Nightlife (23 page)

And launched himself away from the door.

Well . . .

Most of him, anyway.

Kerebawa was halfway across Miami by dawn. Dressed, once again. Heading northwest. He had looked at the full Florida map opposite the Miami side. Had found Tampa.

The trail of the
hekura-teri
was growing colder. But he knew he should at least try. He had nothing else to do. And so he walked. With his tied cloth roll and bundle of sticks, now three in number, he cut a figure no more imposing than Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.

By midafternoon he was free of the city and was in areas less congested. Found himself in a small town called Opa Locka. It was good to have the crushing frenzy of the city behind him, good to feel the open ground beneath his feet more often.

In late afternoon, Kerebawa took respite in a small park area, foliated thickly, plenty of palms towering overhead. Within this emerald theater, he rested. Sniffed some
ebene
in hopes that it might open his eyes, at least in this tiny replica of home. Show him what to do, where to go, what to hunt for.

There were mysteries, still. And his
noreshi,
the hawk, still had not returned. But when he looked in the distance to the northwest, toward Tampa, he saw something else.

An eagle, struggling with broken wings.

And as the heat of the day and the draining effects of the
ebene
sent him seeking a bed of ferns, he smiled. Gave a self-satisfied nod. For at least he had something once again to follow.

At her tilted drafting table, April poked her tongue out while she worked. Frowning in concentration, working that tongue tip at the corner of her mouth. Justin thought she probably wasn’t even aware of doing it. Amazing, all the little habits that characterize us that for years go unrealized. Sometimes even to the grave.

He enjoyed watching her work, tried to be unobtrusive. Just sat in a chair several feet away, a Killian’s sweating on the hardwood floor beside his chair leg.
Can’t leave the bottles alone, can I?
he thought.
But I’m handling it, it’s okay, it’s not out of control.
April was doing some cartoonish graphics for a plant rental and maintenance firm. Big business down here, he gathered—expert foliators for office space, for execs too busy to worry about their own green thumbs. Or lack of them. With as many plants as he had sent to an early mulch-grave, Justin figured his own thumb was brown.

April worked in sporadic bursts. A flurry of lines and strokes, then periods of appraisal and contemplation. Pulling back to view at a distance, leaning close for microscopic scrutiny. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep it from falling onto the paper.

And he watched, committing her movements into an overall gestalt. You never truly know someone until you know how they move. It’s not enough to call to mind their face, body. You have to understand the way they move. And with April, he wanted to know it all. Because she, dear young woman, had moved
him.

At the same time, he had to wonder how long it would have been before they reached this stage had Erik not died. A week ago he hadn’t even known her. A week ago she was mere fantasy, an image on Kodak paper. Without Erik’s murder, they still would have reached it, probably. After another week, maybe two, perhaps a month. They had been on their way. A moot point, however.

Quantum leaps had been made this past weekend. Heightened emotions squeezed out by a pressure cooker of sorrow, and vulnerabilities so blatant they might as well have had bull’s-eyes painted on them. They had turned to each other so quickly it was dizzying. Maybe that was healthy, maybe not. The more cynical of the world might have said they were merely using each other as an antidote for grief. Perhaps they were.

But he refused to believe it.

“So what’s it like?” she said, looking up from her table.

“Erik’s hometown?”

“Uh-huh.”

It was a continuation of a conversation put on hold ten minutes ago, before the graphics had taken over again. He understood perfectly. Even did it himself, back-burner a conversation while in the midst of writing something, expecting it to still be warm when he was ready to pick it up again. The mind in the act of creation bridging the time gap as if it were an eyeblink. It had always bugged Paula. Creative sorts generally belonged together, if for no other reason than they were more apt to put up with one another’s quirks.

Erik’s hometown. Shepley, Ohio.

“I was there only once, during college.”

“Once is enough to know.”

Justin shrugged. “It’s little. About eight thousand people. Kind of like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon—you get the idea that time sort of forgot it. It’s the kind of place you might have expected Norman Rockwell to retire to.”

April smiled, rubbed her eyes. A bit red, strained. “He hardly ever talked about it.”

Justin drank some beer. “Erik had a love-hate relationship with the place. You know, once he was past a certain age and all, and it just wasn’t enough anymore. But still, he grew up there.” Justin smiled toward the floor. The ache within—oh, that ache. “He’d gotten too big for the town. Not in an ego sense. Just in what he needed and couldn’t get there.”

“Will it bother you much going back there again?”

“Probably.” He folded arms over chest, shut his eyes a moment. He had spilled many a tear over the past three days, to be dried by April. Just as he had dried hers. “I know his parents want him buried there—but it doesn’t seem right, in a way. That place isn’t
him
anymore. He didn’t much fit in even when we were in college. The gap only got wider after that. He shouldn’t have to stay there forever.”

She tabled her pen and got up from her chair. Crossed her pleasantly cluttered office and stood behind him. She circled his chest with her arms. Kissed his head, then turned her cheek to rest atop it. She patted a hand over his heart as he gently gripped her forearms. Hand over heart, patting, patting.

“He won’t all be there,” she whispered.

And he knew it to be so.

April worked another twenty minutes, then checked the time. Nearing four o’clock. She had put in a long day. She clicked off the swivel lamp hanging over her table.

