oysters off, so be it. There was a gun cabinet downstairs, and the idea of doing the job with one of George T. Nelson’s own guns felt like poetic justice to Frank.
If he was unable to unlock the gun cabinet, or force the door, he would help himself to one of his old party-buddy’s steak-knives and do the job with that. He would stand behind the front door, and when George T. Nelson came in, Frank would either blow his motherfucking oysters off or grab him by the hair and cut his motherfucking throat.
The gun would probably be the safer of the two options, but the more Frank thought of the hot blood jetting from George T. Nelson’s slit neck and splashing all over his hands, the more fitting it seemed.
Et tu, Georgia. Et tu, you blackmailing fuck.
Frank’s reflections were disturbed at this point by George T.
Nelson’s parakeet, Tammy Faye, who had picked the most inauspicious moment of its small avian life to burst into song. As Frank listened, a peculiar and terribly unpleasant smile began to surface on his face. How did I miss that goddam bird the first time?
he asked himself as he strode into the kitchen.
He found the drawer with the sharp knives in it after a little exploration and spent the next fifteen minutes poking it through the bars of Tammy Faye’s cage, forcing the small bird into a fluttery, feather-shedding panic before growing bored with the game and skewering it. Then he went downstairs to see what he could do with the gun cabinet. The lock turned out to be easy, and as Frank climbed the stairs to the first floor again, he burst into an unseasonal but nonetheless cheery song: Ohh… you better not fight, you better not cry, You better not pout, I’m telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town!
He sees you when you’re sleeping!
He knows when you’re awake!
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, So you better be good for goodness’ sake!
Frank, who had never failed to watch Lawrence Welk every Saturday night with his own beloved mother, sang the last line in a low Larry Hooper basso. Gosh, he felt good! How could he have ever believed, only an hour or so earlier, that his life was at an end?
This wasn’t the end; it was the beginning! Out with the oldespecially dear old “friends” like George T. Nelson-and in with the new!
11
Frank settled in behind the door. He was pretty well loaded for bear; there was a Winchester shotgun leaning against the wall, a Llama.32 automatic stuffed into his belt, and a Sheffington steakknife in his hand. From where he stood he could see the heap of yellow feathers that had been Tammy Faye. A small grin twitched Frank’s Mr.
Weatherbee mouth and his eyes-utterly mad eyes now-rolled ceaselessly back and forth behind his round rimless Mr. Weatherbee spectacles.
“You better be good for goodness’ sake!” he admonished under his breath. He sang this line several times as he stood there, and several more times after he had made himself more comfortable, sitting behind the door with his legs crossed, his back propped against the wall, and his weapons in his lap.
He began to feel alarmed at how sleepy he was becoming. It seemed nuts to be on the verge of dozing off when he was waiting to cut a man’s throat, but that didn’t change the fact. He thought he had read someplace (perhaps in one of his classes at the University of Maine at Farmington, a cow college from which he had graduated with absolutely no honors at all) that a severe shock to the nervous system sometimes had that very effect… and he’d suffered a severe shock, all right. It was a wonder his heart hadn’t blown like an old tire when he saw those magazines scattered all over his office.
Frank decided it would be unwise to take chances. He moved George
T. Nelson’s long, oatmeal-colored sofa away from the wall a little bit, crawled behind it, and lay down on his back with the shotgun by his left hand. His right hand, still curled around the handle of the steak-knife, lay on his chest. There. Much better.
George T. Nelson’s deep-pile carpeting was actually quite comfortable.
“You better be good for goodness’ sake,” Frank sang under his breath. He was still singing in a low, snory voice ten minutes later, when he finally dozed off.
12
“Unit One!” Sheila screamed from the radio slung under the dash as Alan crossed the Tin Bridge on his way back into town. “Come in, Unit One! Come in right now!”
Alan felt a sickening lift-drop in his stomach. Clut had run into a hornet’s nest up at Hugh Priest’s house on Castle Hill Road-he was sure of it. Why in Christ’s name hadn’t he told Clut to rendezvous with John before bracing Hugh?
You know why-because not all your attention was on your job when you were giving orders. If something’s happened to Clut because of that, you’ll have to face it and own the part of it that’s yours. But that comes later. Your job right now is to do your job.
So do it, Alan-forget about Polly and do your damned job.
He snatched the microphone off its prongs. “Unit One, come back?”
Someone’s beating John up!” she screamed. “Come quick, Alan, he’s hurting him bad!”
This information was so completely at odds with what Alan had expected that he was utterly flummoxed for a moment.
“What? Who? There?”
“Hurry up, he’s killing him!”
All at once it clicked home. It was Hugh Priest, of course. For some reason Hugh had come to the Sheriff’s Office, had arrived before John could get rolling for Castle Hill, and had started swinging. It wasjohn LaPointe, not Andy Clutterbuck, who was in danger.
Alan grabbed the dash-flash, turned it on, and stuck it on the roof. When he reached the town side of the bridge he offered the old station wagon a silent apology and floored the accelerator.
13
Clut began to suspect Hugh wasn’t home when he saw that all the tires on the man’s car were not just flat but cut to pieces. He was about to approach the house anyway when he finally heard thin cries for help.
He stood where he was for a moment, undecided, then hurried back down the driveway. This time he saw Lenny lying on the side of the road and ran, holster flapping, to where the old man lay.
“Help me!” Lenny wheezed as Clut knelt by him. “Hugh Priest’s gone crazy, tarnal fool’s busted me right to Christ up!”
“Where you hurt, Lenny?” Clut asked. He touched the old man’s shoulder. Lenny let out a shriek. it was as good an answer as any.
Clut stood up, unsure of exactly what to do next. Too many things had gotten crammed up in his mind. All he knew for sure was that he desperately did not want to fuck this up.
“Don’t move,” he said at last. “I’m going to go call Medical Assistance.”
“I ain’t got no plans to get up and do the tango, y’goddam fool,” Lenny said. He was crying and snarling with pain. He looked like an old bloodhound with a broken leg.
“Right,” Clut said. He started to run back to his cruiser, then returned to Lenny again. “He took your car, right?”
“No!” Lenny gasped, holding his hands against his broken ribs.
“He busted me up and then flew off on a magic fuckin carpet.
Sure, he took my car! Why do you think I’m layin here? Get a fuckin tan?”
“Right,” Clut repeated, and sprinted back down the road. Dimes and quarters bounced out of his pockets and spun across the macadam in bright little arcs.
He leaned in the window of his car so fast he almost knocked himself out on the door-ledge. He snagged the mike. He had to get Sheila to send help for the old. man, but that wasn’t the most important thing. Both Alan and the State Police had to know that Hugh Priest was now driving Lenny Partridge’s old Chevrolet BelAir. Clut wasn’t sure what year it was, but nobody could miss that dust-colored oil-burner.
But he could not raise Sheila in dispatch. He tried three times and there was no answer. No answer at all.
Now he could hear Lenny starting to scream again, and Clut went into Hugh’s house to call Rescue Services in Norway on the telephone.
One hell of a fine time for Sheila to have to be on the john, he thought.
14
Henry Beaufort was also trying to reach the Sheriff’s Office. He stood at the bar with the telephone pressed against his ear. It rang again and again and
