Blowback(27)

I said to nobody in particular, “I'm sorry it happened. He was just too drunk to know what he was doing.”

“Wasn't your fault,” the bartender said. “Hell, I should have stopped serving him an hour ago.”

The desk clerk said, “Maybe I'd better call the law.”

I shook my head and looked toward the rear of the room, where there was a closed door with lettering on it that said Restrooms. “No, I'll handle it. Have you got a rear entrance through that door?”

The bartender nodded. “Into an alley that cuts through the block.”

“Maybe you could help me carry him out there.”

“You can't just leave him in the alley.”

“I won't.”

He shrugged and came over to where I was. I flexed my right arm to get the last of the tingling numbness out of it; my knuckles had begun to throb, and I saw that two of them were scraped and bloody. I bent down and took Knox by the shoulders, and the bartender got his legs, and one of the guys from the booth went over and opened the rear door for us. We carried Knox down a short corridor and out through another door, into daylight that was blinding after the semidarkness of the bar.

The alley was narrow and unpaved and there was not much in it except weeds and a stack of crates and boxes and half a dozen garbage cans. A lizard sat sunning itself on one of the posts in the fence opposite the door; beyond the fence was a pasture with two horses and a mule grazing in it. We laid Knox down in the dust next to the hotel wall.

I said, “There'll be a man named Kayabalian in asking for me pretty soon-one of your guests. Will you tell him I'll be back as soon as I can?”

“No more trouble?”

“No more trouble.”

“Okay, then.” He went back inside and closed the door.

I knelt beside Knox, fished through his pockets until I came up with a leather key case. When I straightened again, there was a sudden fiery pain in my chest and then an attack of coughing so intense for a few seconds, tears squeezed past the corners of my eyes. I leaned against the wall until it quit.

I'm fifty years old, I thought, I've got a lesion on one lung, what the hell am I doing mixing it up in bars?

I scrubbed my face dry with my handkerchief, went slowly down the alley to one side street and looked around and did not find the Rambler wagon. But when I came back to the other side street, I saw it parked under a locust tree thirty yards down. So I got it and drove it into the alley and managed to drag Knox through one of the rear doors-it was like dragging a side of beef-and lay him across the seat. Then I backed the Rambler out of the alley, parked it where I'd found it under the locust tree. He could sleep it off here as well as anywhere else. But I kept the keys; I did not want him driving when he finally did come around.

For a moment I stood looking in at him. I had not had much time to consider what he'd imparted to me in the bar, but the implications were pretty obvious. It looked as though I had at last gotten my handle on Angela Jerrold, and that made it all the more imperative to get her and Jerrold the hell away from Eden Lake. I had suspected all along it would turn out this way; not many women with that kind of appeal to men are strong enough to resist using their power. The only thing I wondered about now was whether Talesco and Knox were the only ones. For all I knew, she had been playing the siren's song for everybody at the camp and half of The Pines.

Only it was Jerrold, poor bastard, who had listened to it once too often.





Ten




Charles Kayabalian turned out to be a tall thin relaxed-looking guy somewhere in his early forties. He had pronounced Semitic features, jet-black hair worn in a modern shag cut, a small neat mustache, and smooth skin the color of an aged walnut. Round expressive eyes gave him an ingenuous look that was probably an asset when he went up in front of a jury. You got the impression that he wore any kind of clothes as if they had been tailored for him, but that he preferred casual outfits to the more conventional suit and tie; he was dressed now in a patterned silk shirt, beige flare slacks, and suede loafers.

I found him sitting at the bar when I came back into the Gold Rush Room, and after I had introduced myself and we had shaken hands and sized each other up the way you do, he suggested that we take one of the booths; the two guys who had witnessed my brief skirmish with Knox were gone.

When we were settled in the booth he said, “The bartender told me about the fight you had. I trust everything's all right?”

“More or less. It was just one of those things.”

“People should learn to control liquor.” He got a package of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. “Cigarette?”

Christ yes, I thought. But I said, “No thanks. I gave them up a while ago.”