“Who?” It was blurted, almost a shout.
But Frank didn’t seem to hear. “It wasn’t the face or the body. It wasn’t the eyes, either. More like the feeling you get when you’re in a room that looks different but somehow you know you’ve been there before. Can’t put your finger on what it is, but you know it just the same. That’s what I remember mostly, that feeling. It was sorta weird, it gimme the chills. But that don’t matter. I like to get the chills. It feels nice when I start to shiver. So there we stood at the bar and I was shivering and it felt real nice. And then, when she walked out, I waited just long enough to say the alphabet from A to Q. Then I followed her.”
“You did what?”
“Followed her,” Frank said, speaking to the wall.
“Was she alone?”
Frank’s head moved jerkily up and down. “She’d come to Dugan’s to pick up her brother, the lush. But he wouldn’t leave. He told her to go home alone. On the street I saw her walking toward that little car she drives. The little gray job with the wire wheels. It was parked on the other side of Vernon, halfway down the block. All the other spaces were taken up by trucks. So she hadda do some walking to get to the car. That gave me plenty of time to follow her. I was shivering real good then, nice and cold. She looked so slim and trim and neat, so clean and shining, like something you see in a dream. That’s it. In a dream. And I’d been there before. The same moon. The same street. Everything the same except for one thing. Her name. It wasn’t Loretta.”
It seemed to Kerrigan that the walls were liquid, forming waves that rolled slowly toward him. He begged himself to get up from the chair and run out of the room. But he couldn’t budge. He heard himself saying, “All right, you saw her walking to the car. Then what?”
“Nothing,” Frank said. “She drove away in the car.”
“You’ve pulled this stunt before? You’ve followed women down the street?”
Frank didn’t answer.
“Tell me,” Kerrigan said. He was up from the chair, moving toward the bed. He grabbed Frank’s shoulders. “You’re gonna tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Frank uttered a soundless laugh. “Something you know already?”
He dropped his hands to his knees. He backed away from Frank, his eyes riveted to his brother’s face. And yet his inner vision didn’t show a face at all. It showed a dark alley, with the moonlight coming down and spraying brightly on dried bloodstains.
14
He turned away from Frank, hurried out of the room, and walked out of the house. He was trying very hard not to think about Frank. He wished he could reach with his fingers into his mind and drag Frank out of there.
On Vernon Street, walking toward Wharf, he saw the row of wooden shacks off Vernon between Third and Fourth, and he thought, Maybe it was Mooney, after all, or maybe it was Nick Andros. He walked faster, seeing more wooden shacks and the shabby fronts of tenements and he muttered without sound, There’s more than one creep lives in these dumps, more than one hophead and bay-rum drinker and all kinds of queers. It might have been any one of them and maybe you’ll never know for sure who it was. He pleaded with himself to let it rest there, to bury it and forget about it. But his face was gray and his breathing was heavy and he was still thinking about Frank.
And hours later, hauling crates along Pier 17, he didn’t feel the weight of heavy boxes tugging at his arms and pressing on his spine. The only pressure he felt was inside his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about Frank.
At four in the afternoon the sky began to darken and the river took on a metallic sheen. Black clouds moved in and shadowed the piers and warehouses and the street that bordered the docks. At a few minutes past five, as some of the dock workers started to leave the piers and head for home, the air was split with thunder. Pier bosses and foremen shouted feverish commands. Then all at once it was coming down, and it hit with terrific force. It was like a lake falling from the sky.
The docks were deserted. And soon the streets were empty. There was no human activity at all. There were only the darkness and the rumble of thunder and the relentless cascade of rain. The river was choppy with white caps, and angry waves came smashing at the piers.
Cursing, drenched to the skin, Kerrigan huddled under the stingy roof of a loading platform. He tried the big door that led into the warehouse. But the door was locked, and all he could do was press his back against it and try to keep from getting wetter than he was already.
He looked out across a few yards of wooden pier, the planks giving way to a newer driveway of concrete. Through the wall of falling rain he saw the raging foam of the river, and he could feel the vibration of the pier as the waves crashed against its pilings. Muttering an oath, he told himself it was a northeaster, and that meant it was due to last for hours and hours, and maybe days. He decided to take his chances with a run for home, and he braced himself, preparing to leap off the platform and make a beeline toward Vernon.
Just then he heard a clicking sound behind him. Someone had unlocked the big door. He told himself he’d been seen through one of the windows and some kind-hearted character was inviting him to come in and get dry.
He worked the door handle and pushed against the door, and the heavy bulk of it swung slowly inward. As he entered the warehouse, he saw there were no bulbs lit, and he frowned puzzledly as he groped his way forward. He shouted, “Anybody around?”
There was no answer. The only sound was the dull roar of the storm outside.
His frown deepened. He took a few more steps, bumped into a barrel, circled around it, and kept on going. Scarcely any light came through the partially opened door to the loading platform, and now he moved in almost total darkness.
He decided the door had been unlocked by some gin hound who’d come out of it just long enough to do him a favor, and then had returned to an alcoholic slumber.
His hand came in contact with the edge of a large box. He sat down on the box and wished he had a book of matches and a pack of cigarettes. For a few moments he played with the idea of getting the hell out of here. But the air in the warehouse was warm and somehow comfortable, and a lot drier than the weather outside. He figured he might as well sit here for a while.
But then, he thought, the storm would probably get worse and last for hours, and he was pretty hungry, getting hungrier all the time. And the problem of love had remained.
“The hell with this,” he muttered aloud, and turned his head, looking for the column of gray light that would reveal the exit.
All he saw was blackness, and the dim gray rectangles of the small windows. The windows were high off the floor, and that was one thing. Another thing was the fact that they were made of wired glass and he’d have one mess of a time smashing his way through.
And yet he wasn’t thinking much about that. He was concentrating on the door, telling himself he’d left the door open and now it was closed.
His mouth was set in a thin line as he thought, Whoever let me in here is making sure I don’t get out.
In that same moment, he heard footsteps.
The sounds came from behind him. He knew that if he turned his head, he would see who it was. His eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and the windows afforded just enough light for recognizing a face. But in the instant that he told himself to turn and look, his instinct contradicted the impulse and commanded him to duck, to dodge, to evade an unseen weapon.
He threw himself sideways, falling off the box. There was a whirring sound that sliced the air, and then the crash of a thick club or something, landing on the top of the box where he’d been seated. He was on his knees, crouched at the side of the box, listening intently for a sound that would give him his assailant’s position.