Babysitter, page 8
Three months later, unable to take it any longer, David moved to Los Angeles, lucked out in finding a job with an agency that handled a national funeral home association (and finding that funeral home directors, for all their bad press, were the best clients he’d ever worked with; all copy and no ass-kissing) and began spending every other weekend with Jerred. He even became reasonably good friends with Jerred’s new stepfather.
There were women, of course, but hard as he tried he could not find within himself any emotion stronger than lust. He sensed that he needed a long period of loneliness to purge himself of the shortcomings that had helped bring down his first marriage.
Then, suddenly, Jerred was fourteen years old and he had his own friends and spending weekends with Dad was not so much fun and, equally suddenly, David found himself beginning to worry about such matters as pension and retirement and finding another woman to marry.
And then one night he’d had his heart attack in the vestibule of his apartment house and all David could say in the ambulance with the round face of the paramedic constantly hanging over his face, was, “Am I going to die?”
But it was also then that he realized the question was somewhat moot. Fearing death presumes that one has good reasons to go on living, and in the white hospital days that followed, he discovered how few were the things that gave him pleasure, how angry he was inside, how ill-equipped he was to understand happiness.
And so, a year later, surviving on a decent-sized savings account, he came back to his hometown and threw himself into writing a history of that hometown.
And then today he’d seen Jody, a girl he’d always noticed, but for some reason never pursued in his younger days.
Now he turned his new Chevrolet right onto Swanson Avenue and watched the good two-story middle-class homes give way to a neighborhood that resembled a war zone: windows smashed, the dead carcasses of ancient cars filling front yards, loud and angry husband-wife arguments floating on the air like sad music, and young men and women sitting on stoops and staring out at him with a mixture of scorn and bafflement. How did a guy get a new Chevrolet anyway . . .
It was in this neighborhood that the babysitter had lived. Now he was more curious about her than ever.
He looked at the address on the piece of white scratch paper and slowed down.
She lived in a Gothic monstrosity of gingerbread, dormer windows, and a widow’s walk. Not even the night could hide the condition of the place, the weeds that grew knee-high on the front lawn, the rusty bicycles and barrels and bedsprings strewn across the front porch.
For the first time, he felt some small fear about getting involved in all this.
He had never been a strong man—never a particularly brave one. And middle-age and a heart condition did not exactly inspire him with self-confidence. He had no idea what he would find inside that macabre-looking building.
He got out of the car. After the coolness of the Chevrolet’s crisp air-conditioning, the night was muggy. Sweat quickly pasted his shirt to his back. Rock and roll blared from a window; another domestic battle was in progress; a motorcycle revved up somewhere in the shadows.
He went up to the front door.
A plump black tomcat sat with a partially eaten mouse in front of it. Serious green eyes rose to meet David’s as he squinted at the battered and once gold mailboxes, looking for any identification on apartment No. 6. There was nothing.
Up on the porch the air smelled of spaghetti and beer and cigarette smoke. And filth. Peering into the vestibule, he saw a massive garbage can overflowing with rotten food. Flies buzzed around it in furious circles.
Gulping, he went inside, trying to pay no attention to the garbage can.
Once the octagonal-shaped vestibule had no doubt been fashionable, with parquet flooring and stained glass windows. But the parquet pattern was lost beneath decades of wear and filth and a long gash of stained glass had been smashed out.
He went up the stairs, toward the blare of rock and roll coming from the second floor. On the whitewashed wall paralleling the banister, graffiti of all sorts had been spray-painted. A few words had been written in lipstick that eerily resembled dried blood. He had seen a clever TV movie once about urban vampires. If such creatures existed, this was no doubt the type of place in which they’d hide.
The rock and roll became overpowering by the time he reached the narrow hallway of the second floor. The only illumination was from two dim bulbs spaced ten feet apart and hanging naked from the ceiling. Far down the hall, on either side, were at least a half dozen apartment doors.
Head beginning to throb from the music, stomach gnarled because of the relentless odors, he walked past doors until he came to No. 6.
Even if someone were inside, he wondered, how would they hear his knock above the music?
He knocked anyway and followed up by pressing his right ear to the door and filling his left ear with a finger so he could cut down the noise.
Nothing.
He was not surprised.
He moved back on down the hail to the apartment from which the rock and roll roared. Shaking his head, he raised his hand and brought it down on the door.
Unlocked, the door swung open and he found himself staring into a wide front room that was lit only by a small lamp on the floor. The lamp bulb was red and it painted everything in the room that color. Once again, he was reminded of blood.
On the floor, next to the lamp, sat an old man with his back pressed to the wall. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt. His aged flesh hung loose. Skinny as he was, he had breasts like a young girl’s. He raised a head so completely bald it looked shaved, and stared directly at David. He wore sunglasses. He grinned. He had no teeth. He picked up a quart of Hamms beer he kept at his left side and took a huge swig. He grinned toothlessly again and offered the quart to David. Then he beckoned David inside.
