
“Told you,” Arlene shot back as they bustled out, “once they’re in jammies, you won’t hear a peep till morning.”
The door swung closed behind them.
“Nice loafers,” said Ellis, from inside the stall.
“How’s our friend?” I asked.
“Napping.”
“Good. We need to get out this window.”
“Your little chat was productive, then?”
“Schneider thinks we’re carpooling. I’d . . . ah . . . prefer not. You guys finish that vial?”
“Oh please. I am so sick of cocaine,” said Ellis, opening the stall door. “Damn ‘War on Drugs’ made it so cheap it’s tacky. . . .”
“We gotta go.”
She eyed the aperture. “Cool,” she said, walking into the stall beneath.
Ellis hopped onto the back of the toilet. She launched herself up so she could swing a leg over the partition, and shoved at the window.
“Thing’s painted shut,” she said. “Any chance you’re holding a Swiss Army knife?”
“Top of my bureau.”
“So look in her purse.”
I lifted Vomit Girl’s head with a safecracker’s delicacy, then unzipped her bag.
She didn’t travel light: Certs, Suave mousse, toothpicks in cellophane . . . cardboard nail file, rat-tail comb, tube of Clearasil . . . My arm started to cramp. Woman’s head weighed more than a bowling ball.
“Christ,” I said, “she could, like, launch an assault on Everest.”
. . . Little redhead girl’s school picture in a clear plastic sleeve, bottle of white shoe polish with a nurse on the label . . .
“Anything?” asked Ellis.
“Crochet hook,” I said, “roach clip with feathers, Secret roll-on . . .”
Someone pushed the bathroom door in a few inches, then thought better of it.
“Oh my God,” said Ellis. “Find me something or I’m going to kick out this damn glass.”
I smiled. “Bingo.”
“What?”
“Razorblade.” I held it in my teeth and shoved the rest of the crap back in the purse.
I lowered Vomit Girl’s head by the smoothest increments I could manage, wrist sparkling as blood shot back into my hand. She brought a fist up to her mouth, but didn’t open her eyes.
I stood up and walked the blade to Ellis.
She snicked it along the foot of the window frame, sliced down the left-hand edge, then the right. “Latex. We lucked out.”
Ellis punched at the base with both hands. The window popped out and up, awning style. “Et voilà,” she said.
She scooted back, then swung her legs up, toes pointed, to scissor neatly onto her belly.
“Slick,” I said.
“Bet your sweet ass.”
Ellis pushed out fast, hand over hand. She paused, elbows on the sill.
“Hey, know what?” she whispered, grinning down like the Cheshire Cat.
“What?”
“You’re prettier,” she said, “but I’m thinner.”
Then she dropped like a stone down a well.
I had one foot up on the toilet when hands latched onto my earthbound ankle.
“Hell you think you’re going?” croaked Vomit Girl.
“Home,” I said. “I’m tired.”
She pulled herself under the partition, using me for leverage. “Better not be a damn thing missing from my pocketbook.”
“Your razorblade. Stuck right up here in the window frame.”
She dug her nails into my flesh. The busted one hurt like a bitch. “What’s with you sneakin’ out, then?”
I shrugged. “Your boyfriend’s creepy.”
She slitted her eyes, working that ragged nail sideways and deeper. “Yeah?”
“No offense.”
“Tell him go get fucked,” she said. “S’what I’d do.”
I thought about kicking loose, yelling for Ellis to get the truck while I hauled myself out the window.
Then I realized the keys were in my pocket, which meant she couldn’t get any kind of head start unless I tossed them out into the dark scrub behind the bar.
Then I realized the keys meant we hadn’t needed the razorblade at all.
Then I had an attack of conscience.
I looked down at Vomit Girl. “You live with that guy?”
She stiffened. “None of your business.”
“It’s just . . .” I faltered, groping for something that would sink in.
“Spit it out,” she said.
“That picture in your purse? Pretty little girl, all those gorgeous red curls?”
“Tiffy,” she nodded, face going soft.
Her daughter, then, but not Schneider’s. Tiffy’s dad was black.
“What he said to me tonight?” I said. “He reminded me of this one stepfather. . . .”
Vomit Girl’s eyes clicked back to mine.
Maybe, I thought, you’ll do for your kid what you won’t for yourself.
“Listen . . .” I said, “promise me something?”
She swallowed hard. Didn’t blink.
“I want to know you won’t leave Tiffy alone with him,” I said.
Her throat turned pink, then her face.
I kept staring at her, hard.
