Thinner (15 page)

'Oh, Christ, Hopley, I'm sorry.'

'Don't be,' Hopley said, that weird joviality back in his voice. 'Yours is going slower, but you'll get there eventually. My service pistol is in the third drawer of this desk, and if it gets bad enough I'll use it no matter what the balance is in my bankbook. God hates a coward, my father used to say. I wanted you to see me so you'll understand. I know how he feels, that old Gyp. Because I wouldn't make any pretty legal speeches. I wouldn't bother with any sweet reason. I'd kill him for what he's done to me, Halleck.'

That dreadful shape moved and shifted. Halleck heard Hopley draw his fingers down his cheek, and then he heard the unspeakable, sickening sound of ripe pimples breaking wetly open.
Rossington is plating, Hopley's rotting, and I'm wasting
away,
he thought.
Dear God, let it be a dream, even let me be crazy ... but don't let this be happening.

'I'd kill him very slowly,' Hopley said. 'I will spare you the details.'

Billy tried to speak. There was nothing but a dry croak.

'I understand where you're coming from, but I hold out very little hope for your mission,' Hopley said hollowly. 'Why don't you consider killing him instead, Halleck? Why don't you
... ?'

But Halleck had reached his limit. He fled Hopley's darkened study, cracking his hip hard on the corner of his desk, madly sure that Hopley would reach out with one of those dreadful hands and touch him. Hopley didn't. Halleck ran out into the night and stood there breathing great lungfuls of clean air, his head bowed, his thighs trembling.

Chapter Thirteen

172

He thought restlessly for the rest of the week of calling Ginelli at Three Brothers - Ginelli seemed like an answer of some kind -just
what
kind, he didn't know. But in the end he went ahead and checked into the Glassman Clinic and began the metabolic series. If he had been single and alone, as Hopley was (Hopley had made several guest appearances in Billy's dreams the night before), he would have canceled the whole business. But there was Heidi to think about
...
and there was Linda - Linda, who truly was an innocent bystander and who understood none of this. So he checked into the clinic, hiding his crazy knowledge like a man hiding a drug habit.

It was, after all, a place to be, and while he was there, Kirk Penschley and the Barton Detective Services would be taking care of his business. He hoped.

So he was poked and prodded. He drank a horrid chalky-tasting barium solution. He was given X rays, a CAT-scan, an EEG, an EKG, and a total metabolic survey. Visiting doctors were brought around to look at him as if he were a rare zoo exhibit.
A giant panda, or maybe the last of the dodo birds,
Billy thought, sitting in the solarium and holding an unread
National Geographic
in his hands. There were Band-Aids on the backs of both hands. They had stuck a lot of needles in him.

On his second morning at Glassman, as he submitted to yet another round of poking and prying and tapping, he noticed that he could see the double stack of his ribs for the first time since
...
since high school? No, since forever. His bones were making themselves known, casting shadows against his skin, coming triumphantly out. Not only were the love handles above his hips gone, the blades of his pelvic bones were clearly visible. Touching one of them, he thought that it felt knobby, like the gearshift of the first car he had ever owned, a 1957 Pontiac. He laughed a little, and then felt the sting of tears. All of his days were like that now. Upsy-downsy, weather unsettled, chance of showers.

I'd kill him very slowly,
he heard Hopley saying. I will
spare you the details.
Why? Billy thought, lying sleepless in his clinic bed with the raised invalid sides. You
didn't spare me anything else.
During his three-day stay at Glassman, Halleck lost seven pounds.
Not much,
he thought with his own brand of gallows joviality.
Not much, less than the weight of a medium-sized bag of sugar. At this rate I won't fade away to nothing until ...
gee! Almost October!

172, his mind chanted. 172
now, if you were a boxer you'd be out of the heavyweight class and into the middleweight ...
would you care to try for welterweight, Billy? Lightweight? Bantamweight? How about flyweight?

