Installment #22
Chapters 39 & 40
39
Walt backtracked through Eden, cutting down a side street. He took the road leading out to Vern’s junkyard and arrived there within two minutes. Walt’s mouth was dry, his heart racing.
He rolled down the window and took a breath of the hot night air. Walt followed the tire-rutted path around the perimeter to the back of the salvage yard. He found a gate wide open and drove into the canyons of junk, uniform piles of car bodies and parts.
Unsure of where to go, Walt stopped. He listened but all he could hear was the idling of the truck. He shut down the engine and listened to the pounding silence. Walt could smell the smoke from the scorched fields, an earthy odor that lingered in his nose.
“Cowboy!”
Walt turned and saw Geri stepping out from behind a stack of tires and into the glow of his headlights. She looked good, her jeans and white blouse showing off much of what he had tried hard to forget about her. Climbing into the truck, she slid all the way over next to Walt, kissing him on the cheek.
“Drive,” she said.
Geri steered Walt through a tidy maze of debris until she had him hide his truck behind a wall of junked mustangs, all the production years and peeling colors. Walking hand in hand, she led him down a narrow path that cut through two orderly banks of junked chassis, finally stopping at the incinerated hull of her own Camaro.
“I loved this car,” Geri said. “It was all I needed. Could count on it. Fast and good looking and looked good on me. This car treated me right. Man, I loved this car.”
“It shows,” Walt said, running a finger over the charred body of the car.
“Hey, I did love this car. But some things have to be done, you know?”
“Have to be? Nothing has to be. We get options, choices.”
“Not me, I don’t,” Geri said.
“Can always just walk away.”
Geri smiled at Walt, moved up to his face like she might kiss him.
“I’m glad you made it, baby.”
“To Eden?”
“To Eden,” she said. “And here tonight.”
“Don’t pretend,” Walt said. “You knew I’d show up. Let’s get to it: What do you want me to do for you this time?”
“Get to it? You sound like a guy anxious to make a decision, Walt. Okay, let’s get to it: I need your help getting the money.”
“What money?”
“My money. Vern’s got it stashed somewhere out here.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“I don’t know where he stashed it. I’ll head back, find a reason to get him to come out here. You hide, watch where he keeps the money. He leaves, you scoop up my money. Then I’ll come get you. All you gotta do is watch. You like to watch, don’t you?”
“Funny. So why don’t you just ask Vern for it?”
“He ain’t giving it up unless I do. Know what I mean?”
Geri stepped toward Walt, taking his hand in hers.
“I never should have trusted him,” she said. “Too late to worry about that, though. Are you going to give me a hand?”
Her eyes were pleading and watery. Walt looked away, up to the full moon and the stars.
“C’mon Walt. The money is ours. I figure I owe you after that scam at the track went sour. And for running out like that. Help me get my money and you and me, we can leave tonight. Look at me, baby.”
Walt said nothing as he looked into her eyes hoping to see truth or lies. Either one just so that he might know which he was hearing.
“Lend me a hand,” Geri said, squeezing Walt’s fingers. “Don’t make me…I’ll let Vern put his hands on me if I have to. But I really don’t want to, Walt.”
Walt felt Geri guiding his hand to her belly, down the front of her jeans; she had unbuttoned them without Walt even noticing. She closed her eyes and whispered in his ear.
“I like your hands, baby. Remember it?”
Remember it? thought Walt. So long trying to forget it.
“I’ve never made love to a dead woman before,” Walt said.
“What about that one girl you dated in high school? The one you said just laid—
“Shut up.”
Walt kissed Geri, deeply, there among the junk.
40
“He’s been in there a long time,” Randall said over the walkie-talkie. “Starsky, do you copy? Over.”
Sheriff Cady, sitting in his International Harvester pickup truck, kept his eye on the junkyard about a quarter of a mile away as he spoke into the walkie-talkie, replying to his deputy.
“Randall, what kind of language are you speaking?”
Static came over the little speaker, then the click of Randall pushing his button to talk.
“Code-names, Sherif, um, Starsky. Over.”
“What in the hell for?”
Randall, watching the far side of the junkyard from the cab of his pickup truck, thought before he answered.
“Well, this is a police-type situation, a stakeout. We don’t do stuff like this very often. I figured we ought to do it up right. Ouch! Over.”
“What happened?”
“Spilled my coffee, damn it.”
“Coffee? It’s 11:30 at night.”
“Who knows how long this thing will drag on. I got donuts too. Over.”
“Enough with the radio etiquette,” said the sheriff. “You got donuts?
“Roger. People are always making jokes about cops eating donuts, so I figured when in Rome….over.”
“That’s on TV, movies. You always get your ideas on how to act from the TV? That’s a shame.”
Sheriff Cady let go of the button on his walkie-talkie and laughed to himself. While he waited to see how worked up Randall would get over his last comment, the sheriff watched the flicker of orange fire and gray smoke advancing slowly over the fields. The smell of the burning stubble took him back for an instant to his boyhood. His father, now gone so long, flashed in his mind. Sheriff Cady was amazed at how you never get over losing the people you love.
Randall’s agitated voice brought him back.
“These donuts are good,” Randall said. “Seems like you and me mostly eat pie at the café. Figured donuts might make for a nice change of pace. Besides, eating pie in a vehicle, that’s almost the definition of a bad idea.”
“How many of them donuts you got?”
“Half dozen. Well, four now.”
“What kind?
“Couple of glazed. A few cake donuts. And a Long John.”
Sheriff Cady surveyed his side of the junkyard. No light, no movement.
“Anything going on over on your side?” Sheriff Cady said into the walkie-talkie.
“Nope.”
“Then why don’t you drive that cake donut over here, Hutch? Over.”
Shortly, Randall arrived alongside Sheriff Cady. He parked his truck in the opposite direction so he could pass a cake donut to the sheriff.
“Coffee?”
The sheriff shook his head.
“This is a good idea, using our own trucks, Randall said. “Walt bought it, no doubt.”
“Hey, which one of them was Starsky?” Sheriff Cady said.
“The one who drove the car. The red car.”
“That’s right. The curly-haired fella. Was a Ford, wasn’t it?”
“Yep, a Grand Torino. Pretty fast car. Three-fifty-one Windsor, four-barrel. Or you could get the four twenty-eight jet. Neither one was as fast as they made that car seem on the show. Sheriff, I know TV is just TV and life is just life. No reruns in life.”
“Good point,” Sheriff Cady said, chuckling.
Then he stopped.
“Shut off your truck, Randall. Kill your lights.
Randall did so and they sat quietly listening to tires crunching gravel somewhere off in the junkyard.
“Speaking of cars, looky-there,” the sheriff said. He nodded toward the junkyard. Randall craned his neck around just in time to see a blue Buick sedan emerge from the back of the junkyard, drive along the perimeter then take off like a shot once it hit the blacktop.
“That whose car I think it is? “Randall said.
““I believe it is,“ Sheriff Cady said, following the car with his eyes. “Diane, what in the world are you doing out here?”
“Want me to follow her?“
“No need,“ Sheriff Cady. “We can catch up with her later.”
“Tell you what, for a junkyard,” Randall said, “this place is hopping tonight.“