It's Alive! (13 page)

“Do you make as much money as Dad?”

“Nope. The paint business is changing just like people are. You can’t always predict what business will be like in the future. For my father, it was a good business. But now everybody wants to shop at big discount stores, where paint is cheaper. So my business isn’t so hot.”

“Dad always buys his paint at your store.”

“Well,” Charley chuckled, “I guess that’s part of our being friends.”

“Do you wish you were still married?”

“In a way.” He chuckled again. “I’d like to be with my boys more, that’s for sure. That’s one reason I like being with you so much. You’re almost like another son to me.”

“I like being with you too, Charley, except,” he arced his rod far back and snapped it forward, “that I’d like to be home with Mom and Dad and the baby. Oh-oh!”

“Yeah, you got hung up on that limb, Chris my boy.” Chris’s lure was hooked on a low branch behind him. “Wait a second, I can reach it. I’ll get it down for you.”

“I can do it.” Chris trotted back, crouched, and leaped for the branch, flicking the lure free with his fingertips.

“Hey, terrific!” Charley laughed. “That’s one way you’re like your dad—you both can really jump!”

Christ smiled proudly and reeled the line back onto his reel. “Maybe I’ll teach the baby how to play basketball.”

“Maybe, Chris, maybe. Let’s go out in the boat for a while. You never know where the fish will turn up these days.”

A group of police officers sat in the small office around Detective Lieutenant Perkins.

He gnawed on his cigar. “Okay, I know what’s going on. And I know what’s bothering you. You’ll just have to ignore what people are saying about us and do your jobs. It’s tough on me too. But that’s the way it is when you got a tough case.”

He spat a piece of the cigar end into the wastepaper basket. “Everybody wants to put their two bits in, second-guess you, criticize you. It’s the nature of our business that we can’t run around giving progress reports every step of the way. So people think we’re doing nothing. Until we solve the case. Then they think we’re heroes. They’re wrong on both ends of the deal. But that’s the way folks are. They don’t ever think anything’s going on until it’s done. Folks think pigs are just fat-slob animals until they can bite into a good pork cutlet.”

The men chuckled.

“Could I ask a question, sir?” A young patrolman raised his hand. Perkins nodded. “I just wondered, why didn’t you tell the State Troopers what you think the pattern of killings indicates?”

“I did.”

“Well, I know you said about it being an unpredictable animal, but I mean your theory on what the thing might be after?”

Perkins worked his lips and teeth vigorously around the cigar. “In the first place, I didn’t like those guys being called in. That ain’t my business, of course, and what the mayor or the governor want to do we just have to live with. But they just barge in here, trampling all over everything, thinking they’re smarter than anybody. I ain’t saying it’s not a serious case. But it ain’t a question of just calling in every Tom, Dick, and Harry cop—we got plenty of bodies to do the work. It’s a question,” he tapped his head hard several times with his index finger, “of using your goddam brain. That’s the difference between ordinary cops and good cops. Sure, you gotta beef up patrols, have special communications, all that stuff. That’s easy. It’s basic. We had that set up before the Troopers came in.”

He paced back and forth among the officers, his cigar growing shorter as he chewed and spat.

“So, fine, they get ordered into this, we just make more patrols. Nothing wrong with that—maybe—if they don’t end up shooting at us or their own damn shadows. But as far as my
theories
are concerned, that’s something else. I ain’t telling them because they’d either laugh at me or try and horn in on it and run it all themselves. And they aren’t up to it. They don’t know the area like we do, the nooks and crannies, the holes and pipes, the alleys and stairways. They’d stumble into a goddam swimming pool in somebody’s backyard and drown.

“Plus, I may be wrong. And if I’m wrong, the fewer cops who know about it the better, am I right?”

The officers nodded.

Perkins chuckled. “If I’m wrong, no sense in getting everybody in a uproar over it, ’cause I don’t feel like retiring just yet. And if I’m right . . . if I’m right . . .” he stared out the window, “. . . then we gotta play it cool and quiet. A small group of us are all that’s gonna be in on it, so it don’t get blown. Ready to move fast. ’Cause there’s gonna be some shooting. And I don’t want a whole mob of cops pumping lead into half of L.A.”

A sudden banging on the door. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” More banging. “Lieutenant! They got it! The state cops got it! May I come in?”

The door swung open and a red-faced, breathless young desk officer sprang into the room waving a piece of paper. “I just monitored the call! They got it surrounded! Some Mexican’s house . . .”

State Troopers ringed the yard around the small house, crouched behind bushes, nervously fingering their shotguns.

Captain Sanford clutched his .357 Magnum so tightly that his entire fist was white. His eyes, like the others’, were focused on a low section of shrubbery just off to the left of the front porch. Beside him hunkered a middle-aged man in overalls and a plaid shirt.

The cry came again, a low, mournful, hiccuping cry just like a regular baby.

“That’s it!” the man whispered in the captain’s ear. “Just like I said when I called.”

“Okay,” Sanford whispered to the Troopers nearest him, “move in slowly, all together, pass the word.”

The circle of Troopers emerged from the bushes and started edging toward the cluster of small shrubs, their shotguns at the ready. The captain was a step ahead.

Again the cry, unmistakable, louder.

The men crept forward. They were a few yards from the spot. The crying rose to a wail.

A car screeched up to the curb. A girl’s voice yelled, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

A teenage girl and boy came running from the car, their long black hair flowing behind them. “What’s WRONG?”

They broke through the line of Troopers and headed for the shrubs.