Flowers came: from Heidi, from the firm. A small nosegay came from Linda - written on the card in her flat, sprawling hand was
Please get well soon, Daddy - Love you, Lin.
Billy Halleck cried over that. On the third day, dressed again, he met with the three doctors in charge of his case. He felt much less vulnerable in jeans and a MEET ME IN FAIRVIEW T-shirt; it was really amazing how much it meant to be out of one of the goddamn hospital johnnies. He listened to them, thought of Leda Rossington, and suppressed a grim smile. They knew exactly what was wrong with him; they were not mystified at all. Au
contraire,
they were so excited they were damned near making weewee in their pants. Well
...
maybe a note of caution was in order. Maybe they didn't know
exactly
what was wrong with him yet, but it was surely one of two things (or possibly three). One of them was a rare wasting disease that had never been seen outside of Micronesia. One was a rare metabolic disease that had never been completely described. The third - just a possibility, mind you! - was a psychological form of
anorexia nervosa,
this last so rare that it had long been suspected but never actually proven. Billy could see from the hot light in their eyes that they were pulling for that one; they would get their names in the medical books. But in any case, Billy Halleck was definitely a
rara avis,
and his doctors were like kids on Christmas morning.

The upshot was that they wanted him to hang in at Glassman for another week or two (or possibly three). They were going to whip what was wrong with him. They were going to whip it good. They contemplated a series of megavitamins to start with (certainly!), plus protein injections (of course!), and a great many more tests (without a doubt!). There was the professional equivalent of dismayed howls -and they were almost
literally
howls - when Billy told them quietly that he thanked them, but he would have to leave. They remonstrated with him; they expostulated; they lectured. And to Billy, who felt more and more often lately that he must be losing his mind, the trio of doctors began to look eerily like the Three Stooges. He halfexpected them to begin bopping and boinking each other, staggering around the richly appointed office with their white coats flapping, breaking things and shouting in Brooklyn accents.

'You undoubtedly feel quite well now, Mr Halleck,' one of them said. 'You were, after all, quite seriously overweight to begin with, according to your records. But I need to warn you that what you feel now may be spurious. If you continue to lose weight, you can expect to develop mouth sores, skin problems . . .'

If you want to see some real skin problems, you ought to check out Fairview's chief of police,
Halleck thought. Ex
cuse
me, ex-chief.

He decided, on the spur of the moment and apropos of nothing, to take up smoking again.

'. . . diseases similar to scurvy or beriberi,' the doctor was continuing sternly. 'You're going to become extremely susceptible to infections - everything from colds and bronchitis to tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis,
Mr Halleck,' he said impressively. 'Now if you stay here -'

'No,' Billy said. 'Please understand that it's not even an option.'

One of the others put his fingers gently to his temples as if he had just developed a splitting headache. For all Billy knew, he had - he was the doctor who had advanced the idea of psychological
anorexia nervosa.
'What can we say to convince you, Mr Halleck?'

'Nothing,' Billy replied. The image of the old Gypsy came unbidden into his mind - he felt again the soft, caressing touch of the man's hand on his cheek, the scrape of the hard calluses.
Yes,
he thought,
I'm going to take up smoking again.
Something really devilish like Camels or Pall Malls or Chesterfoggies. Why not? When the goddamn doctors start looking
like Larry, Curly, and Moe, it's time to do
something.

They asked him to wait a moment and went out together. Billy was content enough to wait - he felt that he had finally reached the
caesura
in this mad play, the eye of the storm, and he was content with that ... that, and the thought of all the cigarettes he would soon smoke, perhaps even two at a time.

They came back, grim-faced but looking somehow exalted -men who had decided to make the ultimate sacrifice. They would let him stay free of charge, they said: he need pay only for the lab work.

'No,' Billy said patiently. 'You don't understand. The major medical coverage pays for all of ^that anyway; I checked. The point is, I'm leaving. Simply leaving. Bugging out.'

They stared at him, uncomprehending, beginning to be angry. Billy thought of telling them how much like the Three Stooges they looked, and decided that would be an extremely bad idea. It would complicate things. Such fellows as these were not used to being challenged, to having their
gris-gris
rejected. He did not think it past possibility that they might call Heidi and suggest that a competency hearing was in order. And Heidi might listen to them.

'We'll pay for the tests too,' one of them said finally, in a this-is-our-final-offer tone.

