Killer Move - Michael Marshall [70]
There was the other number he could call, but he didn’t want to do that. He really didn’t want to.
The panic in his guts started to grow. He had even, for a moment, thought about calling Lynn instead. He knew this was born of nothing more than desperation, however. She was just a chew toy, part of a long and complex program of self-distraction, a way of proving to himself that he could live as others did. He knew that. She could be of no help to him now, and it puzzled him that he’d considered it.
He wondered for a moment then, as he held himself upright with one hand, the handset gripped in the other (the two broken fingers in the left making it hard to hold it properly), whether he’d somehow got it all wrong. Whether he could, in fact, have led a normal life.
Too late now.
Too late by years.
Too late to be anything else.
And so, finally, he’d called the second number.
After five rings, it had picked up. Perhaps this was because the guy was on the West Coast, and three hours back in time. It seemed equally possible, however, that he just never slept. Warner had met this person three times over the last few years, and though he understood himself to be a bad man, he had immediately realized that this person was on a whole other plane. The man had been polite, even friendly at times. He had nonetheless scared Warner badly, as you might be by an alien who looked exactly like a human, and yet was something else.
“Who’s this?” the voice said.
“David Warner.”
“And?”
“I’ve got some serious . . . problems.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You . . . how? How do you know?”
“Why are you calling, David?”
Warner had tilted forward until his forehead rested on the rough, pebbled wall above the phone. He used a sentence he had never previously uttered in his life.
“I . . . need help.”
He explained his situation. He explained his injuries. He explained why he could not go home. Though he knew it was probably a mistake, he mentioned the heavy financial dues he’d paid every year.
The man on the other end told him what to do. He gave him a phone number, told him to leave a message as to his whereabouts, and then to keep out of sight.
Warner started to thank him, but realized the phone had already been put down. He called the toll-free number he’d been given, left the message, saying he would be on the beach in front of the unfinished Silver Palms development. It seemed as safe a place as any. No tourist was going to recognize him.
He put the phone back on the hook and shambled out toward the beach.
He didn’t know what time it was now, but if children were up and about and looking for shells, it had to be coming up for nine. Maybe later. He hoped they’d come for him soon. He really didn’t feel very well.
“I saw her face,” said a voice.
It came from behind, a point about six or eight feet up the gentle sandy slope. He recognized the speaker. He didn’t turn. No point turning to face the dead.
“I saw it every night when I lay in bed. I saw how it looked when she realized how drunk you were.”
Warner let his head drop, and answered to the sand between his knees. “She was a bar slut. A whore. She’d seen drunk gringos before.”
“But not like you. Not a man who’d get her into the back of a car, with me there in the passenger seat so it looked safe. Not someone who’d drive her way out of town and then pull off the road and stop the car.”
“Shut up,” Warner said.
“And I was just too high to do anything. Too drunk, too many joints. And fuck, David, I was only seventeen. So were you. How should I have known something like that was going to happen?”
“I didn’t know, either.”
“Yeah, you did. I’d always thought there was ice in you, but . . . fuck, Dave. Do you remember the way her face looked afterward? What you did to it with the rock?”
He remembered. He remembered waking the next morning, on the beach, miles from the mess he’d hidden in an abandoned house—he’d tried to get Katy to help, but she was too screwed up and drunk and crying too hard. Remembered feeling sick, remembered the sense of horrified