Night Songs - Charles Grant

He shrugged and went in, blinked at the dim lighting from the lanterns on the rough walls, and took a stool at the corner of the deserted bar. A glance, and he frowned; he was the only one in the place. But he said nothing to the bartender, only ordered Bloody Marys to be served in formation-when one was half-finished there should be another one waiting.

There was, each one perfect, and he stared at his hands and thought of Annalee and her breasts.

An hour later his knuckles were slightly blurred.

Poor old Warren. What a jackass.

An hour after that he was trying to figure out why the glasses were so slippery.

Poor old Warren. Leave it to the lush to get his throat cut when guys like Carter Naughton walked around still alive.

He blinked at the vicious thought, and felt a chill that disturbed him. He wasn't drunk; he knew that. He knew, and the bartender knew, his capacity, and he was still four drinks away from being barely able to walk home. What he felt was a gentle, and not unpleasant, buzzing in his right ear, a hydrogen cloud in his head, and a tingling in his left foot. So why be so maudlin about a dumb drunken lawyer, and so damnably cold about a miserable teenaged kid?

He shrugged, and nibbled at the celery stick plucked from his glass. Such philosophical musings were best left to daylight.

The door opened then, and before he could turn around, Garve Tabor slammed onto the stool beside him and ordered a triple bourbon. As Hugh watched, mouth agape, Tabor downed it in a swallow and ordered two more.

"Jesus," he said, "you want to slice up your liver?"

Garve looked at him and scowled. "I've had a bad night."

Hugh nodded, knowing exactly what bad nights were. "You wanna… do you want to talk about it?"

"Nope."

Two more glasses emptied, two more in line.

"You're gonna get drunk."

"Yup."

Hugh sniffed, and pulled at the ends of his mustache. "You shouldn't, y'know. You have duties to perform."

"I tried," Garve said. Two gone; two more. "Goddamn it, I tried."

He waited for an explanation, and when none came he sipped from his last drink and looked in the mirror rising behind the bottles opposite his seat. It was obvious the man needed something, and that something wasn't liquor. Garve was, in fact, very much like himself twenty years ago. He had practiced on the mainland, was successful (except with women), and didn't quite know what the hell was wrong with his life. Then a friend had called, and would Hugh mind covering his office while he was in Barbados? Hugh asked where, asked where again, and decided what the hell. He came, he saw, the island conquered and his friend gladly stayed away because Haven's End was no place to make a million.

Fate, perhaps, but Hugh never questioned it. If he was, as his father had put it just before he died, a rabbit afraid of a little hard living, then this was the perfect burrow for his soul.

Garve groaned, and his elbow slipped off the bar.

"My friend," Hugh said, "I'm going to write you a prescription."

Garve nodded slowly, as if his head were threatening to come loose.

"In fact, I'm even going to fill it for you."

Garve nodded again and glowered at his reflection.

Hugh gripped the leather edge of the bar and slipped himself off the stool. When he was positive the door wouldn't move away, he headed for it, heard Garve shout behind him and ignored him. Outside, he shivered, angled to his left and aimed straight for Annalee Covey's.

* * *

Five minutes later Garve realized he was alone. He squinted at the stool beside him, rubbed the heel of his right hand over his eyes, and squinted again. Son of a bitch, he thought, the doc's a magician. Wish to hell I could make myself disappear.

He hadn't been kidding about "one of those nights."

He'd found Lombard at Cameron's house out at the Estates and had come on like some simpleminded refugee from the worst episode of "Dragnet." Warren Harcourt's had his throat slit just down the road and all I want is the facts. Just the facts, mac, and don't give me no crap. And they hadn't. They'd sat there in that cushy living room at least as big as his own place, and offered him Glenlivet neat or on the rocks, and smiled and talked and just about got him down on his knees so they could pat his head and call him a good dog.

Well, maybe not that bad. Cameron had had the sense to be scared out of his mind. Lombard, however, was oily and smooth and quiet and maddening, and when neither of them admitted to knowing where Theo Vincent was, he'd actually lost his temper. Something inside burst like a stoppered pipe, filling him with a bile he could only get rid of by yelling. He reared up and read them his own version of the riot act and stormed out as if he'd just whipped them to within an inch of their miserable lives. The door had slammed behind him. He had driven away so recklessly fast he'd jounced over three curbs before he regained control.

And he knew as he headed back into town that he'd made an absolute jackass of himself. After that speech to Colin and Peg in Hugh's office, after all he'd tried to teach Eliot about the difference between the law and justice and the tightrope between them, he'd forgotten himself.

"You're an Indian, Chief?" Lombard had asked, as casually as if he'd been wondering if it were dark outside. "No. No, I'm wrong, and I'm sorry. Part Indian, right? A grandmother, as I recall."

So carefully phrased, so gently put, and it sounded to Garve as if he'd just been called a half-breed.

That was when his temper went, and that was when he stormed out and roared into the Anchor Inn's parking lot and thundered into the bar and began drinking himself to death.

