“We call the cops as soon as he goes back inside.”
Stinson stretched, and as he approached a pool of light from an outdoor post, Paul saw that he was fully dressed in heavy boots and a jacket.
“He’s not going out in this,” Wish said. “Not on a bike.”
But he was. He pulled on goggles and a helmet, mounted the Harley, and, indifferent to the hellish commotion of its engine or, more likely, proud of it, revved a couple of times to warm it up and took off down the hill, leaving a drizzle trail.
Paul and Wish jumped back into the car. “Should we call the police?”
“And say what? Tell ’em to go looking for a guy on a motorcycle?” Paul asked, frustrated. “We need him back in his room tucked up tight in bed, or somewhere for more than five minutes so that they can swoop down and grab him without a slipup. Oh, great.” Pea-sized hail pelted Paul’s windshield. His wipers pushed futilely against the onslaught.
“You’re not supposed to eat in bed,” Nina told Bob, who balanced a bowl of tortilla chips and a plate of salsa on the sheet as he talked into the phone. He wore boxers and a towel draped around his neck.
Lately he had begun taking half-hour showers. As his teen years bore down on him, he had fallen into the grip of passions that he understood no better than Nina, passions about everything, from a certain kind of cereal to be eaten every morning for three months, to blue shoelaces ordered off the Net. He had suggested that he would like to dye his hair. His attention span for school subjects had dropped to about five minutes, but he could still surf the Net for hours with an intensity befitting a brain surgeon.
At the same time the blitheness of childhood left him, he began to suffer from a lack of confidence. He believed that he was ugly and socially maladroit, though he was strong and healthy with no particular drawbacks that Nina could see. In fact, she thought he might, with luck and a softening of his lantern jaw, grow up to be an attractive fellow.
However, there were a few years to go between now and then.
“So bye,” he said to the phone, and hung up. He dipped another chip, which dripped onto the sheet. He gave Nina a look.
“Was that a glare?” she said.
“All I did was look at you.”
Nina sat down on the bed. “Could I have some?” They ate a couple of chips. Bob wouldn’t look at her. He picked up the remote and an ancient episode of
Clothes and CDs covered every surface including the floor. She tried not to notice. Her run-in with Kevin had left her fuse short and her nerves shaky. “Was that Nikki?” she said in what she hoped was a casual tone.
“Uh huh.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Fine.” When she waited for more and the silence grew oppressive, he broke, adding, “Working on the Web site for that hard-core band from Sweden.”
“Will you be seeing her soon?”
Bob didn’t answer.
“Is she still doing home-schooling?”
“What do you care? Is that a problem for you?”
“I was just asking.” She had many questions about Nikki but didn’t dare ask them. She would have to find out somehow for herself without trampling further upon this mine-filled earth.
Bob munched on another chip. Hitchcock roamed over to his side of the bed and he patted the dog’s back.
“So how’s the band?”
“Defunkt.”
“What?”
“That’s our band name. Nikki finally came up with it. Like it?”
“It’s kind of unusual,” Nina said. “Hard to spell. But-”
“Defunkt with a
“I do want to encourage your interest in music.” But not your interest in Nikki, she had to add to herself. “Any luck finding a bass player?”
“We’ll find one. Why are you cross-examining me? I confess, I did it to Colonel Mustard in the library. With a drumstick.” He scowled. “This isn’t court, Mom.”
“Bob, all I was trying to do was-”
Bob rolled off the bed. Hitchcock jumped up to meet him. “Think I’ll take a shower. Lay there as long as you want, Mom. Eat all the chips you want.” Mockery lurked in the words.
Why, you’re getting damn disrespectful, she said to his back as he disappeared into the bathroom. But she didn’t say it out loud. A bad influence was at work, no question, and this bad influence was cute, and maybe she’d be famous someday like Courtney Love, but Bob wasn’t going to be part of Nikki’s band much longer. Defunkt would soon live up to its name, she decided.
Hitchcock took a running leap onto Bob’s bed and the salsa did the merengue all over the sheets. Nina pushed the dog off. She wadded the sheets up into a dirty ball and tossed them into the hall. As she remade the bed, Bob whistled in the shower “The Little White Duck.” The children’s tune must have stuck in his brain from Andrea’s baby party.
She followed along with the whistling. The white duck on a lily pad, visited by a green frog, and then a buzzing black bug.
And along came the hissing red snake to frighten the other critters away.
What snakes were they turning up?
Unable to answer that question, she went back to whistling the innocent children’s song with its ominous undertone. Opening Bob’s window, she looked out into a late-night storm. Hail battered the roof like falling pebbles.
