Its cold out there, p.16
It's Cold Out There, page 16
He went back to the tool rack and took up the largest wrench, hefting it and slapping it into his palm. He laid it down and tried the hammer. Sudden death, he thought, and he picked up the wrench again. He stared at the slender silver shank and heavy tool-steel jaws, turned once to look out the door down the driveway, washed with rain, and then returned the wrench to its place. He'd never had any use for someone who picked up a piece of pipe, a shank, or packed any kind of steel.
He decided that the overhead light had come on automatically with the opening door and, pulling the exerciser underneath it, he climbed up, balancing carefully to unscrew the bulb. Then he found the switch that controlled the door and watched the aluminum panels as they lowered and shut him into the darkness. He squatted down to wait.
He waited for an hour, the chill of the concrete seeping through his pants, while a constant churn of vague apprehension worked at him. He wasn't afraid, only uneasy, but several times he found himself thinking he should get out and make it back to his hotel room.
To put your head under your pillow? he asked himself scornfully. You blew whatever chance you had to be a spooky kid. Now you can be a man, some kind of man, or you'll be nothing.
The distant murmur of car motors rose and fell in the street below, and finally one continued to rise until with a sharp click the machinery that opened the door began to work. JD stood up quickly and placed himself flat to the wall. The rising door let in the glare of headlights, and JD saw the tips of his shoes shining in them and turned his feet to the side. The lights flared up as the car rolled forward, growing brighter until they were muffled against the far wall, leaving the large, round taillights glaring back like the eyes of a demon. He saw the silhouette of a man in the driver's seat. Then all the lights went out.
JD moved as swiftly as he could, tiptoeing toward the sound of the opening car door. He hoped his vision would sharpen. One shoe scraped against something. Then he saw Holleran's back rising up directly ahead and, aiming where he sensed the neck should be, he delivered a sidearm rabbit punch. Pain leaped in his own hand, and he realized he landed high on the head. He swung again, chopping down. Holleran, with a startled shout, tried to sidestep but landed against the car. Immediately he tried to butt JD, but JD, locking both hands together into one large fist, delivered a savage uppercut. Holleran went down, but as JD moved in he lashed out with his feet to foul JD's ankles, and both men were down. JD had time to realize that Holleran was fast and hard to hurt. Then the other man was on him, searching for his throat. JD tried to use his strength, but could find no leverage—Holleran slid through his hands—and when he tried to reach Holleran with a finishing blow, the other man went under it, and JD hit the car door. After that he couldn't feel his right hand.
They rolled back and forth in a fumbling melee, trapped in the narrow space between the metal bench and the side of the automobile—all to JD's disadvantage. He could use neither his size nor his strength and it was this very size and strength that had made it seldom necessary for JD to fight at all. He was discovering that he didn't know how. Holleran had him outmatched, but even knowing this, he wasn't able to make a break and run for it.
It didn't end until both men were at the point of exhaustion. Then Holleran managed to clamp his forearm across JD's windpipe and hung on grimly no matter how JD bucked and twisted until the larger man blacked out and went limp.
Holleran got up slowly and stood, legs spread, chest heaving as he sucked at the air. He explored the side of his head with gentle fingers and swore softly as he fumbled for the car door. The door opened eight inches and jammed against JD, who shifted and groaned. Holleran went around the front of the car, holding onto it for support, opened the far door, and took a gun from the glove compartment.
When JD opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the gun. Holleran was leaning against the metal bench pointing it down at him, and a shock of dismay went through him. He started to sit up.
"Easy," Holleran said, still breathing hard. "Get up, but get up easy."
JD was looking at his right hand, wondering if it was broken. Already it was beginning to swell. After the first shaft of dismay a dullness was beginning to set in. He turned and stared up at Holleran.
"Get up." Holleran prodded him.
He stood. Other than his hand he didn't seem to be hurt, but his fight was spent. Holleran had backed away carefully and now he used the gun to indicate a side door. "We'll go in the house. You first."
