CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

By six-thirty, Payne’s house appeared empty of all life. It was still bright daylight outside, California summer-daylight, golden and warm. But the house looked dark and cold, Nick thought as he glanced up from his desk at the shadowed porch. Even squinting he could only barely make out a small blot of white fluttering next to the door. It was probably the envelope with the note for Tasco.

Or Tasco’s psycho helper.

Nick still didn’t feel comfortable with the arrangements, not even with just having to watch for the guy. As far as Nick was concerned, the bastard could take a long walk off a short pier; he could stick his head in a bucket of water three times and bring it up twice; he could take a flying leap from any bell-tower on any campus in the glorious state of California. Nick thought of a couple more possibilities, feeling better with each one, until finally his mood broke and the house next door seemed less threatening and less shadowy.

He turned his attention to his books and read steadily for nearly forty-five minutes. He was just turning the page when the squeal of brakes sounded through the open window. He looked up. Along the edge of the window he could just make out the front bumper and tire of a van the same color and make as Tasco’s.

It probably was Tasco’s, he thought dispiritedly.

Until that moment, he had half hoped that no one would show. He dropped his hand and the page fluttered down as well. He sat back in his chair, watching to make sure the guy found the note.

No one appeared on the sidewalk.

He must be checking a work roster or something, Nick decided. He leaned forward, just enough to see the passenger window. Sunlight reflected from the glass, turning it opaque. And the angle was wrong anyway, so he could not tell for certain whether or not anyone was still in the van. He leaned further forward, letting his hands support his weight.

The front door rattled. Nick straightened and spun around, scattering his book and note cards onto the floor. His heart thumped unaccountably and his hand shook. Someone thumped insistently and impatiently on the door again.

“Just a minute,” Nick yelled and half-ran out of the room.

He was breathing heavily by the time he pulled the door open.

“Tasco’s,” Ric said, his mouth twisted into what Nick could only think of as an evil grin.

Nick stared.

“The key, man. For next door. You got the key, right.”

Nick stared. He shifted his weight until his body was mostly hidden by the door.

“Look, man, I got a job to do. I need the freakin’ key!”

“I don’t have it,” Nick blurted out. “Payne...Mr. Gunnison left it under the mat. On his porch.”

He slammed the door and leaned heavily against it. That creep was one scary bastard! Nick didn’t know how or why, but Ric seemed threatening just standing in the doorway. Nick listened but did not hear any movement on the porch. In a cold sweat, he ran through the living room and into his bedroom and leaned over the desk and looked out the window.

Ric was just stepping up onto Payne’s porch, one foot mashing down with what seemed unreasonable violence against the rough concrete. Nick watched intently to make sure that the man found the key. He didn’t want anyone from Tasco’s coming back to knock at his door.

At that moment, the man turned his head and looked into Nick’s window. Their eyes caught for an instant—an infinitely horrifying instant for Nick, who felt all of his pent-up dread and horror concentrating in that single unwanted interchange before breaking and flooding through him. He drew back, then leaned forward only long enough to slam the window closed and shut the curtains.

By that time Ric was in the shadows of Payne’s porch.

Nick stood numbly in the middle of his room for a long while. His hands trembled but otherwise he did not move. Finally, he stared around him, looking for all the world like someone just coming out of a coma, a Johnny Smith suddenly impelled back into this time and this place.

He glanced toward the closed and draped window.

Even though the material was translucent enough that the streetlights sometimes bothered him at night, he could see nothing of the house next door, not even a dark form penetrating vaguely through the curtains.

He breathed deeply and realized that his hands were shaking and that his heart was pumping wildly.

Forget Payne, he decided suddenly. I’m getting the hell out of here! He grabbed his wallet and checked on his money—three twenties and his credit cards. That would be plenty. The way he felt right now, two nickels and a plastic spoon would have been enough.

He rummaged up a pair of pants, an extra shirt, a pair of underwear, and a blue windbreaker with UCLA stamped in cracking white letters on the front and ran with them into the kitchen. Fortunately, he had parked his car on the side driveway for a change; usually he just left it out front where it was easier to get in and out. His driveway was barely single-car width, and the house on the other side—the non-Payne side—was bordered by ancient hibiscus plants that overhung Nick’s driveway like the shadow of doom. He had meant to say something to the owners, but he had only seen someone in the house once or twice in the past year. Apparently they (if it was them and not just him or her) rose early, worked late, and spent most of their free time somewhere else.

For whatever the reason, he had never spoken to them about the bushes, had barely spoken to them at all in the time he had lived there. And besides, as he would have been the first to admit, the bright reds and yellows and pinks during the summer months created a beautiful view from his kitchen and through the side living-room window. So, finally, it was just easier and more convenient for him to park along the front curb. This once, though, because the last time he had driven it he had done his monthly shopping and didn’t want to carry the heavy bags any farther than necessary, his car was parked between the two houses, with the bulk of his own place between him and the man at Payne’s.

Nick slid into the front seat and started the engine. He backed up, reversing his usual direction and angling the rear of his car in front of his own house so that he could head down Greensward and away from Payne’s. In the rear-view mirror, he saw the back of Tasco’s truck. He couldn’t see any of Payne’s house.

Without knowing where he was going, except that he didn’t plan on returning until late, late that night, maybe not even until well into the next day, Nick eased the car into first and drove slowly, quietly down Greensward, making as little noise as possible, like a nervous bridegroom trying to elope with an equally nervous bride under the nose of an irreconcilably angry future father-in-law.