BOILER

Chapter 13

Toland drove out of the city. The car was low on fuel. He stopped and filled up at an empty stone-grey forecourt. There was one grey-haired and tired-looking woman in the store, and two trucks parked in the dark across the road. One car went by fast behind its headlights. There were howls and white eyes hovered and winked in the black trees. He pumped, watching the numbers wind up and clap out and slotted the nozzle back in its holster. The woman watched him cross the forecourt, he noticed. He pushed the door open and strolled to the counter.

'That's fifteen and three.'

'Gimme a pack of nuts, too, please.'

'That's fifteen and thirty-three.'

'I don't have the three,' he said, pushing around coins in his palm.

I can break whatever you got.

He took the nuts and the change and asked if there was a phone. She said there was one down the back near the charcoal and lighter fluid. Another car slowed down and swept into the forecourt and rolled around the pumps. It stopped before exiting. He dialled the secretary's extension and watched for someone to get out of the car. He took a pencil from his pocket and wrote the licence plate on the wall above the phone while he waited. The line went to the machine. A blank white face stared out the windshield at him. Toland hung up and stared back. The face seemed to turn and speak to someone in the back of the car. He pulled his Berretta and held it over his head. The people in the car saw that and left. He picked the phone up and dialled again.

'Yeah, it's Jim' — 'I'm at a garage on my way up to the wilds. Did you hear from Charlie yet?' — 'What'd he say?' — 'That right?' — 'Well, that's a good job. So, what's he doing about it?' — 'And what time is that?' — 'I should be all right to make it. Make sure he's got good company with him. Useful people' — 'All right. I'll be in touch.'

He hung up and told the lady at the counter to lock the door behind him.

The road reached up as it travelled into the hills, cutting a black line in the forest of pine trees. Darkness was reaching from the treeline when he came to a cabin made up as a bait shop. There were racks of lures and fishing rods fixed to the walls below a red and white sign for cabin rental. An old man stood in the door with his hands balled in his canvas overalls. His white hair was feint on his head and unruly around his ears and his stubble was silver with a few days of growth in it and his white moustache had grown into his mouth and he was chewing on it. He didn't take his eyes off the car. Even staring through the headlights.

Toland got out and leaned on the door. 'You the one to speak to about a cabin?'

'You read the sign?'

'There's no names on the sign. Are you one who rents them or what?'

'I am. What are you looking for?'

'People and where they are.'

'Why'd you be wanting that?'

Toland shut the door and strolled over. He showed his ID. The old man narrowed his eyes on it and grumbled, 'I guess you better come in then.'

The man went behind the counter that had a bear paw displayed above it.

'That real?' Toland asked.

'What real?'

'The paw. Was that ever alive or is it like an ornament?'

'It was alive 'til I shot the son of a bitch.'

His dark eyes darted about and stopped as he reached and brought out a brown-leather ledger. 'This is the register. You help yourself.'

There were plenty of ways for air to get into the cabin, but that did nothing to break the smell of fish guts. The floor was littered with hardened, black lumps fallen from some dead thing. The old man went away and ran a tap and came back wiping the wet off his face. He was looking at Toland for a while. Toland noticed but tried to ignore him. Eventually the old man spoke.