Later

61

Blood and brains spattered the wall behind him. I screamed and ran out of the room, down the stairs, out the door, past Teddy, and down the hill. I ran all the way to Renfield. All of this in one second. Then Liz wrapped her arms around me.

“Steady, kiddo. Stead—”

I punched her in the stomach and heard her woof out a surprised breath. Then I was whirled and my arm was twisted up behind me. It hurt like blue fuck and I screamed some more. All of a sudden my feet were no longer holding me up. She’d swept them right out from under me and I went on my knees, yelling my head off with my arm twisted up so high that my wrist was touching my shoulderblade.

“Shut up!” Her voice, little more than a growl, was in my ear. This was the woman who had once played Matchbox cars with me, both of us down on our knees while my mother stirred spaghetti sauce in the kitchen, listening to oldies on Pandora. “Quit that squalling and I’ll let you go!”

I did and she did. Now I was on my hands and knees, staring down at the rug, shaking all over.

“On your feet, Jamie.”

I managed to do it, but I kept looking at the rug. I didn’t want to look at the fat man with the top of his head gone.

“Is he here?”

I stared at the rug and said nothing. My hair was in my eyes. My shoulder throbbed.

“Is he here? Look around!”

I raised my head, hearing my neck creak as I did it. Instead of looking directly at Marsden—although I could still see him, he was too big to miss—I looked at the table beside his bed. There was a cluster of pill bottles on it. There was also a fat sandwich and a bottle of spring water.

“Is he here?” She slapped me on the back of my head.

I scoped the room. There was nobody but us and the fat man’s corpse. Now I’d seen two men shot in the head. Therriault had been bad, but at least I hadn’t had to watch him die.

“No one,” I said.

“Why not? Why isn’t he here?” She sounded frantic. I couldn’t think much then, I was too fucking terrified. It was only later, replaying that endless five minutes in Marsden’s room, that I realized she was doubting the whole thing. In spite of Regis Thomas and his book, in spite of the bomb in the supermarket, she was afraid I couldn’t see dead people at all, and she’d killed the only person who knew where that stash of pills was hidden.

“I don’t know. I was never where someone actually died. Maybe… maybe it takes awhile. I don’t know, Liz.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll wait.”

“Not in here, okay? Please, Liz, not where I have to look at him.”

“In the hall, then. If I let go of you, are you going to be good?”

“Yes.”

“Not going to try to run?”

“No.”

“You better not, I’d hate to shoot you in the foot or the leg. That’d be the end of your tennis career. Back out.”

I backed out and she backed out with me, so she could block me off if I tried to make a break for it. When we were in the hall, she told me to look around again. I did. Marsden wasn’t there and I told her that.

“Damn.” Then: “You saw the sandwich, didn’t you?”

I nodded. A sandwich and a bottle of water for a man who was bound to his jumbo bed. Bound hand and foot.

“He loved his food,” Liz said. “I ate with him in a restaurant once. He should have had a shovel instead of a fork and spoon. What a pig.”

“Why would you leave him a sandwich he couldn’t eat?”

“I wanted him to look at it, that’s why. Just look. All day, while I went to get you and bring you back. And believe me, a shot in the head is just what he deserved. Do you have any idea how many people he killed with his… his happy poison?”

Who helped him? I thought, and of course didn’t say.

“How long do you think he would have lived, anyway? Two years? Five? I’ve been in his bathroom, Jamie. He’s got a double-wide toilet seat!” She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort of disgust. “Okay, let’s stroll down to the balcony. We’ll see if he’s in the great room. Slow.”

I couldn’t have gone fast if I’d wanted to, because my thighs were trembling and my knees felt like jelly.

“You know how I got the gate code? Marsden’s UPS man. Guy has a hell of a coke habit, I could have slept with his wife if I’d wanted to, he’d’ve been happy to supply her if I kept supplying him. The house code I got from Teddy.”

“Before you killed him.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Like I was the dumbest kid in class. “He could identify me.”

So can I, I thought, and that brought me back to the thing this lad—me—could whistle for. I’d have to do it, but I still didn’t want to. Because it might not work? Yeah, but not just that. Rub a magic lamp and get a genie, okay, good for you. Rub it and summon a demon—a deadlight—and God might know what would happen, but I didn’t.

We reached the balcony with its low rail and high drop. I peered over.

“Is he down there?”

“No.”

The gun prodded me in the small of my back. “Are you lying?”

“No!”

She gave a harsh sigh. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.”

“I don’t know how it’s supposed to go, Liz. For all I know, he could be outside talking with T—” I stopped.

She took hold of my shoulder and turned me around. There was blood all over her upper lip now—her stress must have been very high—but she was smiling. “You saw Teddy?”

I dropped my eyes. Which was answer enough.

“You sly dog.” She actually laughed. “We’ll go out and take a look if Marsden doesn’t show in here, but for the time being, let’s just wait a little. We can afford to. His latest whore is visiting her relatives in Jamaica or Barbados or somewhere with palm trees, and he doesn’t get company during the week, does all his business by phone these days. He was just lying there when I came in, watching that John Law court show on TV. Christ, I wish he’d at least been wearing some pajamas, you know?”

I said nothing.

“He told me there were no pills, but I could see on his face that he was lying, so I secured him and then cut him a little. Thought that might loosen his tongue, and you know what he did? He laughed at me. Said yes, okay, there was Oxy, a lot of it, but he’d never tell me where it was. ‘Why should I?’ he said. ‘You’re going to kill me anyway.’ That’s when the penny dropped. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. Muy stupido.” She hit the side of her head with the hand holding the gun.

“Me,” I said. “I was the penny that dropped.”

“Yes indeed. So I left him a sandwich and a bottle of water to admire and I went to New York and I got you and we drove back and nobody came and here we are, so where the fuck is he?”

“There,” I said.

“What? Where?”

I pointed. She turned and of course saw nothing, but I could see for both of us. Donald Marsden, also known as Donnie Bigs, was standing in the doorway of his circular library. He was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and the top of his head was pretty much gone and his shoulders were drenched with blood, but he was staring at me with the eye Liz hadn’t punched shut in her fury and frustration.

I raised a tentative hand to him. He raised one of his in return.