Dolan's Cadillac (3 page)

graders, front-end loaders. Abandoned not just because it was after knocking-off time but because it was a weekend, a

three-day weekend.

In the second vision everything was the same except the detour signs were gone.

They were gone because I had taken them down.

It was on the last day of school when I suddenly realized how I might be able to find out. I had been nearly drowsing,

my mind a million miles away from both school and Dolan, when I suddenly sat bolt-upright, knocking a vase on the

side of my desk (it contained some pretty desert flowers my students had brought me as an end-of-school present) to

the floor, where it shattered. Several of my students, who had
also
been drowsing, also sat bolt-upright, and perhaps

something on my face frightened one of them, because a little boy named Timothy Urich burst into tears and I had to

soothe him.

Sheets, I

thought, comforting Timmy.
Sheets and pillowcases and bedding and silverware; the rugs; the grounds. Everything

has to look just so. He'll want everything just so.

Of course. Having things just so was as much a part of Dolan as his Cadillac.

I began to smile, and Timmy Urich smiled back, but it wasn't Timmy I was smiling at.

I was smiling at Elizabeth.

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School finished on June 10th that year. Twelve days later I flew to Los Angeles. I rented a car and checked into the

same cheap hotel I had used on other occasions. On each of the next three days I drove into the Hollywood Hills and

mounted a watch on Dolan's house. It could not be a
constant
watch; that would have been noticed. The rich hire

people to notice interlopers, because all too often they turn out to be dangerous.

Like me.

At first there was nothing. The house was not boarded up, the lawn was not overgrown - heaven forbid! - the water in

the pool was doubtless clean and chlorinated. But there was a look of emptiness and disuse all the same - shades

pulled against the summer sun, no cars in the central turnaround, no one to use the pool that a young man with a

ponytail cleaned every other morning.

I became convinced it was a bust. Yet I stayed, wishing and hoping for the final vector.

On the 29th of June, when I had almost consigned myself to another year of watching and waiting and exercising and

driving a front-end loader in the summer for Harvey Blocker (if he would have me again, that was) a blue car marked

LOS ANGELES SECURITY SERVICES pulled up at the gate of Dolan's house. A man in a uniform got out and used a

key to open the gate. He drove his car in and around the corner. A few moments later he came back on foot , closed the

gate, and relocked it.

This was at least a break in the routine. I felt a dim flicker of hope.

I drove off, managed to make myself stay away for nearly two hours, and then drove back, parking at the head of the

block instead of the foot this time. Fifteen minutes later a blue van pulled up in front of Dolan's house. Written on the

side were the words BIG JOE'S CLEANING SERVICE. My heart leaped up in my chest. I was watching in the rear-view

mirror, and I remember how my hands clamped down on the steering wheel of the rental car.

Four women got out of the van, two white, one black, one Chicana. They were dressed in white, like waitresses, but

they were not waitresses, of course; they were cleaning women.

The security guard answered when one of them buzzed at the gate, and unlocked it. The five of them talked and

laughed together. The security guard attempted to goose one of the women and she slapped his hand aside, still

laughing.

One of the women went back to the van and drove it into the turnaround. The others walked up, talking among

themselves as the guard closed the gate and locked it again.

Sweat was pouring down my face; it felt like grease. My heart was triphammering.

They were out of my field of vision in the rear-view mirror. 1 took a chance and looked around.

I saw the back doors of the van swing open.

One of them carried a neat stack of sheets; another had towels; another had a pair of vacuum cleaners.

They trooped up to the door and the guard let them inside.

I drove away, shaking so badly I could hardly steer the car.

They were opening the house. He was coming.

Dolan did not trade in his Cadillac every year, or even every two - the gray Sedan DeVille he was driving as that June

neared its end was three years old. I knew its dimensions exactly. I had written the GM company for them, pretending

to be a research writer. They had sent me an operator's manual and spec sheet for that year's model. They even

returned the stamped, selfaddressed envelope I had enclosed. Big companies apparently maintain their courtesy even

when they're running in the red.

I had then taken three figures - the Cadillac's width at its widest point, height at its tallest, and length at its longest - to

a friend of mine who teaches mathematics at Las Vegas High School. I have told you, I think, that I had prepared for

this, and not all my preparation was physical. Most assuredly not.

I presented my problem as a purely hypothetical one. I was trying to write a science fiction story, I said, and I wanted

to have my figures exactly right. I even made up a few plausible plot fragments - my own inventiveness rather I

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astonished me.

My friend wanted to know how fast this alien scout vehicle of mine would be going. It was a question I had not

expected, and I asked him if it mattered.

'Of course it matters,' he said. 'It matters a lot. If you want the scout vehicle in your story to fall directly into your trap,

the trap has to be exactly the right size. Now this figure you've given me is seventeen feet by five,, feet.'

I opened my mouth to say that wasn't exactly right, but he was already holding up his hand.

'Just an approximation,' he said. 'Makes it easier to figure the arc.'

'The what?'

'The arc of descent,' he repeated, and I cooled off. That was a phrase with which a man bent on revenge could fall in

love. It had a dark, smoothly portentous sound.
The arc of descent.

I'd taken it for granted that if I dug the grave so that the Cadillac could fit, it would fit. It took this friend of mine to

make me see that before it could serve its purpose as a grave, it had to work as a trap.

The shape itself was important, he said. The sort of slit-trench I had been envisioning might not work - in fact, the

odds of its not working were greater than the odds that it would. 'If the vehicle doesn't hit the start of the trench

dead-on,' he said, 'it may not go all the way in at all. It would just slide along on an angle for awhile and when it

stopped all the aliens would climb out the passenger door and zap your heroes.' The answer, he said, was to widen the

entrance end, giving the whole excavation a funnel-shape.

