'Salem's Lot(54)

Where were you?

I was holding him, Roy. He just wriggles so.

Wriggles. Yeah.

He went up to the door, still steaming. His leg hurt where he had bumped it. Not that he'd get any sympathy from her. So what was she doing while he was sweating his guts out for that prick of a foreman? Reading confession magazines and eating chocolate-covered cherries or watch?ing the soap operas on the TV and eating chocolate?-covered cherries or gabbing to her friends on the phone and eating chocolate-covered cherries. She was getting pimples on her ass as well as her face. Pretty soon you wouldn't be able to tell the two of them apart.

He pushed open the door and walked in.

The scene struck him immediately and forcibly, cutting through the beer haze like the flick of a wet towel: the baby, naked and screaming, blood running from his nose; Sandy holding him, her sleeveless blouse smeared with blood, looking at him over her shoulder, her face contracting with surprise and fear; the diaper on the floor.

Randy, with the discolored marks around his eyes barely fading, raised his hands as if in supplication.

'What's going on around here?' Roy asked slowly.

'Nothing, Roy. He just - '

'You hit him,' he said tonelessly. 'He wouldn't hold still for the diapers so you smacked him.'

'No,' she said quickly. 'He rolled over and bumped his nose, that's all. That's all.'

'I ought to beat the shit out of you,' he said.

'Roy, he just bumped his nose - '

His shoulders slumped. 'What's for dinner?'

'Hamburgs. They're burnt,' she said petulantly, and pulled the bottom of her blouse out of her Wranglers to wipe under Randy's nose. Roy could see the roll of fat she was getting. She'd never bounced back after the baby. Didn't care.

'Shut him up.'

'He isn't - '

'Shut him up!' Roy yelled, and Randy, who had actually been quieting down to snuffles, began to scream again.

'I'll give him a bottle,' Sandy said, getting up.

'And get my dinner.' He started to take off his denim jacket. 'Christ, isn't this place a mess. What do you do all day, beat off?'

'Roy!' she said, sounding shocked. Then she giggled. Her insane burst of anger at the baby who would not hold still on his diapers so she could pin them began to be far away, hazy. It might have happened on one of her afternoon stories, or 'Medical Center'.

'Get my dinner and then pick this frigging place up.'

'All right. All right, sure.' She got a bottle out of the refrigerator and put Randy down in the playpen with it. He began to suck it apathetically, his eyes moving from mother to father in small, trapped circles.

'Roy?'

'Hmmm? What?'

'It's all over.'

'What is?'

'You know what. Do you want to? Tonight?'

'Sure,' he said. 'Sure.' And thought again: isn't this some life. Isn't this just some life.

7

Nolly Gardener was listening to rock n' roll music on WLOB and snapping his fingers when the telephone rang. Parkins put down his crossword magazine and said, 'Cut that some, will you?'

'Sure, Park.' Nolly turned the radio down and went on snapping his fingers.

'Hello?' Parkins said.

'Constable Gillespie?'

'Yeah.'

'Agent Tom Hanrahan here, Sir. I've got the information you requested.'

'Good of you to get back so quick.'

'We haven't got much of a hook for you.'

'That's okay,' Parkins said. 'What have you got?' 'Ben Mears investigated as a result of a traffic fatality in upstate New York, May 1973. No charges brought. Motorcycle smash. His wife Miranda was killed. Witnesses said he was moving slowly and a breath test was negative. Apparently just hit a wet spot. His politics are leftish. He was in a peace march at Princeton in 1966. Spoke at an antiwar rally in Brooklyn in 1967. March on Washington in 1968 and 1970. Arrested during a San Francisco peace march November 1971. And that's all there is on him.' 'What else?'

'Kurt Barlow, that's Kurt with a "k". He's British, but by naturalization rather than birth. Born in Germany, fled to England in 1938, apparently just ahead of the Gestapo. His earlier records just aren't available, but he's probably in his seventies. The name he was born with was Breichen. He's been in the import-export business in London since 1945, but he's elusive. Straker has been his partner since then, and Straker seems to be the fellow who deals with the public.'

'Yeah?'

'Straker is British by birth. Fifty-eight years old. His father was a cabinetmaker in Manchester. Left a fair amount of money to his son, apparently, and this Straker has done all right, too. Both of them applied for visas to spend an extended amount of time in the United States eighteen months ago. That's all we have. Except that they may be queer for each other.'

'Yeah,' Parkins said, and sighed. 'About what I thought.'

'If you'd like further assistance, we can query CID and Scottand Yard about your two new merchants.'

'No, that's fine.'

'No connection between Mears and the other two, by the way. Unless it's deep undercover.'

'Okay. Thanks.'