Waltz of Shadows Read online

  I came out of it when Sharon screamed. I opened my eyes to see her with her head thrown toward the sky, mouth open as if to suck in the dark, her teeth wet and white as piano keys. Her body trembling, starting to go weak. And then it was my turn. I let my load fly and the train blew again and its headlights bobbed over us.

  Then Sharon was pulled away and Bob was slamming the spikes with the sledge, loosening them. He and Dave jerked me off the tracks. The train roared by, blowing its whistle, tossing gravel, nearly knocking us down with the wind from its rush. Sharon was left standing on the other side of the track, the train between us.

  I lay on the ground quivering. Dave and Bob laughed, bent to untie me.

  When they finished, I stood up, and it was like my knees were made of yogurt. I pulled up my shorts and pants and fastened myself, watched the train scream by. Another second or two, and Sharon and I would have been just so much goo.

  Dave said, “Wasn’t that something,” and I hauled off and hit him with all I had. Caught him one on the side of the jaw and knocked him backwards down the embankment, bloodying his nose. I was all over him then. Had him pinned on the ground with my knees, punching him, and he wasn’t doing much to keep it f K to bloodyirom happening. He was enjoying it. I realized suddenly Bob and Carrie were standing over me, watching, Bob with video camera, filming every bit of it.

  That took the fight out of me.

  The train roared on by.

  I got up slowly, pulled in some deep breaths. When I straightened up, Sharon, holding her hands out to her sides as if she had just missed hugging the locomotive, came across the track smiling. She kissed me on the cheek, like there had been nothing to it. Just an everyday good old-fashioned roll in the hay. Her eyes were huge, filled with the night. Her body was quivering. Her breath was dry and sour, copper smelling. Her thighs were wet in the moonlight; looked to have been coated with salve.

  Carrie brought Sharon’s clothes to her and Sharon slipped them on and Dave and Bob patted me on the back and Carrie almost grinned, which was high humor for her. We got in Dave’s car and drove away from there, Sharon tight beside me, trembling all the way home.

  4

  Bill paused his story, took a deep breath. He looked clammy, like a man coming down with the flu. He glanced at the tattered carpet and dropped the butt of his cigarette there and put his heel to it. He had been doing that all through his story. The odor of smoke and burned carpet floated up, touched my nostrils, and went away.

  He shook his cigarette pack. It was empty. He wadded it up and tossed it on the floor. He looked at me. “I’m gonna talk some more, I’m going to need some wine. My throat’s getting dry.”

  I got the wine bottle and gave it to him. He took a drink from it, made a face like it was vinegar, set the bottle on the carpet next to the pile of cigarette butts.

  “I tell you, Uncle Hank, whole thing was over, and I got to thinking on it, I began to feel good about it. Not mad anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to do it again. But I wasn’t mad. We went over to Dave’s place and watched it on video. I’ve never been so turned on in all my life, seeing me and the others on film. Shots of the train coming, throwing out its light. The sounds of mine and Sharon’s breathing and that train whistle, it was some kind of aphrodisiac.”

  “I’ll stick to oysters,” I said.

  Bill picked up the wine bottle and took a long gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said,” Don’t worry, Uncle Hank. I’m coming to the photo book. What I know, anyway.”

  “Time you get there, I’ll be too old and blind to look at the pictures—provided I really want to.”

  “I tell myself I don’t want to look at them either, but I keep looking. Last night I got up and went to the bathroom, got to thinking about that damn book lying in here, and I came back and turned on the lamp and sat there and looked at it for a half hour before I went to bed. Had bad dreams. Told myself never again. But this morning, before I called you, I got it out again.”

  Bill shook the wine bottle and turned it around and around in his hand. “I should have told that Dave sonofabitch, all of them, goodbye. But I didn’t. I felt initiated into something. How many guys you know have got off with a N to bthat Da beautiful woman to the thunder and lights of a speeding train?”

  “Want the short list?”

  “Exactly.” He finished off the wine, and continued his story.

