Текст книги "Mr. Mercedes"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

‘You keep saying she,’ Pete said. They hadn’t mentioned the owner’s name.

‘Hey, come on.’ The mechanic smiling a little now. ‘This is Mrs Trelawney’s Mercedes. Olivia Trelawney. She bought it at our dealership and we service it every four months, like clockwork. We only service a few twelve-cylinders, and I know them all.’ And then, speaking nothing but the utter grisly truth: ‘This baby’s a tank.’

The killer drove the Benz in between the two container boxes, killed the engine, pulled off his mask, doused it with bleach, and exited the car (the gloves and hairnet probably tucked inside his jacket). Then a final fuck-you as he walked away into the fog: he locked the car with Olivia Ann Trelawney’s smart key.

There was your but.

16

She warned us to be quiet because her mother was sleeping, Hodges remembers. Then she gave us coffee and cookies. Sitting in DeMasio’s, he sips the last of his current cup while he waits for his credit card to be returned. He thinks about the living room in that whopper of a condo apartment, with its kick-ass view of the lake.

Along with coffee and cookies, she had given them the wide-eyed of-course-I-didn’t look, the one that is the exclusive property of solid citizens who have never been in trouble with the police. Who can’t imagine such a thing. She even said it out loud, when Pete asked if it was possible she had left her ignition key in her car when she parked it on Lake Avenue just a few doors down from her mother’s building.

‘Of course I didn’t.’ The words had come through a cramped little smile that said I find your idea silly and more than a bit insulting.

The waiter returns at last. He puts down the little silver tray, and Hodges slips a ten and a five into his hand before he can straighten up. At DeMasio’s the waiters split tips, a practice of which Hodges strongly disapproves. If that makes him old school, so be it.

‘Thank you, sir, and boun pomeriggio.’

‘Back atcha,’ Hodges says. He tucks away his receipt and his Amex, but doesn’t rise immediately. There are some crumbs left on his dessert plate, and he uses his fork to snare them, just as he used to do with his mother’s cakes when he was a little boy. To him those last few crumbs, sucked slowly onto the tongue from between the tines of the fork, always seemed like the sweetest part of the slice.

17

That crucial first interview, only hours after the crime. Coffee and cookies while the mangled bodies of the dead were still being identified. Somewhere relatives were weeping and rending their garments.

Mrs Trelawney walking into the condo’s front hall, where her handbag sat on an occasional table. She brought the bag back, rummaging, starting to frown, still rummaging, starting to be a little worried. Then smiling. ‘Here it is,’ she said, and handed it over.

The detectives looked at the smart key, Hodges thinking how ordinary it was for something that went with such an expensive car. It was basically a black plastic stick with a lump on the end of it. The lump was stamped with the Mercedes logo on one side. On the other were three buttons. One showed a padlock with its shackle down. On the button beside it, the padlock’s shackle was up. The third button was labeled PANIC. Presumably if a mugger attacked you as you were unlocking your car, you could push that one and the car would start screaming for help.

‘I can see why you had a little trouble locating it in your purse,’ Pete remarked in his best just-passing-the-time-of-day voice. ‘Most people put a fob on their keys. My wife has hers on a big plastic daisy.’ He smiled fondly as if Maureen were still his wife, and as if that perfectly turned-out fashion plate would ever have been caught dead hauling a plastic daisy out of her purse.

‘How nice for her,’ Mrs Trelawney said. ‘When may I have my car back?’

‘That’s not up to us, ma’am,’ Hodges said.

She sighed and straightened the boatneck top of her dress. It was the first of dozens of times they saw her do it. ‘I’ll have to sell it, of course. I’d never be able to drive it after this. It’s so upsetting. To think my car …’ Now that she had her purse in hand, she prospected again and brought out a wad of pastel Kleenex. She dabbed at her eyes with them. ‘It’s very upsetting.’

‘I’d like you to take us through it one more time,’ Pete said.

