Lost (15 page)

Tugging at the dog's rope, Sherman tore from the pickup window and marched past the attendant. Angry tears stood in his eyes. He knew when the cards were stacked against him, knew when to keep his mouth shut. He jerked the dog to him, moved down the drive, crossed the highway, and slipped into the ditch so he could let the Chinaman loose. His good hand was curled tight on the blackjack in his pocket. He wanted to take it and beat that sonofabitch to death. He hadn't gone very far when he heard a horn honk and saw the white pickup truck swerve to the side of the road above the ditch. It's about god-dammed time, he thought.

He squatted down in a corner of the truck bed, pulling the dog in beside him, and the irregular houses and foothills and pockets of trees wheeled alongside the truck and sank away in an ever-deepening V.

By the time Sherman hopped down from the bed of the truck, uneasiness was nagging at him. He held the Chinaman's collar with his bandaged hand, waved thanks to the driver, and watched the pickup rattle out into the steady flow of Wednesday-afternoon traffic. They were alone in a strange place, but what he felt was more like panic than loneliness. From the truck bed, he had seen three patrolling police cars and now the air seemed charged with hostility. This is not a good place, he thought.

The highway crooked down into the basin of the city and narrowed to a street. There, as far as the eye could see, loomed the city of Scranton. At his feet, the sidewalk thrummed as if from some deep pounding. Under the vast network of poles and wires, between what seemed like stacks of buildings, rivers of cars darted and blared. The air stank of electricity and sulphur. Backfire, gunfire, blowout. The sky glimmered of itself like the green-gold wings of flies. Factory whistles blew, church bells struck, and sirens shrieked in the air with sudden death. Like evil tidings, all his worst expectations had come home to roost in his mind. If Mamie had been brought here, how would he ever find her?

He stood there transfixed for several seconds, feeling himself shrink smaller and smaller. Trembling with hate, he muttered, “We gotta get outa here. You stick with me, now. We gotta get through with this,” and in a burst of furious urgency, he led the dog through the traffic to the nearest gas station.

He waited on the cement drive until the mechanic would talk to him; then Sherman asked if he'd seen a dark blue car come through here last night.

“There's lots of blue cars,” the mechanic said, clicking his ballpoint with his grease-black thumb. “What kinda car was it?”

Sherman described the car with his hands. It had two doors, the trunk sloped down, it had bubble fenders in front and a snout for a hood.

The man said, “It sounds like a Chevy or Buick, '48 or '49.” He turned the pages of a calendar showing naked girls posed in and around different makes of cars, and kept saying, “Does this look like it?” Sherman shook his head and shook his head, until finally he said, “That's a lot like it, only this one I'm asking about was blue.” And the man said, “Now, that's a '48 Buick Roadmaster.” But he hadn't seen one.

Another mechanic, in a garage, changed spark plugs while Sherman spoke to him. “Did you see a dark blue '48 Buick come through here last night about eleven o'clock?” The man studied the mean-looking dog and shook his head. Sherman had walked out into the daylight when the man said, “Who's drivin' that Buick?”

“A woman was drivin' it,” Sherman said, coming back. He took the larger photograph from his billfold and held it up, but out of reach. “Here's what she looks like,” he said, “and there's this little girl with her.”

The mechanic squinted his eyes and reset his cap. “Naw,” he said.

Bit by bit, treading down the sides of the highway strewn with bottle caps like an idiot's spilled treasure, zigzagging back and forth through traffic from one gas station to another, he put his question together in a cohesive whole. Had any of them seen a blue '48 Buick drive through here around eleven o'clock last night? He described the car again when it was called for, showed the woman's picture, and eventually showed the picture of Mamie, although it worried him that Mamie's picture would probably appear in the newspaper soon enough and somebody might put two and two together. But nobody remembered seeing a blue Buick driven by a woman. And the afternoon passed slowly away.

Eventually he came to a gas station with an empty driveway. When the man acted friendly, Sherman said, “I was wonderin' if you could break this up for me?” He slipped one of the thousand-dollar bills from the other two and opened it with his fingers.

The man held out his hand. “Let me see that a minute.”

