Mickelsson's Ghosts (102 page)

Now Lawler was on his feet, fumbling in one of his suitcoat pockets, hurrying to seize the doorknob. He had the dusty handkerchief over his mouth and nose, almost black now, so that he looked like a fat Jesse James. The room was full of hovering dirt, bits of paper; the phone was ringing, and in his left hand, the hand that seized the doorknob, Lawler had a noose of piano wire.

He threw open the door and cried out joyfully, “Come in! Come in!”

The scream was like the scream of the rat in the stove. Lawler froze, the piano wire forgotten in his hand, and the same instant, nothing in his mind, Mickelsson hurled the pick-axe and charged in behind it. Lawler jerked his head around like a man cruelly wronged, and the pick-axe hit him squarely in the forehead, flatside, so that it didn't cut in. Lawler took a dazed step as if to escape that violent football rush—he'd now forgotten the pistol too—but Mickelsson moved swiftly and, hitting with his head, slammed him against the doorpost so hard that Lawler's breath went out of him. He was unconscious even before he fell. The scream went on, and Mickelsson would register later that it came from the child in the doorway, Lepatofsky's daughter. Lepatofsky stood behind her, squarely braced and still. Mickelsson hardly noticed; all he was clearly aware of was his sharply outlined, red-tinted hands around Lawler's throat, squeezing to get hold of the man's life. Mickelsson gasped, like Lawler, for breath. Then something happened. He felt no pain, only darkness rushing in at him from every direction. He felt himself falling. It seemed a long fall, and everything was dark, growing darker.

8

He lay on his back on the kitchen floor, someone hunkering beside him. The face and shape began to clear, come into focus.

“Hello, Prafessor,” Tim Booker said, beaming. “I see you've been fixin things up a bit.” He had on a red wool stocking cap. His ears stuck out.

Now Mickelsson saw Lepatofsky too, standing beyond Tim, and Lepatofsky's daughter with her hand in her father's hand. “Lucky thing we dropped by when we did,” Lepatofsky said. “You know Dr. Benton, here?”

Mickelsson rolled his head to the left and saw an old man tall as a crane in a baggy beige suit. The man smiled and nodded.

“What happened?” Mickelsson asked. The weakness of his voice surprised him, and he couldn't seem fully to open his left eye. He noticed that his shirt had been unbuttoned and his belt unbuckled. His hands were mittened into paws with gauze and tape. Now he became aware of one more person in the room, over leaning on the sink; the policeman Tacky Tinklepaugh.

“Well,” Dr. Benton said, “nothing too serious, I hope. We won't really know for a day or two. Seems you had a little touch of heart trouble—likely nothing that won't be fixed with bed-rest and a few small changes of habit. All that drinking and smoking, not eating right … You may be a bit foggy-minded for a while. …”

“It was the strangest thing,” Lepatofsky said, grinning. One eye was opened extra wide. “My little Lily never talked before. We was driving by the howse and all at once she yells out,
‘Stahp! Stahp!'
I ding near drove right off the road, that's how supprised I was. Lucky thing we
did
stahp!”

“And you?” Mickelsson asked Tim feebly. He had to concentrate. Odd dreams kept edging in. It seemed to him that the black dog was in the room.

Tim said, grinning, “They gave me a call when you keeled over.”

“Think you can sit up?” Dr. Benton asked, rather loudly, as if he'd asked it twice now.

Mickelsson tried to push up with his arms, but he was as weak as a baby and his bandaged hands throbbed. Tim and Dr. Benton bent down to help.

“By Gahd, it was just like a miracle,” Lepatofsky said. “We must've drove by here fifty times before, but this time she yells
‘Stahp!' ”

“There are no miracles,” Tinklepaugh growled. “Just luck.” Tinklepaugh's face was dark red, more ravaged than a week ago—or two; whatever it was—as if years had passed. He seemed, as always, angry about something, saving up for his day of vengeance. The sagging flesh hung as motionless as papier-mâché.

With the help of Tim and Dr. Benton, Mickelsson made it to his feet. He let them lead him to the hallway and the stairs. The cat was still there. All three of them looked at it, but Tim's pressure on Mickelsson's arm remained firm, and they climbed past it. “Don't think about it,” Tim said. “Cat had a cancer anyway. That's what made 'im so mean—good cat, before. The doc had me owt here six months ago trying to shoot him.
Tough
old bastard!”