She rolled her eyes, which were red-rimmed and bloodshot. ‘Is that really necessary? I’m exhausted. I was up most of the night with my mother. She couldn’t go to sleep until four. She’s in such pain. I’d like a nap before Mrs Greene comes in. She’s the nurse.’

Hodges thought, Your car was just used to kill eight people, and only eight if all the others live, and you want a nap. Later he would not be sure if that was when he started to dislike Mrs Trelawney, but it probably was. When some people were in distress, you wanted to enfold them and say there-there as you patted them on the back. With others you wanted to slap them a hard one across the chops and tell them to man up. Or, in Mrs T.’s case, to woman up.

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Pete promised. He didn’t tell her that this would be the first of many interviews. By the time they were done with her, she would hear herself telling her story in her sleep.

‘Oh, very well, then. I arrived here at my mother’s shortly after seven o’clock on Thursday evening …’

She visited at least four times a week, she said, but Thursdays were her night to stay over. She always stopped at B’hai, a very nice vegetarian restaurant located in Birch Hill Mall, and got their dinners, which she warmed up in the oven. (‘Although Mother eats very little now, of course. Because of the pain.’) She told them she always scheduled her Thursday trips so she arrived after seven, because that was when the all-night parking began, and most of the streetside spaces were empty. ‘I won’t parallel park. I simply can’t do it.’

‘What about the garage down the block?’ Hodges asked.

She looked at him as though he were crazy. ‘It costs sixteen dollars to park there overnight. The streetside spaces are free.’

Pete was still holding the key, although he hadn’t yet told Mrs Trelawney they would be taking it with them. ‘You stopped at Birch Hill and ordered takeout for you and your mother at—’ He consulted his notebook. ‘B’hai.’

‘No, I ordered ahead. From my house on Lilac Drive. They are always glad to hear from me. I am an old and valued customer. Last night it was kookoo sabzi for Mother – that’s an herbal omelet with spinach and cilantro – and gheymeh for me. Gheymeh is a lovely stew with peas, potatoes, and mushrooms. Very easy on the stomach.’ She straightened her boatneck. ‘I’ve had terrible acid reflux ever since I was in my teens. One learns to live with it.’

‘I assume your order was—’ Hodges began.

‘And sholeh zard for dessert,’ she added. ‘That’s rice pudding with cinnamon. And saffron.’ She flashed her strangely troubled smile. Like the compulsive straightening of her boatneck tops, the smile was a Trelawneyism with which they would become very familiar. ‘It’s the saffron that makes it special. Even Mother always eats the sholeh zard.’

‘Sounds tasty,’ Hodges said. ‘And your order, was it boxed and ready to go when you got there?’

‘Yes.’

‘One box?’

‘Oh no, three.’

‘In a bag?’

‘No, just the boxes.’

‘Must have been quite a struggle, getting all that out of your car,’ Pete said. ‘Three boxes of takeout, your purse …’

‘And the key,’ Hodges said. ‘Don’t forget that, Pete.’

‘Also, you’d want to get it all upstairs as fast as possible,’ Pete said. ‘Cold food’s no fun.’

‘I see where you’re going with this,’ Mrs Trelawney said, ‘and I assure you …’ A slight pause. ‘… you gentlemen that you are barking up the wrong path. I put my key in my purse as soon as I turned off the engine, it’s the first thing I always do. As for the boxes, they were tied together in a stack …’ She held her hands about eighteen inches apart to demonstrate. ‘… and that made them very easy to handle. I had my purse over my arm. Look.’ She crooked her arm, hung her purse on it, and marched around the big living room, holding a stack of invisible boxes from B’hai. ‘See?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Hodges said. He thought he saw something else as well.

‘As for hurrying – no. There was no need, since the dinners need to be heated up, anyway.’ She paused. ‘Not the sholeh zard, of course. No need to heat up rice pudding.’ She uttered a small laugh. Not a giggle, Hodges thought, but a titter. Given that her husband was dead, he supposed you could even call it a widder-titter. His dislike added another layer – almost thin enough to be invisible, but not quite. No, not quite.

