Текст книги "Salem's Lot"
Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
“Lord God, through your mercy those who have lived in faith find eternal peace. Bless this grave and send your angel to watch over it. As we bury the body of Daniel Glick, welcome him into your presence, and with your saints let him rejoice in you forever. We ask it through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” the congregation muttered, and the wind swept it away in rags. Tony Glick was looking around with wide, haunted eyes. His wife was pressing a Kleenex to her mouth.
“With faith in Jesus Christ, we reverently bring the body of this child to be buried in its human imperfection. Let us pray with confidence to God, who gives life to all things, that he will raise up this mortal body to the perfection and company of saints.”
He turned the pages of his missal. A woman in the third row of the loose horseshoe grouped around the grave had begun to sob hoarsely. A bird chirruped somewhere back in the woods.
“Let us pray for our brother Daniel Glick to our Lord Jesus Christ,” Father Callahan said, “who told us: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The man who believes in me will live even though he dies, and every living person who puts his faith in me will never suffer eternal death.’ Lord, you wept at the death of Lazarus, your friend: comfort us in our sorrow. We ask this in faith.”
“Lord, hear our prayer,” the Catholics answered.
“You raised the dead to life; give our brother Daniel eternal life. We ask this in faith.”
“Lord, hear our prayer,” they answered. Something seemed to be dawning in Tony Glick’s eyes; a revelation, perhaps.
“Our brother Daniel was washed clean in baptism; give him fellowship with all your saints. We ask this in faith.”
“Lord, hear our prayer.”
“He was nourished with your body and blood; grant him a place at the table in your heavenly kingdom. We ask this in faith.”
“Lord, hear our prayer.”
Marjorie Glick had begun to rock back and forth, moaning.
“Comfort us in our sorrow at the death of our brother; let our faith be our consolation and eternal life our hope. We ask this in faith.”
“Lord, hear our prayer.”
He closed his missal. “Let us pray as our Lord taught us,” he said quietly. “Our Father who art in heaven—”
“No!” Tony Glick screamed, and propelled himself forward. “You ain’t gonna throw no dirt on my boy!”
Hands reached out to stay him, but they were belated. For a moment he tottered on the edge of the grave, and then the fake grass wrinkled and gave way. He fell into the hole and landed on the coffin with a horrid, heavy thump.
“Danny, you come outta there!” he bawled.
“Oh, my,” Mabel Werts said, and pressed her black silk funeral hankie to her lips. Her eyes were bright and avid, storing this the way a squirrel stores nuts for the winter.
“Danny, goddammit, you stop this fucking around!”
Father Callahan nodded at two of the pallbearers and they stepped forward, but three other men, including Parkins Gillespie and Nolly Gardener, had to step in before Glick could be gotten out of the grave, kicking and screaming and howling.
“Danny, you stop it now! You got your Momma scared! I’m gonna whip your butt for you! Lemme go! Lemme go…I want m’boy…let me go, you pricks…ahhh, God—”
“Our Father who art in heaven—” Callahan began again, and other voices joined him, lifting the words toward the indifferent shield of the sky.
“—hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done—”
“Danny, you come to me, hear? You hear me?”
“—on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us—”
“Dannneeee—”
“—our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us—”
“He ain’t dead, he ain’t dead, let go a me you miserable shitpokes—”
“—and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Through Christ our Lord, amen.”
“He ain’t dead,” Tony Glick sobbed. “He can’t be. He’s only twelve fucking years old.” He began to weep heavily and staggered forward in spite of the men who held him, his face ravaged and streaming with tears. He fell on his knees at Callahan’s feet and grasped his trousers with muddy hands. “Please give me my boy back. Please don’t fool me no more.”
Callahan took his head gently with both hands. “Let us pray,” he said. He could feel Glick’s wracking sobs in his thighs.
“Lord, comfort this man and his wife in their sorrow. You cleansed this child in the waters of baptism and gave him new life. May we one day join him and share heaven’s joys forever. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.”
He raised his head and saw that Marjorie Glick had fainted.
FOUR
When they were all gone, Mike Ryerson came back and sat down on the edge of the open grave to eat his last half sandwich and wait for Royal Snow to come back.
The funeral had been at four, and it was now almost five o’clock. The shadows were long and the sun was already slanting through the tall western oaks. That frigging Royal had promised to be back by quarter of five at the latest; now where was he?
