24
Wakened from their long slumber, Nazi zombies trooped slowly across the bottom of the tropical lagoon, their jackboots kicking up little puffs of sand with every step. Thorpe had seen the movie five or six times before, but he had never understood why the zombies were all wearing sunglasses. Except that it made them look really cool. The sound track was a mere whisper from where he stood. He leaned forward, peered down through the second opening in the projection room, checking out the crowd below. Still no sign of the Engineer.
“Who are you looking for?” asked D.K., the projectionist, watching the movie through his own portal. He was a frail old gent in a threadbare brown suit, a proud, liver-spotted lothario with a bad comb-over.
“Nobody.”
“Nobody, my ass. If you’re checking out the girls, forget it. You’re too old and too square for this crowd. You want to turn some heads, you’ll need to get some tattoos, and pierce your pecker.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.”
“I remember when all it took to get laid was a Brylcreem pompadour and new Levi’s. I wouldn’t be young again if you paid me.”
Thorpe watched the exits, so disappointed, he wanted to break something. He had no right to be—it had always been a long shot— but he was. It would have been an elegant trap, tripping up the Engineer with a classic bad movie. The fact that
Shock Waves
was also one of Thorpe’s favorites would only have made it sweeter. Would have.
“Let me turn the sound up in here,” said D.K. “I can’t hear a thing.”
“I like it quiet,” said Thorpe, still watching.
The audience was bathed in light from the tropical island on-screen. The theater was packed. Thorpe could see rows and rows of surfers with their bare feet up, and street kids slouched like ragged hippies lost in a time warp. Plenty of couples Thorpe’s age, too, buffs drawn from all over to the screening of this out-of-print rarity. The
Los Angeles Times
had even included a boxed notice in its upcoming-events calendar yesterday. The Engineer
had
to have seen it. He wasn’t here, though. Thorpe had roped off the balcony, found a spot where he could see people walking in past the ticket booth without being seen himself. He had gone to high alert at one point when a group had approached wearing zombie masks, but they weren’t the right size for either the Engineer or his bodyguard. He tracked them anyway, waited until they had raised their masks to stuff popcorn into their mouths before returning to his post. He scanned the crowd again. The Engineer wasn’t there.
“You got to plan ahead if you want to meet the ladies.” D.K. crossed his legs. “See, you’re at the wrong movie. Midnight features, that’s for the screwballs and freaks and girls wear ripped fishnet stockings. Those kind of girls aren’t interested in a man with a job, a man who uses deodorant. You should be going to the matinees we run on weekdays.
Ghost, Dirty Dancing, A Man and a Woman,
early Harrison Ford and Richard Gere, too. The joint is just packed with horny housewives. Fish in a barrel for a good-looking fella like you.”
Thorpe smiled. “What about you?”
“Wednesday mornings. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Doris Day and Rock Hudson.” D.K. rearranged the strands of hair on his scalp. “Good thing we only run those movies once a week, or I’d have a heart attack.”
On-screen, the shipwrecked survivors straggled ashore, Brooke Adams’s blouse clinging to her. One of the paradigms of any great zombie movie was a fetching ingenue with great cleavage. In a few minutes, the survivors would traipse through the jungle to the abandoned laboratory of a renegade Nazi scientist and the fun would really start.
“People been saying for years that Rock Hudson was queer, but I’ll never believe it,” said D.K., watching the movie.
Thorpe watched Brooke Adams.
“If this movie is so good, why don’t we go inside and
watch
it?” asked Gregor.
“Because I am a cautious man,” said the Engineer. “Frank may be in there.”
“Let
me
go in and find out.”
“Do you honestly think you could spot him before he saw you?” sneered the Engineer. “Sit back and read your magazines.”
Gregor started to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, he tilted back his seat, the motor groaning with the weight of him, opened a copy of
Assbusters.
There was just enough moonlight coming through the window to illuminate the pornographic images, the flesh gray and dead as the lunar landscape.