‘So let me review your actions once you got here to Lake Avenue,’ Hodges said. ‘Where you arrived at a little past seven.’

‘Yes. Five past, perhaps a little more.’

‘Uh-huh. You parked … what? Three or four doors down?’

‘Four at most. All I need are two empty spaces, so I can pull in without backing. I hate to back. I always turn the wrong way.’

‘Yes, ma’am, my wife has exactly the same problem. You turned off the engine. You removed the key from the ignition and put it in your purse. You put your purse over your arm and picked up the boxes with the food in them—’

‘The stack of boxes. Tied together with good stout string.’

‘The stack, right. Then what?’

She looked at him as though he were, of all the idiots in a generally idiotic world, the greatest. ‘Then I went to my mother’s building. Mrs Harris – the housekeeper, you know – buzzed me in. On Thursdays, she leaves as soon as I arrive. I took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor. Where you are now asking me questions instead of telling me when I can deal with my car. My stolen car.’

Hodges made a mental note to ask the housekeeper if she had noticed Mrs T.’s Mercedes when she left.

Pete asked, ‘At what point did you take your key from your purse again, Mrs Trelawney?’

‘Again? Why would I—’

He held the key up – Exhibit A. ‘To lock your car before you entered the building. You did lock it, didn’t you?’

A brief uncertainty flashed in her eyes. They both saw it. Then it was gone. ‘Of course I did.’

Hodges pinned her gaze. It shifted away, toward the lake view out the big picture window, and he caught it again. ‘Think carefully, Mrs Trelawney. People are dead, and this is important. Do you specifically remember juggling those boxes of food so you could get your key out of your purse and push the LOCK button? And seeing the headlights flash an acknowledgement? They do that, you know.’

‘Of course I know.’ She bit at her lower lip, realized she was doing it, stopped.

‘Do you remember that specifically?’

For a moment all expression left her face. Then that superior smile burst forth in all its irritating glory. ‘Wait. Now I remember. I put the key in my purse after I gathered up my boxes and got out. And after I pushed the button that locks the car.’

‘You’re sure,’ Pete said.

‘Yes.’ She was, and would remain so. They both knew that. The way a solid citizen who hit and ran would say, when he was finally tracked down, that of course it was a dog he’d hit.

Pete flipped his notebook closed and stood up. Hodges did likewise. Mrs Trelawney looked more than eager to escort them to the door.

‘One more question,’ Hodges said as they reached it.

She raised carefully plucked eyebrows. ‘Yes?’

‘Where’s your spare key? We ought to take that one, too.’

There was no blank look this time, no cutting away of the eyes, no hesitation. She said, ‘I have no spare key, and no need of one. I’m very careful of my things, Officer. I’ve owned my Gray Lady – that’s what I call it – for five years, and the only key I’ve ever used is now in your partner’s pocket.’

18

The table where he and Pete ate their lunch has been cleared of everything but his half-finished glass of water, yet Hodges goes on sitting there, staring out the window at the parking lot and the overpass that marks the unofficial border of Lowtown, where Sugar Heights residents like the late Olivia Trelawney never venture. Why would they? To buy drugs? Hodges is sure there are druggies in the Heights, plenty of them, but when you live there, the dealers make housecalls.

Mrs T. was lying. She had to lie. It was that or face the fact that a single moment of forgetfulness had led to horrific consequences.

Suppose, though – just for the sake of argument – that she was telling the truth.

Okay, let’s suppose. But if we were wrong about her leaving her Mercedes unlocked with the key in the ignition, how were we wrong? And what did happen?

He sits looking out the window, remembering, unaware that some of the waiters have begun to look at him uneasily – the overweight retiree sitting slumped in his seat like a robot with dead batteries.

