One Door From Heaven Read Free Page B

hammer arced high over the hood again, and he leaned into the car through the open door to pluck the key from the ignition.
        His house key was on the same ring. When he finally got home, by whatever means, he didn't want to discover that these behemoths were hosting a World Wrestling Federation beer party in his bungalow.
        On the passenger's seat lay the digital camera that contained photos of the philandering husband entering the house across the street and being greeted at the door by his lover. If Noah reached for the camera, he'd no doubt be left with a hand full of bones as shattered as the windshield.
        Pocketing his keys, he walked away, past modest ranch-style houses with neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs, where moon-silvered trees stood whisperless in the warm still air.
        Behind him, underlying the steady rhythmic crash of the hammer, the tire iron took up a syncopated beat, tattooing the Chevy fenders and trunk lid.
        Here on the perimeter of a respectable residential neighborhood in Anaheim, the home of Disneyland, scenes from A Clockwork Orange weren't reenacted every day. Nevertheless, made fearful by too much television news, the residents proved more cautious than curious. No one ventured outside to discover the reason for the fracas.
        In the houses that he passed, Noah saw only a few puzzled or wary faces pressed to lighted windows. None of them was Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy.
        When he glanced back, he noticed a Lincoln Navigator pulling away from the curb across the street, no doubt containing associates of the creative pair who were making modern art out of his car. Every ten or twelve steps, he checked on the SUV, and always it drifted slowly along in his wake, pacing him.
        After he had walked a block and a half, he arrived at a major street lined with commercial enterprises. Many businesses were closed now, at 9:20 on a 'Tuesday night.
        The Chevy-smashing shivaree continued unabated, but distance and intervening layers of laurel branches filtered cacophony into a muted clump-and-crackle.
        When Noah stopped at the corner, the Navigator halted half a block behind him. The driver waited to see which way he would go.
        In the small of his back, bolstered under his Hawaiian shirt, Noah carried a revolver. He didn't think he would need the weapon. Nevertheless, he had no plans to remake it into a plowshare.
        He turned right and, within another block and a half, arrived at a tavern. Here he might not be able to obtain aspirin, but ice-cold Dos Equis would be available.
        When it came to health care, he wasn't a fanatic about specific remedies.
        The long bar lay to the right of the door. In a row down the center of the room, each of eight plank-top tables bore a candle in an amber-glass holder.
        Fewer than half the stools and chairs were occupied. Several guys and one woman wore cowboy hats, as though they had been abducted and then displaced in space or time by meddling extraterrestrials.
        The concrete floor, painted ruby-red, appeared to have been mopped at least a couple times since Christmas, and underlying the stale-beer smell was a faint scent of disinfectant. If the place had cockroaches, they would probably be small enough that Noah might just be able to wrestle them into submission.
        Along the left wall were high-backed wooden booths with seats padded in red leatherette, a few unoccupied. He settled into the booth farthest from the door.
        He ordered a beer from a waitress who had evidently sewn herself into her faded, peg-legged blue jeans and red checkered shirt. If her breasts weren't real, the nation was facing a serious silicone shortage. "You want a glass?" she asked. "The bottle's probably cleaner." "Has to be," she agreed as she headed for the bar.
        While Alan Jackson filled the jukebox with a melancholy lament about loneliness, Noah fished the