A Cool Breeze on the Underground (21 page)

Right, he thought. Then you’ll have another face to add to the Halperin collection. So work backward. Go from the solution to the method. Where would you like to be? What’s the ideal? Safe, quiet, isolated. A place the office doesn’t know about. Think, think, think … a place you can hear your own heartbeat. How about a cottage in the Yorkshire moors?

Where did Simon say it was? Get to work, Neal.

He started to search the apartment.

Neal found what he was looking for almost immediately. Maybe his luck was changing. It was a road map of Britain, with the route to Simon’s Yorkshire cottage marked in bright orange, and notes on how to proceed on the unmarked roads. Neal went to the phone and dialed. It rang a long time.

“Dad?”

“Where are you?”

“Just listen, because I don’t have much time. There’s some stuff you have to know….”

Neal sat down on the edge of the bed. Allie was still sound asleep. Her face and hair were damp with sweat. He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry, kid. I screwed it up. I tried to help you out and ended up getting you in more trouble. I’m really sorry.”

He figured he still had an hour or so before show time. He didn’t feel like sitting around letting the fear eat him out. He thought some more about Joe Graham and then did a very Joe Graham thing.

He cleaned. The place was a mess anyway, and that was hardly the way to repay Simon’s hospitality. He found a broom and a mop, some powdered cleanser and floor wax, and set to work. He vacuumed and dusted, polished furniture and scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor until the sucker gleamed like ice.

When he was done, he felt much better. Then he sat down with a book to wait it out.

The footsteps woke him. He could hear Colin trying to sneak up the front stairs. He checked his watch and was surprised that it was quarter to four.

The steps paused on the landing. He heard fumbling. He saw the thin piece of metal slip the lock. The door opened just a crack. Apparently, Colin didn’t fancy getting whacked in the face with something hard and heavy. Too bad. Neal felt the sickening bile of fear rise. He fought to hold it down as Colin’s foot pushed open the door. Colin stood in the doorway, both hands tucked inside his leather jacket. Which hand has the knife? Neal wondered. He remembered playing that game with the old Italian men in the neighborhood. Which hand has the candy? He’d never been very good at it then, either.

Colin said, “You’ve been trying to ring but the line was engaged, right?”

What if I give up, Colin? What if I throw up my hands and say you can take the book, take Allie? Instead, he said, “You should have come with an army, Colin.”

Colin stepped in and locked the door shut behind him. “For you, rugger? Mind, I’ve seen you fight.”

“You want a cup of tea? A beer?”

“We can start with a book.”

“Start and finish.”

Colin shook his head.

“Where are we, Neal? Whose place is this?”

Neal saw Colin’s left wrist tighten. So it’ll come from that side if it comes. When it comes.

“A friend’s.”

“Are you ripping him off, too?”

As a matter of fact…

“I’ll give you the book. You leave Alice.”

“True love, is it? The book’ll do me no good without the name of the buyer.”

“Okay, I’ll toss that in, too.”

Colin took a tentative step toward him. Neal backed away.

Colin said, “You’re not in much of a position to toss anything, are you, Neal lad? I think I’ll take the book and the girl.
And
you’ll give me the name.” The knife flashed out of his left pocket. He held it, blade turned flat, level with Neal’s eyes, no more than a foot away.

The point sparkled and danced in front of Neal’s eyes. He felt the thud in his stomach and the tightness of breath in his chest. He’d seen people get cut.

He let the terror come up, thought about his face sliced open, the sickening flap of flesh dangling, the scar he would wear for life…. Tears filled his eyes.

“She’s dead, Colin. She must have OD’ d.”

Colin’s hand dropped, not much, but just enough—enough for Neal to turn and run. He ran through the sitting room and flung himself through the sharp left into the kitchen. He had just enough lead to jump onto the counter.

Colin was half a second behind Neal. When he hit the waxed kitchen floor at full speed, his slick leather loafers went out from under him. He landed hard on his back, but not before his head took a nice bounce off the squeaky-clean linoleum. Neal raised the mop high above his head and jammed the butt end down into Colin’s crotch as if he was planting the flag on Mount Everest. This gave Colin a new relationship with the concept of pain, and he rolled on the floor in a fetal position, groaning.