Since his own bedroom was ruined, they put him in the makeshift guest bedroom, a boxspring and mattress made up as a bed, no light but a table-lamp set on the floor. Mickelsson lay on his back, fuzzy-headed, waiting for things to clear. The lamp threw the shadows of those around him toward the ceiling. Lepatofsky's daughter kneeled beside the bed and gazed, faintly smiling, showing her dimple, at a point just to the left of Mickelsson's left ear. Tim leaned on the doorframe, arms folded, and Lepatofsky looked out the window. It was almost dark. While Dr. Benton took Mickelsson's pulse, Tinklepaugh checked the closet as if expecting to find more murderers. Downstairs, the phone was ringing. Lepatofsky said, “I'll get it,” and left the room. Experimentally, Lepatofsky's daughter put her hand, very lightly, on Mickelsson's foot. Still she did not look at him. Dr. Benton was talking—“What a thing! Lordy! You're a lucky man!” Mickelsson did not listen, watching the girl instead. Tears came to his eyes. He remembered the eyelid that wouldn't quite open and raised one finger to touch it. Neither the eyelid nor the tape-covered finger had any feeling.

“How is he?” he heard Tinklepaugh ask.

“Very well, considering,” Dr. Benton said. “Gahd only knows what Tim did to him.” He chuckled.

“Can he talk?” Tinklepaugh asked.

Dr. Benton glanced at Tim, who smiled, all innocence, and opened his arms in a crucifix shrug.

“You want us out of the room?” Dr. Benton asked.

Tinklepaugh said nothing, merely hunkered down beside Mickelsson and sullenly gazed at him. Mickelsson closed his eyes.

“You able to talk?” Tinklepaugh asked.

Mickelsson waited. The smell of stale whiskey on Tinklepaugh's breath made Mickelsson breathe through his mouth.

“We've arrested your pal Professor Lawler,” Tinklepaugh said. “He's over in the Montrose jail right now, learning about toilets without seats. We're holding him for unlawful possession. I assume there's more—I guess I gaht a pretty good idea what it is, but I'd be glad if you'd tell me what you know.” He waited a moment, breathing heavily. “Take your time. I've gaht no place to get to.”

Mickelsson could hear Lepatofsky talking on the phone down in the kitchen.

“Lawler claims—” Mickelsson said, then faltered. He tried to think where to begin, then was filled with confusion, then heard himself talking.

Once in a while as he told his story he opened his right eye; the left still wasn't working. Tinklepaugh, each time Mickelsson looked at him, seemed bored, but he paid grudging attention, sometimes helping Mickelsson along when he lost his place. Dr. Benton hovered at the door, near Tim, undecided about whether to hear the story to the end or go back to the hospital, where he was supposed to be on duty. At last, sometime while Mickelsson's eyes were closed, he left. Only Tim seemed really interested in the story. But Tim was interested in everything. Was it possible, Mickelsson wondered—in his befuddlement mixing up the story he was telling and the book he was supposed to be writing—was it possible that the story, for all it had taken out of him and despite the fact, even, that it had almost been the story of his death, was essentially boring?
MADMAN BEHAVES BADLY, ACCIDENTALLY THWARTED BY FELLOW MADMAN
? He concentrated, trying to find for Tinklepaugh the deeper significance of what had happened. The dog moved back and forth, just beyond the door.

Tinklepaugh's questions were mechanical; he took no notes. “So you think he murdered this Michael Nugent.”

“I'm certain of it. The boy in the … hospital too.”

“Neither one of them was reported as a possible homicide,” Tinklepaugh said. “It doesn't seem likely that the one in the hospital had his throat slit.”

“They were homicides,” Mickelsson said weakly. “Check it.”

“Oh, I believe you, all right.” His voice was sullen, full of something like self-pity.

“You think it's possible he really is a Danite?” Tim asked.

“No chance,” Tinklepaugh said with heavy disgust. He stood up, as if finished and ready to leave, then hooked his thumbs inside his gunbelt and looked at Lily Lepatofsky, who still had her hand resting lightly on Mickelsson's foot. “You people always want things interesting,” Tinklepaugh growled. “They never are. I know about you.” He glanced at Tim, then away, back at Lily. “You have your secret midnight meetings and you talk your mumbo jumbo, maybe take all your clothes off like a bunch of little kids”—quickly he raised his hand to block protest—“I don't say I ever saw it; I just figure you people go to movies too. That's what they do, isn't it? And then when your power's up you go stand on some bridge and put black magic curses on the trucks that come sneaking in at midnight with their shit.”

