'You leavin'?'
'Yeah. I'll be back tonight. Someone may call me here.' I pointed a thumb at the phone.
'Okay,' Tony said. 'Only help me out with somethin' before you go.'
'I thought I was supposed to mind my own business.'
'You gonna want ice in your goddamn bourbon later, this is your business. Damn thing's busted again.' Tony's antiquated ice machine had more weak points than a sermon.
'What is it, that valve? Like when I was here in the fall?'
'Yeah, and twice in the winter when you wasn't. You gotta turn it off downstairs, wait till I tell you to turn it on again. The red one. You know.' I knew. 'Unless you're in a hurry. It can wait till the O'Brien kid comes in, or Marie.'
'No hurry.'
The door to the cellar was back by the phone. Under my weight the wooden stairs creaked. The light from the head of the stairs didn't reach very far, but dusty gray daylight filtered in through the grimy windows in the back wall. The place smelled of mildew and damp concrete. I shook a spiderweb from the back of my hand.
Tony's cellar was a shadowed landscape of boxes, crates, abandoned furniture. Lying across the pipes overhead were old fishing rods, skis, a pair of snowshoes whose leather webbing was crumbling to dust. About five miles of greasy rope was heaped in a corner, next to a bureau Tony's father had moved down here before Tony was born.
Tony knew every object here, and could navigate smoothly through them in the dark. I couldn't. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness, then picked my way carefully to the middle of the room, where a single light- bulb dangled from the ceiling.
I reached a hand up to it; then I stopped and froze. I wasn't the only thing moving.
Barely visible, a shadow darker than the others slid noiselessly behind a hill of boxes.
Slowly, silently, I eased the gun from under my arm. I stared through the dimness; there was nothing. Everything was still, as though it always had been. But I'd seen it. I moved to my left, to where the shadow went. My steps were silent. Maybe whoever it was wouldn't hear my heart pounding, either.
Suddenly a crash, something shattering on the concrete floor. Another flash of movement. I pressed my back against the wall, gun drawn. Before me two unblinking eyes appeared, glittering in the half-light.
The cat whose face they were in crouched on a pile of boxes, hissed, thrashed its tail. It turned, flowed through a broken windowpane and was gone.
I breathed. 'Shit,' I said to the vanished cat. 'You could get killed doing that.' I put my gun away, rubbed the back of my neck.
'Hey, Smith!' Tony yelled from above. 'What the hell are you doin' down there?'
'All right!' I yelled back. I stepped over a broken barstool into the center of the room and yanked the chain on the dangling bulb. The sudden glare brought sharp edges and color springing out of the soft shadows. I looked around, searching for a clear path to the back of the room, but I never found it.
From the back wall near the floor another pair of eyes met mine. These didn't blink either, but they didn't glitter. They were human, and they were dull because they were dead.
Chapter 4
He must have been standing right up against the back wall when he was shot. Three dark rings with darker centers the size of a baby's fist stained his shirt. He'd slumped down leaving a thin smear of blood on the ancient whitewash, until he settled, sitting on the dirty floor, one arm over a case of empties as though it were a friend of his. His face was a mottled gray, like candlewax and ashes, and from his slack, open mouth a thin line of blood, now dry and cracking, had dripped down his chin to splash perfect circles onto his open, bony hand.
I knew those hands. After last night, the way they'd circled my throat, shaking and choking, after that I'd have known them anywhere.
He looked so foolish, so surprised. I wanted to close his eyes, his mouth, cover him with something. He was indecent, unready as the curtain went up on his final show, probably the only starring role a guy like him had ever had.
I knelt, felt his neck for a pulse. I knew it was stupid. I lifted the edge of his coat with a finger, looking for the gun he'd had last night. It was gone.
The sweet smell of blood was thick in the damp air. I let his coat fall and stayed where I was, prowling the floor with my eyes. I didn't know what I was looking for but I found it, a set of keys on a silver ring in the dirt by his knee. I stared at them in the dim light; then I took out a handkerchief, picked them up in it, and slipped them, wrapped, into my pocket.
I stepped back the way I'd come, careful not to disturb anything I hadn't disturbed already.
The creaking of the stairs as I went up seemed louder than before, but I could have been wrong about that.
Tony and I were sitting at the round table in the front of the room, about as far from the cellar as you could get. I was drinking bourbon; he was drinking gin. Tony had called the state troopers. Now all we had to do was wait.
A fly, early and stupid, staggered slowly around a wine stain in the red-and-white tablecloth like an old man avoiding a puddle.
I lit a cigarette, shook out the match. 'Tell me about it, Tony.'
Tony looked into the glass in front of him. He didn't find anything but gin. 'Nothin' to tell.'
'There's a stiff in your cellar says otherwise.'
He raised his head sharply, glared at me. 'You think I put him there?'
