Mike twisted away from me, looking at the ground at his feet.
“Tell me, Mike.”
“I stayed with these fly-by-night guys my mom was seeing.”
“Did they treat you all right?”
“Yeah. They were drunks and gamblers. They were nice to me, but . . .”
“But what, Mike?”
Mike screamed, “They were nice to me because they wanted to fuck Marcella!” His tears had stopped and the hatred in his young face aged him by ten years.
“I don’t know, Uncle Claude, Uncle Schmo, Uncle Fucko, I don’t know!”
“Do you remember the place where you stayed?”
“Yeah, I remember; 6481 Scenic Avenue. Near Franklin and Gower. Dad said . . .”
“Said what, Mike?”
“That … that he was going to flick up Marcella’s boyfriends. I told him they were nice, but he still said it. Fred?”
“Yes?”
“Dad was telling stories last night. He told me this story about this guy who used to be a cop. Did you used to be a cop?”
“Yes. What–”
“Michael, Fred, where the hell are you?” It was Doc’s voice, and it was nearby. A second later we saw him. Michael moved away from me when Doc came into view.
He walked toward us. When I saw his face up close I knew that all pretense was gone. His expression was a mask of hatred; the hard, handsome features were drawn inward to the point where each plane melded perfectly in a picture of absolute coldness.
“I think we should go back to L.A.,” Doc said.
No one said a word as we made our way back to Los Angeles via a labyrinthine network of freeways and surface streets. Mike sat in back, and Doc sat up front with me, his eyes glued straight ahead for the entire two hours.
When we finally pulled up to the house all three of us seemed to breathe for the first time. It was then that I smelled it, a musky, sweaty pungency that permeated the car even with the top down: the smell of fear.
Michael vaulted out of the backseat and ran without a word into his concrete backyard. Doc turned to face me. “What now, Underhill?” he said.
“I don’t know. I’m blowing town for a while.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll be back.”
Harris got out of the car. He looked down at me. He started to smile, but I didn’t let his cold face get that far.
“Harris, if you harm that boy, I’ll kill you,” I said, then drove off in the direction of Hollywood.
Scenic Avenue was a side street about a mile north of Hollywood Boulevard. Number 6481 was a small stone cottage on the south side. There was a small yard of weeds encircled by a white picket fence. It was deserted, as I knew it would be; all the front windows were broken and the flimsy wooden front door was half caved in.
I walked around the corner of the house. The backyard was the same as the front–same fencing, same high weeds. I found a circuit box next to the fence, attached to a phone pole, and wedged a long piece of scrap wood under the hinge, snapping the box open. I toyed with the switches for five minutes until the dusk-shrouded inside of 6481 was illuminated as bright as day.
I brazenly walked across the wooden service porch and through the back door. Then I walked quietly through the entire house, savoring each nuance of the evil I felt there.
It was just an ordinary one-family dwelling, bereft of furniture, bereft of all signs of habitation, bereft even of the winos who usually inhabited such places; but it was alive with an unspeakable aura of sickness and terror that permeated every wall, floorboard, and cobweb-knitted corner.
On the oak floor of the bedroom near an overturned mattress I found a large splotch of dried blood. It could have been something else, but I knew what it was. I upended the mattress; the bottom of it was soaked through with brownish matter.
I found what I knew to be old blood in the bathtub, in the living room closet, and on the dining room walls. Somehow each new sign of carnage brought forth in me a deeper and deeper sense of calm. Until I walked into the den that adjoined the kitchen and saw the crib, its railings splattered with blood, the matting that lined the inside caked thick with blood, and the teddy bear who lay dead atop it, his cotton guts spilling out and soaked with blood from another time that was reaching out to hold me.