Prelude to a Scream (21 page)

Stanley knew the neighborhood well enough to avoid following the BMW all the way into the dead-end. He pulled over at the top of the street, lights doused, to watch.

The BMW descended the steep short street and drove three-quarters of the way around the cul-de-sac, counterclockwise from six to eight. Just as Stanley was about to become convinced the car had deliberately led him here, so as to identify him and his truck, it pulled up next to a van parked in front of a dark, stucco house.

The BMW's lights extinguished. After a minute both its doors opened. Stanley rolled down his window in time to hear a man and a woman sharing a laugh.

Again, Stanley experienced a little twinge of jealousy. Was some part of him so eager to suffer?

Dark figures exited the car, two doors slammed, and a car alarm squawked twice as the figures moved toward the house.

A stolen car with a car alarm. How civilized.

A wooden ramp led from the street to the garage and front entrance of the stucco house. Stanley plainly heard the lighter footfalls of Donna's sneakers on the wood ramp as she walked past the step-van parked on it. Ted's rubber-soled work boots made heavier, less-frequent thumps behind her. Ted's steps were erratic, hesitant. Ted was drunk.

There was another sound, of something moved sharply through the air. For a moment Stanley couldn't place it. But, the third time, he recognized it.

The whip.

Ted was carrying the whip. He was playing with it, tentatively snapping its split thong against the leg of his pants. He was getting a feel for it.

Ted said something that Stanley didn't catch, followed by a swoop and a soft snap. The woman gave a little yelp and laughed. Ted, neo-sadist, was dispensing a little taste of the lash. Emboldened, was he? What had he said to make her laugh? Gee, it's dark out here? It might be too dark to hit you some place where it might feel good? Whap! Yipe! How was that? Was I close? Pretty dark, though. I want to watch. You got any candles? Only if you beg. You like hot wax on your nipples? Oh, you dog. Yes, I always been a quick study.

Your turn to mud, Stanley thought, while I tape.

They began to whisper at the door. She would be giving him some business about not waking the nosy widow who lives across the way. Then she dropped her keys. They clattered when they hit the deck. They jingled as Ted hastened to retrieve them. Mademoiselle. Oh, you speak French. And Greek. Giggle. Haw. Bark like a Chihuahua. Whap! Yipe! That's it…

Stanley considered. All this noise seemed too obvious. Was it a signal? A stall?

The front door was finally opened. For a moment Stanley could see the lights of the city twinkling through a window at the back of the house, beyond the narrow entry hall, then a light came on over the ramp.

There she stood. Green Eyes. Watching the night.

The door closed. The light went out.

At least he had the right party. And a couple of big brass twos nailed to the wall between the entrance and the garage door beneath the light had declared the address.

He made a note on the darkened pad, below the BMW's license number:
22 Parajito Terrace
.

An address that would be good for maybe another hour.

Plenty of time, never a more perfect time, to call Corrigan.

A thought struck him. They wouldn't do the operation here — would they?

He dismissed the idea as too complicated. A reasonably equipped operating room couldn't be easily portable. So, he concluded, she would drug Ted here, then move him. Maybe switch vehicles, too: that would seem like a good precaution.

So, to wait.

Good luck, Ted.

Stanley released the parking brake. The truck coasted soundlessly down the hill toward Parajito Terrace, and he swung it into the first driveway at the mouth of cul-de-sac.

The driveway led uphill, to the right, more or less opposite the car deck. As gravity slowed the truck Stanley pulled the hand brake with infinite care, click by click until it held, avoiding the footbrake so as not to illuminate the cul-de-sac with his brake lights.

In the silence that followed he began to detect the little neighborhood's audio environment; the whispers of the fog passing through the boughs of a grove of eucalyptus ranging up the bowl that formed the south and west sides of the cul-de-sac; the riparian flow of the perpetual traffic of upper Market Street, a hundred yards up the hill, over the bowl's lip.

Stanley peered up at the building in whose driveway he'd parked. It was a tall apartment building, of several units terraced up the west slope, eventually rising almost as high as the looming berm of Market Street. The views would be magnificent. The wide garage door just beyond his hood would open up to the entire ground floor. The building was dark and silent. Everybody was snug for the night or gone to Tahoe for the weekend.

