Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(32)

But the robot coughs it up. Hodges is so surprised he has to fumble for a pencil and then punch 2 for a repeat. He drums his fingers some more, thinking how he wants to approach her. It will probably come to nothing, but it would be his next step if he were still on the cops. Since he’s not, it will take a little extra finesse.

He is amused to discover how eagerly he welcomes this challenge.





5


Brady calls ahead to Sammy’s Pizza on his way home and picks up a small pepperoni and mushroom pie. If he thought his mother would eat a couple of slices, he would have gotten a bigger one, but he knows better.

Maybe if it was pepperoni and Popov, he thinks. If they sold that, I’d have to skip the medium and go straight to a large.

There are tract houses on the city’s North Side. They were built between Korea and Vietnam, which means they all look the same and they’re all turning to shit. Most still have plastic toys on the crabgrassy lawns, although it’s now full dark. Chaz Hartsfield is at 49 Elm Street, where there are no elms and probably never were. It’s just that all the streets in this area of the city—known, reasonably enough, as Northfield—are named for trees.

Brady parks behind Ma’s rustbucket Honda, which needs a new exhaust system, new points, and new plugs. Not to mention an inspection sticker.

Let her take care of it, Brady thinks, but she won’t. He will. He’ll have to. The way he takes care of everything.

The way I took care of Frankie, he thinks. Back when the basement was just the basement instead of my control center.

Brady and Deborah Ann Hartsfield don’t talk about Frankie.

The door is locked. At least he’s taught her that much, although God knows it hasn’t been easy. She’s the kind of person who thinks okay solves all of life’s problems. Tell her Put the half-and-half back in the fridge after you use it, she says okay. Then you come home and there it sits on the counter, going sour. You say Please do a wash so I can have a clean uni for the ice cream truck tomorrow, she says okay. But when you poke your head into the laundry room, everything’s still there in the basket.

The cackle of the TV greets him. Something about an immunity challenge, so it’s Survivor. He has tried to tell her it’s all fake, a set-up. She says yes, okay, she knows, but she still never misses it.

“I’m home, Ma!”

“Hi, honey!” Only a moderate slur, which is good for this hour of the evening. If I was her liver, Brady thinks, I’d jump out of her mouth some night while she’s snoring and run the f*ck away.

He nonetheless feels that little flicker of anticipation as he goes into the living room, the flicker he hates. She’s sitting on the couch in the white silk robe he got her for Christmas, and he can see more white where it splits apart high up on her thighs. Her underwear. He refuses to think the word panties in connection with his mother, it’s too sexy, but it’s down there in his mind, just the same: a snake hiding in poison sumac. Also, he can see the small round shadows of her nipples. It’s not right that such things should turn him on—she’s pushing fifty, she’s starting to flab out around the middle, she’s his mother, for God’s sake—but . . .

But.

“I brought pizza,” he says, holding up the box and thinking, I already ate.

“I already ate,” she says. Probably she did. A few lettuce leaves and a teensy tub of yogurt. It’s how she keeps what’s left of her figure.

“It’s your favorite,” he says, thinking, You enjoy it, honey.

“You enjoy it, sweetie,” she says. She lifts her glass and takes a ladylike sip. Gulping comes later, after he’s gone to bed and she thinks he’s asleep. “Get yourself a Coke and come sit beside me.” She pats the couch. Her robe opens a little more. White robe, white panties.

Underwear, he reminds himself. Underwear, that’s all, she’s my mother, she’s Ma, and when it’s your ma it’s just underwear.

She sees him looking and smiles. She does not adjust the robe. “The survivors are on Fiji this year.” She frowns. “I think it’s Fiji. One of those islands, anyway. Come and watch with me.”

“Nah, I guess I’ll go downstairs and work for awhile.”

“What project is this, honey?”

“A new kind of router.” She wouldn’t know a router from a grouter, so that’s safe enough.

“One of these days you’ll invent something that will make us rich,” she says. “I know you will. Then, goodbye electronics store. And goodbye to that ice cream truck.” She looks at him with wide eyes that are only a little watery from the vodka. He doesn’t know how much she puts down in the course of an ordinary day, and counting empty bottles doesn’t work because she ditches them somewhere, but he knows her capacity is staggering.

“Thanks,” he says. Feeling flattered in spite of himself. Feeling other stuff, too. Very much in spite of himself.

“Come give your Ma a kiss, honeyboy.”

He approaches the couch, careful not to look down the front of the gaping robe and trying to ignore that crawling sensation just below his belt buckle. She turns her face to one side, but when he bends to kiss her cheek, she turns back and presses her damp half-open mouth to his. He tastes booze and smells the perfume she always dabs behind her ears. She dabs it other places, as well.