Rick’s plane landed about the same time Sam Storm was slipping in through Christina Page’s dining room window.
He was the first one off the plane, his only luggage, a little over twenty thousand dollars. Ten thousand, in hundreds, in each hip pocket and a wad of twenties in the right front. He moved through the concourse with a stiff stride, trying to work out the kinks and get his blood circulating as he headed for the taxi rank outside.
He inhaled the night air as he passed the shuttle busses in favor of a more expensive, but much faster cab. It was a hot night and the jet and auto exhaust fumes made it seem all the more oppressive.
“ Long Beach, The Beach Inn on Ocean. You know it?” he asked the first driver in the taxi rank, an elderly Vietnamese American.
“ Like the back of your hand.”
“ You don’t know the back of my hand.”
“ I don’t know the way to the Beach Inn on Ocean either,” he said, smiling.
“ You know the way to the Long Beach airport?” Rick smiled back at him. He liked the man’s sense of humor.
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I’ll direct you from there.”
“ You got it,” the driver said. “Just settle back and relax.”
Rick nodded and closed his eyes as the driver lurched the cab into the airport traffic. It wasn’t long before he drifted off and found the sleep he couldn’t get on the plane.
What seemed like scant seconds, but was thirty-five minutes later, the driver reached over and shook Rick awake.
“ Okay, Mister, I need you to guide me.”
Rick knocked the fog from his head and looked out into the dark.
“ Go straight down Lakewood Boulevard to the Traffic Circle, follow it around to Pacific Coast Highway and then take the first right and follow it all the way to the beach.”
They drove the next five minutes in silence, until the driver stopped the cab in front of the Beach Inn.
“ What room is Christina Page in?” Rick asked the underage boy behind the counter.
“ Just a sec.” The kid punched keys as he stared at a computer screen. “Not here,” he said after a few seconds.
“ You sure?”
“ The computer doesn’t lie.”
“ She was supposed to check in this afternoon.”
“ That explains it. We’re full up. Been that way for a couple days.”
“ Damn,” Rick said. “Thanks.” He left and walked down Ocean. He turned left on her street and walked the block to her house. He mounted the porch, rang the doorbell and waited. No answer. He tried the door and found it unlocked. He turned the knob and felt his stomach flutter. Something was wrong.
The living room was small and connected to the dining room. Only the change in ceiling texture told the division between the two. He made his way through the rooms toward the light switch.
He swore as he banged into a coffee table. He stepped around it, moving between the table and a sofa, toward the switch. He flicked it and the two rooms lit up. Calling out Christina’s name, he went into the kitchen. He was worried. She wouldn’t go out and leave the front door unlocked. In the kitchen, everything appeared to be in order. He opened the refrigerator and checked the vegetable bin where she kept a plastic head of lettuce, stuffed with a another kind of green. If she’d gone to ground, the hidy hole would be empty. It was.
He backed away from the refrigerator, glanced around the kitchen, looking for anything out of order and found nothing. He left the kitchen, moving toward the stairs. With trepidation he started up.
Oh, God, the killer’s back, the thought rang through J.P. He lay on the cold dirt and covered his head with his hands. He heard footsteps overhead. Heard his heart beat. He tried to make himself small. The footsteps went away and a few minutes later they came back, running. They moved around the house, the killer was looking for him. Then the footsteps ran across the living room, out the door, and down the porch steps. He looked through the mesh grill and saw Rick. It wasn’t the killer, after all.
“ Rick, it’s me!” he shouted and Rick stopped. He shouted again and Rick turned and started back. “I’m down here, under the house.”
“ I’ll get you out, J.P.”
“ I can do it.” He scurried on his belly, soldier-fashion, with the bird cage in front, instead of a rifle. Rick met him in the bedroom. The boy handed the cage up to Rick,
“ Did he kill them, Rick? Did he kill them?” he asked as he took in the blood-stained mess.
