Some murmuring: 'Back from the door. Three, two, three, two. From the door.' Clyde fell quiet. The silence stretched itself out and out, and just as David was certain Clyde had hung up, he spoke. His voice came low and growling. 'I'll make you quiver,' he said. 'I'll make you beg.'
'Try it,' David said.
The sound of Clyde spitting came through loud and clear. When he spoke again, his voice was eerily calm. 'It's gonna get worse. A lot worse.'
A chill ran through David's body from his scalp to the soles of his feet. Good, he thought. Then let's play.
The line had gone dead.
His heart was pounding-good competitive bursts of adrenaline.
When Ed returned David's page seconds later, David simply said, 'Bingo.' Ed called back three minutes later and said, 'Pay phone at the Chevron at Venice and Lincoln. Clyde's old stamping grounds.'
'What? He hasn't left the area? I've got to head over. I'll call Yale now.'
'And say what? Based on an illegal phone trace, you have reason to believe that an escaped felon placed a phone call from a gas station? Don't bite the hand that's dealing you, Spier. That's our deal.'
'So what do we do?'
'First, we slow down. We figure out what new information we've gleaned from the phone call.'
David started to protest but held his tongue, remembering the last time Ed walked him through this exercise and the helpful information it yielded. 'Okay… He's probably hiding in an area near the pay phone.'
'Why?'
'His face has been on the cover of the LA Times six times in the past week, plus there's an APB out on his car. It's daytime, so there's no way he'd risk a big trip. The farther he travels from his hiding place, the higher risk he runs of being spotted.'
'Unless he knew the call was being traced and is purposefully misdirecting the investigation.'
'You're right,' David said. 'That's an option.'
'What else?'
'He was no longer slurring when he spoke. That means he probably hasn't been taking lithium, just as we hypothesized, so his blood level is dropping. That makes him more menacing physically, because his balance problems will disappear. He'll be able to run and drive more effectively, as we already surmised. Plus, it makes him more menacing psychologically, because whatever benefit the lithium was providing in reducing his violent tendencies-if it did at all-is now gone.'
'And perhaps he filled up his tank,' Ed added, 'which would explain why he was at the gas station. We're assuming he doesn't have any money, but if he does, you might look at new apartment rentals in the area.'
'He's an addicted smoker. If he'd risk going out for gas, he'd probably also risk heading out for cigarettes. I'll go down there with his newspaper photo and ask around at 7-Elevens and Quickie-Marts. And the gas station too, obviously. First thing that yields, I'll call Yale. Then I'll have a concrete reason for red-flagging the area for the cops.'
'And if you spot Clyde? What are you gonna do?'
'Talk him in.'
'Oh that's right. I forgot how well versed you are in hostage negotiations and combat tactics.'
'Sarcasm suits you better when you're in drag, Ed.'
'I am not fucking around here, Spier. Watch your ass.'
The small concrete storage unit stayed cold, so cold Clyde curled into the fetal position on the cigarette-burnt cushioning of the front seat of his car, his abundant rear end pushed against the driver's door, the cool Beretta pressed to his cheek. The ocean was far enough away that its hypnotic sounds were lost beneath the hum of electric lines and the whir of passing cars, yet close enough that the chill had crept off its surface last night and slunk its way through the streets of Venice, a malicious mist.
Clyde turned and grunted, adjusting his arms under his head. Frustration and then anger found their way into the small noises he made as he shifted. He got out of the car and circled it a few times in the enclosed space. He pulled two cigarettes from a pack of Marlboros in the glove box and smoked them until the cherries singed his lips. Using the tip of the pistol, he slid his dirty T-shirt up and gazed at the pattern of alkali burns across his chest. They looked fearsome, with white, dead skin flaking off around the edges, but they were healing well.
Opening the trunk, he gazed at the mix of oddities he kept stored there. Surgical tools, spare scrub tops and bottoms, a container of liquid DrainEze. Unscrewing the DrainEze cap, he sniffed the alkali solution, then set it on the ground. His hand, tumbling through tire irons and stained towels, found and clutched a Pyrex beaker. He slammed the trunk lid, then set the beaker and the DrainEze on it. Two thick metal runners for the roll-up storage door ran across the ceiling. Around one of them, he'd looped a length of rope. He'd left a makeshift gag dangling from the noose at the rope's end. A recipe for fear.
His call should have drawn David by now-a phone trace, or at least caller ID, would be in place after his last call. Retrieving the pistol from the passenger seat of the car, Clyde walked over to the roll-up storage door, inches away from the front bumper of his Crown Vic, and slid it up a few inches. Daylight streamed in like a gold twinkling river, pooling around his wide calves. He gazed down at the light for a few moments, transfixed and smiling, before taking a knee and peering out of the unit. Dangling from a hasp was the broken combination lock he'd smashed with a tire iron to gain entry to the unit. The lure.
Squinting into the bright light reflecting off the white quartz gravel, he peered down the row of boxy, garage- style units with bright orange metal doors. The strip of storage spaces terminated in the back of a 7-Eleven. A large cracked sign set up on posts-poppy's self-storage-angled toward the road to entice drivers-by. Across the street, cars crammed into lines at the Chevron station's pumps.
The loose skin of Clyde's face drew up around his eyes in a half squint, half scowl when he spotted the olive Mercedes, ashole lettered on the side. Right on schedule. It pulled over into the lot and Clyde watched it, his mouth pulsing slowly as if working a cud of tobacco, his hand tightening around the Beretta's stock.
David stepped out of his car and headed toward the 7-Eleven. He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping across the storage units. Clyde bounced slightly with excitement. A family of four pulled into the parking lot about fifteen feet away from Clyde's hiding place and noisily began loading items into the storage unit next door. Clyde's bouncing slowed. Stopped. His meaty hand sneaked through the gap in the roll-up door and snatched the incriminating broken lock from the hasp. He eased the rolling door down until it tapped the concrete, then gripped the inside handle and set all his weight down against it.
He waited in the darkness.
David exited the 7-Eleven, peeved at the teenager behind the counter with a faceful of pierces. The kid had barely bothered to look at the photograph before saying he'd never seen Clyde before. The Chevron worker across the street had been equally unhelpful-he'd recognized Clyde's photograph only from the news. David's heart had quickened when he'd spotted a dilapidated Crown Vic at the curb, but closer examination had revealed it was not Clyde's.
POPPY'S SELF-STORAGE sign drew David's eye again. His feet crunched on the quartz rock as he made his way across the lot. A man struggled to unload an antique bureau from a Jeep, his family watching with concern. David offered to help, but the man waved him off, his face red and sweaty. A manly man. See you in the ER with a slipped disk.
At the bottom of each unit was a hasp, and each hasp housed a lock. Except one. David walked over to the empty hasp and crouched before the roll-up door. Some of the paint was chipped behind the hasp, as if it had been struck by a blunt object.
David grabbed the door handle and yanked upward, but it barely gave. He crouched so as to get his legs into it and pulled, but again, it scarcely moved. Probably jammed.
He headed back to his car, squinting to cut the glare coming off the ground.
The drive to the Pearson Home took only a few minutes. Walking distance for Clyde, as David had estimated. He pulled over to the curb and got out. Up the street, a few kids clicked bright yellow spray cans and further assaulted the beat-to-shit phone booth.
David's feet crunched across the gravel and broken glass of the abandoned lot beside the building. A figure moved in the upstairs window, behind a rippling curtain. Wide and dancing. Layla.
David came to the scorched car and, on an impulse, climbed in. When he slammed the door, the glove box
