Here Comes the Night (21 page)

Tony couldn’t figure out why Chuckles, and even the old fart
now, were playing him. Now of all times. He needed to get back on the road
before he lost the motor home. But now the old man was calling Chuckles
Billy.

The old guy and Tony were standing just inside the office,
while Chuckles listened by the garage door. Both were staring at Tony like he
just stepped off a spaceship. Tony was doing his best to explain his situation,
and most of it was true, but these idiots weren’t buying a word of it.

Even though Tony was experiencing sporadic acid flashbacks—at
least that’s what they seemed like—he kept his calm face on. “Gimme a break,
guys. I gotta get back to where the wreck went down first. Where I lost my
money.”

“And you wanna take your bike and we just trust you to bring
it back.” Chuckles’ face morphed into somebody Tony didn’t even recognize. An
ugly acting son of a bitch.

“Hey,” Tony said to Chuckles, “why don’t you drive me back
there. Can’t you? Won’t take five minutes.” Tony thought it would be a chance
to talk to him, see what the play was here.

Tony’s head felt wiped out now, with blurred images popping
up and then fading away. Sometimes he had to pause in the middle of saying
something until the pictures went away.

“Tell you what,” Chuckles sneered, “you leave the bike here,
walk
back there, then bring back what you owe us. That’s the fucking
deal.”

That was the end of the rope for Tony. He had given Chuckles
every chance to man up. Tony backed away from them, moving toward his bike,
reaching into his jean pocket as he went.

Both men came to attention, and the old man piped up, “Where
you think you’re going, boy?” He started toward Tony.

Tony whipped his hand out of his pocket and with two quick
jerks
,
his butterfly knife clicked open slicker than snot. He could tell
from the old geezer’s stunned face he hadn’t seen that coming.

“Don’t move another inch, motherfucker,” Tony told him.

Then Chuckles put his hands up in the air, showing no
resistance. “Dad, back off. Peace, brother, ain’t no need pulling that out over
a tire, man.”

“
Now
you’re all nice,” Tony said, reaching the bike.
“Now that I got this baby out.” He flipped the knife from one hand to the
other.

“Hey, man, just go,” Chuckles said.

“Fuckin’ A, I will,” Tony assured him as he mounted the
bike.

As he looked down to find the ignition key, his vision
blurred for a moment, though.

He missed the quick flash from the garage in his peripheral
vision.

Chuckles, moving with a speed and agility that defied his
enormity, grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun from just inside the service door.

Tony recognized the sound as Chuckles racked it.

By the time Tony looked up again, it was aimed right at him.
His turn to be stunned.

Tony slowly raised his hands off the handlebars.

It wasn’t even Chuckles standing there anymore. This was
some asswipe who’d just been pretending to be Tony’s friend. And he looked
ready to leave a hole in him with that 12-gauge.

What was worse, Tony was seeing two and sometimes three
images of Chuckles, like pictures layered one over the other. He needed another
hit of something. He was a sure goner if he couldn’t even focus.

“Good job, son,” the old man crowed.

“Put it down,” Chuckles said, indicating Tony’s knife. “Lay
it on the concrete in front of you and kick it toward me.”

Tony glanced around, searching for an out, as he complied as
slowly as possible. He could see only one play.

He dropped the knife, but kicked it in the old man’s
direction instead of toward Chuckles.

“Leave it there,” Chuckles said, but his dad was already
shuffling toward the weapon. Tony was watching Chuckles, though, whose eyes
flashed back and forth between the two of them. Just what Tony wanted.

“It’s okay, I got it,” the old man said. But when he bent
over to pick up the knife, he stumbled, off balance.

Chuckles instinctively glanced with concern toward his
father and lowered the 12-gauge an inch, giving Tony the split second he needed
to go for his .38 from his back waistband. As he grabbed it, he ran the few
steps he needed to duck behind the bike.

Before Chuckles could readjust his aim, Tony popped up and
got off his shot. The report echoed against the corrugated garage walls.

