Free Blood Of Angels by Michael Marshall Page A

'I want it for another year, if that's okay.'
    'All right by me, and I see the money's here.' She handed him a small, rusty key. 'Goodnight. Leave the key on the step.'
    Then the door was shut, and Jim was finished.
    As he drove through the park, heading for the far side, he was bemused at how easy it had been. He had arrived late, that night twelve years ago, and in an intense frame of mind. His cover story sucked, and yet Hannah had actually given him a ride back to Benboro so he could catch a bus for Miami. He had booked five years and then disappeared for over twice as long. You'd have thought she would be… well, whatever. He'd evidently just made a good choice, that was all, divining correctly that storage turnover out here would not be high. Or perhaps she'd just sold his belongings long ago and was sitting in her trailer now, door bolted, laughing over his money.
    He parked outside the third of the big sheds, and walked along to the fifth big door. He used the key to unlock it, and went inside.
    Space 17 was a simple rectangle partitioned off within the big interior, ten feet wide by twenty deep. It was immediately evident that it still held what Jim had left behind.
    He pulled the cover off and let it fall to the ground. Then just stood and looked at it for a moment. He had meant to be businesslike about this, but he could not help but pause.
    For something that looked so luminous, the object in Space 17 was remarkably prosaic. It was an old VW camper van, in white: a vehicle in neither good nor bad enough condition to draw the eye. There was the big window in front, for optimum visibility. None in the sides. The quarter-height one in back was obscured by a thick white blind. You couldn't see the interior but it held a minuscule kitchenette and a tiny divided-off sleeping area at the back which ran the width of the van, and was just about feasible if you weren't too tall and didn't mind lying on your side and drawing your legs up a little. It was everything a travelling man needed. This particular travelling man, anyhow.
    Jim walked back to his car and got the two bags out. He opened his small suitcase, put his hand into the shoebox, and pulled out the old set of car keys. Felt funny with them in his hands, with the worn plastic fob, a free gift advertising a school craft fair eighteen years ago. He was becalmed by it for a moment, remembering that afternoon, recalling buying it. Another life.
    Back in Space 17 he unlocked the camper's driver-side door and threw the lighter bag across to the passenger seat. Then he carried the heavy bag to the back of the vehicle. He drained the small amount of gas still in the tank and replaced it with new. He removed the van's battery and swapped it with the one in the second bag, then carried the dead one back outside and stowed it in the trunk of the car. Walked back to the van.
    It was time to see. Could be the electrics had gotten damp. The oil would have settled. It had been a very long time.
    He climbed in the front, feeling the seat settle under him like an old friend. Stuck the key in and turned it without ceremony.
    A click, and nothing.
    Turned it again. The van coughed, farted, and then chugged gamely into life. Jim shook his head fondly, not the first person to admire the efficiency of Volkswagen's engineers.
    'Welcome back, old horse,' he said.
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    Ten minutes later he placed the key on the step of Site No. 1 and walked back to the quietly chugging van. He sat in the front and waited while a middle-aged couple wandered across the road. Neither gave him a second glance. A more-or-less white van. Whatever. And of course Jim was over sixty now, and men of that age are seldom assumed to be up to much. The car he had arrived in was in Space 17, covered with the tarp. Inside it were the clothes Jim had been wearing. He was now dressed in black jeans and a faded denim shirt, purchased at the outlet mall. Not the kind of thing Jim Westlake wore. More the style of