Mechanically, as he had so often obeyed the voice of authority, JD moved to obey. They went along a short walk, and he stood aside while Holleran unlocked the back door with one hand, the gun steadied on him with the other. They moved through a large kitchen into the living room, and it seemed different than it had appeared through the window, even larger and more luxurious. A winner's house, JD thought.
"What was that all about?" Holleran asked him.
"I needed money.
"You needed money." Holleran stared at him angrily. "Everyone needs money." In the full light JD could see that Holleran was marked. A purple bruise was forming at his temple; one eye was swelling. "Sit over there on that couch and keep your hands locked behind your head."
JD held out his damaged hand, and Holleran leaned forward to look. "You do that on my head?"
"No, your car."
"Keep your hands on your knees then. Keep them where I can see them."
JD sat down, and Holleran moved to the phone. He consulted an Autodex, dialed a number, and said, "Send a car to 113 Haversham Drive. Tell them to come right in. The door will be open ... No, but I'm holding a prowler here ... Yes, everything's under control."
He walked over and unlocked the front door, then went to the bar, where he poured a drink and downed it. He looked at JD and poured another, which he brought over and left on a table at the end of the couch. Then he sat down in a chair facing JD and indicated the glass. "Better drink that."
"I don't want it."
"Suit yourself."
They sat in silence for a while; then Holleran asked, "What made you pick me?"
JD shrugged. "No particular reason. You looked like you had money."
Holleran smiled grimly. "How'd you get that idea?"
"I don't know. I was desperate."
Holleran shook his head. He seemed disturbed and he walked over and downed the whiskey JD had refused. There was a rush of steps on the front porch, and two private patrolmen, guns drawn, came through the door. JD recognized them. The little one was in front, toeing almost daintily in his high-heeled boots, the large hat pushed back off his forehead.
"Well!" The patrolman turned rapidly between Holleran and JD, his eyes bright. "We ran this same punk off last night. I thought I told you to stay away from here?"
"I'm turning him over to you," Holleran said, "and you can handle it with the police. He attacked me in my garage when I came home tonight. I believe his object was robbery."
"It was robbery all right. I told Fred last night, that big punk's looking for someone to jump. Ain't that right, Fred?"
The quiet partner, his hat under his arm, nodded.
The patrolman holstered his gun, leaving the flap open. He smoothed his gloves over his fingers, bouncing on his heels as if he were getting ready to hit JD, but he only reached for the cuffs fastened to his belt. "On your feet."
"Better search him before you cuff him," the partner said.
"Yeah. Take everything out of your pockets. Put it here." He indicated a low coffee table. JD stood up and began to go through his pockets. He could use only his left hand and he dug awkwardly into his right-hand pocket for a few coins, his keys, and Kristie's keys. He laid them on the table and added his wallet, a comb, and his sack of tobacco.
"That's it."
The patrolman picked the sack of Golden Grain up by the string. "You're a regular sport, aren't you?" He cracked the billfold to disclose a few dollars and nodded knowingly. "And moving on very short dough."
Holleran had walked over to look at JD's things. Now he reached down to touch Kristie's car keys, tapping them lightly with one finger like a man attempting to determine whether some small and possibly dangerous thing is alive or dead.
"Where'd you get these?" he asked.
"They're mine," JD said.
"With a jeweled charm?"
"A girl friend loaned me her car."
"What's her name?"
JD hesitated and the patrolman said, "Answer the question."
"Ann—" He gave his mother's name, but he wasn't quick enough to supply a last name.
"Ann who?"
"Just Ann. I'm not bringing her into this."
Holleran picked the keys up and, holding the little jeweled book between two fingers, he fanned some cards out of it. JD stared. He hadn't examined the charm closely. Now he saw that it was a miniature address book, and he watched Holleran's expression turn troubled as the other man read through a few of the addresses. Holleran looked up at JD and he appeared to be trying to see something in JD's face. Then he turned to the patrolmen, and asked quietly, "Would you mind waiting over there by the door for a moment? I have something I want to say to this man."
