The Baby Blue Rip-Off

20

It was dark in there. Not a trace of light was coming in around the edges of the double doors. No air, either. A hot, stuffy box; not an oven, but a damn close second; not a coffin, but just as disquieting. It was almost enough to make me homesick for that john back at the garage.

One thing kept me from tumbling into depression’s abyss, and that thing was the pair of scissors. I sat clutching them as if they were a crucifix and I was expecting vampires.

Because it seemed inevitable that before long I’d be confronting those two guys driving the van, and if it hadn’t been for those scissors, even my money would be on the van drivers. But having a weapon of sorts, and having the element of surprise on my side, gave me decent odds… though stabbing somebody with a pair of scissors wasn’t something I was looking forward to. After all, stabbing people with scissors was for psychos, and I was supposed to be one of the good guys.

However, at times one can’t be too choosy about one’s options, and I was lucky to have any option at all, and damn lucky to have something sharp and lethal with which to do battle against those dull and lethal boys up front in the van.

The shocks on the vehicle were all but nonexistent, and I’ve had smoother rides falling down a flight of stairs. But that too was a lucky break-and to hell with comfort-as since the ride was jostling and the vehicle naturally noisy, I didn’t have to worry much about keeping down my own level of sound. Although when we went over those railroad tracks just three blocks from Tony’s, I bounced around like a sack of grain and must’ve come within a hair of alerting my unknowing captors of my presence.

I examined the interior of the van and found nothing, not one thing, except some loose dirt on the slightly rusted-out floor. I went over the walls slowly, carefully, like a blind man reading braille-but not getting nearly as much out of it. A close check of the doors proved equally futile. The one on the right did have a square maintenance port near the latching mechanism, but feeling my fingers around in the hole told me nothing; perhaps if I had some slight mechanical know-how, it would’ve been different, but all I could get out of it was grease on my fingers. I considered prying the blades of the scissors around in there, but decided not to risk breaking them. I waited till we were going over a particularly bumpy stretch of road and, under cover of vehicle noise, laid my shoulder into the twin doors, hard. Nothing gave, except my shoulder. Some vans have doors that can be sprung open from within if you give ’em a shot right in the middle where they join; it’s a very weak spot, from a structural point of view. But these doors-even though the van wasn’t a recent model-were rugged and didn’t budge. So I gave up.

I sat and let the rough-riding van knock my butt around, let it jounce me till my ribs hurt past pain. I deserved it for being idiotic enough to hide in a van in the first place. This is not to say that I was going to capitulate. I had given up on beating the van, but not on beating the van drivers. Those scissors were so tight in my fist, they could’ve been some strange, deadly deformity. I was tense with the knowledge of what was ahead of me. I was resolved to violence in a detached way like nothing I’d felt since Vietnam.

At first it was no trouble keeping track of where we were going. Even when my attention was focused on exploring my cell, I could perceive from the sounds of traffic that we were headed out of South End and into town. I felt the sway of the right turn past the pump factory and knew we’d be rolling down Mississippi Drive, and after maybe half a mile we turned again, left, into the downtown.

Then I got lost. Traffic sounds petered out, and several consecutive turns conspired to make me lose all sense of direction. We were, I supposed, winding through some residential area, God knew where. All I knew for sure was we weren’t driving around on the bottom of the river.

And then we veered sharp to the right, and I could hear rocks spitting up against the underside of the vehicle, tickling the van’s belly, and we came to a stop.

An alley, then. We’d stopped in an alley, probably in a residential area.

I heard the front van doors open, slam shut. No pretense at stealth. Had my presence been detected? I held the scissors ready, bayonetlike.

“What’s going on up there?” I heard the authoritative voice say.

“Don’t know,” Hulk said. “Hell. Something.”

“Something is right. I thought Frank said the college kids were gone on weekends.”

“He did. He did say that.”

“Well, they sure as hell aren’t gone this weekend.”

Silence.

Somebody put his hand on the handle that would open the rear van doors. From the positioning of the voices, I figured it was Hulk. I was ready. The scissors and I, we were ready.

He pushed down the handle with a click and began to pull open the doors.

“Wait,” the authoritative voice said. “Hold it; somebody’s coming.”

I placed my foot against the right rear door along the bottom and put my hand inside the square opening. When Hulk pushed the doors shut, I kept the one door from latching by stopping it with my foot and bracing with my hand.

“How’s it going, man?” A new voice. A young voice. And, I thought, a drunken voice. Or maybe stoned. You don’t call two men “man” when your head is totally right.

“Fine,” they said together.

“Going to do some gardening, man?”

“Yeah,” they said.

“Well, uh… don’t cut the grass too short, you know what I mean?” Laughter. His, not theirs. Silly laughter at that.

“Say,” Authoritative Voice said, “what’s going on anyway?”

“Party, man. Bash. Midsummer bash. Not many of us stuck around here for summer school, but whoever is around is upstairs, man. Hey, you want some beer or something?”

“No thanks,” they said.

“Well, listen, if people start roamin’ around outside while you’re doing your work, man, don’t mind ’em. Things aren’t too hairy yet, but they’re gettin’ there. Party just got started last night. By tonight it really oughta be goin’ good. Well, I gotta split.”

“Good-bye,” they said.

I heard his footsteps paddle away. A door yawned open, and I heard the sound of rock music blare out. Then it slammed and cut the music off.

“Damn,” Hulk said.

“Goddamn,” the other one said.

“What we going to do?”

“Scratch it.”

“But….”

“No way we’re going to get it done with all those kids wandering around, drunk on their butts, stoned out of their skulls. We were counting on it being the way Frank laid it out.”

“Those goddamn college kids aren’t supposed to be here on the weekend.”

“Yeah. But they are. Let’s go.”

I heard their footsteps stirring up gravel and then the twin slams of the front van doors. The motor started up and, as they got moving again, I rolled out of the back of the van.

I hit hard, rolling off the alleyway into some bushes to my left. They hadn’t seen or heard me.

They coasted away in the van, turning right at the mouth of the alley, and were gone.

I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and looked around.

Across the alley from where I stood was a two-story yellow clapboard house. It was set up a slight incline to a basement garage. Upstairs was where the party was going on. In the second-story windows I could see the young bodies moving around; and now the sound of rock music, inaudible in the van except when that door had opened, was easy to hear. And strangely out of place in this sleepy residential area full of sedate old two-story houses like this one.

Which was, by the way, a house I recognized.

It was where the Cooper sisters lived.