I had to enter the lot. Nowhere else to look now. As I crossed the street I saw the headlights of a van come alive with alien starkness. Easy to imagine Nolan behind the wheel. Backing out.
The van was five rows deep and on the edge of a lane. I stumbled and slammed into the side of a new Buick trying to get to it. I shouted at it. I heard the whine of the reverse just as I reached the fourth lane. He completed his backing and pointed the green van in the direction of the closest exit. I didn’t have any choice. I ran for the lane he was in and just as he started pulling away I reached his vehicle and pounded on his window. Or rather, her window. A very comely blonde in an IHOP uniform. She gave me the finger and then sped away.
Have you seen this man? I’d be the police sketch of the day tomorrow. I hoped they’d be kind enough to make me look both handsome and erudite.
Making an ass of yourself saps your confidence. I didn’t resume running. Or even searching. I just stood there boiling in my shame.
I didn’t trust Mrs Burkhart; too crazy. But Nolan could bring it all together for me. Maybe he could even tell me who’d killed Jim Waters. Or maybe he’d admit to killing Waters. I had to find Nolan, shame or not.
I walked the lines of cars. The light created shadows and the shadows deceived the eyes. Too easy to imagine sounds and the things that could lurk in those shadows. The one thing that most of the cars and SUVs and vans had in common was their age. Few of them were more than two or three years old.
It was then I saw him. He still wore the dopey wig and the cape-like topcoat. He had misjudged how well he was hiding. He was two lanes away hunched down and hurrying toward the rear of the lot. It might have worked if his head hadn’t popped up for a second. He, too, was imagining sights and sounds and he’d paid the price for his misjudgments. After a time all the parked cars became a maze.
I went after him. ‘Nolan! Stop!’
He wasn’t foolish enough to slow down and look back at me. He was a heat-seeking missile now. I was running again but he reached the street before I did. Traffic was heavy and fast. He chanced the kind of dash that should have ended with an ambulance and half a dozen flaring squad cars. But he made it. When he reached a grassy empty lot he didn’t slow down. I was stranded on the edge of the curb watching him disappear into the shadows of an alley that might as well have been in Cleveland. At that moment it seemed that distant.
I had to make my own chancy dash, the problem being I didn’t have the same luck Nolan had. I cleared the lane closest to me but when I was two steps into the far lane a small panel truck materialized like something from those old Star Trek episodes. It was all furious lights and furious horn. If this had been a cartoon the truck would have been standing on its hood, upright.
No way to tell if he was flipping me off. I waved in apology and kept on grinding. Close up the grassy lot was pocked with numerous holes that could do damage to a walker, let alone a runner. It was also a litter box for various animals. Fresh shit tainted the cool, fresh air. The alley probably dated back to the early part of the last century. The garages were all one-car and all the wooden fencing dragged the earth. There were no lights in any of the houses I could see only from the back. This might well be a condemned block. Ghosts from long-forgotten decades crept inside the garages for respite from the wind. If you listened closely you could hear Benny Goodman.
Had Nolan kept running or was he hiding in one of these small crumbling structures? I slowed to a jog, snapping my head right to left as I moved. No cars. No suggestion of people.
Then two garages ahead of me a sharp clap of wood on wood.
When I got in the garage myself, I was able to see what had made the noise. He’d been hiding in the shadows near a door that led to the backyard of the house. Trouble was he slapped the door shut when he made his break and it was that noise that alerted me.
I dove into the darkness, tripping on tire ruts in the dirt floor that had been dug by time and water. Moonlight outlined the sagging door for me. I didn’t make the mistake he did. I closed it quietly. Rusted clotheslines, brown dead grass, a storm cellar door. No sign of him.
The first thing I checked was that cellar door. The padlock made it certain that he hadn’t used it. Then I was on the street gaping both ways as I had in the alley. Far down the long block I saw the silhouette of a creature racing away.
I raced right after him. After a time the staved-in sidewalk started yielding treasures. Here a gray wig, there a dusty topcoat and finally a greasy, dark-green fedora. I left these gifts to the dogs and cats and squirrels of the neighborhood.
Traffic in this dead area was slight so the sounds of my pounding footsteps were loud enough to bounce off the ramshackle houses as I passed them. Was he aware of me by now?
Three blocks down, this street fed into a major avenue. I was getting close when I watched him turn to the right and disappear into a blaze of light that leapt from buildings into the night sky. Some kind of neighborhood business strip.
I turned the same corner in time to see him cross the street and rush down past two taverns and a video store. This was a block of small businesses destined for urban renewal. Half the front windows were dark. The people on the street were shuffling silhouettes emptying from the taverns, heads down, shoulders slumped. Not even alcohol had cheered them.
A cracked and taped window promising ‘Pizza’ turned out to be Nolan’s destination. As he reached for the door his head turned and our eyes met. Even from this distance I could see his panic. After shedding his old-man clothes, his gray V-neck sweater, white shirt and black trousers marked him as a middle-aged professional who was out of place on a street like this.
The traffic was dense here, too. Two signs indicated that the interstate could be picked up just one block from here. It wasn’t quite nine o’clock yet. The cars drove fast as if they wanted badly to be out of this neighborhood.
By the time I managed to reach the other side of the street he’d been inside ‘Pizza’ for three or four minutes. If he was still inside.
The smell of pizza was the only appealing thing about the long, narrow, and swollen-walled place. Tiny tables with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths made not of cloth but oilcloth lined both walls. The pizza ovens were in back, fronted by a counter where two men in white T-shirts stood talking in an agitated way next to the cash register. When they saw me their eyes narrowed with suspicion. He must have warned them I’d be coming.
None of the customers showed more than momentary interest in me as I hurried to the counter. Even before I quite reached it the bald one said, ‘We don’t have anything to do with it. You want him — he went out the back door.’
‘You’re not a cop, are you?’ the other one said.
I didn’t answer. I was too busy rushing to the Exit sign. Outside again. A long alley. And there, in the distance, he ran. As I started after him I wondered how long we could keep going. We were obviously both in decent shape but we weren’t exactly athletes. Was one of us just going to flame out, fall face first on to whatever texture of ground we were running on, and lie unmoving until the cold night air began to plug our sinuses and rasp our throats?
He turned left at the head of the alley. I was grinding through space, blind animal pursuing blind animal. In my imagination at least he had begun to slow some. Or I was finding a remarkable second wind?
This time he resorted to what he must have thought was a very tricky trick. As I reached the street he went left again. He had assumed I wouldn’t get to the street in time to see where he was going. He had also assumed that I would assume he’d turned right into a street filled with condemned houses ripe with winos, rats, and hiding places.
What he’d done was lead us right back to the dreary street of the taverns and ‘Pizza.’ Except this time he was running in the opposite direction. When I hit the street I saw that I hadn’t imagined his lagging strength. He was no more than half a block away. If this had been even ten minutes ago he would have been at least a block or more from me. He had one advantage, though. He knew where he was going.
And soon enough I knew where he was going, too: the interstate. When he reached the end of the street he took a sharp right and started climbing a small hill that led to the entrance. As he scrambled up toward the green- and-white sign he glanced back at me. He seemed to give a small jerk as he realized how close I was. Then he was up and over and I couldn’t see him for the moment.
The hill was more imposing than it appeared. Twice I had to dig my fingers into the dirt to keep my footing. And once I stumbled and gashed my knee on an unseen rock. Or maybe it was a piece of glass.
