Cast a Pale Shadow(39)

Kirk spit on the ground and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Let me see some identification."

Nicholas fumbled in his jacket pocket, patting for his wallet, delaying the finding of it until he thought of something else. "As an officer of the court, I am authorized--"

Whether Kirk thought he was reaching for a weapon or he had simply grown impatient with his game, Trissa's father gave him no time to finish. The flask swung up and smashed Nicholas across the temple. He staggered sideways with the blow. His wallet flew from his fingers and into the grass.

"Where is she, prick? Tell me, or I'll kick you bloody. You won't be sticking it to someone else's daughter again when I'm done with you."

"Look at me before you make your threats, Kirk," Nicholas said, fists clenched and ready to strike, his ear still ringing. "I'm not some little girl you can knock around and intimidate. When the police arrive--"

"When the police arrive, my ass. You've been sniffing around my back alley for two hours like some cur looking for a bitch in heat. Don't tell me you been waiting for the police to arrive. When the police arrive, Mr. Officer of the Court, they'll see I've dealt with a prowler trespassing on my property."

It took a moment for Nicholas to realize that it was not he who swayed from the after effects of the hit, but Kirk. But when Kirk lunged drunkenly forward trying to land a rabbit punch, Nicholas was able to step aside, and Kirk landed on his face in the dirt with a force that knocked the wind out of him. Nicholas laughed at his easy triumph, snatched the flask from the ground where it had dropped and emptied it inches from Kirk's nose, making gin-mud that spattered his face.

"As I was about to say, you have your choice of two alternatives. One, you can wait until the police arrive and I will have assault added to the charges already appearing on the warrant, the details of which I hesitate to mention in earshot of all your neighbors." Nicholas, feeling far too cocky for someone who had never won a fight in his life, was shouting loud enough that neighbors on the next block could hear. He had his foot planted squarely and firmly into the small of Kirk's back. "Or you can submit to a court order that prohibits all contact with your daughter for an unspecified, but, I assure you, prolonged period."

"God damn it, let me up."

"Choose, Kirk." Nicholas increased the pressure on his back, grinding his heel into his kidney.

"Ow, shit! All right, God damn it. I'll leave her alone. She always was more trouble than she was worth." With Nicholas' slight easing of tension, Kirk seized the opportunity to thrust his flank upward, knocking Nicholas off balance. It was a simple matter then to grab the other ankle and pull him off his feet.

Kirk was on him in an instant with skill most likely honed in barroom brawls and wife-beating, he pummeled him with blow after blow in the gut, followed by a few well-placed kicks until Nicholas heaved himself over and tried to crawl away, digging his nails in the gin-soaked mud, unable to pull himself to his feet or even his knees.

"You sure as hell fight like a little girl."

Through smoky pain, he heard Kirk taunt him. A clot of something sour and salty rose to his throat and he retched into the dirt. The pain radiated from his groin to his chest, and rings of darkness encroached on his vision like the closing of the aperture on a camera lens from f/4 to f/8 to f/16.

He brought Trissa's face to mind and held it there, a charm against the blackness. The next kick was to his left ear, and he saw and heard nothing else.



*****



Trissa's worry mounted steadily since dinner when Nicholas didn't show and he hadn't called. Augusta had reminded her several times that he had said he might be late. She had tried to keep her busy making bows and ribbon streamers to festoon the music room. But when seven o'clock had come and gone, no amount of brightly colored bunting could have kept up her spirits.

When the phone rang, they all froze, it seemed everyone expected the worst, and no one wanted to be to be the one to hear it. Roger rose to answer it at last.

"Blackburn residence." There was a pause, then he smiled and nodded. "Just a moment." He pointed at Trissa and mouthed, "I think it's him."

"Hello? Nicholas?" Her voice was tight with anxiety and a bit breathless.

"No, Bryant Edmonds. Hello, Trissa."

"Oh, it's you. I can't speak now. I'm expecting a call."

"I think this may be it."

"Don't flatter yourself," she said flatly.

