Ragged Man (14 page)

Irritated, because now he had to drive the rest of the night, he made his way down the stairs. Outside he heard a car door slam. Instinctively he knew it was the girl the note had been addressed to. He turned out the light and hastened out of the kitchen to the dark hallway, where he hid in the space under the stairs.

He was cramped, but from his darkened position he could see into the kitchen and he had a clear view of the back door. He waited silently, like in ambush. He heard footsteps on the back stairs, heard a key inserted into the lock, heard the door latch click and he saw the door open.

It was the girl from the Irish Pub, Susan. Of course, he should have made the connection earlier when he read the note. She was wearing the same white skirt, but she’d changed out of the peasant blouse that had revealed so much into one that had sleeves and buttoned up to the neck.

The girl went to the refrigerator, read the note, then opened the door. She took out a quart of chocolate milk and drank from the carton. After she finished it, she tossed the carton in a waste basket. Storm readied himself for the attack, but before he moved, she turned round again, closed the refrigerator and started in his direction. He looked at her pouting lips as she approached his hiding point, and he clenched his fists, biting into his tongue. Her lips were the color of a New Orleans Hurricane. She had Hurricane lips.

She came into the dark hallway and stopped, inches from his crouching form, searching for the light switch. Her skirt brushed against his face. He could kill her so easily, but he didn’t. He held his breath, hoping she wouldn’t look down and see him, a coward below the stairs.

She found the switch and the hallway burst into light, allowing Storm to take in every weave of the cotton fabric. He started to reach for her, but something held him back. She had Hurricane lips. Louise had Hurricane lips. In the bar, behind the stage light, her lips were lighter, but now he knew they were Hurricane red, that special red that till now he had only seen on his wife. He was powerless.

She moved away and mounted the stairs. He remained until she reached the top, then he allowed himself a breath. He waited till she went into the one furnished room up there and imagined that she was using the working bathroom, probably to take a shower.

When he thought she was safely out of earshot, he eased his cramped body out from under the stairs and silently made his way to the kitchen. He opened the door with a burglar’s soft touch and made his way out of the house.

He crossed the street, a man torn in half, and slid behind the wheel. The fire inside him raged, he wanted to go back to his room and sleep, but forces beyond his control were driving him on. He reached under the seat for the road atlas and turned on the map light.

New Braunfels was about thirty miles north of San Antonio. He lay back, closed his eyes and asked himself if driving all night to kill a man he didn’t know was what he wanted to do.

Danny Morrow had done nothing to him. In fact, he told himself, if Gordon and his gang hadn’t set up their underground network, he wouldn’t have had a job for the last fifteen years. It wasn’t their fault that they were too smart to get caught in the act. It wasn’t their fault that the crime they were committing wasn’t felonious enough to keep the police interested. It wasn’t their fault that collectors all over the country clamored for the bootlegs. And it wasn’t their fault that everybody in the record industry laughed at him behind his back.

But he hated being laughed at. He started the car and drove the night away and half the next day. He was tired and sleepy when he turned off the interstate, but he still managed to find the King’s Pride Inn in less than five minutes.

He stretched, yawned and stepped out of the cool air conditioned car into a hundred and three degree West Texas summer day, where breathing was the only thing one had to do to work up a sweat.

He undid the top buttons of his sport shirt and wiped the sweat from his brow. He felt lousy. He hadn’t slept in over twenty hours. He hated the heat and he was beginning to question his actions. He was no longer sure he was fighting the good fight, but gritting his teeth, he made his way to the lobby.

He pushed open the glass door and again entered air conditioned comfort. And with the cold, the rightness of what he had done and what he was going to do flooded through him. The death of Gordon’s gang of four, followed by the death of Gordon himself would send a shock wave throughout the international bootleg community. Fear of finding themselves in the same shoes would send the other bootleggers scurrying for cover. Then, when the world was free of these record and CD pirates, he would finally be able to rest.

“
Can I help you?” He recognized the accent from the phone last night.

“
I’m dead dog tired and I need a room,” Storm said, putting on a smile.

“
Usually we’re booked for the summer, but we had a cancellation yesterday, so you’re in luck. One hundred and twenty a night.” The woman was older than God and her face was covered in rouge.

Storm dropped six twenties on the counter and jumped back when a large cockroach scurried over the bills.

“
Will I be sharing the room with his relatives?”

“
This isn’t the Hilton.” The rouge-faced woman scooped up his money, without asking for ID and handed him a key. “Room twelve, down the hall.” She didn’t ask why he had no bags, but said instead, “You’ll need a bathing suit if you want to go down the river.”

“
Where can I get one?”

“
Sporting goods store across the street.”

Storm thanked her and made his way to his room. The air conditioner didn’t work and he suspected that was the reason for the cancellation. He opened the sliding door and stepped out onto a fenced patio. The room next door had a makeshift clothes line with wet towels and bathing suits hanging on it. He reached over and took a black suit that looked like it might fit.

He was about to slide the door shut and take a shower when he heard a young girl’s voice call out, “Hurry up, Danny.”

He went out on the patio and looked over the fence. A young redhead in a bikini that matched her green eyes was loading the biggest inner tube he’d ever seen on the back of a fully restored ’65 Impala convertible. Another girl was rolling a similar tube toward the car. She was blond, thin, and looked like she’d just stepped off the cover of Vogue. And then he saw Danny Morrow, with both arms wrapped around a tube.

“
Where’s Ronny?” the redhead asked.

“
Bathroom,” Morrow answered. “We’ll have to wait.”