The sandwich was bologna and cheese, his favorite. All the sandwiches he made were his favorites; that was one of the advantages to being single. He finished up and dusted his hands, spraying a few bread crumbs down on the coffin.
Someone was watching him.
He felt it suddenly and surely. He stared around at the cemetery with wide, startled eyes.
“Royal? You there, Royal?”
No answer. The wind sighed through the trees, making them rustle mysteriously. In the waving shadows of the elms beyond the stone wall, he could see Hubert Marsten’s marker, and suddenly he thought of Win’s dog, hanging impaled on the iron front gate.
Eyes. Flat and emotionless. Watching.
Dark, don’t catch me here.
He started to his feet as if someone had spoken aloud.
“Goddamn you, Royal.” He spoke the words aloud, but quietly. He no longer thought Royal was around, or even coming back. He would have to do it by himself, and it would take a long time alone.
Maybe until dark.
He set to work, not trying to understand the dread that had fallen over him, not wondering why this job that had never bothered him before was bothering him terribly now.
Moving with quick, economical gestures, he pulled the strips of fake grass away from the raw earth and folded them neatly. He laid them over his arm and took them out to his truck, parked beyond the gate, and once out of the graveyard, that nasty feeling of being watched slipped away.
He put the grass in the back of the pickup and took out a spade. He started back, then hesitated. He stared at the open grave and it seemed to mock him.
It occurred to him that the feeling of being watched had stopped as soon as he could no longer see the coffin nestled at the bottom of its hole. He had a sudden mental image of Danny Glick lying on that little satin pillow with his eyes open. No—that was stupid. They closed the eyes. He had watched Carl Foreman do it enough times. Course we gum ’em, Carl had said once. Wouldn’t want the corpse winkin’ at the congregation, would we?
He loaded his shovel with dirt and threw it in. It made a heavy, solid thump on the polished mahogany box, and Mike winced. The sound made him feel a little sick. He straightened up and looked around distractedly at the floral displays. A damn waste. Tomorrow the petals would be scattered all over in red and yellow flakes. Why anybody bothered was beyond him. If you were going to spend money, why not give it to the Cancer Society or the March of Dimes or even the Ladies’ Aid? Then it went to some good, at least.
He threw in another shovelful and rested again.
That coffin was another waste. Nice mahogany coffin, worth a thousand bucks at least, and here he was shoveling dirt over it. The Glicks didn’t have no more money than anyone else, and who puts burial insurance on kids? They were probably six miles in hock, all for a box to shovel in the ground.
He bent down, got another spadeful of earth, and reluctantly threw it in. Again that horrid, final thump. The top of the coffin was sprayed with dirt now, but the polished mahogany gleamed through, almost reproachfully.
Stop looking at me.
He got another spadeful, not a very big one, and threw it in.
Thump.
The shadows were getting very long now. He paused, looked up, and there was the Marsten House, its shutters closed blankly. The east side, the one that bid good day to the light first, looked directly down on the iron gate of the cemetery, where Doc—
He forced himself to get another spadeful of earth and throw it into the hole.
Thump.
Some of it trickled off the sides, creasing into the brass hinges. Now if anyone opened it, there would be a gritting, grating noise like opening the door to a tomb.
Stop looking at me, goddammit.
He began to bend for another spadeful, but the thought seemed too heavy and he rested for a minute. He had read once—in the National Enquireror someplace—about some Texas oilman dude who had specified in his will that he be buried in a brand-new Cadillac Coupe de Ville. They did it, too. Dug the hole with a payloader and lifted the car in with a crane. People all over the country driving around in old cars held together with spit and baling wire and one of these rich pigs gets himself buried sitting behind the wheel of a ten-thousand-dollar car with all the accessories—
He suddenly jerked and took a step backward, shaking his head warily. He had almost—well—had almost been in a trance, it seemed like. That feeling of being watched was much stronger now. He looked at the sky and was alarmed to see how much light had gone out of it. Only the top story of the Marsten House was in bright sunlight now. His watch said ten past six. Christ, it had been an hour and he hadn’t thrown half a dozen shovelfuls of dirt down that hole!
Mike bent to his work, trying not to let himself think. Thumpand thumpand thumpand now the sound of dirt striking wood was muffled; the top of the coffin was covered and dirt was running off the sides in brown rivulets, almost up to the lock and catch.