'I'm leaving,' Billy said. He spoke very quietly, but he saw that they finally believed him. Perhaps it was the very quietness of his tone that had finally convinced them that it was not a matter of money, that he was authentically mad.

'But
why? Why,
Mr Halleck?'

'Because,' Billy said, 'although you think you can help me ... ah ... gentlemen, you can't.'

And looking at their unbelieving, uncomprehending faces, Billy thought he had never felt so lonely in his life. On his way home he stopped at a smoke shop and bought a package of Chesterfield Kings. The first three puffs made him feel so dizzy and sick that he threw them away.

'So much for that experiment,' he said aloud in the car, laughing and crying at the same time. 'Back to the old drawing board, kids.'

Chapter 14

156

Linda was gone.

Heidi, the normally tiny lines beside her eyes and the corners of her mouth now deep with strain
(she
was smoking like a steam engine, Billy saw - one Vantage 100 after another), told Halleck she had sent Linda to her Aunt Rhoda's in Westchester County.

'I did it for a couple of reasons,' Heidi said. 'The first is that ... that she needs a rest from you, Billy. From what's happening to you. She's half out of her mind. It's gotten so I can't convince her you don't have cancer.'

'She ought to talk to Cary Rossington,' Billy muttered as he went into the kitchen to turn on the coffee. He needed a cup badly - strong and black, no sugar. 'They sound like soulmates.'

'What? I can't hear you.'

'Never mind. Just let me turn on the coffee.'

'She's not sleeping,' Heidi said when he came back. She was twisting her hands together restlessly. 'Do you understand?'

'Yes,' Billy said, and he did ... but it felt as if there was a thorn lodged somewhere inside of him. He wondered if Heidi understood that he needed Linda too, if she really understood that his daughter was also part of his support system. But part of his support system or not, he had no right to erode Linda's confidence, her psychological equilibrium. Heidi was right about that. She was right about that no matter how much it cost.

He felt that bright hate surface in his heart again. Mommy had driven his daughter off to auntie's house as soon as Billy had called and said he was on his way. And how come? Why, because the bogey-daddy was coming home! Don't run screaming, dear, it's only the Thin Man ...

Why
that
day? Why did you have to pick
that
day?

'Billy? Are you all right?' Heidi's voice was oddly hesitant.

Jesus! You stupid bitch! Here you are married to the Incredible Shrinking Man, and all you can think to ask is if I'm all
right?

'I'm as all right as I can be, I guess. Why?'

'Because you looked ... strange for a minute.'

Did I? Did I really? Why
that
day, Heidi? Why did you pick
that
day to reach into my pants after all the prim years of
doing everything in the dark?

'Well, I suppose I feel a little strange almost all the time now,' Billy said, thinking:
You've got to stop it, my friend. This is
pointless. What's done is done.

But it was hard to stop it. Hard to stop it when she stood there smoking one cigarette after another but looking and seeming perfectly well, and ...

But you will stop it, Billy. So help me.

Heidi turned away and stubbed her cigarette out in a crystal ashtray.

'The second thing is ... you've been keeping something from me, Billy. Something to do with this. You talk in your sleep, sometimes. You've been out nights. Now, I want to know. I
deserve
to know.' She was beginning to cry.

'You want to know?' Halleck asked. 'You really want to know?' he felt a strange dry grin surface on his face.

'Yes! Yes!'

So Billy told her.

Houston called him the following day, and after a long and meaningless prologue, he got to the point. Heidi was with him. He and Heidi had had a long chat
(did you offer her a toot for the human snoot?
Halleck thought of asking, and decided that maybe he had better not). The upshot of their long chat was simply this: they thought Billy was just as crazy as a loon.

'Mike,' Billy said, 'the old Gypsy was real. He touched all three of us: me, Cary Rossington, Duncan Hopley. Now, a guy like you doesn't believe in the supernatural I accept that. But you sure as shit believe in deductive and inductive reasoning. So you've got to see the possibilities. All three of us were touched by him, all three of us have mysterious physical ailments, Now, for Christ's sake, before you decide I've gone crazy, at least consider the logical link.'