"G.o.d, Garrett," I said, "Kull would be proud of you."

He laughed. "Yeah, and so would Conan."

All this was a surprise because Garrett had always been the most cowardly kid I'd ever known. He'd walk blocks out of his way to avoid the local bullies. The only time I'd ever seen him fight, he'd taken one punch, started crying, and fell to the ground.

He wasn't the old Garrett.

He'd beefed up maybe twenty pounds and the gray eyes hinted at a ferocity now. Even the hands looked bigger somehow, more purposeful.

"You working now?" I said.

Shook his head. "Start tonight."

"Bet you're excited." I smiled. "I got it. Why don't you go ha.s.sle some of the creeps that used to give us so much grief?"

He didn't return the smile.

In fact, he shook his head.

"That's the one thing I learned at the academy. You can't let your feelings get in the way. Had an old cop tell me that and it made a lot of sense. He said if you let anger get in the way, then you start to bully people. And if you let greed get in the way, then you start getting corrupt. And if you let pride get in your way, then you're never able to admit that you made a mistake on a case. He said the best cops are the ones who are strictly professional. Let their heads tell them what to do, not their emotions. And that's just the way I'm going to be." Then he gave me the kid grin again. "Of course, if one of those old bullies should ever get out of line with mea""

"a"hit them a few times for me."

"Exactly."

He looked around the store. "This used to be some place, didn't it?"

"Sure did."

"I remember my mom always bringing me here at Christmas time. One year I p.i.s.sed on Santa's lap."

"Nice kid."

"So how'd you like the Army?"

"It was all right."

"Your mom says you're going to the community college?"

"Yeah, next spring."

"Great."

I think it was about then that we both started realizing that the old friendship wasn't quite there any more. We were different people now. Quoting Kull and talking about the old days could only take you so far.

We fell into an uncomfortable silence and then he said, "Well, I'd better head over to the station. Got a lot of things to do before tonight."

"It was really great seeing you, Mike."

"Yeah, it was. We should go get a pizza sometime."

"Right. Talk about Conan."

"And Kull." He frowned. "My mom got rid of all my paperbacks."

"Mine did, too," I said. "When I was away in the Army."

"I'll bet some of those old ones with Frazetta covers are worth a lot of money today."

"Man, they were beautiful, weren't they?" I said.

"Yeah," he said, "yeah, they really were." And for a moment there, he sounded as sentimental as I felt at the moment. It's funny how you can get melancholy about the person you used to be, as if that person were a separate person from you.

"Let's have that pizza," I said.

"I'll give you a call," he said.

And then I wanted to smile but I knew better.

I couldn't help it.

He still looked like a kid in that uniform, the pug nose and freckled face.

Even with the Sam Browne and the Magnum, he looked like a kid.

CHAPTER SIX.

About twenty minutes before closing time, everybody in the store would start to get bundled up for the trip outside into early winter. Halloween had barely pa.s.sed and now jolly snowmen with c.o.c.ked top hats and knowing smiles kept sentry duty all over town. Yellow road graders with big yellow insect eyes roared through the night. And young people who were in love had s...o...b..ll fights up and down the nighttime streets.

After I counted the money and took it upstairs to the accounting department, I finished closing up the shoe department for the night.

I was just pushing the fitting tools underneath their chairs, so the cleaning lady wouldn't have to bother with them when she was vacuuming, when the stout and unfriendly woman who worked in women's apparel came over to me.

She was sixty going on thirty. When I was little she'd been the local femme fatale. She and her husband used to drive around in big a.s.s cars like local celebrities. They still had that air about them, being special and important. She had hair that had been peroxided so much it had the dead, dry texture of a wig. She usually wore cream colored suits meant to hide her bulges. And she effected a kind of Marilyn Monroe gush when she spoke, all dramatic whispers. I managed to hate her and feel sorry for her at the same time. Her feelings for me were much simpler. She just hated me.

"You had a visitor. I forgot to tell you."

"A visitor?"

"A girl."

"A girl. Did she have a name?"

"That cute one who was Homecoming Queen."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't like that tone of voice."

I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her.

"When was she here?"

"Over your dinner hour."

"What did she say?"

"That she was looking for you and would I give you that message." A coy smile: "I'm kind of surprised she'd stop by, knowing the kind of guys she could get."

She'd always be in high school, this one, where the popular kids never had truck with the unpopular ones. I walked away.

It was cold in the parking lot.