The Engineer sat perfectly still in the driver’s seat of the Buick sedan, watching the Strand theater. They had been there for over an hour, watching the crowd slowly filing through the doors, but had seen no sign of Thorpe. There was undoubtedly a back entrance, but the Engineer couldn’t be in two places at once, and he didn’t trust Gregor to keep lookout. It was hard to be unobtrusive when you were over three hundred pounds. The man had other abilities. No, the Engineer stayed put. He could sit for hours without needing to shift his weight, completely comfortable. He could have been an astronaut, able to live in cramped quarters for months without complaint. He
would
have been an astronaut if there had been money in it, money or ego gratification. What was the point of going to the stars unless you were getting away with something?
Gregor was breathing heavily now, his face bent over the pages.
The Engineer cracked his window. He hated missing the show. He had seen
Shock Waves
only on video, never a 35-mm print. He had no idea how Thorpe could have found out about his predilection for cheesy horror movies . . . but he didn’t put anything past the man. He had been tempted to buy a ticket, but the idea of being fooled by Frank was unbearable. Fooled
again.
He remembered the girl, Kimberly. That had rankled. She and Thorpe had gotten him good. Well, the Engineer had laughed last. With Kimberly at least. He smiled to himself. Kimberly was merely a preview of coming attractions. Thorpe was the main feature. He turned to Gregor, annoyed. “Kindly stop smacking your lips.”
“Sorry.”
The Engineer stared at the marquee announcing
Shock Waves.
If Thorpe was setting him up, they would wait for the theater to empty, then catch him leaving, when his guard was down. If the showing of his favorite movie
was
just a lovely coincidence, then he and Gregor would simply stroll in afterward and confiscate the print. He hummed softly, thinking of the good times ahead.
“That was a pretty decent movie,” said D.K., packing up the first reel.
Thorpe watched the remnants of the crowd filing out. The Engineer would have to wait. In twelve days, the Meachums would be back from Hawaii, but Thorpe had come up with a plan to keep them safe. It might even work.
“Don’t worry, kid. There’s a woman for you out there. You just got to pick your shots.”
Thorpe helped D.K. with the other reel.
“That’s him,” said the Engineer.
“Where?”
The Engineer eased the Buick forward, lights out, barely giving it any gas. He wouldn’t have recognized Thorpe from this distance, but the film cans he was lugging down the alley marked him. The Engineer had waited until the crowd had left, then drove past the stragglers smoking under the marquee and found another parking spot. A few minutes later, someone stepped out of a theater exit he didn’t even know existed, and he knew it had to be Thorpe.
“Is that him?” Gregor tossed aside his magazine. “I’ll grab him.”
“Even if you could
grab
him, that’s not what I want. I prefer to see where he’s going.”
“Because of the money?”
“Very good.” The Engineer watched the corner. “If we snatch him, it will degenerate into a contest of wills, and he might just choose to die before giving me what I want. The man is sitting on at least two or three million dollars; I’d like to see where he lives . . . perhaps who he’s living with. Frank is stubborn, but he has a soft spot for the weaker sex.” Smile. “And he
does
have some idea what I’m capable of.”
“I get it.”
“Down,” hissed the Engineer, sliding lower. Gregor barely got his knees out of view before headlights illuminated their car and then were gone. Gregor was quicker than he looked, a world-class wrestler in his youth, now gone to fat and indolence, but still useful. Loyal, too. That was why the Engineer had spared his life.
The Engineer had drugged Lazurus’s whole crew at the party they gave in his honor for escaping, drugged them and shot them in the head, shot them one by one as they snored away. Except for Gregor. He had watched his bodyguard snoring, and the Engineer had actually placed the barrel of his pistol in Gregor’s mouth, started to squeeze the trigger . . . and stopped. Sometimes he surprised himself. He had been so angry that night, angry at Frank for not staying at the safe house, angry at having to rush with Kimberly, not being able to take his time. Killing the crew had been necessary for security reasons, but it didn’t really diminish his anger.
“Up.” The Engineer turned on the ignition, pulled away from the curb. He could see the red taillights of Thorpe’s car far ahead. He didn’t turn on his headlights until Thorpe turned the corner. He sped up now, afraid they were going to lose Thorpe.
