Текст книги "Mr. Mercedes"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

He remembers something Pete Huntley said at lunch, just a remark in passing, and the answer comes to him. Hodges writes on his pad, then rewrites, then polishes. He reads the finished message over and decides it will do. It’s short and mean. There’s something you forgot, sucka. Something a false confessor couldn’t know. Or a real confessor, for that matter … unless Mr Mercedes checked out his rolling murder weapon from stem to stern before climbing in, and Hodges is betting the guy didn’t.

If he’s wrong, the line snaps and the fish swims away. But there’s an old saying: no risk, no reward.

He wants to send the message right away, but knows it’s a bad idea. Let the fish swim around in circles a little longer with that bad old hook in his mouth. The question is what to do in the meantime. TV never had less appeal for him.

He gets an idea – they’re coming in bunches this morning – and pulls out the bottom drawer of his desk. Here is a box filled with the small flip-up pads he used to carry with him when he and Pete were doing street interviews. He never expected to need one of these again, but he takes one now and stows it in the back pocket of his chinos.

It fits just right.

5

Hodges walks halfway down Harper Road, then starts knocking on doors, just like in the old days. Crossing and re-crossing the street, missing no one, working his way back. It’s a weekday, but a surprising number of people answer his knock or ring. Some are stay-at-home moms, but many are retirees like himself, fortunate enough to have paid for their homes before the bottom fell out of the economy, but in less than great shape otherwise. Not living day-to-day or even week-to-week, maybe, but having to balance out the cost of food against the cost of all those old-folks medicines as the end of the month nears.

His story is simple, because simple is always best. He says there have been break-ins a few blocks over – kids, probably – and he’s checking to see if anyone in his own neighborhood has noticed any vehicles that seem out of place, and have shown up more than once. They’d probably be cruising even slower than the twenty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit, he says. He doesn’t have to say any more; they all watch the cop shows and know what ‘casing the joint’ means.

He shows them his ID, which has RETIRED stamped in red across the name and vitals below his photo. He’s careful to say that no, he hasn’t been asked by the police to do this canvassing (the last thing in the world he wants is one of his neighbors calling the Murrow Building downtown to check up on him), it was his own idea. He lives in the neighborhood, too, after all, and has a personal stake in its security.

Mrs Melbourne, the widow whose flowers so fascinated Odell, invites him in for coffee and cookies. Hodges takes her up on it because she seems lonely. It’s his first real conversation with her, and he quickly realizes she’s eccentric at best, downright bonkers at worst. Articulate, though. He has to give her that. She explains about the black SUVs she’s observed (‘With tinted windows you can’t see through, just like on 24’), and tells him about their special antennas. Whippers, she calls them, waving her hand back and forth to demonstrate.

‘Uh-huh,’ Hodges says. ‘Let me make a note of that.’ He turns a page in his pad and jots I have to get out of here on the new one.

‘That’s a good idea,’ she says, bright-eyed. ‘I’ve just got to tell you how sorry I was when your wife left you, Detective Hodges. She did, didn’t she?’

‘We agreed to disagree,’ Hodges says with an amiability he doesn’t feel.

‘It’s so nice to meet you in person and know you’re keeping an eye out. Have another cookie.’

Hodges glances at his watch, snaps his pad closed, and gets up. ‘I’d love to, but I’d better roll. Got a noon appointment.’

She scans his bulk and says, ‘Doctor?’

‘Chiropractor.’

She frowns, transforming her face into a walnut shell with eyes. ‘Think that over, Detective Hodges. Back-crackers are dangerous. There are people who have lain down on those tables and never walked again.’

She sees him to the door. As he steps onto the porch, she says, ‘I’d check on that ice cream man, too. This spring it seems like he’s always around. Do you suppose Loeb’s Ice Cream checks out the people they hire to drive those little trucks? I hope so, because that one looks suspicious. He might be a peedaroast.’

‘I’m sure their drivers have references, but I’ll look into it.’

‘Another good idea!’ she exclaims.

