Blood and Rain Page 13

  * * *

  The light in the kitchen comes on and Julia Richardson is standing across the room from me. Felicia her daughter stands beside her. Julia is looking tall and proud, her chocolate skin almost seems to glow. Felicia looks very much like her mother, only about five inches shorter. Neither of them is smiling.

  "I see that you are chasing death again," Julia says so quietly it is almost a whisper.

  "It's what I do," I answer and for no reason that I know of my heart starts pounding hard in my chest. It feels like I've run a long distance. I feel what is almost a sense of panic settle over me.

  Felicia smiles, "Do you want to play some chess?" she asks and points to the table in front of me.

  I now see that a chess set is on the table. The set is made of white and black marble. The pieces are large fine detailed sculptures of skeletons.

  Felicia's smile now looks strangely hungry. "It makes no difference who wins," she says almost giggling. "The end is the same."

  A hand touches my shoulder and I see that Kira Brooks, my girlfriend who now lies in a grave, is standing beside me.

  She kisses me on the cheek. Her lips are large and warm. "They will join me soon," she says and the skin on her face turns to dust and falls away to reveal a grinning skull beneath.

  I scream and jump to the side.

  Julia and Felicia start laughing and their skin starts melting from their bodies.

  They both start chanting together, "Our turn soon! Our turn soon!"

  I scream again and run into a wall.

  My eyes open and I'm staring at the linoleum floor that I have fallen onto. The sun is streaming in through the sliding glass door.

  I come awake with a jarring suddenness. I almost spring to my feet. The house around me is quiet. The only sound is the chirping of birds outside.

  It's not easy but I make myself calm down. My breathing slows down and my heart stops racing. I just can't believe it. I had actually fallen asleep in a guy's house that I came out to kill. If that ain't about the stupidest thing imaginable to do, then I don't know what is.

  So Robert Perry had never come home. A good thing for me too. They might have found me snoring like a baby rhino and with my luck he'd have brought the whole Pontoon Beach Police Department home with him for beers.

  I looked around the kitchen and saw a blank note pad sitting on the counter. There was indention's in the paper where the sheet above had been written on and torn off. Something made me want to know what had been on that note pad.

  A long time ago, I'd seen on an episode of Perry Mason where he'd taken a pencil and rubbed lightly on a note pad just like this. That showed the words that had been written on the page that had been torn off. I started looking through drawers in the kitchen for a pencil. Then I saw stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet, a sheet of paper from the note pad.

  The message on the paper read, FLT.162, Feb, 4, 10:00 P.M. Return, FLT 159, Feb 9, 10:00 P.M.

  Below that was wrote Atlanta Hilton, the telephone number and confirmation number.

  Well, it appears as though my boy isn't coming home anytime soon.

  CHAPTER 35

  NAKED WOMEN AND IDIOTS

  I took the note and went back to my apartment. Sleeping in that chair gave me a real bad backache. I climbed in bed to stretch out for a while and woke up about three hours later feeling a lot better.

  It was about twelve thirty in the afternoon, so I dialed Graham Nash's number. I expected to get his answering machine since it was Saturday, but he answered on the second ring.

  "Graham," he said.

  "John Dark," I answered. "Subject left town."

  "Go get him," Graham said.

  "It'll cost an extra thousand to go after him."

  "You're over paid already," Graham said.

  "That's the cost," I said.

  "Do it," Graham said without hesitating. "It will be included in your final payment."

  Both of us hung up without another word.

  I called Lambert Airport and reserved a seat on a flight to Atlanta, Georgia. The flight didn't leave till noon on Sunday, the next day.

  Without even thinking about it, I called Julia's number. She answered on the third ring.

  "Just wanted to know if you were doing all right," I told her.

  "Thanks," she said, "I'm always doing all right."

  "I've been thinking a lot about you."

  "Yeah," Julia answered. "I think about you some too."

  There was a heavy silence between our words.

  "Stop by," she said. "We'll talk about things."

  "I will," I told her.

