Bridge of Clay(9)
What was going on here?
Could no one intuit the killer?
No, it wasn’t going to be that easy, and now he was left, this time crushed on the couch, to contemplate the term of his natural invisibility. He was caught—somewhere between the relief of its mercy and the shame of its impotence—and he sat there, simple and still. Around him, a cyclone of loose cat hair whirled in the evening light. The goldfish resumed its war with the glass, and the pigeon hit full stride.
And the piano watched him from behind.
At Bernborough Park, when the last of them turned up, they shook hands, they laughed. They reveled. They drank in that adolescent way, all greedy-mouthed and wide open. They said “Oi!” and “Hey!” and “Where the hell have you been, you dopey deadshit?” They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn’t know it.
As soon as he’d stepped from his car, Henry’s first order of business was to make sure Clay was in the grandstand dressing sheds. Down there he’d meet today’s batch; there’d be six boys, all waiting, and what would happen was this: They’d walk back out the tunnel.
Each of those six boys would then position himself around the 400-meter track.
Three at the 100-meter mark.
Two at the 200.
And one anywhere from the 300 to the finish.
Last, and most importantly, all six would do everything in their power to stop Clay running a single lap. Easier said than done.
As for the mob who watched, they guessed at the result. Each would call out a specific time, and that’s where Henry came in. Henry, very willingly, handled the bets. A stump of chalk in his hand, an old-school stopwatch round his neck, and he was set.
* * *
—
Today, several boys were at him immediately, down at the foot of the grandstand. To Henry, many of them weren’t even real—they were nicknames with boys attached. As for us, for all but two of them, we’ll see them here, we’ll leave them here, they’ll be fools like this forever. It’s kind of nice, when you think of it.
“Well, Henry?” asked Leper. You can only pity a guy with a nickname like that; there were scabs of various shapes, sizes, and colors all over him. Apparently he’d started doing stupid things on his bike when he turned eight, and never stopped.
Henry very nearly took pity on him, but opted instead for a smirk. “Well, what?”
“How tired is he?”
“Not very.”
“Has he run up Crapper’s stairwell yet?” This time it was Chugs. Charlie Drayton. “And up the hill to the graveyard?”
“Look, he’s good, all right, he’s in mint condition.” Henry rubbed his hands together, in warm anticipation. “We’ve got six of the best down there, too. Even Starkey.”
“Starkey! That bastard’s back, is he? That’s worth at least another thirty seconds, I reckon.”
“Oh, come on, Trout, Starkey’s all talk. Clay’ll run right past him.”
“How many floors in that apartment block again, Crapps?”
“Six,” said Henry, “and that key’s getting a bit rusty, too, old boy. Fix us up for a new one and I might even let you bet free.”
Crapper, curly-haired, curly-faced, licked his curly lips. “What? Really?”
“Okay, maybe half.”
“Hey,” said a guy named Spook, “how come Crapps gets a free bet?”
Henry interrupted before there was anything to interrupt. “Unforchantly, Spook, you pale, poor bastard, Crapps has got something we can use; he’s useful.” He walked with him, he mentored. “You, on the other hand, are useless. Get it?”
“Okay, Henry, how about this?” Crapper tried for more. “You can have my key if you give me three bets gratis.”
“Gratis? What are you, bloody French?”
“I don’t think the French say gratis, Henry. I think it might be German.”
That voice had come from out of the pack; Henry sought it out. “Was that you, Chewie, you hairy bastard? Last I heard you couldn’t speak fucking English!” To the rest of them: “Can you believe that awful prick?”
They laughed. “Good one, Henry.”
“And don’t think a ‘Good one, Henry’ll do you any extra favors.”
“Hey, Henry.” Crapper. One last try. “How about—”
“Oh, Jesus!” His voice erupted in fury, but Henry did mock-anger, not anger itself. At seventeen, he’d endured much of what life as a Dunbar could throw at him, and he always came up smiling. He also had a soft spot for Wednesdays here at Bernborough, and the boys who watched from the fence. He loved that all of this was their midweek main event, and to Clay it was one more warm-up. “All right, you bastards, who’s up first? It’s ten up front or piss off!”
He jumped to a splintery bench.
* * *
—
From there the bets went this way and that, from 2:17 to 3:46 to a resounding 2:32. With his stump of green chalk, Henry wrote the names and times on the concrete at their feet; next to bets from previous weeks.
“All right, come on, Showbag, enough’s enough.”
Showbag, also known as Vong, or Kurt Vongdara, had agonized a long time. He took few things very seriously, but this, it seemed, was one of them. “Okay,” he said. “With Starkey out there, make it, shit—5:11.”