Thinner (27 page)

Billy managed a white-lipped smile. 'You would have made a great lawyer, Richard. You have this unique way of putting things in perspective.'

'Yeah? You think so?'

'I do.'

'Well, thanks. Next I called Kirk Penschley.'

'You talked with Kirk Penschley?'

'Yes.'

'Jesus, Richard!'

'What, you think he wouldn't take a call from a cheap hood like me?' Ginelli managed to sound both wounded, and amused at the same time. 'He took it, believe me. Of course, I called on my credit card - he wouldn't want my name on his phone bill, that much is true. But I've done a lot of business with your firm over the years, William.'

'That's news to me,' Billy said. 'I thought it was just that one time.'

'That time everything could be out in the open, and you were just right for it,' Ginelli said. 'Penschley and his big studlawyer partners would never have stuck you into something crooked. William - you were a comer. On the other hand, I suppose they knew you'd be meeting me sooner or later, if you hung around long enough in the firm, and that first piece of work would be a good introduction. Which it was - for me as well as for you, believe me. And if something went wrong - if our business that time had happened to turn the wrong corner or something - you could have been sacrificed. They wouldn't have liked to do it, but their view is better to sacrifice a comer than a genuine bull stud-lawyer. These guys all see the same they are very predictable.'

'What other kind of business have you done with my firm?' Billy asked, frankly fascinated - this was a little like finding out your wife had been cheating on you long after you had divorced her for other reasons.

'Well, all kinds - and not exactly with your firm. Let's say they have brokered legal business for me and a number of my friends and leave it at that. Anyway, I know Kirk well enough to call him and ask for a favor. Which he granted.'

'What favor?'

'I asked him to call this Barton bunch and tell them to lay off for a week. Lay off you, and lay off the Gypsies. I'm actually more concerned about the Gypsies, you want to know the truth. We can do this, William, but it'll be easier if we don't have to chase them from hoot to holler and then back to fucking hoot again.'

'You called Kirk Penschley and told him to lay off,' Billy said, bemused.

'No, I called Kirk Penschley and told him to tell the Barton agency to lay off,' Ginelli corrected. 'And not exactly in those words, either. I can' be a little bit political when I have to be, William. Give me
some
credit.'

'Man, I give you a lot of credit. More every minute.'

'Well, thank you. Thank you, William. I appreciate that.' He lit a cigarette. 'Anyway, your wife and her doctor friend will continue to get reports, but they'll be a little bit off. I mean, they'll be like the
National Enquirer
and
Reader's Digest
version of the truth - do you dig what I am saying.

Billy laughed. 'Yeah, I see.'

'So, we got a week. And a week should be enough.'

'What are you going to do?'

'All you'll let me do, I guess. I am going to scare them, William. I'm going to scare
him.
I'm going to scare him so bad he's gonna need to put a fucking Delco tractor battery in his pacemaker. And I'm going to keep raising the level of the scares until one of two things happens. Either he is gonna cry uncle and take off what he put on you, or we decide he don't scare, that old man. If that happens, I come back to you and ask if you have changed your mind about hurting people. But maybe it won't go that far.'

'How are you going to scare him?'

Ginelli touched the shopping bag with the toe of one Bally boot and told him how he meant to start. Billy was appalled. Billy argued with Ginelli, as he had foreseen; then he talked with Ginelli, as he had also foreseen; and although Ginelli never raised his voice, his eyes continued to whirl and twirl with that mad light and Billy knew he might as well have been talking to the man in the moon.

And as the fresh pain in his hand slowly subsided to the former throbbing ache, he began to feel sleepy again.

'When are you going?' he asked, giving up.

Ginelli glanced at his watch. 'Ten past ten now. I'll give them another four or five hours. They been doing a good little business out there, from what I heard downtown. Telling a lot of fortunes. And the dogs - those pit-bulls. Christ Almighty. The dogs you saw weren't pit-bulls, were they?'

'I never saw a pit-bull,' Billy said sleepily. 'The ones I saw all looked like hounds.'

'Pit-bulls look like a cross between terriers and bulldogs. They cost a lot of dough. If you want to see pit-bulls fight, you got to agree to pay for one dead dog before the wagers even get put down. It's one nasty business.

