The house was dark. One back window had been repaired with a cardboard carton and some tape. I peered inside. Bulks of furniture, steady shadows, dirt and dust. Nobody lived there. I took a quarter out of my pocket, holding it between my fingers. Tapped it sharply on the steel door to the cellar. Three fast, three slow. Waited. Did it again. Convict code. We always find a way. A guy who did time on the Coast told me about scooping all the water out of the steel toilets, using the tubing as a communication line to the other blocks. Guys in solitary use a kind of Morse code. Takes a whole day to pass a message along. We played chess through the mail. Used little scraps of mirror to see what's happening down the tier. Hand signals. We'd find a way. And some guys, they'd be in solitary even when they hit the streets.
Three answering taps, spaced the same way. I tapped back, this time six in a row, all quick. The padlock on the storm door was a phony— it rested alongside the rings, not through them. I pulled it open and stepped into the darkness.
Down a flight of concrete steps, feeling my way. When I got down far enough, I reached up, pulled the storm door closed behind me.
I hit the bottom of the steps, put a palm along the wall to guide me. A white burst of light in my face, rooting me where I stood. It snapped off, leaving bright-spangled lights dancing inside my eyelids.
A switch clicked. Soft pool of light in a corner of the basement.
"Thanks for coming, brother."
Virgil.
26
HE LOOKED about the same. Thick black hair, combed back along the sides '50s style, hazel eyes, a long face, pointed jaw, dominated by a falcon's beak for a nose. Indians had visited his grandfather's turf and they hadn't all got themselves shot.
Taller than me, a mountain man's build, the power in the bone, not the muscles. Big hands, thick wrists. The whole package built to survive the mountains and the mines.
Or prison.
He extended his hand, gave mine a brief squeeze, dropped it, and turned to stand next to me. Letting me see it for myself. My eyes adjusted, working in figure-eight loops from the pool of light. Small refrigerator against one wall, two-burner hot plate, canned goods stacked almost to the ceiling. Virgil handed me a flash. I swept the rest of the basement. It was as neat and clean as a lifer's cell. Three army cots, big portable radio with speakers on each side and a carrying handle, a pair of sawhorses with a rough plank across them for a table.
Virgil took the flash from me, pointed it and followed the beam, me right behind. I left my bag on the floor, keeping both hands free. The basement had more than one room. We turned the corner, stepped into a small bathroom. Just a toilet and a drain in the floor for the shower someone had put together out of a length of hose draped over a hook. We walked through to the furnace area. An ancient oil burner squatted, dying of metal fatigue, its plug pulled years ago.
Virgil spoke. "Come on out of there, boy. It's okay."
The door to the oil burner opened from the inside. A kid stepped out, blinking his eyes at the light. A slightly built boy with close-cropped light hair, trembling.
"Uncle Virgil…"
Virgil ignored him. "This here's Lloyd," he said to me. "My wife's kin."
The kid watched me like a bird watching a cat. A bird who couldn't fly.
"Get on inside," Virgil said to him, stepping aside so the kid could walk in front of us.
Back in the big room, Virgil nodded toward the left-hand corner. A triangle of packing crates, hubcap on the floor between them. I took a seat. Virgil settled in. "You too," he told the kid.
He nodded his head at the corners of the basement. "This here's the living room. Over there's the kitchen, far side's the bedroom. You already seen the bathroom. Man who owns this house, he's kin of Rebecca's." He said her name the way they do in Appalachia, twanging hard on the first "e," dragging it out.
"Ain't nobody gonna come around. We got electricity for at least another month, until they turn it off. Garbage goes in the plastic bags. We stack 'em back behind the furnace. Got enough food here for a long time. Anybody comes, it's me they find. Lloyd hides himself in the furnace. Reba'll come back for him, it comes to that."
"You going to go quietly?" I asked him.
He saw where I was looking. At the pair of long guns resting against the wall just behind him.
He shrugged. "They don't want me for much of nothing. Helping a bail jumper, that's no kind of time. It just didn't seem natural to hole up without some firepower."
"This an ashtray?" I asked, pointing at the hubcap on the floor.
"Yeah. The basement windows are all boarded up but there's plenty of cracks in them. It clears out pretty good."
I lit a smoke, sneaking a glance at the kid in the flare of the wooden match. He was sitting soft, waiting. Like Terry, when I first rented him from a kiddie pimp. Not exactly like Terry: this boy didn't know why I came. And he did care.
I looked across at Virgil. We'd done time together and he'd passed the test. More than once. The test of time, the test of crime. In my world, no difference. "What's my end?" I asked him.
"I need to know some truth. Reba, she'd'a told you what happened over here, right?"
I nodded.
"First the cops thought it was Lloyd. Then they didn't. Now they back to where they was. It's Lloyd. In their minds. Me, I don't know about this stuff. Freak stuff. But you know them…"
Them. Humans who kill for love. Torture for fun. They set fires to watch the flames. Black-glove rapists. Snuff-film directors. Trophy-takers. Baby-fuckers. Pain turns on the switch. Blood lubricates the machinery. Then the power-rush comes. And they do too.
It's not sex. Castrate the freaks and they use broomsticks or Coke bottles.
I've been studying them all my life. Since I was a tiny little kid. They taught me. Nightmare walkers.
Virgil was right. Whoever ventilated those kids in lovers' lane…
"I know them," I said in the quiet darkness. The kid couldn't meet my eyes. Or wouldn't.
"You're here to talk to Lloyd. When you're done, you tell me the truth. You'll know. Nobody's better at it than you. I know you did it before. For that lawyer. I remember you telling me about it. Never forget it. That's what I need now."
I dragged deep on my smoke. "I'm in."
Virgil nodded. Turned to the kid. "Lloyd, this man's my brother. You heard what he said. He's gonna talk to you. You're gonna talk to him. When it's done, I'm gonna know the truth. You got it?"
"Uncle Virgil…"
"What?"
"I didn't do it."
"You didn't do it, my brother will know. Then I'll get something together for you. Whatever it takes. You a member of the family. My wife's cousin. Blood kin. You didn't do it, we're behind you. I risked my house for you. My home. Where my children live. And it looks like I may be going back to jail for a little bit too. That's okay. A man's got no more than his family."
"Will I have to go to jail?"
"Jail? Boy, you better pray you going to jail. Only way you're going inside is you didn't do what they say you did."
"Uncle Virgil," the kid's voice was a ribbon of broken glass, drooling out of his slack mouth. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"
Virgil lit a cigarette of his own. I knew what he was doing. Getting his thoughts together, making sure it came out right. "Lloyd, you didn't do this…my brother tells me you didn't do this…then we come up with a plan. Some plans don't work out. And then people go to jail. You have to go to jail, you'll go like a man, you understand? That ain't no big thing. And you'll always have your people. Inside and out. Something waiting for you. Like I had."