"
Boy!
" Scrooge hailed down from his window, a caricature of the Christmas
Spirit in his nightgown and cap. "Is the prize turkey still in the butcher's
window?"
"Wot?" the boy asked. "The one as big as I am?"
"Yes, yes," Scrooge answered, giggling wildly. It was as if the three spirits
had, instead of saving him, driven him mad. "The one as big as you are!"
Arnie, Welch, Repperton… LeBay?
Sometimes he thought it was not the bust that had tired him out and made him
feel so constantly beaten and afraid. That it was not even the fact that they
had busted his pet accountant or that the Federal tax people were in on it and
were obviously loaded for bear this time. The tax people weren't the reason
that he had begun scanning the street before going out mornings; the State
Attorney General's Office didn't have anything to do with the sudden glances
he had begun throwing back over his shoulder when he was driving home
nights from the garage.
He had gone over what he had seen that night—or what he thought he had
seen—again and again, trying to convince himself that it was absolutely not
real or that it absolutely was. For the first time in years he found himself
doubting his own senses. And as the event receded into the past, it became
easier to believe he had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing.
He hadn't seen Arnie since the bust, or tried to call him on the telephone. At
first he had thought to use his knowledge about Christine as a lever to keep
Arnie's mouth shut if the kid weakened and took a notion to talk—God knew
the kid could go a long way toward sending him to jail if he cooperated with
the cops. It wasn't until after the police had landed everywhere that Will
realized how much the kid knew, and he had had a few panicky moments of
self-appraisal (something else that was upsetting because it was so foreign to
his nature): had
all
of them known that much? Repperton, and all the hoody
Repperton clones stretching back over the years? Could he actually have
been so stupid?
No, he decided. It was only Cunningham. Because Cunningham was different.
He seemed to understand things almost intuitively. He wasn't all brag and
booze and bullshit. In a queer way, Will felt almost fatherly toward the boy—
not that he would have hesitated to cut the kid loose if it started to look as if
he was going to rock the boat.
And not that I'd hesitate now,
he assured
himself.
On the TV, a scratchy black-and-white Scrooge was with the Cratchets. The
film was almost over. The whole bunch of them looked like loonies, and that
was the truth, but Scrooge was definitely the worst. The look of mad joy in
his eye was not so different from the last look in the eye of a man Will had
known twenty years before, a fellow named Everett Dingle who had gone
home from the garage one afternoon and murdered his entire family.
Will lit a cigar. Anything to take the taste of the aspirator out of his mouth,
that rotten taste. Lately it seemed harder than ever to catch his breath.
Damned cigars didn't help, but he was too old to change now.
The kid hadn't talked—at least not yet he hadn't. They had turned Henry Buck,
Will's lawyer had told him; Henry, who was sixty-three and a grandfather,
would have denied Christ three times if they had promised him a dismissal
Or even a suspended sentence in return. Old Henry Buck was sicking up
everything he knew, which fortunately wasn't a great deal. He knew about the
fireworks and cigarettes, but that had only been two rings of what had been,
at one time, a six- or seven-ring circus encompassing booze, hot cars,
discount firearms (including a few machine-guns sold to gun nuts and
homicidal hunters who wanted to see if one "would really tear up a deer like
I heard"), and stolen antiques from New England. And in the last couple of
years, cocaine. That had been a mistake; he knew it now. Those Colombians
down in Miami were as crazy as shithouse rats. Come to think of it, they
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