  * * *

  About eight o'clock that night I found myself at Johnny's and we played chess for a while. I took revenge for the beating I took the night before. After I whipped him four games straight Johnny announced he wanted to head out.

  There was one drunk in the place half asleep on the bar. We ran him out and Johnny locked up. I rode with Johnny in his car to a place named Dottie's Body Shop. It was a little strip club just outside the city limits of East St. Louis.

  Johnny didn't want to go out to Roxie's tonight. Sushi was working. Ever since they had been sleeping together, Johnny couldn't stand seeing other guys look at Sushi when she took her clothes off on stage.

  She wants Johnny to change his life and he wants her to change hers. It doesn't look like either one of them is going to budge one bit.

  Dottie's Body Shop was actually just little more than a bar with a stage in the center of it where one woman was dancing. The lighting was dim except for a spotlight that was shining on the stage.

  There were three waitresses wearing bikini bottoms and nothing else. All three looked young, almost like children. They tried to smile when they served the drinks but mostly they wore sad expressions on their faces.

  The music was from a jukebox. The sound was tinny and the words were impossible to understand. The drinks were overpriced and watered down. A large black bouncer sat at the bar.

  I ordered a coke.

  "You must be sick tonight," Johnny said.

  "I just don't feel like drinking tonight," I told him.

  There were about twenty guys in the place and they were of the quiet drinking type. No one was at the stage where a slim waiflike girl danced with an energy that was almost sleep inducing.

  "You brought us to an exciting place," I told Johnny. "They should call this the zombie strip club."

  "Well, I got my reasons," Johnny said.

  I know Johnny just wanted to avoid seeing Sushi. He should have chosen a different club.

  We received our drinks and our waitress tried her best to impress us by wiggling and giggling and generally acting like a mentally defective juvenile delinquent. It was pretty pathetic.

  She made me feel so sorry for her I gave her a two dollar tip. The way she wiggled from the excitement of getting that money made me think she just had an orgasm.

  This place was really damn dreary.

  The door swung open and a young guy who looked like a short weight lifter and an older guy who looked like a little old cab driver came in. The young guy went directly to the stage and made a grab for the dancer's leg. She jumped back from him.

  He laughed real loud and yelled, "I want some pussy." The young guy had moved with an athletic grace that showed he wasn't drunk no matter how stupid he was acting.

  The older man sat down beside the younger guy. He was shaking his head in disapproval but was ignored. The bouncer came from the bar and said something to the young guy who just laughed it off and waved it away.

  "That guy is a fucking idiot," Johnny said.

  "Yeah," I answered. "There are enough of them around."

  The girl kept dancing but she kept here distance from the idiot. He kept laughing loudly and acting like an escapee from the monkey house.

  I took a drink of my coke. Johnny took a drink of his beer.

  I looked around the room then looked at Johnny. Johnny looked ar
ound the room then looked at me.

  "Are you going to want to stay here long?" I asked Johnny.

  He held his beer up to me. "I'll drink this," he said. "And we'll get the hell out of here."

  "Next time you want to avoid Sushi," I told Johnny. "We'll just hang out at the mortuary. We could find more life in that place than we could here."

  The girl on the stage danced two more songs and then left.

  I got a bad feeling in my stomach when the bouncer got up on the stage.

  "Christ, don't tell me he's gonna dance," Johnny said. "They can't be that desperate for some entertainment here."

  The bouncer spoke loudly so everyone in the room could hear him.

  He announced, "Now appearing by special arrangement the Jewell of the Orient, the Wild and Wonderful Star of the Far East, directly to you, Sushi."

  I looked at Johnny and Johnny looked at me, "No shit," he said.

  I could tell right then, this night was going downhill.

  Sushi climbed up on the stage and started dancing to her signature song Kung Fu Fighting. She was a small athletic woman wearing a kickboxing outfit complete with hand wraps.

  She started going through her Kung Fu Fighting routine. Sushi was kinda short and kinda skinny but the way she was snapping out punches and kicks she looked like she could really kick some ass.

