The Three Dollar Phoenix by Walt Sautter (rooftoppers .txt) 📖

times and still no answer. She looked at her watch. It was a little early. Mike probably wasn’t in yet. A cup of coffee would kill ten minutes and then she’d try again. She opened the booth door, exited, turned and looked at its interior, checking that no change had inadvertently dropped out of her wallet. Sure that none had, she turned again and started towards the counter.
As her eyes looked upwards, away from the phone booth floor, there he was.
Her first impulse was to run, to lunge for the door, to look for a rear exit, but the shock of his sudden presence tetanized every muscle in her body. Her heart began to race and she struggled to squeeze out a quivering “Hello” and regain her composure. It was the surprise of seeing him here that had stunned her. She felt like a kid caught shoplifting, even though she knew his appearance could very well be mere coincidence.
“Hello, Rita” he replied to her shaky greeting in a clear, deliberate voice.
He knew her name. She could feel the butterflies in her stomach metamorph into bats and the blood vessels in her temples began to pulse She was trapped. Confession or new attempts at deceit were the choices.
“Rita Ray. That’s your real name isn’t it?” he asked in a strong declarative tone.
She said nothing.
“You don’t have to answer. It is” he asserted.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a cop in Bayonne and he ran the license plate number of your car through Trenton. After he found the owner is Rita Ray then he cheeked on her driver’s license description. Either you’re her or you’ve got a twin sister.”
She remained silent.
“What sleazy magazine do you work for and who exactly are you trying to cannibalize this time? You people like to kick somebody when they’re down. You call yourselves reporters. You got to be kiddin’. I think you’re nothing but a bunch of ghouls pickin’ on the corpses of people whose souls are dead from drugs or booze.
They come here to Caramore to be resurrected and you want to pick their bones clean before they can get up off their backs.
What’s even worse, is that I really liked you and you just tried to use me to help get your god damn morbid story.”
She couldn’t stand by mutely and allow herself to be maligned any longer. Having regained her composure once more, she abruptly interrupted his tirade.
“I’m not a reporter, Larry. And I don’t work for any magazine, sleazy or otherwise” she interjected angrily.
“Then what the hell are you doing sneaking around here like super spy? The only ones that do that kind of shit, as far as I know are the movie mag people” he retorted sharply in a loud voice,
As he spoke, her eyes caught a glimpse of a dark sports car parked at the curb directly in front of the building. It wasn’t there when she arrived, of that she was sure. Then it struck her.
“Is that your car?” she demanded and pointed out through the cafeteria window at it.
Surprised by the sudden sternness of her tone, he responded almost by reflex.
“Yes.”
“Sneaking around. You son of a bitch. Look who’s talking. You followed me back to the hospital the other night and scared me out of my wits. If that’s not sneaking, what the hell is it? I wonder how many other times you’ve followed me. Do you peek in my windows when I’m in the bathroom?” she fired back in a loud voice.
Then instinctively, they both turned to see the counterman and his two customers intently listening to their conversation. She turned back to Larry and added in a quieter voice.
“Look, I’m not here for any of the reasons that you think.”
“Then why are you here?” he replied more calmly.
“Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you the whole story” she said and with that led him towards one of the small tables in the corner of the room.
They ordered coffee and Rita began her long, detailed explanation of the events that brought her to Caramore. She decided to lay everything out with him. Her original impression of Larry was that of an honest, sincere guy who could be trusted and she had been given no reason to change that opinion. Now that she thought about it, her initial fright on encountering him was probably due more to embarrassment and surprise, than warranted fear.
As she spoke, she could see his skepticism begin to fade. After she finished, he leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“Now that I’ve told you mine, let’s hear yours.
Why are you following me around and checking my car registration?” she asked pointedly.
He hesitated and then spoke in a slow tone.
“To be honest Rita, I like you a lot, a real lot.”
He paused convincingly.
“I’ve had some disappointing experiences in the past and I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t heading for another one. Maybe I’m too suspicious now but I’ve got reasons for being that way” he replied with irresistible sincerity.
Then after a long moment, and sensing a need for further explanation, he continued.
“I met a girl at the last place I worked. We got along great. We had what I thought was a really good relationship going. Then one day, out of the clear blue, all of a sudden, I found myself scheming with her to steal some morphine out of the pharmacy. Luckily, I stopped and asked myself what the hell I was doing, just before I went through with it. She was giving me a line of bullshit about her invalid grandmother and the acute state of pain she was in, and I was sucking it all up like ice cream.
