Thinner

'You didn't answer my question. Do you think he knew you were going to be there?'

There was a long, considering silence from the slumped shape in the Eames chair. 'Yes,' Hopley said at last. 'Yes, I do. More insanity, Halleck, right? Good thing no one's keeping score, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Billy said. 'I guess it is.' A peculiar little giggle escaped him. It sounded like a very small shriek.

'Now, what's this idea of yours, Halleck? I don't sleep much these days, but I usually start tossing and turning right around this time of night.'

Asked to bring out in words what he had only thought about in the silence of his own mind, Billy found himself feeling absurd – his idea was weak and foolish, not an idea at all, not really, but only a dream.

'The law firm I work for retains a team of investigators,' he said. 'Barton Detective Services, Inc.'

'I've heard of them.'

'They are supposed to be the best in the business. I … That is to say . . .'

He felt Hopley's impatience radiating off the man in waves, although Hopley did not move at all. He summoned what dignity he had left, telling himself that he surely knew as much about what was going on as Hopley, that he had every bit as much right to speak; after all, it was happening to him too.

'I want to find him,' Billy said. 'I want to confront him. I want to tell him what happened., I … I guess I want to come completely clean. Although I suppose if he could do these things to us, he may know anyway.'

'Yes,' Hopley said.

Marginally encouraged, Billy went on: 'But I still want to tell him my side of it. That it was my fault, yes, I should have been able to stop in time – all things being equal, I would have stopped in time. That it was my wife's fault, because of what she was doing to me. That it was Rossington's fault for whitewashing it, and yours for going easy on the investigation and then humping them out of town.'

Billy swallowed.

'And then I'll tell him it was her fault, too. Yes. She was jaywalking, Hopley, and so okay, it's not a crime they give you the gas chamber for, but the reason it's against the law is that it can get you killed the way she got killed.'

'You want to tell him that?'

'I don't want to, but I'm going to. She came out from between two parked cars, didn't look either way. They teach you better in the third grade.'

'Somehow I don't think that babe ever got the Officer Friendly treatment in the third grade,' Hopley said. 'Somehow I don't think she ever went to the third grade, you know?'

'Just the same,' Billy said stubbornly, 'simple common sense -'

'Halleck, you must be a glutton for punishment,' -the shadow that was Hopley said. 'You're losing weight now – do you want to try for the grand prize? Maybe next time he'll stop up your bowels, or heat your bloodstream up to about a hundred and ten degrees, or -'

'I'm not just going to sit in Fairview and let it happen!' Billy said fiercely. 'Maybe he can reverse it, Hopley. Did you ever think of that?'

'I've been reading up on this stuff,' Hopley said. 'I guess I knew what was happening almost from the time the first pimple showed up over one of my eyebrows. Right where the acne attacks Always started when I was in high school – and I used to have some pisser acne attacks back then, let me tell you. So I've been reading up on it. Like I said, I like to read. And I have to tell you, Halleck, that there are hundreds of books on casting spells and curses, but very few on reversing them.'

'Well, maybe he can't. Maybe not. Probably not, even. But I can still go to him, goddammit. I can stare him in the face and say, "You didn't cut enough pieces out of the pie, old man. You should have cut out a piece for my wife, and one for your wife, and while we're at it, old man, how about a piece for you? Where were you while she was walking into the street without looking where she was going? If she wasn't used to in-town traffic, you must have known it. So where were you? Why weren't you there to take her by the arm and lead her down to the crosswalk on the corner? Why -'

'Enough,' Hopley said. 'If I was on a jury, you'd convince me, Halleck. But you forgot the most important factor operating here.'

'What's that?' Billy asked stiffly.

'Human nature. We may be victims of the supernatural, but what we're really dealing with is human nature. As a police officer – excuse me, former police officer – I couldn't agree more that there's no absolute right and absolute wrong; there's just one gray shading into the next, lighter or darker. But you don't think her husband's going to buy that shit, do you?'

'I don't know.'

'I know,' Hopley said. 'I know, Halleck. I can read that guy so well I sometimes think he must be sending me mental radio signals. All his life he's been on the move, busted out of a place as soon as the “good folks” have got all the maryjane or hashish they want, as soon as they've lost all the dimes they want on the wheel of chance. All his life he's heard a bad deal called a dirty gyp. The “good folks” got roots; you got none. This guy, Halleck, he's seen canvas tents burned for a joke back in the thirties and forties, and maybe there were babies and old people that burned up in some of those tents. He's seen his daughters or his friends' daughters attacked, maybe raped, because all those “good folks” know that gypsies fuck like rabbits and a little more won't matter, and even if it does, who gives a fuck. To coin a phrase. He's maybe seen his sons, or his friends' sons, beaten within an inch of their lives … and why? Because the fathers of the kids who did the beating lost some money on the games of chance. Always the same: you come into town, the “good folks” take what they want, and then you get busted out of town. Sometimes they give you a week on the local pea farm or a month on the local road crew for good measure. And then, Halleck, on top of everything, the final crack of the whip comes. This hotshot lawyer with three chins and bulldog jowls runs your wife down in the street. She's seventy, seventy-five, half-blind, maybe she only steps out too quick because she wants to get back to her place before she wets herself, and old bones break easy, old bones are like glass, and you hang around thinking maybe this once, just this once, there's going to be a little justice … an instant of justice to make up for a lifetime of crap -'

'Quit it,' Billy Halleck said hoarsely, 'just quit it, what do you say?' He touched his cheek distractedly, thinking he must be sweating heavily. But it wasn't sweat on his cheek; it was tears.

'No, you deserve it all,' Hopley said with savage joviality, 'and I'm going to give it to you. I'm not telling you not to go ahead, Halleck – Daniel Webster talked Satan's jury around, so hell, I guess anything's possible. But I think you're still holding on to too many illusions. This guy is mad, Halleck. This guy is furious. For all you know, he may be right off his gourd by now, in which case you'd be better off making your pitch in the Bridgewater Mental Asylum. He's out for revenge, and when you're out for revenge, you're not apt to see how everything is shades of gray. When your wife and kids get killed in a plane crash, you don't want to listen to how circuit A fucked up switch B, and traffic controller C had a touch of bug D and navigator E picked the wrong time to go to shithouse F. You just want to sue the shit out of the airline … or kill someone with your shotgun. You want a goat, Halleck. You want to hurt someone. And we're getting hurt. Bad for us. Good for him. Maybe I understand the thing a little better than you, Halleck.'

Slowly, slowly, his hand crept into the narrow circle of light thrown by the Tensor lamp and turned it so that it shone on his face. Halleck dimly heard a gasp and realized it had come from him.