Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(14)
“So I tell him, I go, Don’t get mad. Somebody pushes back against your precious ideas, you guys always get mad. Have you noticed that about the Christers?”
He hasn’t but says he has.
“Only this one listened. He actually did. And we ended up going down to Hosseni’s Bakery and having coffee. Where, I know this is hard to believe, we actually did have something approaching a dialogue. I don’t hold out much hope for the human race, but every now and then . . .”
Brady is pretty sure his letter will pep the old cop up, at least to start with. He didn’t get all those citations for being stupid, and he’ll see right through the veiled suggestion that he commit suicide the way Mrs. Trelawney did. Veiled? Not very. It’s pretty much right out front. Brady believes the old cop will go all gung ho, at least for awhile. But when he fails to get anywhere, it will make the fall even more jarring. Then, assuming the old cop takes the Blue Umbrella bait, Brady can really go to work.
The old cop is thinking, If I can get you talking, I can goad you.
Only Brady is betting the old cop never read Nietzsche; Brady’s betting the old cop is more of a John Grisham man. If he reads at all. When you gaze into the abyss, Nietzsche wrote, the abyss also gazes into you.
I am the abyss, old boy. Me.
The old cop is certainly a bigger challenge than poor guilt-ridden Olivia Trelawney . . . but getting to her was such a hot hit to the nervous system that Brady can’t help wanting to try it again. In some ways prodding Sweet Livvy into high-siding it was a bigger thrill than cutting a bloody swath through that pack of job-hunting *s at City Center. Because it took brains. It took dedication. It took planning. And a little bit of help from the cops didn’t hurt, either. Did they guess their faulty deductions were partly to blame for Sweet Livvy’s suicide? Probably not Huntley, such a possibility would never cross his plodder’s mind. Ah, but Hodges. He might have his doubts. A few little mice nibbling at the wires back there in his smart-cop brain. Brady hopes so. If not, he may get a chance to tell him. On the Blue Umbrella.
Mostly, though, it was him. Brady Hartsfield. Credit where credit is due. City Center was a sledgehammer. On Olivia Trelawney, he used a scalpel.
“Are you listening to me?” Freddi asks.
He smiles. “Guess I drifted away there for a minute.”
Never tell a lie when you can tell the truth. The truth isn’t always the safest course, but mostly it is. He wonders idly what she’d say if he told her, Freddi, I am the Mercedes Killer. Or if he said, Freddi, there are nine pounds of homemade plastic explosive in my basement closet.
She is looking at him as if she can read these thoughts, and Brady has a moment of unease. Then she says, “It’s working two jobs, pal. That’ll wear you down.”
“Yes, but I’d like to get back to college, and nobody’s going to pay for it but me. Also there’s my mother.”
“The wino.”
He smiles. “My mother is actually more of a vodka-o.”
“Invite me over,” Freddi says grimly. “I’ll drag her to a f*cking AA meeting.”
“Wouldn’t work. You know what Dorothy Parker said, right? You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”
Freddi considers this for a moment, then throws back her head and voices a Marlboro-raspy laugh. “I don’t know who Dorothy Parker is, but I’m gonna save that one.” She sobers. “Seriously, why don’t you just ask Frobisher for more hours? That other job of yours is strictly rinky-dink.”
“I’ll tell you why he doesn’t ask Frobisher for more hours,” Frobisher says, stepping out onto the loading platform. Anthony Frobisher is young and geekily bespectacled. In this he is like most of the Discount Electronix employees. Brady is also young, but better-looking than Tones Frobisher. Not that this makes him handsome. Which is okay. Brady is willing to settle for nondescript.
“Lay it on us,” Freddi says, and mashes her cigarette out. Across the loading zone behind the big-box store, which anchors the south end of the Birch Hill Mall, are the employees’ cars (mostly old beaters) and three VW Beetles painted bright green. These are always kept spotless, and late-spring sun twinkles on their windshields. On the sides, in blue, is COMPUTER PROBLEMS? CALL THE DISCOUNT ELECTRONIX CYBER PATROL!
“Circuit City is gone and Best Buy is tottering,” Frobisher says in a schoolteacherly voice. “Discount Electronix is also tottering, along with several other businesses that are on life support thanks to the computer revolution: newspapers, book publishers, record stores, and the United States Postal Service. Just to mention a few.”
“Record stores?” Freddi asks, lighting another cigarette. “What are record stores?”
“That’s a real gut-buster,” Frobisher says. “I have a friend who claims dykes lack a sense of humor, but—”
“You have friends?” Freddi asks. “Wow. Who knew?”
“—but you obviously prove him wrong. You guys don’t have more hours because the company is now surviving on computers alone. Mostly cheap ones made in China and the Philippines. The great majority of our customers no longer want the other shit we sell.” Brady thinks only Tones Frobisher would say the great majority. “This is partly because of the technological revolution, but it’s also because—”