Blood exploded out of Chuckles’ enormous stomach. Stunned,
he took a couple of steps forward, then stood there, gaping dumbly at the
flowing wound.

The old man hurried to him. “Billy. No, Billy.”

Tony jumped on the bike, roared it to life and squealed out
onto the highway. He fired a couple more blind shots behind him for cover, then
leaned low on the bike. “Fuck you, piece of shit,” he muttered to himself.

Tony couldn’t understand why, all of a sudden, he felt
choked up. Tears were filling his eyes. He gave them a swipe.

What Tony didn’t see behind him was the iron will of Billy
Inman. He may have been badly wounded and bleeding, but with charged adrenalin,
Billy, somehow, got up, shotgun still in hand, and stumbled out into the road.

“Cocksucker,” Billy screamed and aimed for Tony’s receding
back on the fleeing Kawasaki.

The 12-gauge erupted. Billy wobbled backwards from its kick,
then, unable to muster any more energy, dropped to a sitting position in the middle
of the road.

Tony heard the gunshot that blasted into his back, but it
never registered in his mind that he had been hit. His body involuntarily
shuddered, but his head shifted into an unreal sense of well-being.

With a grin, he leaned his blood-spackled face into the
windshield, and kept driving as though nothing had happened.

Then somebody was talking to him. It was Chuckles.

“What’d I tell you, buddy? I’s afraid you wouldn’t last long
out there with the normies. Now you went and done it.”

“
Shut up,” Tony said, in that half-joking tone he
liked to use with Chuckles. The motorcycle was weaving in and out of lanes now.
Blood streamed down Tony’s t-shirt.

“Hey, Tony, this is it, kiddo, the end. Told you I’d be here
for you.”

“It’s you, man,” Tony managed, more feeling the presence
beside him than seeing it. “You made it.”

Tony’s sight began blurring on the road ahead. Suddenly, his
body seemed incredibly light and relaxed.

“Here to help, son. Just let ‘er go now. You’re free.”

“Yeah, free,” Tony whispered to the wind, struggling to keep
his eyes open.

“All your shit, just set it down. Look at you, man, you’re
flyin’ now, ya hear?”

Tony smiled and lifted his hands off the handlebars and
stretched them up into the air. The bike started a slow drift toward the
shoulder.

Chuckles was whispering again. “Let go now, Tony. Let go and
just fly.”

Sure enough, Tony could see himself elevating above the
earth. He leaned his head as far back as he could, surprised at the closeness
of the mottled gray sky. He could almost reach out and grab it.

“What a ride,” he said to the air. From somewhere came the
smell of alfalfa and pine trees. The wind tickled his cheeks. He closed his
eyes and felt his hair swirl around his face. Then he was being lifted up into
the sky.

“I’m way up here now,” he whispered to the wind. He could
see beneath him then, the motorcycle drifting toward a fence, the two lanes of
asphalt, the tops of green trees framing it all like a painting.

And when Tony’s heart stopped beating a minute later, he was
still soaring, up into the gray underbelly of heaven itself.

Angie studied her image in the rearview mirror. There was
barely any trace of her left under the black wig, sunglasses, and shapeless,
flowered house dress. She looked more like Juanita, who had left for the day at
Angie’s insistence. Her plan was risky enough, without allowing an easy witness
to it.

She drove Gordon’s black Mercedes. Not perfect, but not the
advertisement her silver BMW would be. She picked up the throw-away cell she’d
purchased shortly before, while wearing the same disguise, and punched in
Buck’s apartment number. Almost holding her breath, she waited through several
rings before he finally picked up.

“Hello?”

“You alone?” she whispered.

Then a moment as he realized who it was. A sharp intake of
breath. “Yeah.”

“Stay put.” She hung up and sighed.

They were probably monitoring Buck’s movement, but she was
betting they wouldn’t have tapped his phones this quickly. Even if they had, a
call that brief could be written off as a wrong number.
They might
suspect, but at least they couldn’t prove who made it.