Suddenly a blast of damp, cold air washed over the bar. His untouched paper napkin fluttered, the collar of his shirt jumped to cover his neck. He lowered his glass slowly, turned, and stared a long moment at Annalee before he finally nodded.

"Hugh wants to give you a prescription," she said. She was wearing a plaid shirt open two buttons down and pulled out of her jeans, sandals on her bare feet, a cardigan cloaked over her shoulders.

"Hugh," he said, stifling a belch, "is a noisy twerp."

She sat and folded her arms on the bar. "You're drunk."

"Not yet, but I'm working on it." He raised a finger to signal the bartender, and she grabbed it, held it until he turned to face her. "Lee, I'm not…" He was going to say, I'm not in the mood, but the look of her, and the touch of her hand, stopped him. He shrugged with a lift of an eyebrow and lowered his hand; she did not let go.

"Where's Hugh?" he asked, trying not to let the smell of her hair penetrate the sharp odor of the bourbon.

"On his way home, I hope," she said, her hand shifting from one finger to the whole hand. "A little wobbly, but I think he'll make it."

"He's a good man."

"You said he was a noisy twerp."

He grinned lopsidedly. "I speak with forked tongue."

"You drink another one of those and you won't be able to speak at all."

He managed a barking laugh, picked up his glass, emptied it, and slammed it onto the counter so hard he made himself wince. There was no taste to the liquor at all; he'd burned out his tongue, and the fire in his stomach was rapidly turning to acid.

Ten minutes passed while they stared at each other in the mirror. Garve licked his lips. Her eyes, that hair-damn, but she was making him nervous.

"Hugh said you had a bad night."

"Hugh talks too much."

"You, uh, want to talk?"

Yes, he thought, Lord, yes.

"No," he said. Then he smiled. "I don't… I don't think I can."

"Okay," she said. "Maybe later."

Later? he thought. Jesus Christ, Hugh, what did you say to her?

"C'mon," she said then, standing and taking his arm.

"What?"

She pulled him to his feet, and grabbed his waist when he discovered that someone had substituted rubber for his knees. It wasn't right, he thought as she lead him carefully to the door, I can walk, damn it. She doesn't have to carry me.

The door opened, and the fresh air smacked his cheeks, dried his throat. "Oh God," he groaned, "I think I'm dying."

"You're impossible, you know that, don't you," she said, guiding him across the parking lot toward her house.

"Where are we going?"

She looked at him sideways. "Are you really that drunk?"

He felt stupid and helpless, and was amazed to realize that he didn't mind at all. As long as she was there to hang on and keep him from falling, as long as she was there, period, he decided he would survive.

At the end of the parking lot he stumbled over a raised section of curbing, laughed self-consciously, and looked up to the small house. Fog had drifted in from the woods behind it, pooling in the yard, clinging to his face and pulling his skin tight. He stopped when they were halfway there, turned and stared at the street. The bourbon was numbing him, fuzzing his mind, but he still didn't like the way the street looked.

He thought he heard footsteps on the grass, beside the house, in the dark.

"Lee?"

She was hugging his arm now. "Yes," she said. "I know. C'mon, let's hurry."

They almost ran the last few steps to the porch, and he was grateful she had not locked the door, that the lights witch was right at hand, that she did not stop but led him straight to the bedroom.

"Lee?"

"Garve," she said, pulling at his shirt while he sagged onto the bed. "Garve, don't worry. I'm here. It's all right."

He rubbed at his eyes, felt the mattress on his back, and knew that she was lying. Whoever was out there, whatever was out there, it wasn't all right at all. It wasn't all right.

* * *

Eliot decided to check on the Estates, to try to rid his system of its inexplicable nervousness-they weren't Gran's prints, damn it-and to see if anyone needed help boarding windows, loading cars. He nearly braked when he reached the Sunrise Motel and thought he saw a light behind one of the drawn curtains. The hell with it, he thought, speeding up again; if Cart wanted to take himself some tail that was no concern of his. With luck the storm would blow the creep away.

Just beyond Mayfair's he swung left, wincing at the tires' high-pitched protest against the tarmac, slowing as he entered Dunecrest Estates. The homes began on his left, dark for the most part, a few lighted as they swung left with the road. He parked at the curve and switched off the ignition, and with a glance to his right remember that Lilla was supposedly still in Gran's shack.

He hesitated, then thought, why not. Save a crazy-with-grief girl and make yourself a hero. It was certainly better than scaring himself to death.

This print, patrolman, belongs to Gran D'Grou.

He shuddered and slid out of her car.

The sand was cold beneath his shoes, the sawgrass slapping harshly against his legs. The ocean grumbled, a giant turning in its sleep, and he slipped once, going down on one knee before he was able to right himself again.

"Hell."

He dusted off his trousers, slapped his palms together, and grunted when the sand flattened and hardened and he could see the shack, just barely, just black.

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