"Wait, you misunderstand. I have some bad news. Do you have someone with you?"

"Yes," her voice rose on the word. "Yes, Augusta's here. What is it? Tell me."

"Have her bring you down to the hospital right away. It's Brewer. The police just brought him in."

"No. What happened?"

"He's pretty badly beaten up. I'm sorry, but you'd better hurry. They may have to take him into surgery."

Trissa felt the blood drain from her head and she crumpled like a rag doll. Roger, who hovered nearby, caught her just before she hit the floor.

They revived her with a sniff of ammonia and a cold glass of water, and it was as if the ice in the glass had put ice in her veins. Suddenly all business, she fetched her purse and coat, left instructions for Beverly for clothes to pack and bring Nicholas at the hospital.

She was still giving directions when Augusta bundled her out the back door to the car that Jack had warmed up and ready. On the way to the hospital, she chattered on about Nicholas and his talent and how she wanted him to send his photos in somewhere and try to sell them, but he kept saying they weren't good enough. She thought she might surprise him and send some in any way. She'd go to the library and look up how to do it.

"Do you think he'd be upset if I did that, Augusta?"

"I don't know, honey, maybe it would be wise to wait."

"Wait? Wait for what?"

Augusta patted her knee, and Trissa clutched at her hand and read the answer in her eyes. "Oh, Augusta, what if he's killed -- My father warned me he would -- Oh, God, he warned me." She let the tears come then and Augusta comforted her and told her it was good to cry. It would make her stronger when she had to be, when Nicholas needed her smiles to make him get better.





Chapter Fifteen





Like shifting patterns in smoke, the dream swirled around him and Cole drifted, rising near its surface then sinking again, always throbbing with pain as regular as his heart beat or his breathing. He had lost the beginning of the dream down a white, cold tunnel of memory, and it seemed that he had trudged along for miles and days, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

Now and then, there were windows of color: a frigid, starry night along a railroad track, a moment in a green-walled room staring, waiting, waking in a car and scratching a letter to Fitapaldi on a scrap of paper. They were glimpses of life snatched away from him by a will stronger than his own, so that the features of the dream slipped away, and there was only darkness and the passage of time.

Occasionally, the pain towed him up to the shallows of consciousness. Cole gulped for air before submerging again and she was there, the chestnut-haired sprite with eyes as sad and blue as craters of the moon. He blinked and she kissed him and called him Nicholas. Then down and down he plunged, like a sinking ship, to the place that was bottom...that was death. In the shadowed depths his family beckoned, Jill and Danny and Valerie, younger and happier than he remembered them, hand in hand, Red Rover, Red Rover. But when he reached to touch them, it was her hand that held him, pulled him back.

"Nicholas, come back to me. I need you. I love you."

And he would float near the surface and dream again. Always, the pain connected him to life, like a surging current in an overheated electrical cord, burning through his gut or pulsing down the side of his head. His neck was encased and immobilized, restricting his vision and muffling sound.

She sat on his left, his good side, stroking a finger lightly over his cheek from time to time, shaving him with cautious tenderness when shafts of morning light pierced the shade of his dead sleep, kissing his eyelids when they fluttered in dreams.

"Wake up, Nicholas. We're waiting for you."

But they waited for Nicholas. The other. And not for Cole at all.

In his dreams, he saw an old woman, bent and ragged, hunched against the cold of a November day. She offered Cole a drink from her treasured silver flask.

"Be thankful you're alive, if nothing else," she croaked at him. "There'll be long cold years ahead when you're not." Clouds hung low around them, the sky dipping to man-height. They drank and smoked and she gave advice in a raspy singsong. "When you scrape bottom, the only way to go is up, I always say."

"Or out," came his quick and sensible suggestion. "There's always out."

"Yeah, that too, I guess. Up or out, either way." She started to walk away, into the fog that thickened with the billows of smoke she puffed from the stub of her cigarette, then turned and shook a crooked finger at him. "But you can't stay here, Sonny. Up or out. Out or up. But move along. Move along."