needing his getaway money. In which case, he would be happy-no, honored-to leave the money behind for Cappy, as a token of his appreciation for his help in clearing his name and bringing Missy’s killer to justice, not to mention the loan of the Harley.
From the glitter in the old man’s eyes when Simon dumped half of his remaining stacks of dead presidents on the bed, Simon was reasonably certain that he had just bought himself a second accomplice. But it wasn’t only the money that had won Cappy over, it was the prospect of adventure. Judging by the man’s excitement and enthusiasm when they started going over the next part of the plan, Simon had the feeling that Cappy would have paid
Simon had thought of everything. The two were to stay in the kitchenette portion of the apartment, where they couldn’t be seen from the apartment’s only window. Rosie was to wait half an hour, then call the cops and tell them she was being held hostage by her son. After that, all Rosie had to do was stall, stall, stall; all Cappy had to do was let himself be heard in the background every so often.
And when push came to shove, Simon assured them, they wouldn’t have to put themselves in danger-he wouldn’t think of allowing any harm to come to either of them. Let the cops in, explain how Simon had threatened to kill them if they didn’t help him get away, then go treat yourselves to a fancy dinner someplace with the money Simon had so generously left behind, and never mind the senior/twilight discounts.
Before leaving, he’d traded clothes with Cappy and kissed his mother good-bye. The wrinkled cheek was surprisingly soft against his lips; the eyes were filled with tears. She cried easily, this old woman-but had she cried when she spent the blood money Grandfather Childs had given her to abandon her children? And did she cry when she spread her legs for that old man on the Murphy bed? Did she cry for her children then?
Of course not-so why should I cry for her? thought Simon as he closed the door behind him. Then he’d made a big stomping show of starting down the stairway, before doubling back quietly to ring the bell of the apartment next door.
“Who’s there?” A shaky, phlegmy old voice. Perfect for his purposes: if the occupant was as feeble as she sounded, there would be no need to strong-arm her, as he’d originally planned. He might not even need to improvise a delayed-action fuse to trigger the explosion.
“Gas company, ma’am,” Simon had called. “I’m afraid there may be a problem with your line.”
Twenty minutes later he was on his way. He might even have passed the Bu-car containing Special Agents LaFeo and Kingmore, traveling in the opposite direction. He heard the explosion an hour later, from a phone booth near Deep Water, New Jersey, just east of the Delaware Memorial Bridge spanning the Delaware River.
“Hello, Mrs. Schantz? This is Joe from the gas company. Your readings are all clear now-as they say in the Navy, the smoking lamp is lit…. Yes, ma’am, I know the smell is strong-that’s the anti-inflammatory I told you we were going to be pumping in.…I quite understand-I’m a pack-a-day man myself. What I want you to do, though, while I’m holding, I want you to flick that Bic for me, walk around the apartment, see if the flame wavers…. No, you can keep the Bic with our compliments…. Yes, ma’am, I’ll wait.”
While he waited, Simon held the phone at arm’s length to avoid the percussion tinnitus syndrome shortly to be experienced by the hostage negotiator for the Atlantic City Police Department, currently holding the line for Rosie Delamour next door-unlike her, he knew what was coming.
And though he’d told himself he wasn’t going to cry, afterward there were tears in his eyes as he replaced the receiver and walked slowly back to the Harley. He was an orphan now, he’d suddenly realized-a motherless, fatherless, sisterless child.
7
Dorie and Pender hit the hay early. It didn’t take Pender long to drop off-within twenty minutes he was bleating and blatting like a Sun Ra solo scored by John Cage.
No such luck for Dorie, not with her first airplane ride looming at seven-fifty in the A.M. It was funny, she mused, how she’d never really thought of herself as an aviophobe. Probably because flying was so easy to avoid. But fear of flying was one of those sneaky phobias. It’s not really a problem for me, you say: I don’t like to travel anyway. And you never think about what came first, the fear of the chicken or the fear of the egg.
Plenty of time to think about all that now, however. And the longer she lay there listening to Pender snore, the more unfair it seemed. Wasn’t this whole thing his idea in the first place? So how come he gets to sleep like an adenoidal baby while I lie here gnawing on my liver? She scooted over toward the warm center of the bed until she felt his hip warm and solid against hers.
“Hey, Pen? Pen, you awake?”
“Apparently.”
“Tell me about your house.”
“Hill. Woods. Canal. Bedrooms, lots of bedrooms. Pen sleep now.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. How come you have so many bedrooms if you live alone?”
Pender bowed to the inevitable. “Tinsman. The lockkeeper. He used to add another bedroom onto the end of the house every time his wife had another kid. She had seven.” A portentous pause-this was one of Pender’s set pieces. “Only six bedrooms were added on.” And another pause.
“How come?” Dorie rolled onto her side and pillowed both hands under her cheek the way she used to when she was a little girl-her daddy had been an excellent storyteller.
“The way the rangers tell it-every year they have a special Halloween program down at Great Falls: rangers in period costumes tell all the ghost stories and murder stories from the history of the canal, and they always end with Tinsman’s Lock. The way they tell it, the last kid wasn’t Tinsman’s. His wife had been having an affair with a redheaded mule driver from Rock Creek. They say the lockkeeper cut her throat, then drowned the seventh baby in the canal. Some people claim to have seen her ghost wandering up and down the banks in a bloodstained nightgown, searching for her redheaded baby.”
“Great, a ghost story,” said Dorie with a mock shudder that turned real at the end, as mock shudders often do. “Remember one thing, buster:
Pender reached across his body with his good arm, and patted her shoulder. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. They say she only walks on Halloween night.”
“Pender.”
“What?”
“Halloween is this coming Sunday.”
“Is it really?” Wide-eyed and innocent; butter wouldn’t melt…, as his sister Ida would have said.
“Yeah-and you know what’s amazing? For the first time since I can remember, I don’t care-it doesn’t matter.”
“I remember you telling me Halloweens were always tough on you.”
“And Sunday ones were the worst. ’Cause if it fell on a Sunday, that’d be three days I’d have to hide out in my house with the curtains drawn. Couldn’t go shopping on Friday, because the store clerks might be in costumes with masks, on Saturday night people in masks might be coming and going from parties, and then of course the trick-or-treaters on Sunday.”
“No trick-or-treaters out where I live.”
“But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter anymore? I’d almost like to give it a try.”
“Ask and you shall receive. Pool, the Liaison Support secretary, she and her roommate always do Halloween up real big, costume party, haunted house and all. If you want me to take you, I have a standing invitation.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” said Dorie. She suspected it was an idea that was going to seem less and less attractive, the closer to Sunday they got.
