stairs for a moment, then snapped off the light and closed the door. He went to the sink, rolled up his sleeves, and washed in the hottest water he could stand. He plunged his hands into the suds… and came up holding the butcher knife Dussander had used.
‘I’d like to cut your throat with this,’ Todd said grimly.
‘Yes, and then feed me to the pigs. I have no doubt of it’
Todd rinsed the knife, dried it, and put it away. He did the rest of the dishes quickly, let the water out, and rinsed the sink. He looked at the clock as he dried his hands and saw it was twenty past ten.
He went to the phone in the hallway, picked up the receiver, and looked at it thoughtfully. The idea that he had forgotten something — something as potentially damning as the wino’s shoe-nagged unpleasantly at his mind. What? He didn’t know. If not for the headache, he might be able to get it The triple-damned headache. It wasn’t like him to forget things, and it was scary.
He dialled 222 and after a single ring, a voice answered: This is Santa Donato MED-Q. Do you have a medical problem?’
‘My name is Todd Bowden. I’m at 963 Claremont Lane. I need an ambulance.’
‘What’s the problem, son?’
‘It’s my friend, Mr D-’ He bit down on his lip so hard that it squirted blood, and for a moment he was lost, drowning in the pulses of pain from his head. Dussander. He had almost given this anonymous MED-Q voice Dussander’s real name.
'Calm down, son,’ the voice said. Take it slow and you’ll be fine.’
‘My friend Mr Denker,’ Todd said. ‘I think he’s had a heart attack.’
‘His symptoms?’
Todd began to give them, but the receptionist had heard enough as soon as Todd described the chest pain that had migrated to the left arm. He told Todd the ambulance would arrive in ten to twenty minutes, depending on the traffic. Todd hung up and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
‘Did you get it?’ Dussander called weakly.
‘Yes!’ Todd screamed. ‘Yes, I got it! Yes goddammit yes! Yes yes yes! Just shut up?’
He pressed his hands even harder against his eyes, creating first senseless starflashes of light and then a bright field of red. Get hold of yourself, Toad-baby. Get down, get funky, get cool. Dig it.
He opened his eyes and picked up the telephone again. Now the hard part. Now it was time to call home.
‘Hello?’ Monica’s soft, cultured voice in his ear. For a moment — just a moment — he saw himself slamming the muzzle of the .30-.30 into her nose and pulling the trigger into the first flow of blood.
‘It’s Todd, mommy. Let me talk to dad, quick.’
He didn’t call her mommy anymore. He knew she would get that signal quicker than anything else, and she did. ‘What’s the matter? Is something wrong, Todd?’
‘Just let me talk to him!’
‘But what—’
The phone rattled and clinked. He heard his mother saying something to his father. Todd got ready.
Todd? What’s the problem?’
‘It’s Mr Denker, daddy. He… it’s a heart attack, I think. I’m pretty sure it is.’
‘Jesus!’ His father’s voice lagged away for a moment and Todd heard him repeating the information to his wife. Then he was back. ‘He’s still alive? As far as you can tell?’
‘He’s alive. Conscious.’
‘All right, thank God for that Call an ambulance.’
‘I just did.’
‘222?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy. How bad is he, can you tell?’
(not fucking bad enough!)
‘I don’t know, dad. They said the ambulance would be here soon, but… I’m sorta scared. Can you come over and wait with me?’
‘You bet Give me four minutes.’
Todd could hear his mother saying something else as his father hung up, breaking the connection. Todd replaced the receiver on his end.
Four minutes.
Four minutes to do anything that had been left undone. Four minutes to remember whatever it was that had been forgotten. Or had he forgotten anything? Maybe it was just nerves. God, he wished he hadn’t had to call his father. But it was the natural thing to do, wasn’t it? Sure. Was there some natural thing that he hadn ’t done? Something -?
‘Oh, you shit-for-brains!’ he suddenly moaned, and bolted back into the kitchen. Dussander’s head lay on the table, his eyes half-open, sluggish.
‘Dussander!’ Todd cried. He shook Dussander roughly, and the old man groaned. ‘Wake up! Wake up, you stinking old bastard!’
‘What? Is it the ambulance?’
The letter! My father is coming over, he’ll be here in no time. Where’s the fucking letter?'
‘What… what letter?’
‘You told me to tell them you got an important letter. I said…’ His heart sank. ‘I said it came from overseas… from Germany. Christ!’ Todd ran his hands through his hair.
‘A letter.’ Dussander raised his head with slow difficulty. His seamed cheeks were an unhealthy yellowish- white, his lips blue. ‘From Willi, I think. Willi Frankel. Dear… dear Willi.’
Todd looked at his watch and saw that already two minutes had passed since he had hung up the phone. His father would not, could not make it from their house to Dussander’s in four minutes, but he could do it damn fast in the Porsche. Fast, that was it. Everything was moving too fast. And there was still something wrong here; he felt it. But there was no time to stop and hunt around for the loophole.
‘Yes, okay, I was reading it to you, and you got excited and had this heart attack. Good. Where is it?’
Dussander looked at him blankly.
‘The letter! Where is it?’
‘What letter?’ Dussander asked vacantly, and Todd’s lands itched to throttle the drunken old monster.
The one I was reading to you! The one from Willi What’s—his-face! Where is it?’
They both looked at the table, as if expecting to see the letter materialize there.
‘Upstairs,’ Dussander said finally. ‘Look in my dresser. The third drawer. There is a small wooden box in the bottom of that drawer. You will have to break it open. I lost the key a long time ago. There are some very old letters from a friend of mine. None signed. None dated. All in German. A page or — o will serve for window-fittings, as you would say. If you hurry—’
‘Are you crazy?’ Todd raged. ‘I don’t understand German! How could I read you a letter written in German, you numb fuck?’
‘Why would Willi write me in English?’ Dussander countered wearily. ‘If you read me the letter in German, / would understand it even if you did not. Of course your pronunciation would be butchery, but still, I could—’
Dussander was right — right again, and Todd didn’t wait to hear more. Even after a heart attack the old man was a step ahead. Todd raced down the hall to the stairs, pausing just long enough by the front door to make sure his father’s Porsche wasn’t pulling up even now. It wasn’t, but Todd’s watch told him just how tight things were getting; it had been five minutes now.
He took the stairs two at a time and burst into Dussander’s bedroom. He had never been up here before, hadn’t even been curious, and for a moment he only looked wildly around at the unfamiliar territory. Then he saw the dresser, a cheap item done in the style his father called Discount Store Modern. He fell on his knees in front of it and yanked at the third drawer. It came halfway out, then jigged sideways in its slot and stuck firmly.
‘Goddam you,’ he whispered at it. His face was dead pale except for the spots of dark, bloody colour flaring in each cheek and his blue eyes, which looked as dark as Atlantic storm-clouds. ‘Goddam you fucking thing come out!’