The little patrolman hesitated. "He's our prisoner now."
"Just wait over there."
JD noted grimly that he wasn't the only one broken to authority. The patrolman backed off resentfully, and his neutral partner followed him. They stood by the front door, both guns pointed at the floor.
"Did you steal these?" Holleran asked quietly so his voice wouldn't carry.
"No."
"Then Kristie gave them to you?"
JD remained silent.
"I know these are Kristie Olson's keys. Look, my own address is here."
JD read the entry. "She had nothing to do with it."
"You can't expect me to believe that. At the very least, she told you about me. And I'll tell you something else. She tried to call me earlier this evening. I didn't receive the call, but I was informed of it." Holleran paused, studying him closely, his pale eyes steady and alert. Something enormous was trying to tear loose inside JD, but he kept his mouth shut and his eyes indifferent. "Well," Holleran said, "I intend to find out."
He walked to the phone. The patrolmen started forward, but Holleran waved them back impatiently. He dialed quickly a number he knew well.
"Kristie? This is Nathan . . . Take it easy. I just learned you were trying to reach me earlier in the evening . . . Yes, I'm home." He listened for what seemed a long time, then said, "Kristie, that's an incredible story . . . No . . . No, that's not possible. You should know it's not possible . . . Yes, I'm sorry too . . . Good-bye." He hung up quickly and turned back to JD, his face impassive.
"She says you stole her car. That you were coming here to rob me and that she had tried to stop you."
JD sat down, and it seemed he was pushed down by a great weight. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his good hand. "That lousy bitch."
"What really happened?" Holleran asked.
"Does it make any difference."
"It could—to me. I think I have a right to know."
"Maybe you do, but I'm telling you, no one else. If you repeat me, I'll deny it." With a bitter foretaste of the memories that would come to haunt him during these new years in prison he began to sketch his brief experience with Kristie. He left nothing out. The patrolmen shuffled restlessly in the background, but Holleran listened intently, shaking his head at intervals.
When JD finished, Holleran asked, "How long were you in for?"
"A while."
"And then you got out and met Kristie?"
"Yes."
"You could have run into a hundred different women, but it had to be Kristie, and she used you for everything but a man."
"She saw me as a man."
"Did she? She didn't see me as a man or even as a person, but only as something she was making up. I've been there and I know." He stretched out his hands to look at them, perhaps picturing them as they had held Kristie. The backs were still lightly freckled. "I ached for her, and I kept thinking if she were only a little different, what a wonderful woman she would be. I don't know if she could have sent me on her dirty errands—" JD winced and Holleran went on quickly. "Perhaps she could have. I came close to ruining my career over her, not to mention my home. So I know how it is with you. In her narrow way she's a lot of woman, but it isn't enough, and she's poisoning herself and those around her. This should show you."
Holleran took his billfold from his pocket and held it open so JD could see that it held a five and three ones. "There might be twenty more around the house, and Kristie knows I pay for almost everything by either check or credit card. At the most, you might have caught me with fifty dollars. Do you see?"
"Yeah." JD didn't understand why Holleran was bothering to point out to him how badly he'd been had. "I never thought the money was the whole story, but I thought you'd screwed her over and deserved to lose something for it."
Holleran looked uncomfortable. "I was married, but she knew that. I don't know—she took it hard when we broke up. Maybe . . ." He trailed off and sat for a moment staring at something inside himself. Then he stood up and walked over to the patrolmen.
"I was mistaken," he told them. "This turns out to be a private matter. I'm sorry I got you up here for nothing."
Holleran held the door open, but the patrolman balked. "Now wait just a minute," he said. "There's been a complaint made, and it will have to be heard by a judge. That's law."
"A complaint made to whom?"
"To me. I'm a special officer."
"Boy"—Holleran's voice cut with the word like an axe—"you're here to keep kids from breaking the streetlamps and to prevent strange dogs from pissing on our lawns. Now, get out of here, and if any word of this gets to the real police, you're out of a job. And the next time you come in this house, take your goddam hat off."