For the second time in less than five minutes, David felt great reluctance about being in this house.
He went inside anyway.
The place was furnished with an overstuffed couch, a small mattress on the floor, and a wobbly card table on which sat a hotplate and a greasy pizza box. White stuffing daubed red by the lamp stuck out of various curves in the couch, reminding David of wounds.
Now that he was closer to the old man, David realized the truly remarkable thing about him. He was covered, nearly entirely, with tattoos. But they were so faded that David had not been able to see them until he came close up. The tattoos were fading from the old man just as his life force was.
David’s eyes moved right, and there on the orange crate he saw the stereo. It was a small and beaten Sears model. It was astonishing it could put out so much volume.
David, without asking permission, went over and turned it off.
When he turned back around, he saw that the old man held a switchblade in his hand. With surprisingly deft fingers, the old man released the blade. There was a snick sound.
“Don’t believe I asked you to turn it down, asshole.”
“I need to ask you a few questions.”
“You don’t scare me none. Not none at all.” He paused, his birdlike, paranoid eyes searching the doorway. “You a cop?”
“I look like one?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“What is?”
“That cops look a certain way. I know cops who look like insurance men and I know cops who look like fairy boys.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Then what the fuck are you doin’ turnin’ down my stereo?”
“Look,” David said. “I’m sorry about your stereo, all right? But we’re looking for a little girl and right now we need all the help we can get.”
For the first time, fear came into the old man. “I don’t know nothin’ about no little girl. Kids ain’t my bag. Just because I did a little time back in Illinois—” He paused, looked at the four-inch blade. The red bulb cast a huge silhouette of his hand and the shiv on the wall behind him.
“Why don’t you put the knife away? I’m not saying you know anything about the little girl at all. I just want to ask you a few questions about somebody who lived here.”
“Who?”
“A young girl who did babysitting.” Before the old man could speak, David said, “The knife. All right?”
“I can git it out again fast, fucker. You remember that.”
“I’ll remember. I’ll remember.”
The old man ceremoniously closed the blade, then laid the knife down next to himself on the floor.
“When’d she live here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then why’d you come here lookin’ for her?”
“The police told me—”
Immediately, David knew he’d made a mistake.
“I thought you weren’t no cop. Lyin’ bastard.”
“The police are trying to help find the little girl. That’s all.”
“Yeah. Right.” He picked up the quart of Hamms and drained it. He set the one quart down and with seamless ease picked up a second one, uncapped it, and began making serious withdrawals from this one. “So who’s this babysitter?”
“She lived in apartment six.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“Nobody lives in apartment six.”
“Maybe she moved recently.”
“No way. That apartment’s been vacant three years.”
“What?”
“Three years minimum.”
“Why is it vacant?”
“Had a fire in there. All burned out. Cheap bastard landlord’s too cheap to fix it up again and he sure as hell can’t rent it out the way it is. Not even in a neighborhood like this one.”
“So nobody’s been in there?”
A strange cackle came from the old man just as he lifted the quart to his lips again. Finished, he smacked his lips loudly. “I said it was vacant. But that don’t necessarily mean that nobody’s been in there.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You don’t, huh? Now isn’t that just too fuckin’ bad?”
The old man put forth, palm up, an amazingly steady hand. He snapped his fingers with all the arrogance he could summon. “You want talk, asshole, you’re gonna pay for it.”
“How much?”
“How much you got?”
“How much you want?”
“Asshole.” Beat. “Twenty bucks.”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen.”
David took his wallet out. He counted three crisp fives and handed them to the old man.
The old man lifted up the switchblade, set down the three fives, and then set the knife back down on the bills.
“So who goes in there?”
“This girl.”
David sighed. This was a treacherous old sonofabitch, there was no doubt about it.
“You know her?” David asked.
“No. She only comes at night sometimes.”
“What does she do?”
“Lets herself in.”
“In apartment six?”
“Yeah.”
“She has a key?”
“No.”
“How does she get in?”
“That one you’re gonna have to figure out for yourself.”
“You have any idea what she does inside there?”
“You ever talk to her?”
Something shifted in the old man’s expression. “I said I never talked to her.”
Finally, David recognized what he saw in the old man’s eyes now and heard in his voice.
“You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”
The old man said nothing.
“Why would you be afraid of her?”
“I’ll tell you somethin’, mister. Just consider it part of the fifteen bucks.” He took another swig from the brown Hamms quart. “You don’t want to know that girl.”
“Why not?”
“That’s all I’m gonna say.” He pointed to the door. His loose skin shimmied as he raised his arm. “Now you git.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“No.”
“You don’t know when she comes here?”
“No. Now git, just like I said.”
