Thinner(69)

'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Meantime, I'll give her your love.'

'Give who my love?'

Ginelli smiled. 'Lovely Gina. The whore who put the ball bearing through your hand.'

'Leave her alone,' Billy said. When he thought of those dark eyes, it seemed to be impossible to say anything else, no matter what she had done to him.

'No one gets hurt,' Ginelli reiterated, and then he was gone. Billy listened to the Nova start up, listened to the rough sound of its motor - that roughness would smooth out only when it got up to around sixty-five miles an hour - as Ginelli backed it out of the space, and reflected that No one gets hurt wasn't the same thing as agreeing to leave the girl alone. Not at all.

This time it was noon before Ginelli returned. There was a deep cut across his forehead and along his right arm there the turtleneck sweater's sleeve hung in two flaps.

'You lost some more weight,' he said to Billy. 'You eating.

'I'm trying,' Billy said, 'but anxiety isn't much good for the appetite. You look like you lost some blood.'

'A little. I'm okay.'

'A ' you going to tell me now what the hell you've been doing?

'Yes. I'm going to tell you everything just as soon as I get out of the shower and bandage myself up. You're going to meet with him tonight, Billy. That's the important thing. That's what you want to psych yourself up for.'

A stab of mingled fear and excitement poked at his belly like a shard of glass. 'Him? Lemke?'

'Him,' Ginelli agreed. 'Now, let me get a shower, William. I must not be as young as I thought - all this excitement has got my ass dragging.' He called back over his shoulder, 'And order some coffee. Lots of coffee. Tell the guy to just leave it outside the door and slide the check underneath for you to sign.'

Billy watched him go, his mouth hanging open. Then, when he heard the shower start, he closed his mouth with a snap and went to the phone to order the coffee.

Chapter Twenty-two. Ginelli's Story

He spoke at first in quick bursts, falling silent for a few moments after each to consider what came next. Ginelli's energy seemed really low for the first time since he had turned up at the Bar Harbor Motor Inn on Monday afternoon. He did not seem much hurt - his wounds were really only deep scratches - but Billy believed he was badly shaken.

All the same, that crazy glow eventually began to dawn in his eyes again, at first stuttering on and off like a neon sign just after you turn the switch at dusk, then glowing steadily. He pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his jacket and dumped a capful of Chivas into his coffee.. He offered Billy the flask. Billy declined - he didn't know what the booze might do to his heart.

Ginelli sat up straighter, brushed the hair off his forehead, and began to talk in a more normal rhythm.

At three o'clock on Tuesday morning, Ginelli had parked on a woods road which branched off from Route 37-A near the Gypsies' camp. He fiddled with the steaks for a while and then walked back to the highway carrying the shopping bag. High clouds were sliding across the halfmoon like shutters. He waited for them to clear off, and when they did for a moment he was able to spot the circle of vehicles. He crossed the road and set off cross-country in that direction.

'I'm a city boy, but my sense of direction ain't as bad as it could be,' he said. 'I can trust it in a pinch. And I didn't want to go in the same way you did, William.'

He cut through a couple of fields and a thin copse of woods; splashed through one boggy place that smelled, he said, like twenty pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag. He also caught the seat of his pants in some very old barbed wire that had been all but invisible in the moonless dark.

'If all that is country living, William, the rubes can have it,' he said.

He had not expected any trouble from the camp hounds; Billy was a case in point. They hadn't bothered to make a sound until he actually stepped into the circle of the campfire, although they surely must have caught his scent before then.

'You'd expect Gypsies to have better watchdogs than that,' Billy commented. 'At least that's the image.'

'Nah,' Ginelli said. 'People can find all kinds of reasons to roust Gypsies without the Gyps themselves giving them more.'

'Like dogs that bark all night long?'

'Yeah, like that. You got much smarter, William, and people are gonna think you're Italian.'

Still, Ginelli had taken no chances - he moved slowly along the backs of the parked vehicles, skipping the vans and campers where people would be sleeping and only looking in the cars and station wagons. He saw what he wanted after checking only two or three vehicles: an old suit coat crumpled up on the seat of a Pontiac station wagon.

'Car wasn't locked,' he said. 'Jacket wasn't a bad fit, but it smelled like a weasel died in each pocket. I seen a pair of old sneakers on the floor in the back. They was a little tight, but I crammed 'em on just the same. Two cars later I found a hat that looked like something left over from a kidney transplant and put that on.'

He had wanted to smell like one of the Gypsies, Ginelli explained, but not just as insurance against a bunch of worthless mutts sleeping by the embers of the campfire it was the other bunch of dogs that interested him. The valuable dogs. The pit-bulls.

Three-quarters of the way around the circle, he spotted a camper with a small rear window that had been covered with wire mesh instead of glass. He peered in and saw nothing at all - the back of the camper was completely bare.