“Ever,” I said, aching right then to take her with us, to go get her kid so they’d both be safe.
Vomit Girl shook her head. “He loves her like his own,” she said. “Buys her stuff. Clothes. All these books from when he was a kid. Reads her stories every night. Brushes her hair. Treats us like gold—”
Books. Stories.
“And does he make sure she’s asleep,” I asked, “befo
re he starts slamming you around?”
She took one hand off my leg and touched her shoulder, covering the spot right where I’d seen that bruise.
“You don’t know shit,” she said.
“Oh, sweetie,” I said. “Shit’s what I know best. What I know by goddamn heart.”
“Just pissed ’cause he wouldn’t look at you twice.”
Someone banged on the door, then I heard Schneider boom, “Hell’s taking so damn long?”
I kicked free and launched myself out that window, headfirst.
Ellis, bless her unsuspecting soul, broke my fall.
“Chrissake,” she said as we ran for the truck. “Just ’cause I said I was thinner didn’t mean you had to go prove it.”
The truck’s back end broke wide, coming out of STD’s, but I punched it and we straightened out.
How long would it take Vomit Girl to go narc? I’d been stupid to piss her off.
I looked in the rearview mirror. Narrow lanes behind, everything black beyond the taillights’ reach.
I wanted to get the hell away from STD’s, onto something more anonymous than the skinny old turnpike. We had a good few miles through the woods yet, no side roads to duck down.
I checked again. Saw a flicker of light way back just as we dropped into a hollow.
Up the next rise and there it was. Closer. But the mirror was vibrating. I couldn’t tell what I wanted most to know.
“Look out the back,” I said.
“What?”
“Is that one light or two?”
“Don’t tell me,” said Ellis, “Schneider’s a biker.”
“How many?”
“Can’t see it now,” she said.
We were coming up on a curve. I tapped the brakes going in and then gunned it.
“If you thought he was gonna come after us,” she said, “why the hell’d you talk to Vomit Girl so long?”
“She’s got a daughter,” I said. “They live with him.”
“And?”
“And I think he killed those girls himself,” I said.
Ellis was silent.
“I mean,” I went on, “the idea of a little kid . . .”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
She was still looking out the back. I told myself it would be good luck if I didn’t check the mirror. I held my breath down the straightaway, counting silent thousands like I was waiting for thunder.
“There it is,” she said.
“It?”
“It,” she said. “One light.”
CHAPTER 21
Ellis kept checking the cab’s rear window.
“Not gaining,” she said, “but keeping up.”
I just looked ahead, willing us forward. I could see lights. Civilization, so to speak.
“Oh my God!” said Ellis.
“What?”
“It’s a van,” she said, bouncing on her end of the seat. “With a headlight out.”
She turned around and laughed and collapsed against the door.
We didn’t speak, not until we were rocketing north on the raised stretch of 81, past SU’s shoulder of hill.
It was overcast, sky aglow from the city beneath us. I slotted into a tight pack of cars with Ontario plates—you want to go fast, tailgate a homebound Canadian.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“Sorry for landing on you.”
“Sorry for saying you were less than svelte. Which is not true in any meaningful sense,” she said.
“It’s okay. You pretty much only implied.”
“Yeah, well. What are friends for?”
“Breaking one’s fall.”
“Exactly.”
I checked the mirror.
“See him?” Ellis looked out the back.
I shook my head. We were both twitchy with adrenaline.
She crossed her legs, started jiggling a foot. “So, you really figure he did it?”
“Not like he definitely did it, just more like could have.”
“Which you weren’t thinking earlier. Going in.”
“Would’ve told you.”
“So now he might have because?”
Eye-flick to the mirror. “I’m not sure anybody would seriously buy it.”
“I would.”
“Okay,” I said. “He’s left-handed. He was in Vietnam really early—1964.”
“He told you that?”
“It was on the lighter Vomit Girl made me take out. One side had a city name on it, ‘Hue,’ with ‘Double Vet’ under it. The other said ‘Get more in ’64’ with this picture—”
“And it would be good if he did it, right? I mean, we’re hoping for that. As an outcome.”
“I’d be pretty psyched, sure . . .”
She nodded.
“Okay, so Hue, that early?” I continued. “I think you’re talking up there—Ultima fucking Thule. Like you’d have to be all Martin Sheen, persona-wise. Jungle patrol. Face paint. Throw a rat on the barbie . . .”