“I need to go to the travel agency for our tickets,” she said. “Want to tag along?”

“Sure.”

Justin stood up and stretched. Any trip sounded good. He’d not been out of the loft all day. For that matter, he’d spent most of yesterday cooped up too. Had briefly stepped outside yesterday morning for her Sunday
Tribune.

They put on shoes, and he wondered how long things would last this way. He could start feeling like a kept man very quickly. Justin Gray, gigolo for hire.
If she can still walk, I don’t know my business.

April went through the ritual undergone anytime she left her office. Weighting down loose papers so stray wind wouldn’t scatter them. Shutting the windows at this end in case of sudden monsoons. Last, she turned on the answering machine for her separate business line. All set.

And hand in hand, they left the apartment.

Lupo liked to think of life in terms of boxes.

Packing crates for life’s biggies, matchboxes for the little things. A place for everything, and ideally, everything in its place. Disorder was his mortal enemy. Of course, when things began weaseling from their boxes, that was when he did his best work. Keeping those crates in good repair. He was, he realized, a stevedore on the S.S.
Mendoza.

He sat parked in the same nondescript Olds they had used to snatch Erik Webber. Alone, at curbside. Just as he had been for many hours, the same weeping-willow branch bobbing before the windshield. The car’s windows were opened up full, the breezes pleasant today. The weekend’s humidity had dipped to humane.

Behind the wheel, he fingered a box of nine-millimeter bullets. Not to use, just for fun. He opened the box, slid out the Styrofoam block. Perfect bullets in perfect regimented rows, gleaming brass. The Styrofoam a perfect snug fit within the box. All of life should fit together as nicely.

Things had gotten too loose around the edges lately, as far as he was concerned. This happened periodically, no way around it. With Tony running the show, it was inevitable. But then, nobody made advances in
any
business without occasionally treading over risky ground. It was just that in some businesses, the consequences were more permanent than in others. No wonder they paid well.

Skullflush was, he fretted, a potential bastard to keep a lid on.

Erik Webber dead, now this. Eliminating players in the thick of the game was one thing. Planning the elimination of those on the periphery—well, that was when troubles began to rattle at those box lids.

Justin Gray. Tony hadn’t been able to turn loose of him. An untidy frayed end that needed clipping. Tony, ever since Erik had bidden a farewell to arms, had run things over in his mind. How and where to find the guy.

Tony had once more plied a girl he knew who jockeyed a computer for GTE. Still no new listing or scheduled hookup for a Justin Gray. Had he gotten his own place, as Erik had said, it seemed unlikely he would ignore a phone. Scratch that off as a lie told to protect a friend.

Then he’d remembered April Kingston. And a slight inconsistency.

Tony had questioned her last week about the guy. She said she didn’t know much about him. Okay, fine, he’d had no reason to doubt her at the time. But once Angel had spilled the beans, Tony had to reconsider. Justin and April
had
looked pretty chummy at Apocalips. Now, if Angel had known Justin was Erik’s pal and not Trent’s, shouldn’t April have known too? Sure. Ipso facto, a withholding of information. And she had to have a reason. Maybe even a personal one. Hence Tony’s late-Sunday-morning decision that perhaps her apartment should be watched for a while. Just in case.

Well well well. Pay dirt, and this was only Monday afternoon. There they were, hand in hand as they left her building some fifty-odd yards to his left. Going for her car.

April, April. 'Twould appear that she had been less than upfront with Tony. This was not a healthy thing.

Lupo slowly keeled over across the front seat as they left and pulled onto the street. No sense in chancing an unwanted discovery. He straightened up moments later and let them run like rabbits.

He fired up the Olds. Not to follow, but homeward bound.

Tony would be most pleased to hear what he had to say.

Justin and April flew out of Tampa late Tuesday morning, packed for a forty-eight-hour layover in Ohio. They touched down in Cleveland, and from there they rented a Capri from Avis and puttered southwest on I-71 some sixty miles to Shepley. It was five miles off the interstate, and they checked into a motel near the turnoff.

They slung clothing onto hangers, divided the shiny silver bar near the bathroom into his and hers sides. Generic motels like this always made him feel a little sad. Forlorn way stations with no souls, when you wished you were somewhere else. April seemed to sense it and stripped the
SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
band from the toilet. She put it on like a sweatband, and this made him laugh.

Shepley was like some overgrown village set in the middle of farm country, sprouting out of land as flat as an ironing board. It was the kind of place Justin could imagine John Cougar Mellencamp singing about, somehow managing to find the heart in this part of the country. This town of white picket fences and White Protestant Values. This town of gossiping phone lines where a good scandal might get years of mileage. This town of teenagers who cruised out of desperate boredom, and of veterans who loved their God, country, children, and beer, not necessarily in that order.

Erik’s parents had flown down on Sunday to claim his body, had returned the next day. Tuesday evening after the funeral home visitation, Erik’s display with a prosthetic and a glove, the Webber house was like a miniature Grand Central Station. For those who truly cared, and those unable to pass up a chance to show how sympathetic they were.
If there’s anything we can do . . .
Justin grew sick of the phrase. Their kitchen swelled with food and drink, and casseroles sprouted like mushrooms.