25
Thorpe drove slowly down the alley, lights off, not knowing what he was doing here. He should be home. He should be knocking on Claire’s door, apologizing for ignoring her these last few days, but he didn’t want to lie to her about his reasons. Instead, he was dodging potholes and overflowing garbage cans at 4:00 a.m., still pissed off that the Engineer hadn’t taken the bait. He wouldn’t be able to sleep now anyway, might as well check up on the Meachums’ house. They might have returned early from their second honeymoon. If they’d had a fight, Meachum would have run off to his girlfriend, but Gina would have come home to her paintings. The front of their house gave no indication of recent activity, but he drove down the alley anyway. He slowed as he passed their back door, continued on, and parked beside their neighbor’s garage. He had seen something in the space between the window shade and the frame: the flicker of a television. He walked slowly toward the house, staying to the edges of the alley, where there were no pebbles to make noise.
He edged closer to the window. The TV was on in the back bedroom, tuned to CNN, the sound low. Leaving the TV on when you went out of town wasn’t a bad idea. That was one possibility. If Gina had come home by herself, she might not have wanted to sleep in her marriage bed anymore. That was another possibility. Someone changed the channel with a remote, the room momentarily brighter, and Thorpe glimpsed a man in the dimness of the bedroom. He put away the 9-mm, shaking his head. This was a possibility he hadn’t considered.
Thorpe knocked on the back door, and the door rattled, unlocked. He knocked again, opened the door. “Ray! It’s me, Frank. Ray?”
The kitchen light came on, and Ray Bishop stood there, barefoot, scratching his ass with a .38. “Come on in.”
Thorpe closed the door behind him, locked it. “Ray, what are you doing here?”
“Same thing you’re doing. Looking out for these people . . .” Bishop was wearing new Bermuda shorts and a sport shirt with a button-down collar. Clean-shaven. He padded over to the refrigerator, barely limping. “You want a soft drink? I got Coke, 7Up—”
“How did you find this place?”
“You think you’re the only one who can run an investigation?” Bishop slipped the .38 into his front pocket, took out a can of Coke. “The morning after you came calling, I went to the library, did a search on Clark and Missy. The most recent entry was that nasty column that society broad wrote. I ran her next, and found out she got run down the same day the column came out. Didn’t take much to figure out that you were worried that the Meachums were next. The gallery was closed, but it wasn’t hard to find out where they lived.” He cracked the can, Coke foaming across his knuckles, but he ignored it. “You told me at the construction site that you had put them in the soup, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what you might have done.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” Bishop sipped from the can. “The Meachums aren’t going to be back for a while. They left their itinerary on a notepad, the hotel they are staying at, everything. They were either in a big hurry or just naïve, I can’t make up my mind. The lock on that back door . . . I opened it with a bankcard and a paper clip.”
The Meachums
had
been in a hurry. On the counter, Thorpe could see the hammer and the picture hooks Gina had been using when he interrupted her. “Ray . . . you being here, it’s breaking and entering.”
“You going to turn me in?”
“That’s not the point. Vlad and Arturo might show—”
“I hope they do.” Bishop flipped off the light. “Come on, you want to watch some TV?”
Thorpe followed him into the back bedroom. In the dim light from the TV, he could see Bishop’s security uniform draped over a hanger, an overnight bag on the floor. He stayed standing while Bishop sat in an armchair. “You’re planning on being a hero, Ray?”
“After you left, I got to thinking.” The images from the TV were reflected in Bishop’s face, but he wasn’t watching the set. “Vlad and Arturo are expecting to find a couple of Yuppies here, trusting folks who think calling 911 is the answer to all their problems.” He finished his Coke, set the can down on a coaster. “Well, I
know
who Vlad and Arturo are, and I’m not about to give them a fair chance—they show up, I’m going to blow their brains out. Self-defense. I may not even stick around to call it in.” He belched, proud of himself.
Thorpe sat down. “What about your job? You had a good thing going there.”
Bishop gave him the finger, and they both laughed.
“Okay, it was a shit job,” said Thorpe, “but you can’t stay here.”
“You don’t think I can handle myself?”
“No . . . it’s not that.”
“I used to be a good cop.”
“I know—”
“I haven’t had a drink since I saw you last . . . and, yeah, it’s not the first time I’ve been sober for a few days, but this time feels different.” Bishop leaned forward in his chair. “I’m grateful to you, Frank. That night at the site, seeing you all rough-and-ready—that used to be me.
