Worth finished cleaning up in the basement and laid everything out on an old towel to dry. He grabbed a shower and another plate of eggs and headed back out to the garage.
He pulled all the masking tape, the newspaper with it, and shoved the whole wad into a garbage bag. He turned off the space heater and the fans and gathered up the half acre’s worth of drop cloths he’d used to line the garage. He left the blue tarp draped over the Ranger.
In the adjacent stall sat a 1971 Pontiac GTO, minus a spoiler, clad now in a tacky coat of American Home Interior Satin. Tawny Barnwood, Prairie Earth Collection.
Worth went to the workbench where he’d left the inventory of items he’d collected from the interior of the car. Title and registration. A fat padded folio of CDs. A loaded .38 revolver, a sleeve of unopened rubbers. A handheld Bearcat police scanner. Half a pack of Dentyne.
He put everything but the radio scanner and the pistol into a zippered kit bag, shoved the bag back under the seat.
Outside, the temperature had dropped. The wind had picked up, and the sleet grew coarse. Worth checked across the street and stepped back into the garage.
He used his cell phone to call the number he’d copied from the phone book inside the house; after a few rings a voice answered, thick with sleep.
“Yeah.”
Worth said, “Ricky?”
“Curtis.” A yawn. “What?”
“This is Matt Worth.”
“Who?”
“Officer Worth. From the store.”
“Oh.” Another yawn. “Um, hey man. Shit. We late for work? What time…hey. It’s snowing.”
“Curtis, do me a favor, okay?”
“What’s up?”
“I want you to call this number. Got a pen?”
“Pen. Hang on.” Silence. Rustling. Footsteps thudding away, thudding back. “Yeah, go.”
Worth read him the other number he’d written down inside the house. “Ask for somebody and play dumb for a couple minutes. Figure out you dialed the wrong number by mistake, but take your time about it. Okay?”
“Who do I ask for?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just pick a name and burn a couple minutes.”
“Yeah, I got it. How come?”
“Just playing a joke on a buddy,” Worth said. “Omaha PD thanks you for your cooperation.”
“Whatever you say.” Curtis paused. “Hey?”
“Yeah.”
“We heard Gwen was in the hospital.”
“She is.”
More silence. Worth looked at his watch, already spending more time on this call than he’d intended.
“Hurt her pretty bad this time, huh?”
“Bad enough.”
Curtis sighed into the phone. “Ricky wants to go kick the holy shit outta that fucker.”
“I didn’t hear you say that.”
“Maybe polish that car he drives with a brick.”
Worth glanced at the freshly spray-painted trunk of the GTO. He was beginning to feel queasy now. The second round of eggs wasn’t sitting well. He could hear the patter of sleet on the roof, clicking against the east windows.
“Probably best if you let us handle it,” he said. “Listen, Curtis, I’ll fill you guys in later. Promise. Can you help me out?”
“Right, operation crank call. Forgot.”
“Just keep the line busy a couple minutes.”
“Play dumb,” Curtis said. “No prob.”
Back outside, hands in his pockets, sleet stinging his cheeks, Worth squinted toward the house on the corner lot across the street. John Pospisil. Good guy, a fellow in divorce, laid up at home after a nasty fall. John was the only neighbor with a clear view of Worth’s garage; he’d been standing on the front porch in his quilted flannel overshirt for a half hour, leaning on one crutch, drinking a beer and watching the sky.
He saw Worth and raised a hand. Worth waved back. John looked at the sky, shrugged. Nebraska weather, right? Just then he cocked his head and listened.
His shoulders seemed to sag. In a moment he waved again, turned, and hobbled into the house. It looked like slow going. Hard to manage the screen door. Worth hated to do it to the guy.
He hustled into the garage, hit the button. The door opened slowly, hauling in a swirl of sleet.
He forgot to grab the remote from the visor of the pickup to close the door again behind him. He had to go back and get it. Fifteen seconds wasted.
Little mistakes.
He backed the GTO out of the garage, into the turnaround, and scooted down the narrow driveway to the street. Sleet scoured the roof of the car, filling the interior with soft white noise.
Worth checked both ways and headed south, past John Pospisil’s empty porch, palms slick on the icy wheel. His pulse thudded in his neck, receding gradually as he pulled out of view.
At the end of the street he turned west, then south toward the interstate, the first crackle of chatter from Russell’s cop scanner emerging from the steady whisper of flash-frozen rain.
“Hello?”
“Is Scotty there?”
John Pospisil sighed. All the way in he’d come, thinking it would be his son or daughter calling, checking on him.
They got nervous if he didn’t answer. Liz especially. She’d pack up the kids and drive all the way up from Plattsmouth if he let the phone ring more than five or six times.
“I think you have the wrong number,” he said.
“Oh. This isn’t 555-0102?”
“Nope, sorry. This is 555-0120.”
“Hey, no, I’m sorry. I must have mixed up the numbers.”
“That’s okay. Happens all the time. Bye, now.”
“Um…wait a second. Hello?”
John sighed again and hopped on his left foot, wedging the crutch under him a little better. He needed to remember to carry the cordless around with him. Especially outside.
Though the way his leg was yelling at him, maybe he didn’t need to be going outside anyway. He got so that he felt so cooped up in the house that some days anything seemed worth a gulp of fresh air. But one step out the door, and the icy air slipped right through the cracks in his bones. It felt like somebody working on his leg from ankle to hip with a hammer drill.
“Sir? Hello?”
“Yes?”
“You said this is what number?”
“Five-five-five,” John said slowly, “oh-one-two-oh.”
“And Scotty isn’t there? Scotty Sullivan.”
Jesus. He needed three Vicodins, a shot of Jack, and a long nap. “I’m sorry, son. Try it again.”
Outside, John heard a rumbling engine. He moved the curtains and saw a curious sight.
Across the street, at Helen’s place, a car backed out of the garage. Sixties Camaro, or something along those lines. Sort of an odd, puke-tan color. A back end that looked…wrong. John couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
He suddenly felt all muddle-headed. Something about the car seemed familiar and off-kilter at the same time. He could see Matt Worth’s pickup covered up in the other stall, a bright blue tarp showing through the sleet.
The garage door came down.
“Five-five-five,” the voice in his ear repeated, “oh-one-oh-two.”
“Zero-one-two-zero,” John said, struggling with his temper now. “Son, change the last two numbers around and try it again. I’ve got to go. You take care.”
He hung up the phone and watched the car pull away down the street, thinking Goddamn sleeping pills.
9
Junk Monkey Scrap and Salvage sat across the river, an hour northeast into Iowa, bunkered among the tall wooded bluffs overlooking the spine of the Lewis and Clark Trail.
The weather let him go at the river. Even with the improved visibility, Worth doubted he’d have found the place in the dark if the directions he’d been given hadn’t held up.
Eight miles down a winding road tunneled over by gnarly burr oaks, he marked the turnoff in his high beams: a pair of tires bolted to fence posts on either side of a long rock driveway. On each tire, runny hand-sprayed letters spelled the words JUNK MONKEY in reflective white paint.