football coach before the big game. ‘I don’t care who’s tried to stop him before. I don’t care if Attila the Run played him and lost. I’m going to have my shot. I want you with me. I need you.’ And that was the truth, pure and naked.
‘Okay,’ Mark said. He looked down into his lap, and his hands found each other and entwined in distraught pantomime.
‘Dig your feet in,’ Ben said.
Mark looked at him hopelessly. I’m trying,’ he said.
44
Sonny’s Exxon station on outer Jointner Avenue was open and Sonny James (who exploited his country-music namesake with a huge color poster in the window beside a pyramid of oil cans) came out to wait on them himself. He was a small, gnome-like man whose receding hair was lawn-mowered into a perpetual crew cut that showed his pink scalp.
‘Hey there, Mr Mears, howya doin’? Where your Citrowan?’
‘Laid up, Sonny. Where’s Pete?’ Pete Cook was Sonny’s part-time help, and lived in town. Sonny did not.
‘Never showed up today. Don’t matter. Things been slow, anyway. Town seems downright dead.’
Ben felt dark, hysterical laughter in his belly. It threatened to boil out of his mouth in a great and rancid wave.
‘Want to fill it up?’ he managed. ‘Want to use your phone.’
‘Sure. Hi, kid. No school today?’
I’m on a field trip with Mr Mears,’ Mark said. ‘I had a bloody nose.’
‘I guess to God you did. My brother used to get ‘em. They’re a sign of high blood pressure, boy. You want to watch out.’ He strolled to the back of Jimmy’s car and took off the gas cap
Ben went inside and dialed the pay phone beside the rack of New England road maps.
‘Cumberland Hospital, which department?’
‘I’d like to speak with Mr Burke, please. Room 402.
There was an uncharacteristic hesitation, and Ben was about to ask if the room had been changed when the voice said: ‘Who is this, please?’
‘Benjaman Mears.’ The possibility of Matt’s death suddenly loomed up in his mind like a long shadow. Could that be? Surely not-that would be too much. ‘Is he all right?’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘No, a close friend. He isn’t-’
‘Mr Burke died at 3:07 this afternoon, Mr Mears. If you’d like to hold for just a minute, I’ll see if Dr Cody has come in yet. Perhaps he could… ’
The voice went on but Ben had ceased hearing it, although the receiver was still glued to his ear. The realization of how much he had been depending on Matt to get them through the rest of this nightmare afternoon crashed home with sickening weight. Matt was dead. Congestive heart failure. Natural causes. It was as if God Himself had turned His face away from them.
Panic seized him and he grappled with it silently. He put the receiver back into its cradle without thinking about it, guillotining a question half-asked.
He walked back outside. It was ten after five. In the west the clouds were breaking up.
‘Comes to just three dollars even,’ Sonny told him brightly. ‘That’s Doc Cody’s car, ain’t it? I see them MD plates and it always makes me think of this movie I seen, this story about a bunch of crooks and one of them would always steal cars with MD plates because-’
Ben gave him three one-dollar bills. ‘I’ve got to split, Sonny. Sorry. I’ve got trouble.’
Sonny’s face crinkled up. ‘Gee, I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Mears. Bad news from your editor?’
‘I guess you could say that.’ He got behind the wheel, shut the door, pulled out, and left Sonny looking after him in his yellow foulweather slicker.
‘Matt’s dead, isn’t he?’ Mark asked, watching him.
‘Yes. Heart attack. How did you know?’
‘Your face. I saw your face.’
It was 5:15.
45
Parkins Gillespie was standing on the small covered porch of the Municipal Building, smoking a Pall Mall and looking out at the western sky. He turned his attention to Ben Mears and Mark Petrie reluctantly. His face looked sad and old, like the glasses of water they bring you in cheap diners.
‘How are You, Constable?’ Ben asked.
