From a Buick 8(102)

CHAPTER 9

'You're in tomorrow, right?' I asked.

'Bright and early, Sarge. We'll do it all again.'

'Then maybe you ought to postpone your thinking and do a little sleeping instead.'

'I guess I can give it a try.' He touched my hand briefly. 'Thanks, Sandy'.

'No problem.'

'If I was a pisshead about any of it ? '

'You weren't,' I said. He had been a pisshead about some of it, but I didn't think he'd been able to help it. And at his age I likely would have been pissier by far. I watched him walk toward the restored Bel Aire his father had left behind, a car of roughly the same vintage as the one in our shed but a good deal less lively. Halfway across the parking lot he paused, looking at Shed B, and I paused with the smoldering stub of my cigarette poised before my lips, watching to see what he'd do.

He moved on instead of going over. Good. I took a final puff on my delightful tube of death, thought about crushing it on the hottop, and found a place for it in the butt-can instead, where roughly two hundred previous butts had been buried standing up. The others could crush out their smokes on the pavement if they wanted to ? Arky would sweep them up without complaint ? but it was better if I didn't do that. I was the Sarge, after all, the guy who sat in the big chair.

I went into the barracks. Stephanie Colucci was in dispatch, drinking a Coke and reading a magazine. She put the Coke down and smoothed her skirt over her knees when she saw me.

'What's up, sweetheart?' I asked.

'Nothing much. Communications are clearing up, though not as fast as they usually do after . . . one of those. I've got enough to keep track of things.'

'What things?'

'9 is responding to a car-fire on the I-87 Exit 9 ramp, Mac says the driver's a salesman headed for Cleveland, lit up like a neon sign and refusing the field sobriety test. 16 with a possible break-in at Statler Ford. Jeff Cutler with vandalism over at Statler Middle School, but he's just assisting, the local police have got that one.'

'That it?'

'Paul Loving is 10-98 for home in his cruiser, his son's having an asthma attack.'

'You might forget to put that on the report.'

Steffie gave me a reproachful look, as if she hardly needed me to tell her that. 'What's going on out in Shed B?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'Well, nothing much. Normalizing. I'm out of here. If anything comes up, just . . .' I stopped, sort of horrified.

'Sandy?' she asked. 'Is something wrong?'

If anything comes up, just call Tony Schoondist, I'd been about to say, as if twenty years hadn't slipped under the bridge and the old Sarge wasn't dribbling mindlessly in front of Nick at Nite in a Statler nursing home. 'Nothing wrong,' I said. 'If anything comes up, call Frank Soderberg. It's his turn in the barrel.'

'Very good, sir. Have a nice night.'

'Thanks, Steff, right back atcha.'

As I stepped out, the Bel Aire rolled slowly toward the driveway with one of the groups Ned likes ? Wilco, or maybe The Jayhawks ? blaring from the custom speakers. I lifted a hand and he returned the wave. With a smile. A sweet one. Once more I found it hard to believe I'd been so angry with him.

I stepped over to the shed and assumed the position, that feet-apart, sidewalk-superintendent stance that makes everyone feel like a Republican somehow, ready to heap contempt on welfare slackers at home and flag-burning foreigners abroad. I looked in. There it sat, silent under the overhead lights, casting a shadow just as though it were sane, fat and luxy on its whitewall tires. A steering wheel that was far too big. A hide that rejected dirt and healed scratches ? that happened more slowly now, but it did still happen. Oil's fine was what the man said before he went around the corner, those were his last words on the matter, and here it still was, like an objet d'art somehow left behind in a closed-down gallery. My arms broke out in gooseflesh and I could feel my balls tightening. My mouth had that dry-lint taste it gets when I know I'm in deep shit. Ha'past trouble and goin on a jackpot, Ennis Rafferty used to say. It wasn't humming and it wasn't glowing, the temperature was up above sixty again, but I could feel it pulling at me, whispering for me to come in and look. It could show me things, it whispered, especially now that we were alone. Looking at it like this made one thing clear: I'd been angry at Ned because I'd been scared for him. Of course. Looking at it like this, feeling its tidal pull way down in the middle of my head ? beating in my guts and my groin, as well ? made everything easier to understand. The Buick bred monsters. Yes. But sometimes you still wanted to go to it, the way you sometimes wanted to look over the edge when you were on a high place or peer into the muzzle of your gun and see the hole at the end of the barrel turn into an eye. One that was watching you, just you and only you. There was no sense trying to reason your way through such moments, or trying to understand that neurotic attraction; best to just step back from the drop, put the gun back in its holster, drive away from the barracks. Away from Shed B. Until you got beyond the range of that subtle whispering voice. Sometimes running away is a perfectly acceptable response.

I stood there a moment longer, though, feeling that distant beat-beat-beat in my head and around my heart, looking in at the midnight-blue Buick Roadmaster. Then I stepped back, drew a deep breath of night air, and looked up at the moon until I felt entirely myself again. When I did, I went to my own car and got in and drove away.