The patrolman took a step back, his face pinched, and made an abortive grab for his hat, which he checked halfway up, and spun on his heel to walk out stiffly. His partner followed him, giving Holleran a careful and respectful nod in passing.
JD sat up alertly now, looking at the gun Holleran had left lying on the arm of the chair across from him.
He had no plan to make a grab for it—the implication of the gun was one of trust.
"It's not loaded," Holleran said behind him.
"You could have fooled me."
"That was the idea. I fooled you a second time. Kristie didn't say you had stolen her car. She told pretty much the same story, but I wanted to hear it from you."
"That takes a little weight off her."
"Very little. Tomorrow it will all seem different to her, and the next day still another way. If I went back to her, as she seems to want so badly, I'd be her 'hero' for two weeks. Then one day she'd look at me and see an ordinary man approaching middle age, who spends his time making sure other people are building a rocket. No, once is enough. You better put your things back in your pockets."
Holleran watched, rubbing the bruise at his temple, as JD redistributed his belongings. "You pack a godawful wallop," he said.
"Not good enough," JD said. "You cutting me loose?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I like to handle my own trouble when I can. Look, would some kind of decent job help you get straightened out?"
"I like to think it would, but no one will hire me."
"I'll hire you." Holleran took a card from his billfold and handed it to JD. "Call me tomorrow. I'll find something for you. Maybe not too much, but something to give you a toehold, at least."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Two reasons, I suppose. First, you could have left me for dead if you'd bothered to hit me with anything. You came at me like a bear, but all you used were your own hands. You gave me that chance, and it beat you, but I think it means something about the kind of man you are. And, second"—Holleran smiled wryly—"we're both veterans of the same war."
KRISTIE ...
... shivered and rubbed the goose flesh on her arms. Her apartment was cold, but she didn't get up to turn on the heat. What would be the use? She felt as if she were exposed in the middle of a giant hand that would presently close on her.
Why had she tried to punish Nathan? She didn't want him. She compared him to JD. She didn't want JD either. She no longer knew who or what she did want—if she had ever known. Peace, she thought, and folded her hands in her lap to wait.
When the pounding started, she thought, I'm not afraid, and as the word "afraid" formed in her mind she realized she was terrified. She tiptoed to the window and made a small crack at the edge of the curtain. JD was standing on her porch, pounding with his left hand, his right hand stuck in his coat, resting on the support of a fastened button. He's hurt, she thought. Nathan hurt him. She felt a brief contempt, but then she saw his face.
She gasped and ran into the bedroom, then threw herself on the bed with her hands over her ears. The pounding only seemed to grow louder. Please stop. I'm sorry I can't let you in. Then above the sound of JD's persistent knocking came the shriller tones of the telephone, and Kristie's eyes grew blind. They would break in. They would all break in. She thought she heard the door splintering and she ran to the bedroom window and opened it. The rain had died off to a light sprinkle, and the night was like cold hands on her face. The raw, unfinished cement scratched her knees and forearms when she lowered herself from the window, and the weeds brushed her bare legs with wet fingers as she ran down the narrow alley, stumbling in the darkness, until she came to a high fence of wooden palings and jumped futilely, inches short, trying to reach the top. A car started up on the other side, and she called out, but the motor ground into gear, and the sound of it diminished up the street.
She turned to run back, past her own windows, toward the other end. She tripped over something that boomed hollowly between her feet, and when she threw her hand out blindly for support, her fingers scraped down the side of the building until a large cardboard box broke her fall. The shock cleared her mind for a moment, and as she lay trying to get her breath she realized that it was another box she had tripped over. They were all around her. Then she was suddenly, with an icy shock, aware of something moving near her. Instinctively she screamed, jerking her head around trying to locate the source of the motion. Then she saw a large crate with something half out of it like a bear emerging from the mouth of a cave.
