road.
In the gravel of the driveway entrance lay two wide tire tracks. As we watched, a trickle of pea-sized stones rattled down to make a little heap in one of the troughs: Someone had taken this access road at speed and recently.
“If either of you thinks this ain’t the place, now just might be the time to say,” I pointed out. As neither of them seemed inclined to disagree, I got out the car. “Wait here a skosh. I’m going to scout it out.”
I crept down the driveway, the house looming larger and clearer with every furtive step I took. As I got closer, I heard an electric motor humming around the corner of the attached garage.
I angled to the side for a better look. The Cougar’s rear end was visible as the garage’s motorized rolling door descended, rattling and clashing as it lowered to hide the car the rest of the way from my sight.
I needed to move quick but I crept just as careful on the way back to the Lincoln. Like the wise man said: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
“This is the house,” I told Sam, my voice gone tight and brassy. “I’m going in, and you’re gonna stay outside.”
“The fuck you say,” Sam said. “You think I’m letting you do it alone, you got another think coming.”
He looked like he wanted to stomp up to the house and kick it in like a puffball, like he thought fury and a just cause would carry him through whatever awaited within. I shook my head at his foolishness, doing my best to appear dismissive and authoritative – the forms had to be observed here, my son was stubborn enough to need the full pantomime.
“You misunderstand me, Sam. I’m going in, but you’re going to be right outside the front door guarding the exit, making sure I can beat feet fast if I have to. That’s how me and Karl always did it, young blood.”
I was telling the truth – but it would also keep Sam out of harm’s way as much as possible for now. After a moment he reluctantly nodded at the sense of it.
I turned to Elaine. “It’s no good if we can’t get away, so you’re driving the car.”
I looked up and down the road. “Find a turn out or shoulder or something, U-turn the car around, and park it out of sight from here but where you can still keep an eye on this spot. No matter what happens or who you see coming, you keep quiet and wait on us and us only. Don’t let anyone know you’re there – you’re our ace in the hole. We’ll probably be in a hurry when we come out, so be fucking ready to pull up the instant you see us.”
Elaine nodded owlishly at my instructions, but she still had me paranoid as ever. Here I was having to turn my back on her to enter the Driver’s lair, still uncertain about the risk she represented.
But it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do; didn’t matter whose side she was on. I was going into that house after that kid even if it was all some kind of trap, and it still had to be me instead of my son.
As we turned to go, Elaine said, “Don’t come back without that child.” She appeared nervous as I probably did but there was also a set, grim expression on her face.
“We won’t,” Sam promised.
The Lincoln idled quietly away behind us as we moved toward the house. I cased the casa as we neared it, watching for signs of activity, figuring my best angle in. I found myself moving slower and slower as I got a better and better look at the place. Sam didn’t seem in any more of a hurry; he didn’t budge from my side.
I was feeling less and less in control the closer we got. There were too many ways upcoming events could skitter away from me like a drop of water on a hot griddle.
To the right of the garage, the grim bulk of the main house extended in a long one-story wing. The porch light was unlit, and I gestured at Sam to take his station there. Sam peeled off and moved in that direction, silent as a tomcat on the prowl.
When I reached the garage I looked past it at a beautiful view: Stagger Bay sprawled beneath the heights this house commanded, street lights and neon in a small-town grid, like a cartoon or some kind of computer simulation. I saw the Hospital and the Gardens; the jail and the courthouse; Stagger Bay Center and the Arcade; Old Town and the Andersen Club and our two water towers. Beyond all lay the Bay and the Pacific, the night surf glowing phosphorescent in the moonlight.
It was a little town, even if it was Sam’s whole world right now. Maybe the folks living in it were no more than bacterium scurrying across the face of an unremarkable planet orbiting a sub-prime star, facing inevitable entropy and death.
But they mattered, didn’t they? They’d sure tell you so if you asked them.
I’d tried to make this little toy town my home once, and Sam claimed it now. But to the beast lurking in the house behind me it was a hunting ground, and he used this raised vantage point to plan his stalks. He figured he owned Stagger Bay and all the people that lived in it, even if it was the Gardens he was targeting for now.
Did the Driver have any inkling of the Brownian motion of conflicting agendas, selfish impulses, and higher yearnings that had somehow come together to accomplish this moment in time, create the reality of me being here on his doorstep about to have a heart to heart with him? It was almost as though Stagger Bay was an entity with goals and an agenda of its own like some kind of hive mind. I wasn't sure I liked the idea of being a soldier ant, a worker bee serving Stagger Bay's collective soul – a soul I'd found to be homicidally callous and apathetic where my loved ones were concerned.
But what if it was the Driver who served Stagger Bay’s nonhuman needs? What if Stagger Bay was as much my personal enemy as the Driver? A ludicrous thought, one that almost made me chuckle nervously out loud.
I moved around the far corner of the garage to a lit-up window. On the other side of the Cougar I saw the Driver’s broad rounded back and blond mop of hair as he stepped through a door into the house’s interior.
A little black boy was draped over the Driver’s shoulder. There was duct tape over the boy’s mouth and around his wrists. I recognized the boy instantly: it was Little Moe, Big Moe’s nephew. The Driver hit the light switch on his way in and the garage went dark as he closed the door behind him.
When I reached up to test the window my hand stopped short for a moment just before I touched it – as if I were afraid I would feel a pulse, as if the house were a living creature I should be frightened to disturb. I went ahead and grabbed ahold.
The window was locked but it was old and loose in its wooden slide rail. I’d beat this type many times in my burg days as a kid. It was a simple matter to lift it, pull it from its trough, wipe where I’d gripped the edges with my sleeve, and lean it silently against the exterior wall.
I stood to clamber inside and froze again. That dark window looked like a toothless, sucking mouth, and I suddenly felt like I’d rather die than slither in there. But Sam was on duty at the front door, waiting to cover my egress; he wouldn’t wait long before deciding I wasn’t coming out – he’d go into the house and face the Driver alone.
I imagined Sam’s mockery if he ever learned of my hesitation here. If we survived this evening and he ever got an inkling of this, he’d never let me hear the end of it.
At the thought of my son the window was just a window again, like any of the hundred ones I’d B &E’d through before I’d met Angela. I went right on in with ease: eeling through until I rested in a hand-stand pike on the garage’s cement floor, then silently drawing each leg through in turn until finally standing and looking past the Cougar at the door to the interior.
For what it was worth, I was inside the Driver’s lair.
Chapter 55
I swiped my sleeve across where I’d gripped the window sill entering, and scuffed my feet across the floor where my hands had rested when I piked my way in. Sloppy cleanup, but there were timeliness constraints here.
Automotive tools hung neatly on wall racks, and hot-rod accessories lay all about ready to service the Cougar’s souped-up needs – this garage was a wrench-head heaven, and perfectly organized by an anal retentive type. On a work bench next to me I saw a hammer, a 24-ouncer used for framing with a waffle pattern on the face of the head.
I picked the hammer up and hefted it. It wasn’t the jawbone of an ass but it’d have to do.
I rounded the Cougar and stood in front of the closed door into the main house, breathing open-mouthed to