  · · ·

  So I’m hanging out with them, and one day we’re over at Dave’s apartment, and he says out of nowhere, “Now’s the time.”

  Just like that. “Now’s the time.” And everyone goes quiet. Dave could do that to you. He was a psycho, but there was something about him. Just his voice could pull you up straight.

  He starts laying out what he’s got in mind, and if ever I was born for a superior stupid moment, I was agreeing with what he wanted. His idea was we kidnap someone. Not kidnapping the way you’re thinking. Not for money. Least it wasn’t for money at first. And the plan wasn’t to keep them for any real length of time. Sort of a thrill kidnapping. That’s why I agreed to it. I thought of it as being pretty harmless.

  Dave said he wanted us to pick some guy who looked kinda stiff. Someone this kind of thing would really jack around. Not that anyone I can think of, except maybe the crowd I was running with, would get a kick out of being kidnapped. But he thought we’d grab a real straight and give him a serious thrill. Make him think we’re gonna do something drastic. Scare him good. Then we’d paint his balls blue, and let him go. I mean, literally, paint his balls blue. Or something stupid like that.

  I know, it’s ridiculous. But you got to understand the frame of mind I was in. My whole life, since my Dad’s death, has been kind’a screwed. Mom did her best. I know that. I’m not putting the Indian sign on anyone. I’m just saying, I feel kind of… out there. Like the airlock blew on the space ship and sucked me into space without my suit and I’m gasping for air.

  Suddenly I’m getting balled by this gal looks like a movie star, and I’m around people who know how to make me feel alive.

  We spent a few days figuring on how to choose our victim. We didn’t want to pick a kid. That was too mean. And what’s it take to scare a kid? No challenge in that. We figured on some guy fat and happy, cruising along with life paying him all the dividends.

  Me and Dave were like the scouts for the victim. We decided to go over to the public library every day, hang out there in the morning reading the newspapers, pretending to study our books, and from the windows by the street, we could see Imperial Bank across the way. Figured if we wanted a fat cat, that’d be where we’d find him. Going in and out of the bank.

  Me and Dave got our eyes on this guy we’d seen a couple days in a row. Or rather Dave did. He said right away, “That’s our guy.” I guess it was Dave’s show all along. I never got the impression he meant for me to pick anybody. It was always him. He was just letting me and the others go through the paces.

  Guy we picked showed up at the bank every day about ten-forty-five. Real straight laced. Looked thirtyish. Well built. Grey suit one day, blue the next. Always a white shirt and a dark tie. Hair cut and combed and sprayed just right. Looked like the kind of guy if he wasn’t doing suit ads in the Sears catalogu Sear and a dae, he’d be reading you the news on TV. I remember thinking he probably had a blond wife with a nice ass and two kids and lived over on the good side of town. Made all the right parties. Most likely had his picture in the paper now and then.

  · · ·

  We watched till he came out of the bank, then we got in Dave’s car and followed him. Sure enough. The good side of town. You know where that great big house is on the hill overlooking the University on University Drive? One where the property trails off down that deep wooded slope, toward the creek, then rises up high on the other side?

  That was the house. We watched our guy go inside, and it didn’t take much for us to figure who he was. It was on his mail box. Guy named Doctor Benja
min J. Parker.

  Dave knew who he was, and when he told me, it rang a bell. The cosmetic surgeon. I’d seen the Doc’s ads all over. In the newspapers. On television.

  Guy like that, all the titties he’s stuffed, we figured he had money enough to put on toilet rollers for wiping his ass.

  Next day, third day in a row, we went back to our post to watch him. When he showed up, we knew we had somebody with a pattern. Ten-forty-five, every work day, this dude was at the bank.

  Next time, we were waiting outside the library. Dave had his video camera, and was taping the historical marker by the library. One tells about the Texans turning back the Mexicans during the war for Texas Independence by firing a cannon full of gravel and nails, or beatin’ a hundred of them to death with turkey legs, or some such shit. When Doc showed up, Dave turned and pretended to be taking shots of the street and the old bank front. As he was doing that, he got Doc and this fat guy in the video too.