A few blocks from his apartment, she found a parking spot.
Angie had disguised herself plenty of times to rent motel rooms for her and
Buck, and had been amazed how easy it was. She had never realized that people
rarely looked at those around them, even clerks taking money. She was betting
they wouldn’t even glance at an Hispanic woman in a house dress and ugly shoes.
With an added head scarf over the black wig, she was unrecognizable, even on
surveillance cameras.

Angie walked quickly to the apartment building and buzzed
Buck’s apartment to open the building entrance door. She held her breath a
moment. Quickly, with no exchange, he buzzed her up.

Moments later Angie pushed his doorbell, then waited, head
down. Buck opened the door, puzzled for a moment at her appearance. But he had
seen her in disguise before and quickly waved her in. She slipped inside and he
shut the door behind them.

Then he grabbed for her, clutching so tightly she could
barely move. Shaking, they held on to each other for a long, charged moment.

Finally, he released his grip and took off her sunglasses
and wig. She touched his bruised face with tender fingers and shook her head in
sympathy.

“We make a fine pair,” Buck said with a grin.

“I know this is insane. I’m sorry. I had to come.”

“It’s alright,” he pulled her into him again. “I’ve been
aching, I wanted to see you so bad. Right now I don’t care what happens.”

He kissed her and she stayed close against him. Angie felt
safe for the first time since they had parted after the poker game, even if
they were both still trembling.

Angie gingerly touched his swollen black eye. “When I saw
you all beat up this morning, I didn’t think I could stand it.”

“They sent these thugs. They wanted their money. I got
worked over.” He showed her his bandaged finger. “They took it,” he said in a
breaking voice.

Angie cried and listened as he explained how it had all gone
down.

“Oh, God,” he said, “if I had just paid them before I went
into work on Friday—”

“You couldn’t have known. They’re animals.” Then Angie told
him everything about how it had been at her end.

“When I couldn’t find you, I was dying. Then when I saw your
car, with some girl in it, I just fell apart. I went nuts.”

They both sat shaking their heads at how crazy bad it had
all gone. Yet all Angie could think about was wanting to be close enough to
smell every part of him again, to feel their bodies melt together.

She took his hand and pulled him into his bedroom, both
undressing as they went. Their bare bodies fell together in their sweet,
familiar way. Yet, it was different somehow. Angie sensed it from the
beginning.

Something darker was affecting them. It was as if the
unspoken guilt lay there between them, alongside the desire. The usual
lightness of their lovemaking, their sense of abandonment, was almost gone.

This time, when Buck pushed himself inside her, a heaviness,
a need, came with it. He went slowly, as though it almost hurt to continue.

Then she heard him whispering in her ear. “Just this one
time…please. Just once.”

Angie could feel Buck abandoning himself to her, and asking
with his whole heart for something just as real back from her. He was entirely
present with his love, leaving her somehow on the outside, looking in.

It broke Angie’s heart that she didn’t know how to give
herself to him completely. She wanted with everything in her to open her heart,
open her soul and let all of him in. But the harder she tried, the more it
wouldn’t budge. Not even after all he’d been through. All he’d done for her.

Later, as both lay half-dressed on the bed, they stared at
the ceiling without speaking. Buck felt a weight settle over him that he was
too exhausted to fight off.

Angie whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He watched the ceiling fan throw circling shadows on the
ceiling. “I get lost in you, always have.”

“Oh, Buck—”

“No, it’s true. Last night when I knew I was going to die, I
thought…I was wondering, why did I spend so much of my life trying to
find
something?
But that wasn’t it. I wasn’t wanting to find something, I was looking for
something to get
lost
in, you know? Football. Celebrity. Gambling. Then
you. You were the sweetest.”

“Hey, what’s this ‘were?’ I’m still here.”

“I know.” He turned his head to her. “They know I killed
Gordon.”

