Ghost Story

'Yeah, sure.'

Slowly, still feeling the knife, his uncle's knife, beginning to enter his skin, he turned sideways on the chair. The girl was sitting on her unmade bed, watching him. Her intense unbeautiful face.

'What questions?'

'You know.'

'Tell me.'

She shook her head and would not say any more.

'Do you want to see where we're going?'

The girl came toward him, not slowly but measuredly, as if not wishing to display suspicion. 'Here,' he said, pointing to a spot on the map. 'Panama City, in Florida.'

'Will we be able to see the water?'

'Maybe.'

'And we won't sleep in the car?'

'No.'

'Is it far away?'

'We can get there tonight. We'll take this road-this one-see?'

'Uh huh.' She was not interested: she hung a little to one side, bored and wary.

She said: 'Do you think I'm pretty?'

What's the worst thing that ever happened to you? That you took off your clothes at night beside the bed of a nine-year-old girl? That you were holding a knife? That the knife wanted to kill her?

No. Other things were worse.

Not far over the state line and not on the highway he had shown Angie on the map but on a two-lane country road, they drew up before a white board building. Buddy's Supplies.

'You want to come in with me, Angie?'

She opened the door on her side and got out in that childish way, as if she were climbing down a ladder; he held the screen door open for her. A fat man in a white shirt sat like Humpty Dumpty on a counter. 'You cheat on your income tax,' he said. 'And you're the first customer of the day. You believe that? Twelve-thirty and you're the first guy through the door. No,' he said, bending forward and scrutinizing them. 'Hell no. You don't cheat Uncle Sam, you do worse than that. You're the guy killed four-five people up in Tallahassee the other day.'

'What-?' he said. 'I just came in here for some food-my daughter-'

'Gotcha,' the man said. 'I used to be a cop. Allentown, Pennsylvania. Twenty years. Bought this place because the man told me I could turn over a hundred dollars' profit a week. There's a lot of crooks in this world. Anybody comes in, I can tell what kind of crook they are. And now I got you straight. You're not a killer. You're a kidnapper.'

'No, I-' he felt sweat pouring down his sides. 'My girl-'

'You can't shit me. Twenty years a cop.'

He began to look frantically around the store for the girl. Finally he saw her staring gravely at a shelf stocked with jars of peanut butter. 'Angie,' he said. 'Angie-come on-'

'Aw, hold on,' the fat man said. 'I was just tryin' to get a rise out of you. Don't flip out or nothin'. You want some of that peanut butter, little girl?'

Angie looked at him and nodded.

'Well, take one off the shelf and bring it up here. Anything else, mister? 'Course if you're Bruno Hauptmann, I'll have to bring you in. I still got my service revolver around somewhere. Knock you flat, I'll tell you that for free.'

It was, he saw, all a weary mockery. Yet he could scarcely conceal his trembling. Wasn't that something an ex-cop would notice? He turned away toward the aisles and shelves.

'Hey, listen to this,' the man said to his back. 'If you're in that much trouble, you can just get the hell out of here right now.'

'No, no,' he said. 'I need some things-'

'You don't look much like that girl.'

Blindly, he began taking things off the shelves, anything. A jar of pickles, a box of apple turnovers, a canned ham, two or three other cans he didn't bother to look at. These he took to the counter.

The fat man, Buddy, was staring at him suspiciously. 'You just shook me up a little bit,' he said to him. 'I haven't had much sleep, I've been driving for a couple of days…' Invention blessedly descended. 'I have to take my little girl to her grandmother, she's in Tampa-' Angie swiveled around, clutching two jars of crunchy peanut butter, and gaped at him as he said this-'uh, Tampa, on account of her mother and me split up and I have to get a job, get things put together again, right, Angie?' The girl's mouth hung open.

'Your name Angie?' the fat man asked her.

She nodded.

'This man your daddy?'

He thought he would fall down.

'Now he is,' she said.

The fat man laughed. ' 'Now he is!' Just like a kid. Goddam, you figure out the brain of a kid, you got to be some kind of genius. All right, nervous, I guess I'll take your money.' Still sitting on the counter, he rang up the purchases by bending to one side and punching the buttons of the register. 'You better get some rest. You remind me of about a million guys I took into my old station.'

Outside, Wanderley said to her, 'Thanks for saying that.'

'Saying what?': pertly, self-assuredly. Then again, almost mechanically, eerily, ticking her head from side to side: 'Saying what? Saying what? Saying what?'

5

In Panama City he pulled into the Gulf Glimpse Motor Lodge, a series of shabby brick bungalows around a parking lot. The manager's lodge sat at the entrance, a separate square building like the others, with the exception of a large pane of plate glass behind which, in what must have been ovenlike heat, a stringy old man with gold- rimmed glasses and a mesh T-shirt was visible. He looked like Adolf Eichmann. The severe inflexible cast of the man's face made Wanderley remember what the ex-policeman had said about himself and the girl: he did not, with his blond hair and fair skin, look anything like the girl's father. He pulled up before the manager's lodge and left the car, his palms sweaty.

But inside, when he said that he wanted a room for himself and his daughter, the old man merely glanced incuriously at the dark-haired child in the car, and said, 'Ten-fifty a day. Sign the register. You want food, try the Eat-Mor down the road apiece. There's no cooking in the bungalows. You planning on staying more than one night, Mr.-' He swung the register toward him. 'Boswell?'

'Maybe as long as a week.'

'Then you'll pay the first two nights in advance.'

He counted out twenty-one dollars, and the manager gave him a key. 'Number eleven, lucky eleven. Across the parking lot.'

The room had whitewashed walls and smelled of lavatory cleaner. He gave it a perfunctory look around: the same iron carpet, two small beds with clean but worn sheets, a television with a twelve-inch screen, two awful pictures of flowers. The room appeared to have more shadows in it than could be accounted for. The girl was inspecting the bed against the side wall. 'What's Magic Fingers? I want to try it. Can I? Please?'

'It probably won't work.'

'Can I? I want to try it. Please?'

'All right. Lie down on it. I have to go out to do some things. Don't leave until I come back. I have to put a quarter in this slot, see? Like this? When I get back we can eat.' The girl was lying on the bed, nodding with impatience, looking not at him but at the coin in his hand. 'We'll eat when I get back. I'll try to get you some new clothes, too. You can't wear the same things all the time.'