The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales
- Автор: Пронзини Билл
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Perfect Crime Books
- ISBN: 978-1-935797-70-8
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales». Краткое содержание книги:
I paid the bill and we went back out into what was left of the day’s heat. He stood looking past the gas pumps to Interstate 40 with that forlorn expression back on his face.
“What’re you going to do now?” I asked him.
“Dunno. Ranches around here ain’t hiring this time of year. Not me, anyways. Got a better chance of finding something in a town.”
“It’s a long way to the nearest one.”
“Don’t matter. I’m used to walking, sleeping out.”
I was still feeling sorry for him. “Well, look, Breakbone, I’ll give you a ride as far as Santa Rosa if you want. I’d stake you to a night’s lodging, too, but I’m short on funds right now. Enough for another meal’s the best I can do.”
He gave me a long, solemn look. “Do all that for me, too?”
“The original good Samaritan, that’s me. How about that ride?”
“Sure. Okay.”
We got into the Audi. He was so tall that he had to sit scrunched down with his duffel on the floor mat and his knees up against the dashboard, and at that the top of his head scraped the headliner. He didn’t have anything to say once we were underway. That was all right with me. Having to hold a conversation while I’m driving, particularly after an already long day behind the wheel, tends to distract me, even out in the middle of nowhere.
This was high desert country, pretty desolate, mostly flat with a few rolling hills and mesas in the background. Horse and cattle country, though how cattle could survive on the sparse grass was beyond me. Most of the terrain seemed to be barren except for patches of cactus and yucca and stunted juniper trees.
Traffic was light. We’d gone about ten miles and were making good time when an interchange appeared ahead. As we neared it, I noticed a guy with a backpack sitting on the grassy verge between the entrance ramp and the highway on this side. Another hitchhiker. It’s against the law to troll for rides on an interstate, but there’s always somebody ready and willing to defy laws and take chances.
Breakbone was looking out the side window at the hitchhiker as we rolled on past. He said suddenly, “Stop the car.”
“What? No way. I don’t pick up hitchers—”
“Stop the car.”
“—and even if I did, there’s not enough room in back—”
His body turned and one of his huge hands clamped down in a tight squeeze on my right knee. “Stop the car!”
It was like being caught in the iron jaws of a scoop shovel. I felt cartilage grind; pain shot all the way up into my groin. Reflex made me jam my left foot down so hard on the brake I nearly lost control of the car. The rear end fishtailed, wobbling, the skidding tires smoked and must have laid fifty feet of rubber before I managed to straighten out and then maneuver the Audi off onto the side of the highway. No other car had been close; if one had been...
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what’s the idea? You nearly caused an accident.”
He wasn’t listening to me. He had the passenger door open and was looking back, gesturing. In the rearview mirror I saw the hitchhiker running toward us, his backpack clutched against his chest. Young guy, nineteen or twenty; short and thin, with a long mop of blond hair and a heat-blotched face.
Breakbone got out and opened the rear door. The kid came to an abrupt stop, staring up at him. “Wow,” he said.
“Get in,” Breakbone said. “There’s enough room.”
“Hey, thanks, thanks a lot.” The kid squeezed himself into what little space there was on the rear seat, holding the backpack on his lap. “Man, that air-conditioning feels good,” he said. Then, to me through a friendly grin, “Thanks to you, too, mister. I didn’t think anybody was going to stop and I’d have to spend the night out there.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“Yeah, I saw. You sure made up your mind in a hurry.”
“Didn’t I, though.”
Breakbone was filling up the passenger seat again. He said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
I wanted to say something more to him in protest; my knee and leg were still smarting. But with the kid already in the car now, it didn’t seem to be worth making an issue of it. Over and done with and no real harm done. I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway.
We went a mile or so in silence. Then the kid said, “All this stuff back here. You guys moving somewhere?”
“Just me,” I said. “California.”
“I’m going to Phoenix. Well, Tempe. Arizona State University. I’m a student there. I don’t suppose you could take me that far? Or at least as far as Flagstaff if you’re staying on Forty?”
“Well...”
“I understand if you can’t. I’m grateful for any ride I can get, as far as I can get. My name’s Rob, by the way.”
“Jack.”
Breakbone didn’t offer his nickname.
It got quiet again. I could feel an edginess growing in me. It wasn’t the same having Breakbone along now, after that knee-squeezing business. I didn’t want him in the car anymore. Once we got to the outskirts of Santa Rosa, I’d stop and let him out. The kid, Rob, seemed to be all right; I could take him as far as Phoenix because my route plan was to swing down through there and pick up Interstate 10 into L.A. But I didn’t want him with me, either — no more company at all after Santa Rosa. Why had Breakbone forced me to stop for him? Compassion for a fellow traveler, I supposed, like I’d had compassion for him.
The quiet kept playing on my nerves. I turned on the radio, thinking: Music, news, call-in show — any thing. The station I was tuned to was playing a song by Willie Nelson. Breakbone immediately reached over and turned it off.
“What’d you do that for?”
“Don’t like the radio playing.”
“Well, I do.”
“So do I,” the kid said. “Jazz is my thing, though. None of that country stuff.”
“Leave it off, Jack,” Breakbone said.
I didn’t argue with him. I wanted to, it was my car, dammit, but I didn’t. There was something about the way he was sitting there, so damn big and Sphinx silent, those massive hands bulked together in his lap.
The miles piled up, fifteen or so. Dusk had settled; I switched the headlights on. How many more miles to L.A. and Karen? Only about eight-fifty now. And maybe another hundred closer before I called it a day. I could be with her sometime tomorrow night if I got an early start in the morning and drove straight through. I was even more eager to see her now. And it wasn’t just sex. It was her... her smile, her voice, the way she laughed, everything about her. I’d been in love before, but never the way I was in love with Karen...
Twilight was rapidly fading into darkness, the shadows long and clotted on the empty desert landscape. Night came down fast out here. It’d be full dark in another few minutes.
Another mile clicked off on the odometer. And then Breakbone put an end to the silence. “That exit up there, Jack,” he said. “Take it.”
I peered ahead. The exit, according to the sign, was to a secondary road that led to a couple of far-off towns I’d never heard of. There were no services there, just the offramp and sign and a crossroad stretching both ways across the desert flats.
“What for?”
“Take it.”
“Now listen—”
His big hairy paw dropped on my knee again, the stone-hard fingers digging in. Not with any pressure, not yet. “Take it.”
I slowed and took it.
“What’s going on?” Rob said from the back seat. He sounded sleepy; he must have been dozing.
“Turn right,” Breakbone said.
Don’t do it, I thought. But I didn’t even hesitate at the stop sign, just swung onto the secondary road heading east. “Where is it you want to go?”