I spent two minutes sc.r.a.ping rough ice from my windshield. In the meantime, I let the motor run so the car would get warm. Dad had loaned me enough money to buy an old junker Chevrolet. It'd get me back and forth to college. If the heater never exactly warmed up, I had an old blanket on the back seat I could throw over my legs when the thermometer hit zero.

The seat was cold on my b.u.t.t and legs, and the motor kept dying, but I got out of the parking lot and onto the street. Though the plow had been down here, the wind was blowing snow hard enough that I had to use windshield wipers. The mercury vapor lights gave the downtown a flat, sterile look. With all the empty storefronts, it resembled one of those places in the rust belt where towns just collapsed after the steel mills shut down.

I fishtailed to a stop at every light. There wasn't much traffic. I pa.s.sed a cop car parked at a corner. I could see a cop-shape inside but I couldn't make out the face. I wondered if it was Garrett. His first night.

I didn't want to go home. I had absolutely no place else to go but ever since I'd heard that Cindy had stopped by, a terrible restlessness had come over me. I wanted to tell somebody about her. I'd never had a girl come and ask for me before, and certainly never one as beautiful as Cindy.

But where would I go?

I pa.s.sed a Pizza Hut. The parking lot was crowded with the kind of cars kids drive. I pulled in. In high school, I never went to the places where the popular kids hung out. It always embarra.s.sed me to sit in a booth and watch the golden ones having their fun, as if I'd do anything just to be near them in some way. I was pathetic enough then.

But Cindy had stopped by for me. That gave me a kind of prestige, even if n.o.body else knew about it.

I had a right to go in the G.o.d d.a.m.ned Pizza Hut and sit there with the popular kids. I had a right.

The experience was pretty much the same as it had been back in my high school days. I took a two-seat table in the back and sat there and ate a small cheese pizza by myself. From what I could see, I was the only person in the whole place alone. People looked at me skeptically, as if I had a disease or was going to mug them in the parking lot. The really popular kids merely looked through me. I lived in another dimension. I wasn't there.

He came in just as I was finishing the pizza. He threw the door back and stood just inside, glaring around. He had a lot of snow on his hair and the shoulders of his letter jacket. He was pretty p.i.s.sed, no doubt about it.

He started walking up and down the aisles, searching. When he got to me, he just sort of snorted and shook his head. I wasn't even worth real contempt. He smelled of cold air and hot sweat and expensive after-shave.

By now, a lot of people were watching him.

Not every night a football star like David Myles comes into the Pizza Hut storming up and down the aisles, looking as if he's ready to kill someone.

When he got to the back of the place, he walked straight up to the women's toilet, tore open the door and stalked inside.

A few seconds later, a frightened but silent older woman came out, tugging her skirt down.

The manager looked at the a.s.sistant manager and then the manager gave the a.s.sistant manager a little shove.

You go tell him to get the h.e.l.l out of there, I could hear the manager saying. Bravely.

But Myles was out by the time the a.s.sistant manager reached the women's door.

Myles glared at all the diners again, and then headed for the exit door.

Then he was gone and everybody put their heads together speculating on who he'd been looking for.

They hadn't done any speculating while he was here. They knew better.

I finished up, left a tip, got out of there.

By the time I reached my junker, snow and ice had buried the roof and windows again. I was in a far dark corner of the lot and the drifts seemed to be worse here. I could barely see for all the blowing snow.

I got the sc.r.a.per from the front seat and went to work.

A few minutes later, I backed out of the parking lot and drove back on to the street.

I was just pulling up to a stop light when a voice from the back seat said, "Find someplace dark where we can park. I need to talk to you."

I was scared until I realized that I recognized the voice. I looked in the back seat and then on the floor. She'd pulled the cover down over her. Now her head stuck up through the folds of the blanket, a chick being hatched.

"He'll kill me if he finds me," she said. "You have to help me."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

It wasn't exactly a great night to drive around, not in an old junker anyway.

I kept to dark side streets. I thought of going out into the country but it would be too easy to end up in a ditch.

We skidded a lot and ran up into curbs and even made a few unexpected U-turns. And we froze. The heater still wasn't working properly. I kept having to sc.r.a.pe off the inside of the windshield.

She stayed in the back seat, tucked in the corner, scrunched down so that n.o.body could see her from the outside.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this. Now he'll be mad at you."

I was afraid of Myles, no doubt about it. But it was the flattery thing again. I just felt so d.a.m.ned proud to be a.s.sociated with her in any waya"a girl like her asking a guy like me for helpa"that I was happy to be in the middle of it.