The whole neighborhood was as if asleep, buttoned-up, or abandoned. A single-engined airplane droned overhead, drifting toward the Bay until its lights were no longer distinguishable from the myriad bulbs of Oakland, its drone silenced by the distance.

The fog had begun to froth down from Twin Peaks, cooling the slope as it came. From the glove compartment of the pickup Stanley retrieved a pint of whiskey. It had been in there for five or six weeks, untouched since his last tour of the Tenderloin. He twisted off the cap and treated himself to a slug. Antifreeze. He replaced the pint in the glove compartment, and, thinking that he'd never been able to comprehend how any hooker could manage to look cozy while half-naked on a freezing street corner, he slowly zipped up his jacket against the cold.

He concentrated on keeping the zipper quiet.

But it was loud enough to prevent him from hearing the back door of the van open.

Chapter Fifteen

H
E'D BEEN LOOKING AT THE HOUSE FOR AT LEAST A COUPLE OF
minutes before he abruptly realized that someone had opened the back door of the van before he'd started watching. It may even have happened while he'd been capping whiskey. The thought brought a prickle to the back of his neck. He should be a little more alert. Otherwise the next person he tried his smile on might be a coroner.

So Stanley didn't move. He almost stopped breathing.

A lighter flared in the back of the van. Igniting two cigarettes, its flame clearly illuminated the faces of a black man and a white man. The lighter went out. Two orange dots floated around the dark mouth of the van door, like fireflies in a cellar.

If these two smokers were looking out the back door of the van at all, they were looking directly at the open driver's window of Stanley's truck. The street was plenty dark, but the least movement on Stanley's part would certainly betray his presence.

Stanley was twisted sideways in his seat, unmoving. He wasn't unthinking, though—thoughts like, two guys quietly smoking cigarettes in the back of a van on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood of a quiet San Francisco midnight could quietly mean nothing, right?

Wrong.

Now what?

Kick down the door with two guns blazing.

Right. Call Corrigan? Right. Too late to call anybody, now.

How about another license number?

No problem. The license plate was hanging right underneath the two fireflies. One of the fireflies even had a lighter by which Stanley could read the tag—along with the make and maybe even the year of the van. Very helpful, such a lighter. Guy holding it might even offer to get a hose, siphon a little gasoline out of the tank, and set Stanley on fire, just as soon as Stanley assured them he'd committed the license to memory. Whoosh. Recite it to Shiva, baby. Maybe light up Stanley right here in Hop Toy's pickup truck. Not only does upholstery kill dogs that eat it, it burns good.

A puff of smoke appeared over the van's door and billowed straight up. Stanley thought he heard someone talking, but the talk wasn't any louder than his own heartbeat.

Even so, he realized, he must now be seeing the chapter he'd missed six weeks ago.

Donna had taken him in a different car to a different house, in the Excelsior District. Drinking and flirting as they had been, polluting sips from the pint of excellent brandy with gargles from a quart of Lucky Lager, toying with the little quirt at stoplights, Stanley hadn't taken proper notice of the address of her apartment. He was still in San Francisco, after all. Historically speaking, he could wake up anywhere in town and find his way home. It had been an apartment, that much he remembered. And he recalled her taking an involved route from Geary Street to the Excelsior, probably to disorient him. But he recognized quite well the environs of the Excelsior District — who could miss a whole series of streets named for the great cities of Europe? London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Edinburgh, Naples, Vienna, Athens.… Not only that but Hop Toy had an aunt who lived out there, and Stanley took her a box of produce once a week. Which reminded him, he or at least his truck had to go to work at 4 a.m.… Come on, he hadn't even named her street yet. European cities: Moscow, Munich, Prague… Prague was the aunt's street — and then… Dublin. What a jump.

Stanley remembered most of the Excelsior's streets, more or less in their correct order. This brand of serial memory was a hangover from when he'd worked in a vast plumbing-supply warehouse in the late seventies, and had been forced to learn long lists of the
non-sequitur
concept-names of different models of toilet: The Butler. The Carrera. The King and the Queen. No Knave, but a Baron and a Duchess, and also a President. And then there were the colors: a Buff President, a Mocha Queen, a Manhattan Granite Duchess, and so forth.

