“Just don’t do anything that makes things worse, Josh. You know your temper.”
“Don’t worry. Everything’ll be fine. We’ll nail the bastard. And I won’t do anything stupid.”
Then it was time to leave.
3
The parking lot of Frazier’s apartment house told its own story. All the cars were wannabes, knock-offs of this or that sports car. Josh knew the place by reputation. The last bastion of middle-aged swingers. A number of divorced ad people lived here. A cop could do well for himself here. A certain kind of woman liked authority figures a lot.
He found the building he wanted and went inside, glad for a respite from the numbing cold. It was only a few degrees above zero and the clouds hiding the moon forebode more days of similar freezing.
Dance music filled the lobby from a nearby apartment. Some kind of updated disco number. It was a well-kept place. New carpeting recently vacuumed. Fresh paint. Window casings in good repair. He found Frazier’s apartment and knocked. No answer.
Down the hall two fifty-year-old women emerged from another apartment. They were nice-looking. They smiled at him. “You’re cute,” one of them said. “You want to come along?”
“Maybe some other time.”
“You a cop, too?” the other one said.
“No, just a friend.”
“Well, that story about him raping that hooker — he’ll need all the friends he can get. It’s too bad when some old whore can make trouble for a man like Frazier.”
“He’s very nice to everybody,” the other one said.
“And — no offense — but some cops are pretty hard to deal with. Especially after they’ve had a couple of drinks.”
The other one giggled. “Remember Larry?”
Her friend returned the giggle. “After a couple of drinks, he’d always haul out his bass guitar and take his pants off and walk around in his boxers.”
“I guess he thought he was turning us on,” the lady laughed. “Well, toodles, and if you see Frazier, tell him Kitty and Candy said hi.”
After they were gone, he knocked again. What the hell was going on? Where was Frazier?
He tried knocking again. Then he started jiggling the doorknob. A man came out of an apartment down the hall and stared at him. Josh left.
In his car, starting the engine, he wondered what kind of game Frazier was playing.
He drove away, preoccupied. He didn’t notice, as he reached the slippery nighttime street, that a blue Chevrolet was following him.
The leak was slower than Frazier had figured. He’d slashed Josh’s right rear tire deeply. He’d also taken the spare. By now, the car should be limping along, giving Josh particular trouble on the ice-glazed streets. Trucks were out all over the city, spewing sand on the worst of the main-traveled streets. Cops had already given up on the idea of responding to fender-benders. There were just too many of them.
Then it happened quickly. The black BMW slumped to the right and the car started bumping toward a stoplight. He wouldn’t be going much further on that tire.
He was beginning to lose it.
The tension of the whole situation. Frazier not being home. And now a flat tire.
He pulled the BMW over to the curb and pulled on the emergency lights. He got out of the car, slip-sliding on the ice, doing a couple of silent-movie arm-waving gags while he was at it. He walked back to the trunk.
Great. No spare.
He remembered passing a Sinclair station a few blocks back. There’d been a service garage as well as gas pumps.
Then he remembered the .45 in the glove compartment. He could lock the car but that wouldn’t stop any real dedicated pro. They’d take everything, including the weapon. Better stick it in his pocket.
He got back in the car and opened the glove compartment and the gun wasn’t there and he knew, of course, what had happened.
Elise had found it. Removed temptation from him.
He spoke a few nasty words to himself.
He was just getting out of the car when he saw Frazier standing there. Nobody had taken Frazier’s gun. It was right in his gloved hand.
“Let’s go back and get in my car,” he said. “And be sure and bring that videotape.”
Josh glanced wildly around the street. Mercury vapor lights exposed a small convenience store, a tattoo parlor, a fingernail boutique, an ancient Catholic Church, three bars, a dry cleaners, a real estate office. The rest of the block, on both sides, were filthy giant houses that had long ago been divided up into filthy tiny sleeping rooms and so-called apartments. The legion of the lost plied these streets. Only the bars and the church had any succor to offer them.
Nobody was paying any attention at all to the two men standing by the downed BMW.
“You bring the tape?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see it.”
Josh held up the videotape cartridge.
“Good. Let’s get going.”
Again, no swagger, no macho posturing on Frazier’s part. He didn’t have to impress anybody. He had a gun and Josh had no doubt he would use it.
“You drive,” Frazier said.
Josh had to fight to control the car. It was a big, lumbering beast and tended to skid.
“The guy who took the home video, how much does he want?”
Josh almost smiled. Not only had Frazier bought the video as authentic, he was assuming that Josh was working with some nameless person who’d shot the footage. “Thirty-five thousand.”
“I want to meet with him.”
“I have the tape.”
“You ever heard of copies?”
“He claims this is the original.”
“I don’t give a damn what he claims. I want to meet him. But first I want you to go over on the Avenue and pull into where all those deserted warehouses are.”
“For what?”
“Just do what I said.”
Driving was still treacherous. They saw a couple of fender-benders on the way to the warehouses. Then Josh saw that the icy streets could help him. What if he plowed into a parked car? Maybe he’d have a chance to get away. It was his only hope.
“Slow down,” Frazier said.
Josh saw an opportunity half a block ahead. A car just now pulling out. Perfect timing to ram into him. And in the confusion, run.
Then he felt cold steel against the side of his neck. “I’m not afraid to kill you, Coburn. Not at all. You try and pile us up, the first thing I do is put a bullet right in your heart.”
Ten minutes later, Josh eased the car down a narrow alley between dark, looming warehouses. This had been a vital section of the shipping business until two large importer-exporters moved away. Now maybe as many as fifteen warehouses stood dark and empty.
“I still don’t know what the hell you want with me,” Josh said.
“Pull over there and kill the lights.”
What choice did Josh have?
“Now kill the engine.”
Josh switched off the key.
“The key.”
Josh handed it over.
“Get out.”
Josh was reduced to silent-movie sight gags again. He slipped and nearly fell on his back.
“I’m going to give you something to remember,” Frazier said. “And something for your wife to remember, too.”
He drove his fist into Josh’s stomach so hard, all time, all sensory data stopped. There was only pain. His entire body, his entire mind, his entire soul was pain. He wanted to scream, he wanted to throw up, he wanted to lash out at Frazier. But he was momentarily, and completely, immobilized. He just crouched in half there, his mouth open in a sound he didn’t have strength enough to make.
Then the same fist smashed into the side of Josh’s face. He remembered how, in The Exorcist, the girl’s head had turned all the way around. Surely his head had just done the same thing.