Lightning (18 page)

He drew the Walther PPK/S .380 from the shoulder holster he was wearing inside his peacoat. He put it on the seat at his side.

His feet were painfully cold, and he wanted to pause and empty the snow out of his boots. But he had arrived late, and his original schedule was shot, so he dared not waste a minute. Besides, if his feet hurt, they weren’t frozen; he wasn’t in danger of frostbite yet.

The keys were not in the ignition. He slid the seat back, bent down, groped under the dashboard, located the ignition wires, and had the engine running in a minute.

Stefan sat up just as the owner of the Jeep, breath reeking of beer, pulled open the door. “Hey, what the hell you doing, pal?”

The rest of the snowswept parking lot was still deserted. They were alone.

Laura would be dead in twenty-five minutes.

The Jeep’s owner reached for him, and he allowed himself to be dragged from behind the steering wheel, plucking his pistol off the seat as he went, and in fact he threw himself into the other man’s grasp, using the momentum to send his adversary staggering backward on the slippery parking lot. They fell. As they hit the ground, he was on top, and he jammed the muzzle under the guy’s chin.

“Jesus, mister! Don’t kill me.”

“We’re getting up now. Easy, damn you, no sudden moves.”

When they were on their feet Stefan moved behind the guy, quickly reversed his grip on the Walther, used it as a club, struck once, hard enough to knock the man unconscious without doing permanent damage. The owner of the Jeep went down again, stayed down, limp.

Stefan glanced at the tavern. No one else had come out.

He could hear no traffic approaching on the road, but then again the howling wind might mask the sound of an engine.

As the snow began to fall harder, he put the pistol in the deep pocket of his peacoat and dragged the unconscious man to the nearest other vehicle, the Thunderbird. It was unlocked, and he heaved the guy into the rear seat, closed the door, and hurried back to the Jeep.

The engine had died. He hot-wired it again.

As he put the Jeep in gear and swung it around toward the road, the wind shrieked at the window beside him. The falling snow grew denser, blizzard-thick, and clouds of yesterday’s snow were whipped up from the ground and spun in sparkling columns. The giant, shadow-swaddled pines swayed and shuddered under winter’s assault.

Laura had little more than twenty minutes to live.

They celebrated the publishing contract for Jericho Nights and the otherworldly harmony of their first year of marriage by spending their anniversary at a favorite place—Disneyland. The sky was blue, cloudless; the air was dry and hot. Virtually oblivious of the summer crowds, they rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, had their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse, got dizzy spinning in the Mad Hatter’s teacups, had their portraits drawn by a caricaturist, ate hot dogs and ice cream and chocolate-covered frozen bananas on sticks, and danced that evening to a Dixieland band in New Orleans Square.

The park became even more magical after nightfall, and they rode the Mark Twain paddlewheel steamboat around Tom Sawyer’s Island for the third time, standing at the railing on the top level, near the bow, with their arms around each other. Danny said, “You know why we like this place so much? ‘Cause it’s of the world yet untainted
by
the world. And that’s our marriage.”

Later, over strawberry sundaes at the Carnation Pavilion, at a table beneath trees strung with white Christmas lights, Laura said, “Fifteen thousand bucks for a year’s work... not exactly a fortune. ”

“It isn’t slave wages either.” He pushed his sundae aside, leaned forward, slid her sundae aside, too, and took her hands across the table. “The money will come eventually because you’re brilliant, but money isn’t what I care about. What I care about is that you’ve got something special to share. No. That’s not exactly what I mean. You don’t just
have
something special, you
are
something special. In some way I understand but can’t explain, I know that what you
are,
when shared, will bring as much hope and joy to people in far places as it brings to me here at your side.”

Blinking away sudden tears, she said, “I love you.”

Jericho Nights was published ten months later, in May of 1979. Danny insisted she use her maiden name because he knew that through all the bad years in McIlroy Home and Caswell Hall, she had endured in part because she wanted to grow up and make something of herself as a testament to her father and perhaps, as well, to the mother she had never known. The book sold few copies, was not chosen by any book clubs, and was licensed by Viking to a paperback publisher for a small advance.

