F Paul Wilson - Novel 04 (21 page)

“Weird?” Poppy had to
laugh. “That’s Deadly Nightshade, honey-bunch. The coolest color
around. You rinse it into dark hair like mine and it comes out looking like red
wine.”

“I still don’t want it
on my hair.”

“Don’t worry. We
won’t change your color, just your braids. Now, turn around and let me
brush it out.” As she worked with Katie’s hair, Poppy
couldn’t help thinking about Glory, and wondering if this is what might
have been…

“What’s your name
again?” Katie said.

Before she could give it a thought,
her real name slipped out.

“Poppy.” Damn me! What
an Appleton thing to do! Jesus, what am I gonna do now? The kid knows my name.

“That’s a pretty
name,” Katie said. “Isn’t a poppy a flower?”

Oh, well. The damage was done. But
maybe it wasn’t so bad. Anybody asking her would like figure
Katie’s kidnappers would use fake names, so they’d pay no mind to
“Poppy.” She hoped.

“Yep. It’s a little
flower. That’s what my daddy used to call me. His little flower. Until I
got tall. Then he called me his sunflower.”

“Where’s your daddy
now?” Poppy’s eyes misted for an instant.

“He’s far away.”

“Is that where you grew up?
Far away?”

“No. I grew up right around
here.” Now that was like a total lie but it ought to throw off anybody
coming around later looking for a Poppy who grew up in northern Virginia. No
worry about her real home popping out. Poppy never told anyone her real home town.

Really, how could you tell someone
you grew up on Sooy’s Boot, New Jersey? Sooy’s Boot! How could you
let those words past your lips?

“I grew up far away,”
Katie said. “In Georgia.”

“I figured you were from
somewhere down South.”

“How come?”

“Yo‘ axent,
hunny,” she said, mimicking Katie’s drawl. “Lank
Joe-jah.”

“I don’t have an
accent.”

“Oh, yes, you—”
Poppy stopped as her hand found a depression in Katie’s scalp on the left
side of her head— in her skull. “Hey, what’s this dent in
your head?”

“I… I had an
accident.”

“What sort of
accident?”

“I broke my head.”
Poppy’s stomach turned.

“Shit! I mean, shoot! When
did that happen?”

“When I was little.”

“When you were—?”
Poppy had to laugh. “You’re not so big now. At least you
weren’t born that way. If you were I might think you were an Appleton.”

“What’s a
Appleton?”

“They’re some weird
folks from back around where I grew up. Lots of them got weird-shaped
heads.”

“I thought you said you grew
up around here.”

“Yeah,” Poppy said
quickly. “Yeah, well, somewhere not far from here.” Not far in
miles, she thought. Probably less than two hundred. But so very far in every
other way it might as well be like Mars or someplace.

Sooy’s Boot… a hiccup
on one of the roads running through the heart of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
She was born and raised there, which made her like a fullfledged Piney. Which
meant “poor hick” to most people.

But she didn’t remember
feeling poor when she was growing up. Mom had the Kmart job in May’s
Landing, and Dad worked the pineland’s annual cycle: He cut sphagnum moss
in the spring, picked blueberries and huckleberries in the summer, then
cranberries toward fall, and cut cordwood through the winter. They had
everything they needed.

Until Mom died. She’d been
bothered by the veins in her legs forever, and one day one of her legs got red
and sore. She should have seen a doctor, but she put it off and put it off, and
then one day at work she grabbed her chest and keeled over. She died on the way
to the hospital. Coroner said a giant clot had come loose from one of the veins
in her leg and clogged her heart. Or something like that.

That left Poppy and Dad. She was
all he had, and he doted on her. And no doubt Poppy would like still be living
in the pines, would have grown up to be another Piney girl married to a Piney
guy, raising a bunch of little Pineys… if it hadn’t been for basketball.

Still brushing Katie’s hair,
Poppy smiled. Jesus, she’d been good. Dad had drilled all the fundamentals
into her before she was ten, and by middle school she was playing with the boys
at recess and giving them a run for their money.

The coach at the regional high
school took one look at her in tryouts and put her in the starting five of his
varsity squad. She had to put up with some heavy resentment until they started
winning like they’d never won before.

