'Salem's Lot(24)

'These renovations. I'm not going to get you anything that would leave my ass out to the wind. If you're fixing up to make moonshine or LSD or explosives for some hippie radical outfit, that's your own lookout.'

'Agreed,' Straker said. The smile was gone from his face. 'Have we a deal?'

And with an odd feeling of reluctance, Larry had said, 'If these papers check out, I guess we do at that. Although it seems like you did all the dealin' and I did all the money-makin'.'

'This is Monday,' Straker said. 'Shall I stop by Thursday afternoon?'

'Better make it Friday.'

'So. It is very well.' He stood. 'Good day, Mr Crockett.'

The papers had checked out. Larry's Boston lawyer said the land where the Portland shopping center was to be built had been purchased by an outfit called Continental Land and Realty, which was a dummy company with office space in the Chemical Bank Building in New York. There was nothing in Continental's offices but a few empty filing cabinets and a lot of dust.

Straker had come back that Friday and Larry signed the necessary title papers. He did so with a strong taste of doubt in the back of his mouth. He had overthrown his own personal maxim for the first time: You don't shit where you eat. And although the inducement had been high, he realized as Straker put the ownership papers to the Marsten House and erstwhile Village Washtub into his briefcase that he had put himself at this man's beck and call. And the same went for his partner, the absent Mr Barlow,

At last August had passed, and as summer had slipped into fall and then fall into winter, he had begun to feel an indefinable sense of relief. By this spring he had almost managed to forget the deal he had made to get the papers which now resided in his Portland safe-deposit box.

Then things began to happen.

That writer, Mears, had come in a week and a half ago, asking if the Marsten House was available for rental, and he had given Larry a peculiar look when he told him it was sold.

Yesterday there had been a long tube in his post office box and a letter from Straker. A note, really. It had been brief: 'Kindly have the poster which you will be receiving mounted in the window of the shop - R. T. Straker.' The poster itself was common enough, and more subdued than some. It only said: 'Opening in one week. Barlow and Straker. Fine furnishings. Selected antiques. Browsers wel?come.' He had gotten Royal Snow to put it right up.

And now there was a car up there at the Marsten House He was still looking at it when someone said at his elbow: 'Failin' asleep, Larry?'

He jumped and looked around at Parkins Gillespie, who was standing on the corner next to him and lighting a Pall Mall.

'No,' he said, and laughed nervously. 'Just thinking.'

Parkins glanced up at the Marsten House, where the sun twinkled on chrome and metal in the driveway, then down at the old laundry with its new sign in the window. 'And you're not the only one, I guess. Always good to get new folks in town. You've met 'em, ain't you?'

'One of them. Last year.'

'Mr Barlow or Mr Straker?'

'Straker.'

'Seem like a nice enough sort, did he?'

'Hard to tell,' Larry said, and found he wanted to lick his lips. He didn't. 'We only talked business. He seemed okay.'

'Good. That's good. Come on. I'll walk up to the Excel?lent with you.'

When they crossed the street, Lawrence Crockett was thinking about deals with the devil.

12

1:00 P.M.

Susan Norton stepped into Babs' Beauty Boutique, smiled at Babs Griffen (Hal and Jack's eldest sister), and said, 'Thank goodness you could take me on such short notice.'

'No problem in the middle of the week,' Babs said, turning on the fan. 'My, ain't it close? It'll thunderstorm this afternoon.'

Susan looked at the sky, which was an unblemished blue. 'Do you think so?'

'Yeah. How do you want it, hon?'

'Natural,' Susan said, thinking of Ben Mears. 'Like I hadn't even been near this place.'

'Hon,' Babs said, closing in on her with a sigh, 'that's what they all say.'

The sigh wafted the odor of Juicy Fruit gum, and Babs asked Susan if she had seen that some folks were opening up a new furniture store in the old Village Washtub. Expensive stuff by the look of it, but wouldn't it be nice if they had a nice little hurricane lamp to match the one she had in her apartment and getting away from home and living in town was the smartest move she'd ever made and hadn't it been a nice summer? It seemed a shame it ever had to end.

13

3:00 P.M.

Bonnie Sawyer was lying on the big double bed in her house on the Deep Cut Road. It was a regular house, no shanty trailer, and it had a foundation and a cellar. Her husband, Reg, made good money as a car mechanic at Jim Smith's Pontiac in Buxton.

She was naked except for a pair of filmy blue panties, and she looked impatiently over at the clock on the night?stand: 3:02 - where was he?

Almost as if the thought had summoned him, the bed?room door opened the tiniest bit, and Corey Bryant peered through.

'Is it okay?' he whispered. Corey was only twenty-two, had been working for the phone company two years, and this affair with a married woman - especially a knockout like Bonnie Sawyer, who had been Miss Cumberland County of 1973 - left him feeling weak and nervous and horny.