Thinner(53)

It didn't matter. Even on his own, even at a hundred and thirty pounds, there was enough of him left to catch up to the old Gypsy man.

And what would happen then?

Well, they would see, wouldn't they?

'I smell you, old man,' Billy said again, and walked up to the side of the building. There was a realtor's sign there. Billy took his notebook from his back pocket and jotted down the information on it.

The realtor's name was Frank Quigley, but he insisted that Billy call him Biff. There were framed pictures of a high-school-age Biff Quigley on the walls. In most of them Biff was wearing a football helmet. On Biff's desk was a pile of bronzed dog turds, FRENCHMAN'S DRIVER'S LICENSE, the little sign beneath read.

Yes, Biff said, he had rented the space to the old Gyp with Mr Parsons' approval. 'He figured it couldn't look any worse than it does right now,' Biff Quigley said, 'and I guess he was right, at that.'

He leaned back in his swivel chair, his eyes crawling ceaselessly over Billy's face, measuring the gap between Billy's collar and Billy's neck, the way the front of Billy's shirt hung in folds like a flag on a still day. He laced his hands behind his head, rocked back in his office chair, and put his feet up on his desk beside the bronzed turds.

'Not that it isn't priced to sell, you understand. That's prime industrial land out there, and sooner or later someone with some vision is going to make himself one hell of a deal. Yessir, one hell of a -'

'When did the Gypsies leave, Biff?'

Biff Quigley removed his hands from behind his head and sat forward. His chair made a noise like a mechanical pig - Squoink! 'Mind telling me why you want to know?'

Billy Halleck's lips - they were thinner too now, and higher, so that they never quite met - drew back in a grin of frightening intensity and unearthly boniness. 'Yes, Biff, I mind.'

Biff recoiled for a moment, and then he nodded and leaned back in his chair again. His Quoddy mocs came down on his desk again. One crossed over the other and tapped thoughtfully at the turds.

'That's fine, Bill. A man's business ought to be his own. A man's reasons ought to be his own.'

'Good,' Billy said. He felt the rage coming back and was grappling with it. Getting mad at this disgusting man with his Quoddy mocs and his crude ethnic slurs and his blowdried Jay-Cees haircut wasn't going to do him any good. 'Then since we agree -'

'But it's still going to cost you two hundred bucks.'

'What?' Billy's mouth dropped open. For a moment his anger was so great he was simply unable to move at all or to say anything else. This was probably just as well for Biff Quigley, because if Billy could have moved, Billy would have leapt upon him. His self-control had also lost quite a bit of weight over the last two months.

'Not the information I give you,' Biff Quigley said. 'That's a freebie. The two hundred's for the information I won't give them.'

'Won't . . . give . . who?' Billy managed.

'Your wife,' Biff said, 'and your doctor, and a man who says he works for an outfit called Barton Detective Services.'

Billy saw everything in a flash. Things weren't as bad as his paranoid mind had imagined; they were even worse. Heidi and Mike Houston had gone to Kirk Penschley and had convinced him that Billy Halleck was mad. Penschley was still using the Barton agency to track the Gypsies, but now they were all like astronomers looking for Saturn only so they could study Titan - or bring Titan back to the Glassman Clinic.

He could also see the Barton operative who had sat in this chair a few days ago, talking to Biff Quigley, telling him that a very skinny man named Bill Halleck was going to show up soon, and when he did, this was the number to call.

This was followed by an even clearer vision: he saw himself leaping across Biff Quigley's desk, seizing the bronzed pile of dog turds in mid-leap, and then bashing Biff Quigley's head in with them. He saw this in utter, savage clarity: the skin breaking, the blood flying up in a fine spray of droplets (some of them splashing on the framed pictures), the white glimmer of bone shattering to reveal the physical texture of the man's creepy mind; then he saw himself slamming the dog turds back where they belonged - where, in a manner of speaking, they had come from.

Quigley must have seen this - or some of it - on Billy's haggard face, for an expression of alarm appeared on his own face. He hurriedly removed his feet from his desk and his hands from behind his neck. The chair emitted its mechanical pig squeal again.

'Now, we could talk this over' he began, and Billy saw one manicured hand straying toward the intercom.

Billy's anger abruptly deflated, leaving him shaken and cold. He had just visualized beating the man's brains out, not in any vague way but in the mental equivalent of Technicolor and Dolby sound. And good old Biff had known he was doing it, too.

Whatever happened to the old Bill Halleck who used to give to the United Fund and make wassail on Christmas Eve?

His mind returned: Yeah, that was the Billy Halleck that lived in Fat City. He moved. Gone, no forwarding.

'No need for that,' Billy said, nodding at the intercom.

The hand jerked, then diverted to a desk drawer, as if that had been its objective all the time. Biff brought out a pack of cigarettes.

'Wasn't even thinking of it, ha-ha. Smoke, Mr Halleck?'

Billy took one, looked at it, and then leaned forward to get a light. One drag and he was light-headed. 'Thanks.'