He shrugged with his body and his face. “I'm—"
“Yeah. I know. You're sorry. You're that, all right. Fuck.” He didn't know what to do next. Go in the bank and try to move the weight in there? First Bank of Waterton was notoriously loose in their SBLs, and after all—wasn't he a small businessman? It wouldn't be like he didn't have the collateral.
He watched David Drexel get into his big car. Money in the bank. It couldn't have gone south like this. Jeezus—how much bad luck does somebody have to have?
He turned the corner of the bank, walking, nodding hello to people he'd known all his life. Would P. J. Thatcher, the State Farm man, come to his funeral when Happy and Luis finished with him? he wondered as he passed the insurance office. He needed somebody who had some serious bucks to get him temporarily off this dangerous tenterhook.
He saw Myrna Hyams at a desk and opened the door to Perkins Realty.
“Hi.” She'd been with Sam for a long time and wore her concern on her face.
“Hi, Myrna. I don't guess you've heard anything new?"
“Not a word."
“Does everybody in town know he's disappeared, do you suppose?"
“They will tomorrow. I gave Jake at the Weekly Dispatch the details just a while ago. They put the paper out tomorrow.” The Weekly Dispatch was printed in Maysburg, and this would be big news—a pillar of the community missing.
“Did you get those telephone bills ready?” Mary had told Myrna that he was “helping the family” look for Sam.
“Yes, sir,” she said, glumly. “I couldn't think of anything I haven't already said. I just can't imagine what has happened to Mr. Sam."
He couldn't think what to say, so he just shook his head by way of commiseration. Royce wondered who'd look for him if he disappeared.
Mary Perkins was working her way back down North Main with the handbills. She went in Judy's, the town's most popular cafe, and spotted a woman she knew.
“Hi, Francie."
“Howdy, Mary,” a heavyset woman said from behind the cash register, a look of condolence immediately wrinkling her plump, friendly features with concern. “It's awful about Sam. Have you heard any news?"
“No.” Mary showed the woman a stack of pages she'd just run off across the street at the bank. “Would you all mind handing these out for me?” They were reward announcements that showed Sam's photograph, followed by a photocopy of the account of his disappearance that had run in the Weekly Dispatch that morning.
“Of course not. I'll make sure they get handed out myself,” Francie assured her, glad to help. “I sure hope Sam's okay.” She had clearly written him off.
Mary thanked her and left, working her way on down North Main. She, too, had a very bad feeling now. She'd already caught herself several times as she spoke of her husband in the past tense. Too much time had gone by.
She worked her way down the block, leaving more of the reward handbills at General Discount, the doctor's office, and O'Connor GMC Motors. She'd parked their car on Maple, and she went back to rest a minute and regroup. The plan was to get more posters and work her way on out South Main. She unlocked the car, got in, and looked at Sam's likeness from a recent photo.
REWARD
A substantial cash reward will be paid to anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Sam Perkins, 33, of 911 South Main in Waterton, who has been missing since the morning of Friday, October 5, when he was believed to have been abducted from the parking lot of Perkins Realty.
Anyone having information as to his disappearance or his present whereabouts should contact Martin W. Kerns, Chief of Police, Waterton Office of Public Safety, 555-9191 or 555-3017.
Mary's own number had been added to the newspaper account. She only just now noticed that the pasteup had not been trimmed of all its extraneous information. There was a filler line that the paper had run across the bottom, and she'd left it on. In tiny print at the bottom of the announcement it read:
“Support the Maysburg Eagles!"
Mary forced herself into action and started the car, pulling around the corner and parking halfway down the block. She gathered up a big armful of handbills and went in the first building down at the corner, Wilma's Hair Salon.
Kristi Devere was cutting someone's hair, and there was another lady under a dryer. Mary couldn't place the woman she was working on, but the woman acted like she knew Mary. She asked Kristi if she could leave some of the posters of Sam, and was turning to leave when the woman said, in a well-meaning tone, “I know exactly what you're going through, dear."
“Oh.” She had no idea who the woman was. A pleasant-looking bottle blonde of mysterious years, but clearly on the high side of middle age.
“I lost my Stanley and I didn't think I was ever going to get over it. Thirty-five years.” Kristi stopped and looked at her customer. “It's terrible to have a husband killed."
“Nobody knows that, Clarisse,” Kristi said gently.
“Of course they don't. But you know, if your husband gets Alzheimer's or something, and he's elderly, or in bad health, or he has a stroke—you know—” She needed to talk about it.
“Sure.” Mary wanted to get moving. Clarisse? Not Clarisse Pendleton? Must be. She vaguely remembered her husband had been killed in a car accident. A drunk driver.
“We had our kids grown and out of the house. Doing well. Our grandchildren were healthy. We had our financial situation—you know—comfortable. I mean, we weren't wealthy...” Huge diamonds flashed on an expressive, wrinkled hand.
“Mm-hm."
“I couldn't go in a room in the house without seeing something of Stanley's. I finally had to just box up everything and have Goodwill get it. All his beautiful suits. I couldn't stand it. I cried every time I came in the house. I couldn't fix a meal. I'd open the refrigerator and just break down. I'd find some little note or something in one of my purses. My heart broke ten times a day. You know—you lose someone to cancer, it's awful. But everyone loses loved ones to heart disease, cancer, things like that. To have something like this—"
“Bye bye, Mary,” Kristi said. “Good luck, hon.” Giving her a chance to thank them both and quickly start out the door.
“Holidays are the worst—” she could hear the woman call out to her back as the door mercifully closed.
10
NORTH OF WATERTON, MISSOURI
“Magic Silo. Crossing plowed ground to barnyard. Repeat. Magic Silo. Crossing plowed ground to barnyard.” The words register deep in the lion's brain salad. A radio spits noise.
“That's a rog, Charlie Charlie November. Magic Silo out.” Trying to fight his way out of the haze of tranqs. Wordscreen wrestles for information. Sorts through call signs: Wicked Trade. Mad Rover. Mud Puppy. Magic Silo does not connect.
Sees the steel. Chains. Feels the cold. Senses loss of equilibrium. Turbulence of some kind. Perhaps he is in Vietnam, on the way to an unknown LZ with the call sign Magic Silo. A bumpy ride, in this UH-1. The slick shudders in a loud eggbeater machine-gun flatulence of turbine whomp. But if this is a bird, where is the cocky pilot? The absentee door gunner? The copilot? No arrogant crew chief speaks. He replays a night insertion: unmarked skinships approaching LZ Quebec-Tulsa, filed as LZ: field expedient.
His body shrugs through layers of fog. Tests the chains reflexively. He is immobilized, but he can hear a radio and a single voice. If the pilot is tantalizingly alone, this is golden data—a neck snaps like rotten wood in his memory and he wants to smile, but the huge face is frozen.