19

The deathcar had been transported to Police Impound on a carrier, still locked. Hodges and Huntley received this update when they got back to their own car. The head mechanic from Ross Mercedes had just arrived, and was pretty sure he could unlock the damn thing. Eventually.

‘Tell him not to bother,’ Hodges said. ‘We’ve got her key.’

There was a pause at the other end, and then Lieutenant Morrissey said, ‘You do? You’re not saying she—’

‘No, no, nothing like that. Is the mechanic standing by, Lieutenant?’

‘He’s in the yard, looking at the damage to the car. Damn near tears, is what I heard.’

‘He might want to save a drop or two for the dead people,’ Pete said. He was driving. The windshield wipers beat back and forth. The rain was coming harder. ‘Just sayin.’

‘Tell him to get in touch with the dealership and check something,’ Hodges said. ‘Then have him call me on my cell.’

The traffic was snarled downtown, partly because of the rain, partly because Marlborough Street had been blocked off at City Center. They had made only four blocks when Hodges’s cell rang. It was Howard McGrory, the mechanic.

‘Did you have someone at the dealership check on what I was curious about?’ Hodges asked him.

‘No need,’ McGrory said. ‘I’ve worked at Ross since 1987. Must have seen a thousand Mercs go out the door since then, and I can tell you they all go out with two keys.’

‘Thanks,’ Hodges said. ‘We’ll be there soon. Got some more questions for you.’

‘I’ll be here. This is terrible. Terrible.’

Hodges ended the call and passed on what McGrory had said.

‘Are you surprised?’ Pete asked. Ahead was an orange DETOUR sign that would vector them around City Center … unless they wanted to light their blues, that was, and neither did. What they needed now was to talk.

‘Nope,’ Hodges said. ‘It’s standard operating procedure. Like the Brits say, an heir and a spare. They give you two keys when you buy your new car—’

‘—and tell you to put one in a safe place, so you can lay hands on it if you lose the one you carry around. Some people, if they need the spare a year or two later, they’ve forgotten where they put it. Women who carry big purses – like that suitcase the Trelawney woman had – are apt to dump both keys into it and forget all about the extra one. If she’s telling the truth about not putting it on a fob, she was probably using them interchangeably.’

‘Yeah,’ Hodges said. ‘She gets to her mother’s, she’s preoccupied with the thought of spending another night dealing with Mom’s pain, she’s juggling the boxes and her purse …’

‘And left the key in the ignition. She doesn’t want to admit it – not to us and not to herself – but that’s what she did.’

‘Although the warning chime …’ Hodges said doubtfully.

‘Maybe a big noisy truck was going by as she was getting out and she didn’t hear the chime. Or a police car, winding its siren. Or maybe she was just so deep in her own thoughts she ignored it.’

It made sense then and even more later when McGrory told them the deathcar hadn’t been jimmied to gain entry or hot-wired to start. What troubled Hodges – the only thing that troubled him, really – was how much he wanted it to make sense. Neither of them had liked Mrs Trelawney, she of the boatneck tops, perfectly plucked brows, and squeaky widder-titter. Mrs Trelawney who hadn’t asked for any news of the dead and injured, not so much as a single detail. She wasn’t the doer – no way was she – but it would be good to stick her with some of the blame. Give her something to think about besides veggie dinners from B’hai.

‘Don’t complicate what’s simple,’ his partner repeated. The traffic snarl had cleared and he put the pedal down. ‘She was given two keys. She claims she only had one. And now it’s the truth. The bastard who killed those people probably threw the one she left in the ignition down a handy sewer when he walked away. The one she showed us was the spare.’

That had to be the answer. When you heard hoofbeats, you didn’t think zebras.

20

Someone is shaking him gently, the way you shake a heavy sleeper. And, Hodges realizes, he almost has been asleep. Or hypnotized by recollection.

It’s Elaine, the DeMasio’s hostess, and she’s looking at him with concern. ‘Detective Hodges? Are you all right?’