He threw in another two spadefuls and paused.
Lock and catch?
Now, why in the name of God would anyone put a lock into a coffin? Did they think someone was going to try to get in? That had to be it. Surely they couldn’t think someone would be trying to get out—
“Stop staringat me,” Mike Ryerson said aloud, and then felt his heart crawl up into his throat. A sudden urge to run from this place, to run straight down the road to town, filled him. He controlled it only with great effort. Just the heebie-jeebies, that’s all it was. Working in a graveyard, who wouldn’t get them once in a while? It was like a fucking horror movie, having to cover up that kid, only twelve years old and his eyes wide open—
“Christ, stop it!” he cried, and looked wildly up toward the Marsten House. Now only the roof was in sunshine. It was six-fifteen.
After that he began to work more quickly again, bending and shoveling and trying to keep his mind completely blank. But that sense of being watched seemed to grow rather than lessen, and each shovelful of dirt seemed heavier than the last. The top of the coffin was covered now but you could still see the shape, shrouded in earth.
The Catholic prayer for the dead began to run through his mind, the way things like that will for no good reason. He had heard Callahan saying it while he was eating his dinner down by the brook. That, and the father’s helpless screaming.
Let us pray for our brother Daniel Glick to our Lord Jesus Christ, who said…
( O my father, favor me now.)
He paused and looked blankly down into the grave. It was deep, very deep. The shadows of coming night had already pooled into it, like something viscid and alive. It was still deep. He would never be able to fill it by dark. Never.
I am the resurrection and the life. The man who believes in me will live even though he dies…
( Lord of Flies, favor me now.)
Yes, the eyes were open. That’s why he felt watched. Carl hadn’t used enough gum on them and they had flown up just like window shades and the Glick kid was staring at him. Something ought to be done about it.
…and every living person who puts his faith in me will never suffer eternal death…
( Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh.)
Shovel out the dirt. That was the ticket. Shovel it out and break the lock with the shovel and open the coffin and close those awful staring eyes. He had no mortician’s gum, but he had two quarters in his pocket. That would do as well. Silver. Yes, silver was what the boy needed.
The sun was above the roof of the Marsten House now, and only touched the highest and oldest spruces to the west of town. Even with the shutters closed the house seemed to stare at him.
You raised the dead to life; give our brother Daniel eternal life.
( I have made sacrifice for your favor. With my left hand I bring it.)
Mike Ryerson suddenly leaped into the grave and began to shovel madly, throwing dirt up and out in brown explosions. At last the blade of the shovel struck wood and he began to scrape the last of the dirt over the sides and then he was kneeling on the coffin striking at the brass lip of the lock again and again and again.
The frogs down by the brook had begun to thump, a nightjar was singing in the shadows, and somewhere close by a number of whippoorwills had begun to lift their shrilling call.
Six-fifty.
What am I doing? he asked himself. What in God’s name am I doing?
He knelt there on top of the coffin and tried to think about it…but something on the underside of his mind was urging him to hurry, hurry, the sun was going down—
Dark, don’t catch me here.
He lifted the spade over his shoulder, brought it down on the lock once more, and there was a snapping sound. It was broken.
He looked up for a moment, in a last glimmering of sanity, his face streaked and circled with dirt and sweat, the eyes staring from it in bulging white circles.
Venus glowed against the breast of the sky.
Panting, he pulled himself out of the grave, lay down full length, and fumbled for the catches on the coffin lid. He found them and pulled. The lid swung upward, gritting on its hinges just as he had imagined it would, showing at first only pink satin, and then one dark-clad arm (Danny Glick had been buried in his communion suit), then…then the face.
Mike’s breath clogged and stopped in his throat.
The eyes were open. Just as he had known they would be. Wide open and hardly glazed at all. They seemed to sparkle with hideous life in the last, dying light of day. There was no death pallor in that face; the cheeks seemed rosy, almost juicy with vitality.
He tried to drag his eyes away from that glittering, frozen stare and was unable.
He muttered: “Jesus—”
The sun’s diminishing arc passed below the horizon.
FIVE
Mark Petrie was working on a model of Frankenstein’s monster in his room and listening to his parents down in the living room. His room was on the second floor of the farmhouse they had bought on South Jointner Avenue, and although the house was heated by a modern oil furnace now, the old second-floor grates were still there. Originally, when the house had been heated by a central kitchen stove, the warm-air grates had kept the second floor from becoming too cold—although the woman who had originally lived in this house with her dour Baptist husband from 1873 to 1896 had still taken a hot brick wrapped in flannel to bed with her—but now the grates served another purpose. They conducted sound excellently.
