I wiped at the foam on Delacroix’s chest, then had to gag back vomit as a large, hot section of his skin simply slid away from the flesh beneath, the way the skin will slide off a… well, you know. A done tom turkey.
“Oh my God!” a voice I didn’t recognize almost sobbed behind me. “Is it always this way? Why didn’t somebody tell me? I never would have come!”
Too late now, friend, I thought. “Get that man out of here,” I said to Dean or Brutal or whoever might be listening—I said it when I was sure I could speak without puking into Delacroix’s smoking lap. “Get them all back by the door.”
I steeled myself as best I could, then put the disc of the stethoscope on the red-black patch of raw flesh I’d made on Del’s chest. I listened, praying I would hear nothing, and that’s just what I did hear.
“He’s dead,” I told Brutal.
“Thank Christ.”
“Yes. Thank Christ. You and Dean get the stretcher. Let’s unbuckle him and get him out of here, fast.”
5
WE GOT HIS BODY down the twelve stairs and onto the gurney all right. My nightmare was that his cooked flesh might slough right off his bones as we lugged him—it was Old Toot’s done tom turkey that had gotten into my head—but of course that didn’t happen.
Curtis Anderson was upstairs soothing the spectators—trying to, anyway—and that was good for Brutal, because Anderson wasn’t there to see when Brutal took a step toward the head of the gurney and pulled his arm back to slug Percy, who was standing there looking stunned. I caught his arm, and that was good for both of them. It was good for Percy because Brutal meant to deliver a blow of near-decapitory force, and good for Brutal because he would have lost his job if the blow had connected, and maybe ended up in prison himself.
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no?” he asked me furiously. “How can you say no? You saw what he did! What are you telling me? That you’re still going to let his connections protect him? After what he did?”
“Yes.”
Brutal stared at me, mouth agape, eyes so angry they were watering.
“Listen to me, Brutus—you take a poke at him, and most likely we all go. You, me, Dean, Harry, maybe even Jack Van Hay. Everyone else moves a rung or two up the ladder, starting with Bill Dodge, and the Prison Commission hires three or four Breadline Barneys to fill the spots at the bottom. Maybe you can live with that, but—” I cocked my thumb at Dean, who was staring down the dripping, brick-lined tunnel. He was holding his specs in one hand, and looked almost as dazed as Percy. “But what about Dean? He’s got two kids, one in high school and one just about to go.”
“So what’s it come down to?” Brutal asked. “We let him get away with it?”
“I didn’t know the sponge was supposed to be wet,” Percy said in a faint, mechanical voice. This was the story he had rehearsed beforehand, of course, when he was expecting a painful prank instead of the cataclysm we had just witnessed. “It was never wet when we rehearsed.”
“Aw, you sucker—” Brutal began, and started for Percy. I grabbed him again and yanked him back. Footsteps clacked on the steps. I looked up, desperately afraid of seeing Curtis Anderson, but it was Harry Terwilliger. His cheeks were paper-white and his lips were purplish, as if he’d been eating blackberry cobbler.
I switched my attention back to Brutal. “For God’s sake, Brutal, Delacroix’s dead, nothing can change that, and Percy’s not worth it.” Was the plan, or the beginnings of it, in my head even then? I’ve wondered about that since, let me tell you. I’ve wondered over the course of a lot of years, and have never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer. I suppose it doesn’t matter much. A lot of things don’t matter, but it doesn’t keep a man from wondering about them, I’ve noticed.
“You guys talk about me like I was a chump,” Percy said. He still sounded dazed and winded—as if someone had punched him deep in the gut—but he was coming back a little.
“You are a chump, Percy,” I said.
“Hey, you can’t—”
I controlled my own urge to hit him only with the greatest effort. Water dripped hollowly from the bricks down in the tunnel; our shadows danced huge and misshapen on the walls, like shadows in that Poe story about the big ape in the Rue Morgue. Thunder bashed, but down here it was muffled.
“I only want to hear one thing from you, Percy, and that’s you repeating your promise to put in for Briar Ridge tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said sullenly. He looked at the sheeted figure on the gurney, looked away, flicked his eyes up toward my face for a moment, then looked away again.
“That would be for the best,” Harry said. “Otherwise, you might get to know Wild Bill Wharton a whole lot better than you want to.” A slight pause. “We could see to it.”
Percy was afraid of us, and he was probably afraid of what we might do if he was still around when we found out he’d been talking to Jack Van Hay about what the sponge was for and why we always soaked it in brine, but Harry’s mention of Wharton woke real terror in his eyes. I could see him remembering how Wharton had held him, ruffling his hair and crooning to him.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Percy whispered.
“Yes I would,” Harry replied calmly. “And do you know what? I’d get away with it. Because you’ve already shown yourself to be careless as hell around the prisoners. Incompetent, too.”
Percy’s fists bunched and his cheeks colored in a thin pink. “I am not—”
“Sure you are,” Dean said, joining us. We formed a rough semicircle around Percy at the foot of the stairs, and even a retreat up the tunnel was blocked; the gurney was behind him, with its load of smoking flesh hidden under an old sheet. “You just burned Delacroix alive. If that ain’t incompetent, what is?”
Percy’s eyes flickered. He had been planning to cover himself by pleading ignorance, and now he saw he was hoist by his own petard. I don’t know what he might have said next, because Curtis Anderson came lunging down the stairs just then. We heard him and drew back from Percy a little, so as not to look quite so threatening.
“What in the blue fuck was that all about?” Anderson roared. “Jesus Christ, there’s puke all over the floor up there! And the smell! I got Magnusson and Old Toot-Toot to open both doors, but that smell won’t come out for five damn years, that’s what I’m betting. And that asshole Wharton is singing about it! I can hear him!”
“Can he carry a tune, Curt?” Brutal asked. You know how you can burn off illuminating gas with a single spark and not be hurt if you do it before the concentration gets too heavy? This was like that. We took an instant to gape at Brutus, and then we were all howling. Our high, hysterical laughter flapped up and down the gloomy tunnel like bats. Our shadows bobbed and flickered on the walls. Near the end, even Percy joined in. At last it died, and in its aftermath we all felt a little better. Felt sane again.
“Okay, boys,” Anderson said, mopping at his teary eyes with his handkerchief and still snorting out an occasional hiccup of laughter, “what the hell happened?”
“An execution,” Brutal said. I think his even tone surprised Anderson, but it didn’t surprise me, at least not much; Brutal had always been good at turning down his dials in a hurry. “A successful one.”