Later I found out that she had a boyfriend and he was a heavy drug user. She was setting me up to be his supplier. That hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized the whole thing.
Maybe that will explain my paranoia” he added concluding a story that was obviously difficult for him to tell.
“I felt that getting all the information I could about you before I let myself get involved would help prevent me from making another mistake. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s all true.”
“Then, too” he continued, “the day you came to visit at the pharmacy, after you left I found the computer terminal had been shut off. I never shut that off until the end of the day, when I leave. I figured that you must have been fooling around with it while I was gone and I wondered why?”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” replied Rita.
He continued without answering her question.
“Besides, you didn’t impress me as the country type. Somebody with your ability and background could get a better job in New York City, so why would you come all the way out here in the woods?
I guess it was all just instinct but I knew something was very wrong.”
Rita reached over and grasped his hand.
“Larry everything I’ve told you is true, swear to God, and I’m sure that what you’ve told me is true. I wouldn’t have lied to you in the first place if I hadn’t thought it was absolutely necessary. I wanted to trust you and somehow I knew I could but I was afraid. You do believe that, don’t you?”
He nodded his head.
His belief might have arisen from the facts she presented or it could have come from the strong feelings he held for her and his desire to believe. It made no difference, he did believe what she had told him and she in turn trusted him.
“Now that you know the whole story, will you help me?” she implored.
He hesitated for a second and then looked into her deep brown eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” he answered in a soft, agreeable voice.
She didn’t reply right away. She just accepted
Rita glanced up at the clock behind the counter,
Forty five minutes had passed.
“Let me call Mike before it’s to late” she said and left the table.
Larry remained seated as she went to the phone.
After ten minutes, she came out of the booth and walked to the table. Larry could see from the look on her face that something was wrong.
“Al’s dead. He was home only for two days and he’s dead” she said as she sat down somberly.
“He died from a heart attack. The medication he was taking had nothing to do with a heart problem. If he had that kind of condition how come he wasn’t being treated for it?” she said, more or less thinking out loud.
“A lot of people are killed by their first attack. You know that. They have no history of the disease at all, and then, bang, they’re gone. Maybe it was one of those” Larry replied, attempting to provide some plausible explanation for a seemingly implausible circumstance.
“Maybe” Rita answered with raised eyebrows and a dismissing tone.
“Can you get any medical data on Al out of the computer besides the pharmacy charts I mean?”
“You know he was one of House’s patients. Those files need special codes. I doubt I can get into them, but I’ll try” he replied.
They left the Wedgewood and drove back separately. Rita felt better now than at any time since coming to Caramore. She felt less guilty. She never did like deceiving people, especially those she cared about like Larry. That was over now and it was as if a dark cloud had been swept away. She had a good feeling, deep within her now that she had shared her secrets with him.
She entered the solitude of her apartment and the warm feeling began to slowly evaporate in the cold loneliness. She sat for a while and reached for the phone, grasped the receiver, but failed to lift it. Then, slowly she raised it to her ear and held it there frozen in place. She wanted to dial but couldn’t.
“If you want to make a call, please hang up and dial again” came the recorded message.
She put the phone back in its cradle, held it there and continued to debate with herself. As she was about to pick it up again, a knock sounded at the door. She walked to the door and looked out through the peek hole to see Larry pressing his nose against the lens. Rita never did believe in telepathy, but it was hard to deny it this time. She hurriedly unlocked the door and he fell through in comic fashion.
The delight of seeing him cracked the dam of emotions within her and without a word she threw her arms gleefully about his neck as he entered. He was momentarily startled by the welcome but quickly responded with a powerful passionate embrace which she returned eagerly.
The warm glow that had been faltering, returned to an even greater brightness and Rita felt safe and secure for the first time since Caramore. As the evening went on, they ignited a spark that roared to full brilliance in early morning light.

Chapter XI

He cracked open his eyelids. His vision barely pierced the darkness that surrounded him. His eye caught the only illumination, a faint blur of