Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (16 page)

“No more,” Benny said when they were off again. He had a visible sweat growing there on his forehead.

“Will you stop worrying?”

“It’s not right, is all. And what if we got caught? What then?”

“We didn’t … and we won’t.”

Ben gave Ryan an anxious glance. He stopped himself before he said something, and then simply turned back to the road. His foot fell a little harder on the gas.

“Turn here,” Ryan told him when they were two miles up 71. It was another two from the turn, and they carried on.

Ben Caldwell finally turned into a wide parking lot and brought them to within thirty feet of the large building before them. He looked out at the nondescript hotel—nondescript save the fat red letters and winking joker face on the roof—and gave The Joker’s Wild a summary grimace. “Booze Fairy,” he muttered. “Jeeze-Louise.”

“Just let me handle this, will ya?”

“This is nuts! He’s not gonna go for this.”

“You want whiskey or not?”

Ben sighed. “I get all the change, right?
Right?
”

Ryan gave a slim grin that seemed to make Ben Caldwell worry even more. He got out and took a look around. The place was of grayed wood and brown brick, run down, with some shoddy apartments on the second floor; one of the windows up there had a running fan that buzzed. The lot was nearly empty, save a couple of half-tons and a beat-up station wagon that had one headlamp smashed in. He had half expected to see his father’s pickup, but they’d left him behind at the Texaco; on any other day it would have surprised him not to find him here. Once his mother kicked him out he practically lived here, working his biceps daily with a bottle of Old Number Seven. It didn’t matter that it was illegal to sell booze in taverns across the state. The Wild did, and that’s all that mattered to men like … well, men like his father. The cops had busted the owner more than a few times, but it was all just a dog and pony show. The guy was the brother of the county Sheriff; it didn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out how the lights stayed lit. Mostly, folks just turned a blind eye to the goings-on here, and while there were always the Holy Rollers trying to shut the place down for good, they were pretty much blowing smoke out of their asses. There were whispers, louder and louder every spring, that liquor was a-comin’ to town, a-comin’ to Iowa bars and Iowa restaurants, maybe as early as next year, and all he could think was how much easier it would be for his old man to make more of a jackass out of himself.

Suddenly he had second thoughts about the whole thing. What exactly was he going to say?

He didn’t know. He’d bullshitted Benny, but that was easy. Like blowing a fastball by him.

This was the Big Leagues.

He only hoped he could step up to the plate and cork a home run. Like that asshole, Jones.

Just remember: if the guy says no … it’s Plan B.

Ben raised his brows.
Well?

Ryan turned and hobbled to the entrance, his legs still tender. He was about to try the weathered door when it swung open and nearly struck him. A bear of a man, greasy, six-six, three hundred easy, looked him up and down. His lips wriggled as if he was going to say something, but then he uttered a solid belch, his hot breath pungent with the stagnant smell of spent beer. Ryan backed away in a grimace and let him pass. The man made his way to his truck with all the swagger of a Friday-night drunk. He let out another round of beer gas, climbed in and drove off.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,
he thought, and almost turned round. But in the next breath he was reaching for the door.

The place was dark and dank. Like a dungeon in a Karloff film. A few lamps suspended above some pool tables glowed like torches, guiding him, one by one, toward the bar. Two small bulbs, bare as sin, burned brightly above it. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and he wondered why on Earth they would keep it so dark.

Maybe they don’t like to see each other’s faces. Makes them invisible … makes it easier to hide from the demons.

He understood. They buried
their
troubles in a bottle. He buried his in the dirt.

The smoke was dreadful, hanging there like thick sap. He could taste it with every breath. A jukebox played something old, one of those corny Freddie Price songs his old man liked. There was some muted chatter, then only the music, just before a sharp
crakkk
startled him. Deep laughter echoed in the murk. The guy who broke scratched on the break, and his buddy was having a good holler over it. The guy who broke told the other guy to go fuck himself.

Some rube sat at the bar, his big ass spilling over the seat of his stool. The man barely stirred when Ryan approached, and he kept a good distance between them. The guy reeked of hard liquor. The drunk hovered over his glass, head hung in despair, the poor bugger’s hand trembling like a leaf. Ryan almost asked if he was all right. It occurred to him he was looking at his father maybe ten years down the road. Maybe less, the way things were going.

