Dew focused on one such picture, a typical preseason publicity shot from Dawsey’s sophomore year.
“You are a big fucker, ain’t you, kid?”
In the posed picture, late-summer sun blared down on his maize and blue uniform. Most times these shots showed a kid’s best smile, but this one was different. Dawsey smiled, sure, but there was something else, something around the eyes that bespoke a savage intensity. It was almost as if Dawsey’s very being vibrated aggression, as if he couldn’t handle putting on the pads and not hitting something.
Maybe it was the pic, maybe it was the fact that he’d seen the kid play on TV. Dawsey had been a rare one, a veritable beast who dominated the game every time he set foot on the field. Kid played meaner than a bull with a cattle prod up his ass and a rat trap snapped on his nuts. It was a damn shame, really, the knee injury that ended Dawsey’s career. Dew remembered seeing that on TV, too. Dew had watched men blown in half by land mines, men impaled with giant splinters from trees hit by artillery fire, men decapitated and twitching, rotten and bloated, yet there was something about watching the super-slow-mo replay of that kid’s knee bending ninety degrees the wrong way that had made Dew’s stomach almost rebel.
He stared hard at the picture, memorizing every detail of Dawsey’s face. Big boy, sure, big and strong and mean and dangerous, sure, but that’s why man invented guns. Fuck Murray’s orders-being an All-American didn’t make you Superman, and a bullet in the head would bring “Scary” Perry Dawsey down just as it would anyone else.
Someone had to pay for Malcolm’s death. Dawsey was as good a target as any.
67.
Perry sat on a pale yellow couch that looked brand-new, sinking back into the apartment’s welcome shadows. He always found it strange to be in another Windywood apartment. With an identical floor plan but different furniture and decorations, it was as if his apartment had been taken over and redecorated with watercolor seascapes, matching curtains, lace doilies and enough country-art knickknacks to gag a camel.
He munched on a chicken sandwich, cautiously peeking between the slats of the venetian blinds. He’d lucked out with Fatty Patty’s apartment; from her window he could see the flurry of activity in front of his building. Seven cop cars-five local and two from the state police-threw a visual cacophony of red and blue lights against the pitch- black night.
Observing the scene, he saw the reasons for his narrow escape. Fatty Patty had been watching out this window, and from this third-story perch she had seen the police cruiser a long way off. Her Triangles warned Perry, got him out of harm’s way. It only made sense, really; they were protecting their own. Keeping Perry alive was vital-he was a walking incubator, after all, and if he died the Three Stooges probably died with him.
The cop cars’ flashing lights created a disco effect on the falling snow. It was well past midnight and there wasn’t a star in the sky. If he was going to move, it would have to be later that night when the starless darkness covered everything and the soft snow swallowed every little sound with an insatiable hunger.
But he wasn’t going anywhere until he saw Fatty Patty pop. He had to know how it happened. She sat on a yellow chair that matched the yellow couch, nibbling on a sandwich of her own. She cried silently, fat jiggling in time with the tiny sobs. She held a thrice-folded paper towel to a fresh cut on her forehead. Perry had told her not to cry out loud. She hadn’t listened. He’d cut her; the noise had stopped. Like Daddy always said, sometimes you just had to show women who was in charge.
He noticed she’d used masking tape to hang a Michigan road map on the back of the front door. She’d scrawled a red line on U.S. 23 moving north away from Ann Arbor. The line turned west at 83, then followed a series of small roads until it hit the town of Wahjamega. Around the town she’d drawn several red circles and written the words This is the place.
Near Wahjamega, in neat ruler lines, she had drawn a symbol in red ink:
Perry looked at the design he’d cut into his right arm. The scabs were still fresh. Sure, his was a bit messy, but then again it’s a tad harder to make straight lines with a kitchen knife, right? What did that symbol mean to the Triangles? Did the meaning even matter? No, it didn’t- nothing really mattered anymore.
“They told you to go to Wahjamega, too, eh?” Perry asked. She nodded quietly. “Do you have a car?” She nodded again, and he smiled. It would be easy; all he had to do was wait for the cops to clear out, then he and Fatty Patty could drive to Wahjamega. As for what waited there, he really didn’t want to know, but he was going anyway.
This was his second chicken sandwich (with Miracle Whip, mind you, and with a side of Fritos, it really hit the spot). He’d already polished off lasagna leftovers, some chocolate cake, a can of Hormel chili, and a pair of Twinkies. His hunger was long gone, but the Triangles constantly urged him to eat. And eat he did.
Munching away on the sandwich, he felt surprisingly content. He wasn’t sure how much of that enjoyment was his and how much was overflow from the Triangles; the things beamed with near-orgasmic pleasure at the steady flow of nutrients. The line between what they felt and what he felt was beginning to get a little fuzzy, like the way he now truly wanted to go to Wahjamega.
Have to watch out for that, Perry old boy. Can’t fall into their little trap. Got to keep your own thoughts or you’re as good as dead.
He decided to kill another Triangle as soon as he finished the sandwich. That would redefine their relationship. Nothing like a little self-mutilating demarcation to set things straight.
In front of his building, the Columbos scrambled around like little ants. Perry reveled in his third-floor view. The drama below unfolded like a soundless, long-distance version of Cops.
The police had knocked on Fatty Patty’s door. She’d given an award-winning performance. No, she hadn’t heard anything. No, she hadn’t seen a huge man wandering around the building. She was afraid of Perry, but thanks to her Triangles she was scared shitless of the cops. So she chose the lesser of two extreme evils.
He stared out the window, careful to stay in the shadows, and wondered if they knew he was watching. But that didn’t make sense: if they knew where he was, they’d come after him.
Unless they were already watching him.
Perry’s eyes narrowed. He flicked his gaze about the apartment. Could there be a secret camera in here somewhere? A bug? Were they listening to him? They’d been watching him in his apartment, of that he had no bout-a-doubt-it, so maybe they were set up to monitor Fatty Patty as well. If that was the case, his great escape was nothing more than jumping out of the fire and back into the frying pan.
And, come to think of it, how did he know for sure that she even had the Triangles at all? Maybe she didn’t have any. Maybe this was a setup. Maybe she had some machine that told his Triangles that this was a safe haven. Maybe she was just there to keep an eye on him. Maybe they were combing through his apartment “gathering data” while they knew damn fucking well that he sat up here with Fatty Patty, chewing away on a chicken sandwich and Fritos.
Perry’s gaze nailed her to the yellow chair. She had that expression gazelles wear after being brought down by a lion, before the bite to the jugular, before the final coup de grace. He set his plate down on the coffee table.
“Where are they?” Perry asked quietly.
“Wha…what?” New tears filled her eyes and rolled down her fat cheeks. Did she still think this was a game? He picked up his butcher knife and patted the flat of the ten-inch blade against his palm-each time the blade slapped lightly against his skin, she winced as if hit by a tiny electric shock.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Perry whispered, smiling all the while, not because he liked this or because he was trying to scare her, but because he was in control. “Where are they? Show me.”
Her chubby face changed as the words fell into place like the clicking tumblers of a lock.
“You mean my Triangles, right?” She rushed the words out with an incredibly servile tone. He felt a powerful stab of homesickness-the eagerness to placate, the desperate desire to avoid a beating; it reminded him of his mother.
His mother talking to his father.