‘Fine. But it’s just Mr Hodges now, Elaine. I’m retired.’

He sees concern in her eyes, and something more. Something worse. He’s the only patron left in the restaurant. He observes the waiters clustered around the doorway to the kitchen, and suddenly sees himself as they and Elaine must be seeing him, an old fellow who’s been sitting here long after his dining companion (and everyone else) has left. An old overweight fellow who sucked the last of his cake off his fork like a child sucking a lollipop and then just stared out the window.

They’re wondering if I’m riding into the Kingdom of Dementia on the Alzheimer’s Express, he thinks.

He smiles at Elaine – his number one, wide and charming. ‘Pete and I were talking about old cases. I was thinking about one. Kind of replaying it. Sorry. I’ll clear out now.’

But when he gets up he staggers and bumps the table, knocking over the half-empty water glass. Elaine grabs his shoulder to steady him, looking more concerned than ever.

‘Detective … Mr Hodges, are you okay to drive?’

‘Sure,’ he says, too heartily. Pins and needles are doing windsprints from his ankles to his crotch and then back down to his ankles again. ‘Just had two glasses of beer. Pete drank the rest. My legs went to sleep, that’s all.’

‘Oh. Are you better now?’

‘Fine,’ he says, and his legs really are better. Thank God. He remembers reading somewhere that older men, especially older overweight men, should not sit too long. A blood clot can form behind the knee. You get up, the released clot does its own lethal windsprint up to the heart, and it’s angel, angel, down we go.

She walks with him to the door. Hodges finds himself thinking of the private nurse whose job it was to watch over Mrs T.’s mother. What was her name? Harris? No, Harris was the housekeeper. The nurse was Greene. When Mrs Wharton wanted to go into the living room, or visit the jakes, did Mrs Greene escort her the way Elaine is escorting him now? Of course she did.

‘Elaine, I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Really. Sober mind. Body in balance.’ He holds his arms out to demonstrate.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘Come see us again, and next time don’t wait so long.’

‘It’s a promise.’

He looks at his watch as he pushes out into the bright sunshine. Past two. He’s missing his afternoon shows, and doesn’t mind a bit. The lady judge and the Nazi psychologist can go fuck themselves. Or each other.

21

He walks slowly into the parking lot, where the only cars left, other than his, likely belong to the restaurant staff. He takes his keys out and jingles them on his palm. Unlike Mrs T.’s, the key to his Toyota is on a ring. And yes, there’s a fob – a rectangle of plastic with a picture of his daughter beneath. Allie at seventeen, smiling and wearing her City High lacrosse uni.

In the matter of the Mercedes key, Mrs Trelawney never recanted. Through all the interviews, she continued to insist she’d only ever had the one. Even after Pete Huntley showed her the invoice, with PRIMARY KEYS (2) on the list of items that went with her new car when she took possession back in 2004, she continued to insist. She said the invoice was mistaken. Hodges remembers the iron certainty in her voice.

Pete would say that she copped to it in the end. There was no need of a note; suicide is a confession by its very nature. Her wall of denial finally crumbled. Like when the guy who hit and ran finally gets it off his chest. Yes, okay, it was a kid, not a dog. It was a kid and I was looking at my cell phone to see whose call I missed and I killed him.

Hodges remembers how their subsequent interviews with Mrs T. had produced a weird kind of amplifying effect. The more she denied, the more they disliked. Not just Hodges and Huntley but the whole squad. And the more they disliked, the more stridently she denied. Because she knew how they felt. Oh yes. She was self-involved, but not stu—

Hodges stops, one hand on the sun-warmed doorhandle of his car, the other shading his eyes. He’s looking into the shadows beneath the turnpike overpass. It’s almost mid-afternoon, and the denizens of Lowtown have begun to rise from their crypts. Four of them are in those shadows. Three big ’uns and one little ’un. The big ’uns appear to be pushing the little ’un around. The little ’un is wearing a pack, and as Hodges watches, one of the big ’uns rips it from his back. This provokes a burst of troll-like laughter.

