Junkins listens patiently to this rap. He knows Will Darnell is doing a hell of a lot more than just running a do-it-yourself garage and a junkyard, but Darnell knows he knows, so that’s okay.
Junkins lights a cigarette and says, I’m talking to you because I already talked to the kid and he won’t tell me. For a little while there I thought he wanted to tell me; I got the feeling he’s scared green about something. Then he tightened up and wouldn’t tell me squat.
Darnell says, If you think Arnie ran down that Welch kid, say so.
Junkins says, I don’t. His parents say he was home asleep, and it doesn’t feel like they’re lying to cover up for him. But Welch was one of the guys that trashed his car, we’re pretty sure of that, and I’m positive he’s lying about how bad they trashed it and I don’t know why and it’s driving me crazy.
Too bad, Darnell says with no sympathy at all.
Junkins asks, How bad was it, Mr Darnell? You tell me.
And Darnell tells his first and only lie during the interview with Junkins: I really didn’t notice.
He noticed, all right, and he knows why Arnie is lying about it, trying to minimize it, and this cop would know why too, if it wasn’t so obvious he was walking all over it instead of seeing it. Cunningham is lying because the damage was horrible, the damage was much worse than this state gumshoe can imagine, those hoods didn’t just beat up on Cunningham’s ’58, they killed it. Cunningham is lying because, although nobody saw him do much of anything during the week after the tow-truck brought Christine back to stall twenty, the car was basically as good as new—even better than it had been before.
Cunningham lied to the cop because the truth was incredible.
“Incredible,” Darnell said out loud, and drank the rest of his coffee. He looked down at the telephone, reached for it, and then drew his hand back. He had a call to make, but it might be better to finish thinking this through first—have all his ducks in a row.
He himself was the only one (other than Cunningham himself) who could appreciate the incredibility of what had happened: the car’s complete and total exoneration. Jimmy was too soft in the attic, and the other guys were in and out, not regular custom at all. Still, there had been comments about what a fantastic job Cunningham had done; a lot of the guys who had been doing repairs on their rolling iron during that week in November had used the word incredible, and several of them had looked uneasy. Johnny Pomberton, who bought and sold used trucks, had been trying to get an old dumpster he’d picked up in running shape that week. Johnny knew cars and trucks better than anyone else in Libertyville, maybe anyone else in all of Pennsylvania. He told Will frankly and flat-out that he couldn’t believe it. It’s like voodoo, Johnny Pomberton had said, and then uttered a laugh without much humour. Will only sat there looking politely interested, and after a second or two the old man shook his head and went away.
Sitting in his office and looking out at the garage, eerily silent in the slack time that came every year in the weeks before Christmas, Will thought (not for the first time) that most people would accept anything they saw it happen right before their very eyes. In a very real sense there was no supernatural, no abnormal; what happened, happened, and that was the end.
Jimmy Sykes: Like magic.
Junkins: He’s lying about it, but I’ll be goddamned if I know why.
Will pulled open his desk drawer, denting his paunch, and found his note-minder book for 1978. He paged through it and found his own scrawled entry: Cunningham. Chess Tourney. Philly Sheraton Dec. 11–13.
He called Directory Assistance, got the number of the hotel, and made the call. He was not too surprised to feel his heartbeat shifting into a higher gear as the phone rang and the desk clerk picked it up.
Like magic.
“Hello, Philadelphia-Sheraton.
“Hello,” Will said, “You have a chess tournament put up there, I th—”
“Northern States, yessir,” the desk clerk broke in. He sounded quick and almost insufferably young.
“I’m calling from Libertyville, Pee-Ay,” Will said. “I believe you have an LHS student named Arnold Cunningham registered. He’s one of the chess tourney kids. I’d like to speak to him, if he’s in.”
“Just a moment, sir, I’ll see.”
Clunk. Will was put on hold. He cocked himself back on his swivel chair and sat that way for what seemed to be a very long time, although the red second-hand on the office clock only revolved once. He won’t be there, and if he is, I’ll eat my—
“Hello?”
The voice was young, warily cautious and unmistakably Cunningham’s. Will Darnell felt a peculiar lift-drop in his belly, but none of it showed in his voice; he was much too old for that.
“Hi, Cunningham,” he said. “Darnell.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you up to, Will?”
“How you doing, kid?”
“Won yesterday and drew today. Bullshit game. Couldn’t seem to keep my mind on it. What’s up?”
Yes, it was Cunningham—him without a doubt.
Will, who would no more call someone without a cover story than he would go out without his skivvies on, said smoothly, “You got a pencil, kiddo?”
“Sure.”
“There’s an outfit on North Broad Street, United Auto Parts. You think you could go by there and see what they’ve got for tyres?”
“Remoulds?” Arnie asked.
“First-lines.”
“Sure, I can go by. I’m free tomorrow afternoon from noon until three.”
“That’ll be fine. You ask for Roy Mustungerra, and mention my name.”
“Spell that.”
Will spelled it.
“That’s all?”
“Yeah… except I hope you get your ass whuped.”
“Fat chance,” Cunningham said, and laughed. Will told him goodbye and hung up.
It was Cunningham, no doubt about that. Cunningham was in Philadelphia tonight, and Philadelphia was almost three hundred miles away.
Who could he have given an extra set of keys to?
The Guilder kid.
Sure! Except the Guilder kid was in the hospital.
His girl.
But she didn’t have a driver’s licence or even a permit. Arnie had said so.
Someone else.
There was no one else. Cunningham wasn’t close to anyone else except for Will himself, and Will knew damned well Cunningham had never given him a dupe set of keys.
Like magic.
Shit.
Will leaned back in his chair again and lit another cigar. When it was going and the neatly clipped-off end was in his ashtray, he looked up at the raftering smoke and thought it over. Nothing came. Cunningham was in Philly and he had gone on the high school bus, but his car was gone. Jimmy Sykes had seen it pulling out, but Jimmy hadn’t seen who was driving it. Now just what did all of that mean? What did it add up to?
Gradually, his mind turned into other channels. He thought of his own high school days, when he had had the lead part in the senior play. His part had been that of the minister who is driven to suicide by his lust for Sadie Thompson, the girl he has set out to save. He had brought down the house. His one moment of glory in a high school career that had been devoid of sporting or academic triumphs, and maybe the high point of his youth—his father had been a drunk, his mother a drudge, his one brother a deadbeat with his own moment of glory coming somewhere in Germany, his only applause the steady pounding of German 88s.
He thought of his one girlfriend, a pallid blonde named Wanda Haskins, whose white cheeks had been splattered with freckles which grew painfully profuse in the August sun. They almost surely would have married—Wanda was one of four girls that Will Darnell had actually fucked (he excluded whores from his count). She was surely the only one he had ever loved (always assuming there was such a thing—and, like the supernatural events he had sometimes heard about but never witnessed, he could doubt its existence but not disprove it), but her father had been in the Army, and Wanda had been an Army brat. At the age of fifteen—perhaps only a year before the mystic shift in the balance of power from the hands of the old into those of the young—she and her family had moved to Wichita, and that had been the end of that.