Hodges wonders what he’d do if she produced a long hook, like in the old-time vaudeville shows, and tried to yank him back inside. A childhood memory comes to him: the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

‘Also – I just thought of this – I’ve seen several vans lately. They look like delivery vans – they have business names on them – but anyone can make up a business name, don’t you think?’

‘It’s always possible,’ Hodges says, descending the steps.

‘You should call in to number seventeen, too.’ She points down the hill ‘It’s almost all the way down to Hanover Street. They have people who come late, and play loud music.’ She sways forward in the doorway, almost bowing. ‘It could be a dope den. One of those crack houses.’

Hodges thanks her for the tip and trudges across the street. Black SUVs and the Mr Tastey guy, he thinks. Plus the delivery vans filled with Al Qaeda terrorists.

Across the street he finds a stay-at-home dad, Alan Bowfinger by name. ‘Just don’t confuse me with Goldfinger,’ he says, and invites Hodges to sit in one of the lawn chairs on the left side of his house, where there’s shade. Hodges is happy to take him up on this.

Bowfinger tells him that he makes a living writing greeting cards. ‘I specialize in the slightly snarky ones. Like on the outside it’ll say, “Happy Birthday! Who’s the fairest of them all?” And when you open it up, there’s a piece of shiny foil with a crack running down the middle of it.’

‘Yeah? And what’s the message?’

Bowfinger holds up his hands, as if framing it. ‘“Not you, but we love you anyway.”’

‘Kind of mean,’ Hodges ventures.

‘True, but it ends with an expression of love. That’s what sells the card. First the poke, then the hug. As to your purpose today, Mr Hodges … or do I call you Detective?’

‘Just Mister these days.’

‘I haven’t seen anything but the usual traffic. No slow cruisers except people looking for addresses and the ice cream truck after school lets out.’ Bowfinger rolls his eyes. ‘Did you get an earful from Mrs Melbourne?’

‘Well …’

‘She’s a member of NICAP,’ Bowfinger says. ‘That stands for National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.’

‘Weather stuff? Tornadoes and cloud formations?’

‘Flying saucers.’ Bowfinger raises his hands to the sky. ‘She thinks they walk among us.’

Hodges says something that would never have passed his lips if he’d still been on active duty and conducting an official investigation. ‘She thinks Mr Tastey might be a peedaroast.’

Bowfinger laughs until tears squirt out of his eyes. ‘Oh God,’ he says. ‘That guy’s been around for five or six years, driving his little truck and jingling his little bells. How many peeds do you think he’s roasted in all that time?’

‘Don’t know,’ Hodges says, getting to his feet. ‘Dozens, probably.’ He holds out his hand and Bowfinger shakes it. Another thing Hodges is discovering about retirement: his neighbors have stories and personalities. Some of them are even interesting.

As he’s putting his notepad away, a look of alarm comes over Bowfinger’s face.

‘What?’ Hodges asks, at once on point.

Bowfinger points across the street and says, ‘You didn’t eat any of her cookies, did you?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘I’d stay close to the toilet for a few hours, if I were you.’

6

When he gets back to his house, his arches throbbing and his ankles singing high C, the light on his answering machine is blinking. It’s Pete Huntley, and he sounds excited. ‘Call me,’ he says. ‘This is unbelievable. Un-fucking-real.’

Hodges is suddenly, irrationally sure that Pete and his pretty new partner Isabelle have nailed Mr Mercedes after all. He feels a deep stab of jealousy, and – crazy but true – anger. He hits Pete on speed-dial, his heart hammering, but his call goes right to voicemail.

‘Got your message,’ Hodges says. ‘Call back when you can.’

He kills the phone, then sits still, drumming his fingers on the edge of his desk. He tells himself it doesn’t matter who catches the psycho sonofabitch, but it does. For one thing, it’s certainly going to mean that his correspondence with the perk (funny how that word gets in your head) will come out, and that may put him in some fairly warm soup. But it’s not the important thing. The important thing is that without Mr Mercedes, things will go back to what they were: afternoon TV and playing with his father’s gun.

