He pointed vaguely. “Can’t miss it. A big brick building with blue doors right in the middle of the shopping area. You want the right and left turns?”
I waved him off on that one. “Naw, let me handle it alone. I have to get settled in first.”
“Sure, Captain. I know how it is.”
“You can skip the ‘captain.’ I’m off the Job now.”
“We’re never off the Job, Captain,” Wilson said seriously.
Everything radiated out from the big early Floridian-styled building with the wooden chiseled sign across its entry that read SUNSET LODGE. I found the block I wanted and followed it halfway to its end. The stucco houses along Kenneth Avenue were one-and-a-half stories, bigger than the other homes I’d passed.
I saw number 820, Bettie Brice’s address, and my foot came off the gas pedal as though somebody had kicked it away. A few kids played beside other houses nearby, but 820 was quiet, empty. The front windows were half-opened and a UPS package nestled between the arms of a rocking chair on the porch. No car was parked in the driveway.
My heart started to hammer again as I eased into the driveway beside 818, then got out slowly and walked up the porch steps to the door. I put the key in the lock, turned it and heard it click open.
The place had a new, recently cleaned smell to it. To me a chair was a seat and a bed was where you slept, but someone had gone to a lot of lengths to furnish this place with truly masculine pieces. Nothing gaudy, nothing oddball, just masculine — with the exception of Bettie’s old four-poster bed and antique desk, which had beat me down here thanks to the movers. Both were in the master bedroom upstairs.
I wandered through the rooms checking every item out. This was a house a man would have lived in, but furnished by a woman who thought a lot of him and his personal likes and dislikes. One of the ex-cops’ wives down here had lent a hand on the decorating front.
In a sealed envelope attached to a few other papers was the description of a “secret” area in the master bedroom where I could store any weapons, ammunition or important documents I had. It had been built into the house itself, an area almost impossible to find unless you had a dog that could sniff out gunpowder or gun oil odors. Somebody had been thinking ahead.
I located the disguised wall section — paneling that was really a door — that revealed a hold for rifles and handguns, shelves for ammunition, ear mufflers for shooting on gun ranges, goggles, latex gloves, and pistol and rifle cleaning equipment. There were two heavy clothes hooks on one wall with a pamphlet selling bulletproof vests hanging from the nearest.
Even before I laid out my clothes, I pulled all my weaponry out of its case and deposited everything except ... .45 and the old shoulder holster in its newly assigned hiding place. My well-oiled piece I kept right where I could reach it in a hurry on the nightstand. The gun and the four-poster bed made an unlikely couple. Of course, once upon a time so had Bettie and me.
Getting my clothes in the dresser drawers and the closet took ten minutes, then I went to the kitchen. Non- perishables were stored in the pantry and the refrigerator held all the staples I’d need for a few days. The cooking utensils were stacked away, some still showing their price tags. Even the bathroom was in working order, with new soap cakes, rolls of toilet paper and plenty of new, white towels.
I tried the toilet bowl and it flushed perfectly. The faucets poured out clean, clear water and the drinking cups had paper hoods draped over them. Thomas Brice had made sure of everything.
I hoped he had made sure of tomorrow. I’d be seeing her then. When I thought of it I had to take a deep breath and hold it for half a minute. By then my heart rate had returned to normal.
The drive down had been more tiring than I had expected. My eyes were heavy and as early as it was I hopped into the shower, cleaned up, brushed my teeth and got into bed.
Some dreams are impossible to remember. They get scrambled and exist beyond comprehension. This dream was different. Bettie was outside my door. I could smell her perfume. She was staring at my door and never noticed the black draped figure tiptoeing up the porch stairs behind her. He was carrying a longbladed knife in one hand and the other was stretched out to muffle any sound she tried to let out.
I pulled and twisted but the knob wouldn’t turn and just before I could let out an agonizing howl of despair my eyes flew open and I muffled the yell that nearly came out of me.
Sweat had drenched me. My pulse rate was incredible. It was five minutes before I went back to normal. This time I forced myself to sleep.
It was still dark when I awoke. In the east the sky was barely showing the first edges of light and I knew that in an hour a new time of life would begin for me.
I made coffee, had two cups, then got dressed, climbing into a short-sleeved sweatshirt and my old khakis and sandals and went out on the porch to watch the sun come up. In New York it would be late morning before it rose above the apartment rooftops.
From next door I heard the first bark of a large dog, a short, throaty good morning kind of sound the big ones make to get their owner out of the sack. Then there was just the muted murmur of a lovely girl saying something sweetly unintelligible to her canine pet and the wild beating in my chest was almost painful because I knew it was her! All I needed was any sound. One small sound and now I
But all I could do was ease myself to the edge of the old wooden rocking chair and sit there, immobilized by what was about to happen. I had lain in the wet grass outside Buck Head Benny’s shack where he was holed up with three of his gang of damned killers all armed with AK’s and sawed-off twelve gauge shotguns, looking for more cops to kill. My backup was still a mile away and all I had was ... .45 with four shots left in the clip and their door swung open with a tiny creaking noise and they all came out too fast. They were ready but they didn’t know where I was until Buck Head Benny spotted me and raised the AK in my direction, but before his finger could tighten on the trigger I took him down and he spun into a crazy twist, the AK going into its staccato chatter with the spasmodic yank on the trigger dying men make and the chopper took out all of his killer buddies behind him.
Her door swung open and the dog came out, a huge beast for a racing greyhound. And he heard me. He didn’t just sense me. His ears twitched as he picked up the sound of my breath, but there was no angry retort in his posture. For a second he was immobilized and I saw her hand come out, reach down and felt the stiffness in his stance and she said, “Tacos, is someone here?”
Only ten feet separated us. A million miles of ten feet and I had to squeeze in all those twenty years of thinking and dreaming about what I had thought was completely lost, then suddenly face it up close, only ten feet away.
She hadn’t changed at all.
Her beauty was still untouched — shoulder-length brunette hair, the narrow oval face, the pert nose, the ripe full mouth. In a pink short-sleeved top and white shorts and open-toe sandals, she was fresh and vital and tanned, a long-legged beauty still seeming to emanate an invisible radiance and I knew it was something that only I would see.
I said in an unhurried voice, “I’m your new neighbor, miss...”
And something odd happened to her face.
It was a bee-sting reaction without any pain, a brief moment of total consternation, and if I weren’t very much aware of what was happening, I wouldn’t have noticed before she quickly returned to a perfectly normal stance.
A voice she hadn’t heard for twenty years had been suddenly awakened in her memory, but it didn’t last long. How many times before could that have happened? When another few seconds passed I knew that she had frozen the episode in her memory banks.
“I’m Jack Stang, ma’am. It’s nice to see you.”
My voice located my face for her and she looked directly at me without seeing a damn thing. There was no opaqueness to the pupils of her big hazel eyes. They were the same color she’d always had and when she blinked she kept every expression absolutely normal.
Few would ever suspect that she was totally blind.
