Odd Hours

FIFTEEN

“THIS WAY,” SHE SAID, AND WITH THE FLASHLIGHT still hooded, Annamaria led me to a door that I assumed must open on a closet.

Instead, a landing lay beyond, and narrow interior stairs went down to the garage.

Although sturdy, the stairhead door could be locked only from inside the apartment. If the hulk and his friends got into the apartment, we could not foil their pursuit.

Because Annamaria was pregnant and because I was afraid that, in a rush, she might trip and fall, I took the flashlight and urged her to hold fast to the railing and to follow me with caution.

Filtering the beam through fingers, holding the light behind me to illuminate her way more than mine, I descended into the garage less quickly than I would have liked.

I was relieved to see that the roll-up door featured no glass panels. Two windows, one in the north wall and one in the south, were small and set just below the ceiling.

Our light was not likely to be seen through those high dusty panes. Nevertheless, I continued to keep the lens half covered.

Two vehicles were parked in the garage: facing out, a Ford Explorer; facing in, an older Mercedes sedan.

As Annamaria reached the bottom of the stairs, she whispered, “There’s a way out, along the south wall.”

From above came the knock of knuckles on the door to her tiny apartment.

Through the smell of grease and oil and rubber, wary of putting a foot in a slippery spot on the floor, we moved past the SUV, past the sedan, and found the side exit.

Overhead, a second round of knocking sounded more insistent than the first. Definitely not just a pizza delivery.

With the thumb-turn knob, I disengaged the deadbolt. Because the door opened inward, it did not block my view in any direction when I leaned through to have a look outside.

The Victorian house stood to the north side of this building, out of sight. Here, a narrow walkway lay between the south wall of the garage and the high hedge that defined the property line.

If we stepped outside and went east, toward the front of the garage, we would find our visitors’ truck in the driveway. If we went west, toward the back of the structure, we would be at the foot of the stairs that led up to the landing, where someone had just been knocking.

Even in the dense fog, I did not want to place a bet on our chances of getting off the property without encountering trouble. Two doors had slammed, so two men were out there-at least two-and I did not think they would both have gone up the outer stairs, since they had not arrived with a large gift basket, wine, and flowers. One of them would remain behind to snare us if we escaped from the man now knocking upstairs.

Turning from the door, leaving it open, I scanned the shadowy ceiling and saw no fluorescent fixtures, only one bare incandescent bulb. Another light would be built in to the chain-drive mechanism that raised the large roll-up, but it would come on only when that door was up.

When I guided Annamaria toward the Mercedes sedan, she trusted me at once. She neither resisted nor asked what I intended.

The knocking had stopped. From above came a subtle crack of breaking glass, which the visitor could not entirely muffle.

As I took hold of the handle on the rear passenger-side door, I was suddenly afraid that the car would be locked. Our luck held, and the door opened.

Overhead, the footsteps were so heavy that I would not have been surprised if they had been accompanied by a giant’s voice chanting, “Fee, fi, fo, fum,” and promising to grind up our bones to make his bread.

The interior lights of the Mercedes were not bright. We had no choice but to risk them.

As I encouraged Annamaria into the backseat of the sedan, I saw in my mind’s eye the modest apartment above us. The intruder would see the stacked dishes in the sink: two mugs, two sets of flatware. Sooner than later, he would touch the long neck of one of the oil lamps.

The glass would not be merely warm, but hot. With a smile, he would snatch back his stung fingers, certain that we had fled only as he had arrived.

I glanced toward the south-wall door that I had left standing open to the walkway alongside the property-line hedge. Tendrils of fog crept across the threshold and probed around the jamb, like the fingers of a blind ghost, but no one had yet appeared in the doorway.

Annamaria slid across the backseat, and I climbed into the sedan after her. I pulled the door shut firmly without slamming it, though with more noise than I would have liked. The interior car lights winked out.

The Mercedes was at least twenty years old, maybe twenty-five, from the era when the Germans still made them big, boxy, and not in the least aerodynamic. We were able to slide down in that roomy space, heads below the windows.

This was not quite Poe’s purloined-letter trick, but something similar. Our pursuers would expect us to flee, and the open south-side door would suggest that we had done just that.

In the heat of the moment, believing they were close on our heels, they were not likely to suspect that we would risk hiding in what was virtually plain sight.

Of course, they might find the open door and the in-creeping fog to be a tad too obvious. They might decide to search the garage, and if they did, we were doomed.

They were not fools, after all. They were serious men. I had it on good authority that they were planning many deaths and much destruction; and men don’t get much more serious than that.