Thinner

'He tells me not to hurt anyone,' Ginelli went on, as if she had not spoken. 'I haven't. But that ends tonight. I don't know how many times your old gramps has gotten away with this before, but he ain't going to get away with it this time. You tell him to take it off. You tell him it's the last time I ask. Here. Take this.'

He pressed a scrap of paper into her hand. On it he had Written the telephone number of the 'safe kiosk' in New York.

'You gonna call this number by midnight tonight and tell me what that old man says. If you need to hear back from me, you call that number again two hours later. You can pick up your message … if there is one. And that's it. One way or another, the door is gonna be closed. No one at that number is gonna know what the fuck you are talking about after two o'clock tomorrow morning.-'

'He'll never take it off.'

'Well, maybe he won't,' he said, 'because that is the same thing your brother said last night. But that's not your business. You just play square with him and let him make up his own mind what he's gonna do – make sure you explain to him that if he says no, that's when the boogiewoogie really starts. You go first, then the two kids, then anybody else I can get my hands on. Tell him that. Now, get in the car.'

'No. I*

Ginelli rolled his eyes. 'Will you wise up? I just want to make sure I have time to get out of here without twelve cops on my tail. If I had wanted to kill you, I wouldn't have given you a message to deliver.'

The girl got up. She was a little wobbly, but she made it. She got in behind the wheel and then slid across the seat.

'Not far enough.' Ginelli wiped blood off his forehead and showed it to her on his fingers. 'After this, I want to see you crouched up against that door over there like a wallflower on her first date.'

She slid against the door. 'Good,' Ginelli said, getting in. 'Now, stay there.'

He backed out to Finson Road without turning on his lights – the Buick's wheels spun a little on the dry timothy grass. He shifted to drive with his gun hand, saw her twitch, and pointed the gun at her again.

'Wrong,' he said. 'Don't move. Don't move at all. You understand?'

'I understand.'

'Good.'

He drove back the way he had come, holding the gun on her.

'Always it's this way,' she said bitterly. 'For even a little justice we are asked to pay so much. He is your friend, this pig Halleck?'

'I told you, don't call him that. He's no pig.'

'He cursed us,' she said, and there was a kind of wondering contempt in her voice. 'Tell him for me, mister, that God cursed us long before him or any of his tribe ever were,'

'Save it for the social worker, babe.'

She fell silent.

A quarter of a mile before the gravel pit where Frank Spurton rested, Ginelli stopped the car.

'Okay, this is far enough. Get out.'

'Sure.' She looked at him steadily with those unfathomable eyes. 'But there is one thing you should know, mister – our paths will cross again. And when they do, I will kill you.'

'No,' he said. 'You won't. Because you owe me your life tonight. And if that ain't enough for you, you ungrateful bitch, you can add in your brother's life last night. You talk, but you still don't understand the way things are, or why you ain't home-free on this, or why you ain't never gonna be home-free on this until you quit. I got a friend you could fly like a kite if you hooked up some twine to his belt. What have you got? I'll tell you what you got. You got an old man with no nose who put a curse on my friend and then ran away in the night like a hyena.'

Now she was crying, and crying hard. The tears ran down her face in streams.

'Are you saying God is on your side?' she asked him, her voice so thick the words were almost unintelligible. 'Is that what I hear you saying? You should burn in hell for such! blasphemy. Are we hyenas? If we are, it was people like your friend who made us so, My great-grandfather says there are no curses, only mirrors you hold up to the souls of men and women.'

'Get out,' he said. 'We can't talk. We can't even hear each other.'

'That's right.'

She opened the door and got out. As he pulled away she screamed: 'Your friend is a pig and he'll die thin!'

'But I don't think you will,' Ginelli said.

'What do you mean?'

Ginelli looked at his watch. It was after three o'clock. 'Tell you in the car,' he said. 'You've got an appointment at seven o'clock.'

Billy felt that sharp, hollow needle of fear in his belly again. 'With him?'

'That's right. Let's go.'

As Billy got to his feet there was another arrhythmic episode this the longest one yet. He closed his eyes and grasped at his chest, What remained of his chest. Ginelli grabbed him. 'William, are you okay?'

He looked in the mirror and saw Ginelli holding a grotesque sideshow freak in flapping clothes. The arrhythmia passed and was replaced by an even more familiar sensation – that milky, curdled rage that was directed at the old man … and at Heidi.

'I'm okay,' he said. 'Where are we going,?

'Bangor,' Ginelli said.

Chapter Twenty-three. The Transcript

They took the Nova. Both things Ginelli had told him about it were true – it smelled quite strongly of cow manure, and it ate the road between Northeast Harbor and Bangor in great swallows. Genelli stopped around four to pick up a huge basket of steamer clams. They parked at a roadside rest area and divided them, along with a six-pack of beer. The two or three family groups at the picnic tables got a look at Billy Halleck and moved as far away as possible.

While they ate, Ginelli finished his story. It didn't take long.

'I was back in the John Tree room by eleven o'clock last night,' he said. 'I could have gotten there quicker, maybe, but I did a few loops and figure-eights and turn-backs just to make sure no one was behind me.

'Once I was in the room, I called New York and sent a fellow out to the telephone I gave the girl the number for. I told him to take a tape deck and a steno plug with him – the kind of gadget reporters use to do phone interviews. I didn't want to have to rely on hearsay, William, if you can dig that. I told him to call me back with the tape as soon as she hung up.

'I disinfected the cuts she put in me while I waited for the call-back. I'm not gonna say she had hydrophobia or anything like that, William, but there was so much hate in her, you know.'

'I know,' Billy said, and thought grimly: I really do know. Because I'm gaining. In that one way, I'm gaining.

The call had come at a quarter past twelve. Closing his eyes and pressing the fingers of his left hand against his forehead, Ginelli was able to give Billy an almost exact recitation of how the playback had gone.

Ginelli's Man: Hello.

Gina Lemke: Do you work for the man I saw tonight?

Ginelli's Man: Yes, you could say that.

Gina: Tell him my great-grandfather says

Ginelli's Man: I got a steno plug on this. I mean, you are being taped. I will play it back for the man you mentioned. So

Gina: You can do that?

Ginelli's Man: Yes. So you are talking to him now, in a way of speaking.

Gina: All right. My great-grandfather says he will take it off. I tell him he is crazy, worse, that he is wrong, but he is firm. He says there can be no more hurting and no more fear for his people – he will take it off. But he needs to meet with Halleck. He can't take it off unless he does. At seven o'clock tomorrow evening my great-grandfather will be in Bangor. There is a park between two streets Union and Hammond. He will be there sitting on a bench. He will be alone. So you win, big man – you win, mi hela po klockan. Have your pig friend in Fairmont Park, Bangor, tonight at seven.

Ginelli's Man: That's all?

Gina: Yes, except tell him I hope his cock turns black and falls off.

Ginelli's Man: You're telling him yourself, sister. But you wouldn't be if you knew who you was telling.