Jackie drove it right into a flooded section of River Town and watched it sink up to its windows. Problem solved. After that, they needed a new ride. Jacky said that the entire Black River Valley was at flood stage, Witcham going under, so nobody would be looking for a couple runaway cons. It was the perfect time to jack a car and drive out of the valley. Nobody would ask questions and nobody would stop them.
On foot in Crandon, just off The Strip, the business district, Jacky had slipped off to take a leak and that’s when Roland had taken his walk. But before he did, he pulled Harry aside and said, “Listen, man, you and me, we been tight. I’m telling you now to ditch Jacky first chance you get. You saw how he was inside and he’s gonna be worse out here. He ain’t right in the head. Guy’s a fucking psychopath. You stick with him, he’ll have you robbing banks and raping women. Get you in a bigger mess than you already in.”
With that, Roland ran off into the night.
Jacky wasn’t happy about it, was downright pissed and evil when he found out, but he got it out of his system by tossing a brick through a deli window. Power was down, no alarms. Harry and he sat in the dark by flashlight, eating cheese and sausage, drinking wine. After years of that slop in the joint, real food tasted great.
When they finished gorging themselves, Harry said, “Okay, we’re out. We can make this happen. The mess this city’s in? We can walk right out. So what’s out plan gonna be?”
“We need a car, then we’ll see,” Jacky said. “You never bopped with me outside the joint, Harry, but you better believe I know how to live.”
“I believe it. You did pretty good inside, all them hacks eating out of your hands.”
“You know why they did that, Harry?”
“Because you owned ‘em, you fed ‘em the green and they danced to your own tune.”
“It was more than that. I wasn’t paying off the cons out in the yard, but they showed me respect. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Fear, Harry. They respect me because they fear me.”
“You can be a bad dude, Jacky.”
“You wanna remember that.”
They made their way back outside and one of the first things they saw was some old guy with a stalled car. A red Crown Victoria. Big, nice old ride. It had stalled in the water. There was only about a foot of it there on Michigan Avenue being that it was high ground, but the old guy had hit a puddle and soaked the distributor.
Right away Jacky went over there. “You need help, mister?”
The old guy got out of the car. “Christ, she stalled on me.”
“Need to dry your distributor off,” Harry told him.
The old guy popped the trunk and he had a few suitcases in there, looked like he was leaving town and that was probably a smart thing. He got some rags for Harry and Harry went to work by flashlight, popping the cap and drying it out. While he was doing so, Jacky hung over him, that crooked grin on his hard face.
“Nice ride, eh, Harry?”
“Sure.”
Jacky went over to the old guy who was leaning up by the trunk.
“Sure want to thank you boys. I owe you one.”
“No problem,” Jacky told him. “You got a crowbar, my friend needs it.”
The old guy was only too happy to help. He found it in the trunk and handed it to Jacky and right away, Jacky got that evil gleam in his eye when he had a good piece of iron in his hands. Maybe the old guy saw it, too, by the glare of the trunk light.
“Thanks,” Jacky said and swung it at the old man, knocking him to the ground where he thrashed in the water. Jacky hit him two more times, splitting his head open. “Life ain’t fair, you old fuck.”
“Jesus, Jacky…you didn’t need to do that,” Harry said.
“Sure, I did. That distributor dry?”
Harry swallowed. “Sure.”
They got in, Harry behind the wheel and drove off slowly.
Harry wasn’t liking this. Already, Roland’s warning was coming true and it was only just beginning. Jacky was only getting warmed up.
“Should be a sign here somewhere,” Harry said, “show us how to get to Highway 6. That’ll lead us to the freeway and out of the valley. I remember it when they brought me to Slayhoke.”
“What’s your hurry?”
“I wanna get the hell out of here, that’s what,” Harry told him.
“I say we stay awhile, this city’s wide open. Let’s have some fun.”
Harry knew it was going to be trouble. There was no other way with Jacky Kripp. So when the headlights splashed over two teenage girls walking up the side of the street, Harry felt something go bad inside of him.
“Stop the car,” Jacky said.
“We gotta get out, Jacky.”
Jacky put this gray steel eyes on him. “I said, stop this fucking car.”
Harry did.
Jacky unrolled his window. “You girls okay?” he said, putting it on real smooth and full of concern.
The tall one was dark-haired and the short one was blonde. They both looked like they’d been dragged through the underbelly of hell, soaking wet and shivering.
“Our car,” the brunette said. “It went into the water.”
“Hop in,” Jacky told them. “We’ll take you home.”
They never thought for a moment what they were getting themselves into. The town was flooding and they thought help had finally arrived. Who could blame them for hopping into the back seat where it was warm and dry?
“What’s your names, girls?” Jacky asked them, one arm hung over the back of the seat.
The blonde looked to be in shock or something. She just stared off into space and the brunette kept her arm around her. “This is Lisa and she’s had a rough time,” the brunette said. “I’m Chrissy. I live over on Kneale Street.”
Jacky grinned. “Chrissy, eh? Oh, now that’s a pretty name. A real pretty name. Ain’t that a pretty name, Harry?”
And Harry felt that bad stink coming off Jacky suddenly get much worse.
9
At Sadler Brothers Army/Navy Surplus, in the wee hours of an awfully long and strange night, the basic facts of the matter were being threshed out.
“What you got here is a haunting,” Hardy James was saying. “Goddamn whole city is haunted and that’s the name of that particular tune.”
Hardy had been going on about this for some time now, following this thread of reasoning and filling in the blanks with bullshit, as was his way. But that was Hardy. He was nothing if not a legendary bullshit artist. Though his name was Hardy James, he’d been known through his seventy years as “Hardy Jim” and “Jim Hardy,” though now in his declining years, “Hardy” was all you ever heard. He’d been rambling on about ghosts and hauntings, mainly reeling off things he’d caught on the Discovery Channel during Halloween week along with the plots of a few old movies, spicing the whole thing up with his own brand of high-smelling bullshit.
“Sure as hell,” he told his audience. “Ghosts. And if they’ve come back, then you can bet there’s a good reason for it. They want something and they won’t go until they get it.”
“Ahhhhhh…ghosts. That’s a bunch of shit,” Knucker said, cracking her bony knuckles. She generally started most sentences with “Ahhhhhh” as if she had to wind up something before the words would come out.
“Haunted?” Hubb Sadler said. “What kind of cockfucking nonsense is that? I ain’t seen no ghosts. Just them other things and not one was carrying its fucking head around or dressed in a sheet.”
Knucker chuckled. “Ahhhhhh…that’s just bullshit, Hubb. Don’t pay no mind to Hardy Jim here. He just likes to