He takes out his yellow legal pad and begins transcribing notes on his neighborhood walk-around. After a minute or two of this, he tosses the pad back into the case-folder and slams it closed. If Pete and Izzie Jaynes have popped the guy, Mrs Melbourne’s vans and sinister black SUVs don’t mean shit.

He thinks about going on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and sending merckill a message: Did they catch you?

Ridiculous, but weirdly attractive.

His phone rings and he snatches it up, but it’s not Pete. It’s Olivia Trelawney’s sister.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Hi, Mrs Patterson. How you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, ‘and it’s Janey, remember? Me Janey, you Bill.’

‘Janey, right.’

‘You don’t sound exactly thrilled to hear from me, Bill.’ Is she being the tiniest bit flirty? Wouldn’t that be nice.

‘No, no, I’m happy you called, but I don’t have anything to report.’

‘I didn’t expect you would. I called about Mom. The nurse at Sunny Acres who’s most familiar with her case works the day shift in the McDonald Building, where my mother has her little suite of rooms. I asked her to call if Mom brightened up. She still does that.’

‘Yes, you told me.’

‘Well, the nurse called just a few minutes ago to tell me Mom’s back, at least for the time being. She might be clear for a day or two, then it’s into the clouds again. Do you still want to go see her?’

‘I think so,’ Hodges says cautiously, ‘but it would have to be this afternoon. I’m waiting on a call.’

‘Is it about the man who took her car?’ Janey’s excited. As I should be, Hodges tells himself.

‘That’s what I need to find out. Can I call you back?’

‘Absolutely. You have my cell number?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah,’ she says, gently mocking. It makes him smile, in spite of his nerves. ‘Call me as soon as you can.’

‘I will.’

He breaks the connection, and the phone rings while it’s still in his hand. This time it’s Pete, and he’s more excited than ever.

‘Billy! I gotta go back, we’ve got him in an interview room – IR4, as a matter of fact, remember how you always used to say that was your lucky one? – but I had to call you. We got him, partner, we fucking got him!’

‘Got who?’ Hodges asks, keeping his voice steady. His heartbeat is steady now, too, but the beats are hard enough to feel in his temples: whomp and whomp and whomp.

‘Fucking Davis!’ Pete shouts. ‘Who else?’

Davis. Not Mr Mercedes but Donnie Davis, the camera-friendly wife murderer. Bill Hodges closes his eyes in relief. It’s the wrong emotion to feel, but he feels it nevertheless.

He says, ‘So the body that game warden found near his cabin turned out to be Sheila Davis’s? You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Who’d you blow to get the DNA results so fast?’ When Hodges was on the force, they were lucky to get DNA results within a calendar month of sample submission, and six weeks was the average.

‘We don’t need DNA! For the trial, sure, but—’

‘What do you mean, you don’t—’

‘Shut up and listen, okay? He just walked in off the street and copped to it. No lawyer, no bullshit justifications. Listened to the Miranda and said he didn’t want a lawyer, only wanted to get it off his chest.’

‘Jesus. As smooth as he was in all the interviews we had with him? Are you sure he’s not fucking with you? Playing some sort of long game?’

Thinking it’s the kind of thing Mr Mercedes would try to do if they nailed him. Not just a game but a long game. Isn’t that why he tries to create alternate writing styles in his poison-pen letters?

‘Billy, it’s not just his wife. You remember those dollies he had on the side? Girls with big hair and inflated tits and names like Bobbi Sue?’

‘Sure. What about them?’

‘When this breaks, those young ladies are going to get on their knees and thank God they’re still alive.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘Turnpike Joe, Billy! Five women raped and killed at various Interstate rest stops between here and Pennsylvania, starting back in ninety-four and ending in oh-eight! Donnie Davis says it’s him! Davis is Turnpike Joe! He’s giving us times and places and descriptions. It all fits. This … it blows my mind!’

‘Mine, too,’ Hodges says, and he absolutely means it. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks, but I didn’t do anything except show up this morning.’ Pete laughs wildly. ‘I feel like I won the Megabucks.’