Reluctantly, Sherman laid the bill on the calloused hand. He took a deep breath and exhaled it a little at a time.

“Where'd you get this?” the man said.

“Just found it.” Under his arms, his shirt felt sticky. “You gonna break it or not?”

The man eyed him. “I don't carry that kind of money around here.” He folded the bill lengthwise between his blunt fingers. “This's an awful lot of money for a kid to have in his pocket—practically brand new. S'never touched the ground.” Keeping his face lowered, folding and creasing the money, the man glanced up at Sherman. “This money don't belong to you, does it? Where'd you get it?”

Sherman lunged forward and snatched the bill. “Give me back my
goddammed money!
” Hurtling at his side, the Chinaman's claws dug the glass countertop, his barking muzzle diving at the man, who had quickly stepped back. The potato-chip rack clattered to the floor. Sherman caught the rope and pulled the dog away. “There's nothing wrong with my money!” he shouted. And backed away, backed slowly away, not once taking his eyes from the man.

At five-thirty that evening, Sherman and the Chinaman stood pressed together in the doorway of a church not far from downtown Scranton. He had discovered nothing about Mamie—a whole day shot. Now he had to get some money he could spend. Soon it would be night and his head was beginning to hurt. He knew he should take another pill, shouldn't try to save them, but the pressure of the impending night weighed on his thoughts. He needed to get one of these large bills cashed before everything closed. As he struggled to piece together a scheme to break the money, a yellow taxicab rolled to the curb in front of a brick house across the street. The driver got out of the cab, cocked his cap at an angle, opened the back door, and lifted out a bag of groceries. He went to the front door of the house, rang the doorbell.

Squatting beside the Chinaman for warmth, Sherman studied the cabdriver. He was a young guy and he moved with a jaunty efficiency. A woman opened the door, they spoke, and the driver followed her into the house. Minutes later, the cabdriver reappeared, returned to the taxi, took out a big box of groceries, and went back inside the house. Sherman came to his feet. He understood what was taking place. The woman had called in an order at the grocery store and the cabbie was delivering it. His mother had done the same thing when the children had been sick with scarlet fever and she couldn't leave the house.

The cabbie came out talking to the lady, who was paying him. Sherman went down the church steps and into the street. Walking very fast, the cabdriver came through the gate and stepped out around the front of his cab.

“Hey,” Sherman said, crossing the street.

The cabbie hardly glanced up. “How you doin'?” He sat down under the dome light of the cab, one leg dangling on the pavement. He spoke into a small black microphone, wrote something in a book, lit a cigarette. Sherman stood at the edge of the open car door.

The cabbie reached for the door handle. “Hey,” Sherman said, “you do favors for people, ain't that right? I mean, like you took that woman her groceries. And stuff like that? Dontcha?”

The cabbie smiled. He had bad teeth. Crumbs of tobacco stuck to his lips. “Well,” he said, “I don't deliver groceries for nothin'. I get paid.” He gripped the padded door handle. He had a cocky, smirky grin and his face was angular and sleek and hard-boned; he looked clever like a fox, and Sherman liked him. The cabbie had his cuffs rolled up, and beneath the fine hair of his forearm a blue-and-red tattoo wiggled over his muscles.

“I've got a favor I need done,” Sherman said. “I'll pay you whatever she did,” and nodded toward the house.

The cabdriver glanced at him casually. “Look, kid, I don't have time to mess with you. I'm losing money.” He threw his cigarette out, stepped on the butt, and pulled the door shut, but Sherman stood at the window, held the big bill up. “Look,” he said through the glass. “Could you help me break this? Take it to a store or someplace and break it? I'd give you ten dollars if you would.”

The sunlight was nearly gone. The car door opened, the dome light blinked on. The cabbie grinned. “What's that you've got there?” he asked.

“It's a thousand dollars,” Sherman said. “A thousand-dollar bill.”

“Well, where'd you get it?” He acted surprised and impressed.

“Found it.”

“You did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where'd you find it?”

“Just blowin' across the grass. It looks brand new.”

“You live around here?”