“ We have to get out of here.” Rick brushed damp dirt off the boy, then took him by the hand, led him through the house and out the front door. They walked quickly away from the house, not noticing the brown Ford Granada parked a half block down, on the other side of the street. They made a right at the corner. Rick looked over at the Beach Inn on the other side of the street, but kept going. If it was full a few minutes ago, it would be full now.
“ Did he kill them?” J.P. asked again.
“ I don’t know. Both the twin’s room upstairs and the downstairs bedroom were torn up and there was a lot of blood, but Christina and the girls were gone. Her money’s gone and so is her car. I think they got away.”
“ But she wouldn’t have left me.”
“ She would if she thought you were dead.”
“ Oh.”
“ We still have a big problem. Even if she got away, as soon as the cops see the house torn up and all the blood, they’re going to think I killed her and the girls.”
“ What are we gonna do?”
“ First we have to find a place for the night.”
“ There.” J.P. pointed.
Rick followed the boy’s finger with his eyes to the red neon vacancy sign of the Ocean View Motel. Neither man nor boy noticed the brown Ford round the corner after them and park.
Crossing the threshold, Rick addressed the sleepy-eyed youth behind the counter.
“ Can we have a room for the night?”
“ Can have all you want, we’re mostly empty,” the boy was barely old enough to need a shave.
“ They’re full across the street,” Rick nodded in the direction of the Beach Inn.
“ They get the tour bus crowd.”
“ They don’t come here?”
“ We’re not quite up to their standards, but don’t tell the boss I said that.”
“ Not a chance. You got a room with two beds?”
“ Sure, sign in here.” The youth handed over a pen and the registration form. “You’re in twenty-four, go out the door to your left, you can’t miss it. TV works, we got cable, free coffee in the morning, you pay for the donuts.” He handed Rick a key.
“ Thanks.” Rick took J.P. by the hand.
“ The room is to the left, halfway down.”
“ We’ll find it.”
It was the moment Storm had been waiting for, the chance to go at Gordon. He clamped his left hand around the knife and started to open the door with his right and pain prickled his testicles. He let go of the door handle. Gordon wasn’t going to be as easy as the others. He wouldn’t be able to just walk in on him and attack him with his knife. Besides, he rationalized, he wanted him to suffer, to be humiliated, to know what it’s like to be scorned. He was going to need help.
He started the car and went back to the woman’s house. He ran water over his bloody hand in the downstairs bathroom, then wrapped the cuts with bandages he found in a medicine cabinet. Once he was satisfied his hand looked as good as he could make it, he combed back his hair, washed his face and straightened his clothes.
Time to get that help.
The first thing Rick noticed after entering the room, was the odor of mildew. No, not first class, he thought, as he watched a cricket dart across the carpet. He followed it to the bathroom and gave the room a cursory inspection. He checked the window and decided it was too small for him to squeeze through.
Turning, he faced the twin beds and studied the door that adjoined the next room. One of those doors that locked on each side. The cheap room had been designed so that it could be used as a two room suite. Mom and Dad in one, the kids in the other. When let as a single, the adjoining door remained locked.
Next he turned his attention to the closet and eased the sliding door open.
“ What are you looking for?” J.P. asked.
“ I didn’t know till now, but I think found it.”
“ What?”
“ Look here.” He pointed to a trapdoor in the closet ceiling. “With any luck this connects to the other rooms.”
“ Is that good?”
“ Maybe, go bang on that door. I want to know if we have neighbors.”
J.P. went over and knocked on the adjoining door.
“ Again, louder this time.”
J.P. knocked louder.
“ Okay, we’re going to assume the room next door is vacant. We’re also going to assume there’s a trapdoor inside that closet, like this one. Do you think if I boosted you up, you could crawl through to the next room?”
“ Yeah, I crawled under the house, didn’t I?”
“ Good boy.” Rick had to admire his pluck. His father had been killed only two days ago. Tonight he barely missed getting killed himself and he was still holding it together. Most men would be a basket case in similar circumstances.
“ Ready?”
“ Ready,” J.P. responded.