“The landlord here?”
“Ain’t no landlord. Just the real estate woman. Big tits. She comes once a week and checks things over.”
“I want to go in there.”
“Apartment six?”
“Yes.”
The old man shook his head. “You’re right, pardner. You ain’t no cop. You’re crazy is what you are. Crazy as shit.”
“You going to try and stop me?”
“From going in there?”
“Yes.”
The old man laughed. He sounded genuinely amused.
“Hell, no. You go in there all you want.”
David said nothing else. He crossed the floor, the aged oak floor creaking under his weight, turned the stereo back up to a decent level, then walked out of the apartment, closing the old man’s door.
He walked back down the hall to No. 6. He tried the knob. Locked.
In TV shows, private detectives were forever using credit cards to tumble locked doors. Standing there in the murky light of the hallway, the stereo still twice as loud as it needed to be (the old man had turned it up, of course), the odor of cooking and garbage still turning his stomach, he tried the credit card.
What he got for his trouble, after a few moments, was an American Express card that was bent nearly in half. The door had not yielded at all. As he’d suspected, this trick only worked on doors with more modern lock systems.
He was more comfortable with what he tried next. The door was made of cheap pine and was probably half as old as the house itself.
It shouldn’t be too difficult
The door’s resilience shocked him. It also shocked the shoulder he’d just rammed into it. He was left leaning against the wall and rubbing a very sore spot just above his right bicep, where door and shoulder had made contact.
He was still rubbing his shoulder when he saw the old man appear in the hellish red light of his doorway. He grinned his toothless smile. Obviously he could see that David had tried ramming into the door. Obviously he could see that David had hurt himself trying to do so.
Above the din of the stereo, the old man said, “Only way you’re gonna get in there is kick the sumbitch. That’s what I’d do.”
Then he disappeared back inside his apartment, slamming the door.
David, continuing to work his shoulder, moved back from the wall and looked again at the door to No. 6. Though his ego was hurt—he wanted to feel at least as purposeful as “Magnum, P.I.”—he supposed the old bastard was right. The card hadn’t worked. Nor had his shoulder.
He figured out the best way to put his heel against the lock and then proceeded to push with his heel. The first time, it didn’t work but he could feel—unlike his shoulder attempt—the door give at least a little bit.
The fifth time, it worked very well.
The heretofore impregnable door popped open with impressive implosion.
David went inside.
During his married years, he’d visited a friend’s house that had been destroyed by fire. He recalled how all the wood was charred black, how to the touch it had felt bumpy, as if it were an animal covered with scales. He also recalled the odor. Fire always left a searing smell on the air, a smell that took years to go away. That smell was still in this room.
This apartment was laid out like the old man’s, but instead of hellish red there was just the charred black and the big holes in the plaster walls from where the axes of firemen had pulled the chunks. The only illumination came from a streetlight that laid a dim pall over everything.
Some things had not been damaged. There was a couch, the cushions eaten up by fire. There was a daybed, the mattress stained from where the firemen’s hoses had doused it. There was a bureau, the mirror on top shattered into a hundred fragments. It played back a very distorted image of David.
He found the phone in the corner. It was a model that David had used as a boy, the receiver resting on two slender prongs. Somebody had jerry-rigged it into the jack, which had remained undamaged in the fire. He lifted the cord trailing from its back and followed it through the darkness to a jack on a baseboard. He pulled the cord taut. It was still plugged in.
He went back to the phone itself and lifted the receiver. He got a dial tone. As many times happened when the phone company cut off service for overdue bills, the overdue party was left with a phone that allowed for calls out, but no calls in.
He replaced the receiver and began searching the apartment. He had no idea what he was looking for. In the third room, a kind of combination kitchenette and dining area, he found a box with canned goods and a stack of newspapers.
The papers interested him because they had been turned back to the-want ads and certain ads had been circled. He carried the papers into the living room where he could use the spill light from the broken windows to examine the want ads more carefully.
A chill traversed his entire spine when he saw what section of ads had been noted—”Wanted, Babysitters.”
What was even more disturbing were the dates of the papers. Though the old man said that the fire had gutted the apartment three years ago, these papers were mostly dated within the past two months. You could see where water from the hoses had splashed them.
He went through each paper, checking each circled ad carefully. In all, there were seventeen ads and each ran to type—credentials were required, pay was described as good, and phone numbers given.
All but the paper on the bottom, that is. Even touching that one told him instantly that there was something different about it. He took it even closer to the window for inspection.
It was a very old paper, the date given at the top read April 4, 1967. Though it was the local paper, much of the front page was devoted to national news of the time, particularly various examples of President Richard M. Nixon’s pending re-election. Aside from a story about the mayor cutting the ribbon at a new bank (still in business today), there was only one other local piece. This one had been circled with the same ballpoint pen as the want ads.
