“Tell you what, you hold the phone while I go open me up a fresh can of I-don’t-give-a-shit.”
“Thanks, Vic…you’re a real pal.”
Vic was laughing when he hung up. Polk stared at the mottled gray-white of the concrete of the stairwell landing, conscious of the weight of his sidearm in its holster, heavy with promise.
Chapter 6
(1)
Mike stood frozen to the spot as Tow-Truck Eddie entered the shop. A panicky voice screamed in his head, Run…run…RUN! but his legs were concrete, his body stunned into an immobile mass.
He’d only seen Eddie up close twice before and that memory didn’t match this one at all. The first was maybe two years ago when his mom had made Mike drop off a lunch for Vic. Eddie had seemed big enough, but he’d worn a gentle smile and had given Mike an amiable wink. The second time was a couple of weeks ago, as they passed one another in the lobby of the hospital after Crow had been shot. He’d almost seemed ordinary then. Now the man seemed ten feet tall and five feet wide. Eddie’s police uniform was well tailored but it did nothing to hide the weightlifter’s chest and arms. He had huge sloping shoulders that tapered right up to his head, making it look like he had no neck at all. And though he had to be in his early fifties he showed no signs of age except for some crow’s feet at the corners of his piercing blue eyes. An Arnold Schwarzenegger cop, Mike thought, a Pine Deep Terminator. The name OSWALD was engraved in white on a black plastic name tag pinned to his chest, and Mike realized that he had never known the man’s last name before.
Eddie Oswald closed the door slowly, his gaze intent on Mike, and then walked slowly across the floor of the shop, big hands swinging easily, almost no expression on his face except for tiny bits of muscle at his jaw that bunched and flexed.
For just a second, though, something odd happened and Mike was aware of it on a detached, almost remote level. The air between Officer Oswald and himself seemed to shimmer as if heat vapor were rising from the floor. It gave the big man a distorted appearance, like a mirage of some giant seen across desert sands.
Mike knew he couldn’t run. The big man could catch him easily before he could fish out the key and duck through into Crow’s apartment. Mike wondered if the cop recognized him. Maybe out there on the road the big man hadn’t had a good look at him, so he played on that and turned on a bright, helpful smile that was so fake it made his cheeks hurt. “Uh…can I help you, Officer?”
The cop stood there, frowning now as he looked at Mike, all of his force and swagger diminishing second by second. He peered at Mike, eyes narrowed to slits, but there was no recognition on his face. When he spoke, though, his voice carried a different and far more accusatory weight.
“You work here, boy?” Tow-Truck Eddie’s voice was as raw as scraped knuckles.
“Yes, sir,” Mike whispered through a dry throat. “Is there anything I can do for you…Officer? Um…d’you want me to get the owner?” Crow hadn’t come in yet, but Mike hoped the promise of it might protect him from whatever this madman had planned.
“No,” said the cop quietly. “No, don’t bother him. I want to ask you a couple of questions.” He leaned on the word you.
“Me?” asked Mike, and his adolescent voice broke from tenor to soprano on that one word. “Me? Uh…About what?”
The cop removed a notebook from his pocket and consulted it. Mike watched him, and he had the strangest impression that the cop wasn’t really reading notes on the book, but was just staring at it. The officer’s lips moved slightly, not as if reading aloud with the words, but as if speaking to himself. Finally, the big man raised his eyes and stared long and hard at Mike. “There have been some reports of kids harassing drivers on A-32, playing chicken with cars and trucks put on the highway. Would you know anything about that?”
“Kids playing chicken? No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I don’t know anything about anything like that.”
The cop stared hard in his direction, but kept squinting as if he was having a hard time focusing on him.. “Do you have a bicycle, son?”
“Sure.” The word came out before he could stop it.
“Do you ever ride it on Route A-32?”
Mike hesitated, trying to make it look like he was considering it. “No sir.”
The cop took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and made a note in his book. Or pretended to. “Are you telling me that you never ride your bicycle on Route A-32 at night?”
Mike hedged. “Not…really.”
“What does ‘not really’ mean? Do you or don’t you?”
“I guess I do sometimes, like during the summer, but not recently.”
The cop made another note, and Mike saw him peek upward as he pretended to write, as if hoping to catch a clearer look. For a moment the cop tilted his head as if listening, wincing as he did so, and again confusion clouded his face. “Now tell me, son, have you ever seen other kids riding their bicycles there at night?”
Mike hesitated. “I guess.”
“What was that, son?”
“Yes, sir.” Mike avoided direct eye contact. “Sometimes I see other kids, sure.”
“Have you ever seen any kids playing chicken with cars or trucks on Route A-32 at night?”
“No…no, nothing like that.”
“Never?”
“No.”
The cop winced again. “Would you mind turning down the music so we can talk?
Mike just looked at him. He hadn’t turned on the Halloween CDs yet; the store was quiet. “Music?” he asked.
The cop blinked as if surprised either of them had said anything about music. He looked at his notepad for a moment and then shook his head like a dog being harassed by flies. “Look at me, son,” said the cop quietly, and Mike reluctantly raised his eyes. The shimmer in the air between them seemed to intensify.
Could he see it? Mike wondered. He tensed, his legs trembling with the urge to run.
The cop looked at him with blue eyes that were as hard as fists. “Tell me this, son, have you ever played chicken with a car?”
“No.”
“…or truck…”
“No, never!”
“…or any vehicle of any kind on Route A-32 at night?”
“I swear, Officer, I never did. Nothing like that.”
The cop looked skeptical, and he inflicted silence on Mike for several long seconds. “You know, son, one of these punk kids actually caused an accident on the road the other night.”
“Um…really? What happened?” Mike couldn’t believe he was asking that question.
The cop put a finger in his ear and jiggled it around like a swimmer trying to get rid of water. He realized he was doing it, cleared his throat, and consulted his notebook. “Some kid…some evil, nasty little son of a bitch of a kid…was playing chicken with a truck on the road.”
“A truck?”
“Yes,” said the cop gravely. “A tow truck.”
Mike mouthed the phrase “tow truck,” but didn’t put any sound to it.
“A brand-new tow truck. Very large and very expensive.”
“What happened?” There it was again, his fool mouth asking questions while the rest of him wanted to run and hide.
“Well, son, the tow truck was just driving along, the driver minding his own business, when this punk kid dodges right out in front of him. Dodges right out so unexpectedly that the driver had to swerve to keep from running him over. And do you know what happened then?” When Mike shook his head, Oswald continued. “Since the driver had to swerve so violently to keep from hurting the kid, he lost control of his tow truck and went off the road and into a ditch. The driver was pretty badly banged up. The tow truck itself sustained several thousand dollars worth of damage. Now, isn’t that terrible?”