Rick opened the trap, revealing a black hole in the ceiling above.
“ It’s dark up there,” J.P. said.
“ You gonna be okay?”
“ Yeah,” J.P. said.
Rick scooped the boy up and lifted him into the dark. “Can you see anything?”
“ Kinda.” J.P. peered into the darkness, there was just enough light coming through the open trapdoor from below to show him the way. “It’s scary up here.”
“ Are you going to be okay?”
“ I can do it.”
J.P. squinted his eyes to try and see through the dark. He smelled dust and he felt it as his hands clutched onto the ceiling beams. He was going to have to stay on the beams as he worked his way to the room next door, because he’d learned, when the contractors had added a room on their house in Toronto, back when his parent were still together and his dad was still alive, that the drywall might not hold his weight.
He balanced himself with his knees on adjacent beams and inched his way into the dark, toward the next room. He heard noises up ahead and stopped to listen. A rustling sound. He wanted to scurry backwards, but then he heard the chirping of baby birds and he sighed. There must be a hole in the roof, he thought, allowing the birds a way in to make their nests.
He scooted a little closer to his goal. His right hand slid through a sticky spider web. He felt the creature scamper across his hand and he resisted the urge to scream.
“ There’s spiders up here,” he whispered back to Rick and he started creeping along the beams once again. “I found it.” He pulled the trapdoor up through the ceiling.
“ Good boy,” Rick whispered through the dark attic. “Can you jump down?”
“ Sure,” J.P. whispered back. A few seconds later J.P. opened the connecting door with a smile on his face a block wide.
“ Good work, J.P. You did good.”
“ What are we gonna do now?”
“ We’re going to move next door,” Rick said.
“ Why?”
“ Just a precaution. If someone comes looking for us, we won’t be here.”
“ You think the Ragged Man’s gonna come?”
“ No. I’m just being careful.”
“ I think the man who killed my dad is him.”
“ You mean the Ragged Man?”
“ Yeah, him.”
“ It’s just a story, J.P. Now come on.”
Before entering the adjoining room, Rick went into the bath, took the clean towels off the rack and splashed water on them, before throwing them on the floor. Then he pulled down the bed covers on both beds and rumpled them to make it look as if they had been slept in.
“ This way it’ll look like we’ve been and gone.”
Then the two of them, J.P. carrying the birdcage, entered their new room and Rick closed both doors.
“ Okay, J.P., we have to leave the lights out, no TV, no talking.”
“ I understand. We’re hiding, right?”
“ Right.”
They found their respective beds in the dark. They didn’t undress. They lay on top of the covers, each lost in his own thoughts, staring at the dark ceiling.
J.P. thought about the big man and his steel gray stare. Then he thought about the Ghost Dog and he started to shiver. His shivering increased when he heard the rapping on the door of the room they had just vacated. He looked at Rick and saw that he held his index finger to his lips, telling him to be silent. He didn’t need to be told, he knew who was next door.
“ Police. Open up,” they heard. Then they heard a key being inserted and a door opening. J.P. got up and moved over to Rick’s bed and sat next to him.
“ It’s okay,” Rick whispered. “They don’t know we’re here. They’ll go away in a few minutes.” It wasn’t necessary to listen at the door, the paper thin walls offered no barrier against sound.
“ I don’t understand, they’re not here.” J.P. recognized the motel clerk’s voice.
“ Did they have any luggage?” a fast-talking voice asked.
“ The boy had a bird in a wire cage.”
“ That’s them,” a deep voice said.
“ They only checked in two hours ago, it doesn’t make any sense, them leaving like this,” Deep Voice said.
“ The bathroom’s been used, the beds have been used, and the key is on the bureau. It looks like they just wanted a place to shower and rest awhile,” Fast-Talker said.
“ I didn’t see them leave,” the clerk said.
“ Were you on the front desk the whole time since they checked in?” Fast-Talker said.
“ Most of the time. I went across to the mini market for cigarettes about half an hour ago.”
