Crooked (25 page)

42

THE WAITING ROOM

Amos hadn't seen Eddie all day, but he knew he would sooner or later, at the appointed time. He already felt better—not good exactly, but on the verge of feeling good. He'd liked standing and talking to Clara in the halls, almost willing Eddie to come around the corner. He liked telling her he'd left something on her doorstep. And he liked thinking of seeing her after the play.

He didn't change clothes after school. He wore the loose suit to
The Smiling Gumshoe
and, before curtain, kept scanning the audience for Eddie. He wasn't there. Except for one empty seat to the rear right, it was a full house. When a student started to take that last seat, an usher quickly appeared and explained something, and the student rose, leaving the single seat vacant again. Saved for somebody, Amos thought. The principal or somebody like that.

Presently the lights dimmed, the curtain rose, and Amos settled into the play. He'd seen it twice before, and the familiarity of the words and the dark warm auditorium induced Amos into a light but pleasant sleep, from which he was awakened by the explosion of the stage gun. He snapped open his eyes to see Clara falling forward with her mortal wound.

After the cigarette girls in their gold satin shorts had walked in front of the curtain with the banner that said END OF ACT I, after the audience had broken into applause and the houselights had come on, as various playgoers rose and stretched and drifted toward the lobby, a large form pushed his way into the auditorium against the current, his bald head rising above the crowd.

It was Charles Tripp.

Amos followed his direction to the single seat that had been kept vacant, but no longer was. Sitting there now was Eddie Tripp. He must've come in after the houselights were off, Amos thought. But it didn't matter. There he was. The guy he had the appointment with.

Charles was leaning close to Eddie, telling him something. When Eddie rose and he and Charles moved quickly for the exit, Amos stood and followed.

Okay, he thought. Here goes.

But outside, he lost sight of the Tripps. Amos lingered in the shadows. He wanted to see Eddie Tripp, not Charles. His appointment was with Eddie. Amos ventured further and further out. Then, suddenly, off to the left, he saw their half-sedan backing out of a parking space and beginning to move away.

Amos began to run, staying in the shadows of the tree-lined parking strip but losing ground on the vehicle until, fifty yards ahead, a green light dissolved into orange and then red. The half car, half truck pulled up to the light.

Okay,
a voice within him said.
Do something. Just do it.

Amos sprinted through the shadows. He drew close, closer.

The red light turned green.

As the half-sedan eased ahead, Amos lunged forward, caught hold of the back pickup rail, and was pulled awkwardly forward. He grabbed tight, retracted his feet, and felt his kneecaps swing hard into the bumper. A few terrifying seconds passed as the car moved along with Amos hanging only by his fingers, with his feet curled up behind him and rough asphalt sliding beneath him, but then he chinned himself up, and his feet found the bumpers. He rolled over the tailgate into the truck bed, hidden behind the lockbox. He took a deep breath. He was on board.

When the half-sedan slowed and turned off of Albany Avenue, a well-lighted four-lane street, and onto a dim residential street, Amos edged himself up and peered out over the lockbox. It was a tidy neighborhood that Amos recognized as the Kensington District, on the opposite side of Bandy Ridge from Clara's house. Older cottages sagged beside newer duplexes and a few home businesses.

As the Tripps' half-truck slowed further, Amos's body tightened. He slid over the tailgate and held himself in a crouching position on the rear bumper. To his right, a beauty shop was attached to a yellow stucco house. A spotlight shone on the word
Rae's,
painted in brilliant red.

Just beyond Rae's, the half-truck turned into a gravel driveway.

Amos leaped off the back, ducked into nearby shrubs, and lay perfectly still.

The Tripp brothers emerged laughing from the car.

“Well, when you're in the mood, you're in the mood,” Charles said, and Eddie let out the cackling laugh that Amos remembered from that night in front of the Goddards' house.

Amos peered out from the bushes. At the end of the gravel driveway, sitting above an open and empty two-car garage, was an apartment with 2902A painted in ragged black on the white stucco wall. The front door and cantilevered front porch were reached by wooden stairs, which the Tripps were now ascending.