Hodges doesn’t feel like that, but at least he hasn’t lost the Megabucks. He still has a case to work.

‘I gotta get back in there, Billy, before he changes his mind.’

‘Yeah, yeah, but Pete? Before you go?’

‘What?’

‘Get him a court-appointed.’

‘Ah, Billy—’

‘I’m serious. Interrogate the shit out of him, but before you start, announce – for the record – that you’re getting him lawyered up. You can wring him dry before anyone shows up at Murrow, but you have to get this right. Are you hearing me?’

‘Yeah, okay. That’s a good call. I’ll have Izzy do it.’

‘Great. Now get back in there. Nail him down.’

Pete actually crows. Hodges has read about people doing that, but hasn’t ever heard it done – except by roosters – until now. ‘Turnpike Joe, Billy! Fucking Turnpike Joe! Do you believe it?’

He hangs up before his ex-partner can reply. Hodges sits where he is for almost five minutes, waiting until a belated case of the shakes subsides. Then he calls Janey Patterson.

‘It wasn’t about the man we’re looking for?’

‘Sorry, no. Another case.’

‘Oh. Too bad.’

‘Yeah. You’ll still come with me to the nursing home?’

‘You bet. I’ll be waiting on the sidewalk.’

Before leaving, he checks the Blue Umbrella site one last time. Nothing there, and he has no intention of sending his own carefully crafted message today. Tonight will be soon enough. Let the fish feel the hook awhile longer.

He leaves his house with no premonition that he won’t be back.

7

Sunny Acres is ritzy. Elizabeth Wharton is not.

She’s in a wheelchair, hunched over in a posture that reminds Hodges of Rodin’s Thinker. Afternoon sunlight slants in through the window, turning her hair into a silver cloud so fine it’s a halo. Outside the window, on a rolling and perfectly manicured lawn, a few golden oldies are playing a slow-motion game of croquet. Mrs Wharton’s croquet days are over. As are her days of standing up. When Hodges last saw her – with Pete Huntley beside him and Olivia Trelawney sitting next to her – she was bent. Now she’s broken.

Janey, vibrant in tapered white slacks and a blue-and-white-striped sailor’s shirt, kneels beside her, stroking one of Mrs Wharton’s badly twisted hands.

‘How are you today, dear one?’ she asks. ‘You look better.’ If this is true, Hodges is horrified.

Mrs Wharton peers at her daughter with faded blue eyes that express nothing, not even puzzlement. Hodges’s heart sinks. He enjoyed the ride out here with Janey, enjoyed looking at her, enjoyed getting to know her even more, and that’s good. It means the trip hasn’t been entirely wasted.

Then a minor miracle occurs. The old lady’s cataract-tinged eyes clear; the cracked lipstickless lips spread in a smile. ‘Hello, Janey.’ She can only raise her head a little, but her eyes flick to Hodges. Now they look cold. ‘Craig.’

Thanks to their conversation on the ride out, Hodges knows who that is.

‘This isn’t Craig, lovey. This is a friend of mine. His name is Bill Hodges. You’ve met him before.’

‘No, I don’t believe …’ She trails off – frowning now – then says, ‘You’re … one of the detectives?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He doesn’t even consider telling her he’s retired. Best to keep things on a straight line while there are still a few circuits working in her head.

Her frown deepens, creating rivers of wrinkles. ‘You thought Livvy left her key in her car so that man could steal it. She told you and told you, but you never believed her.’

Hodges copies Janey, taking a knee beside the wheelchair. ‘Mrs Wharton, I now think we might have been wrong about that.’

‘Of course you were.’ She shifts her gaze back to her remaining daughter, looking up at her from beneath the bony shelf of her brow. It’s the only way she can look. ‘Where’s Craig?’

‘I divorced him last year, Mom.’

She considers, then says, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. Can Bill ask you a few questions?’

‘I don’t see why not, but I want some orange juice. And my pain pills.’

‘I’ll go down to the nurses’ suite and see if it’s time,’ she says. ‘Bill, are you okay if I—?’