Neal picked the knife up from the floor and put it into his pocket. Then he stepped over to the refrigerator and pulled out the pan he had placed in the freezer. It was now packed with solid ice. “Crisp,” he yelled in his best imitation of Colin, “get your arse in here!”

Crisp crashed through the flimsy back door and saw Colin rolling on the floor. He never saw Neal swing the pan of ice like Jimmy Connors smashing a high backhand. The heavy pan hit him square on the bridge of the nose, crushing bone and cartilage. Crisp was out before he hit the floor, which was probably a blessing, as he fell right on his shattered nose.

“You whore’s bastard,” hissed Colin with unintended accuracy. He tried to struggle to his feet, but nauseating waves of pain held him to the floor.

Neal went into the bedroom, lifted Allie in a fireman’s carry and hefted her down the back stairs. He was breathing hard and heavy from excitement, fear, and the exertion of beating up Colin and Crisp, so it took him a little longer than he wanted to get down to the garage. He didn’t have a great deal of time before Colin would suck it up enough to come after him. Knife or no knife, Colin would wipe him out in a fair fight, so Neal was hurrying to make sure there wouldn’t be one. He leaned Allie against the garage wall while he fumbled in his pants pocket for the key. He noticed his hands were shaking. Just to make things better, Allie was starting to wake up.

He got the door open, pulled her over to the dreaded Keble, opened the passenger door, and worked her into the seat. This maneuver felt as if it took about an hour and a half, and he expected Colin to come through the garage door any moment. He finally got her and himself settled in the driver’s seat.

Allie came to life. “Wazzup?” she asked sleepily.

“We’re going for a ride.”

“Thas nice,” she said happily, and fell back to sleep.

Yeah, thas nice, Neal thought, if I can get this thing started and get us out of here. He put the key in the ignition—the trunk key. It didn’t fit. Neither did the door key, no matter which way he tried.

Colin was fumbling with his own equipment, which seemed to be all there, even though that Yank bitch’s whelp had tried to geld him. His nether parts ached, though, no mistake, and his head hurt like Sunday morning. He got to his feet and stood over Crisp, who lay as stiff and still as a girl fresh out of the convent.

“C’mon, mate, get up,” Colin said, prodding Crisp with his toe. Crisp didn’t move.

The ignition key fit as if it had been made for the purpose. Neal turned it, stepped on the gas pedal, and waited for the demonic car to throb with malevolent life. Instead, it whined a dry, rhythmic hack. He tried it again. Same thing. Neal said some words your mother never taught you, and tried again.

Crisp wouldn’t move. Colin shook him a few times.

He came to. “My nose! What happened to me?”

“That beggar Neal smashed it. Let’s go get him.”

“You go get him,” Crisp moaned, sinking back to the floor. “I’ve had enough of him.”

Colin gave him a boot in the groin for good measure and headed down the back stairs. The motion joggled his throbbing balls, and he decided he might take two or three days to kill Neal when he found him. Then he heard the distinctive sound of an engine not starting coming from the garage at the bottom of the stairs. If there isn’t a God, he thought, there bloody well certainly is a devil.

The keble wouldn’t start, even though Neal was about standing on the gas pedal. All it would do was hack and spit, and Neal, who hated cars anyway, hated this car more than he had ever hated anything.

“pullona choke,” allie said dreamily.

“What?”

“Pullona choke. Fucking Gordon-Keble won’t start ‘less you pullona fucking choke.” She leaned over his lap and pulled the choke knob out about halfway. The engine roared to life.

“How did you know that?” he asked, but she was asleep again.

Colin heard the engine. Too late, Neal bugger, he thought as he tried to turn the knob to the garage door. The fucker was locked from the inside. He raised his leg to kick it in, but the sheer agony that bolted through his right testicle changed his mind. He limped around to the front of the garage, stopping on his way to pick up a convenient two-by-two left over from the construction. He posted himself outside the sliding door. When you come to open this, Neal, arms all nice and raised and all…

Neal pressed down on what he figured to be the clutch and eased the car into first gear. Keeping a foot on the brake pedal, he raced the engine a couple of times, pleased with the resounding result. This isn’t so bad, he thought. He let off the brake.

Colin waited patiently for the door to lift. He held the two-by-two up around his shoulders, ready to decapitate Neal. The delicious tingle of impending revenge eased the dull throb from his recent drubbing. C’mon, Neal lad….

