Me, I turned toward the front gate. I should have been exhausted, but my anger gave me a surge of energy. Someone had just fired a grenade at me, and I was going to kick his ass.
I ran out to the sidewalk. The asshole in camo pants was nowhere in sight. I looked up the street both ways; a Jeep Cherokee was driving away in one direction, a Dodge Ram truck in the other. Which one should I chase?
I had no reason to choose either, then the choice was gone. Both vehicles turned corners and vanished. Neither had been driving fast, like they would if they were fleeing the scene of a crime. Which meant the asshole could still be here.
And I was standing out in the street like a target at a gun range. I ran toward the spot where he’d stood, but I wasn’t quite sure where it was. I turned around and surveyed Violet’s burning building.
The flames were already shining through the windows of the apartment above, and the smoke was billowing out in two heavy black columns. I heard sirens in the distance, and people were rushing out of the courtyard with cats in their arms, or baby gear. One woman ran across the street toward me and set a milk crate full of paperbacks on the lawn, then sprinted back to the building.
Things would get very crowded soon. I tried to remember everything about Camo Pants that I could. I had seen the hockey bag at his feet, so I moved away from the line of parked cars. Had the telephone pole been on the right or the left? Had he stood on grass or the pavement?
I walked around the area, looking for something that looked like a clue. In Chino, I knew a guy who’d left his wallet on the front seat of a Lexus he’d jacked. Camo Pants wasn’t so considerate. I couldn’t find anything but cigarette butts and food wrappers. Maybe TV cops could spend hours going over all this trash in some lab and finger the guy, but it was useless to me. And I’d forgotten to ask where I could find Violet.
The sirens were getting closer, and that made me itch to leave the scene. But as I turned toward my car, someone behind me said: “Hey, Mr. Lilly.”
I turned slowly and saw a homeless man walking toward me. His clothes were tattered and stiff with dirt, and even at this distance I could smell a year’s worth of cheap cigarettes on him. “Hey, Mr. Lilly,” he said again, his pale blue eyes wide and blank. “Your sick friend asked me to give you this.” He held out a cellphone.
I didn’t move to take it. “Who gave it to you?”
“Come on,” he said, “he paid me ten bucks.” He sounded a little nervous, as though he’d have to give back the money if I didn’t accept it.
The phone rang.
“Who?” I asked again. I still didn’t move to take it.
“I don’t know his name, but he looks like a cancer patient or something. He said he’s your friend. Come on.”
Okay. I can come on with the best of them. I took the phone from him. He bustled away, looking relieved.
The phone was a cheap flip-closed type. It stopped ringing as the call went to voice mail. I opened it and looked at the number. It was an 818 area code, so it was coming from somewhere nearby. As expected, it started ringing again a few seconds later. I answered. “This is Ray.”
“Ray! It’s been so long. Remember me?”
“I remember you, Wally. Why don’t we get together? We can talk about old times.”
“Heh. I’m sure you’d like that, Ray, but I haven’t forgotten that you tried to kill me. I mean, some stuff is hard to remember, but not that.”
He sounded different, almost dreamy. Wally had never been the sharpest guy, but he’d never sounded like this. “I’m a different person now,” I said.
“I’ll bet. Listen, Ray, I do want to meet with you. Right now. Walk west about three blocks. There’s a little diner that serves a nice breakfast. My treat.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “Do you think I’m stupid, Wally?”
“Not at all, buddy. I know you still want to kill me. But I haven’t forgotten what you did for me over the years. I still owe you. So we’ll meet in a public place, and you’ll give me a chance to talk for, say, sixty seconds before you try to kill me again. Okay? After that, we’ll see what happens. The place is called the Sugar Shaker.
Okay?”
“Okay.” I closed the phone and started walking west. The fire engines drove by me as I went, and I saw bystanders and lookie-loos helping tenants unload their apartments or stand guard over their stuff.
At the corner I dropped Wally’s cell into a trash can. It was painful to throw away resources, but it was Wally’s. I didn’t want any gifts from him.
I had three blocks to figure out what he wanted, but I couldn’t put it together. In junior high, a couple of guys from the baseball team had picked on Wally until I told them to lay off. It wasn’t that I liked him, but I hated to see the misery they were making.
Then I’d played with a handgun, and my life changed forever. I never went back to school and didn’t hear from Wally again until just before I got out of Chino. He wrote to me, offering me a joe job at his copy shop. I tried to remember how it felt to be grateful to him, but it was too long ago. Too much had happened since.
So I wasn’t sure what Wally owed me. An apology for what happened to Jon? For the predators he’d unleashed? As far as I was concerned, all Wally King owed me was his spell book and his miserable fucking life.
The Sugar Shaker turned out to be a storefront cafe with a counter along the back wall and ten round tables.
I took hold of my ghost knife before I walked through the door. The spell was quiet—just a sheet of laminated paper that I could sense—as it had always been. But if it still wanted someone to cut, Wally would do just fine.
