“For now,” Junkins said, “talk is all I’ve got. The first time—when Welch got killed—you were supposed to be home in bed.”
“Pretty thin, I know,” Arnie said. “Believe me, if I’d known this shit was going to come down on my head, I would have hired a sick friend to sit up with me.”
“Oh, no—that was good,” Junkins said. “Your mother and father had no cause to doubt your tale. I could tell that from speaking to them. And alibis—the true ones—usually have more holes than a Salvation Army suit. It’s when they start to look like suits of armour that I get nervous.”
“Holy Jumping Jesus!” Arnie almost screamed. “It was a fucking chess meet! I’ve been in the chess club for four years now!”
“Until today,” Junkins said, and Arnie grew still again. Junkins nodded. “Oh yeah, I talked to the club advisor. Herbert Slawson. He says that the first three years you never missed a meeting, even came to a couple with a low-grade case of the flu. You were his star player. Then, this year, you were spotty right from the start—”
“I had my car to work on… and I got a girl—”
“He said you missed the first three tourneys, and he was pretty surprised when your name turned up on the trip sheet for the Northern States meet. He thought you’d lost all your interest in the club.”
“I told you—”
“Yes, you did. Too busy. Cars and girls, just what makes most kids too busy. But you regained your interest long enough to go to Philly—and then you dropped out. That strikes me as very odd.”
“I can’t see anything funny about it,” Arnie said, but his voice seemed distant, almost lost in the surf-roar of blood in his ears.
“Bullshit. It looks as if you knew it was coming down and set yourself up with an airtight alibi.”
The roar in his head had even assumed the steady, wavelike beats of surf, each beat accompanied by a dull thrust of pain. He was getting a headache—why wouldn’t this monstrous man with his prying brown eyes just go away? None of it was true, none of it, He hadn’t set anything up, not an alibi, not anything. He had been as surprised as anyone else when he read in the paper what had happened. Of course he had been. There was nothing strange going on, unless it was this lunatic’s paranoia, and
(how did you hurt your back anyway, Arnie? and by the way, do you see anything green? do you see) he closed his eyes and for a moment the world seemed to lurch out of its orbit and he saw that green, grinning, rotting face floating before him, saying: Start her up. Get the heater going and let’s motorvate. And while we’re at it, let’s get the shitters that wrecked our car. Let’s grease the little cockknockers, kid, what do you say? Let’s hit them so fucking hard the corpse-cutter down at city, hospital will have to pull the paint-chips out of their carcasses with pliers. What do you say? Find some doowop music on the radio and let’s cruise. Let’s—
He groped back behind him, touched Christine—her hard, cool, reassuring surface—and things dropped back into place again. He opened his eyes.
“There’s only one other thing, really,” Junkins said, “and it’s very subjective. Nothing you could put on a report. You’re different this time, Arnie. Harder, somehow. It’s almost as if you’ve put on twenty years.”
Arnie laughed, and was relieved to hear it sounded quite natural. “Mr Junkins, you’ve got a screw loose.”
Junkins didn’t join him in his laughter. “Uh-huh. I know it. The whole thing is screwy—screwier than anything I’ve investigated in the ten years I’ve been a detective. Last time, I felt like I could reach you, Arnie. I felt you were… I don’t know. Lost, unhappy, groping around, trying to get out. Now I don’t feel that at all. I almost feel like I’m talking to a different person. Not a very nice one.”
“I’m done-talking to you,” Arnie said abruptly, and began walking toward the office.
“I want to know what happened,” Junkins called after him. “And I’m going to find out. Believe me.”
“Do me a favour and stay away from here,” Arnie said. “You’re crazy.”
He let himself into the office, closed the door behind him, and noticed his hands weren’t shaking at all. The room was stuffy with the smells of cigar and olive oil and garlic. He crossed in front of Will without speaking, took his time-card out of the rack, and punched in: ka-thud. Then he looked through the glass window and saw Junkins standing there, looking at Christine. Will said nothing. Arnie could hear the noisy engine of the big man’s respiration. A couple of minutes later Junkins left.
“Cop,” Will said, and ripped out a long belch. It sounded like a chainsaw.
“Yeah.”
“Repperton?”
“Yeah. He thinks I had something to do with it.”
“Even though you were in Philly?”
Arnie shook his head. “He doesn’t even seem to care about that.”
He’s a smart cop then, Will thought. He knows the facts are wrong, and his intuition tells him there’s something even wronger than that, so he’s gotten further with it than most cops ever would, but he could spend a million years and not get all the way to the truth. He thought of the empty car driving itself into stall twenty like some weird wind-up toy. The empty ignition slot turning over to START, The engine revving once, like a warning snarl, and then failing off.
And thinking of these things, Will did not trust himself to look Arnie in the face, even though his own experience in routine deceit was nearly lifelong.
“I don’t want to send you to Albany if the cops are watching you.”
“I don’t care if you send me to Albany or not, but you don’t have to worry about the heat. He’s the only cop I’ve seen, and he’s crazy. He’s not interested in anything but two cases of hit-and-run.”
Now Will’s eyes did meet Arnie’s: Arnie’s grey and distant, Will’s a faded no-colour, the corneas a dim yellow; they were the eyes of an ancient tomcat who has seen a thousand mice turned inside out.
“He’s interested in you,” he said. “I’d better send Jimmy.”
“You like the way Jimmy drives, do you?”
Will looked at Arnie for a moment and then sighed. Okay,” he said. “But if you see that cop, you back off. And if you get caught holding a bag, Cunningham, it’s your bag. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” Arnie said. “Do you want me to do some work tonight, or what?”
“There’s a ’77 Buick in forty-nine. Pull the starter motor. Check the solenoid. If it seems okay, pull that too.”
Arnie nodded and left. Will’s thoughtful eyes drifted from his retreating back to Christine. He had no business sending him to Albany this weekend and he knew it. The kid knew it too, but he was going to push ahead anyway. He had said he’d go, and he was now going to by-God do it. And if anything happened, the kid would stand up. Will was sure of it. There was a time when he surely wouldn’t have done, but that time was past now.
He had heard it all on the intercom.
Junkins had been right.
The kid was harder now.
Will began to look at the kid’s ’58 again. Arnie would be taking Will’s Chrysler to New York. While he was gone, Will would watch Christine. He would watch Christine and see what happened.
40
ARNIE IN TROUBLE
With Naugahyde bucket seats in front and back,
Everything’s chrome, man, even my jack,
Step on the gas, she goes
Waaaaahhhh—I’ll let you look,
But don’t touch my custom machine
Rudolph Junkins and Rick Mercer of the Pennsylvania State Police detective division sat drinking coffee the following afternoon in a glum little office with paint peeling from the walls. Outside, a depressing mixture of snow and sleet was falling.
“I’m pretty sure this is going to be the weekend,” Junkins said. “That Chrysler has rolled every four or five weeks for the last eight months.”