Christine (56 page)

He was still grinning, but his eyes looked at me with narrow suspicion. That, and something else. I thought that something else was the first sparkle of fear.

“And what you don't seem to realize is how many people know something is wrong.”

His grin faltered. Of course he must have realized that, and been worried about it. But maybe killing gets to be a fever; maybe after a while you are simply unable to stop and count the cost.

“Whatever weird, filthy kind of life you still have is all wrapped up in that car,” I said. “You knew it, and you planned to use Arnie from the very beginning—except that ‘planned' is the wrong word, because you never really planned anything, did you? You just followed your intuitions.”

He made a snarling sound and turned to go.

“You really want to think about it,” I called after him. “Arnie's father knows something is rotten. So does mine. I think there must be some police somewhere who'd be willing to listen to
anything
about how their friend Junkins died. And it all comes back to Christine, Christine, Christine. Sooner or later someone's going to run her through the crusher in back of Darnell's just on general principles.”

He had turned back and was looking at me with a bright mixture of hate and fear in his eyes.

“We'll keep talking, and a lot of people will laugh at us, I don't doubt it. But I've got two pieces of cast with Arnie's signature on them. Only one of them isn't his. It's yours. I'll take them to the state cops and keep pestering them until they have a handwriting specialist confirm that. People are going to start watching Arnie. People are going to start watching Christine too. You get the picture?”

“Sonny, you don't worry me one fucking bit.”

But his eyes said something different. I was getting to him, all right.

“It's going to happen,” I said. “People are only rational on the surface. They still toss salt over their left shoulder if they spill the shaker, they don't walk under ladders, they believe in survival after death. And sooner or later—probably sooner, with Leigh and me shooting off our mouths—someone is going to turn that car of yours into a sardine can. And I'm willing to bet that when it goes, you'll go with it”

“Don't you just wish!” he sneered.

“We'll be at Darnell's tonight,” I said. “If you're good, you can get rid of both of us. That won't end it either, but it might give you some breathing space . . . time enough to get out of town. But I don't think you're good enough, chum. It's gone on too long. We're getting rid of you.”

I crutched back to my Duster and got in. I used the crutches more clumsily than I had to, tried to make myself look more incapacitated than I really was. I had rocked him by mentioning the signatures; it was time to leave before I overplayed my hand. But there was one more thing. One thing guaranteed to drive LeBay into a frenzy.

I pulled my left leg in with my hands, slammed the door, and leaned out.

I looked into his eyes and smiled.

“She's great in bed,” I said. “Too bad you'll never know.”

With a furious roar, he charged at me. I rolled up the window and slapped down the door-lock. Then, leisurely, I started the engine while he slammed his gloved fists on the glass. His face was snarling, terrible. There was no Arnie in it now. No Arnie at all. My friend was gone. I felt a dark sorrow that was deeper than tears or fear, but I kept that slow, insulting, dirty grin on my face. Then, slowly, I raised my middle finger to the glass.

“Fuck you, LeBay,” I said, and then pulled out, leaving him to stand there in the lot, shaking with that simple, unswerving fury his brother had told me of. It was that more than anything else that I was counting on to bring him tonight.

We'd see.

50

Petunia

I drove about four blocks before the reaction set in, and then I had to pull over. I had the shakes, bad. Not even the heater, turned up to full, could kill them. My breath came in harsh little gasps. I clutched myself to keep warm, but it seemed that I would never be warm again, never. That face, that horrible face, and Arnie buried somewhere inside,
he's always here,
Arnie had said, always except when—what? When Christine rolled by herself, of course. LeBay couldn't be both places at the same time. That was beyond even his powers.

At last I was able to drive on again, and I wasn't even aware that I had been crying until I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the wet circles under my eyes.

• • •

It was quarter of ten by the time I made it out to Johnny Pomberton's place. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing green gum-rubber boots and a heavy red-and-black-checked hunting jacket. An old hat with a grease-darkened bill was tilted up on his balding head as he studied the gray sky.

“More snow comin, the radio says. Didn'
t know as you'd really be out, boy, but I brung her around forya just in case. What do you think of her?”

I got my crutches under me again and got out of my car. Road salt gritted under the crutches' rubber tips, but the going felt safe. Standing in front of Johnny Pomberton's woodpile was one of the strangest-looking vehicles I've ever seen in my life. A faint, pungent odor, not exactly pleasant, drifted over from it to where we stood.

At one time, far back in its career, it had been a GM product—or so the logo on its gigantic snout advertised. Now it was a little bit of everything. One thing it surely was, and that was big. The top of its grille would have been head-high on a tall man. Behind and over it, the cab loomed like a big square helmet. Behind that, supported by two sets of double wheels on each side, was a long, tubular body, like the body of a gasoline tanker truck.

Except that I never saw a tanker truck before this one that was painted bright pink. The word
PETUNIA
was written across the side in Gothic letters two feet high.