Storm tore his clothes off, jumped into the stolen bathing suit, grabbed a tiny hotel towel and started for his car. But he tripped over a cooler in the hall, landing on the seedy carpet with several cold beers.

“
Hey,” a young man complained. He was carrying a dive tank to the room across the hall. The corridor was littered with his things, scuba gear, a giant inner tube, a suitcase and the spilled cooler.

“
Sorry.” Storm pushed himself from the floor.

“
Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You spilled my beer and ruined the ice.” The boy had an athletic body and an attitude.

“
I said I was sorry,” Storm repeated.

“
Yeah, well sorry doesn’t quite cut it, does it?”

“
Here, let me help you with this stuff.” Storm picked up the beer and put it back in the cooler. Then he carried the cooler into the boy’s room.

“
I can do it!” the boy said.

“
No, I spilled the ice, the least I can do is help you load this stuff into your room and buy you another bag.” He went back to the hallway, picked up the wetsuit and weight belt, carried them into the boy’s room and dropped them on one of the sagging beds. The boy followed with the suitcase. Storm closed the door after him, picked up the scuba tank and brought it down on the boy’s head

There wasn’t any blood.

And now Storm had an inner tube, too.

He had just finished stuffing the tube into the back seat and was getting into the car when Morrow’s friend joined the group. Either I’m a fast killer, he thought, or that boy’s a slow shitter.

Morrow started the convertible and put a tape in the cassette player. Storm heard Bob Dylan, backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, belting out Positively Fourth Street and his blood ran hot. The son of a bitch was playing a bootleg cassette. The son of a bitch was going to die.

He followed them through the small town to a wooded campsite. He stayed behind as they entered the campground, entering only after they were parked and were unloading their car. He parked far enough away that he could watch without being noticed.

The park was full of college kids, waiting in line to jump into the water with their tubes. The slow current carried them down the river. Many of the kids had a smaller tube with a cooler full of beer tied on to the larger one they rode in. It was one giant party.

He saw two men with scuba gear slip into the river and he smiled, remembering the dead boy in the room across the hall. The snot nosed bastard had it coming. It wasn’t Storm’s fault. His attitude killed him.

“
Scuba diving?” Storm heard Danny Morrow say.

“
They go along the bottom and gather up beer cans,” his friend Ron said.

“
They get paid for that?”

“
No. Every summer guys into scuba go down the river and every now and then they pop up and scare the girls. They usually make one or two trips gathering up the cans.”

Storm hadn’t been under in years, but he still remembered how. It was like riding a bike.

He watched the group as they headed for the wooden landing and the river. Morrow’s friend dropped his tube into the water, then climbed down the ladder after it. The two women, younger, were more daring. They threw their tubes in and jumped after them, squealing as they hit the cold water. Morrow was the last in. He went down the ladder with his tube in hand. Storm watched as he slipped into the tube at the foot of the ladder—buttocks in the center, legs draped over one side of the giant donut and resting his back over the other without falling into the water.

“
Didn’t even get wet,” he said.

Storm watched them drift away with the current, then he followed Morrow’s example, climbing down the ladder one handed, with the tube in the other. At the last second he put the tube in the moving water and let go of the ladder aiming his buttocks for the tire’s center. He was a big man and he got wet as he splashed into his target and he enjoyed it.

He paddled against the current, so that the four young people slowly drifted away. Within a few minutes they floated around a bend up ahead and were out of sight. He had no desire to stay with them any longer. He only wanted to learn the way of the river.

Every other minute he was passed by a group of college kids, the smallest consisting of two people, a pair of young lovers, and the largest, a group of about fifteen boys and girls laughing and drinking beer. So early in the morning and so many people, he could imagine the zoo the river would become in an hour or so, when the sun burned off the early morning cloud cover.

He lay back in the tube and watched the clouds go by. Convinced there would be no opportunity to get at Danny Morrow on this trip, he decided to relax and enjoy and the ride.

He studied the backyards of the large shaded Southern homes that jutted up against the riverbank. Places where kids grew up sheltered from the violence of modern America. He watched children swinging from a tree rope into the river. Their laughter and squeals of delight stabbed at his heart and he cursed. There had been no happy home when he had been a child.

He spotted a small pool of still water where two men were fishing from a rubber raft. He paddled over to them.

“
Fishing any good?”

“
In the morning, but once the river fills up it’s slow going,” one of the fishermen said.

“
The water here always this still?”

“
Unless it rains. When the river is up, the current reaches the banks.”

Storm looked across the river and noticed that the man was right. The areas by the riverbank were relatively still.

“
Hey, mister, you going down the chute?” a young boy, about ten, floating by asked.

“
I guess so.”

“
You ever been down it before?”

“
No.” Storm waved to the fishermen and paddled back out into the current with the boy.

“
You’re gonna love it. You go real fast and your tube spins around and it shoots you into the river below the dam and you get all wet and everything.”

He wanted to reach out, grab the boy and shove him under the water till he turned blue, but he held himself in check.

“
Get ready,” the boy said.

Storm felt the current as it picked up speed. He looked ahead and saw that the river was dammed and that part of the running current was funneled down a man-made chute that appeared to be sucking in the shouting, yelling, happy tubers. They were having fun and so was he. He clutched onto his tube and followed the summer revelers into the chute.

The chute was a collaboration of man and nature, an unpredictable waterslide that whipped around the dam, depositing the tubers in a small lake below. The smooth flowing river, when compressed into the funnel, churned and foamed, spinning the tubes and spraying the riders. Children loved it. The college kids loved it. And Storm loved it.