  Sushi was twirling around and snapping punches and kicks and dropping clothes along the way. Johnny was looking pissed off. Midway through the song Sushi and Johnny locked eyes just after she had dropped her bra.

  Johnny's face expression changed from smoldering anger to extreme sadness. Sushi saw this. Her gaze dropped to the floor and she involuntarily tried to cover herself with her arms. She looked like she was going to cry as she froze beneath the spotlight.

  Johnny stood up and took off his jacket and walked to the stage where Sushi stood like a shamed statue. He started to climb up on a chair and ascend to the stage when the young idiot grabbed his arm.

  "I came here to see a show, motherfucker," he yelled at Johnny.

  He was grabbed by the bouncer who pulled him aside and yelled, "I done told you about being stupid in here boy. You're leaving now!"

  "Fuck you," he yelled back.

  Johnny climbed to the stage and put his jacket around Sushi.

  "Keep a low profile," I heard the old guy with the young idiot say.

  "Well fuck you too!" He yelled at him.

  I was going to make sure Johnny and Sushi wasn't messed with, so I walked toward the stage.

  In the next second I recognized who the young guy was. He wrenched himself out of the bouncer's grip and stepped back one step.

  The bouncer reached for him.

  It was a bad mistake.

  The young idiot was a boxer that I'd seen climb up through the rankings for the last couple years. He was Roy Wilson, a top ten contender for the middleweight title.

  Roy Wilson did a move I'd seen him do at least a dozen times on TV. He dipped and slipped to the left side, then whipped a hard left hook to the bouncer's jaw. The bouncer staggered sideways, then went over a table and crashed to the floor.

  Wilson moved in Johnny and Sushi's direction and I was directly in his way. He had a look on his face that was like bloodlust. He wasn't going to stop until a lot of people were hurt or he was stopped.

  "It's my turn boy," I told Wilson and readied myself for him.

  "I'll fuck you up," he said and came at me.

  But I had a big advantage. I knew who he was, but he didn't know me.

  He stepped in and did his little dip to the side and I was expecting it. When he whipped his left hook I'd already stepped inside it. His left fist went behind my head.

  I shoved him backward with my shoulder. When he straightened up to keep his balance, I blasted him with a straight hard right cross. The punch drove him to his back. Blood spurted from his nose.

  We didn't need a referee to count to tell us that this bout was over.

  * * *

  I drove Johnny's car back to his bar. Johnny left with Sushi in her car.

  They mumbled thanks to me for what I had done to Roy Wilson.

  "No thanks necessary." I told them. "He needed getting knocked on his ass and I enjoyed doing it."

  The last glimpse I got of Johnny and Sushi that night was when I looked back at them and they were sitting in the front seat of Sushi's car. By the light of the dashboard I could see Johnny reach out and tenderly touch Sushi's face with his fingertips. He was saying something to her and it looked like a tear ran down his face.

  CHAPTER 36

  BOOKS

  I checked in at Lambert Airport the next morning at ten thirty. The plane didn't leave until noon. Why was I here so early?

  Sometime in my life, someone had told me you need to check in at least an hour early to take a flight. So it took me five minutes to get through the line and now I had an hour and a half to stand around and feel kind of stupid because I was here so early.

  I went walking around the shops looking at things, souvenirs mostly. What do I need with a souvenir? I live here. I guess I could buy a plastic Gateway Arch and sit it in the window so all the winos could see I have civic pride.

  I went in a little bookstore and started looking through the paperbacks they had there. The science fiction books were of worlds that never were and never would be. Maybe I did need some place to escape to, I thought as I looked at the covers of the books. There were pictures of muscular guys with swords and beautiful women in almost no clothes fighting ugly creatures.

  I do enough fighting in my life I thought, so I don't want to fantasize about it. I went past those.

  Then there were the romances. No, I don't think so.

  The lady behind the counter was the studious type. She looked tall and slender with short chestnut brown hair. She had wire rimmed glasses that set off the color of her green eyes. She had on one of those loose type summer dresses with a flower print on it. It was February outside but in here, spring was in bloom.