“I don't know
what
to think of her,” I said. “What is she?”

Pomberton poked a Camel cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a quick flick of his horny thumbnail on the tip of a wooden match. “Kaka sucker,” he said.

“What?
”

He grinned. “Twenty-thousand-gallon capacity,” he said. “She's a corker, is Petunia.”

“I don't get you.” But I was starting to. There was an absurd, grisly irony to it that Arnie—the old Arnie—would have appreciated.

I had asked Pomberton over the phone if he had a big, heavy truck to rent, and this was the biggest one currently in his yard. All four of his dump trucks were working, two in Libertyville and two others in Philly Hill. He'd had a grader, he explained to me, but it had had a nervous bustdown just after Christmas. He said he was having a devilish job keeping his trucks rolling since Darnell's Garage shut down.

Petunia was essentially a tanker, no more and no less. Her job was pumping out septic systems.

“How much does she weigh?” I asked Pomberton.

He flicked away his cigarette. “Dry, or loaded with shit?”

I gulped. “Which is it now?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Do you think I'd rentcher a loaded truck?” He pronounced it
ludded truck.
“Naw, naw—she's dry, dry as a bone and all hosed out. Sure she is. Still a little fragrant, though, ain't she?”

I sniffed. She was fragrant, all right.

“It could be a lot worse,” I said. “I guess.”

“Sure,” Pomberton said. “You bet. Old Petunia's original pedigree was lost long ago, but what's on her current registration is eighteen thousand pounds, GVW.”

“What's that?”

“Gross vehicle weight,” he said. “If they pull you over on the Interstate and you weigh more than eighteen thousand, the ICC gets upset. Dry, she prob'ly goes around, I dunno, eight–nine thousand pounds. She's got a five-speed tranny with a two-speed differential, givin you ten forward speeds all told . . . if you can run a clutch.”

He cast a dubious eye up and down my crutches and lit another cigarette.

“Can
you run a clutch?”

“Sure,” I said with a straight face. “If it isn't really stiff.” But for how long? That was the question.

“Well, that's your business and I won't mess into it.” He looked at me brightly. “I'll give you ten percent discount for cash, on account of I don't usually report cash transactions to my favorite uncle.”

I checked my wallet and found four twenties and four tens. “How much did you say for one day?”

“How does ninety bucks sound?”

I gave it to him. I had been prepared to pay a hundred and twenty.

“What are you going to do with your Duster there?”

It hadn't even crossed my mind until just now. “Could I leave it here? Just for today?”

“Sure,” Pomberton said, “you can leave it here all week, I don't give a shit. Just put it around the back and leave the keys in it in case I have to move it.”

I drove around back where there was a wilderness of cannibalized truck parts poking out of the deep snow like bones from white sand. It took me nearly ten minutes to work my way back around on my crutches. I could have done it faster if I'd used my left leg a bit, but I wouldn't do that. I was saving it for Petunia's clutch.

I approached Petunia, feeling dread gather in my stomach like a small black cloud. I had no doubt it would stop Christine—if she really showed up at Darnell's Garage tonight and if I could drive the damned truck. I had never driven anything that big in my life, although the summer before I'd gotten some hours in on a bulldozer and Brad Jeffries had let me try the payloader a couple of times after knocking off for the day.

Pomberton stood there in his checked jacket, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his workpants, watching me with wise eyes. I got over to the driver's side, grabbed the doorhandle, and slipped a little. He took a step or two toward me.

“I can make it.”

“Sure,” he said.

I jammed the crutch into my armpit again, my breath frosting out in quick little gasps, and pulled the door open. Holding onto the door's inside handle with my left hand and balancing on my right leg like a stork, I threw my crutches into the cab and then followed them. The keys were in the ignition, the shift pattern printed on the stick. I slammed the door, pushed the clutch down with my left leg—not much pain, so far so good—and started Petunia up. Her engine sounded like a full field of stockers at Philly Plains.

Pomberton strolled over. “Little noisy, ain't she?” he yelled.

“Sure!” I screamed back.

“You know,” he bellowed, “I doubt like hell if you got an
I
on your license, boy.” An
I
on your license meant that the state had tested you on the big trucks. I had an
A
for motorcycles (much to my mother's horror) but no
I
.

I grinned down at him. “You never checked because I looked trustworthy.”

He smiled back. “Sure.”

I revved the engine a little. Petunia blew off two brisk backfires that were almost as loud as mortar blasts.

“You mind if I ask what you want that truck for? None of my business, I know.”

“Just what it was meant for,” I said.

“Beggin your pardon?”

“I want to get rid of some shit,” I said.

• • •

I had something of a scare going downhill from Pomberton's place; even dry and empty, that baby really got rolling. I seemed incredibly high up—able to look down on the roofs of the cars I passed. Driving through downtown Libertyville, I felt as conspicuous as a baby whale in a goldfish pond. It didn't help any that Pomberton's septic pumper was painted that bright pink color. I got some amused glances.