Paul gripped the wheel, struggling in vain to see something through his windshield. “We have no enemy but winter and rough weather, and man, those are serious enemies.” The hail splattered down like a million shards of breaking glass. He could hardly hear himself shout above the racket.
Wish shrugged. “When you live up here, you get used to it. It’s almost always sunny, except when it’s a blizzard.”
“Look, Cody’s motorcycle has just the one dim light fading into obscurity up ahead of us. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and that’s a dilemma, because I’d like to go on living at the moment. Where are we?” He gave the wheel a swift tilt to the right, narrowly avoiding a swimming pool in the middle of the road.
“Well…” Wish considered, then peered out the window to place himself. “We’re headed east on 267. He skipped a couple of side roads and seems to be going fast-”
“No shit!”
“-so he’s probably not planning to stop anytime soon. Anyway, there’s no major place to turn off after Northstar for miles. He’s heading for the lake.”
“If I can stay up with him past the Northstar turn, we’ll have a breather, maybe,” Paul said, pushing the accelerator down. “Then if he gets ahead, I can catch up without committing suicide.”
“Don’t you just love a solid V- 8,” Wish said, smiling, approving of the Mustang’s speed.
The speedometer crept up, and Paul used all the old tricks to keep himself from skidding off the road, two hands in proper formation on the steering wheel, cold sweat left unwiped on his brow.
“Most people don’t go out on nights like this,” Wish observed, arms folded calmly, “even if it isn’t three in the morning. More roadway for us.”
His nose as close to the windshield as he could get it, Paul cursed. “We lost him on that last curve. So quick-decision time. Turn right at Northstar or keep going toward King’s Beach?”
“I don’t gamble,” Wish said, “not much anyway, but somehow I can’t see any friend of his living at Northstar. Too ritzy. I bet on passing.”
“Okay,” Paul said. The sign indicating the Northstar ski resort area swept by in a blur. Paul stomped down again, the car swerved right, then left, then straightened itself on the road.
Wish flicked the radio on. A static howl filled the car.
Paul flicked it off. “Are you nuts?” he said. “I’m doing sixty on a dark wet road in the middle of a blizzard!”
“I just thought we’d see if there was a weather report on,” Wish said reasonably. “Anyway, we have nothing to worry about. There he is.”
Sure enough, there he was.
“Ooh,” Wish said, as the hail stopped suddenly and a beautiful starry night materialized like magic. “I just got my first good look. It’s a 1960s Arlen Ness chopper, customized in the seventies, I’d say. That’s a California streetdigger or lowliner, if you’re in the market. No wonder it’s noisy.”
This time, Paul jumped hard on the motorcycle’s tail and didn’t let go.
Once Cody Stinson’s motorcycle reached King’s Beach, he slowed down, scrupulously following the speed limit. They followed him through King’s Beach to Tahoe City, expecting him to stop, but he never did.
“The scenic route around the west shore,” Wish said. “He’s heading around the lake the hard way.”
“He’s nuts. He must have a death wish to take 89. A road designed by Lucifer,” Paul murmured, following as close as he could up and down the narrow, curving roadway above Emerald Bay, invisible a thousand feet below in the predawn. “He’s going all the way back to South Lake Tahoe.”
Stinson passed through the Y intersection at the bottom of the lake, riding along the boulevard.
“Where could he be going?” Wish asked.
“No idea.” By now, Paul had been without sleep for a good twenty hours. His mind simmered grayly, like overdone pot roast. “What I know is, Nina wants us to find him and get the police on him, so that’s what we’ll do the minute he stops for more than ten seconds.”
“Uh oh,” Wish said, straightening up. Wish, a local, knew the streets better than Paul. Paul knew only that they had made a turn up the highway toward the bright lights of the casino district, wherein sat Caesars, wherein was his bed, a warm place he liked. What he did not know was what subtle confluence of geography in the small town that constituted South Lake Tahoe had prompted Wish to utter those portentous words, “Uh oh.”
“So?” he asked as they turned off Lake Tahoe Boulevard toward Regan Beach.
“I thought Nina said this place was really, really private. Somewhere nobody knows about.”
“What place?” Paul asked, turning to follow Cody down a small, dark, empty street on the left.
“I mean, he’s definitely not the type I would expect to know,” Wish said, voice heavy with disapproval.
“Know what?” Paul said.
“Maybe a girlfriend told him or something.”
“Told him what?”
“About the shelter.”
There wasn’t any way to head Cody Stinson off before he got to the women’s shelter, so Paul continued to follow.