'They're into all the classy stuff in this town, ain't they, William - Ferrari sunglasses, dope boats, dogfights. Oh, sorry and tarot and the I
Ching.'

'Be careful,' Billy said.

'I'll be careful,' Ginelli said, 'don't worry.'

Billy fell asleep shortly after. When he woke up it was ten minutes until four and Ginelli was gone. He was seized with the certainty that Ginelli was dead. But Ginelli came in at a quarter to six, so fully alive that he seemed somehow too big for the place. His clothes, face, and hands were splattered with mud that reeked of sea salt. He was grinning. That crazy light danced in his eyes.

'William,' he said, 'we're going to pack your things and move you out of Bar Harbor. Just like a government witness going to a safe house.'

Alarmed, Billy asked, 'What did you do?'

'Take it easy, take it easy! Just what I said I was going to do - no more and no less. But when you stir up a hornet's nest with a stick, it's usually a good idea to flog your dogs on down the road afterward, William, don't you think so?'

'Yes, but

'No time now. I can talk and pack your stuff at the same time.'

'Where?' Billy almost wailed.

'Not far. I'll tell you on the way. Now, let's get going. And maybe you better start by changing your shirt. You're a good man, William, but you are starting to smell a little ripe.

Billy had started up to the office with his key when Ginelli touched him on the shoulder and gently took it out of his hand.

'I'll just put this on the night table in your room. You checked in with a credit card, didn't you?'

'Yes. but -'

'Then we'll just make this sort of an informal checkout. No harm done, less attention attracted to us guys. Right?'

A woman jogging by on the berm of the highway looked casually at them, back at the road ... and then her head snapped back in a wide-eyed double-take that Ginelli saw but Billy mercifully missed.

'I'll even leave ten bucks for the maid,' Ginelli said. 'We'll take your car. I'll drive.'

'Where's yours?' He knew Ginelli had rented one, and was now realizing belatedly that he hadn't heard an engine before Ginelli walked in. All of this was going too fast for Billy's mind -he couldn't keep up with it.

'It's okay. I left it on a back road about three miles from here and walked. Pulled the distributor cap and left a note on the windshield saying I was having engine trouble and would be back in a few hours, just in case anybody should get nosy. I don't think anyone will. There was grass growing up the middle of the road, you know?'

A car went by. The driver got a look at Billy Halleck and slowed down. Ginelli could see him leaning over and craning his neck.

'Come on, Billy. People looking at you. The next bunch could be the wrong people.'

An hour later Billy was sitting in front of the television in another motel room - this the living room of a seedy little suite in the Blue Moon Motor Court and Lodge in Northeast Harbor. They were less than fifteen miles from Bar Harbor, but Ginelli seemed satisfied. On the TV screen, Woody Woodpecker was trying to sell insurance to a talking bear.

'Okay,' Ginelli said. 'You rest up the hand, William. I'm gonna be gone all day.'

'You're going
back
there?'

'What, go back to the hornet's nest while the hornets are still flying? Not me, my friend. No, today I'm gonna play with cars. Tonight'll be time enough for Phase Two. Maybe I'll get time enough to look in on you, but don't count on it.'

Billy didn't see Richard Ginelli again until the following morning at nine, when he showed up driving a dark blue Chevy Nova that had certainly not come from Hertz or Avis. The paint was dull and spotted, there was a hairline crack in the passenger-side window, and a big dent in the trunk. But it was jacked in the back and there was a supercharger cowling on the hood.

This time Billy had given him up for dead a full six hours ago, and he greeted Ginelli shakily, trying not to weep with relief. He seemed to be losing all control of his emotions as he lost weight ... and this morning, as the sun came up, he had felt the first unsteady racings of his heart. He had gasped for breath and pounded at his chest with one closed fist. The beat had finally smoothed out again, but that had been it: the first instance of arrhythmia.

'I thought you were dead,' he told Ginelli as he came in.

'You keep saying that and I keep turning up. I wish you would relax about me, William. I can take care of myself. I am a big boy. If you thought I was going to underestimate this old fuck, that would be one thing. But I'm not. He's smart, and he's dangerous.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing. I'll tell you later.'

