Fire Lake (21 page)

I kicked Bo in the butt and sent him sprawling on his
face. I backed toward the door, keeping the pistol trained on LeRoi.
He didn't take his eyes off me. I opened the door and walked outside,
pocketing the pistol as I left.
 

29

It wasn't until I started back across Vine Street
that I began to pay the price for my hijinks. My hands wouldn't stop
shaking, and as the adrenaline washed away, my spine started to hurt
like a son of a bitch. I'd wrenched it, pulling Bo across the
counter. The spasms were bad enough to make me take small steps and
pause in between them.

Worse than the pain was the effect my antics had had
on Karen. I'd forgotten that she could see partway into LeRoi's chili
parlor from where she was sitting in the car. I hoped she'd missed
the worst of it--the tussle with Bo and the business with the
shotgun. But there was little doubt in my mind that she'd seen some
of what happened and that it had probably terrified her.

I knew my suspicions were right when I saw her jump
out of the car as soon as I'd crossed Vine. She came running up the
snowy sidewalk toward me.

"What happened in there?" she said
breathlessly, giving me an anguished look. "I couldn't see
through the window. You disappeared inside. Then people started
running around, and I had no idea what was going down. I almost
called the cops, for chrissake!"

I could see from her face that she was close to tears
and very angry.

"I'm all right," I said, trying to smile
reassuringly.

"All right!" she shouted. "You've got
blood on your cheek! "

I wiped my cheek and glanced back over my shoulder at
LeRoi's Silver Star. "Let's just get out of here, okay?"

She eyed me furiously. "You son of a bitch!"
she said. "Don't you care about yourself? Don't you care about
me?"

Her pouty lip started to tremble, and she turned away
and walked stiff-legged back to the Pinto.

When I got inside the car, she was holding her hands
over her face, breathing heavily. I stared at her guiltily.

"Karen . . ." I reached out to touch her.

She dropped one hand and pushed me away. "Don't
you touch me!" she shouted.

She covered her face again. I knew she wasn't just
crying over me. It was the whole day--the toll it had taken. It was
her past coming back to haunt her. It was that bad karma she hadn't
worked off. It was Lonnie. But it was also me, and I felt bad about
it.

"I'm sorry, Karen," I said heavily.

"At least I knew where I stood with Lonnie,"
she said bitterly. "At least I could predict what he was going
to do." She took a couple of deep breaths.

"All right," she said, her hands still
tented over her eyes. She pulled her hands down to her mouth and
rested them against her lips. "What happened?" she said,
staring at me over her fingertips.

"The guys that Lonnie got the crack from live in
that chili parlor," I said. "One of them was the kid who
tried to carve me up in my apartment. When I saw him . . . I lost my
temper."

"You're hurt!" she said through her teeth.
"You're supposed to lay off for a while. You crazy bastard."
"It wasn't all bad," I said, blushing. "I made an
impression on LeRoi. And LeRoi is the man we're going to have to deal
with."

She shook her head, helplessly. "What about
Norvelle? Did you forget about him?"

"I think we're going to have to talk to Cal
about Norvelle." She dropped her hands to her lap and gawked at
me. "You are crazy."

"I told you before, Karen. I didn't make this
scene. I'm just trying to survive it."

"Sure you are," she said, shaking her head.

She started the car up and
headed south on Vine. As we passed LeRoi's, I glanced into the chili
parlor window. The junkies were sitting at the counter again, their
heads bobbing like plastic dogs.

***

It was almost four-thirty when we left the chili
parlor, and the sun was already low in the sky, setting in a band of
orange behind a bank of dark gray storm clouds. It was going to snow
some more in the night. And after the chili parlor and the scene in
the car, I was too cold, too hurt, and too generally dispirited to
face Cal before nightfall. I told Karen to drive us home--back to the
Delores.

She had just turned left on St. Clair, when I
happened to glance in the rearview mirror. There was a late-model
gray Ford, a cop car, on our tail. At least, I thought it was on our
tail. When we got to Burnett, the Ford turned with us, and I was sure
he was following us. I was also sure that it was Jordan behind the
wheel.

Karen turned into the Delores's parking lot, with the
Ford right on her bumper. Before she could turn off the engine, he'd
turned on his siren.

"Harry," Karen said, giving me a sick look.

"Yeah," I said, "I know."

"The whole block knows," she said over the
howl of the siren.

"That's the way he wanted it." I got out
and walked slowly to the rear of the car. Jordan had parked behind
us, on an angle--as if he were blocking off a felony suspect.

I peered through his front window, waiting for him to
come out. He just sat there, for a good three or four minutes,
watching me shiver. He left the siren running, too-long enough so
that everyone in the apartment house had time to plaster themselves
against their windows. People on the street had stopped, too, peeking
over the snow-covered hedges into the frozen lot.

When Jordan was satisfied that he was commanding
sufficient attention, he turned off the siren, got out of the Ford,
and walked slowly up to me, a dead grin on his dead-eyed face. He
knew how badly I wanted him, and he was enjoying making me squirm in
front of the home folks, in front of Karen.

"How ya' doing, Harry," he said. "How's
the back?"

I straightened up. "What do you want, shithead?"

"Nice talk,"Jordan said, shaking a finger
at me. "Saw where you paid a visit to your pal LeRoi. He's an
old friend of mine, too. I've seen lots of him downtown, Harry. You
know about downtown, don't you? Where we keep the bad guys?

