The Killing Moon: A Novel

cart, juggling pins, Houdini-style chains and padlocks. At the opposite doorway stood a winking circus strongman, a seven-foot plaster dummy wearing only a loincloth and a handlebar mustache, a magician's top hat on his chipped bald head.

The cop continued, sticking his head in the bathroom, then entering the kitchen, keeping tabs on Frankie as he went. He eyed the old refrigerator and the huge ancient stove that doubled as a room heater in winter. The dirty dishes in the sink. 'These dishes all yours?'

'Some.'

'Some were left in there?'

'I guess. Yeah.'

The cop whipped back the black theater curtain that dressed the pantry doorway, revealing Dill's computers, the multiple drives he had networked together, green 'busy' lights winking. The screen saver showed fireworks exploding.

'You ever use this?' asked the cop.

'Sometimes,' said Frankie. 'He lets me.'

The cop didn't touch it, stepping back out and walking along the other hallway, past the bookcase into Dill's front bedroom. He waded through the clothes and other junk strewn on the floor around the unmade bed. He turned his head to read the name on a credit card next to the tin of shoe polish on top of the bureau, but didn't pick it up. The closet door was ajar and he opened it the rest of the way with his hiking shoe, and Frankie realized that this cop didn't want to touch anything with his hands. Something bad was going on.

The cop leaned close to the headboard, eyeing a black wig hanging from the post. 'What's this?'

'His makeup and things. He keeps all sorts. Theatrical makeup.'

'You've been sleeping here?'

Frankie shook his head. 'The sofa out there. Where the TV is.'

The cop backed him into the hall, finishing his circuit of the place, returning to the door at the top of the stairs. He got up in Frankie's face there. 'You're saying you have no idea where he is. None whatsoever.'

'No,' Frankie said.

'If he was going somewhere, a trip or something, he would have told you?'

'A trip?'

'Would he have told you?'

'Yeah. He would have.'

'And there's no sign of him having packed anything?'

'Packed? No.'

'No signs of any struggle you might have straightened up.'

'A struggle?'

'Chairs knocked over. Things broken. Like that.'

Frankie shook his head.

The cop thought it over. 'You seen a pager in here?'

'A pager?'

'A pager.' The cop pulled one out of his back pocket, showed it to Frankie. A nice one, almost like a phone, with a screen for text messaging. 'Like this?'

Frankie thought that was weird, but shook his head.

As the cop put away his pager, the ashtray caught his eye. A glass-bowled one on a gold stand that Dill said a theater usher had given him once. Its vermillion sand was studded with Dill's cigarette butts. The cop said, 'You smoke these hand-rolled things too?'

'No.'

'Know anybody else who does?'

'Just Dill.'

The cop took a better look at Frankie then. Studying his eyes. Frankie looked away.

The cop said, 'What do you smoke, then?'

'Smoke?' Frankie said. He shook his head.

'You got a cold or something? Your nose.'

'Yeah. I think I do.'

'Maybe it's a case of scurvy. Not getting enough vitamin C. You look like a kid who just walked off a pirate ship.'

'What do you want from me?'

'I want you to listen up. Sinclair is twice your age, all right? You know his story?'

Frankie shook his head.

'You want to?'

Frankie shook his head harder.

'The way he got into trouble was giving kids magic lessons. What do you do for him here? What do you bring him?'

'I told you, we hang?'

'You think I can't look at you and just tell? And just know? It's in your skin, Frankie Sculp, it's in your eyes. That yellow bleached shit you call hair. Turn around. Smell the wall.'

Frankie did, bumping up against it as the cop frisked him.

'You think of yourself as a dealer, huh? Real big-time, right? Sinclair your drug buddy?' The cop's hands picked his pockets. 'If I find a needle you don't warn me about, I'm going to drive it into the back of your skull.'

Frankie wasn't holding. It was a habit of his to stash his stash rather than walk it around. Right then it was under the top hat on the plaster strongman's head.

The cop turned him back around and got in his face. 'I don't know what you're looking for here. If it's love or friendship or a father figure?I don't even know if you know. But get this. Whatever you're looking for, Dill Sinclair isn't it. I can guarantee you that. Find a new friend, and stop peddling this shit before it starts peddling you.' He smacked him in the chest for emphasis. 'If it hasn't already.'

Frankie felt that same old icy shiver up his back. This cop pushing him around, making decisions for him, everyone making decisions for him, social workers, counselors, guardians. Strangers telling him what's best, deciding his life for him as they shuttled him from family to family, from school to school. And look at how great it had all turned out for him. Here he was stuck in Black Falls, Massachusetts. The asshole of the earth.

In fourteen months he would turn eighteen and age out of the foster-care system. Then he would be free.

'You cops are out to get him,' Frankie said.

The cop cocked his head. 'I'm looking for him. Is that the same thing?'

'He's going to get you. That's what he said.' It was stupid to betray Dill's confidence like this, but Frankie couldn't help it. He had nothing else to throw back at this cop except his own empty hurt, wanting to scare somebody else for a change. 'He knows a way, he said. All the cops. He's going to turn this shit-fucking town upside down.'

He waited for the shove, the slap, the knee. Instead he got a hard stare, and strange words of caution. 'That's something you should maybe keep to yourself, don't you think?'

Frankie stared. This cop didn't believe him? Or was this something else entirely? 'Am I getting the key back?'

'All you're getting is a pass out of here, right now, and that means never come back. I want that understood. I want you crystal clear on that.'

'Fuck you.'

The cop shook his head. 'No, man. No way. You want me to step on you. That's what you're used to. All you know is getting bounced around. And that's why I'm not going to do you that way. Why I'm not throwing you down these stairs right now. You think you're young enough to mess around with your life like this, like you're putting one over on the rest of the world? The world doesn't care, Frankie. The world welcomes statistics. But I'm not going to waste a speech on you. All you want is the back of someone's hand so you can go deeper into your sulk. You're leaving here now. And never coming back.'

'I have to get my stuff?'

He started toward the living room, where his stash was, but the cop pushed him back against the wall, staring hard into his eyes like he knew.

Out on the street, walking away fast, tears pressured Frankie's eyes but would not fall.

Dill. Don't leave me alone in this town.

He looked back at the corner building. He saw a man standing on the darkened balcony, and his mind stuttered a moment, telling him it was Dill.

It wasn't. Just the cop. Watching Frankie go?but standing with his head turned. Utterly still and aware. As though listening to something.

Frankie heard the sounds then, distant, way up in the hills.

Sirens.

21

EDDIE

IT WAS A STRANGE-LOOKING house that got stranger the longer Eddie Pail worked around it. The front was constructed out of thick timber while the high wall on one side and the low wall on the other were built with river stones like ostrich eggs set in mortar.

Eddie had the long pole and was trying to break one of the top windows from the side lawn, but couldn't get enough force behind it. So he found some fist-sized rocks and started throwing. The third one cracked right through. He resumed with the pole, smashing out the rest of the glass, his hole venting black billows of smoke and wavy heat.

The pumper truck was parked up on the lawn, its hose splashing the exterior, the heated stones hissing as water became steam. The house smoked and dripped like something cooking and melting at the same time.

They yelled back and forth across the lawn,