Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

27

Zeb Luther was home from the hospital by mid-afternoon— if you could call that fusty apartment home . Hospitals were so damn slow, with all their paperwork. Riding in the backseat of Thelma’s Volvo with Mindy beside him, he had his walker folded in the trunk; not that he intended to use it. “I’m not crippled. Ain’t no broken leg, no need for that contraption.”

Joe Grey sat across the street in his tower watching Mindy help the old man to the curb and Thelma wrestle out the walker as if it weighed a ton; he watched Zebulon manage the four front steps just fine without any hospital equipment, leaving the walker propped against the rail.

Thelma scowled at Mindy. “You can get him some lunch or an early supper. Both of you better eat, there’s peanut butter and jelly, and milk if it hasn’t gone sour. Then Grandpa might want to lie down.”

“I had peanut butter and jelly in the hospital until it’s running out my ears. And why would I want to lay down, I’ve been in that damned bed for three days. Mindy and I will take a walk.”

Thelma made a rude comment and left the house saying something about groceries.

Thus the neighborhood disturbances began again, bursting forth from within, quite audible at all hours as Grandpa argued that he was going home—to his own home—as Thelma and Varney shouted at him, and as neighbors walked the street staring in, then began calling the station; as the dispatcher sent out an officer on a domestic that ended in nothing but a warning. Zebulon was so loud, and Varney’s language so vile that, after the second domestic call, the responding officer threatened to take them in. Thelma managed to talk him out of it because Grandpa was just home from the hospital and how could she take care of him in jail?

Officer Wrigley frowned. “One more complaint, Grandpa goes back to the hospital and the rest of you to jail.”

“Not my little girl,” Thelma howled. “You can’t put . . .”

“She goes to Children’s Services,” Wrigley said. As he left, Thelma swore and slammed the door behind him. When she headed for her bedroom, Varney came down the hall wearing wrinkled jeans and an old jacket and stomped out of the house; who knew where he went? Joe didn’t hear his car start.

Mindy and Zeb didn’t hear it, either, but they heard Varney go out the front door. He did that sometimes, left his car at home. Mindy looked out the window, saw him walking away, up the hill toward the freeway.

When the house was quiet, when they knew Varney was gone, and thought that Thelma slept, Grandpa and Mindy, alone in Mindy’s room, packed a few necessities in a small duffel and hid it under his bed. They went up the hall to the kitchen and as Zeb listened for Thelma, Mindy hastily packed some food in two grocery bags. She made some canned-ham sandwiches, taking two back to her room for their supper. They went to bed fully dressed. Whether or not they slept, Joe Grey himself dozed off.

Around midnight, Mindy put her ear to Thelma’s door making sure her mother still slept; she slipped into the room as silent as a mouse and lifted Thelma’s car keys from the dresser. Zebulon fetched the grocery bags from the kitchen broom closet and they fled the house.

The sound of a car starting woke Joe, he rose up among the pillows to see Thelma’s parking lights on, and Zeb at the wheel. He watched Mindy hop in with an armload of blankets. The two grocery bags were already on the backseat, with the duffel, and Joe Grey smiled. Zeb Luther was having his way, he and Mindy were going home.Oh, wouldn’t Thelma pitch a fit!

The rain was gone but the clouds still hung thick covering the moon, the night so black he could hardly see where street and parked cars met. Only up the block past a few dark cottages and shops did faint lights shine where the shopping plaza stretched away behind his own house: softly illuminated courtyard, subtly lit first-floor display windows. And on the dark street, only the trail of Zebulon’s taillights headed toward the freeway. His dashboard lights were off, and he must be driving with only his parking lights. He’d be lucky not to crash into a parked car before he reached traffic and had to turn the headlamps higher. The village was so still, the only movement Joe could see was Thelma’s “borrowed” car creeping along . . .

But when he looked again he saw movement at the front of the plaza, faint lights moving inside Saks’s elegant second floor.

Leaving his warm cushions, Joe leaped up onto the top of his tower. From that height, perched on its slanted shingles, he could easily see past the roof of his own house. Yes, faint lights moving deep within Saks’s second-floor display windows, the faintest of soft blue lights. Deeper in, black shadows moved behind the fashionably posed models. And in front of Saks, on Ocean Avenue, three old gray cars were parked half on the sidewalk with their backs to Saks’s front door. Tonight was the night.

Dropping down from the top of his tower, Joe galloped across the bedroom roof and dropped to the kitchen roof; he jumped down to the barbecue counter and around the patio wall that Ryan had designed and built. Here he made a long leap to the top of the higher wall that separated the back of their property, and the entire residential block, from the plaza.

From that wall he could see behind the plaza buildings to the wide strip where buses and trucks could pull off the side street and park during the day. Four tour buses were parked there now, effectively concealing the back of Saks from the street, their occupants most likely tucked in for the night at the several motels that stood among the trees and village shops. Between the buses and Saks, two large black limos had been squeezed in close to the store’s delivery doors, their lights out, nearly invisible in the blackness. Was this a new twist, DeWayne had split up the cars and the retreat routes? Maybe thinking that Maurita had told the department how he usually operated: all out at once, through one door, loaded down with their loot, gone before the cops had a clue?

Now, there was not a cop in sight, in front or in back of Saks. Not a squad car, not a single foot patrol that Joe could see standing in the shadows. He was about to spin around and head home to the phone when, through the upstairs store windows, lights flashed and the shadows moved fast in one direction, converging at the back, hauling cumbersome bags. They disappeared downward as if on service stairs. Where the hell were the cops? The men came out the back of the building, piled their black plastic bags into the limos, swung in themselves and were gone, turning left to Ocean Avenue then right, heading up the hill for the freeway. He heard the cars in front start up and follow them, those figures so stealthy he hadn’t seen them. And still not a cop anywhere. He watched the line of cars turn south onto the freeway, and Joe Grey sped for home.

Bursting into the kitchen through Rock’s dog door and leaping to the counter, he had knocked off the phone’s speaker, forgetting that this call would be ID’d, when up on the freeway he heard tires squeal and sirens scream. He pushed the phone back in place, realizing only then how close the snitch had come to getting caught.

Just ahead of the mixed entourage of crooks, Zeb and Mindy, still driving slowly, saw the pack of cars bearing down behind them. They saw and heard the scream of squad cars, saw their lights flashing, coming fast, and they made a sharp skid onto the right shoulder; they were almost scraped over by the speeding limos. Zeb pulled over farther onto an embankment, tilting the Volvo nearly beyond recovery.

“Get out, Mindy, before we go over.”

“You get out,” she said, grabbing her cell phone and opening her door, watching Zebulon slide out to safety; and they both scrambled down the ditch.