All because of me, she thought.

No brag. Truth. She’d been
totally awesome in the paint—could dribble circles around anyone who got
in her way. And when they walled up to block her out, she hung back and dropped
in three pointers. And when they got so frustrated that they started fouling
her, she’d sink two for two on her free throws—ninety-five percent
from the line.

By junior year she’d already
been offered a full ride at Rutgers. Dad had been ecstatic: Not only was his
little flower All State, but she was going to college. That big round ball was
going to be her ticket out of poverty and the pines.

Then she did a real Appleton thing:
She fell in love.

With Charlie Pilgrim, of all
people. Even now she couldn’t help wincing at the whole thing. How could
she have been so totally stupid?

Well, one thing leading to another,
as it so often does, Poppy had found herself pregnant. And since there was no
way she’d have an abortion—after all, this was Charlie’s baby
and they were in love—she had to quit basketball.

Dad was crushed, of course. And
seeing his face every day when she came home right after school instead of
practicing with the team became a total torture that finally got to be too much
to take.

So she and Charlie had run off to
New York City where Charlie was going to find a job and they were going to get
married. Except Charlie never did find steady work and they never got around to
like getting married. They wound up on welfare, sharing a filthy Lower East
Side apartment with two other couples.

And then the baby had been born.
She was beautiful, she was glorious, and so that was what they named her:
Glory.

But soon Glory had started having
fits, and the doctors at NYU Medical Center said she had a brain defect,
something wrong in her head that gave her epilepsy. They tried all sorts of
medications but she kept on having fit after fit after fit—the doctors
called them seizures— until her eighty-ninth day of life when she went
into a final unstoppable fit that lasted until she died.

All the doctors had been sorry;
some of the nurses even cried. They all said they didn’t know why she had
all those fits, but Poppy knew. It was Appleton blood. Some of it was in her.
Dad had always said there wasn’t, but what had happened to Glory was
proof. Poppy had bad blood. Appleton blood.

She hadn’t been too easy to
be with after that. She totally hated the doctors, hated everyone around her,
hated Charlie for getting her pregnant, but like hated herself most of all.
Charlie couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted to take her back to Sooy’s
Boot but no way could she face Dad again. Not after losing the baby because of
Appleton blood.

So Charlie had left without her.
Probably told all sorts of tales about her when he got back. Poppy hadn’t
cared. She totally wanted to die. And she damn well might have killed herself
if she hadn’t discovered the unholy trinity: grass, speed, and coke. They
hadn’t killed the pain, but they’d eased it, made it like bearable.

Some long, dark years had followed,
years that were mostly a blur now.

She tried not to think about the
things she did to get by. She fell in with some bad people, even turned tricks
when she was desperate, OD’d a couple times, got beat up more than a
couple times, and just might be dead by now if she hadn’t found Paulie.

Paulie had changed her life, and
she liked to think she like changed Paulie’s—for the better, of
course.

Her only regret was that she
hadn’t gone back home, just for a visit. She’d been so wrapped up
in herself, she never imagined something could have been wrong with Dad…
that he wouldn’t always be there. And then… he wasn’t
there… would never be there again… and she never knew until he was
six months in the ground.

Maybe that’s what I’ll
do when this is over, she thought as she finished weaving Katie’s French
braid. Tending to Katie had awakened a longing in her. She’d thought she
never wanted to see Sooy’s Boot again, but now…

She felt like going home. She still
had family in the pines. Maybe she could like reconnect… if any of them
would speak to her.

“I have to go to the
bathroom,” Katie said.

“Sure thing, honey bunch. And
you can check out your braid in the mirror while you’re at it.

She had her halfway there when the
phone rang.

Poppy hurried her into the
bathroom. “Now, you stay in there till I come and get you,” she
told her, then dashed for the phone.

She picked up on the fourth ring
and slipped her Minnie Mouse mask to the top of her head.

“Hello?”

“What took you so
long?” She knew that voice: Mac.

“I was taking
the’package‘”—Jesus, she hated that
word—“to the bathroom.”

“Put him on,” Mac said.