A grim hard face emerged from a corridor as a door swung closed behind it. The door was marked KINGS, the door beside it QUEENS, the cursive letters tarnished brass, and it was all Ryan could do to stop himself from laughing. All he could think was how stupid the names were. No doubt the drunken patrons who used the facilities felt like royals, as they gave it a shake or wiped their ass.

Henry Roberts was frail, pencil-thin; a solid breeze might send him fluttering away. His hair was fine and white, his scruffy complexion a sickly gray under the dim lights. He had creases in his crusty skin just about everywhere you looked. Baggy brown shorts, the ugliest Ryan had ever seen, swallowed his skinny legs, legs so close to stripped bone that Beaks would likely gnaw on them on sight. A half-smoked Lucky Strike hung from his thin lips, and when he looked up and saw the kid in his bar, his eyes narrowed to vicious slits of black. Slits that felt like razors cutting into Ryan’s flesh.

Ryan stepped back a little. He felt something thick clog his throat. The guy gave him the creeps. The barkeep drew on his smoke, eyeing him up. Henry Roberts raised a bony hand to his cigarette, drew it out slowly, and exhaled in his face. The Stick Man stuffed the cancer stick back between those chicken lips, his head kind of listing, a hint of some wicked grin there.

Ryan swallowed. “… I need …”

Henry Roberts drew his cigarette between his ochre-stained stick-fingers. He rolled a thin tongue over decaying front teeth, two missing, another chipped to a sharp edge. He unstuck the black thing stuck there, chewed it a bit and swallowed. For all Ryan knew, it was a morsel of roadkill. And from what he’d heard about the man, he wouldn’t put it past him. The guy was a freak.

If he so much as touches me, so help me God I’ll
—

“You need
what,
” Henry Roberts groaned, like an old tree in the wind.

Ryan panicked. He had no idea what he needed. His mind seemed to freeze. And he was worried that Ben would have messed things up.

“I need whiskey,” he mumbled after some length, too weak to be understood.

“
Eh?
”

From the glare he was given, it was hard to tell if it was anger or surprise, or if the man hadn’t heard him right in the first place. Maybe it was a little of all three. He straightened, trying to play it cool, but the fact was, that clog in his throat was threatening to choke him dead. Even his eyes betrayed him, shifting to the brooding rube for a moment.

“… I need … whiskey.”

He had spoken too loud. He must have. He didn’t want to turn to the men shooting stick to find them staring at him. He’d look like … well, like a kid.

“I want—”

“I know what you want,” the barkeep croaked. His cigarette hung taut in his lips, poised like a tiny knife.

Suddenly, standing alone, Ryan felt entirely vulnerable; this was a place of
men.
Maybe he should have brought Ben after all. Or just gone fishing.

“I got money,” he said flatly, and immediately wished he hadn’t. In all likelihood, he was walking out of here with nothing but a boot up his ass, and more likely was that he’d be twenty bucks lighter once they forced him to hand it over. So much for Ben’s change.

Henry Roberts cackled. It took him a moment to settle, the smoke from his Lucky floating round him in a thickening cloud. He didn’t look like he was going to speak another word, and then he did.

“You got trouble,” is what the Stick Man said. “Now get the hell outta here before I call the cops.”

Ryan flinched, praying the man didn’t notice. The bitch of it was, Henry Roberts was probably twenty pounds lighter than him, probably fifty years older. Why he was so afraid of him he wasn’t quite sure. Well, there was the thing about the old bastard touching him.

“I want whiskey.”

“Dumb
shit.
” The barkeep swept behind the bar, bent down a breath, and came up with a cocked .30-.30. All Ryan could do besides shit himself black was to stumble back on those useless legs.

“Wh—what’re you doin’?”

“Get your sorry ass outta my bar, kid.”

Ryan took a small step—a very wavering step—forward.

“Don’t you get me, boy?”

“I’m not leavin’ … not without whiskey.”