I
was the guy asking questions;
I
was the guy standing up for what was right. I was no saint, but I did my job.” His hands gripped the arms of the chair. “Clark and Missy beat me back in Riverside, they took away everything I cared about, and I let them. I rolled over and
let
them. Well, not anymore. I’m not going back to punching a clock, protecting lumber and drywall, and pretending it’s all fine.” He pointed at his uniform. “I keep that there to remind me. I actually had to buy that thing, you believe it?” He shook his head. “No thanks. I know who I am now.”
Thorpe nodded. “You look good.”
“I
feel
good.” Bishop breathed easily, relaxed now, settling in to his flesh and his newfound certainty. “It’s like I lost my way these last few years, but coming here, on my own, making that decision myself . . . it’s like I got a direction again.” He blushed, his face pink as a canned ham. “I guess someone like you can’t understand what that’s like.”
“Ray . . . I understand
exactly
what that’s like.”
Bishop stared at him. “Yes, I believe you do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have felt so envious of you when you walked off the site, on your way to do what I should be doing.” He leaned closer, his features grotesque in the flickering light of the TV. “I bet you made some outrageous fuckups in your time. I bet you made some real doozies.”
Thorpe just smiled.
“You don’t give anything away, do you? I like that. There’s too many talkers, you ask me. I’d still like to know how you got mixed up with Clark and Missy, though. I can see how that newspaper column would set her off, but how was that your fault? Did you talk to this Betty B?”
“No, but I might as well have.”
Bishop watched him, waiting for more, then gave up. He patted his belly. “You hungry? I’ll scramble us up some eggs.”
Thorpe stood. “I’ve got some business to take care of.”
“At
this
hour?”
“They’ll be awake. If not, I’ll convince them that it’s time.”
“Anybody I know?”
“I don’t think so.” It was a lie, but Thorpe was comfortable with it. Bishop needed to be here—he understood that—but there was no way Thorpe was going to let the man put himself in jeopardy. He had planned on waiting a day or so to talk with Clark and Missy, but he was going to do it now. Right now. He couldn’t take the chance of Arturo and Vlad dropping by. Bishop might have convinced himself he was ready to take them on, but Thorpe knew better. Thorpe had to defuse the situation with Clark and Missy. Bishop could stay here as long as he wanted, on guard for an attack that would never come. Whatever brought him closer to the man he wanted to be.
Bishop got out of the chair, hitched up his shorts. “My wife and kids are in Pennsylvania, living with her sister outside Pittsburgh. Her sister has a big house. . . . They’re not suffering. I . . . I’ve been thinking about paying them a visit. I got some money saved. What do
you
think?”
“I think that’s a fine idea.”
Bishop nodded, looked away. “I’m not quite ready yet, but I think about it. I was a lousy husband. I was a good father, but I was a lousy husband.”
“People can change, Ray.”
“That’s what I tell myself . . . but I’m not so sure.” Bishop looked up at Thorpe, fidgeting now. “How do you think I should go about it?”
“You don’t need advice from me.”
“The hell I don’t,” said Bishop. “Should I call first, or surprise them?” he said, whispering, as though someone else might hear. “Do I take flowers or gifts for the kids? I sent cards for every birthday and Christmas, but—”
Thorpe put a hand on Bishop’s shoulder. “You don’t have to call first, but don’t go by the house. You don’t want to put any pressure on her, and you don’t want to upset the kids. Go to where she’s working. Go there just before she gets off for the day and ask her to go have a cup of coffee or just walk and talk. You’ll be nervous, but that’s okay, because she’ll be nervous, too.”
“Not her,” said Bishop. “That woman’s a rock. I got no idea why she put up with me as long as she did.”
“
She
knows why. All you have to do is allow her to remember.” Thorpe lowered his voice. “Don’t promise her the moon; she’ll have heard that from you often enough. Tell her the truth, Ray. Tell her that you’re making your way back and you know you’ve got a way to go, but that you love her. Tell her you love her. You can’t say that too often. Tell her you love her and you thought about her and the kids the whole time you were apart, and ask her for another chance. Make sure she knows it’s her choice and that you will understand if she’s had enough. Tell her you love her. Tell her you’ve been wrong about everything in life but her. Then hope she says yes.”
“You sound like a man who’s had to beg a woman to take him back a few times.”
“No, but I’m ready.”