Although his parents were down in the living room, they might as well have been discussing him right outside the door.
Once, when his father had caught him listening at the door in their old house—Mark had only been six then—his father had told him an old English proverb: Never listen at a knothole lest you be vexed. That meant, his father said, that you may hear something about yourself that you don’t like.
Well, there was another one, too. Forewarned is forearmed.
At age twelve, Mark Petrie was a little skinnier than the average and slightly delicate-looking. Yet he moved with a grace and litheness that is not the common lot of boys his age, who seem mostly made up of knees and elbows and scabs. His complexion was fair, almost milky, and his features, which would be considered aquiline later in life, now seemed a trifle feminine. It had caused him some trouble even before the Richie Boddin incident in the schoolyard, and he had determined to handle it himself. He had made an analysis of the problem. Most bullies, he had decided, were big and ugly and clumsy. They scared people by being able to hurt them. They fought dirty. Therefore, if you were not afraid of being hurt a little, and if you were willing to fight dirty, a bully might be bested. Richie Boddin had been the first full vindication of his theory. He and the bully at the Kittery Elementary School had come off even (which had been a victory of a kind; the Kittery bully, bloody but unbowed, had proclaimed to the schoolyard community at large that he and Mark Petrie were pals. Mark, who thought the Kittery bully was a dumb piece of shit, did not contradict him. He understood discretion.). Talk did no good with bullies. Hurting was the only language that the Richie Boddins of the world seemed to understand, and Mark supposed that was why the world always had such a hard time getting along. He had been sent from school that day, and his father had been very angry until Mark, resigned to his ritual whipping with a rolled-up magazine, told him that Hitler had just been a Richie Boddin at heart. That had made his father laugh like hell, and even his mother snickered. The whipping had been averted.
Now June Petrie was saying: “Do you think it’s affected him, Henry?”
“Hard…to tell.” And Mark knew by the pause that his father was lighting his pipe. “He’s got a hell of a poker face.”
“Still waters run deep, though.” She paused. His mother was always saying things like still waters run deep or it’s a long, long road that has no turning. He loved them both dearly, but sometimes they seemed just as ponderous as the books in the folio section of the library…and just as dusty.
“They were on their way to see Mark,” she resumed. “To play with his train set…now one dead and one missing! Don’t fool yourself, Henry. The boy feels something.”
“He’s got his feet pretty solidly planted on the ground,” Mr Petrie said. “Whatever his feelings are, I’m sure he’s got them in hand.”
Mark glued the Frankenstein monster’s left arm into the shoulder socket. It was a specially treated Aurora model that glowed green in the dark, just like the plastic Jesus he had gotten for memorizing all of the 119th Psalm in Sunday school class in Kittery.
“I’ve sometimes thought we should have had another,” his father was saying. “Among other things, it would have been good for Mark.”
And his mother, in an arch tone: “Not for lack of trying, dear.”
His father grunted.
There was a long pause in the conversation. His father, he knew, would be rattling through The Wall Street Journal. His mother would be holding a novel by Jane Austen on her lap, or perhaps Henry James. She read them over and over again, and Mark was darned if he could see the sense in reading a book more than once. You knew how it was going to end.
“D’you think it’s safe to let him go in the woods behind the house?” his mother asked presently. “They say there’s quicksand somewhere in town—”
“Miles from here.”
Mark relaxed a little and glued the monster’s other arm on. He had a whole table of Aurora horror monsters, arranged in a scene that he changed each time a new element was added. It was a pretty good set. Danny and Ralphie had really been coming to see that the night when…whatever.
“I think it’s okay,” his father said. “Not after dark, of course.”
“Well, I hope that awful funeral won’t give him nightmares.”
Mark could almost see his father shrug. “Tony Glick…unfortunate. But death and grief are part of living. Time he got used to the idea.”
“Maybe.” Another long pause. What was coming now? he wondered. The child is the father of the man, maybe. Or as the twig is bent the tree is shaped. Mark glued the monster onto his base, which was a grave mound with a leaning headstone in the background. “In the midst of life we’re in death. But Imay have nightmares.”