She tried to stop him from continuing, but he motioned her
to wait. “I don’t know if they can prove it yet,” Buck explained, “but they’ve
narrowed it down. If they can prove we’re together, we’ll both go down.”

“No,” she protested.

“Listen, if they can find evidence to put us together,
that’s motive. And then they won’t stop. They’ll find more stuff. It’s out
there. I didn’t exactly cover my tracks after the shit hit the fan.”

“But they can’t prove it.”

Buck knew he had to prepare her, even though it pained him
to tell her. “Gordon had pictures. Of us. He had us followed.”

The color fell out of her face. “No. Oh, no.”

“The cops may not have seen them, but the thugs did. It’s
possible
they might be the only copies…if we have any luck left at all.”

Angie seemed to regain her composure a bit. “That would be
like Gordon, to insist on keeping the only copies and all the negatives.”

“Hopefully,” Buck agreed. “But whatever investigator took
them will eventually come forward. And when I’m arrested—”

“Don’t even say it,” she hissed, grabbing his arm.

He pressed on her hands to still her so he could continue.
“Please, this is hard enough. Now, if I’m caught, you’ve got to go on. There’s
no need for you to be involved, too.”

She began to cry. “But I was the one who…I started the whole
thing.”

He could see her scared little kid coming to the surface.
“It doesn’t matter, Angie. Look, it’s not like I’m planning to get caught. I’m
just telling you now, while I can, that I don’t want you to go down for this,
too, if it comes to that.”

The sharp buzz of the doorbell made them both involuntarily
jump. They looked at one another, instantly alert, up in a panic, buttoning and
zipping up.

He whispered, “Bathroom.”

She nodded and headed in there.

Whoever it was didn’t seem to be giving up. More buzzing. By
now Angie was dressed and sitting in the tub of his bathroom. He pulled the
shower curtain around her.

Silently, he moved into the living room and listened. After
a moment, he recognized Horse’s voice.

“Mr. Dearmore, it’s Detective Douglas and Edgars. We need to
speak with you.”

Buck saw Angie’s purse and wig by the sofa and quickly took
them back to the bathroom. Everything else looked okay if he had to let them
in.

“Mr. Dearmore?” It was Edgars’ voice this time. “We just
need to clarify a small detail and we’ll leave you alone. We can hear you
moving around.”

“Just a second.” He glanced in a full length mirror to check
that he looked halfway together.

Finally, he steeled himself and opened the door. He shook
his head, trying to look like he’d just gotten up. “I guess I fell asleep back
there.” He wasn’t about to let them in, but he tried to look undisturbed. “What
small detail?”

“May we come in?” Edgars asked with upraised eyebrows.

Buck was ready for them. “Sorry, not to be rude, but my
lawyer told me not to let you in here again. In fact, I’m not supposed to be
talking to you at all.”

Horse looked like he might jump in, but Edgars raised his
hand to tell him to cool it. “That’s fine, Mr. Dearmore. We were hoping to come
in for a few minutes, but we can do this downtown if you’d rather come with
us.”

Buck turned this over in his head. Edgars probably expected
him to let them in after the detective threw this inconvenience at him. But
Buck wasn’t about to. It would take just one sound from Angie, one thing left
in sight that he hadn’t noticed. He didn’t like leaving, but it made more sense
than refusing to cooperate. Finally, he said, “Fine, gentlemen. I’ll just lock
up.”

The detectives stood there, obviously not going anywhere
until he did.

“I need to call my lawyer,” Buck said, hoping they might go
ahead. “I can just meet you there.”

But Edgars seemed to read him all too well. “Actually, we
should drive you. You can call him on the way.”

Buck put on a relaxed face. “Alright.” He grabbed his wallet
and cell. He was tempted to say something on the way out that Angie might
overhear, so she’d know what was up, but he was afraid it would sound clumsy to
the detectives. So he had to leave, hoping she might have caught some of what
the detectives said, even though he knew the bathroom was too far away.

Just like him, she was on her own now.