Day Shift

30

The town fell silent again at dusk. Everyone did the same things they’d done the night before, even though some of the tension had gone. Fiji called Manfred to ask him if he wanted some homemade bread, and when he said yes, they met in the middle of Witch Light Road. There was still plenty of light; they talked a little. Though the heat radiated off the road, it was still pleasant to be outside, to be confident that nothing was lurking… yet.

“Mr. Snuggly won’t come out of the corner of my bedroom,” she said. “He’s gone into scaredy-cat overload.”

“One more night of this, you think? After tonight?”

“I think so.”

“What, exactly, are we so afraid of?”

“Well,” Fiji said, “it is the full moon.” She looked at him significantly, obviously expecting Manfred to pick up her meaning.

“It’s been the full moon lots of times since I moved here, and I’ve never had to do this before.”

“Then you should ask yourself, ‘What’s different about this time?’” she said patiently. “Here’s the bread. There’s beer in it. Enjoy.” She cast a quick glance over at the pawnshop, perhaps hoping that Bobo would emerge. She turned to go back to her house, calling good-bye over her shoulder.

Manfred raised the bread to his nose. It had the most wonderful aroma. He wondered if baking might someday be included in his skill set, because he would do anything to make his house smell like this. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A police car was driving very slowly down the street. The driver was looking from side to side. There was someone else in the front seat. Manfred saw that the passenger was Shorty Horowitz.

“Shit!” Manfred said. He flagged down the car. It pulled into his driveway. He didn’t know the driver, but it was a sheriff’s department uniform.

“You know this man, sir?” asked the deputy.

“Yes, where was he?”

“I found him on the Davy highway just north of here. He says he has a grandson here? Someone named Barry Bellboy?” The deputy said this very carefully, as if he suspected he was the butt of a joke.

“His grandson is over at the hotel,” Manfred said. “I’ll bet he’s going nuts.”

He looked over at the hotel and saw Barry standing in the hotel doorway, looking from one direction to another, obviously terrified. Manfred waved his arms and pointed at the patrol car. Barry came running across the intersection like there was no such thing as traffic, and in a second was standing by the car, panting.

“Oh, you’ve found him! Thanks so much.”

“You Barry? He do this a lot?” asked the deputy.

At least it’s not Gomez, Manfred thought.

“I’m Barry Horowitz. He’s never done this before,” Barry said. “God, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was really, really… scared.” He leaned down to look across the deputy at the errant Shorty. “Granddad, where’ve you been? Why did you leave?” His voice sound gentle, and he’d put the fear away somewhere.

“Barry?” Shorty turned to look at his grandson. He seemed puzzled.

“That was part of the problem,” the deputy explained. “He kept telling us your name was Bellboy, and I put out a call to search for someone of that name. Of course, there wasn’t anyone in this area called that.”

Barry didn’t seem to be able to speak. He looked stricken.

“You ready to take your grandpa back home?” the deputy said, looking a little worried.

Barry had recovered his vocal cords. “Okay, Grandpa, you ready to go back to the hotel?”

“All right. If they’ll give me cake for supper and let me take a nap.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Whitefield won’t mind giving you some cake, if she’s got one made, and you can sure take a nap in your room.”

“Barry took a nap,” Shorty said. “But it was time for me to go home.”

“That was my big mistake,” Barry told the deputy. He seemed to have recovered his wits. “He woke me up last night with this ‘going home’ theme, and I dropped off to sleep this afternoon. He gets worse the closer to night it becomes. Sundowner syndrome, they call it.”

“Sundown,” Manfred said significantly. The deputy looked at him oddly, but Barry got Manfred’s drift.

It was very close to nightfall.

“Thanks so much, Deputy…” Barry paused.

“Nash. Glad to help. Glad we found the old guy before he came to harm.”

After some well-meaning advice from Deputy Nash and more profuse thanks from Barry and more disjointed statements from Shorty, Barry and Manfred extricated Shorty from the car and waved while the deputy backed out and turned right to go back to Davy.

“Go, go, go,” Manfred said. “Do you need to stay at my place?” He made the offer reluctantly, but he made it.

“We’ve got the time,” Barry said. “I don’t know what the urgency is, but we’ll be inside in four minutes, maximum.” He began to coax his grandfather toward the hotel, promising cake and ice cream and many naps. Manfred stood in his doorway watching.

Finally, the tall man and short man reached the double glass doors to the hotel.

Manfred heard a sound coming from somewhere close, a deep sound, one he could not identify. But it made him think of the zoo again.

In an instant, he was in the house with the door shut behind him. And he locked it. And he drew the curtains tight.

After he had gotten his breathing under control, he noticed that the message light on his cell phone was blinking. He had two messages. The first one was from Magdalena Powell. “I did the thing I said I was going to do,” she said. “Have you called my mom yet?”

The second message was from Fiji. “What the hell is with the cop car?” she said.

Manfred returned her call.

“Yeah?” she said breathlessly.

“Barry’s grandfather went walkabout,” he told her. “The cops returned him. Deputy Nash was confused because Shorty kept telling him that his grandson’s name was Barry Bellboy. Weird, huh?”

“He’ll have to do something about Shorty.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s thinking about that right now.”

“Did you tell Barry that? About the Bellboy thing?”

“The deputy did. Barry freaked out.” Manfred reconsidered his terminology. “Actually, he was scared shitless.”

“That’s pretty strange. Well, have a good evening and enjoy the bread.”