Cul-de-Sac (30 page)

Camel stopped at the doorway to the room and looked down a corridor to see Nurse Packard talking with a state trooper in full uniform, an impossibly young man whose face was bland and gentle, eyes brown and bovine, hair dark and thinning … he’d be
bald before he was forty. Seeing them standing together like that Camel thought the trooper and the nurse made a breeding-program-compatible couple except the trooper’s nose was even smaller than Crystal’s and you had to wonder if their babies would have any noses at all.

She pointed back toward Camel’s room.

He didn’t want to start answering questions yet, Camel still didn’t know what to say about Parker Gray and he still wanted to make sure Annie was okay.

He hurried to the bathroom, flipped on the light, opened a tap, then stepped out and closed the door, returning quickly to hide behind the door to the room just as the trooper walked in.

With Camel close enough to touch him the trooper stood there looking at the room’s three empty beds, then at the closed door to the bathroom. A light was shining under that door and you could clearly hear water running. When the trooper headed for the bathroom Camel slipped out.

Luckily Crystal wasn’t at the nurses’ station when he walked by, Camel taking the steps down because he didn’t want to chance waiting for an elevator.

Evading that trooper was probably stupid he thought as he left the hospital … but he was working on a plan how he might avoid being charged in Parker Gray’s death and to make it fly he needed to have a very serious talk with Jake Kempis.

Camel was heading for the street, looking for a cab, when from behind him someone called his name.

“Mrs. Milton?”

Hearing her name being called from the other side of the closet door Annie screamed to be let out … she didn’t care who was there, which man it was this time, she wanted
out
.

When the door opened Annie came rushing into the room but still kept the jacket protectively over her head. “Bees!” she shouted. “
Bees!
” Then she was embraced by whoever had opened the door and he laughed and told her, “No, honey, they’re just flies.”

Cluster flies, the kind that swarm livestock in the summer, that will cover a horse’s face by the hundreds … big fat flies that cluster in hibernation-like swarms inside the walls of buildings and if these clusters are disturbed the flies will buzz loudly like bees and try to reform their clusters. In the closet they swarmed Annie’s face not to attack her but in an effort to find each other and reassemble.

She finally pulled the jacket down from her head and saw that dozens of the flies were still buzzing around her, flies just like those that were behind that rotting window shade she pulled down, that settled on Paul and got caught in his hair. Not swattable little domestic houseflies, these were heavy and loud and if you
squashed one of them there’d be a mess to clean up, they were that big.

In Annie’s hair now, she brushed at them wildly and said, “No! No!” Not bees, thank God they weren’t bees, but she still didn’t want them on her, she was still repulsed whenever one landed in her ear or on her lip.

As Annie continued flailing at the flies, ducking her head to escape them, the man who’d let her out of the closet laughed again and grabbed Annie’s wrists. “Honey they’re just flies.”

She looked up at him.

“Just big ol’ fat flies,” he said, brushing at her hair with one hand as he held her right wrist with his other hand. “You remember me?”

Annie did, of course she did.

When Camel turned around the first thing Neffering said was, “What happened to your nose?”

“Broke it in a car wreck.”

“Yeah the reason I’m here, got a call about my car being in an accident … how bad?”

“Bad.”

“Totaled?”

“I don’t know, probably.” He handed over the keys which Eddie accepted like the personal effects of a recently departed loved one.

“You come from home or The Ground Floor?” Camel asked.

Eddie kept looking down at the keys.

Thinking of the trooper who was searching for him right at this moment, Camel said, “We got to get out of here.” He started walking, Eddie following slowly. “Come on we got to go
now
.”

When Eddie caught up he said, “I don’t know where Annie is.”

“It’s okay, she was out at Cul-De-Sac but Jake Kempis took her to your place.”

“She’s been missing since morning, I’ve spent most of the day looking for her … Jake took her to my house?”

“No, The Ground Floor.”

“Teddy I just came from there.”

Camel stopped, checked his watch.

Neffering asked him what’s going on.

“They’ve had plenty of time to get to The Ground Floor … you driving Mary’s Mustang? Where’s it parked?”

“You wrecked the Fairlane.” Neffering saying this to make sure he had it straight, to confirm it was really true.

“Eddie let’s get to Mary’s car, I’ll tell you on the way.”

“Can I see the Fairlane first, where is it?”

“No time.”

“You said Annie’s okay?”

“I thought so but she and Jake should’ve been at your place by now.”

“We got time to take a quick look at the Fairlane?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I just gave a state trooper the slip there in the hospital and any second now he’s going to be coming out here to grab my sorry ass.”

Eddie nodded. “Car’s over there.”

In Eddie’s wife’s new red Mustang, on the way to The Ground Floor, Camel explained some of what had happened … but not everything because he didn’t want to make Eddie vulnerable to an accessory charge.

When they got to the shopping mall’s parking garage Camel thought about showing Eddie the sheet of paper from the notepad, ask him to read it and give an opinion on how he thought Gray intended to finish the statement.

“How much trouble you in?” Eddie asked.

“Lots.” Camel decided he couldn’t let any of that trouble wash over on Eddie … couldn’t tell him about killing Gray. “Let’s go see if they showed up yet.”

Camel and Neffering went into The Ground Floor but Annie and Jake weren’t there, no one had heard from them.