  Fat guy was in his fifties. Gray haired. About five-nine. Must have weighed over two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. Wheezy looking fuck. Walked like he had tacks in his shoes. Wore a red and green suit coat looked like it belonged on a carnival barker. It was oversized in the shoulders so it would button around his fat belly. He had on these lime green pants, and scuffed brown shoes, and these stupid, thin, white socks you could see through. Wore a wide, red and green striped tie like they used to wear in the seventies. Big enough to dry off on after a shower. All that motherfucker needed to make him just right was some Christmas lights.

  Anyway, our Doc is going up the steps of the bank, and the fat guy comes out of the bank then, and they nod at each other. Casual like. Nothing overly friendly. Just two guys being polite. Doc reaches into his coat and brings out an envelope, which he drops. The fat guy picks it up, brings it in close to himself, and smiles. Then he reaches out and hands Doc back the envelope. Good Samaritan stuff. Right?

  We got home and looked at the video, to show the others that we’d found our perfect victim, and we noticed something funny. We ran it back a few times for a looksee. The envelope the fat guy hands the Doc, it’s not the one the Doc dropped. Doc’s envelope was slightly oversized. The fat guy handed him back a regular size envelope and pushed the other one inside his coat.

  It was smooth. Magician smooth. But us running that tape backwards three or four times to get a good look at the Doc, Dave picked up on it, and af Son smoter it was pointed out, we all saw it.

  A planned swap if ever there was one.

  Next day we went to the Square with the video, took a position down by the old hardware store they’re remodeling, and used that as our focus. You know, like we’re filming some historical bit, which considering all the renovation going on down on Main Street and the Square these days, fits in for a good cover.

  Doc shows up like usual, goes in the bank. No fat guy this day. So we don’t take any video. We wanted to know if there was something to really see before we got down to business, this stuff with the envelope being so intriguing and all.

  Next day we hung out in my car. Parked across the street from the bank in front of the library. Got the video ready. Doc comes on time, and the fat man’s there again. They go through the same envelope routine. Doc dropping. Fat man picking it up and trading with him.

  Comes to us then that possibly the fat guy’s got some pictures of the Doc doing something he shouldn’t do. Maybe when the fat guy switches envelopes, he’s giving the Doc negatives or something.

  Whatever reason, this fat guy, he’s got Doc by the short hairs, and he’s giving them a tug, you know. And Doc, he’s got it arranged where he can pay off in a public place so he doesn’t have to be alone with the fat guy. Scared of him, maybe. Something like that.

  So, we had a joker in the deck. That made it better. We decided to play the Doc like a fiddle. Kidnap him, make like we’re in with the fat guy. Tell the Doc whatever’s been paid isn’t enough. More’s got to come. Or else. He could make up his mind what “or else” meant.

  I was thinking, guy like this, kind of money he’s got, we could put a serious bite on him. Maybe ten-thousand apiece. More. We get our kicks any way we go, and get a little money out of the deal, which personally I could use, and nobody gets hurt.

  We set shifts following him. Me and Sharon doing one. Dave and Carrie one. Bob odd man out. Then we’d mix it up. We took turns parking nights down in the University lot so a couple of us could cross the highway, go into the patch of woods and work our way over the creek and up the hill. From there, we could watch the house.

  We got damn good at shadowing. Got Doc’s pattern down perfect. Saw he did have a blond wife with a good ass, if no kids, and he and the blonde seemed to run in pretty different paths. When he came home in the afternoon, she went out and didn’t come back until late. Hour or so after she left, he’d come out dressed in tee-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, and drive over to the Court Club.

  Hour or so later he’d come out of there red and sweaty, drive back home. Stay until seven-thirty. Then he’d come out dressed the way he dressed during the day. Suit and tie. Most nights he’d go down to the Chinese restaurant on University.

