'Salem's Lot(38)

Ben took the book. 'The way Weasel Craig tells it, your wife's been dead fourteen or fifteen years.'

'That so?' Parkins looked totally unsurprised. 'That Weasel, he does love to talk. He'll open his mouth too wide one day and fall right in.'

Ben said nothing.

'Do you s'pose you could sign it for me, then?'

'Delighted to.' He took a pen from the desk, opened the book to the flyleaf ('A raw slice of life!' - Cleveland Plain Dealer), and wrote: Best wishes to Constable Gillespie, from Ben Mears, 9/24/75. He handed it back.

'I appreciate that,' Parkins said, without looking at what Ben had written. He bent over and crushed out his smoke on the side of the wastebasket. 'That's the only signed book I got.'

'Did you come here to brace me?' Ben asked, smiling.

'You're pretty sharp,' Parkins said. 'I figured I ought to come and ask a question or two, now that you mention it. Waited until Nolly was off somewheres. He's a good boy, but he likes to talk, too. Lordy, the gossip that goes on.'

'What would you like to know?'

'Mostly where you were on last Wednesday evenin'.'

'The night Ralphie Glick disappeared?'

'Yeah.'

'Am I a suspect, Constable?'

'No, sir. I ain't got no suspects. A thing like this is outside my tour, you might say. Catchin' speeders out by Dell's or chasin' kids outta the park before they turn randy is more my line. I'm just nosin' here and there.'

'Suppose I don't want to tell you.'

Parkins shrugged and produced his cigarettes. 'That's your business, son.'

'I had dinner with Susan Norton and her folks. Played some badminton with her dad.'

'Bet he beat you, too. He always beats Nolly. Nolly raves up and down about how bad he'd like to beat Bill Norton just once. What time did you leave?'

Ben laughed, but the sound did not contain a great deal of humor. 'You cut right to the bone, don't you?'

'You know,' Parkins said, 'if I was one of those New York detectives like on TV, I might think you had somethin' to hide, the way you polka around my questions.'

'Nothing to hide,' Ben said. 'I'm just tired of being the stranger in town, getting pointed at in the streets, being nudged over in the library. Now you come around with this Yankee trader routine, trying to find out if I've got Ralphie Glick's scalp in my closet.'

'Now, I don't think that, not at all.' He gazed at Ben over his cigarette, and his eyes had gone flinty. 'I'm just tryin' to close you off. If I thought you had anything to do with anything, you'd be down in the tank.'

'Okay,' Ben said. 'I left the Nortons around quarter past? seven. I took a walk out toward Schoolyard Hill. When it got too dark to see, I came back here, wrote for two hours, and went to bed.'

'What time did you get back here?' 'Quarter past eight, I think. Around there.'

'Well, that don't clear you as well as I'd like. Did you see anybody?'

'No,' Ben said. 'No one.'

Parkins made a noncommittal grunt and walked toward the typewriter. 'What are you writin' about?'

'None of your damn business,' Ben said, and his voice had gone tight. 'I'll thank you to keep your eyes and your hands off that. Unless you've got a search warrant, of course.'

'Kind of touchy, ain't you? For a man who means his books to be read?'

'When it's gone through three drafts, editorial correc?tion, galley-proof corrections, final set and print, I'll per?sonally see that you get four copies. Signed. Right now that comes under the heading of private papers.'

Parkins smiled and moved away. 'Good enough. I doubt like hell that it's a signed confession to anything, anyway.' Ben smiled back. 'Mark Twain said a novel was a con?fession to everything by a man who had never done any?thing.'

Parkins blew out smoke and went to the door. 'I won't drip on your rug anymore, Mr Mears. Want to thank you for y'time, and just for the record, I don't think you ever saw that Glick boy. But it's my job to kind of ask round about these things.'

Ben nodded. 'Understood.'

'And you oughtta know how things are in places like Isalem's Lot or Milbridge or Guilford or any little pissant burg. You're the stranger in town until you been here twenty years.'

'I know. I'm sorry if I snapped at you. But after a week of looking for him and not finding a goddamned thing Ben shook his head.

'Yeah,' Parkins said. 'It's bad for his mother. Awful bad. You take care.'

'Sure,' Ben said.

'No hard feelin's?'

'No.' He paused. 'Will you tell me one thing?'

'I will if I can.'

'Where did you get that book? Really?'

Parkins Gillespie smiled. 'Well, there's a fella over in Cumberland that's got a used-furniture barn. Kind of a sissy fella, he is. Name of Gendron. He sells paperbacks a dime apiece. Had five of these.'

Ben threw back his head and laughed, and Parkins Gillespie went out, smiling and smoking. Ben went to the window and watched until he saw the constable come out and cross the street, walking carefully around puddles in his black galoshes.