“ Then if they left while you were across the street, you would have missed them?” Fast-Talker said.
“ I guess so.”
“ Thanks for your help.”
“ Do you think they’ll be back?” the clerk asked.
“ No,” Fast-Talker said, “I don’t, and you can go.” J.P. heard the clerk leave the room.
“ Okay, Mr. Storm, we tried,” Fast-Talker said. “It looks like they flew the coup. Now, you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“ I told them when I called the station.”
“ Humor me.”
“ I’m a private investigator working for the RIAA. I was staking out the Page house, hoping Gordon would show. When he did, I decided to wait till morning and see if he would lead me to a warehouse full of bootlegs. I wanted to bust him real dirty.”
“ Did you know he was wanted for murder?” Fast-Talker said.
“ No, I didn’t,” Storm said.
“ What happened next?”
“ He came running out of there like a striped-ass ape, dragging the kid, and came straight here. It looked like they were here for the night, so I went back to the house to see if I could get the Page lady to tell me anything.”
“ Did you think she would?”
“ I didn’t know, but nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Storm said.
“ And that’s when you found the house all torn up?”
“ Not exactly. I knocked on the door and when I didn’t get any answer, I went next door and woke the neighbors and got lucky. The neighbor lady had a key. She said she watches the house when the Pages are away.”
“ So the neighbor let you in?” Fast-Talker said.
“ She came over with me. I waited outside while she checked the house.”
“ And you didn’t go in with her?”
“ I’m a private investigator. I got a license to protect. I don’t go into anyone’s home unless I’m invited.”
“ So the neighbor went in?”
“ And came out a few seconds later, screaming her head off. I didn’t have any choice, I went in, saw the house and dialed 911. You know the rest.”
“ Do you have any idea where Gordon will go next?”
“ He’ll go to Tampico.”
“ How can you be so sure?” Fast-Talker said.
“ One, he has a house there, and two, he’s sweet on the boy’s mother.”
“ Do you think he’ll harm the boy?”
“ I don’t know, but he has every reason to think he got away with what he did tonight. He’ll go to Tampico. I’m sure of it.”
“ Well, he won’t get there. If I remember right, there is only the one road into town from the Pacific Coast Highway. If that’s where he’s going, they’ll get him by morning.”
“ I hope they do,” Storm said.
“ You want to come down to the station and write out what you told me?”
“ Be glad to.”
J.P. went to the window and peeked through the curtains as the men left. “Rick,” he whispered, “come here quick. It’s the man who killed my dad.”
Rick looked out and got a clear view of the big man and the two policemen as they stood under a street lamp in the parking lot. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but close enough that he recognized the big man as the man who went to get the sheriff and never returned that horrible day. The day Ann died.
However that day he hadn’t said anything about the RIAA or bootlegs or given any indication that he knew who Rick was. Rick shook his head, he couldn’t understand. Had the RIAA hired someone to kill the bootleggers? That made no sense, none at all. But there he was, the man who had killed J.P.’s father and he claimed that he worked for the RIAA.
Rick thought about calling out. He could tell the police who the killer was, that they were talking to him right now, but what if they didn’t believe him? What if they arrested him? What would happen to J.P.? He decided to wait till morning and call Sheriff Sturgees in Tampico. At least he was a police officer who would listen to him.
He kept watch as the two policemen and the killer with the deep voice got into the police car and drove off.
“ Okay, J.P., let’s smooth up the beds. We don’t want it to look like anybody’s been here.” With the boy helping, they had the beds looking like a motel maid had done the job in short order.
“ Now what are we gonna do?”
“ We’re going back to our old room. It’s the last place they’ll look for us and with unmade beds and the dirty towels, they won’t rent it again tonight.”
“ Does that mean I have to go up into the roof again?”
“ Yeah, I’m afraid it does.” Again Rick hoisted J.P. through a trapdoor into the dark attic and minutes later they were back in their original room, stretched out on their respective beds, staring at the ceiling. J.P. fell asleep first.