“'Course I'm
always
in the mood,” Charles said, which brought more laughter from Eddie.

They didn't go through the front door. There were four windows running along the upstairs porch. Charles went to the third of these windows, slid it open, and with surprising agility slipped inside. Eddie followed behind. A moment later, one of them switched on the interior lights.

This, Amos realized with sudden clarity, was where the Tripp brothers lived.

Behind the apartment's windows, Eddie and Charles were moving about the lighted room, vanishing into other rooms, returning again. Both drank from tall glasses and talked in low voices, with Eddie's laughter carrying out into the night. At one point, to Amos's astonishment, Charles seemed to say, “Okay, then,” and then lowered himself from view, which made no sense, because the garage below the apartment remained empty and dark.

And then, a few minutes later, Charles's shaved head and huge body rose again into the lighted room.

The lights went out, and the Tripps exited as they'd entered, through the third window, which they now closed after them. They were both wearing dark clothes.

“So we make her wait a few minutes,” Charles said, and laughed. “I'll tell you what making her wait is. Making her wait is a freaking mood enhancer.” He laughed thickly, and Eddie's cackle followed.

The tires spat gravel as Eddie backed the half-sedan quickly out of the driveway, and Amos lay flat, eyes down, while the headlights passed over him as the Tripps turned onto the street.

Amos stood and watched the taillights disappear.
Make who
wait?
he wondered. He looked at the street, then at the apartment. He walked up the gravel, each step a loud crunching sound. The garage was empty except for empty oil cans, half-filled Hefty bags, and other trash. The walls were freshly painted, and the back wall was covered with sheetrock and hanging tools. Nothing was odd, except that it seemed shorter than most garages.

Amos went to the foot of the stairs and looked up. Don't hurry and don't sneak, he thought. Hurrying and sneaking attract attention. Amos took one step, then another. His heart felt like it had risen from his chest and wedged itself between his ears, where it pounded fiercely.

Don't sneak. Don't hurry. One step at a time.

When he reached the upstairs porch, Amos went straight to the third window and, without looking around, slid it open. He bent and stepped easily through.

Amos was inside, breathing again. The pounding in his ears softened a little.

He switched on a light. To his surprise, the place was tidy. Tidy and strange. It looked like a military dormitory. Instead of bureaus, there were two khaki-colored footlockers. The two twin beds were covered with army blankets and wrapped tight as wontons. Along one wall, an old khaki green door lay atop two stacks of milk crates to make a desktop, on which sat a newish wide-screen Sony, a neat stack of dirty magazines, a large, military-style flashlight, and a book called
A Teenager's Guide to the Legal System
.

There were three more doors in the room. One led to the kitchen, almost as tidy as the bedroom. The rinsed glasses in the sink still smelled of liquor. Within the refrigerator, besides Red Dog beer, white tequila, and some red syrupy liquid in a tall bottle, there was Kix, Cap'n Crunch, sugar in a sack, Oreos, pork rinds, and barbecued potato chips. Stuff, Amos thought, you usually kept in cupboards, unless your cupboards had cockroaches. He swung open the freezer compartment. It was cold and frosty but contained no ice, no ice cream, and—half to Amos's disappointment, half to his relief—no frozen snakes.

The second door led to a bathroom, also spic-and-span, and the third door accessed a closet, with clothes hanging neatly on poles. But there was something else. Hanging from the interior side of this closet door was a fold-out photograph of a naked woman with tiny random holes punched through her. The photo had been used as a dartboard. Even now, three feathered metal darts protruded grotesquely from the punctured woman. It revolted Amos. He quickly pushed the door closed.

He looked around. So where had Charles lowered himself? And into what? Amos went over to the place at the rear of the room where Charles had seemed to be standing. There was nothing there but one of the heavy footlockers.

When Amos gave the locker a push, it and the rug beneath it slid aside and revealed something surprising. There, in the floor, was a flush-hinged trapdoor.

Amos gingerly lifted the small door and peered in. Nothing but darkness. He grabbed the flashlight from the desk and directed its beam into the hole. A slanted wooden ladder led down to a small room. Amos's heart again began to beat furiously. It was creepy. It was definitely creepy.

