On impulse I started the engine, swung the car around, drove back to the same liquor store I’d stopped at a while ago to ask directions. There was a phone box out front; I put a quarter in the slot and punched out the number that had been in Tucker’s address book.
A woman’s low-pitched voice said, “Hello?”
“Is Brit there?”
“No, not right now.”
“You expect him back tonight?”
“I guess. He comes and goes.”
“What time do you think he’ll be home?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Who is this?”
“Midge.”
“Midge who?”
“… Do I know
“I’m a friend of Brit’s.”
“Uh-huh. You want to leave a message?”
“No,” I said, “no message.”
I cradled the receiver. Midge. Girlfriend, probably. The important thing was that he wasn’t out of town or out of state, that he was due back home tonight. But how was I going to get him alone? Lure him out by phone? Foolish move; if I didn’t handle it just right it might put him on his guard. Chances were, he hadn’t been back to the Deer Run cabin yet. In which case he believed I was still chained up inside, and as long as he believed that he had no reason to be looking over his shoulder, to stay cooped up at home with Midge. Sooner or later he would go out again-sometime tomorrow, probably. Sooner or later there would be a time and a place where he was alone and I could take him the way he’d taken me that long ago night in San Francisco.
I debated finding a room for the night, coming back and staking out the cottage early in the morning. No point in returning to Cordilleras Street now, was there? No… except that I wasn’t ready yet to close myself up in some box of a motel room, do my waiting in absentia. I ached for a look at him, at his face without the ski mask to hide it. Maybe I could accomplish that much tonight, at least.
Back to Cordilleras, back into the tree shadows next to the vacant lot. The cottage’s front window was still un-draped, and the blond woman was still sitting there reading her magazine. Brit hadn’t come home in the brief interval between my phone call and now: The driveway still had just one car parked on it and the curb in front was deserted.
I waited. I have always hated stakeouts-the monotony, the dribbling passage of time, the tension-and this one was twice as bad as any other in thirty years. I was so tired my eyes ached and watered and I had to keep knuckling them to clear my vision. So wired already that my neck and shoulders felt as though they were being compressed in a vise. Hunger pangs under my breastbone, too… I should have bought something to eat at the liquor store. Still not thinking things out as carefully as I used to, still not planning ahead. But Jesus, I was so close to the end of it now, so
8:30. Headlights behind me, turning into Cordilleras. I eased farther down on the seat, watched the lights approach in the side mirror. But the car went on past Number 62, ahead into the next block, and turned into a driveway midway along.
8:45. The woman, Midge, got up and left the front room. It was ten minutes before she came back, carrying a plate of something and a glass, and sat down again.
8:55. A man came out of a mobile home adjacent to the cottage and directly opposite where I was sitting, took something from his car and then went back inside without looking my way. If he knew I was there he didn’t want to know it. That was one good thing about staking out an area like this, as opposed to a middle-class residential district: no neighborhood watch program, no overwrought fear of strangers who might have designs on the family silver, no self-righteous busybodies eager to pick up the phone and call the police at the slightest provocation. People here minded their own business. They had no family silver to protect, shunned the law except in cases of emergency, and avoided hassles whenever they could because their daily lives, scratching out existences on streets like this one, were hassle enough, thank you.
9:20. Another pair of headlights turning in behind me-and another destination on the second block.
9:30. Midge got up and switched on a black and white TV. Sat down again, only to stand a minute later and walk to the window and draw thin patterned drapes: There had probably been some kind of glare from outside that affected her view of the television. I said aloud, “Shit!” Now maybe I wouldn’t get a look at Brit tonight after all.
9:50. Cramp in my right leg. I had to go through contortions to pull the leg up, maneuver it past the gearshift and straighten it out across the passenger seat.
10:05. Why didn’t he come? Out enjoying himself, probably; taking in a movie, playing cards, having sex… damn him! Damn his rotten soul to hell!
10:15. God, how I wanted this to be over with. Not just this waiting tonight-
10:30. Another cramp in my leg. I couldn’t keep on sitting here much longer…
I didn’t have to. Two minutes after I massaged the knot out of my leg, a third set of headlamps appeared behind me-and this time the car turned into Number 62’s driveway.
I sat up, gripping the bottom of the steering wheel with both hands. The car over there-I couldn’t tell the make, just that it was an older model-went dark and a slender man shape got out. The dome light was too dim and the night too dark for me to see him clearly. I watched him walk through the weedy front yard to the door, let himself in with a key. There was light inside, and when he stepped through the open doorway I had a quick glimpse of lank brown hair, pale face in profile, dark blue Windbreaker. Then the door closed off the light and he was gone.
Frustration was sharp in me for a few seconds, but then the edge of it rubbed off against the grindstone of fatigue. So close to him now, just a hundred yards or so separating us. And yet there was nothing I could do about it tonight. Tomorrow, but not tonight. Get out of here, go get some sleep, I thought, come back in the morning… but I could not seem to make my body respond. I didn’t trust myself to drive yet anyway. My hands twitched when I took them away from the wheel, as if I had contracted some sort of neurological disease: too much stress, too much time cramped up in this small space. I gripped the wheel again, harder this time. Sat like that, waiting until I felt able to handle the car without risk to myself or someone else.
More minutes crawled away-not many, ten at the most. When I let go of the wheel this time my hands were still. I had been taking deep slow breaths; I took several more, ran my tongue over dry lips, tested my reactions by pushing in the clutch, tapping the brake, working the gearshift. Okay now. I reached for the ignition key-
And the cottage’s front door opened and he came back out.
I froze with my fingers on the key. In the two or three seconds he was in the light I saw that he had changed clothes, or at least put on a different coat-something heavy and plaid-and some kind of cap on his head. Then he was a shadow shape walking across the yard, opening the car door, ducking inside. The starter ground, a whiny sound in the night’s stillness; the headlights came on. He backed the car out of the driveway and turned my way.
I drifted low on the seat, straightened immediately after he rolled past and reached again for the ignition key. He turned left at the corner behind me. I had the engine going by then, and I made a sharp U-turn and hit the headlight switch before I reached the corner. When I completed the turn after him he was only a block and a half away.
Adrenaline had taken away some of the dragging tiredness, made me alert again. I thought: Going after a pack of cigarettes or liquor, maybe. That was fine, as long as he went somewhere that wasn’t too crowded. I could wait in his car while he made his purchase; or if he locked it I could hang around in the shadows nearby until he came back.
But he
