Black House

The call from the Fisherman comes in to the 911 phone at 8:10 A.M., while Jack is finishing his notes on the yellow legal pad and Henry is strolling down his driveway, smelling the summer morning with great pleasure in spite of the shadow Jack’s news has cast over his mind. Unlike some of the officers (Bobby Dulac, for instance), the Mad Hungarian reads the script taped next to the 911 phone word for word.

ARNOLD HRABOWSKI: Hello, this is the French Landing Police Department, Officer Hrabowski speaking. You’ve dialed 911. Do you have an emergency?

[Unintelligible sound . . . throat-clearing?]

AH: Hello? This is Officer Hrabowski answering on 911. Do you—

CALLER: Hello, asswipe.

AH: Who is this? Do you have an emergency?

C: You have an emergency. Not me. You.

AH: Who is this, please?

C: Your worst nightmare.

AH: Sir, could I ask you to identify yourself?

C: Abbalah. Abbalah-doon. [Phonetic.]

AH: Sir, I don’t—

C: I’m the Fisherman.

[Silence.]

C: What’s wrong? Scared? You ought to be scared.

AH: Sir. Ah, sir. There are penalties for false—

C: There are whips in hell and chains in shayol. [Caller may be saying “Sheol. ”]

AH: Sir, if I could have your name—

C: My name is legion. My number is many. I am a rat under the floor of the universe. Robert Frost said that. [Caller laughs.]

AH: Sir, if you hold, I can put on my chief—

C: Shut up and listen, asswipe. Your tape running? I hope so. I could shag [Caller may be saying “scram” but word is indistinct] it if I wanted to but I don’t want to.

AH: Sir, I—

C: Kiss my scrote, you monkey. I left you one and I’m tired of waiting for you to find her. Try Ed’s Eats and Dogs. Might be a little rotten now, but when she was new she was very [Caller rolls r’s, turning the word into “verrry ”] tasty.

AH: Where are you? Who is this? If this is a joke—

C: Tell the coppiceman I said hello.

When the call began, the Mad Hungarian’s pulse was lub-dubbing along at a perfectly normal sixty-eight beats a minute. When it ends at 8:12, Arnold Hrabowski’s ticker is in overdrive. His face is pale. Halfway through the call he looked at the Caller I.D. readout and wrote down the number displayed there with a hand shaking so badly that the numbers jigged up and down over three lines on his pad. When the Fisherman hangs up and he hears the sound of an open line, Hrabowski is so flustered that he tries to dial the callback on the red phone, forgetting that 911 is a one-way street. His fingers strike the smooth plastic front of the phone and he drops it back into the cradle with a frightened curse. He looks at it like something that has bitten him.

Hrabowski grabs the receiver from the black telephone beside 911, starts to punch in the callback, but his fingers betray him and hit two numbers at once. He curses again, and Tom Lund, passing by with a cup of coffee, says, “What’s wrong there, Arnie?”

“Get Dale!” the Mad Hungarian shouts, startling Tom so badly he spills coffee on his fingers. “Get him out here no w!”

“What the hell’s wrong with y—”

“NOW, goddamnit!”

Tom stares at Hrabowski a moment longer, eyebrows raised, then goes to tell Dale that the Mad Hungarian seems to have really gone mad.

The second time Hrabowski tries, he succeeds in dialing the callback number. It rings. It rings. And it rings some more.

Dale Gilbertson appears with his own cup of coffee. There are dark circles under his eyes, and the lines at the corners of his mouth are a lot more prominent than they used to be.

“Arnie? What’s—”

“Play back the last call,” Arnold Hrabowski says. “I think it was . . . hello!” He barks this last, sitting forward behind the dispatch desk and shoving papers every which way. “Hello, who is this?”

Listens.