Ryerson got up from the barstool, went over to the woman, sat beside her. Creosote began to whimper.
"Somethin' wrong which your dog?" the woman asked.
Creosote tried to burrow in between Ryeron's side and arm; Ryerson stroked him reassuringly. "Hey, it's okay, fella," he said, then, to the woman, "He comes here, doesn't he?"
"Lucas? Sure. He comes here. He's a friend a mine."
Ryerson foundthat he could read from her only what he usually read from crazies, and animals-what looked in his mind's eye like the snow between channels on a TV set. "A friend of yours?" he said, and wondered why she'd been so quick with information. "Is he here now? It's imperative that I get in touch with him."
"Imperative; is it?" said the woman. "Imperative?!" She grinned, took another sip of the whiskey, glanced down the front of her low-cut dress, reached in, and adjusted her bra.
Creosote's whimpering grew louder.
She went on. "Why don't you tell Doreen what's so imperative, and I'll relay the message to him when he comes in."
The bartender brought Ryerson's glass of ginger ale; "Buck fifty," he said, and Ryerson dug in his pockets, found a dollar bill and some change, and put it on the counter.
~ * ~
Detective Third Grade Andy Spurling's fondest memories were of growing up in Syracuse, New York, where he was thoughtof as the toughest kid on the block, and the quickest with a six-gun. His six-guns, of course, were made by Mattel, but they were made of real metal, not plastic like they are today, and they were heavy, and their action was much like the action of a real gun. The one he carried now, for instance.
He was the toughest kid on the block because he was the biggest, and the most aggressive, and pain had never bothered him a lot-a fact which had put the other kids, even the smart ones, in awe of him (he remembered particularly the time he held the lit end of a cigarette against the back of his wrist; he remembered the acrid smell of burning flesh, the gasps of the kids gathered around him, his own tight sneer against the pain).
He knocked on the door of Apartment 3C at the Livemore Apartments-he had a bad-check arrest warrant in his suit coat pocket. He listened to the movement inside the apartment, tried to gauge just what kind of movement it was, whether someone was going out a window, or merely getting up from a chair. Funny, he thought, that the memories from his childhood should return with such vibrancy in the last few days, ever since that incredible mess on Lawrence Street.
"Yes, who is it?" he heard a man call from within the apartment.
"Police," he called back. And there was silence.
Maybe, he thought, the memories had returned because he'd realized at last that his position with the Buffalo Police Department was always going to be pretty low, that he was probably never going to make captain, or even lieutenant. Maybe he'd make sergeant if he tried really hard. Sure, twenty years before, in Syracuse, when ' he was a tough eleven-year-old kid who could hold lit cigarettes against the back of his wrist, he was top of the heap. But when you were grown-up, people had words other than "tough" to describe that sort of thing. They called it "stupid," and "juvenile," and even the assholes who hung out at sleazy bars weren't impressed by it anymore. What did impress lots of people, though, was gunplay. Eleven-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, thirty-year-olds-it didn't matter. Guns demanded respect. And Christ, but he was good with a gun!
"What do you want?" he heard from within Apartment 3C.
He put one hand on his .45, in a shoulder holster, and the other on his stomach, because, for the past five days, it had been giving him lots of trouble. "Mr. Warren Anderson?" he called.
"Who's asking?" the man called back. "Are you …" A surge of pain; he winced. "Are you Warren Anderson?"
"No. He ain't here."
"Open the door, please."
"I said Warren ain't here. He went south. He went to Florida."
Spurling hesitated, hand tightening on the .45. What would Guy Mallory do now, he wondered, and another surge of pain pushed through him; he winced again, a small "Uh!" escaped him. How would that tough eleven-year-old kid from Syracuse react-not only to the pain, but to this man he had to haul in? The hell with Guy Mallory. Mallory was too cautious; Mallory followed the book, the damned criminal-coddling book.
"Listen," he called to the man in the apartment, "I've got an arrest warrant for Warren Anderson-"
"He ain't here. I told you that!"
"The amount of the check"-another surge of pain went through him, deeper; he doubled over, waited for it to subside. "The amount of the check is just twenty dollars. You pay it, Mr. Anderson, and you're free."
Silence.
"Mr. Anderson?" Spurling coaxed, and realized, with relief, that the pain in his stomach seemed to be subsiding.
"Twenty dollars?" the man called.
"That's all. Shit, if you haven't got it, I'll loan it to you."
"Yeah?"
"Sure." Spurling glanced at the floor; he had seen movement there. His gaze settled on his pants cuffs, which appeared to be hanging over his shoes much more than they usually did. He looked back at the door. "Sure," he called, again. "As long as you promise to pay me back, Mr. Anderson."
"Twenty dollars? That's all it is? Just twenty dollars?"
"That's all, Mr. Anderson. I've got it in my hands right now." Once more he glanced in confusion at his pants cuffs, then at the door again. Strange, he thought, but the apartment number seemed to be higher on the door than it had been five minutes before. "Why don't you do us both a favor, Mr. Anderson, and open up."
And inside the apartment, Warren Anderson wondered if the cop would indeed loan him the twenty dollars to cover the bad check. He opened the door.
And looked down at the kid standing there who was awash in clothes five sizes too large for his eleven-year-old frame.
Anderson muttered, "What in the hell-" and smiled a big smile of deep relief. His smile broadened when the kid produced a gun from inside his suit jacket and pointed it directly at Anderson's forehead. Anderson threw his hands into the air. "Hey, don't shoot me, kid!" he laughed. The kid fired. A .45-caliber bullet tore at a hard angle through Anderson's forehead, into his brain, out the other side, and imbedded itself high on the north wall of Apartment 3C.
~ * ~
At Frank's Place the woman named Doreen was getting off her barstool. "Nice talkin' to ya," she said, took one last tug on her glass of whiskey, called, "Hey, I'll see ya, Sam," to the bartender, who looked over and said, "Yeah, sure."
Then Ryerson asked her, "Who are you?"
"Name's Doreen," the woman answered.
"No, it isn't," Ryerson said, because for just one moment, one half second, the snow he was reading from her had lifted and he had caught a glimpse of something hard and dark and obscene beneath.
The woman smiled coyly. "Whatever I want to call myself, my man, then that's my name. I want to call myself Ginger Rogers, then that's what you gotta call me." She turned her back to him, glanced around. "Nice little dog you got there. Better watch out no one steps on him," and she laughed quickly, and left the bar.
The bartender watched her go, then turned to Ryerson. "That's one nasty dame," he said.
"Yes," Ryerson said, "she is that."
Chapter Seventeen
Lilian Janus, dressed in a pink vest and skirt, white blouse, nylons, and white Naturalizers for her part-time job at Sibley's Department Store, had been sitting for two hours on the edge of her bed with her eyes on the naked corpse of her husband. It lay on the floor on its stomach, arms out straight, legs together, feet pointing in opposite directions, head supported by the handsome, cleft chin.