Rick thought about Christina. He prayed that she and the girls were safe and well. He blamed himself for what had happened tonight. If he hadn’t taken off right away for Tampico, he would have been there to meet the killer. He had abandoned her and the twins and now they were running scared, or worse, dead. It was his fault and he felt like shit. He stayed awake for another two hours, but finally closed his eyes and fell asleep at around three in the morning.
He woke three hours later with his head in a fog. He’d been dreaming about Ann and didn’t want to leave her, so he closed his eyes and tried to bring it back. He pictured her walking along the beach, yellow hair blowing in the wind. She turned to face him, smile shining, eyes sparkling. He never wanted to leave that place between sleep and not sleep. That perfect place, where happiness reigns supreme and nobody ever dies.
She had been the focus of his life, his reason for living, his past, present and future. She laughed with him, talked with him, fought with him and loved him. When she died he was left adrift, a wandering sailor on a leaking raft. He ached for her and he fought to stay asleep.
He walked toward her and her smile faded, her eyes darkened. “You don’t belong here,” she said, and he was cut to the quick. He pleaded silently with his eyes and her eyes answered back and she said, “You can’t stay, Flash. I love you. I’ll always love you. I’ll be with you soon and I’ll never leave,” she said, her smile returning, “but you have to go now,” and she faded from his sight as he came awake.
He rolled out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, where he closed the door. He didn’t want to wake J.P. until he had to. The boy had been through a lot in the last three days and Rick wanted him to get as much sleep as possible, because they had a long day ahead of themselves.
He ran cold water into the wash basin, splashed his face, trying to wipe the sleep away. He looked in the mirror and winced at his reflection. The bags under his bloodshot eyes and the worry wrinkles on his forehead were like a flashing neon sign, saying that this man needs rest. He was bone tired. The few hours of restless sleep only seemed to exacerbate the problem. The cold water was no help.
He ran a hand over his face and mentally kicked himself for forgetting his shaving gear. He held a hand in front of his mouth, exhaled, then frowned. The toothbrush was in his bathroom up north, sitting next to his razor. He bent into the sink and took a mouthful of water, gargled and ran a finger over his teeth, a poor substitute. He felt lousy.
He stripped off the clothes he’d slept in and started the shower. When the water was warm enough, he stepped in and stood under the spray. He thought about Christina and the twins and prayed again that they were away safe, alive and well.
The sound of the shower running woke J.P. He looked over at Rick’s empty bed and rubbed his stomach. He was hungry. He reached into his pocket and grasped the money his father had given him. He was thinking about Ding Dongs and cold milk.
He pulled down the covers, slid to the side of the bed and put on his shoes. He figured he could go to the mini-market across the street and surprise Rick with breakfast. He tiptoed to the door, eased it open and stepped out into the morning. Stretching his arms, he met the day with a yawn and started across the parking lot. He thought about running across the street, there were no cars out this early, but he decided to cross at the light. It was a few feet out of the way and might take a few seconds longer, but his mother had taught him to never jay walk.
When he reached the crosswalk, he reached with an outstretched finger to push the cross button on the traffic signal, but someone clamped a beefy hand over his face and he felt himself being lifted off his feet.
Feeling better, Rick turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub. He toweled off, glancing at his ghostly reflection in the steamed mirror for only a second, before he dressed. It was time to wake J.P. and get on the road. He left the warmth of the bathroom and stopped, staring at J.P.’s bed. The boy was gone.
He ran his eyes around the room and saw J.P.’s shoes just inside the door. They were sitting on a folded piece of paper. He pulled the paper out from under the shoes. It was note, someone had been in the room while he’d been in the shower. He unfolded the paper and read:
I have the boy. He dies tomorrow Like the others — In Tampico at sunset. Tell anyone and I’ll peel his skin off before sticking in the knife.
I’ll know if you call the police, so don’t be stupid. If you’re very lucky, maybe you can trade your life for his.
I am damned but so are you.
It was unsigned.