For the record, one of the lines of concept toilets coincided almost exactly with another neighborhood of Excelsior street names: Dartmouth, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Amherst… And so forth.

One of the two smokers cleared his throat and spat. The bolus of mucus arced out of the darkness in the back of the van and caught what little light there was at its apogee, about ten feet above and halfway across the street, before it descended onto the canvas top of a Jaguar convertible nosed into a driveway not ten feet from Stanley's truck.

Stanley heard a soft chuckle. A disembodied voice drifted out of the darkness. “Good thing the man left his top up.”

Another chuckle, different from the first. “Ever boosted a Jag?”

“Once,” answered the first voice. “I might as well put a sign on my back says, ‘Arrest this dumb member of the Negro race.' A big mistake.”

“In this town? Are you kidding me? Just wear a suit and show the calling card of your law firm.”

“I tried all that. More mistakes.”

“It's the details, bring a man down.”

“True story.”

“What was it this time?”

“Give him the wrong card.”

“Which card was that?”

“My bail bondsman.”

“True story?”

“I am a little fucked up at the time.”

“Who goes your bail?”

“Jerry Barrish.”

“
Don't perish in jail — Call Barrish for bail.
My man.”

“I make him rich.”

“What does the heat say?”

“The man squints at Jerry's card. Then he squints at me. Then he squints at the Jag. It's a nice one. Twelve cylinders, leather interior, walnut dash, top of the line and brand new, too. So new it's still got the dealer's plates on it. He squints at Jerry's card again. After a while he shows me the card and says, ‘Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, sir?'”

“Sir,” the other man chuckled softly. “Respectful, like.”

“He said, ‘Just step out of the vehicle, sir, and keep your hands where I can see them.'”

“Oh, man. Away we go.”

They both laughed grimly.

After a short silence: “That was it for me and the Jaguar thing.”

“Not to mention the freedom thing.”

“From then on, I just stick to keepin' wheels under Sibyl.”

“Just enough to keep your hand in.”

“That's right. A Beamer here, a Pontiac there. Mix it up. Nossir,” the man sighed, “it don't pay to be any more particular than you can afford to be.”

After another, longer pause, the same voice added, “That's a damn nice car, though. Damn nice car.”

The other voice grunted.

The two fell silent.

Higher up the hill a motorcycle on Market revved its engine at the stoplight perpendicular to Parajito, getting ready to instantly accept the green at face value. Stanley realized he had created a crick in his neck by holding still for so long. Yet he didn't move. He had no doubt that the two men with the disembodied voices, reclining comfortably in the back of the van, were staring directly at him, whether they knew it or not. Waiting for something.

Stanley had long since grasped the key ring dangling from the ignition switch, ready to crank up the truck and back all the way out to Market Street if anything went wrong. His fingers were cramped. He even refused his eyeballs permission to move in their sockets.

Kick down the door with two guns blazing.

Right.

The motorcyclist redlined the engine and dumped the clutch. The machine took off, and its rider speed-shifted all the way up Market Street, snapping the clutch just enough to toe the gear change, not backing off the wide-open throttle at all. Stanley listened to the machine go through four or five gears until the sound had diminished into the ambient mutter of the city.

The two men in the van were listening to the motorcycle, too.

“Man,” one of them said. “Must be something he wants bad, down the road.”

“That, or something bad wants him up at this end.”

While they chuckled, Stanley finally permitted himself to move his eyes enough to make a startling discovery.

The front door of the stucco house was open.

She was standing there.

There was no light. But he could easily make out the unmistakable figure of the brunette, silhouetted in the darkened doorway. Against the plate glass window on the other side of the house she was a complete darkness, outlined by the twinkling lights of the city.

The figure didn't move. How long had she been standing there?

She, too, must have been listening. But to what? The motorcycle? The conversation?

Stanley tried to remember whether he'd moved at all in the last twenty minutes. Had he done anything that had betrayed his presence to her?

