“Brad will take care of me again.”
Stagg fetched a large sweater and poured himself a modest measure of Chivas. It was a bit chilly on the patio, but better than listening to her insanity.
He sloshed scotch around in his tumbler, standing next to the empty pool with its dead-leaf-coated bottom. The plastic rope with the floats, which divided the deep end from the shallow, lay coiled on the greening lawn like a dead snake.
Stagg’s memory fell back to high school days. Brad always had a pool party here for the football team. Stagg, as team manager, was also invited. Senior year, to everyone’s delight, Brad and Denny swung little Stagg by his ankles and wrists, and tossed him into the pool. Stagg couldn’t swim. That was even funnier.
The night after that party, Stagg stayed hidden among the trees and spied on Brad and Diana, the virgin queen of Haddonfield High. It was the apex of his life up to then, seeing Brad deflower lovely, naked Diana, poolside.
Another big, world-beating memory: how, tending to the stunned Diana in the wake of Brad’s death, he brought her groceries in on a night as starkly moonlit as this one. How Diana rose from the swimming pool, water glistening on her bare skin, her forty-year-old body as taut as a teenager’s.
How under that hunters’ moon, she had smiled at him. Diana, naked for him. That night was the true apex.
Diana’s shrill cry broke the reverie. She stood in the French doors to the study. “You have a phone call.”
Stagg trundled inside. The landline phone display read Joe Dogan. Wonderful. That dirtbag must have kept the unlisted number from a year ago. “What do you want?”
Diana was climbing the stairs. “I’m tired. Wake me up when Brad comes.”
Dogan had ingested his usual royal portion of spirits. “You gotta help me out.”
Had Dogan heard that he was on Mister Man’s priority boarding list for evacuation from the planet? “I’m getting sick of this, you idiot.”
“You think you’re smarter than everyone,” Dogan slurred. “Well, I’m not the idiot. You’re the idiot.”
“Brilliant comeback,” Stagg said. “Repartee worthy of Dorothy Parker.”
“Never met the bitch,” Dogan said. “We got a problem,”
“We do, huh? Let me guess. You got another drunk-driving arrest on that stupid motorcycle, and I have to fix things with the cops. No, your supervisor on the county road crew called, and you told him you’d kill his children if he didn’t back off. No, you were drunk and groping women at T.G.I. Friday’s happy hour, and one called the cops. I’ve bailed you out so many times for so much asinine behavior that I’m losing track.”
With a moan, Dogan said, “Have you seen him?”
“Who?”
“Brad Acton came to me in a bar in H Town this afternoon. He said he wanted to see us. Both. Tonight.”
Stagg sighed. “My wife had the same hallucination. Her, high on meds. You, high on booze. Astute observers, the two of you.”
“He was real, man. I mean, not like a ghost. I couldn’t, like, see through him.”
“I can see through you. You are a serious alcoholic. Go get dried out.”
“He knew how much you paid me to do him. Plus, the no-show job on the county roads. How could he know that?”
“Because it is in your drink-addled head. Today is the anniversary. It brings back the trauma, makes you imagine things. You don’t have to be Freud to understand that.”
“He knew you are gonna get a barbed-wire enema from the feds. Mister Man pays you off, Stagg. Everybody knows it.”
“You know nothing,” Stagg snarled. “Brad was ten times as dirty as me. He came from family money, but wanted more. He introduced me to Mister Man. Then when Javers came sniffing around, Brad wanted me to be the fall guy. He wanted me to take Mister Man down, too.”
“I remember every minute from a year ago.”
“Meantime, King Brad stays simon-pure. Well, ha-ha, Brad. For the first time in your pampered life, you lost.”
Dogan didn’t seem to be listening anymore. “I tell you, he seemed like flesh and blood. Like you and me. I bet I could put another bullet in him, and that’d be that.”
“Check yourself into rehab, you cretin.”
“I don’t want to face him alone tonight, man.”
Stagg slammed the phone down.
A wind came up and blew about the budding branches of the ghostly trees. Winter and summer warred in the sudden draft off the river, and Dogan shivered. What was he doing sitting here like a frozen pond toad?
Dogan got on his bike and blasted away from the riverfront park. In a jiffy, his Harley’s loud engine was invading the smooth, quiet roads of Haddonfield, Brad Acton’s hometown. In Haddonfield, trees flower first, and their perfume seeped down from the elegant mosaic of branches that covered the old lanes.
The Harley brayed down King’s Highway, the town’s main street, where subtly lit colonial storefronts displayed chic clothing and leather goods. Tomorrow, the slender, blond women of the marvelous men of Haddonfield would float past those storefronts, browsing, blasé.
A year had gone by and beer had fuzzed his thinking, hence Dogan took a while to find Brad Acton’s house. He clattered through the lovely streets until he saw the right landmarks. Left at the three-century-old church, right at the giant white-board mansion, left onto Cypress Avenue.
Front yard carriage lamps shed soft glows on the brick and flagstone walkways flowing from the smooth road to the fine wood doors that guarded the aristocratic stone houses. Through the latticed windows of those handsome homes came the lamplight of the Haddonfield elite, who ran the world.
Acton’s house, though, lay in darkness. Girded by vigilant firs, watched over by towering oaks, it seemed almost uninhabited. Then Dogan saw the two cars parked to the side: Stagg’s Volvo and Diana Acton’s Jaguar. He killed the bike’s motor and dismounted.
It had been a year ago, around midnight. About now, his watch said.
He couldn’t stand there forever, hypnotized by the house, the night, the clock. Dogan walked cautiously up the sloping, well-barbered lawn, bathed in intense moonglow. The wind, a devilish mix of warm and cold, made small gasps among the trees’ flowers.
A shadow shimmered among the tree trunks. Dogan gave a start and yelped. He yanked his .45 out of his coat pocket, tearing more fabric. “Killed you once, I’ll kill you twice, bastard,” he said through bared teeth.
His gun moved in small semicircles, pointed at where the movement had been, as he marched up the lawn. With his attention fixed on the trees, he missed seeing the ankle-high miniwall bisecting the lawn in front of him. Dogan went down hard, swearing.
Hell, last year, making this same approach, he’d tripped on the miniwall. He had been drunker then, but this couldn’t be a coincidence.
The wind came again, colder now, and enveloped him with a harsh sense of dread. Was he reliving the same night from a year ago?
The castlelike front door loomed in front of him. Dogan punched the doorbell button, and heard sweet chimes inside. As he had a year ago.
He hit the button again. As he had a year ago.
Somehow, he smelled burnt gunpowder. As he had a year ago.
Stagg had clumped wearily up the stairs, left his clothes on the floor of his dressing room and climbed into his pajamas. He heaved into the broad bed, where Diana lay, asleep. Good. No more nonsense from her. He had barely slipped into sleep’s welcome oblivion when the doorbell chimes rang. Repeatedly.
Diana was screaming. “Don’t go down there, Brad. Don’t go.”
He was fully awake. “I’m Robert, dammit.”
Finally, Dogan heard footsteps beyond the door. A muffled voice asked him who he was and what he wanted. Just like a year ago.
He replied the same. “It’s me. Joe Dogan. Robert’s guy. It’s about Mister Man.”
An inside light went on. The bolt slid open. The door swung inward. A man was in the threshold.