'Salem's Lot(36)

'What was down there?' Royal asked. 'What did you see?'

'Nothin',' Hank Peters said, and the word came out in sections divided by his clicking teeth. 'I didn't see nothin' and I never want to see it again.'

6

Larry Crockett was getting ready to shut up shop and go home when there was a perfunctory tap on the door and Hank Peters stepped back in. He still looked scared.

'Forget somethin', Hank?' Larry asked. When they had come back from the Marsten House, both looking like somebody had given their nuts a healthy tweak, he had given them each an extra ten dollars and two six-packs of Black Label and had allowed as how maybe it would be best if none of them said too much about the evening's outing.

'I got to tell you,' Hank said now. 'I can't help it, Larry. I got to.'

'Sure you do,' Larry said. He opened the bottom desk drawer, took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and poured them each a knock in a couple of Dixie cups. 'What's on your mind?'

Hank took a mouthful, grimaced, and swallowed it.

'When I took those keys down to put 'em on the table, I seen something. Clothes, it looked like. A shirt and maybe some dungarees. And a sneaker. I think it was a sneaker, Larry.'

Larry shrugged and smiled. 'So?' It seemed to him that a large lump of ice was resting in his chest.

'That little Glick boy was wearin' jeans. That's what it said in the Ledger. Jeans and a red pull-over shirt and sneaks. Larry, what if - '

Larry kept smiling. The smile felt frozen on.

Hank gulped convulsively. 'What if those guys that bought the Marsten House and that store blew up the Glick kid?' There. It was out. He swallowed the rest of the liquid fire in his cup.

Smiling, Larry said, 'Maybe you saw a body, too.'

'No - no. But - '

'That'd be a matter for the police,' Larry Crockett said. He refilled Hank's cup and his hand didn't tremble at all. It was as cold and steady as a rock in a frozen brook. 'And I'd drive you right down to see Parkins. But something like this . . .' He shook his head. 'A lot of nastiness can come up. Things like you and that waitress out to Dell's . . . her name's Jackie, ain't it?'

'What the hell are you talking about?' His face had gone deadly pale.

'And they'd sure as shit find out about that dishonorable discharge of yours. But you do your duty, Hank. Do it as you see it.'

'I didn't see no body,' Hank whispered.

'That's good,' Larry said, smiling. 'And maybe you didn't see any clothes, either. Maybe they were just . . . rags.'

'Rags,' Hank Peters said hollowly.

'Sure, you know those old places. All kinds of junk in em. Maybe you saw some old shirt or something that was torn up for a cleaning rag.'

'Sure,' Hank said. He drained his glass a second time. 'You got a good way of looking at things, Larry.'

Crockett took his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, and counted five ten-dollar bills out on the desk.

'What's that for?'

'Forgot all about paying you for that Brennan job last month. You should prod me about those things, Hank. You know how I forget things.'

'But you did - '

'Why,' Larry interrupted, smiling, 'you could be sitting right here and telling me something, and I wouldn't re?member a thing about it tomorrow morning. Ain't that a pitiful way to be?'

'Yeah,' Hank whispered. His hand reached out trem?bling and took the bills; stuffed them into the breast pocket of his denim jacket as if anxious to be rid of the touch of them. He got up with such jerky hurriedness that he almost knocked his chair over. 'Listen, I got to go, Larry. I . . . I didn't . . . I got to go.'

'Take the bottle,' Larry invited, but Hank was already going out the door. He didn't pause.

Larry sat back down. He poured himself another drink. His hand still did not tremble. He did not go on shutting up shop. He had another drink, and then another. He thought about deals with the devil. And at last his phone rang. He picked it up. Listened.

'It's taken care of,' Larry Crockett said.

He listened. He hung up. He poured himself another drink.

7

Hank Peters woke up in the early hours of the next morning from a dream of huge rats crawling out of an open grave, a grave which held the green and rotting body of Hubie Marsten, with a frayed length of manila hemp around his neck. Peters Jay propped on his elbows, breathing heavily, naked torso slicked with sweat, and when his wife touched his arm he screamed aloud.

8

Milt Crossen's Agricultural Store was located in the angle formed by the intersection of Jointner Avenue and Rail?road Street, and most of the town's old codgers went there when it rained and the park was uninhabitable. During the long winters, they were a day-by-day fixture.

When Straker drove up in that '39 Packard - or was it a '40? - it was just misting gently, and Milt and Pat Middler were having a desultory conversation about whether Freddy Overlock's girl Judy run off in 1957 or '58. They both agree that she had run off with that Saladmaster salesman from Yarmouth, and they both agreed that he hadn't been worth a pisshole in the snow, nor was she, but beyond that they couldn't get together.

All conversation ceased when Straker walked in.

He looked around at them - Milt and Pat Middler and Joe Crane and Vinnie Upshaw and Clyde Corliss - and smiled humorlessly. 'Good afternoon, gentlemen,' he said.