Bookman's promise

“Then you’ve got it, no strings attached, for as long or short as you want it.”

She gave me a grateful look. Then she looked uneasily around the room. “I guess there’s nothing we can do till morning. But this house has been violated. I think I’ll go crazy just waiting here.”

“Well, the alternative is to get out now. Where’s your car?”

“In the garage behind the house.”

“Get all your stuff together, if that’s what you want to do. Gimme your keys; I’ll get the car and bring it up close to the house. Then we’ll stash the stuff in the car and get it out of here.”

“Where will we go?”

“Down to Baltimore where there are people and lights. Maybe we’ll just drive around till dawn. At nine o’clock we’ll go to your bank and get a safe deposit box. The bank should be able to copy your notes. Later you’ll want to get dupes made of the tapes as well.” I shrugged. “This isn’t the greatest idea since Poe invented the detective story, but it’s the best I’ve got. Unless you want to change your mind and stay here till dawn.”

“No, that doesn’t feel…I don’t know how to explain it.”

She gave me her keys and went away. I heard her footsteps on a stairwell going down, then I heard her moving around under my feet, and I walked from window to window, looking out into the yard for trouble. The backyard looked peaceful in the moonlight, the garage a ramshackle building in the center of it, the whole property ringed by trees and underbrush. From there I couldn’t see any sign of a neighboring house.

I went out through the kitchen, through a small porch to the backyard. Nothing there either: no movements or sounds, no shadows darting away into the trees. It would be easy to find Koko guilty of an overactive imagination, but now I had a dark hunch of my own. I leaned back against the porch and wondered if we were doing the right thing. But I told her we’d go, it was her choice, so I finally moved uneasily away from the house toward the garage.

Halfway across the yard I froze. Something had moved, back in the trees. Might be a man, maybe a dog: probably nothing more than my own imagination competing with Koko’s. A breeze had come up, fluttering the leaves, and maybe that’s all it was.

I egged myself on. Come on, boy, you’re acting like a spooked kid.

I reached the edge of the garage and looked around it. I could see the door a few feet ahead: a double door for the car and a walk-in at the side. There was a small window and the interior looked pitch-black. I eased along the wall. My dark hunch had grown into a monster and I wished I had brought a flashlight, or Koko’s gun.

The door creaked loudly as I opened it and stepped inside. It was dark but I could see part of the car in the moonbeam coming through the window. It glinted off one of the fenders and fell against an empty wall.

I moved quickly away from the door and stood against the opposite wall, listening. This is damn ridiculous, I thought. Koko would wonder where I’d gone. But I didn’t move.

Someone was in here. I felt him breathing: I sensed his spirit. Nothing moved, there was no sound from any part of the garage, but by then my internal alarm was going crazy.

Then he did move. A slight bump, small enough to be nothing more than a rat.

A shadow crossed outside the door. Nothing imaginary about that. I leaned forward and peered out as something flitted past toward the trees. Another shape flicked past the window. There were three of them now, at least three. I eased along the wall, my fingers probing around for anything that might work as a weapon—a tire iron, a wrench, a hammer—but all I picked up was a layer of dust.

Nothing to do but go ahead. I took two quick steps away from the wall, touched the hard, cold door of the car, found the handle, and jerked it open. I was ready for what happened next; he was not. The car’s interior light came on and I saw him, in a crouch about three feet away. He shouted and came at me. I swung from the hip, caught him with a solid left just above the belt, and he dropped like a congressman’s ethics. He rasped out two desperate words, “Jesus…Christ,” and the other two charged into the garage. I slammed the car door shut—we all might as well be in the dark—and spun away as a dancing shadow moved around me. I swung and hit nothing.

Suddenly a powerful flashlight went on in my face. I smelled a gunny sack just before it was thrown over my head and jerked down over my arms. “Now, you son of a bitch,” a voice whispered. “Now we’ll see how frisky your ass is.”

I took a killer kidney punch. Someone wrapped me in another sack, my arms were pinned by some kind of rope or belt, my feet were kicked out from under me, and I tasted the floor, a burlap sandwich garnished with blood. I felt a searing pain and saw red streaks behind my eyes. One of them had stomped on the back of my head. I knew I was hurt; for the first time in years I feared for my life, and I fought like a wild man to get up and get out of that straitjacket.

I never made it. He went to work with his feet, not caring much what he hit or how hard. I took half a dozen in the gut, a bad one to the groin, and again he found my head. At some point I went under.

The next thing I heard was Koko’s voice. I felt her hands as she pulled off the gunnysack and rolled me over. It was still dark. I looked up and saw her shape behind the tiny flashlight.

“Are you okay?”