The drink. Had she been there long enough to have seen him take the goddamn drink?

A convulsive movement of his sweating fingers caused the key ring to click against the steering column, and he stopped breathing. It seemed like the loudest sound he'd heard all night—louder than all motorcycles put together.

The woman's figure disappeared from the doorway. A moment later it reappeared at the back of the van.

A brief, whispered conversation ensued, cut short by a final, sharp whisper from the brunette.

“Can't you two keep quiet for a minute?”

“Aw, Sibyl, we was just —.”

“Shut up!”

They shut up.

Sibyl, thought Stanley. The name clicked into place. Sibyl.
Baby. How'd your date go with the helium-voiced anesthesiologist?

More to the point, how's your date going with Ted?

Sibyl made a sharp gesture with her arm and stepped aside.

Two men materialized in the gloom at the back of the truck.

Using a very conversational, ordinary tone, speaking noticeably louder than before, Sibyl said, “I hadn't realized you two had arrived already. You should have knocked.”

One of the men replied, “Yessum.”

“We was just takin' a break, lady,” said the other man. “Been at it all week long.”

“Well. Anyway, I appreciate your coming all the way out here at such an ungodly hour.”

“Yessum.”

“I'm sure my husband will make it worth your while.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

“Now let's get this over with. You have the new one?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“How do you want to manage it?”

“Well… How about we just bring in the new one and bring out the old one?”

Nobody said anything.

“Ma'am?”

“What? Well of course. Let's get on with it. It's getting late.”

She led the way toward the house, followed by the shadow of one man dragging something out of the van and, a moment later, the shadow of the second man, taking up the end of the something. Between them stretched a horizontal shadow, about eight feet long and a couple of feet thick.

The woman entered the house first. The vista of city lights beyond darkened and reappeared. After a moment a light came on in the entryway, and Stanley could see that the two men were carrying a rolled carpet with fringe along its edges.

The front door closed behind them.

Someone locked it. The sound of a deadbolt sliding home was clearly audible.

The porch light went off.

Stanley blinked.

Then he lifted his legs over the Toyota's gear shift, transferred himself to the passenger seat, and gently pulled the latch on the passenger door. The dome light blinked on. Stanley barely restrained a loud curse as he pulled the door to. This was the first time the dome light in this truck had worked in two years. He thumbed a switch on the light's bezel. Then, taking a deep breath and ignoring the tingle in his lower back, he slid out of the passenger door.

Keeping low, he scuttled silently to the rear fender of the Toyota and peered beyond the tailgate.

The fog bank now spilling down off Twin Peaks rustled the grove of tall eucalyptus behind the house at the very end of the cul-de-sac, to Stanley's right. Otherwise, all was quiet. Directly in front of him, the front door of the stucco house remained closed. No light shone from within.

As quietly as he could do it, Stanley ran across the circle of asphalt and slid into a crouch at the back of the van. The open back door exuded odors of stale cigarette smoke and foam carpet padding, transmission fluid and… an essence he couldn't place. He hesitated.

What was that odor?

He shook off the query. He didn't have time to think about it.

It was dark there, darker than he'd thought possible. He had to put his nose to the license plate and actually trace the raised metal to figure out its letters and numbers. This took time. 1E…L…T0…36. It could have been a zero or the letter ‘O'. No matter. A commercial license plate. 1ELT036. He could remember that: One El To Thirty-six. Like directions to a party in Chicago. Some party. Doubtless a California tag would attract the least attention. Even in San Francisco, two guys delivering carpet at midnight with a truck registered in Minnesota might look a little artless. He grasped the rear corner of the door and half-closed it. For this the light was better. A chrome script showed on the door panel: Ram. That would be a Dodge. Centered on the door above the model name was a magnetic sign.
Cabrini. He could remember that. Nice Italian name. Probably Florentine. Also, Cabrini Green is an infamous housing project in the heart of Chicago. And the phone number — forget the phone number. This sign was obvious bovine scatology — it had to be. It was the license number he needed to remember. He eased the door back to its open position. What was it? One El To Thirty-six. The EL runs in Chicago, where Cabrini—. He heard a sound. The deadbolt. A door swung open.