Thinner

Gina: And fuck you, too.

Ginelli's Man: You should call back here at two, to see if there's an answer.

Gina: I'll call.

'She hung up,' Ginelli said. He dumped the empty clam shells in a litter basket, came back, and added with no pity at alclass="underline" 'My guy said it sounded like she was crying all through it.'

'Christ Jesus,' Billy muttered.

'Anyway, I had my guy put the steno plug back on the phone and I recorded a message for him to play back to her when she called at two. It went like this. "Hello, Gina.

This is Special Agent Stoner. I have your message. It sounds like a go. My friend William will come to the park at seven o'clock this evening. He will be alone, but I will be watching. Your people will be watching too, I imagine. That's fine. Let us both watch and let neither of us get in the way of what goes on between the two of them. If anything happens to my friend, you will pay a high price.'

'And that was it?'

'Yes. That was it.'

'The old man caved in.'

'I think he caved in. It could still be a trap, you know.' Ginelli looked at him soberly. 'They know I'll be watching. They may have decided to kill you where I can see it, as revenge on me, and then take their chances with what happens next.'

'They're killing me anyway,' Billy said.

Or the girl could take it into her he had to do it on her own. She's mad, William. People don't always do what they're told when they're mad.'

Billy looked at him reflectively. 'No, they don't. But either way, I don't have much choice, do I?'

'No … I don't think you do. You ready?'

Billy glanced toward the people staring at him and nodded. He'd been ready for a long time.

Halfway back to the car he said: 'Did you really do any of it for me, Richard?'

Ginelli stopped, looked at him, and smiled a little. The smile was almost vague … but that whirling, twirling light in his eyes was sharply focused – too sharply focused for Billy to look at. He had to shift his gaze.

'Does it matter, William?'

Chapter Twenty-four. Purpurfargade Ansiktet

They were in Bangor by late afternoon. Ginelli swung the Nova into a gas station, had it filled up, and got direction from the attendant. Billy sat exhaustedly in the passenger seat. Ginelli looked at him with sharp concern when h came back.

'William, are you all right?'

'I don't know,' he said, and then reconsidered. 'No.'

'Is it your ticker again?'

'Yeah.' He thought about what Ginelli's midnight doctor had said – potassium, electrolytes … something about how Karen Carpenter might have died. 'I ought to have something with potassium in it. Pineapple juice. Bananas. Or oranges.' His heart broke into a sudden disorganized gallop. Billy leaned back and shut his eyes and waited to see if he was going to die. At last the uproar quieted. 'A whole bag of oranges.'

There was a Shop and Save up ahead. Ginelli pulled in. 'I'll be right back, William. Hang in.'

'Sure,' Billy said vaguely, and fell into a light doze as soon as Ginelli left the car. He dreamed. In his dream he saw his house in Fairview. A vulture with a rotting beak flew down to the windowsill and peered in. From inside the house someone began to shriek.

Then someone else was shaking him roughly. Billy started awake. 'Huh!'

Ginelli leaned back and blew out breath. 'Jesus, William, don't scare me like that!'

'What are you talking about?'

'I thought you were dead, man. Here.' He put a net bag filled with navel oranges in Billy's lap. Billy plucked at the fastener with his thin fingers – fingers which now looked like white spider legs – and couldn't get it to give. Ginelli slit the bag open with his pocket knife, then cut an orange in quarters with it. Billy ate slowly at first, as one does a duty, then ravenously, seeming to rediscover his appetite for the first time in a week or more. And his disturbed heart seemed to calm down and rediscover something like its old steady beat … although that might have only been his mind playing games with itself.

He finished the first orange and borrowed Ginelli's knife to cut a second one into pieces.

'Better?' Ginelli asked.

'Yes. A lot. When do we get to the park?'

Ginelli pulled over to the curb, and Billy saw by the sign that they were on the corner of Union Street and West Broadway -summer trees, full of foliage, murmured in a mild breeze. Dapples and shadow moved lazily on the street.

'We're here,' Ginelli said simply, and Billy felt a finger touch his backbone and then slide coldly down it. 'As close as I want to get, anyway. I would have dropped you off downtown, only you would have attracted one hell of a lot of attention walking up here.'

'Yes,' Billy said. 'Like children fainting and pregnant women having miscarriages.'

'You couldn't have made it anyway,' Ginelli said kindly. 'Anyway, it don't matter. Park's right down at the foot of this hill. Quarter of a mile. Pick a bench in the shade and wait.'

'Where will you be?'

'I'll be around,' Ginelli said and smiled. 'Watching you and watching out for the girl. If she ever sees me again before I see her, William, I ain't never going to have to change my shirt again. You understand?'

'Yes.'

'I'll be keeping my eye on you.'

'Thank you,' Billy said, and was not sure just how, or how much, he meant that. He did feel gratitude to Ginelli, but it was a strange, difficult emotion, like the hate he now bore for Houston and for his wife.

'Por nada,' Ginelli said, and shrugged. He leaned across the scat, hugged Billy, and kissed him firmly on both cheeks. 'Be tough with the old bastard, William.'

'I will,' Billy said, smiling, and got out of the car. The dented Nova pulled away. Billy stood watching until it had disappeared around the comer at the end of the block, and then he started down the hill, swinging the bag of oranges in one hand.

He barely noticed the little boy who, halfway up the block, abruptly turned off the sidewalk, scaled the Cowans' fence, and shot across their backyard. That night this little boy would awake screaming from a nightmare in which a shambling scarecrow with lifeless blowing hair on its skull-head bore down on him. Running down the hallway to his room, the boy's mother heard him screaming: 'It wants to make me eat oranges until I die! Eat oranges till I die! Eat till I die!'

The park was wide and cool and green and deep. On one side, a gaggle of kids were variously climbing on the jungle gym, teeter-tottering, and whooshing down the slide. Far across the way a softball game was going on – the boys against the girls, it looked like. In between, people walked, flew kites, threw Frisbees, ate Twinkies, drank Cokes, slurped Slurpies. It was a cameo of American midsummer in the latter half of the twentieth century, and for a moment Billy warmed toward it – toward them.

All that's lacking is the Gypsies, a voice inside him whispered, and the chill came back – a chill real enough to bring goose bumps to his arms and cause him to abruptly cross his thin arms over his reed of a chest. We ought to have the Gypsies, oughtn't we? The old station wagons with the NRA stickers on the rusty bumpers, the campers, the vans with the murals on the sides – then Samuel with his bowling pins and Gina with her slingshot. And they all came running. They always came running. To see the juggling, to try the slingshot, to hear the future, to get a potion or a lotion, to bed a girl– or at least to dream of it– to see the dogs tear at each other's guts. They always come running. Just for the strangeness of it. Sure, we need the Gypsies. We always have. Because if you don't have someone to run out of town once in a while, how are you going to know you yourself belong there? Well, they'll be along soon, right?

'Right,' he croaked, and sat down on a bench that was almost in the shade. His legs were suddenly trembling, strengthless. He took an orange out of the bag and after some effort managed to tear it open. But now his appetite Was gone again and he could only eat a little.