“Oh?”
“That Mr Foreman must be quite an artist, grisly as it sounds. He really looked as if he was just asleep. That any second he might open his eyes and yawn and…I don’t know why these people insist on torturing themselves with open-coffin services. It’s…heathenish.”
“Well, it’s over.”
“Yes, I suppose. He’s a good boy, isn’t he, Henry?”
“Mark? The best.”
Mark smiled.
“Is there anything on TV?”
“I’ll look.”
Mark turned the rest off; the serious discussion was done. He set his model on the windowsill to dry and harden. In another fifteen minutes his mother would be calling up for him to get ready for bed. He took his pajamas out of the top dresser drawer and began to undress.
In point of fact, his mother was worrying needlessly about his psyche, which was not tender at all. There was no particular reason why it should have been; he was a typical boy in most ways, despite his economy and his gracefulness. His family was upper middle class and still upwardly mobile, and the marriage of his parents was sound. They loved each other firmly, if a little stodgily. There had never been any great trauma in Mark’s life. The few school fights had not scarred him. He got along with his peers and in general wanted the same things they wanted.
If there was anything that set him apart, it was a reservoir of remoteness, of cool self-control. No one had inculcated it in him; he seemed to have been born with it. When his pet dog, Chopper, had been hit by a car, he had insisted on going with his mother to the vet’s. And when the vet had said, The dog has got to be put to sleep, my boy. Do you understand why? Mark said, You’re not going to put him to sleep. You’re going to gas him to death, aren’t you? The vet said yes. Mark told him to go ahead, but he had kissed Chopper first. He had felt sorry but he hadn’t cried and tears had never been close to the surface. His mother had cried but three days later Chopper was in the dim past to her, and he would never be in the dim past for Mark. That was the value in not crying. Crying was like pissing everything out on the ground.
He had been shocked by the disappearance of Ralphie Glick, and shocked again by Danny’s death, but he had not been frightened. He had heard one of the men in the store say that probably a sex pervert had gotten Ralphie. Mark knew what perverts were. They did something to you that got their rocks off and when they were done they strangled you (in the comic books, the guy getting strangled always said Arrrgggh) and buried you in a gravel pit or under the boards of a deserted shed. If a sex pervert ever offered him candy, he would kick him in the balls and then run like a split streak.
“Mark?” His mother’s voice, drifting up the stairs.
“I am,” he said, and smiled again.
“Don’t forget your ears when you wash.”
“I won’t.”
He went downstairs to kiss them good night, moving lithely and gracefully, sparing one glance backward to the table where his monsters rested in tableau: Dracula with his mouth open, showing his fangs, was menacing a girl lying on the ground while the Mad Doctor was torturing a lady on the rack and Mr Hyde was creeping up on an old guy walking home.
Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.
SIX
Roy McDougall pulled into the driveway of his trailer at half past eight, gunned the engine of his old Ford twice, and turned the engine off. The header pipe was just about shot, the blinkers didn’t work, and the sticker came up next month. Some car. Some life. The kid was howling in the house and Sandy was screaming at him. Great old marriage.
He got out of the car and fell over one of the flagstones he had been meaning to turn into a walk from the driveway to the steps since last summer.
“Shitfire,” he muttered, glowering balefully at the piece of flagging and rubbing his shin.
He was quite drunk. He had gotten off work at three and had been drinking down at Dell’s ever since with Hank Peters and Buddy Mayberry. Hank had been flush just lately, and seemed intent on drinking up the whole of his dividend, whatever it had been. He knew what Sandy thought of his buddies. Well, let her get tight-assed. Begrudge a man a few beers on Saturday and Sunday even though he spent the whole week breaking his back on the goddamn picker—and getting weekend overtime to boot. Who was she to get so holy? She spent all day sitting in the house with nothing to do but take care of the place and shoot the shit with the mailman and see that the kid didn’t crawl into the oven. She hadn’t been watching him too close lately, anyway. Goddamn kid even fell off the changing table the other day.
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 watching 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 somelife.
SEVEN
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 Scotland 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.”
“It’s what we’re here for. If you want assistance, get in touch.”
“I will. Thank you now.”
He put the receiver back in its cradle and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Who was that, Park?” Nolly asked, turning up the radio.
“The Excellent Café. They ain’t got any ham on rye. Nothin’ but toasted cheese and egg salad.”