Sherman looked straight at him. “Can you help me break it or not?”

“I'm thinkin' about it.”

“Well, I wish you would. I need to get this broke.”

“Just hold your horses,” the cabbie said. “I better do some checking.” He picked up the microphone and turned his head in to the cab. Sherman heard him say, “Breaker central,” and then something else and, “I'm still on South Hampton. I'm gonna get a cup of coffee.” The radio crackled and a woman's garbled voice fuzzed and snapped. The cabbie looked around at Sherman and winked. “Well, tell'er to keep her pants on.” He laughed at his joke, signed off, and put the microphone down.

“Now,” he said, turning his full attention to Sherman, “as I was saying, that's a hell of a lot of money to try to do anything with this time of day. Everything's practically closed. All the banks're closed, all the usual places. No grocery store's gonna have enough money to cash a bill that big.”

As the sleek-faced cabbie talked, Sherman stuffed the bill slowly back inside his pocket. “I know it,” Sherman said.

“I didn't say it was impossible,” the cabbie said. “I just said it wouldn't be easy. I know a couple of places.… I know this one place in particular where a friend of mine's usually got a bankroll might be able to help us out. But it'd cost you—probably cost you a C-note.”

“What's that?”

“A C-note's a hundred. I imagine that'd be his cut.” The cabbie sat on the edge of the car seat, in no hurry now, leaning over with his elbows on his knees and his feet planted on the pavement.

“That's pretty steep,” Sherman said.

“I know it is.” He was talking slow and friendly. “It sure is. But with money like that you can afford it. I'm just telling you the facts. That's one way we could go.” He kept looking at Sherman from the corners of his eyes. “Then, of course, it's clear on the other side of town and I'd have to take time to arrange it and make the trip. I imagine altogether it'd run you another fifteen, twenty bucks for my time and expenses. Now that's one way we could go with this situation.”

Sherman tried to calculate quickly how much it would cost all told and how much he'd have left over, but he couldn't. It was coming at him too fast, somehow; it made him extremely nervous. It seemed like a lot to pay, considering that before last night he'd never even seen a hundred dollars, much less a thousand. But even so, he thought, he and the Chinaman would still have plenty of money left afterward. “How long would it take?” he finally asked.

“Oh … probably half an hour, everything considered.”

“How would we do it?”

“Probably the easiest way would be for me to just go and do it. You could give me the money and I'd go change it and meet you back here.”

“What if you don't show up?”

The cabbie grinned; then he laughed. “Well, hell, kid, I'd show up if you paid me to do a job. What's the matter?”

“If you're gonna do it,” Sherman said, “then I have to come, too.”

“Okay. That can be arranged.”

“And he goes, too.”

The cabbie rolled his eyes toward the dog and turned back. “Look. That won't work. If somebody sees a dog in my rig, I get fired. That's the way it is. Health and safety regulations. Can't do it.”

Sherman shook his head. “He goes too, or I don't go.”

The cabbie put out his hand to pat Sherman's shoulder and the Chinaman barked once and began to growl. He removed his hand. “Let's see if we can't work this out. Why don't you two get in the car?”

They sped through the city, lights glowing and sinking past. Bounced across railroad tracks, and made their way through a dark area of empty-looking warehouses. At one point, they wove through traffic over a long black bridge and dropped in among rows of car lots and drive-in restaurants swarming with traffic. Sherman sat on the back seat with the Chinaman tall beside him. Once they were moving, the cabbie kept up a constant chatter. He asked Sherman what'd happened to his hand, but Sherman was busy studying their route and left his answer deliberately vague. “Hurt it,” he said, “working on an old car.”

“Wasn't battery acid, was it?”

“Nope.”

The cabdriver had agreed to take them back to their original starting point when the transaction was over. Even so, Sherman felt swept along on an irreversible plunge through the night; he kept struggling to track their direction with landmarks he could remember. The taxi bucked and rolled with the uneven streets, stopped at red lights, then sped away. The steering wheel had a knob on it that the cabbie used to drive one-handed. The radio squawked unintelligibly, and over it the other radio played tunes.
So Halo, everybody, Halo. Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair
.…