He nods and flicks two fingers in a go, go gesture. As soon as she’s out the door, Hodges gets to his feet, bypasses the visitor’s chair, and sits on Elizabeth Wharton’s bed with his hands clasped between his knees. He has his pad, but he’s afraid taking notes might distract her. The two of them regard each other silently. Hodges is fascinated by the silver nimbus around the old lady’s head. There are signs that one of the orderlies combed her hair that morning, but it’s gone its own wild way in the hours since. Hodges is glad. The scoliosis has twisted her body into a thing of ugliness, but her hair is beautiful. Crazy and beautiful.

‘I think,’ he says, ‘we treated your daughter badly, Mrs Wharton.’

Yes indeed. Even if Mrs T. was an unwitting accomplice, and Hodges hasn’t entirely dismissed the idea that she left her key in the ignition, he and Pete did a piss-poor job. It’s easy – too easy – to either disbelieve or disregard someone you dislike. ‘We were blinded by certain preconceptions, and for that I’m sorry.’

‘Are you talking about Janey? Janey and Craig? He hit her, you know. She tried to get him to stop using that dope stuff he liked, and he hit her. She says only once, but I believe it was more.’ She lifts one slow hand and taps her nose with a pale finger. ‘A mother can tell.’

‘This isn’t about Janey. I’m talking about Olivia.’

‘He made Livvy stop talking her pills. She said it was because she didn’t want to be a dope addict like Craig, but it wasn’t the same. She needed those pills.’

‘Are you talking about her antidepressants?’

‘They were pills that made her able to go out.’ She pauses, considering. ‘There were other ones, too, that kept her from touching things over and over. She had strange ideas, my Livvy, but she was a good person, just the same. Underneath, she was a very good person.’

Mrs Wharton begins to cry.

There’s a box of Kleenex on the nightstand. Hodges takes a few and holds them out to her, but when he sees how difficult it is for her to close her hand, he wipes her eyes for her.

‘Thank you, sir. Is your name Hedges?’

‘Hodges, ma’am.’

‘You were the nice one. The other one was very mean to Livvy. She said he was laughing at her. Laughing all the time. She said she could see it in his eyes.’

Was that true? If so, he’s ashamed of Pete. And ashamed of himself for not realizing.

‘Who suggested she stop taking her pills? Do you remember?’

Janey has come back with the orange juice and a small paper cup that probably holds her mother’s pain medication. Hodges glimpses her from the corner of his eyes and uses the same two fingers to motion her away again. He doesn’t want Mrs Wharton’s attention divided, or taking any pills that will further muddle her already muddled recollection.

Mrs Wharton is silent. Then, just when Hodges is afraid she won’t answer: ‘It was her pen-pal.’

‘Did she meet him under the Blue Umbrella? Debbie’s Blue Umbrella?’

‘She never met him. Not in person.’

‘What I mean—’

‘The Blue Umbrella was make-believe.’ From beneath the white brows, her eyes are calling him a perfect idiot. ‘It was a thing in her computer. Frankie was her computer pen-pal.’

He always feels a kind of electric shock in his midsection when fresh info drops. Frankie. Surely not the guy’s real name, but names have power and aliases often have meaning. Frankie.

‘He told her to stop taking her medicine?’

‘Yes, he said it was hooking her. Where’s Janey? I want my pills.’

‘She’ll be back any minute, I’m sure.’

Mrs Wharton broods into her lap for a moment. ‘Frankie said he took all the same medicines, and that’s why he did … what he did. He said he felt better after he stopped taking them. He said that after he stopped, he knew what he did was wrong. But it made him sad because he couldn’t take it back. That’s what he said. And that life wasn’t worth living. I told Livvy she should stop talking to him. I said he was bad. That he was poison. And she said …’

The tears are coming again.

‘She said she had to save him.’

This time when Janey comes into the doorway, Hodges nods to her. Janey puts a pair of blue pills into her mother’s pursed and seeking mouth, then gives her a drink of juice.

‘Thank you, Livvy.’

Hodges sees Janey wince, then smile. ‘You’re welcome, dear.’ She turns to Hodges. ‘I think we should go, Bill. She’s very tired.’

