When Radko left at three-thirty to drive down to L. A. for “a meeding,” Bridger slipped out too. Despite his assurances to the contrary, he had no intention of working straight through, not today-he had to drive Dana to the impound yard to retrieve her car and then sit down with the victims' assistance people and start the process of reclaiming her life, because there was no guarantee she wouldn't be arrested again, not until they caught this jerk who'd stolen her identity. When he pulled into the parking lot at the school, she was sitting on the front steps waiting for him, and that was a relief, though he never really believed she'd just walk out on her classes, no matter what degree of ass-holery the headmaster attained. That wouldn't be like Dana. She never gave up on anything.
She was having an animated discussion in Sign with one of her students, a weasel-faced kid of seventeen or so who seemed to have given an inordinate degree of thought to his hairstyle (bi-colored, heavy on the gel, naked skin round the ears and too far up the nape), and she looked like her old self as she rose to her feet, gathered up her things and slid into the car. But then her eyes went cold and the first thing she said wasn't “How was your day?” or “I love you” or even “Thanks for picking me up,” but “I'm really at the end of my rope.”
He lifted his eyebrows in what he hoped was an inquisitive look, though he wasn't much good at pantomime.
“With Koch, I mean.”
“Why?” he asked, careful to exaggerate the movement of his lips. “What happened?”
The car-a '96 Chevy pickup he'd bought used when he was in college and had been meaning to service ever since-stuttered, died and caught again. “Never mind,” she said. “It would take me a week to explain.” The weasel-faced kid gave them a tragic look, a look that ratified what Bridger had already surmised-that he was burning up with the delirium of love and would walk through fire for his teacher, as soon as he could eliminate the competition, that is. She gave the kid a farewell wave and turned back to him: “Just drive. I've got to get my car back-I mean, I'm helpless without it. And the papers”-she did a characteristic thing then, a Dana thing, a sort of hyperactive writhing from the waist as if the seat were on fire and she couldn't escape it-“oh, Jesus, the papers.”
At the impound yard-CASH OR CREDIT CARD ONLY ABSOLUTELY NO CHECKS-they waited in line for twenty minutes while the people ahead of them put on a demonstration of the limits and varieties of hominid rage. The office, to which they were guided by a series of insistent arrows painted on the outer wall, was made of concrete block and had the feel of a bunker, dark and diminished and utterly impregnable. Immediately on entering they were confronted with a wall of bulletproof Plexiglas, behind which sat a skinny sallow grim-faced cashier with hair dyed the color of engine oil. She might have been forty, forty-five-an age, at any rate, beyond which there is neither hope nor even the pretense of it-and she wore a blue work shirt with some sort of badge affixed to the shoulder. Her job was to accept payment through a courtesy slit and then, at her leisure, stamp a form to release the vehicle in question. From early morning till closing time at six, people spoke to her-cursed, raved, foamed at her-through a scuffed metal grille. There were no cars in sight. The cars were out back somewhere, secreted behind a ten-foot-high concrete-and-stucco wall surmounted with concertina wire.
The couple who were stalled at the window when they arrived inquired as to whether the woman on the other side of the Plexiglas would take a personal check and the woman didn't bother with a reply, merely raising a lifeless finger to point to the NO CHECKS sign nearest her. There was some further negotiation-Could she accept the major part of the amount on a credit card and the rest in a check? — followed by a second objectification of the finger, after which there was a rumble of uncontained threats (a mention of lawsuits, the mayor, the governor himself) before the couple swung round, murder stamped across their brows, and slammed out the door, vehicleless. Next in line was a man so tall-six-six or more-that he had to bend nearly double and lean into the counter in order to speak through the grille. He was calm at first-or at least he made an effort to suppress the rage and consternation in his voice-but when the cashier handed him the bill for towing and two days' storage, he lost it. “What is this?” he demanded. “What the fuck is this?”
The woman fastened on him with two dead eyes. She never moved, never flinched, even when he began to pound at the Plexiglas with both fists. When he was done, when he'd exhausted himself, she said only, “Cash or charge?”
Dana had observed all this, of course, though she was spared the details, the whole business a kind of mute Punch and Judy show to her, Bridger supposed, but when it was her turn she stepped forward, slid the impound notice and her driver's license through the courtesy slit and waited for the woman to return her keys. But the woman didn't return the keys. Instead she pushed an invoice through the slit and said, “That'll be four hundred eighty-seven dollars, towing fee plus four days' storage. Cash or charge?”
“But you don't understand,” Dana said, her voice like an electric drill, “I'm innocent. It's all a mistake. It was somebody else they wanted, not me. Look”-and she held up the affidavit, pressed it to the glass. “You see? This exonerates me.”
Bridger couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if the smallest flare of interest awakened in the cashier's eyes. There was something unusual here, something out of the ordinary, and for a moment he almost thought she was going to act on it, but no such luck. “Cash or charge?” she repeated.
“Listen,” he said, stepping forward, though Dana hated for him to interfere, as if his acting as interpreter somehow exposed or diminished her. She didn't need an interpreter, she always insisted-she'd got on just fine all her life without him or anyone else conducting her business for her. Dana gave him a savage look, but he couldn't help himself. “You don't get it,” he said. “I mean, ma'am, if you would only listen a minute-they got the wrong person, is all, she didn't do anything… You saw the affidavit.”
The cashier leaned forward now. “Four hundred eighty-seven dollars,” she repeated, enunciating slowly and carefully so there would be no mistake. “You pay or you walk.”
Next it was the victims' assistance office in the back annex of the police station. They were fifteen minutes late for their appointment with the counselor because even after Bridger convinced Dana to go ahead and pay the impound fee and put in a claim with the police later on, there was a delay of over an hour before the car was released, and no one-not a clairvoyant or a president's astrologer or even the public defender-could have said why. As a result, Dana was pretty well worked up by the time they stepped through the door-mad at the world, at the headmaster, the torturer's assistant in the impound office and Bridger too, for daring to speak up for her-and things went badly, at least at first. To give her credit, the woman behind the desk (middle-aged, creases under the eyes, every mother's face) was a living shrine to patience. Her name, displayed on a plaque in the center of the desk, was Mrs. Helen Bart Hoffmeir-“Call me Helen,” she murmured, though neither of them could bring themselves to do it. She let Dana vent for a while, offering sympathy at what seemed the appropriate junctures, but of course the soothing soft gurgle of her voice was lost on Dana.
At some point-Dana was clonic with anger; she wouldn't take a seat; she wouldn't be mollified-the woman extracted a three-tiered box of fancy chocolates from the filing cabinet behind her and set it out on the desk. “Would you like a cup of chamomile tea?” she asked, lifting the top from the box and looking from Dana to Bridger with a doting smile. “It helps,” she added. “Very soothing, you know?”