After Midnight

The little tremor in my belly grew large.

I drove around the block to give myself time to think. On the one hand, the building’s lot seemed like the perfect place to drop off Tony’s car. He probably had an assigned parking space in there.

Where better to leave his car than precisely where it should be?

Seeing it there in the morning, who would ever guess he’d gone somewhere in the middle of the night and gotten himself killed?

And his body might not be discovered for days.

On the other hand, someone might enter the parking lot and see me.

Which would screw up everything.

What are the chances?

Slim, I told myself. Very slim. The danger would only last for a minute or two—long enough to drive in, locate Tony’s space, park his car, jump out and run back up the ramp to get outside.

Worth the risk.

I came to that conclusion just in time to make the turn.

Oh, God, here we go!

I swung to the right and drove slowly down the ramp into the lot. Nobody seemed to be coming or going. The place looked deserted except for the parked cars. Lots of them. I began to worry about finding a space for Tony’s car.

That turned out not to be the problem.

Among the twenty or so parked cars, I found three empty spaces. But they were labelled with letters, not numbers.

L, R and W.

That was the problem.

One of them had to be reserved for Tony’s car.

But which one? He rented apartment 12, not apartment L, R or W.

After making one full loop through the lot, I stopped and tried to think.

I sure didn’t want to leave Tony’s car in the wrong slot. That would make it really conspicuous. Better to abandon it on a street than to leave it in someone else’s space.

A one-in-three chance of getting it right made for lousy odds.

I needed a clue, and fast. At any moment, one of the two missing cars might return and I’d be seen.

Think!

If Tony had been worried about forgetting the letter of his parking space, wouldn’t he have written it on the same paper as his address?

I hauled out the paper again and double-checked it.

645 Little Oak Lane, Apt. 12.

No L, no R, no W. Nothing except the address.

Forget it! Park and get out of here!

No, wait!

Could there be a correlation between Tony’s apartment number and any of the letters?

With the help of my fingers, I counted to the twelfth letter of the alphabet.

12 was L!

Fabulous!

It didn’t make anything certain, but at least it was a clue.

I swung his car into space L, shut off the headlights, killed the engine, put the keys in my pocket, and pulled out Tony’s handkerchief. With that, I wiped the steering wheel, shift lever, interior door handle, and every other surface that I might’ve touched. Then I climbed out, locked the door, and shut it so gently that it hardly made a noise.

For the next minute or so, I used the hanky to wipe the outside. The rear of the car was still wet from getting hosed. That didn’t worry me much. It was just water. It would dry soon enough.

I saw no traces of blood.

Tucking the hanky into my pocket, I headed for the driveway ramp. It seemed like an endless distance away. I listened for sounds of approaching cars. And for footfalls. The only sounds came from Tony’s loafers on my feet, clumping along the concrete. They sounded loud and hollow.

Finally, I reached the ramp.

My legs felt shaky as I hurried to the top.

Suddenly, I was out!

In and out, slick as a whistle, unseen!

I almost clapped my hands, but didn’t. Someone might glance out a window to see who’d made the noise.

Feeling light and free, I quickened my pace.

I’d be home in an hour.

Five, six miles.

Maybe a little longer than an hour. At a good pace, I can make four miles in an hour. But it might take an hour and a half for six miles.

Then I got to thinking.

Suddenly, I wasn’t certain of the mileage.

The drive had felt like a lot more than six miles. I must’ve been in the car for half an hour.

Half an hour, averaging about thirty miles per hour…

Fifteen miles!

But I did make those detours, pull over once, drive around the block while I was trying to make up my mind, and sit in parking lot for a few minutes trying to figure out which slot to use.

So maybe the distance was more like ten or twelve miles.

It can’t possibly be that far!

But I had no way of knowing for sure.

During the drive over, I hadn’t paid any attention to the clock or to the odometer.

If only I’d checked the odometer before starting out from home…

Or set the tripometer.

Oh, my God!

I stopped walking.

Was Tony’s car equipped with a tripometer?

I tried to call up an image of the dashboard. I pictured a dashboard, okay, and it had a tripometer, but I didn’t know whether my picture was accurate. Maybe I was just imagining the device.

But if Tony did have one, and if he’d set it to zero before coming to my rescue…

I had to go back.

9

THE LOST DETAIL

So many little details to think about.

And if you don’t think about them, too bad, tough toenails, you’re done for.

Just don’t kill anyone. That’s my big advice to you, if you’re reading this. I’ve heard that books are supposed to be meaningful and help a person gain insights into themselves, or life, or something. So maybe that’s what you should get from my book—don’t kill anyone or you’ll be sorry.

Of course, I guess any person with half an ounce of sense knows that already.