"You know, Harry," he said, staring at me
hard. "It's a good thing you've got friends on the force or
you'd be in slam right now. I got your name on the Encantada
register. I got a few rocks from the motel. I got the crack from your
apartment. I got a Polaroid of you going into that chili parlor. And
before too long I'm going to have a witness, Harry, who saw what you
and your pal were up to at the Encantada on the night that Jenkins
was killed. And when I get a deposition ..." He whistled like a
fast freight. "We're going to take another trip downstairs. And
this time, no one's going to stop us."

"You'll have to kill me before I give you
another chance like that, Jordan," I said.

"Then that's what I'll have to do," he
said, nodding as if the matter were settled. "You called the
shot."

"Don't count on it being easy," I said with
a smile.

"You pack your bags, Harry, and kiss the little
woman goodbye. It won't be long." He waved at me with the
fingers of his right hand. "See ya."

Walking back to the car, he got in, turned around,
and pulled back out of the lot, spinning his tires on the ice and
throwing up a plume of dirty snow in his wake.
 

30

What Jordan had said had shaken me up, especially the
part about a witness to the murder. I could explain away the rest of
it-the name on the register, the crack, LeRoi and Bo. But if someone
had seen me coming out of the Encantada office on Friday night, I was
in serious trouble. Accessory after the fact, concealing evidence, at
the very least. If they really wanted to get ugly, it could be as bad
as aggravated homicide. The first thing I did when I got upstairs to
the apartment, was phone Al Foster at CPD.

"I just ran into Jordan," I said to him.

"You're talking to me again, are you?" Al
said in his wheezy, high-pitched voice.

"I guess I am," I said. "I guess I
forgot to say thanks yesterday too."

"Forget it," Al said. "What did Jordan
want?"

"To put me in jail. He claims he's got a witness
to what went down at the Encantada Motel, the night that the clerk
was murdered."

"What do you care? You weren't there, were you?"

"I just want to know who the witness is--if
there is a witness, if Jordan's not just jerking me off. You think
maybe you could look into it for me?"

"I'll get back to you," Al said.

I stared at the phone for a moment, after I'd hung
up. Karen came up beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. I patted
her hand idly.

"Maybe I should take a trip out to the
Encantada," I said, half to myself.

"It's past five," Karen said, staring out
the window at the twilight settling on Burnett Avenue. "Don't
you want to rest?"

I looked up at her with a smile. "I thought you
were mad at me.

She shrugged. "I'm mad at the world. I just want
this thing to be over with, without either one of us getting hurt."

I stood up and took Karen by the hand. "Let's go
to bed," I said, staring into her pale blue eyes. She smiled at
me uncertainly. "You sure you want to? I said some lousy things
to you, this afternoon."

"I've got a thick hide," I said, pulling
her to me and guiding her down the hallway.

Our lovemaking wasn't explosive, like it had been in
the hotel room. The urge was there, all right, but I could only move
awkwardly, because of my back. For the most part, I just lay there
and let Karen do the work. She didn't seem to mind.

After we'd made love, we huddled under the covers for
a time, watching the snow blowing outside the bedroom window. The
ground cover was reflecting streetlights and car lights, lending the
night sky a warm, yellow cast. The bedroom was dark and quiet, save
for the wind whistling in the casements. Karen traced a fingertip
around my lips, then laid her head on nry chest.

"I'm sorry about this afternoon," she said
softly. "I mean about the chili parlor. I wasn't just mad at
you." She raised her head and slapped my chest lightly with her
palm. "Although that was pretty stupid, what you did."

"Pretty stupid," I agreed.

She put her head back down. "That place reminded
me of another place, in East St. Louis. For almost a year, all Lonnie
and I did every day was go down to the junkie restaurant and hang
out--nodding off, talking shit, waiting to score. It was a very bad
time in my life--maybe the worst, all told. Some awful things
happened in the back room of that restaurant."

She shivered under the covers and I stroked her head,
running my hand down her long, smooth neck.

"We don't have to talk about it. I shouldn't
have lost my temper in the chili parlor. It was stupid." I
grunted. "In fact, I don't think I've done one smart thing since
Lonnie stepped back into my life, except for making love to you."

I couldn't see her face, but I could feel her smile
against my chest. She stirred under the blankets, pressing herself
against me.

"There was something else about this afternoon,"
she said in a whisper. "I realized it when I was sitting in the
car, waiting for you to come out of that chili parlor."

"What?" I said.

"I was afraid," she said guiltily.

I pulled her tight against me. "You had a right
to be afraid. It was a scary situation."

"That's not what I meant," Karen said. "I
wasn't just scared for you, although I was scared for you. What I
realized was that I'd been afraid for a long time. Ever since I left
Lonnie, really. I've been holding my breath for two years."

"I think what you did after you left Lonnie was
pretty brave," I said to her.

She shook her head. "Sure, I uncomplicated my
life. But I stopped loving, Harry. I stopped trying to love and
started trying to get by. Sometimes in St. Louis I'll wake up alone
in the night, and it's like Lonnie never happened to me, like I have
no past at all. When I feel like that, I have to get up and go look
at the kids, just to reassure myself that I do have a history. And
then every once in a while, I'll hear an old song or see an old movie
like Woodstock and it'll all come back. I'll think, my God, that was
me, that was my generation. It's like, in trying to forget Lonnie,
I've been hiding out from a whole decade."

"You kept going forward," I said. "Like
the Marine Corps manual says."

She laughed feebly. "Sometimes I want to go
back. I want to share that with someone. I don't want to be afraid of
my own past."

"You can share it with me," I said.

"For how long, though?" she said
uncertainly. "He'll always be there--for both of us."

The phone jangled on the nightstand.

"Don't answer it," Karen said with
foreboding. "I think I better," I said. "It might be
Al."