Thinner(80)

'Well, suppose we do this,' Ginelli said. 'You look through the photos, and if you can positively identify the man as Halleck, we won't need to bother the elder Mr Lemke.'

'That would be fine. If you catch this Halleck pig, you will arrest him?'

'Oh, yes. I have a federal John Doe warrant with me.'

That convinced her. As she swung out of the camper with a swirl of skirt and a heartbreaking flash of tanned leg, she said something that chilled Ginelli's heart: 'There won't be much of him to arrest, I don't think.'

They walked past the cops still sifting dirt in the deepening gloom. They passed several Gypsies, including the two brothers, now dressed for bed in identical pairs of camouflage pajamas. Gina nodded at several of them and they nodded back but steered clear - the tall Italian-looking man with Gina was FBI, and it was best not to meddle in such business.

They passed out of the circle and walked up the hill toward Ginelli's car, and the evening shadows swallowed them.

'It was just as easy as pie, William,' Ginelli said. 'Third night in a row, and it was still as easy as pie ... why not? The place was crawling with cops. Was the guy who shot them up just going to come back and do something else while the cops were there? They didn't think so ... but they were stupid, William. I expected it of the rest of them, but not of the old man - you don't spend your whole life learning how to hate and distrust the cops and then just suddenly decide they're gonna protect you from whoever has been biting on your ass. But the old man was sleeping. He's worn out. That's good. We may just take him, William. We may just.'

They walked back to the Buick. Ginelli opened the driver's-side door while the girl stood there. And as he leaned in, taking the .38 out of the shoulder holster with one hand and pushing the wire lid-holder off the Ball jar with the other, he felt the girl's mood abruptly change from bitter exultation to one of sudden wariness. Ginelli himself was pumped up, his emotions and intuitions turned outward and tuned to an almost exquisite degree. He seemed to sense her first awareness of the crickets, the surrounding darkness, the ease with which she had been split off from the others, by a man she had never seen before, at a time when she should have known better than to trust any man she'd never seen before. For the first time she was wondering why 'Ellis Stoner' hadn't brought the papers down to the camp with him if he was so hot to get an ID on Halleck. But it was all too late. He had mentioned the one name guaranteed to cause a knee-jerk spasm and hate and to blind her with eagerness.

'Here we are,' Ginelli said, and turned back to her with the gun in one hand and the glass Ball jar in the other.

Her eyes widened again. Her br**sts heaved as she opened her mouth and drew in breath.

'You can start to scream,' Ginelli said, 'but I guarantee it will be the last sound you ever hear yourself make, Gina.'

For a moment he thought she would do it anyway ... and then she let the breath out in a long sigh.

'You're the one working for that pig,' she said. 'Hans satte sig pa -'

'Talk English, whore,' he said almost casually, and she recoiled as if slapped.

'You don't call me a whore,' she whispered. 'No one is going to call me a whore.' Her hands - those strong hands - arched and hooked into claws.

'You call my friend William a pig, I call you a whore, your mother a whore, your father an ass**le-licking toilet hound,' Ginelli said. He saw her lips draw back from her teeth in a snarl and he grinned. Something in that grin made her falter. She did not exactly look afraid - Ginelli told Billy later that he wasn't sure then if it was in her to look afraid but some reason seemed to surface through her hot fury, some sense of who and what she was dealing with.

'What do you think this is, a game?' he asked her. 'You throw a curse onto someone with a wife and a kid, you think it is a game? You think he hit that woman, your gramma, on purpose? You think he had a contract on her? You think the Mafia had a contract put out on your old grandmother? Shit!'

The girl was now crying with rage and hate. 'He was getting a jerk-off job from his woman and he ran her down in the street! And then they ... they han tog in pojken whitewash him off -but we got him fixed. And you will be next, you friend of pigs. It don't matter what -'

He pushed the glass cap off the top of the wide-mouthed jar with his thumb. Her eyes went to the jar for the first time. That was just where he wanted them.

'Acid, whore,' Ginelli said, and threw it in her face. 'See how many people you shoot with that slingshot of yours when you're blind.'

She made a high, windy screeching sound and clapped her hands over her eyes, too late. She fell to the ground. Ginelli put a foot on her neck.

'You scream and I'll kill you. You and the first three of your friends to make it up here.' He took the foot away. 'It was Pepsi-Cola.'

She got to her knees, staring at him through her spread fingers, and with those same exquisitely tuned, almost telepathic senses, Ginelli knew that she hadn't needed him to tell her it wasn't acid. She knew, had known almost at once in spite of the stinging. An instant later - barely in time - he knew she was going to go for his balls.

As she sprang at him, smooth as a cat, he sidestepped and kicked her in the side. The back of her head struck the chrome edging of the open driver's-side door with a loud crunch and she fell in a heap, blood flowing down one flawless cheek.