First and third are a long way apart on a baseball diamond. But on a gearbox, they are barely distinguishable, especially to a mechanical moron like Neal Carey. He punched down on the accelerator and let off on the brake. The car flew backward. That’s when Neal remembered that he’d forgotten to open the door.

Except that Colin had done it for him. The impatience of rage had gotten the better of him, and, suspecting some trick, he had leaned down to open the door and go in and get that bastard when the little sports car plowed straight into him. Colin took a short ride on the hood before rolling off to the right, avoiding the crush of wheels by inches.

Neal had swerved to avoid him, hit the brakes, and, in doing so, killed the engine. “Fuck!” he yelled, turning the ignition key. He could see Colin in the rearview mirror. Colin was on all fours in the street, shaking his head as if to clear it. The Keble coughed again.

Allie leaned against the door, lost in a happy dream, just aware enough of her surroundings to mumble, “Choke, you gotta pullona—”

“Choke, I know, I know,” Neal snapped, a little too busy to reflect on the fact that a girl whose bloodstream contained enough drugs to sedate a small town could drive better than he could. He pulled the fucking choke, the car started, and Neal once again put it into first.

Colin stumbled to his feet and realized he’d been run over by a car. He saw his assailant in front of him, dead in the water. He picked up his stick and was about to attack when the car started to back up, slowly at first, and then faster—straight at him.

Neal wasn’t such a terrific driver going forward. Backward, he was a complete disaster. He tried to stop when he saw Colin, he really did. But when you step on the foot feed instead of the brake, you go faster.

Colin did what any smart, tough cookie would do: He ran. And not in a straight line, either. He zigged, lie zagged, he ran as fast as a man who’s been smashed to the floor, bashed in the balls, and crashed with a car could run. But the little auto kept coming after him as if he had a magnet strapped to his arse.

Neal was trying to do just the opposite, but that was the problem. Lacking any facility for thinking in reverse, he made the precise opposite happen of what he intended. Each time he tried to steer away from the madly fleeing Colin, he headed right for him. It was all pretty confusing, especially at that speed.

Colin‘s scream woke up Vanessa, who had been dozing in the phone box. She made a quick assessment of the scene and acted with dispatch.

“Stop!” she yelled as she chased the car down the street. “Stop! You’re going to kill him! Stop!”

Neal stopped. His scrambling feet and hands finally found the right combination, and the high-performance vehicle screeched to a sudden halt, slamming Neal and Allie into the dashboard and then flinging them back into their seats as it lunged forward.

Which surprised vanessa, who never really thought you could get anybody to actually stop just by yelling “Stop.” She was quite pleased with herself until she realized the little auto was now heading toward her, and she was about to turn and run when a shout from the window distracted her.

“He broke my nose, Vanessa!” Crisp bellowed as he hung out the window. “He broke my fucking nose!”

There were two things about Vanessa that became important at this crucial point. The first was that, of all the players in the game, she was the freshest. That is to say; she wasn’t stoned into the Enchanted Forest and she hadn’t been wrestling with a demonic triumph of automotive engineering. Nor had she smashed her head on the floor, had rough sex with a mop handle, or had her face smashed by a pan full of ice. The second factor was that Vanessa was relatively unattractive. She had never had a horde of suitors fighting over her, and she was bound and determined to hold on to the one she had, a man who found her witty, sexy, and desirable. A man who now stood in the window, bleeding and disfigured, crying for justice.

So as the car bore down on her, Vanessa stood her ground. Neal saw her standing in the middle of the street, Katie-Bar-the-Door. He was on the verge of gaining a semblance of control over this vehicular virago and even managed to slow down as he steered around her. Mistake.

You’ve heard all those stories about mothers lifting Mack trucks off their children. Something about a chemical combination of maternal instincts and adrenaline? Vanessa had plenty of both going for her as she grabbed the driver’s door handle and jumped onto the narrow running board. “You hurt my baby!” she screamed as she landed a nifty right hand through the open window onto Neal’s jaw. He hit the brake, forgetting that damn thing about the clutch, and the car shuddered to a stop. As Neal struggled to find the ignition key, Vanessa smacked him again in the side of the head.