“Doesn’t matter,” Danny told her. “It’ll come in time. It’ll all come in time. Because of what you
are.”

By then she was deep into her second novel, Shadrach. Working ten hours a day, six days a week, she finished it that July.

On a Friday she sent one copy to Spencer Keene in New York and gave the original script to Danny. He was the first to read it. He left work early and began reading at one o’clock Friday afternoon in his living-room armchair, then shifted to the bedroom, slept only four hours, and by ten o’clock Saturday morning he was back in the armchair and two-thirds of the way through the script. He would not talk about it, not a word. “Not until I’m done. It wouldn’t be fair to you to start analyzing and reacting until I’ve finished, until I’ve grasped your entire pattern, and it wouldn’t be fair to me, either, because in discussing it you’re sure to give away some plot turn or other.”

She kept peeking at him to see if he was frowning, smiling, or responding to the story in any way, and even when he was reacting she worried that it was the wrong reaction to whatever scene he might be reading. By ten-thirty Saturday, she couldn’t bear to stay around the apartment any longer, so she drove to South Coast Plaza, browsed in bookstores, ate an early lunch though she was not hungry, drove to the Westminster Mall, window-shopped, ate a cone of frozen yogurt, drove to the Orange Mall, looked in a few shops, bought a square of fudge and ate half of it. “Shane,” she told herself, “go home, or you’ll be a double for Orson Welles by dinnertime. ”

As she parked in the carport at the apartment complex, she saw that Danny’s car was gone. When she let herself into the apartment, she called his name but got no answer.

The script of Shadrach was piled on the dinette table.

She looked for a note. There was none.

“Oh, God,” she said.

The book was bad. It stank. It reeked. It was mule puke. Poor Danny had gone out somewhere to have a beer and find the courage to tell her that she should study plumbing while she was still young enough to get launched on a new career.

She was going to throw up. She hurried to the bathroom, but the nausea passed. She washed her face with cold water.

The book was mule puke.

Okay, she would just have to live with that. She’d thought Shadrach was pretty good, better than
Jericho Nights
by a mile, but evidently she had been wrong. So she would write another book.

She went to the kitchen and opened a Coors. She had taken only two swallows when Danny came home with a gift-wrapped box about the right size to hold a basketball. He put it on the dinette table beside the manuscript, looked at her solemnly. “It’s for you.”

Ignoring the box, she said, “Tell me.”

“Open your gift first.”

“Oh, God, is it
that
bad? Is it so bad you have to soften the blow with a gift? Tell me. I can take it. Wait! Let me sit down.” She pulled out a chair from the table and dropped into it. “Hit me with your best, big guy. I’m a survivor.”

“You’ve got too strong a sense of drama, Laura.”

“What’re you saying? The book’s melodramatic?”

“Not the book. You. Right now, anyway. Will you for God’s sake stop being the shattered young artiste and open your gift?”

“All right, all right, if I’ve got to open the gift before you’ll talk, then I’ll open the bloody gift.”

She put the box in her lap—it was heavy—and tore at the ribbon while Danny pulled up a chair and sat in front of her, watching.

The box was from an expensive shop, but she was not prepared for the contents: a large, gorgeous Lalique bowl; it was clear except for two handles that were partly clear green and partly frosted crystal; each handle was formed by two leaping toads, four toads altogether.

She looked up, wide-eyed. “Danny, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s the most beautiful piece ever.”

“Like it, then?”

“Good God, how much was it?”

“Three thousand.”

“Danny, we can’t afford this!”

“Oh, yes, we can.”

“No, we can’t, really we can’t. Just because I wrote a lousy book and you want to make me feel better—”

“You didn’t write a lousy book. You wrote a toad-worthy book. A
four
-toad book on a scale of one to four, four being the best. We can afford that bowl precisely because you wrote Shadrach. This book is beautiful, Laura, infinitely better than the last one, and it’s beautiful because it’s you. This book is what you
are,
and it shines.”