'Now!'

No.'.

'Why not?'

'Two reasons,' Ginelli said patiently. 'First, because you might ask me to back off. Second, because I haven't been this tired in about twelve years. I'm gonna go in there to the bedroom and crash out for eight hours. Then I'm gonna get up and eat three pounds of the first food I can snag. Then I'm gonna go back out and shoot the moon.'

Ginelli did indeed look tired - almost haggard.
Except for his eyes,
Billy thought. His
eyes are still whirling and twirling
like a couple of fluorescent carnival pinwheels.

'Suppose I did ask you to back off?' Billy asked quietly. 'Would you do it, Richard?'

Richard looked at him for a long, considering moment and then gave Billy the answer he had known he would give ever since he had first seen that mad light in Ginelli's eyes.

'I couldn't now,' Ginelli said calmly. 'You're sick, William. It's through your whole body. You can't be trusted to know where your own best interest lies.'

In other words, you've taken out your own set of committal papers on me.
Billy opened his mouth to speak this thought aloud and then closed his mouth again. Because Ginelli didn't mean what he said; he had only said what sounded sane.

'Also because it's personal, right?' Billy asked him.

'Yeah,' Ginelli replied. 'Now it's personal.'

He went into the bedroom, took off his shirt and pants, and lay down. He was asleep on top of the coverlet five minutes later.

Billy drew a glass of water, swallowed an Empirin, and then drank the rest of the water standing in the doorway. His eyes moved from Ginelli to the pants crumpled on the chair. Ginelli had arrived in a pair of impeccable cotton slacks, but somewhere in the last couple of days he had picked up a pair of blue jeans. The keys to the Nova parked out front would undoubtedly be in them. Billy could take them and drive away ... except he knew he wouldn't do that, and the fact that he would be signing his own death warrant by so doing now seemed actually secondary. The important thing now seemed to be how and where all of this would end.

At midday, while Ginelli was still sleeping deeply in the other room, Billy had another episode of arrhythmia. Shortly after, he dozed off himself and had a dream. It was short and totally mundane, but it filled him with a queer mixture of terror and hateful pleasure. In this dream he and Heidi were sitting in the breakfast nook of the Fairview house. Between them was a pie. She cut a large piece and gave it to Billy. It was an apple pie. 'This will fatten you up,' she said. 'I don't want to be fat,'

he replied. 'I've decided I like being thin. You eat it.' He gave her the piece of pie, stretching an arm no thicker than a bone across the table. She took it. He sat watching as she ate every bite, and with every bite she took, his feelings of terror and dirty joy grew.

Another spell of light arrhythmia jolted him awake from his dream. He sat there for a moment, gasping, waiting for his heart to slow to its proper rhythm, and eventually it did. He was seized by the feeling that he had had more than a dream that he had just experienced a prophetic vision of some kind. But such feelings often accompany vivid dreams, and as the dream itself fades, so does the feeling. This happened to Billy Halleck, although he had cause to remember this dream not long after.

Ginelli got up at six in the evening, showered, pulled on the jeans and a dark turtleneck sweater.

'Okay,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow morning, Billy. Then we'll know.'

Billy asked again what Ginelli meant to do, what had happened so far, and once again Ginelli refused to tell him.

'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Meantime, I'll give her your love.'

'Give who my love?'

Ginelli smiled. 'Lovely Gina. The whore who put the ball bearing through your hand.'

'Leave her alone,' Billy said. When he thought of those dark eyes, it seemed to be impossible to say anything else, no matter what she had done to him.

'No one gets hurt,' Ginelli reiterated, and then he was gone. Billy listened to the Nova start up, listened to the rough sound of its motor - that roughness would smooth out only when it got up to around sixty-five miles an hour - as Ginelli backed it out of the space, and reflected that
No one gets hurt
wasn't the same thing as agreeing to leave the girl alone. Not at all.

This time it was noon before Ginelli returned. There was a deep cut across his forehead and along his right arm there the turtleneck sweater's sleeve hung in two flaps.

'You lost some more weight,' he said to Billy. 'You eating.

'I'm trying,' Billy said, 'but anxiety isn't much good for the appetite. You look like you lost some blood.'