Out There in the Darkness Page 5

  One night when Jan was asleep, I went up on the deck of the boat and just watched the stars. I used to read a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a boy. I always remembered how John Carter felt—that the stars had a very special destiny for him—and that night there on the deck, that was to be a good family man, a good stockbroker, and a good neighbor. The bad things were all behind me now. I imagined Neil was feeling pretty much the same way. Hot bitter July seemed a long ways behind us now. Fall was coming, bringing with it football and Thanksgiving and Christmas. July would recede even more with snow on the ground.

  The funny thing was, I didn’t see Neil much anymore. It was as if the sight of each other brought back a lot of bad memories. It was a mutual feeling, too. I didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see me. Our wives thought this was pretty strange. They’d meet at the supermarket or shopping center and wonder why “the boys” didn’t get together anymore. Neil’s wife, Sarah, kept inviting us over to “sit around the pool and watch Neil pretend he knows how to swim.” September was summer hot. The pool was still the centerpiece of their life.

  Not that I made any new friends. The notion of a midweek poker game had lost all its appeal. There was work and my family and little else.

  Then one sunny Indian summer afternoon, Neil called and said, “Maybe we should get together again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s over, Aaron. It really is.”

  “I know.”

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  I felt embarrassed. “Oh, hell, Neil. Is that swimming pool of yours open Saturday afternoon?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is. And as a matter of fact, Sarah and the girls are going to be gone to a fashion show at the club.”

  “Perfect. We’ll have a couple of beers.”

  ”You know how to swim?”

  “No,” I said, laughing. “And from what Sarah says, you don’t, either.”

  I got there about three, pulled into the drive, walked to the back where the gate in the wooden fence led to the swimming pool. It was eighty degrees and even from here I could smell the chlorine.

  I opened the gate and went inside and saw him right away. The funny thing was, I didn’t have much of a reaction at all. I just watched him. He was floating. Face down. He looked pale in his red trunks. This, like the others, would be judged an accidental death. Of that I had no doubt at all.

  I used the cellular phone in my car to call 911.

  I didn’t want Sarah and the girls coming back to see an ambulance and police cars in the drive and them not knowing what was going on.

  I called the club and had her paged.

  I told her what I’d found. I let her cry. I didn’t know what to say. I never do.

  In the distance, I could hear the ambulance working its way toward the Neil Solomon residence.

  I was just about to get out of the car when my cellular phone rang. I picked up. “Hello?”

  “There were three of us that night at your house, Mr. Bellini. You killed two of us. I recovered from when your friend stabbed me, remember? Now I’m ready for action. I really am, Mr. Bellini.”

  Then the emergency people were there, and neighbors, too, and then wan, trembling Sarah. I just let her cry some more. Gave her whiskey and let her cry.

  Chapter 8

  He knows how to do it, whoever he is.

  He lets a long time go between late-night calls. He lets me start to think that maybe he changed his mind and left town. And then he calls.

  Oh, yes, he knows just how to play this little game.

  He never says anything, of course. He doesn’t need to. He just listens. And then hangs up.

  I’ve considered going to the police, of course, but it’s way too late for that. Way too late.

  Or I could ask Jan and the kids to move away to a different city with me. But he knows who I am and he’d find me again.

  So all I can do is wait and hope that I get lucky, the way Neil and I got lucky the night we killed the second of them.

  Tonight I can’t sleep.

  It’s after midnight.

  Jan and I wrapped presents until well after eleven. She asked me again if anything was wrong. We don’t make love as much as we used to, she said; and then there are the nightmares. Please tell me if something’s wrong. Aaron. Please.

  I stand at the window watching the snow come down. Soft and beautiful snow. In the morning, a Saturday, the kids will make a snowman and then go sledding and then have themselves a good old-fashioned snowball fight, which invariably means that one of them will come rushing in at some point and accuse the other of some terrible misdeed.

  I see all this from the attic window.

  Then I turn back and look around the poker table. Four empty chairs. Three of them belong to dead men.

  I look at the empty chairs and think back to summer.

  I look at the empty chairs and wait for the phone to ring.

  I wait for the phone to ring.