He can see that, but is still reluctant to leave. There’s a feeling you get when the interview isn’t done. When there’s at least one more apple hanging on the tree. ‘Mrs Wharton, did Olivia say anything else about Frankie? Because you’re right. He is bad. I’d like to find him so he can’t hurt anyone else.’

‘Livvy never would have left her key in her car. Never.’ Elizabeth Wharton sits hunched in her bar of sun, a human parenthesis in a fuzzy blue robe, unaware that she’s topped with a gauze of silver light. The finger comes up again – admonitory. She says, ‘That dog we had never threw up on the rug again. Just that once.’

Janey takes Hodges’s hand and mouths, Let’s go.

Habits die hard, and Hodges speaks the old formula as Janey bends down and kisses first her mother’s cheek and then the corner of her dry mouth. ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Wharton. You’ve been very helpful.’

As they reach the door, Mrs Wharton speaks clearly. ‘She still wouldn’t have committed suicide if not for the ghosts.’

Hodges turns back. Beside him, Janey Patterson is wide-eyed.

‘What ghosts, Mrs Wharton?’

‘One was the baby,’ she says. ‘The poor thing who was killed with all those others. Livvy heard that baby in the night, crying and crying. She said the baby’s name was Patricia.’

‘In her house? Olivia heard this in her house?’

Elizabeth Wharton manages the smallest of nods, a mere dip of the chin. ‘And sometimes the mother. She said the mother would accuse her.’

She looks up at them from her wheelchair hunch.

‘She would scream, “Why did you let him murder my baby?” That’s why Livvy killed herself.’

8

It’s Friday afternoon and the suburban streets are feverish with kids released from school. There aren’t many on Harper Road, but there are still some, and this gives Brady a perfect reason to cruise slowly past number sixty-three and peek in the window. Except he can’t, because the drapes are drawn. And the overhang to the left of the house is empty except for the lawnmower. Instead of sitting in his house and watching TV, where he belongs, the Det-Ret is sporting about in his crappy old Toyota.

Sporting about where? It probably doesn’t matter, but Hodges’s absence makes Brady vaguely uneasy.

Two little girls trot to the curb with money clutched in their hands. They have undoubtedly been taught, both at home and at school, to never approach strangers, especially strange men, but who could be less strange than good old Mr Tastey?

He sells them a cone each, one chocolate and one vanilla. He joshes with them, asks how they got so pretty. They giggle. The truth is one’s ugly and the other’s worse. As he serves them and makes change, he thinks about the missing Corolla, wondering if this break in Hodges’s afternoon routine has anything to do with him. Another message from Hodges on the Blue Umbrella might cast some light, give an idea of where the ex-cop’s head is at.

Even if it doesn’t, Brady wants to hear from him.

‘You don’t dare ignore me,’ he says as the bells tinkle and chime over his head.

He crosses Hanover Street, parks in the strip mall, kills the engine (the annoying chimes fall blessedly silent), and hauls his laptop out from under the seat. He keeps it in an insulated case because the truck is always so fucking cold. He boots it up and goes on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella courtesy of the nearby coffee shop’s Wi-Fi.

Nothing.

‘You fucker,’ Brady whispers. ‘You don’t dare ignore me, you fucker.’

As he zips the laptop back into its case, he sees a couple of boys standing outside the comic book shop, talking and looking at him and grinning. Given his five years of experience, Brady estimates that they’re sixth– or seventh-graders with a combined IQ of one-twenty and a long future of collecting unemployment checks. Or a short one in some desert country.

They approach, the goofier-looking of the pair in the lead. Smiling, Brady leans out his window. ‘Help you boys?’

‘We want to know if you got Jerry Garcia in there,’ Goofy says.

‘No,’ Brady says, smiling more widely than ever, ‘but if I did, I’d sure let him out.’

They look so ridiculously disappointed, Brady almost laughs. Instead, he points down at Goofy’s pants. ‘Your fly’s unzipped,’ he says, and when Goofy looks down, Brady flicks a finger at the soft underside of his chin. A little harder than he intended – actually quite a lot – but what the hell.