“Me?” Tim said. He got out his pipe, then changed his mind, maybe thinking about Mickelsson's heart.

“You and all your nuts,” Tinklepaugh said. “You make me sick.”

Mickelsson found himself sitting up on his elbows, though he wouldn't have thought he had the strength to manage it. “Wait a minute,” he brought out, “did you say it was Tim that fixed me up, not Dr. Benton?” He sank back again, as if pushed, trying in vain to hook the word
witchcraft
with apple-faced Tim and his motorcycle friends, or Dr. Bauer, Donnie Matthews. …

“First aid,” Tinklepaugh said, emphatic, turning away. “That's all, just first aid. For a while they had trouble getting hold of anything but a witch-doctor.” Then, without a word, he left. Mickelsson listened to his boots going down the stairs.

“Naht me,” Tim said, raising his hands in sign of innocence. “Tink's as crazy as everbody else.”

Mickelsson closed his eyes. After a while he said, “Does it work? Those curses on the trucks?”

Tim said nothing for so long that Mickelsson decided he meant not to speak; then Tim said, jokingly, “Naht all by themselves. Sometimes you add just a little engineering, owt at one of those dumps. You'd be supprised what can happen to a truck.”

Mickelsson said, after another long pause, still with his eyes closed, “I take it you know where Donnie Matthews is.”

“She's fine.”

“I know. I talked to her on the phone.”

“You must be special,” Tim said. “The rest of us she's cut off.” As if eager to change the subject, he said, “I'll tell you one thing, it's lucky old Lawler didn't work out that dahrn box of keys. I could shoot myself for not grabbing it the minute I figured it owt, when I came here with the doc.”

Mickelsson thought of opening his eyes but lacked the energy. At length he said, “You worked out the fire at Spragues', then, and the murder?”

Tim said, “Yeah,
finally.”

Mickelsson drifted awhile. Then: “It's a queer religion, witchcraft.” Now he did open his eyes.

“Naht me!” Tim said, but he was resisting less now. He was grinning, possibly flattered, shaking his head.

“You seem to watch over people. You do bad spells on the trucks, good spells for people like me, apparently—plus a little engineering. …”

“Hay,
Prafessor
,” Tim said, mock-surprised, “what's got into you? Hay, look at me! No pointy hat, no broom—”

Lily Lepatofsky's bright sparrow-eyes were on Mickelsson's face now. It seemed that possibly she too was a witch, and her father. How else would they have known to call Tim?

Then her father was at the door. “Somebody from the I.R.S. calling you,” he said. “Office down in Scranton.” He shook his head, pushing his jaw out and smiling uncertainly. “When I told him what happened here, he went right out of his gourd. Talked a whole lot about the willful destruction of government property.” He grinned but rolled his eyes from one of them to the other, hoping for explanation.

“Weird!” Tim said, grinning happily. So he knew about that too. No doubt heard it from his friend the banker.

At last Lepatofsky reached for his daughter's hand. “We better go, honey,” he said.

She nodded solemnly, gave her shoulders a queer little shake, patted Mickelsson's foot, then took her father's hand and rose.

“Thanks. Thanks to both of you,” Mickelsson said. “I'm sorry.”

“Hay, ‘sorry'!” Lepatofsky said, and waved. Then they were gone.

He was spacy, almost weightless—whether because of something Tim had given him or Dr. Benton's pills or as an after-effect of the adrenaline he'd pumped, he couldn't tell. “Bed-rest,” Dr. Benton had said. Mickelsson had not consciously disobeyed, but he found himself standing at the phone in the kitchen, freeing his right hand from the gauze and tape, then dialing Jessie. If he were clear-headed, he would realize later, he might not have called her.

“Pete?” she asked groggily. He'd apparently wakened her again from sleep.

Slowly, having a little trouble with his tongue, he told her what had happened. He did not mention that he'd perhaps had a light stroke and ought to be on his back, but she knew something was wrong. She said nothing about Lawler, nothing about the tearing apart of his house; said only: “You sound strange. Are you drugged?” Her voice was reserved.

“I don't think so.” He remembered now the reason for her reserve and thought of saying no more. But he heard himself continuing, “Tim did something—maybe gave me something. It sounds stupid, and he denies it, but I guess he thinks he's a witch.”