Thinner(88)

Say it aloud, then.

No, he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to do that, and he didn't want to look at the hand again. So he did both.

'Ginelli's dead,' he said. He paused, and then, because that seemed to make it a little better: 'Ginelli's dead and there's nothing I can do about it. Except get the f**k out of here before a cop . . .'

He looked at the steering wheel and saw that the key was in the ignition. The hick's keyring, which displayed a picture of Olivia Newton John in a sweatband, dangled .from a piece of rawhide. He supposed the girl, Gina, might well have returned the key to the ignition when she delivered the hand - she had taken care of Ginelli, but would not presume to break whatever promises her greatgrandfather might have made to Ginelli's friend, the fabled white man from town. The key was for him. It suddenly occurred to him that Ginelli had taken a car key from one dead man's pocket; now the girl had almost surely done the same thing. But the thought brought no. chill.

His mind was very cold now. He welcomed the coldness.

He got out of the Nova, set the pie carefully on the floor, crossed to the driver's side, and got in. When he sat down, Ginelli's hand made that grisly seesawing gesture again. Billy opened the glove compartment and found a very old map of Maine inside. He unfolded it and put it over the hand. Then he started the Nova and drove down Union Street.

He had been driving almost five minutes when he realized he was going the wrong way - west instead of east. But by then he could see McDonald's golden arches up ahead in the deepening twilight. His stomach grumbled. Billy turned in and stopped at the drive-through intercom.

'Welcome to McDonald's,' the voice inside the speaker said. 'May I take your order?'

'Yes, please - I'd like three Big Macs, two large orders of french fries, and a coffee milkshake.'

Just like the old days, he thought, and smiled. Gobble it all in the car, get rid of the trash, and don't tell Heidi when you get home.

'Would you like any dessert with that?'

'Sure. A cherry pie.' He looked at the spread-out map beside him. He was pretty sure the small bulge just west of Augusta was Ginelli's ring. A wave of faintness washed through him. 'And a box of McDonaldland cookies for my friend,' he said, and laughed.

The voice read his order back to him and then finished, 'Your order comes to six-ninety, sir. Please drive through.'

'You bet,' Billy said. 'That's what it's all about, isn't it? Just driving through and trying to pick up your order.' He laughed again. He felt simultaneously very fine and like vomiting.

The girl handed him two warm white bags through the pickup window. Billy paid her, received his change, and drove on. He paused at the end of the building and picked up the old road map with the hand inside it. He folded the sides of the map under, reached out the open window, and deposited it in a trash barrel. On top of the barrel, a plastic Ronald McDonald danced with a plastic Grimace. Written on the swinging door of the trash barrel were the words

PUT LITTER IN ITS PLACE.

'That's what it's all about, too,' Billy said. He was rubbing his hand on his leg and laughing. 'Just trying to put litter in its place ... and keep it there.'

This time he turned east on Union Street, heading in the direction of Bar Harbor. He went on laughing. For a while he thought he would never be able to stop - that he would just go on laughing until the day he died.

Because someone might have noticed him giving the Nova what a lawyer colleague of Billy's had once called 'a fingerprint massage' if he had done it in a relatively public place - the courtyard of the Bar Harbor Motor Inn, for instance - Billy pulled into a deserted roadside rest area about forty miles east of Bangor to do the job. He did not intend to be connected with this car in any way if he could help it. He got out, took off his sport coat, folded the buttons in, and then carefully wiped down every surface he could remember touching and every one he might have touched.

The No Vacancy light was on in front of the motor inn's office and there was only one empty parking space that Billy could see. It was in front of a dark unit, and he had little doubt that he was looking at Ginelli's John Tree room.

He slid the Nova into the space, took out his handkerchief and wiped both the wheel and the gearshift. He got the pie. He opened the door and wiped off the inside handle. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket, got out of the car, and pushed the door with his butt to close it. Then he looked around. A tired-looking mother was squabbling with a child who looked even more tired than she; two old men stood outside the office, talking. He saw no one else, sensed no one looking at him. He heard TV's inside motel rooms and, from town, barroom rock 'n' roll cranking up as Bar Harbor's summer denizens prepared to party hearty.

Billy crossed the forecourt, walked downtown, and followed his ears to the sound of the loudest rock band. The bar was called the Salty Dog, and as Billy had hoped, there were cabs -three of them, waiting for the lame, the halt, and the drunk -parked outside. Billy spoke to one of the drivers, and for fifteen dollars the cabbie was delighted to run Billy over to Northeast Harbor.

'I see you got y'lunch,' the cabbie said as Billy got in.

'Or somebody's,' Billy replied, and laughed. 'Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it? Just trying to make sure somebody gets their lunch.'

The cabbie looked dubiously at him in the rearview mirror for a moment, then shrugged. 'Whatever you say, my friend -you're paying the tab.'