Body Copy - Michael Craven [59]
“I’m in a jam,” Tremaine said. “Too much coffee. Please.
I just have to take a piss. I already tried the aquarium place next door, they said no.”
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B O D Y C O P Y
The man laughed and said, “All right, man. I’ll show you where it is.”
He led Tremaine to the door he had come out of at the back of the studio. He opened it and led Tremaine in, following closely behind him. Once behind the door, Tremaine could see a hallway, a long hallway, with several doors on the right-hand side, maybe four, and two doors on the left. It was clean and kind of nice-looking. Freshly painted white walls, no dirt anywhere, and blond hardwood floors just like up-front.
The guy led Tremaine to the first door on the left, still standing close, right there, and said, “This is the bathroom.”
Tremaine thought, he could have stayed up-front and said, “The bathroom’s the first door on the left,” and let me find it on my own. But he didn’t. He led me back here personally. Maybe he didn’t want me to go in the wrong door . . .
Tremaine went in the bathroom and the man stood outside, watching him as he went in.
The bathroom was also clean and nice. Tremaine made sure to actually use the bathroom, as he was sure the man was standing outside, right outside. After Tremaine flushed, but before he washed his hands, he heard, through the wall, what sounded like a woman laughing. Had to be coming from the other room on the left, adjacent to the bathroom, not any of the rooms on the right.
Tremaine washed his hands, dried them, then walked out of the bathroom, and there was the guy, waiting for him. Looking right at him, that glimmer holding firm in his eyes.
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Michael Craven
“You’re a lifesaver,” Tremaine said.
“Been there.”
The guy motioned for Tremaine to lead the way out, back to the front of the studio, and Tremaine did, walking straight out, not even looking to the left at the four closed doors.
And there they were again, the two of them, standing face to face in the front of the studio, their reflections all over the place. Tremaine thought, how does this guy fit in to my puzzle? And then he thought, should I ask him about Tyler Wilkes, about Roger Gale? Tremaine looked at the guy. Intense, but calm. No, this one’s not the person to ask.
Tremaine said, “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
The guy looked at him and nodded. Before heading for the door, Tremaine took one last look at the guy standing there, his black skin contrasting with the white cloth of the karate uniform. Tremaine looked in the man’s glimmering eyes for just a moment, and, in that moment, he could see charm, suspicion, and evil.
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C H A P T E R 2 7
Tremaine left the strip mall and drove two miles west, back toward the beach. Then he turned the Cutlass right, back on Olympic now, then right again, back toward downtown, back toward the karate studio. But this time he approached it from the back side, north of Seventh Street, from behind the strip mall. He pulled the Cutlass into the alley behind the stores in the mall, where the employees of the aquarium store, the wig store, the karate studio, the sushi restaurant, and the barber shop parked. He then went left down an alley that ran perpendicular to the one he was on, did a U-turn, and tucked the Cutlass behind a four-foot brick wall, facing the alley behind the strip mall.
He sat in the car and waited.
Dusk fell, then night. Six smokes and side one of the Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East.
Michael Craven
He watched various people from the various establishments head out into the alley and get in their cars and leave for the day. Mostly people he didn’t recognize, and then one guy he did. The black guy from the karate studio. Tremaine watched the guy get in his car, a Corvette, a new one, and cruise down the alley, away from him. Then the Corvette went left, away from Seventh, and was gone.
Tremaine stayed put.
Moments later, Tremaine saw two people leave from the same door the black man had left. A young man and a young woman, an attractive young woman with blonde hair and