Him. That meant Paulie. Poppy knew
how paranoid Mac was about mentioning names or being specific about anything on
the phone. Talking to him was all about not saying things. Maybe she could see
his point, but how about a Hello or How’s it going? Jesus, she hated this
guy. The sooner they were rid of him, the better. She couldn’t wait.

“He’s not here.”

“Where the hell is he?”

“Out.” He wants info,
she thought, let him scratch for it.

“Don’t give me this
shit, girl. Where is he?”

“Shopping. Getting some
tools.”

“Tools? What are you giving
me? Did he get the persuader? Is it packed up and ready to go?”

“Not yet.” Silence on
the other end, then a tone so totally low and cold she almost dropped the
phone. “You’d better explain.” She was ready for that.
She’d been rehearsing.

“It’s gonna get done.
It’s just that this one’s a lot trickier than the last. We got a
smaller area to work with, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Then go back to the
original—like last time.”

Right, Mac, she thought. Her
finger. Sure. On a cold day in hell.

She said, “Either way,
it’s a different situation. We can’t exactly get this package
liquored up like the last one.” What an absolute total nightmare that had
been.

“So use something else. Or
maybe I ought to come over and supervise.”

Oh, Jesus, no. No-no-no-no!

“That’s okay, Mac.
We’re handling it. It’ll get done as soon as he gets back.”

“Yeah? What tool’s he
out buying?”

“A meat cleaver.”

Another silence on Mac’s end,
shorter this time. His voice was lighter when he spoke again. “Yeah. That
oughta do it.”

“Quick and neat,” she
said, forcing the words. She couldn’t resist adding, “But no matter
how you look at it, it’s like pretty goddamn ugly. I mean, she’s only—”

“Watch it! Watch what you
say.”

“All right, but—”

“No buts. And don’t get
all soft and fuzzy on me. A little persuader will make things run much
smoother, and get this over quicker. And besides, she’ll never miss
it.” And she’ll never forget what two strangers did to her in a
back room when she was six years old. Poppy thought. But I’ll see to it
she doesn’t have to forget.

Poppy sighed with all the regret
she could muster. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Suppose? You’d better
know I’m right. Have him call my voice mail if there’s a problem;
otherwise he knows where to deliver it.” Mac hung up right in the middle
of her “Yeah.” Jesus, she hated him.

She got her Minnie Mouse mask back
on and went to retrieve Katie from the bathroom. She needed a dose of that
little girl to clear away the bad aftertaste of Mac.

Paulie stood in a clump of trees
across from the Lynch-MacDougal Funeral Home and watched all the mourners trail
away. He waited while all windows went dark one by one, then groaned as he saw
Michael and Lydia appear at the back door.

“The parking lot lights,
schmuck! Don’t leave’em on. It’s a waste of energy.”

The pair didn’t seem to care.
They locked up and headed for separate cars; MacDougal to a Buick Riviera and
Lynch to a little Beamer then drove off in the same direction. He still
hadn’t figured out how those two were related, and didn’t really
care. He had a problem: the sodium lamps didn’t leave a single goddamn
shadow near the building. This was going to be like breaking in at noon.

But it had to be done. At least the
bathroom window was around back. That gave him some cover.

He checked his pockets: penlight,
pruning shears, the leather driving gloves from his chauffeur stint the other
day all present and accounted for. He checked the street. When no cars were in
sight, he dashed across and pelted straight through the parking lot to the back
of the funeral home. He stood there panting, looking innocent, while he waited
to see if he’d attracted any attention.

Nothing stirred. He crouched,
spotted the white of the toilet tissue he’d left to mark the right
window, and gave it a shove. The window swung in easily.

Paulie rolled onto his belly,
pushed his legs into the opening, and slid through the window. A tight squeeze
for his shoulders, but he managed to wriggle through and wound up standing on
the toilet. He pushed the window closed and turned on the penlight.

Moving out to the dark smoking
lounge, he looked around for the private door. He’d been thinking about
what might be on the other side and had an idea. He stepped inside and flashed
the light around. Just what he’d suspected: polished wooden boxes in
tight neat rows. This was where they stored the coffins.