He parked in the garage and went inside. The main floor and upstairs were empty, just furniture runners on the floors that the movers had left. The kitchen table remained, and two chairs. The sink was full of dirty dishes.
His mother had left notes taped to the refrigerator and the cupboards about when to thaw and eat each meal she’d left stacked in plastic containers in the freezer. He opened the fridge, which contained nothing but Coca-Cola, twenty cans of it.
He snapped the flip top on a can of Coke. Took another along for backup, and went down the stairs into the basement.
The basement was stripped.
Dale had not so much packed as given everything away to the Lutheran church his mom had gone to, mostly alone, for the last thirty years. Except for his computer, which he’d smashed into a pulp and dropped in Devil’s Lake. All that remained was a desk, an arm chair, and hassock in front of the TV.
He still had the VCR set up. It was so old nobody would want one like that anymore. Just leave it when he…
No. He did not intend to move. He was going to change. Reappear as a totally new person. But first he had to do this favor for Ace. More of a favor than Ace had ever done for him.
Gordy. Dale smirked. Gordy had mocked and bullied him all his life. Well, Gordy was about to get his heads-up.
His barren desk set against the wall under an old Star Wars poster. Barren except for his high school yearbook. Dale sat down and flipped the pages to the senior pictures until he came to the picture of a younger, smiling Gordy Riker, looking like a toothy, hairy werewolf zit.
With a deliberateness of ceremony, Dale reached up to his chest pocket, moved the stubby Epipen aside, and grabbed the thick-nib Sharpie. His breathing came more rapidly, and a squeezy bubbly sensation started in his chest as he methodically blacked out Gordy’s eyes with the pen.
Then he turned forward a few pages and studied Ginny Weller’s picture. Her eyes, too, were blacked out.
Not so pretty now-huh, bitch?
Real funny. Ha ha. It was supposed to be a joke. For their senior trip, the whole class went for the weekend to a hotel in Bismarck. To see a play. He should have figured it out. How come the prettiest girl in the class all of a sudden started seeking him out, sitting next to him? Paying him attention.
It happened the second night, late; Ginny had dared him to go skinny-dipping with her in the hotel pool, which was closed for the night but she knew a way to get in.
Just the two of them. The naughty taunt in her voice.
“Come on, you scared? Don’t you want to see me naked?”
At this point in his life Dale was considered shy; quiet but not that weird. He had a B-plus average. Played linebacker on the football team. Kept his turmoil carefully tucked away inside. Kept a certain distance from people, especially girls. He had this notion that if you kissed a girl-one of those open-mouth, slurpy French kisses-she might be able to see down your throat, right inside, all the way down to all your secrets.
Everybody left Dale alone because he was Ace’s brother. But halfway through senior year, Ace hit Bobby Pease, over in the bar at Starkweather. Ace spent the next year hoeing beans down in Jamestown.
So why was Ginny Weller flirting with him? He knew it had to be some kind of a game. Maybe she was trying to make Irv Fuller mad. When her talk didn’t work, she maneuvered him into a corner in the lobby and planted one of those French jobs on him, sticking her tongue between his teeth.
After that he couldn’t resist. Though he was scared plenty, because the farthest he’d been with a girl was messy hand jobs with dumpy Margie Block up in her dad’s hayloft.
He had to give it a try.
They met in the hall, at midnight. She showed him how she’d put tape on the lock to the door in the ladies’ room that led to the pool. Taped it on vertical, up the inside edge of the door, keeping the lock bolt from engaging.
They slipped into the darkened bathroom. Ginny told him to go on in and undress. She’d meet him in a second and they’d go skinny-dipping.
“For starters,” she’d said.
A chance like this would never come again. So Dale went in, stripped off his clothes, and waited in the darkness. There were little lights along the bottom of the pool that cast wavy shadows on the ceiling. It felt humid and smelled of chlorine. The longer he waited, the more excited he got.
And when he had become real excited, and no Ginny yet-that’s when the lights exploded on.
And there was Ginny standing by the door with Irv and Gordy Riker. They pointed their fingers and rocked with laughter.
“Boy,” Irv sang out, “that’s what I call real hard.”
“And real small,” Gordy chimed in, moving forward and extending his hand. He wasn’t just pointing. He had a squirt gun and proceeded to squirt Dale in the crotch. Dale covered up and ran to the other side of the pool, to where they kept the towels, but there weren’t any towels.
To his chagrin, Dale discovered that Gordy’s squirt gun had been filled with cheap perfume. And for the rest of the trip, and all during the bus ride home, people kept saying: “You smell anything? I sure smell something.”
The nickname “Needle-Dick” became common usage.
Dale smiled, took the videotape from his desk, and fed it into the VCR. He pushed the play button on the VCR remote. As the screen flickered into focus, he settled down into his chair, raised his hips slightly, and unbuttoned his jeans.
Chapter Twenty-six
“This is Jane.”
“Game over. Ace just gave me the boot,” Nina said.
“Not to worry. You got all your stuff?”
“Yeah, I’m doing my famous walking-down-the-highway-to-town.”
“Did you keep your legs crossed?”
“Turns out he wasn’t that kind of guy.”
“Nina, they’re all that kind of guy.”
“Well, what have we got?”
“We got movement on your tip. Khari, the liquor dealer in Grand Forks, is planning a road trip tonight. Bugs got a parabolic mike on his house. Overheard a call to Shuster about the special pickup. It tracks with what you told Broker. Distinctly heard him say they’d meet at the RLS on 5. That’s missile talk for the deserted Remote Launch Site east of Langdon. So Bugs will be tailing him. Holly is standing by with the bird if we need him. We’ll follow Ace, in case the meet on the highway is a diversion.”
After her awful scene with Ace, Janey’s upbeat voice was a blast of relief. Nina’s knees trembled, a little weak. “Great,” she said, “where do you want me? I’m out here all alone, walking down a country road half-dressed.”
“Hey, I thought you liked that dress. And I got a feeling you won’t be walking alone for long.”
Before Nina could ask Janey where she was, the call ended. Nina kept walking, looked back once. Okay. A deserted pole barn and some trees broke the line of sight to the Missile Park. If Ace was watching her she’d be lost in the roadside clutter now. She was almost to the airport. From Janey’s remark, she figured they were close. But where? She squinted down the road: patches of sunlight alternated with muggy afternoon shadows.
Then she caught movement to the right, a figure stepping from a grove of trees, an arm whipping in a tight circle. About forty yards off the highway, standing in the thick stuff behind an abandoned Quonset. Hand signaclass="underline" Rally on me. She hefted her travel bag and started up the rutted trap rock driveway. When she came closer and entered the trees, she saw it was Janey.
“What’s going on?” Nina said.
Janey stood casually in jeans and a dark pullover, one hip thrust out, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, like a B-movie moll. She said, “Watching Ace. He’s talking on the phone, to George. Like I said. I doubt he can see out the window and through this building. On the other hand, if you climb up top this Quonset you can get a fair view in through the living room window. With these.” She held up a pair of binoculars. “Quite a little striptease going on for a while there.” She handed over the smoke. Nina took a drag and handed it back.