“Something must’ve gone wrong after I left,” Camel told Eddie. “I need that forty-five … and the keys to Mary’s Mustang.”

Neffering looked away, his big brushy mustache drooping.

“I know, Eddie,
I know
. You went my bail, I wrecked your Fairlane, now I want your other car and your forty-five … I know I’m being a pain in the ass but this is important, I have to get back out to Cul-De-Sac.”

“I’ll come with.”

“Not possible. Now gimme the car keys or I’ll take a fucking cab.”

“Teddy you can’t make demands like that, not to the only friend you got in the world.”

“Then who can I make them to?”

Eddie shook his head. “I brought the forty-five from home, I’ll get it then I’ll walk out to the car with you.” He waited for a thank-you.

“Come on Eddie I’m in a hurry.”

Camel had the forty-five in one pocket, the keys to the Mustang in another … he and Eddie were just coming off the elevator when they both saw a little guy heading their way. He was five and a half feet tall, wearing a London Fog raincoat, had thinning dark hair, face like a well-groomed weasel.

“Weenie wagger,” Eddie said almost in passing because, with everything else that was happening, catching weenie waggers had fallen low on the priority list.

But Camel reacted differently, seeing the pervert galvanized him into action … running toward the guy, Eddie hurrying to keep up.

At first the weenie wagger looked scared then he realized these were the same two lugs around whom he had run circles last time they met up … the pervert smiling as he skipped backward and sang out, “If it ain’t Slow and Slower … see ya boys!” To mock Camel he shaped his thumb and forefinger into a pistol and pretended to shoot.

Camel raised the .45 and shot for real, two quick rounds into the concrete at the weenie wagger’s feet … made a hell of a noise
there in that low-roofed garage, the pervert lucky the bullets didn’t ricochet up into his legs. In fact when chips of concrete peppered him the little guy thought he
was
shot, yelping and tripping backward to fall on his skinny ass.

Neffering said, “Jesus Teddy.”

Camel walked to the pervert. “You work around here don’t you?”

He didn’t answer, too busy checking his legs for blood, for bullet wounds.

“Better find another job,” Camel told him. “I don’t want to see you again, never again, because if I ever see you again …” Something in Camel snapped loose, he kicked the guy knocking him flat on his back. “I’ll fucking castrate you.” As if to perform that very operation with gunfire he shot repeatedly into the concrete between the pervert’s legs, chips and chunks flying everywhere, the sound deafening. In the echoing aftermath of all that gunfire Camel said, “Never again.” Voice of God, Old Testament.

Eddie grabbed Camel’s gun hand and raised it to point up at the ceiling before telling the pervert, “Better get out of here.”

He didn’t have to be told a second time, the little guy quickly on his feet, running without looking back.

“Like the bad old days,” Eddie said, releasing Teddy’s hand once the pervert was out of sight. “Camel’s back.”

He popped the clip and asked Eddie, “You got more ammo?”

Midnight, bottom of the bag, Camel driving up Cul-De-Sac’s lane, dousing the Mustang’s headlights, worried about Annie and wondering about Jake, how deeply he was in on this with Parker Gray. Jake was the one snooping around for information right after Camel started making calls about that old homicide at Cul-De-Sac, Jake used his position as a security guard to get keys to Camel’s office, Jake was the one who turned Annie over to Parker Gray, and Jake wouldn’t take Elizabeth to the hospital, he insisted on staying at Cul-De-Sac to get Annie. As Camel slowly drove up the lane he tried figure it out … Jake did all of this to get an appointment to the academy? Was he in on the conspiracy? Or was Growler still alive, maybe Jake didn’t cuff him after all and Growler somehow …

Camel felt a burning pain in the middle of his chest, like his heart was on fire … the only thing he cared about in this whole mess was Annie’s safety, what did it matter to him that Growler had been framed, that Parker Gray had been living a lie for seven years … people are framing each other and lying and conspiring all the time, fuck ’em, he cared only about Annie, he should’ve seen to her first, made sure she was okay
then
worry about Elizabeth,
then
worry about getting off the hook for having shot Gray.

A film of sweat covered his face. Take care of your own first … when did I forget that fucking lesson?

Stopping the Mustang a hundred yards from Cul-De-Sac, Camel killed the engine and sat there wishing for a cigarette. After checking the .45 for maybe the sixth time he got out of Mary’s Mustang and walked the rest of the way. A late-model Cadillac and a beat-up Chevy Nova were parked in front of the building, Camel didn’t remember seeing them before but of course he’d left in a hurry, Elizabeth Rockwell smoking in the backseat.

Gray’s car was still parked to the side, its trunk still open. Camel entered the building through that window in the back, keeping the .45 cocked and locked in his right hand as he opened the storage room door with his left. The corridor still smelled of gas, Parker Gray’s body was still there on the floor, so was Murray’s head … but Donald Growler was gone.

The possibilities made Camel feel hollowed out inside as he hurried around through mazelike corridors, turning on lights as he went, reaching the huge atrium at the center of Cul-De-Sac. One of the five-gallon cans of gasoline had been carried from the back corridor and placed here at the bottom of the stairway. And next to that can of gas was Jake Kempis, his throat gashed. “Jake,” Camel said softly. But he didn’t have time for regrets or sympathy, Camel was ruthlessly focused now … one thing and one thing only, Annie. Starting up those steps, he shouted her name.