  I ended up following him there and watching him a couple of nights. He took a table at the back, semiprivate, halfway behind one of those screens with the butterflies and birds painted on it. But if you sat up front, looking in the big wall mirror there, you could see a lot of what was going on in the back, behind the partial screen.

  Not that he was doing anything unusual. But there was this waitress always waited on him. College girl. Dark haired. Pretty. Tits like zeppelins. She talked to him extra friendly-like, showed a lot of teeth. They got pretty handsy now and then.

  Didn’t take a genius to see something more than polite conversation was going on. Whenever he got ready to leave, he scooted a fifty dollar bill under his plate. I know, ’cause on my way to the restroom I took a look.

  Saw too he wasn’t any thirty years old. He was quite a bit older, but those workouts kept him pretty well preserved, that and the fact I figure he’d had some of his colleagues pull his face up and tie it behind his ears.

  After the restaurant he’d run a few errands, then go home. About midnight, the wife’d come home. Early in the morning, two or three, Doc’d go out the back door and down the hill into his private park in the woods by the creek. There was a wooden bridge over the water and stone seats and figures that look Oriental in design. There was a roofed, three walled pavilion.

  Me and Sharon were the ones found the park, since we were the first ones to get the duty of hiding out back of Doc’s house. Finding the park was a neat surprise. The night was comfortable and the moonlight coming through the trees was kinda sexy. There were spots you could see through the woods and down the hill, watch car lights moving along University Drive, and beyond that, you could see the lights of the University itself.

  It was like a little Never Never Land in the middle of the city. Protected from all the jokers down there that had to work and struggle to buy shoes for their kids and pay their electric bill. It was sweet and comfortable.

  Me and Sharon were supposed to be watching the house, but I got to tell you, that time of morning, the whole idea seemed pretty stupid. We figured it was just Dave’s way of playing Secret Squirrel. So we sat on one of the benches there and got to necking. Few minutes later we heard brush breaking. Someone was coming from the direction of the highway, heading up the hill toward us.

  We got behind some brush and laid still and peeked out. We heard someone cross the bridge. Pretty soon we could see her. It was the waitress from the Chinese restaurant. Big Tits.

  She moved up the hill toward Doc’s house, and that’s when we heard someone coming down the hill toward her. Doc, of course. He had a bundle of blankets with him. They hugged and kissed and went down to the pavilion. He rolled out the blankets on the floor and they got naked and fifteen minutes later you could hear that pussy poppin’.

  Me and Sharon laid
there a long time, quiet as the dead, and watched them. Finally, they finished up and got dressed. Doc gathered up his blankets. They kissed, said something we couldn’t hear, and Doc went up the hill and Big Tits went across the creek and out of sight.

  We crawled to the top of the hill and watched Doc go into his house, through the back door which he’d left unlocked. Then we went back down the hill, giving Big Tits plenty of time to get away. We went to my place and did some momentous fucking ourselves. Next morning we reported to Dave what we’d seen.

  That’s the way it went all work week. Same schedule. Doc wrapping up each day doing the belly rub with Big Tits. Sth ng oWeekends, the Doc and his wife went around town together, shopping, the movies, eating out, that sort of thing. But it was all business, no smacky mouth, no holding hands. Two blocks of ice couldn’t have had less fun than those two.

  This Doc, I had to admire him. Hours he kept, action he was getting, way he kept on keeping on. He had some kind of constitution.

  After we got the Doc’s schedule down, Dave told us plans had changed again. We were going to jump the doctor in his house. We weren’t going to kidnap him and we weren’t going to do anything childish like paint his balls blue. We were going to point a gun at him and get some kind of payment plan going. Really scare him by making him feel vulnerable in his own home.

  I didn’t like the idea much. Especially the gun part. Even if Dave said it would be unloaded. And I thought everyone else was taking this change of plans a little too smoothly.

  Following Doc around, playing private detective was all right. The rest of it, I didn’t want to go through with. But I kept telling myself it would be okay. And there was the money, and I couldn’t stop liking that part.