Ryan stood cold, uncertain of his next move or his next word (let alone his next breath), and turned to the men playing eight-ball. They looked up with dim curiosity, one sucking a smoke, the other spitting something dark and slick to the floor. And then they simply went back to wasting the afternoon, as if this happened all the time.

“Eh?”

He
is
deaf,
Ryan thought.
That’s what they say.

“I’m not leavin’.”

“I’m gonna count to three.”

“You’re not gonna shoot me,” Ryan said. “You know it, and I know it.”
But he might,
he thought,
he just might.

Henry Roberts took a moment to consider this statement. He looked positively puzzled by this turn of events. He put the gun down and tucked it away.

“Get outta here, kid.”

“I’m not leavin’ without my friends. Jack and Daniels.”

The barkeep started to grin at this old joke, but then he hacked up a lung. He choked his cigarette in an ashtray pregnant with the things, licked his lips, and then lit another.

“A real joker, eh? Well, joker boy. Let’s say I did have somethin’ for ya. You think I’d be so butt-stupid to sell it to some smartass kid?”

Suddenly, Ryan found his resolve slipping away … but couldn’t believe it when his legs took another small step forward. Maybe he
could
do this.

“But you
like
kids,” he said, and said it loud enough that he hoped everyone heard. Even the stoned rube.

Old Henry Roberts seemed to choke on a chunk of that roadkill. The barkeep’s face went numb as the color drained from him. If you had a needle you could have pricked him; the man wouldn’t have felt a thing. Ryan feared that
Plan B
—the plan that had come to him when he had lifted the money from the till, the plan he had hoped this wouldn’t come to—had given the man a mild stroke.

“You … get the hell outta my bar.
Now.
”

Time for the Three-Two pitch,
Ryan thought.

“I know about you and Billy Kingston,” he said, keeping his voice to a hair above a whisper.

“Shut your trap, boy.” Now the barkeep was whispering.

“And Billy’s little brother. Billy told me all about what you did to them last summer.”

“You little … you don’t know shit, kid.”

Fastball,
Ryan thought.
Blow it right by him.

“It was a Saturday,” he went on, as if he were telling the old man a ghost story. The thing was, it was a horror story, one of those Dark Closet tales you never wanted to hear. Or tell.

“I guess you don’t remember,” he said, reluctant to go on but having to now. “I mean, if I butt-fucked
my
little cousin, I guess
I’d
try to forget, too.”

It was true, every word. Billy Kingston
was
the man’s cousin, and Henry did butt-fuck him—
and
his little brother. Thing was, Billy Kingston was also one of Ryan’s friends, and Billy had drowned himself in the river last September. Took his father’s canoe and let himself over the side, two cement blocks tied to his ankles. They found the canoe miles from his body, and it took the cops three weeks to find him. He was pretty messed up from what Ryan had heard, fish got to him in a bad way. Billy had the sense to leave a note in Ryan’s math book, and when Ryan had thought about it, it was probably the best place to leave it. It was the one book he rarely opened, so it was safest there. Billy had scribbled
BUTTFUCK,
over and over and over, scribbled it as one never-ending word as if it were the only word he knew anymore, until there was no room left on the page. But on the back where there
was
room, Billy had told him the sickest part, a part that had made Ryan nearly throw up. Billy had begged Ryan to tell the cops, in letters formed so poorly that Billy must have been full crazy when he wrote them—because Billy couldn’t bring himself to. But Ryan never had. And he wouldn’t. Ever. He only prayed the Stick Man didn’t call his bluff.

“Did you hear what I said, old man?”

One of the men playing pool, the guy who had been laughing his ass off at the guy who blew the break, spoke up. “Somethin’ wrong, Henry?”

“Mind your own, Jacko.”

Jack Mitchell. Ryan recognized him now. The same Jack Mitchell who had burned out his ex’s trailer two years ago. Jacko gave the barkeep a
Hmph
, and did as he was told.

“So,” Ryan said. “What about it?”

Before he knew what was happening, Henry Roberts reached across the bar and snared him by the arm, drawing him sideways to the end of the bar and into the corridor. They stood next to the door marked QUEENS. Ryan backed up a step and kept his distance. He didn’t want to think what the old bastard might do if the guy whisked him behind that door.