Thinner(29)

Sober, Arncaster might have told them they were just lucky he was an honest man and had refunded them the unused portion of what they had paid. Drunk - Arncaster was a three-six-packs-a-night man - he might have been slightly more expansive. There were forces in town that wanted the Gypsies gone, he might have told them.

Pressure had been brought to bear, pressure that a poor dirt farmer like Lars Arncaster simply couldn't stand against. Particularly when half the so-called 'good people' in town had the knife out for him to begin with.

Not that any of the Gypsies (with the possible exception of Juggler, Billy thought) would need a chapter-and-verse rendition.

Billy got up and walked slowly back home through a cold, drifting rain. There was a light burning in the bedroom; Heidi, waiting up for him.

Not the patrol-car jockey; no need for revenge there. Not Arncaster; he had seen a chance for five hundred dollars cash money and had sent them on their way because he'd had to do so.

Duncan Hopley?

Hopley, maybe. A strong maybe, Billy amended. In one way Hopley was just another species of trained dog whose most urgent directives were aimed at preserving Fairview's well-oiled status quo. But Billy doubted if the old Gypsy man would be disposed to take such a bloodlessly sociological view of things, and not just because Hopley had rousted them so efficiently following the hearing. Rousting was one thing. They were used to that. Hopley's failure to investigate the accident which had taken the old woman's life ...

Ah, that was something else, wasn't it?

Failure to investigate? Hell, Billy, don't make me laugh. Failure to investigate is a sin of omission. What Hopley did was to throw as much dirt as he could over any possible culpability. Beginning with the conspicuous lack of a breathalyzer test. It was a cover-up on general principles. You know it, and Cary Rossington knew it too.

The wind was picking up and the rain was harder now. He could see it cratering the puddles in the street. The water had a queer polished look under the amber highsecurity streetlamps that lined Lantern Drive. Overhead, branches moaned and creaked in the wind, and Billy Halleck looked up uneasily.

I ought to go see Duncan Hopley.

Something glimmered - something that might have been the spark of an idea. Then he thought of Leda Rossington's drugged, horrified face ... he thought of Leda saying He's hard to talk to now ... it's happening inside his mouth, you see ... everything he says to me comes out in grunts.

Not tonight. He'd had enough for tonight.

'Where did you go, Billy?'

She was in bed, lying in a pool of light thrown by the reading lamp. Now she laid her book aside on the coverlet, looked at him, and Billy saw the dark brown hollows under her eyes. Those brown hollows did not exactly overwhelm him with pity . . . at least, not tonight.

For just a moment he thought of saying: I went to see Cary Rossington, but since he was gone I ended up having a few drinks with his wife - the kind of drinks the Green Giant must have when he's on a toot. And you'll never guess what she told me, Heidi, dear. Cary Rossington, who grabbed your tit once at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, is turning into an alligator. When he finally dies, they can turn him into a brand-new product: Here Come de Judge Pocketbooks.

'Nowhere,' he said. 'Just out. Walking. Thinking.'

'You smell like you fell into the juniper bushes on your way home.'

'I guess I did, in a manner of speaking. Only it was Andy's Pub I actually fell into.'

'How many did you have?'

'A couple.'

'It smells more like five.'

'Heidi, are you cross-examining me?'

'No, honey. But I wish you wouldn't worry so much. Those doctors will probably find out what's wrong when they do the metabolic series.'

Halleck grunted.

She turned her earnest, scared face toward him. 'I just thank God it isn't cancer.'

He thought - and almost said - that it must be nice for her to be on the outside; it must be nice to be able to see gradations of the horror. He didn't say it, but some of what he felt must have shown on his face, because her expression of tired misery intensified.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It just ... it seems hard to say anything that isn't the wrong thing.'

You know it, babe, he thought, and the hate flashed up again, hot and sour. On top of the gin, it made him feel both depressed and physically ill. It receded, leaving shame in its wake. Cary's skin was changing into God knew what, something fit only to be seen in a circus-sideshow tent. Duncan Hopley might be just fine, or something even worse might be waiting for Billy there. Hell, losing weight wasn't so bad, was it?

He undressed, careful to turn off her reading lamp first, and took Heidi in his arms. She was stiff against him at first. Then, just when he began to think it was going to be no good, she softened. He heard the sob she tried to swallow back and thought unhappily that if all the storybooks were right, that there was nobility to be found in adversity and character to be built in tribulation, then he was doing a piss-poor job of both finding and building.

'Heidi, I'm sorry,' he said.

'If I could only do something,' she sobbed. 'If I could only do something, Billy, you know?'

'You can,' he said, and touched her breast.

They made love. He began thinking, This one is for her, and discovered it had been for himself after all; instead of seeing Leda Rossington's haunted face and shocked, glittering eyes in the darkness, he was able to sleep.