he was going to call the police. I walked over to him.
“Your daughter told me.”
“You’re crazy!” Thick red bubbles popped from his mouth. “Get out of here! Get out of here now!”
I kicked him in the stomach and that started him blubbering even harder. I leaned over and grabbed him by his hair and pulled him up so he had to look at me.
“She told me all about you,” I said. “About you raping her and-”
“You going to believe that lying bitch? That lying little cu-”
I threw him down and kicked him hard in the chest, giving it just about everything I had. I kicked him again. Both times I heard his ribs crack. He moaned and curled up tighter. I was still holding the glass of scotch, although I’d spilled half of it when I was kicking him. I drank what was left. “She’s not lying.” I repeated everything his daughter had told me. When I’d finished I said, “When I bring Debra here later you’re going to be long gone. For good. God help you if she ever sees you again.”
“What am I going to tell my wife?” he asked softly, and then broke out with more blubbering.
“That’s your problem.” I turned away. I had to. I walked over to a rosewood bookcase and picked up a family portrait. In it, Craig Singer was smiling with all his teeth intact, arms wrapped around his wife and daughter. If you glanced at it you’d think it was just as it appeared, a typical upper middle-class family picture. The proud father, the loving but impatient wife, the sullen bored teenager. But if you looked a little more carefully, you’d realize it wasn’t boredom on Debra Singer’s face, any more than it was teenage angst. And if you looked hard enough, you could detect rigid lines around Mrs. Singer’s eyes and mouth that might indicate something more than impatience.
Singer whimpered. I put the photo back on the bookcase. “I’m hurt pretty bad,” he moaned. “I need a doctor.”
“Again, that’s your problem.”
He pushed himself up into a sitting position. I knew he was in a good deal of pain. He’d have to be with a busted up mouth and a chest full of cracked ribs.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I love my daughter. She’s all I care about. If you give me a chance I can change and-”
“You better stop now while you can. In another minute it’ll be too late.”
He started crying again. “What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to get out of here,” I said. “Now. I don’t know how much longer I can stomach being around you.”
He slowly got to feet, moaning every inch of the way. He grabbed his side loosely and headed towards the staircase. He said he was going to pack a few things. I told him there wasn’t time. He hesitated and then turned around and hobbled to the bathroom. I watched as he cleaned and bandaged his mouth. The bandaged area had already swollen to the size of a small melon. I didn’t see the point in what he was doing, but I also didn’t see any point arguing with him.
When he was done, he asked again about packing some items. I shook my head. I followed him as he left the house.
As he got behind the wheel of his Volvo his expression changed, the submissiveness in his eyes shifting to something else, something cagey. He waved me over.
“You have no right,” he said. “What you did was assault and battery. Possibly attempted murder.”
“I guess you could look at it that way.”
“You guess I could look at it that way? I could sue you for every penny you got and then put you in jail.”
“Well, you could sure try.”
“I could do a lot more than just try.” He watched carefully for my reaction. “If you tell anyone about your allegations or write about them in your newspaper column, you’ll find out how much I can do.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d like we could go to the police right now. I’d be glad to bring Debra along and have her tell her story.”
His jaw muscles tightened as he looked away. Blood seeped from his bandaged mouth and dripped down his shirt. “You better keep quiet about this, Lane. If you don’t, I’ll sue you.” He turned back, facing me. “And I’ll move back home.”
I leaned forward, resting on his window. “Let me make sure you understand something,” I said as politely as I could. “The only reason I won’t write about this is because I don’t want to make things any more difficult than they already are for your daughter. If she ever sees your face again, I promise you there won’t be any face left afterwards.”
He put the car in gear and stepped on the gas. I had to jump back to keep from having my feet run over.
Of course, he was only kidding himself. I guess the finality of it all hadn’t sunk in yet, but it would. It was only a matter of time.
I looked down and saw my hands were shaking worse than a junkie’s. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to think about Craig Singer, about what I almost did to him, about what I wanted more than anything to do to him. Because when I was standing over him I knew I came within a hair’s breadth of sending him straight to hell. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep from doing it.
I stood there for a while and then got in my car and waited until the shaking stopped.
* * * * *
I almost didn’t get to the bank in time to cash Craig Singer’s check. As it was, the teller was a big fan of mine, and by the time we were through chatting and I was able to leave, it was past five o’clock. It was almost five thirty before I got back to the Corner Diner.
Carol was sitting at a table waiting for me. She looked miserable. When she saw me her face went white.
“I’m so sorry, Johnny-”
I put up a hand, stopping her. Of course Debra was gone. I told Carol it was my fault for taking as long as I did. I asked her what time Debra had left.
“Around one thirty,” Carol said. “I tried to keep an eye on her, but it got busy, and when I looked up she wasn’t there. My shift ended at three but I’ve been waiting for you so I could-”
“So you could sit around and make yourself more and more miserable,” I said, forcing a smile. “Look, darling, the reason I come here is because you got such a beautiful smile it makes me feel good just to look at you. If you’re going to look the way you do right now, I might have to find myself another diner.”
That made her blush and smile at the same time. “I feel terrible about this, Johnny,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her. Second time is always easier.”
* * * * *
I gave it my best shot. I spent over an hour driving up and down East Colfax without any luck. After that I drove to Denver International Airport and showed Debra’s picture around. People stopped and looked at it and shook their heads sadly and told me how sorry they were they couldn’t help. I got the same reactions when I tried the bus terminal.
It was ten thirty when I tried East Colfax again. At each street corner I slowed down and waited for the hookers to come running over and then I showed them Debra’s picture. Some argued that they could give me a better ride for my money than the girl I was looking for, others got nasty, and a few tried to help, giving me the old news about Debra working Tiny’s peep show. After East Colfax, I drove around the State Capital building with pretty much the same results, only difference being more of the hookers were transvestites.
By the time I got home it was two thirty in the morning and I was dead tired. I hadn’t really eaten all day, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. I went to bed. As I lay awake thoughts entered my head, things that I had no right thinking about. After a while, I realized I wasn’t going to sleep. Especially with those images swirling around in my mind. I got up, found a bottle of bourbon, and brought it back to bed. A long time later I passed out.
When I woke, I felt like I had swallowed a pound of chewing tobacco and spent a few hours being kicked in the stomach. It was a lot more than the hangover that made me feel as bad as I did. I couldn’t stop thinking about Craig Singer, about what I almost did to him. Other things had seeped through. Real crazy things that just didn’t make any sense.
As I lay awake trying to sort it all out, I realized I was blowing everything out of proportion. Because if you think about it, what I wanted to do was perfectly normal; any sane, rational person would’ve wanted to do the same thing. If you lift up a rock and see something nasty crawling under it your natural reaction is to stomp on it,