  She saw me looking around the store with no success. Now she stood up and held a book out to me. "You look like a mystery man," she said.

  "That I am," I answered and couldn't help but look down her dress at her smallish round breasts as she leaned forward. Just the right size for my mouth, I thought and round just like oranges.

  She blushed and laughed and I took the book from her hand. The name of the book was Hard Road Ahead. The cover showed a man standing outside a Fifty-Seven Chevy Convertible with a vixen of a brunette in the front seat showing off her legs.

  He was holding a pistol in his hand and both of them were looking down a two lane road into the sunset.

  I read the back cover writing out loud to the woman at the counter.

  "He was a two fisted private detective with a dame he couldn't trust. His past was violent and his future is just a long ride down the hard road to nowhere."

  The lady behind the counter smiled and her wire rimmed glasses made her look like she always had something on her mind.

  "It sounds like my biography," I told her and I went to hand her the book back.

  She put her hands up. "No charge," she said. "I brought it from home, but it's not my type of book."

  "Well, Judi," I said seeing her name tag. "Thank you." Then I walked toward the door holding the book. I stopped near the entrance and looked back. Judi had her back to me. Her loose dress outlined the shape of the curve of her back and her ass. She looked good.

  "Hey," I said to her and she looked at me over her shoulder. I held the book up, "Here's looking at you kid," I said in my best Bogart.

  Judi laughed. "If you want anything, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don‘t you? Just put your lips together and blow."

  "That I will."

  * * *

  My flight left on time.

  It was a cloudy, dreary, snowy day, but in no time we were above the clouds. I got a drink from the stewardess. One of those midget bottles of Ja
ck Daniels.

  I opened up my book, Hard Road Ahead, and read for a while. I ended up skimming through it. Max Thursday was the detective. He was hired to follow a man, to catch him cheating on his wife and to report everything to his wife, June. June started an affair with Max and Max found out that June's husband, Juan, was dealing drugs in a big way. The story was set in the border town of Nogales, Arizona. June set Max and Juan against each other. After Max killed Juan, she took off with Juan's money and Max went to jail.

  Well, you just never know about women, I thought and put the book down. You just never know. The only thing that was certain was that Max was a dummy.

  The plane landed and taxied into the terminal.

  CHAPTER 37

  YOU JUST NEVER KNOW

  I had a taxi take me out to the Atlanta Hilton. The first thing I noticed about Atlanta was that it was hot.

  During February in St. Louis the highs are usually a maximum of forty degrees. I got off the plane and it was sixty-five.

  The highway was packed. It took about a half hour to make it to the hotel. I got out of the cab, paid the cabbie, and watched him drive away. I walked to the Ramada across the street carrying the one suitcase I brought with me.

  I checked in at the Ramada and made sure they gave me a room on the first floor. Once, I'd done a job in Detroit and the body was found quicker than I'd anticipated. The police did a door to door search of that hotel and the one next door.

  I was in a second floor room of that hotel next door. There was no way I could explain the unregistered gun I had with me. That night I jumped from the second floor window and nearly broke my ankle, but the police hadn't covered the alley.

  I didn't want to be hopping out of any more windows.

  I opened up my suitcase and set it open on the dresser. Inside the suitcase I arranged my stuff so I could use them from right inside the suitcase. If I had to leave fast I didn't want to be having to pack anything.

  That done, I turned on the TV. There wasn't much on. Just a few old sitcoms and a couple of southern preachers throwing out fire and brimstone. On one channel they were showing that old movie, Gone With The Wind. That's really what I needed to see right now. Some southern asshole trying to fuck some chic who doesn't want to have shit to do with him and then when she finally does want his dick, he doesn't want her pussy anymore. Hell, I'd have fucked her just so I could tell her to hit the bricks just to piss her off worse. But hey, that's just me, and I hadn't been fucked in so long that even the crack of dawn gives me a hard on. And about that movie, frankly my dear I just don't give a damn.