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DOMINIC SANDINI
On her own front porch,
she fumbled for her keys in her purse, inserted the right
one in the lock, went inside, and closed the door behind
her. She was reaching for the light switch when a male
voice said, “Don’t turn on the light.” The scream of
terror caught in her throat when he added “It’s okay, I’m
a friend of Zack’s.”
“Why should I believe
you?” she said, her voice shaking as hard as her hand.
“Because,” Dominic
Sandini said with a smile in his voice, “I came to have a
look around and make sure you’re clear to take a little
trip if you should suddenly decide to.”
“Damn it, you scared the
hell out of me!” Julie exploded half in anger and half in
laughter as she collapsed against the door.
“Sorry.”
“How did you get in
here?” she said, feeling a little absurd talking to an
invisible man in the black dark.
“I came in the back
after having a look around. You’ve got a tail on you,
ma’am?”
“A –a what?”
Julie was so disoriented
she actually started to reach for the back of her skirt to
check for a tail before he clarified, “You’re being
watched. A blue van parked down the street covers the
house and a black pickup truck follows you wherever you
do. It’s gotta be FBI – they use cars that ain’t worth
stealin’, but they’re better at surveillance thatn the
local yokels. Cars,” he added proudly, “are a specialty of
mine. Take yours, for example, you got a 1.5-liter engine,
probably a factory radio, no telephone so it’s worth mebbe
$250 stripped for parts.”
“You – you’re a used car
salesman?” Julie said, temporarily ignoring the problem of
the FBI because she was so absurdly glad to have someone
near her who called himself Zack’s friend.
“You could say that,” he
added with a chuckle. “But when I sold ‘em, they didn’t
have titles if you get my meaning.”
“You . . . you . . .
stole cars?” Julie added uneasily.
“Yeah, but not any
more,” he explained with another smile in his voice. “I’m
reformed now.”
“Good!” she said
gustily. It was not nearly as reassuring to have Zack’s
friend be a car thief. Realizing that her faceless visitor
might be able to banish her other fears, Julie said
quickly, “Zack isn’t in Los Angeles is he? He’s not
threatening those people?”
“I don’t know where he
is or what he’s doing, and that’s the truth.”
“But you must! I mean,
you’ve obviously spoken to him – “
“Nope, not me. Zack
would have a shi – a fit,” he corrected hastily, “if he
knew I came here myself and got involved. This was
supposed to be handled purely by outsiders, but I figured
this would be my only chance to meet his Julie. You must
love him one helluva lot.”
He fell silent, and
Julie said quietly, “I do. He must mean a lot to you, too,
for you to risk coming here like this.”
“Hell – heck, it’s no
risk,” he said in a cocky voice. “I’m not doing anything
illegal. All I’m doing is stopping by to visit a friend of
a friend, and there ain’t no law against that nor in
coming in the back door and waiting for her in the dark.
In fact, I even fixed the lock on your back door while I
was waiting. That thing wouldn’t have kept a kid out of
this house if they wanted inside. Is that being a
law-abiding citizen or what?” he joked.
He’d said he had come
here to make sure she was “clear” to take her trip, and
Julie was about to ask him what he meant by that when he
provided the answer in the same jovial, unconcerned voice.
“Anyway, the reason I’m here is ‘cause Zack wanted you to
have a new car – you know, if you should suddenly decide
to go for a long drive in a couple days – so I volunteered
to deliver it. And here I am.”
Julie assumed instantly
she was probably to use this car, not her own, to throw
off her followers when she made her escape from Keaton in
two days. “Tell me it isn’t stolen,” she said in a dire
tone that made him laugh.
“It’s not. Like I told
you, I’m retired, Zack paid for it, and I decided to
deliver his gift, that’s all. There ain’t no specific law
against an escaped con buyin’ a car for a lady with his
own hard-earned, honest money. Or, how she chooses to use
that car ain’t none of my business.”
“I didn’t see any car in
front of the house tonight.”
“Of course not!” he said
in exaggerated horror. “I didn’t think I should break some
city ordinance or something by cluttering up your nice
street. So I delivered it to the parking lot behind a
place in town called Kelton’s Dry Goods.”
“Why?” Julie said,
feeling stupid.
“That’s an interesting
question. I’m not sure just why I got a crazy impulse like
that,” he joked, suddenly reminding Julie of the
incorrigible, irrepressible, eight-year-old boys she
taught. “I guess I figured that if you was to park your
own car on the street in front of that store one morning,
you might want to go inside, look around, and then go out
the back door and take your new car for a little test
drive. Of course, that might annoy the guys who are
tailing you, I mean, it’d be awful hard for them to figure
out which way you went, what you’re driving, and what
you’re wearin’ – assuming you was also to get a sudden
desire to change into a different sweater or somethin’
that you happened to have in your briefcase. If you get my
meanin’”
Julie nodded in the
dark, shivering at the clandestine overtones of everything
he’d said. “I get your meaning,” she said with a tight,
nervous laugh.
The rocking chair
creaked as he stood up. “it’s been nice talkin’ to you,”
he said, as his hand briefly touched her arm. “Good-bye
Zack’s Julie. I hope you know what the hell you’re doin’.”
Julie hoped so, too.
“Don’t turn the lights
on in he back of the house until I’m gone.”
She listened to his slow
footsteps and had the feeling he moved with a slight limp.
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