Then there was this problem of speed.

If Dolan's Cadillac was going too fast and the hole was too short, it would fly across, sinking a bit as it went, and

either the frame or the tires would strike the lip of the hole on the far side. It would flip over on its roof - but without

falling in the hole at all. On the other hand, if the Cadillac was going too slowly and the hole was too long, it might land

at the bottom on its nose instead of its wheels, and that would never do. You couldn't bury a Cadillac with the last two

feet of its trunk and its rear bumper sticking out of the ground any more than you could bury a man with his legs

sticking up.

'So how fast will your scout vehicle be going?'

I calculated quickly. On the open highway, Dolan's driver kept it pegged between sixty and sixty-five. He would

probably be driving a little slower than that where I planned to make my try. I could take away the detour signs, but I

couldn't hide the road machinery or erase all the signs of construction.

'About twenty rull,' I said.

He smiled. 'Translation, please?'

'Say fifty earth-miles an hour.'

'Ah-hah.' He set to work at once with his slip-stick while I sat beside him, bright-eyed and smiling, thinking about that

wonderful phrase: arc of
descent.

He looked up almost at once. 'You know,' he said, 'you might want to think about changing the dimensions of the

vehicle, buddy.'

'Oh? Why do you say that?'

'Seventeen by five is pretty big for a scout vehicle.' He laughed. 'That's damn near the size of a Lincoln Mark IV.'

I laughed, too. We laughed together.

After I saw the women going into the house with the sheets and towels, I flew back to Las Vegas.

I unlocked my house, went into the living room, and picked up the telephone. My hand trembled a little. For nine years

I had waited and watched like a spider in the eaves or a mouse behind a baseboard. I had tried never to give Dolan the

slightest clue that Elizabeth's husband was still interested in him - the totally empty look he had given me that day as I

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passed his disabled Cadillac on the way back to Vegas, furious as it had made me at the time, was my just reward.

But now I would have to take a risk. I would have to take it because I could not be in two places at the same time and

it was imperative that I know if Dolan was coming, and
when
to make the detour temporarily disappear.

I had figured out a plan coming home on the plane. I thought it would work. I would
make
it work.

I dialed Los Angeles directory assistance and asked for the number of Big Joe's Cleaning Service. I got it and dialed it.

'This is Bill at Rennie's Catering,' I said. 'We got a party Saturday night at 1121 Aster Drive in Hollywood Hills. I

wanted to know if one of your girls would check for Mr Dolan's big punch-bowl in the cabinet over the stove. Could

you do that for me?'

I was asked to hold on. I did, somehow, although with the passing of each endless second I became more and more

sure that he had smelled a rat and was calling the phone company on one line while I held on the other.

At last - at long,
long
last - he came back on. He sounded upset, but that was all right. That was just how I wanted him

to sound.

'Saturday

night?'

'Yes, that's right. But I don't have a punch-bowl as big as they're going to want unless I call across town, and my

impression was that he already has one. I'd just like to be sure.'

'Look, mister, my call-sheet says Mr Dolan ain't expected in until three P.m.
Sunday
afternoon. I'll be glad to have one

of my girls check out your punch-bowl, but I want to straighten this other business out first. Mr Dolan is not a man to

fuck around with, if you'll pardon my French-'

'I couldn't agree with you more,' I said.

'-and if he's going to show up a day early, I got to send some more girls out there right away.'

'Let me double-check,' I said. The third-grade reading textbook I use,
Roads to Everywhere,
was on the table beside

me. I picked it up and riffled some of the pages close to the phone.

'Oh, boy,' I said. 'It's my mistake. He's having people in
Sunday
night. I'm really sorry. You going to hit me?'

'Nah. Listen, let me put you on hold-I'll get one of the girls and have her check on the-'

'No need, if it's
Sunday,' I
said. 'My big punch-bowl's coming back from a wedding reception in Glendale Sunday

morning.'

'Okay. Take it easy.' Comfortable. Unsuspicious. The voice of a man who wasn't going to think twice.

I hoped.

I hung up and sat still, working it out in my head as carefully as I could. To get to LA by three, he would be leaving

Vegas about ten o'clock Sunday morning. And he would arrive in the vicinity of the detour between elevenfifteen and

eleven-thirty, when traffic was apt to be almost non-existent anyway.

I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start acting.

I looked through the want ads, made -some telephone calls, and then went out to look at five used vehicles that were

within my financial reach. I settled for a battered Ford van that had rolled off the assembly line the same year Elizabeth

was killed. I paid cash. I was left with only two hundred and fifty-seven dollars in my savings account, but this did not

disturb me in the slightest. On my way home I stopped at a rental place the size of a discount department store and

rented a portable air compressor, using my MasterCard as collateral.

Late Friday afternoon I loaded the van: picks, shovels, compressor, a hand-dolly, a toolbox, binoculars, and a

borrowed Highway Department Jackhammer with an assortment of arrowhead-shaped attachments made for slicing

through asphalt. A large square piece of sand-colored canvas, plus a long roll of canvas -this latter had been a special

project of mine last summer - and twenty-one thin wooden struts, each five feet long. Last but not least, a big industrial

stapler.

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On the edge of the desert I stopped at a shopping center and stole a pair of license plates and put them on my van.

Seventy-six miles west of Vegas, I saw the first orange sign: CONSTRUCTION AHEAD PASS AT YOUR OWN RISK.