“Watch it!” Captain Sanford bellowed. “Everybody down!”

The Troopers flopped into prone firing positions.

The two teenagers parted the shrubs to reveal a stroller in which a diaper-clad baby now goo-gooed happily.

“Stay away from its fingers!” yelled the captain.

The girl picked up the baby and hugged it to her chest. “But what’s wrong, officers? We just left the baby for a few minutes.”

Captain Sanford stood up, brushed himself off, and gingerly approached the girl.

“You can put that leg of lamb away,” she said, waggling her hand at the huge pistol.

“What the hell is going on here?” the captain asked gruffly.

“I’m babysitting,” she said. “My boyfriend came by and we just left the baby for a few minutes to pick up some tacos.”

“But why the devil’d you put it in them damn shrubs?”

“The mother said not to leave him alone in the house. And we put him back there so he wouldn’t see us leave and get upset. He likes to be out in the sun. We thought he would go to sleep like he usually does.” She kissed the top of the baby’s head. “We were gone just a few minutes.”

Captain Sanford clicked on the safety and jammed the Magnum down in his hip holster. “Well, goddam.” He turned and glared at the man in overalls. “Why’d you call us for a thing like that?”

“It was a baby’s cry, just like I read about.” The man blushed deeply and fumbled with the straps of his overalls. “I couldn’t see nothin’. I didn’t mean no harm. Better to be safe than sorry, ain’t that right?”

Captain Sanford snarled and glared at the man. “But if you live next door or something, didn’t you know there was a baby in this house?”

“I don’t live around here. I’m a carpenter, on a job down the block. I was just walkin’ by.”

Three local police cars careened around the corner, slid up to and over the curb, and came to a skidding halt on the lawn behind the Troopers. The men, led by Detective Perkins, spilled out of the cars.

“What in blazes . . .” Perkins pushed through the crowd, saw the baby, then turned slowly around to Captain Sanford. “Anybody shot?”

“Naw. False alarm. This damn plumber here don’t know a baby from his uncle.”

Perkins looked at the man in overalls, who stared nervously at the ground.

“Sorry, I heard a cry . . .”

By now several people had come from nearby houses and were bunched on the sidewalk, watching the scene.

“Okay, okay,” Perkins waved them away, “keep it moving. Family dispute. Everybody back to their knitting.”

“We were here within seconds after the call,” Sanford said proudly.

“I’m sure you were.”

“And I can tell you this.” The captain leaned to Perkins’s ear confidentially. “If it’d a been that monster brat we’re after, it’d a been plastered all over the wall of that house before it could say boo.”

“I don’t doubt that either.”

“Okay, men, back in your cars! Good trial run!”

The Troopers scrambled into their cars and sped away.

“Gee, officer,” said the man in overalls, standing with one toe on top of the other, “did I do something really wrong?”

“No, mister,” Perkins replied. “You did exactly the right thing. You might a saved a life. As it was, I think the babysitter here performed that service just in the nick of time.”

She came shyly over to the lieutenant. “I can’t tell you how sorry and embarrassed I am,” she said, looking at the baby who gurgled merrily at her chest. “It was wrong, leaving the baby. I hope I don’t lose the job.”

“You deserve to.”

“I know.”

Perkins turned to leave.

She took a hesitant step forward. “I was just wondering . . .” she followed him to his car, “. . . whether I should have called the police about something I saw, last night.”

He stopped short and turned back to her. “What did you see?”

“Well, um, nothing really. I mean, that’s why I didn’t call, because I couldn’t really tell—”

“Tell me now.”

“Well, I was walking through the parking lot of the shopping center, you know, over on Hooper Street? I had worked late at the supermarket—that’s my main job—and the stores were closed, but it wasn’t completely dark. And as I was walking along, I saw something move, on the other side of the fence, on the ground. You know that picket fence they have? Well I saw something move. At first I thought it was a dog, or some squirrels. But it wasn’t. I mean I don’t think it was. It was getting pretty dark. I thought I saw the head of something. I can’t be sure. I thought it was a head. Just the back of it. Like it was looking in the direction—”

“Look, miss, just tell me exactly what you saw, even if you’re not sure.”

“Well, like I said, I thought it was a head. But . . .”

“But what?”

“Now please, don’t laugh at me, or call me crazy or anything—because I said I just
thought
I saw it . . .”

Perkins sighed.

“. . . But I swear to God, officer, the head was
very big and bald and round
, like some kind of giant human baby.”

Detective Perkins bit his cigar in two. “Then what happened?”

“It was as if it suddenly saw something, in the other direction, like over toward the school. And then all at once a whole bunch of leaves flew up around it, and it was gone. Please, officer,” she put a hand on his arm and looked at him pleadingly, “don’t call me crazy. I know how it sounds. That’s why I didn’t tell anybody, not a soul.”

“Don’t tell anybody else. Maybe you saw something, maybe you didn’t. Appreciate you mentioning it to me. Let’s go, men.”

They got into their cars and backed off the lawn, leaving the girl standing there cradling the baby, her boyfriend waiting for her at the front door.

The officer behind the wheel looked over at Detective Perkins. “What do you think, lieutenant?”

“I think she saw something,” Perkins said, “maybe a balloon. But I don’t think it was a balloon.”

“Looks like you’ve been right about it, then.”

“If that’s a consolation to you. But this town ain’t gonna give a damn how right I’ve been. All anybody’s gonna care about is that we get this job done. And we ain’t done it yet. All we know is that thing’s still loose. And it’s still here, most likely.”