‘Gotcha,’ Brady says merrily.

Goofy smiles to show yes, he’s been gotten, but there’s a red weal just above his Adam’s apple and surprised tears swim in his eyes.

Goofy and Not Quite So Goofy start away. Goofy looks back over his shoulder. His lower lip is pushed out and now he looks like a third-grader instead of just another pre-adolescent come-stain who’ll be fucking up the halls of Beal Middle School come September.

‘That really hurt,’ he says, with a kind of wonder.

Brady’s mad at himself. A finger-flick hard enough to bring tears to the kid’s eyes means he’s telling the straight-up truth. It also means Goofy and Not Quite So Goofy will remember him. Brady can apologize, can even give them free cones to show his sincerity, but then they’ll remember that. It’s a small thing, but small things mount up and then maybe you have a big thing.

‘Sorry,’ he says, and means it. ‘I was just kidding around, son.’

Goofy gives him the finger, and Not Quite So Goofy adds his own middle digit to show solidarity. They go into the comics store, where – if Brady knows boys like these, and he does – they will be invited to either buy or leave after five minutes’ browsing.

They’ll remember him. Goofy might even tell his parents, and his parents might lodge a complaint with Loebs’. It’s unlikely but not impossible, and whose fault was it that he’d given Goofy Boy’s unprotected neck a snap hard enough to leave a mark, instead of just the gentle flick he’d intended? The ex-cop has knocked Brady off-balance. He’s making him screw things up, and Brady doesn’t like that.

He starts the ice cream truck’s engine. The bells begin bonging a tune from the loudspeaker on the roof. Brady turns left on Hanover Street and resumes his daily round, selling cones and Happy Boys and Pola Bars, spreading sugar on the afternoon and obeying all speed limits.

9

Although there are plenty of parking spaces on Lake Avenue after seven P.M. – as Olivia Trelawney well knew – they are few and far between at five in the afternoon, when Hodges and Janey Patterson get back from Sunny Acres. Hodges spots one three or four buildings down, however, and although it’s small (the car behind the empty spot has poached a little), he shoehorns the Toyota into it quickly and easily.

‘I’m impressed,’ Janey says. ‘I could never have done that. I flunked my driver’s test on parallel parking the first two times I went.’

‘You must have had a hardass.’

She smiles. ‘The third time I wore a short skirt, and that did the trick.’

Thinking about how much he’d like to see her in a short skirt – the shorter the better – Hodges says, ‘There’s really no trick to it. If you back toward the curb at a forty-five-degree angle, you can’t go wrong. Unless your car’s too big, that is. A Toyota’s perfect for city parking. Not like a—’ He stops.

‘Not like a Mercedes,’ she finishes. ‘Come up and have coffee, Bill. I’ll even feed the meter.’

‘I’ll feed it. In fact, I’ll max it out. We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

‘You learned some stuff from my mom, didn’t you? That’s why you were so quiet all the way back.’

‘I did, and I’ll fill you in, but that’s not where the conversation starts.’ He’s looking at her full in the face now, and it’s an easy face to look into. Christ, he wishes he were fifteen years younger. Even ten. ‘I need to be straight with you. I think you’re under the impression that I came looking for work, and that’s not the case.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I think you came because you feel guilty about what happened to my sister. I simply took advantage of you. I’m not sorry, either. You were good with my mother. Kind. Very … very gentle.’

She’s close, her eyes a darker blue in the afternoon light and very wide. Her lips open as if she has more to say, but he doesn’t give her a chance. He kisses her before he can think about how stupid it is, how reckless, and is astounded when she kisses him back, even putting her right hand on the nape of his neck to make their contact a little firmer. It goes on for no more than five seconds, but it seems much longer to Hodges, who hasn’t had a kiss like this one in quite awhile.

She pulls back, brushes a hand through his hair, and says, ‘I’ve wanted to do that all afternoon. Now let’s go upstairs. I’ll make coffee and you make your report.’

But there’s no report until much later, and no coffee at all.