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Before he could reply, Manx went on. “I am puzzled about some things. I am hoping you can clear up a mystery for me.”

With his other hand, he reached beneath his greatcoat and produced a folded sheet of paper, dirty and stained. He unfolded it and held it in front of Wayne’s face.

BOEING ENGINEER VANISHES

“A woman with absurdly colored hair turned up at your mother’s house the other day. I am sure you remember her. She had a folder full of stories about me. Your mother and this lady made quite a scene in your mother’s yard. Bing told me all about it. You will be surprised to know that Bing saw the whole thing from the house across the street.”

Wayne frowned, wondered how Bing had been able to watch from across the street. The de Zoets lived over there. An answer suggested itself. It wasn’t funny in the slightest.

They reached the door under the stairs. Manx pulled the knob and opened it to reveal a little half bathroom under a slanted roof.

Manx reached for a chain hanging from a bare lightbulb and pulled it, but the room remained dark.

“Bing is letting this place go to the dogs. I will leave the door open to allow you a little light.”

He nudged Wayne into the dim bathroom. The door remained ajar about half a foot, but the old man stepped aside to give Wayne his privacy.

“How does your mother happen to know this peculiar lady, and why would they be talking about me?”

“I don’t know. I never saw her before.”

“You read the news stories she brought, though. Stories about me, most of them. I would like to tell you, the news reports about my case are full of the most outrageous libels. I have never killed a single child. Not one. And I am no kiddie fiddler either. The fires of hell are not hot enough for such people. Your mother’s visitor did not seem to think I was dead. That is a remarkable notion to have, considering that the papers widely reported upon not only my demise but also my autopsy. Why do you think she had so much faith in my continued survival?”

“I don’t know that either.” Wayne stood there holding his prick, unable to pee. “My mother said she was a crazy person.”

“You are not ‘having me on’ are you, Wayne?”

“No, sir.”

“What did this woman with the curious hair say about me?”

“My mother sent me inside the house. I didn’t hear any of it.”

“Oh, you are telling me a tall one now, Bruce Wayne Carmody.” But he didn’t say it like he was angry about it. “Are you having difficulties with your fiddlestick?”

“My what?”

“Your winkie. Your peepee?”

“Oh. Maybe a little.”

“It is because we are talking. It is never easy to tinkle when someone is listening to you. I will move three steps away.”

Wayne heard Manx’s heels rapping on the concrete as he moved off. Almost immediately Wayne’s bladder let go, and the urine rained down.

As he peed, he let out a long sigh of relief and tipped back his head.

There was a poster above the toilet. It showed a naked woman on her knees, with her hands tied behind her. Her head was stuffed into a gasmask. A man in a Nazi uniform stood over her, holding a leash, the collar around her neck.

Wayne shut his eyes, pushed his fiddlestick—no, penis, “fiddlestick” was a grotesque word—back into his shorts, and turned away. He washed his hands in a sink with a cockroach clinging to the side. As he did, he was relieved to discover he had not found anything funny about that awful poster.

It’s the car. It’s being in the car that makes everything seem funny, even when it’s awful.

As soon as he had this thought, he knew it was true.

He stepped out of the bathroom, and Manx was there, holding the door open to the backseat of the Wraith. In his other hand was the silver mallet. He grinned to show his stained teeth. Wayne thought he might be able to run as far as the driveway before Manx smashed his head in.

“Tell you what,” Manx said. “I would really like to know more about your mother’s confidante. I am sure if you put your mind to it, you will remember some details you have forgotten. Why don’t you sit in the car and turn it over in your mind? I will go and get your breakfast. By the time I come back, perhaps something will have occurred to you. What do you say to that?”

Wayne shrugged, but his heart surged at the thought of being alone in the car. The phone. He only needed a minute alone to call his father and tell him everything: Sugarcreek, Pennsylvania; pink house, right down the hill from a burned church. The cops would be here before Manx got back with his bacon and eggs. He climbed into the car willingly, without hesitation.

Manx shut the door and knocked on the glass. “I will be back in a jiffy! Don’t run away!” And he laughed as the lock banged down.

Wayne knelt on the seat to watch through the rear window as Manx left. When the old man had disappeared into the back of the house, Wayne turned, dropped to the floor, grabbed the walnut drawer beneath the driver’s seat, and yanked it open to get his phone.

Gone.





Bing’s Garage


SOMEWHERE A DOG BARKED AND A LAWN MOWER STARTED AND THE world went on, but here in the Rolls-Royce the world had caught in place, because the phone was gone.

Wayne pulled the drawer all the way out and put his hand in it, patting down the baize interior, as if the phone might be hiding under the drawer lining somehow. He knew he was not mistaken and that this was the drawer he had put it in, but he closed it and looked in the other drawer, beneath the passenger seat. It was just as empty.