Hodges strolls down the broken sidewalk to the overpass. He doesn’t think about it and he doesn’t hurry. He stuffs his hands in his sportcoat pockets. Cars and trucks drone by on the turnpike extension, projecting their shapes on the street below in a series of shadow-shutters. He hears one of the trolls asking the little kid how much money he’s got.

‘Ain’t got none,’ the little kid says. ‘Lea me lone.’

‘Turn out your pockets and we see,’ Troll Two says.

The kid tries to run instead. Troll Three wraps his arms around the kid’s skinny chest from behind. Troll One grabs at the kid’s pockets and squeezes. ‘Yo, yo, I hear foldin money,’ he says, and the little kid’s face squinches up in an effort not to cry.

‘My brother finds out who you are, he bust a cap on y’asses,’ he says.

‘That’s a terrifyin idea,’ Troll One says. ‘Just about make me want to pee my—’

Then he sees Hodges, ambling into the shadows to join them with his belly leading the way. His hands deep in the pockets of his old shapeless houndstooth check, the one with the patches on the elbows, the one he can’t bear to give up even though he knows it’s shot to shit.

‘Whatchoo want?’ Troll Three asks. He’s still hugging the kid from behind.

Hodges considers trying a John Wayne drawl, and decides not to. The only Wayne these scuzzbags would know is L’il. ‘I want you to leave the little man alone,’ he says. ‘Get out of here. Right now.’

Troll One lets go of the little ’un’s pockets. He is wearing a hoodie and the obligatory Yankees cap. He puts his hands on his slim hips and cocks his head to one side, looking amused. ‘Fuck off, fatty.’

Hodges doesn’t waste time. There are three of them, after all. He takes the Happy Slapper from his right coat pocket, liking its old comforting weight. The Slapper is an argyle sock. The foot part is filled with ball bearings. It’s knotted at the ankle to make sure the steel balls stay in. He swings it at the side of Troll One’s neck in a tight, flat arc, careful to steer clear of the Adam’s apple; hit a guy there, you were apt to kill him, and then you were stuck in the bureaucracy.

There’s a metallic thwap. Troll One lurches sideways, his look of amusement turning to pained surprise. He stumbles off the curb and falls into the street. He rolls onto his back, gagging, clutching his neck, staring up at the underside of the overpass.

Troll Three starts forward. ‘Fuckin—’ he begins, and then Hodges lifts his leg (pins and needles all gone, thank God) and kicks him briskly in the crotch. He hears the seat of his trousers rip and thinks, Oh you fat fuck. Troll Three lets out a yowl of pain. Under here, with the cars and trucks passing overhead, the sound is strangely flat. He doubles over.

Hodges’s left hand is still in his coat. He extends his index finger so it pokes out the pocket and points it at Troll Two. ‘Hey, fuckface, no need to wait for the little man’s big brother. I’ll bust a cap on your ass myself. Three-on-one pisses me off.’

‘No, man, no!’ Troll Two is tall, well built, maybe fifteen, but his terror regresses him to no more than twelve. ‘Please, man, we ’us just playin!’

‘Then run, playboy,’ Hodges says. ‘Do it now.’

Troll Two runs.

Troll One, meanwhile, has gotten on his knees. ‘You gonna regret this, fat ma—’

Hodges takes a step toward him, lifting the Slapper. Troll One sees it, gives a girly shriek, covers his neck.

‘You better run, too,’ Hodges says, ‘or the fat man’s going to tool up on your face. When your mama gets to the emergency room, she’ll walk right past you.’ In that moment, with his adrenaline flowing and his blood pressure probably over two hundred, he absolutely means it.

Troll One gets up. Hodges makes a mock lunge at him, and Troll One jerks back most satisfyingly.

‘Take your friend with you and pack some ice on his balls,’ Hodges says. ‘They’re going to swell.’