Okay. One step at a time.

He descended carefully, using the flashlight to illuminate each spot where his foot would step next. When he was standing inside the small room, he scanned its contents with the light. It was filled with merchandise, all neatly sorted and stacked. Car stereos. Color televisions. Ornate silverware. Watches. Rings. It was like a modern version of a pirate's trove with glittery secret treasure. Except this trove had been stashed in a dark secret vault built at the back of a garage.

There was something else, too. Standing on one chest-high shelf was a typewriter, with a stack of clean paper beside it. Amos slid one of these sheets into the typewriter's roller. He picked out the letters from the keyboard one by one,
tap tap tap
. DEAR MR. AMOS. It was the same typewriting. Identical.

A noise. Amos thought he heard a noise. He switched off the flashlight, stood perfectly still, and heard only his heart pounding in his ears.

He pulled the paper from the typewriter, climbed the ladder, and was sliding the locker and rug back into place when he suddenly froze. A car was pulling up the graveled driveway. A car with loud music. Then the music stopped.

Amos went to the window and peeked out. Down below, a girl emerged from a dilapidated Honda Civic and headed toward the stairs. Amos spun around, looking wildly for another exit, but there wasn't one.

Down below, the Civic was driving away, but the girl's clicking footsteps could be heard on the stairs, approaching.

The closet? The kitchen? The bathroom? Amos listened to the girl's footsteps on the stairway. In a panic, he slid under one of the twin beds and hugged himself close to the wall. The front window opened.

“Chazbro? Eduardo?”

Amos held his breath.

From beneath the bed, he saw first one, then another black platform shoe step through the window. He watched them click across the linoleum.

“Charles? Eddie?” she called out. Then, under her breath, “You assholes.”

She returned to the window and closed it. Then she went to the kitchen, opened a bottle, and walked into the bathroom, but without closing the door. Amos listened to the watery sounds of urination.

If he tried to escape, she might turn and see him. Probably she would hear him. But she couldn't really come running out at this moment.

Quickly Amos slipped off his shoes, slid from beneath the bed, and eased across the linoleum. He was nearly to the window when a pair of headlights turned into the driveway. It was the half car, half truck. The Tripps.

Behind him, the toilet flushed. Down below, the gravel crunched.

Cornered, frantic, Amos dropped back under the bed.

“Well, well,” Charles said once he and Eddie were inside the apartment. “Here's our little wayward Brandykins.”

“I'm here,” the girl said, “but I'm not little, not wayward, and not yours.”

Eddie let out a sharp cackling laugh. Charles, however, was silent. The Tripp brothers were wearing black Nikes. The smaller ones—Eddie's—went to the kitchen and came back with what sounded like iced drinks. “Tequila sunrises,” he said.

“I'll stick to Red Dog,” the girl said.

A tinkling of ice cubes, then Eddie went to the closet door, swung it open, and backed away from it.
Thunk. Thunk.
He was throwing darts at the fold-out. One of the darts bounced off the door and rattled to the ground, near the bed. Amos watched Eddie's hand pick it up. A thin straight scar ran across his forearm. It was so close Amos could've grabbed it. But this wasn't the appointment, he could feel it in his bones. This was more like the waiting room.

In a calm voice, Charles said, “And yet, Brandykins, now that I think of it, I believe I told you to wait.”

“I
did
wait, you moron. I waited for something like forever.”

Again, Eddie's cackling laugh.

Charles, however, was patient. “And then?”

“And then I got a ride.”

“You got a ride,” Charles repeated. “And who did you get a ride with?”

“Some guy who was nice enough to offer. Some guy who was
there
when the guy who was
supposed
to be there wasn't.”

Thunk. Thunk.
Then Eddie laughing and saying, “Now
that's
a delicate shot.”

Charles ignored Eddie. His feet were still turned toward the girl's black platforms. “Some guy,” Charles said. “What was some guy's name, Brandykins?”

“Why? What's it to you?”

Suddenly Charles's shoes moved closer to hers.