My left leg had begun to ache a little, but running through Petunia's unfamiliar shift pattern in the stop-and-go downtown traffic kept my mind off it. A more surprising ache was developing in my shoulders and across my chest; it came from simply piloting Petunia through traffic. The truck was not equipped with power steering, and that wheel really turned hard.

I turned off Main, onto Walnut, and then into the parking lot behind the Western Auto. I got carefully down from Petunia's cab, slammed her door (my nose had already become used to the faint odor she gave off), set my crutches under me, and went in the back entrance.

I got the three garage keys off Jimmy's ring and took them over to the key-making department. For one-eighty, I got two copies of each. I put the new keys in one pocket, Jimmy's ring, with his original keys reattached, in the other. I went out the front door, onto Main Street, and down to the Libertyville Lunch, where there was a pay telephone. Overhead, the sky was grayer and more lowering than ever. Pomberton was right. There would be snow.

Inside, I ordered a coffee and Danish and got change for the telephone booth. I went inside, closed the door clumsily behind me, and called Leigh. She answered on the first ring.

“Dennis! Where are you?”

“The Libertyville Lunch. Are you alone?”

“Yes. Dad's at work and Mom went grocery shopping. Dennis, I . . . I almost told her everything. I started thinking about her parking at the A&P and crossing the parking lot, and . . . I don't know, what you said about Arnie leaving town didn't seem to matter. It still made sense, but it didn't seem to matter. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking about giving Ellie a lift down to Tom's the night before, even though my leg was aching like hell by then. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Dennis, it can't go on like this. I'll go crazy. Are we still going to try your idea?”

“Yes,” I said. “Leave your mom a note, Leigh. Tell her you have to be gone for a little while. Don't say any more than that. When you're not home for supper, your folks will probably call mine. Maybe they'll decide we ran off and eloped.”

“Maybe that's not such a bad idea,” she said, and laughed in a way that gave me prickles. “I'll see you.”

“Hey, one other thing. Is there any pain-killer in your house? Darvon? Anything like that?”

“There's some Darvon from the time Dad threw his back out,” she said. “Is it your leg, Dennis?”

“It hurts a little.”

“How much is a little?”

“It's really okay.”

“No B.S.?”

“No B.S. And after tonight I'll give it a nice long rest, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Get here as quick as you can.”

• • •

She came in as I was ordering a second cup of coffee, wearing a fur-fringed parka and a pair of faded jeans. The jeans were tucked into battered Frye boots. She managed to look both sexy and practical. Heads turned.

“Looking good,” I said, and kissed her temple.

She passed me a bottle of gray and pink gel capsules. “You don't look so hot, though, Dennis. Here.”

The waitress, a woman of about fifty with iron-gray hair, came over with my coffee. The cup sat placidly, an island in a small brown pond in the saucer. “Why aren't you kids in school?” she asked.

“Special dispensation,” I said gravely. She stared at me.

“Coffee, please,” Leigh said, pulling off her gloves. As the waitress went back behind the counter with an audible sniff, she leaned toward me and said, “It would be pretty funny if we got picked up by the truant officer, wouldn't it?”

“Hilarious,” I said, thinking that, in spite of the radiance the cold had given her, Leigh really wasn't looking all that good. I didn't think either of us really would be until this thing was over. There were small strain-lines around her eyes, as if she had slept poorly the night before.

“So what do we do?”

“We get rid of it,” I said. “Wait until you see your chariot, madam.”

• • •

“My God!”
Leigh said, staring at Petunia's hot-pink magnificence. It hulked silently in the Western Auto parking lot, dwarfing a Chevy van on one side and a Volkswagen on the other. “What is it?”

“Kaka sucker,” I said with a straight face.

She looked at me, puzzled . . . and then she burst into hysterical gales of laughter. I wasn't sorry to see it happen. When I had told her about my confrontation with Arnie in the student parking lot that morning, those strain-lines on her face had grown deeper and deeper, her lips whitening as they pressed together.

“I know that it looks sort of ridiculous—” I said now.

“That's putting it
mildly,”
she replied, still giggling and hiccuping.

“—but it'll do the job, if anything will.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it should. And . . . it's not exactly unfitting, is it?”

I nodded. “I had that thought.”

“Well, let's get in,” she said. “I'm cold.”

She climbed up into the cab ahead of me, her nose wrinkling. “Ag,” she said.

I smiled. “You get used to it.” I handed her my crutches and climbed laboriously up behind the wheel. The pain in my left leg had subsided from a series of sharp clawings to a dull throb again; I had taken two Darvon back in the restaurant.

“Dennis, is your leg going to be all right?”

“It'll have to be,” I said, and slammed the door.