Troll One gets his arm around Troll Three, and they hobble toward the Lowtown side of the overpass. When Troll One considers himself safe, he turns back and says, ‘I see you again, fat man.’

‘Pray to God you don’t, fuckwit,’ Hodges says.

He picks up the backpack and hands it to the kid, who’s looking at him with wide mistrustful eyes. He might be ten. Hodges drops the Slapper back into his pocket. ‘Why aren’t you in school, little man?’

‘My mama sick. I goin to get her medicine.’

This is a lie so audacious that Hodges has to grin. ‘No, you’re not,’ he says. ‘You’re skipping.’

The kid says nothing. This is five-o, nobody else would step to it the way this guy did. Nobody else would have a loaded sock in his pocket, either. Safer to dummy up.

‘You go skip someplace safer,’ Hodges says. ‘There’s a playground on Eighth Avenue. Try there.’

‘They sellin the rock on that playground,’ the kid says.

‘I know,’ Hodges says, almost kindly, ‘but you don’t have to buy any.’ He could add You don’t have to run any, either, but that would be naïve. Down in Lowtown, most of the shorties run it. You can bust a ten-year-old for possession, but try making it stick.

He starts back to the parking lot, on the safe side of the overpass. When he glances back, the kid is still standing there and looking at him. Pack dangling from one hand.

‘Little man,’ Hodges says.

The kid looks at him, saying nothing.

Hodges lifts one hand and points at him. ‘I did something good for you just now. Before the sun goes down tonight, I want you to pass it on.’

Now the kid’s look is one of utter incomprehension, as if Hodges just lapsed into a foreign language, but that’s all right. Sometimes it seeps through, especially with the young ones.

People would be surprised, Hodges thinks. They really would.

22

Brady Hartsfield changes into his other uniform – the white one – and checks his truck, quickly going through the inventory sheet the way Mr Loeb likes. Everything is there. He pops his head in the office to say hi to Shirley Orton. Shirley is a fat pig, all too fond of the company product, but he wants to stay on her good side. Brady wants to stay on everyone’s good side. Much safer that way. She has a crush on him, and that helps.

‘Shirley, you pretty girly!’ he cries, and she blushes all the way up to the hairline of her pimple-studded forehead. Little piggy, oink-oink-oink, Brady thinks. You’re so fat your cunt probably turns inside out when you sit down.

‘Hi, Brady. West Side again?’

‘All week, darlin. You okay?’

‘Fine.’ Blushing harder than ever.

‘Good. Just wanted to say howdy.’

Then he’s off, obeying every speed limit even though it takes him forty fucking minutes to get into his territory driving that slow. But it has to be that way. Get caught speeding in a company truck after the schools let out for the day, you get canned. No recourse. But when he gets to the West Side – this is the good part – he’s in Hodges’s neighborhood, and with every reason to be there. Hide in plain sight, that’s the old saying, and as far as Brady is concerned, it’s a wise saying, indeed.

He turns off Spruce Street and cruises slowly down Harper Road, right past the old Det-Ret’s house. Oh look here, he thinks. The niggerkid is out front, stripped to the waist (so all the stay-at-home mommies can get a good look at his sweat-oiled six-pack, no doubt) and pushing a Lawn-Boy.

About time you got after that, Brady thinks. It was looking mighty shaggy. Not that the old Det-Ret probably took much notice. The old Det-Ret was too busy watching TV, eating Pop-Tarts, and playing with that gun he kept on the table beside his chair.

The niggerkid hears him coming even over the roar of the mower and turns to look. I know your name, niggerkid, Brady thinks. It’s Jerome Robinson. I know almost everything about the old Det-Ret. I don’t know if he’s queer for you, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It could be why he keeps you around.

From behind the wheel of his little Mr Tastey truck, which is covered with happy kid decals and jingles with happy recorded bells, Brady waves. The niggerkid waves back and smiles. Sure he does.

Everybody likes the ice cream man.