We were coming up on the MONY Towers. They had masts up top with colored lights on them, supposedly coded to the weather. Orange now, whatever that meant. There was some rhyme about it, but nobody could tell me how it went.
Taillights flashed ahead and I braked. “So maybe Schneider knew the kind of techniques Kenny said the killer used—how the girls’ throats were cut, stuff like that.”
“Which is good because you like this cousin.”
“Like like?” I looked straight ahead. My cheeks had to be flaming.
She shook her head, tsk-tsking. “Christ. You are completely transparent.”
“He was just always really kind to me. . . . As a kid.”
“Give it up,” she said.
“Seriously.”
“You’re doing that thing with your hair.”
I immediately put both hands on the wheel. “Nuh-uh.”
“That thing,” she said. “That little annoying flippy thing.”
“I told you about the fairy tale, and the thing with the silhouette guy, right?” I asked. “The old German poem with the thumbs?”
“Struwwelpeter,” she said. “Yes, you did.”
“Okay, so Vomit Girl said Schneider buys all these books for her daughter, things he liked as a kid, and that he reads to her every night. . . .”
“He must be a total babe, your cousin.”
“Ellis . . .”
“No, really,” she said. “ You are so not over this guy.”
“Dude, shut up.”
She turned toward me, grin predatory in the dashboard glow.
“I’m driving,” I said. “I’m not going to look at you. I can see you out of the corner of my eye, and you’re being an asshole.”
She crossed her arms.
Kept jiggling that foot.
I sighed.
“He has an eyepatch,” I said. “Tall with dark hair, kind of curly. Taught me to dance.”
“You must have totally wanted to jump him.”
I ignored her, me and my Canadian posse flying past an entirely too sedate Crown Vic. Methodist Blue, Dean would call it.
“What were you,” she said, “like twelve?”
“You do it too,” I said. “That flippy thing.”
“It’s universal. See a guy you’d drop trou for, play with your hair. Some hardwired ovary deal. Even thinking about it.”
I gripped the wheel.
“Nice try, fighting the impulse,” she said. “Your knuckles went all white.”
First sign for Adams and Harrison. I flipped the turn signal.
Ellis sighed. “Just wanted to point out that you may be lacking a certain amount of objectivity.”
“Duh.”
“And that you should probably bring me along if you’re going to talk to him.”
“Party at Bonwit’s,” I said. “Next weekend. Lapthorne’s already RSVP’d.”
“Perfect,” she said. “What are we wearing?”
“Costumes.”
<
br /> I shot down the ramp, toward that circular Holiday Inn. Nipped through an intersection just as the light went yellow.
“You sure you want to keep going?” I said. “After tonight?”
“He straight?”
I stopped for a red light and looked her full in the face. Lifted an eyebrow, Belushi-perfect.
She stared up toward the headliner. “Oh sure, just because you’re married.”
“You would hit on my most tragically unconsummated huge childhood crush?”
Ellis cleared her throat, arms still crossed. She started drumming her fingers in rapid sequence along her upper arm.
Didn’t look at me. Didn’t have to.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
Tit for tat. There was that guy Pete Schiller, first of all. Not that I’d hit on him . . . And Gary . . . um . . . Gary whatever. In Vermont. Alec didn’t count.
“Only thing—” I started.
She looked at me, mouth tight.
“Those were still his dog tags,” I said, “where they found the girls.”
She tried to keep a straight face but sputtered once and then lost it, cracking up so bad she couldn’t breathe.
“Dude,” I said, “harsh.”
“Totally had you going, though, didn’t I?”
The light turned green.
“Okay,” I said, slamming the stick into first, “yeah. You totally did.”
I hit the gas, went under 690. By the time we passed the Kleen-Food at the foot of Green Street, we were weeping with laughter, practically blind.
“Hey,” she said, hours later, cozy in the bed I’d made up on the sofa.
“Need another pillow?” I walked from lamp to lamp, groping under shades for the little pull-chains, each equipped with ancestral tassel.
Ellis yawned, shaking her head. “What’d ‘Double Vet’ mean, on the lighter?”
“I asked him that. He never told me.”
“So you should find out.”
“Yeah. Could be something.”
“Could be,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Ice water? Anything?”
“Go to bed.”
I extinguished the last bulb. “Sweet dreams.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
By morning, she was gone—an eventuality I’d expected, long used to her habit of arriving without announcement and leaving without a goodbye. Ellis just got too fidgety to be bothered, and I’d never seen her sleep more than five hours, which had made us crappy roommates in the Berkshires.
A Field of Darkness Page 14
