“Nothing,” Sully said, tracing the sewer line up Limerock Street in his mind. “Except the old—”
“Right,” Carl said. “The rendering plant. Remember why they closed? No, of course you don’t. You can’t remember yesterday. But if you had a memory, you’d recall they got into a spat with the town over back taxes and moved the operation to Mohawk. Gus thinks they flooded that sewer line intentionally. Kind of a parting gift.”
“Except that was, what? Two years ago? Three?”
“That’s what threw us off. The theory is the mill needs repointing along the eaves. Every time it rains, water gets inside. Normally that wouldn’t matter, except it drains into the basement floor.”
Sully nodded, finally understanding. “And the drainage keeps whatever’s down there nice and ripe.”
“Under ideal conditions,” Carl went on, “say a heat wave after a week of rain…”
“Double time,” Sully said.
“Sorry?”
“Whatever you paid Rub for your last filthy job, he gets double for this.”
“Oh, sure. That you remember. Extort your old buddy Carl at every opportunity. Why do I even talk to you?”
“Triple, actually,” Sully said, upon further reflection.
“Fine, I’ll hire somebody else. You think Rub’s the only halfwit in Bath who needs work?”
He had a point there. “Okay, then double.”
“Deal,” Carl said, far too quickly.
Sully’d given in too soon, he realized.
“You think you can talk him into it?”
“I don’t know. He hates you.”
Carl rose to his feet. “Tell him you like me,” he suggested, heading for the men’s room. “He has no opinions that aren’t identical to yours.”
“But I don’t like you.”
“Sure you do, booby.”
When the bathroom door swung shut behind him, Sully went back to studying Roy Purdy, who was now thumbing up the last microscopic crumbs of piecrust from his plate. What he’d told Carl earlier was true. These days he did think of murder more often than sex. Roy had arrived back in Bath the same day Sully was given his diagnosis, the two events dovetailing in his mind and encouraging him to weigh his various options for the scumbag’s permanent removal. Running the little prick over with his pickup truck probably made the most sense, though it struck Sully as kind of impersonal. There was a strong possibility Roy wouldn’t fully comprehend what had hit him, and Sully wanted him to know. Sneaking up behind him and braining him with a shovel would probably be more rewarding. The sound of tempered steel encountering Roy’s skull — that melon softness underneath the fractured bone — would be satisfying. Since turning seventy, though, Sully wasn’t as good at sneaking up on people as he used to be, and here, too, Roy might die without knowing who killed him. Maybe the best guarantee that he would know exactly who was putting an end to his sorry existence would be to lace his coffee with rat poison. Some midmornings, after the breakfast rush, Ruth would ask Sully to watch the counter while she ran to the bank, so he could do it then. It’d be gratifying to watch Roy’s face spasm, the realization dawning, too late, that he’d been poisoned and by whom. The difficulty was in knowing how much poison to administer. Too little and he might not die, too much and he might taste it in the first sip, after which Sully might die. Sully’d never really been afraid of death and wasn’t even now that it was approaching on horseback, but he was fully committed to Roy dying first.
“I guess you liked that all right, then,” Ruth said, clearing Roy’s plate.
“Not bad for day-old,” he said, rubbing his small paunch. “We good here?”
“Aren’t we always?”
Roy evidently had no opinion on this subject. “Tell Janey I’m sorry I missed her.”
Sully saw his eyes settle on the door from the diner to the attached apartment where his ex-wife lived with Tina, their daughter.
“She doin’ okay, then?” he asked. “Everything all right?”
“She’s just fine, Roy,” Ruth said flatly. “So’s your daughter, if that’s of any interest.”
This last Roy appeared not to hear. “Tell her there wasn’t no need for that restraining order. I’m a changed man.”
“She’ll be glad to hear that. Keep your distance just the same.”
“Like I told the judge, it ain’t easy in a town this size.”
Ruth nodded. “That why you hang around the parking lot out at Applebee’s around closing time, waiting for her to get off?”
“I do that?”
“Somebody said they saw you.”
Roy swiveled on his stool to look at Sully now, acknowledging his presence for the first time, then swiveled back again. “Tell her soon as I find a job I’m gonna start making things up to her, and that’s for true.”
“Maybe you’d have better luck job hunting someplace else,” Ruth suggested. “Albany, maybe, or New York City. Someplace with more opportunities.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Roy said, getting to his feet and taking half-a-dozen toothpicks from the cup by the register. “I’ll find something right here in town one of these days.”
Sully opened up the paper to the classifieds and put on his reading glasses. “Here’s something that’d suit you to a T, Roy,” he offered.
“Sully,” Ruth said, with an edge in her voice that a wise man would have paid attention to.
“Wife beater needed,” Sully pretended to read. “Entry level. Minimum wage to start but plenty of opportunity for advancement. Only highly motivated self-starters need apply.”
“Sully,” Ruth repeated.
“Hey, that’s a good one,” Roy said. “You make that up on the spot or you been thinkin’ about it all morning, waitin’ for me to come in here so you could say it?”
Sully ignored both this and Ruth, who was glaring daggers at him as well. “Yeah, but here’s what I don’t understand,” he told Roy. “Carl Roebuck was just talking about needing somebody to clean up that ruptured sewer line. How come you didn’t speak up? Let him know you were looking for work?”
Roy rose from his stool. He’d removed a toothpick from its scarlet cellophane and was chewing on it thoughtfully. “How come you don’t like me, Sully?” he said. “I never done nothin’ to you.”
“Hold on, here’s another,” Sully said, as the other man moved toward the door. “Wanted. Experienced petty thief. Night shift. Ex-con preferred.”
“I guess you don’t think people can change, then,” Roy said, his hand on the doorknob, the bell above tinkling in anticipation.
“They do, sometimes,” Sully conceded, refolding the paper carefully, so his landlady was faceup again. Was it his imagination, or had her expression changed? Become ever so slightly more disapproving? “Mostly they get worse, though, is the problem.”
“Maybe I’ll surprise you,” he said. “I been meanin’ to ask, though. How you like livin’ in my trailer?”
Sully snorted, though he knew what Roy was getting at. “Your trailer?” Because it had once been Roy’s, or rather his and Janey’s, a gift from Ruth and her husband when Janey was pregnant and she and Roy were newly married and without a place to stay. They’d parked it out back of Ruth’s and lived there until Roy got arrested out at the Sans Souci with a truckload of stolen TVs and furniture. Later, after Roy was sent downstate that first time, Ruth bought the trailer back so Janey would have enough money to move to Albany and begin a new, improved Roy-free life. She’d been beyond incredulous when Sully offered to take it off her hands. “What do you mean you’re going to live in it?” she wanted to know. “You’ve got a nice big house on the prettiest street in Bath.”