In her excitement and in her eagerness to hug him, she nearly dropped the three-thousand-dollar bowl.

A skin of new snow covered the highway now. The Jeep wagon had four-wheel drive and was equipped with tire chains, so Stefan was able to make reasonably good time in spite of the road conditions.

But not good enough.

He estimated that the tavern, where he had stolen the Jeep, was about eleven miles from the Packard house, which was just off state route 330 a few miles south of Big Bear. The mountain roads were narrow, twisty, full of dramatic rises and falls, and blowing snow ensured poor visibility, so his average speed was about forty miles an hour. He could not risk driving faster or more recklessly, for he would be of no use at all to Laura, Danny, and Chris if he lost control of the Jeep and plunged over an embankment to his death. At his current speed, however, he would arrive at their place at least ten minutes after they had left.

His intention had been to delay them at their house until the danger had passed. That plan was no longer viable.

The January sky seemed to have sunk so low under the weight of the storm that it was no higher than the tops of the serried ranks of massive evergreens that flanked both sides of the roadway. Wind shook the trees and hammered the Jeep. Snow stuck to the windshield wipers and became ice, so he turned up the defroster and hunched over the wheel, squinting through the inadequately cleaned glass.

When he next glanced at his watch, he saw that he had less than fifteen minutes. Laura, Danny, and Chris would be getting into their Chevy Blazer. They might even be pulling out of their driveway already.

He would have to intercept them on the highway, scant seconds ahead of Death.

He tried to squeeze slightly more speed out of the Jeep without shooting wide of a turn and into an abyss.

Five weeks after the day that Danny bought her the Lalique bowl, on August 15, 1979, a few minutes after noon, Laura was in the kitchen, heating a can of chicken soup for lunch, when she got a call from Spencer Keene, her literary agent in New York. Viking loved Shadrach and were offering a hundred thousand.

“Dollars?”
she asked.

“Of course, dollars,” Spencer said. “What do you think, Russian rubles? What would that buy you—a hat maybe?”

“Oh, God.” She had to lean against the kitchen counter because suddenly her legs were weak.

Spencer said, “Laura, honey, only you can know what’s best for you, but unless they’re willing to let the hundred grand stand for a floor bid in an auction, I want you to consider turning this down.”

“Turn down a hundred thousand dollars?” she asked in disbelief.

“I want to send this out to maybe six or eight houses, set an auction date, see what happens. I think I know what will happen, Laura, I think they’ll all love this book as much as I do. On the other hand... maybe not. It’s a hard decision, and you’ve got to go away and think about it before you answer me.”

The moment Spencer said goodbye and hung up, Laura dialed Danny at work and told him about the offer.

He said, “If they won’t make it a floor bid, turn it down.”

“But, Danny, can we afford to? I mean, my car is eleven years old and falling apart. Yours is almost four years old—”

“Listen, what did I tell you about this book? Didn’t I tell you that it was you, a reflection of what you are?”

“You’re sweet, but—”

“Turn it down. Listen, Laura. You’re thinking that scorning a hundred K is like spitting in the faces of all the gods of good fortune; it’s like inviting that lightning you’ve spoken about. But you earned this payoff, and fate isn’t going to cheat you out of it.”

She called Spencer Keene and told him her decision.

Excited, nervous, already missing the hundred thousand dollars, she returned to the den and sat at her typewriter and stared at the unfinished short story for a while until she became aware of the odor of chicken soup and remembered she had left it on the stove. She hurried into the kitchen and found that all but half an inch of soup had boiled away; burnt noodles were stuck to the bottom of the pot.

At two-ten, which was five-ten New York time, Spencer called again to say that Viking had agreed to let the hundred thousand stand as a floor bid. “Now, that’s the very least you make from
Shadrach
—a hundred grand. I think I’ll set September twenty-sixth as the auction date. It’s going to be a big one, Laura. I feel it.”

She spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to be elated but unable to shake off her anxiety.
Shadrach
was already a big success, no matter what happened in the auction. She had no reason for her anxiety, but it held her in a tight grip.