No words.
Chapter Thirty-three
Harry Griffin passed a fitful night that was not altogether unpleasant. Sometimes, like now, when he’d get excited, this auxiliary energy kicked in. He woke up, ready; electric in the dark. And it seemed as if all twenty-five years of his sobriety surrounded him like a thick magnifying lens. Images from his past life jumped up huge, in aching detail.
Four-thirty A.M. He got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and heated water, ground coffee, put a filter in the Chemex coffeemaker.
Waiting for the water to boil, he went into the living room and sat on a cushion in front of the fireplace. He folded his legs in a half lotus, shut his eyes, and tried the TM trick: let his runaway thoughts stream away like rising bubbles. Tried to calm down.
Didn’t work. He startled when the teakettle shrieked, boiling over. So much for the tricks. He got up, poured the water into the ground coffee, and slit the cellophane on a fresh pack of Luckies. Since he couldn’t get his night horse back in the barn, he settled down to ride it out with coffee and cigarettes.
Sitting at a stool at his kitchen snack bar, he held out his right hand, thick-veined, bone prominent, absolutely steady. Vividly he remembered the last person he’d killed. Ten years ago, when he got talked into that last-minute hunting trip in Maston County…
Griffin squashed out his cigarette in the full ashtray and watched the sun rise thin over the lake. Okay. Be honest. Maybe the last one did get to him, the kid. There’d been a woman in St. Paul he thought he might marry, even start a family. Maybe Broker was right. He’d run away. After that scene in the woods, he’d quit his newspaper job and migrated up here. Do some honest work with his hands where there were fewer people.
Fewer people to hurt.
But there were exceptions. And possibly Gator Bodine was one them.
Quarter past nine Saturday morning Gator was dipping his toast in an egg yolk at Lyme’s Cafe, looking at a picture on the front page of
He looked up and saw Harry Griffin come through the door and walk straight to the booth where he was sitting. Stood there looking down with that shrink leather face, looking a little shaky with a wild aspect. Hadn’t shaved.
“We never been properly introduced, you and me,” Griffin said.
Gator tucked the toast in his mouth, chewed, then dusted the crumbs off his thick fingers. “That what this is, getting introduced?” he said, keeping his voice neutral, sizing Griffin up close. A real bad boy in his time, people said, but now he was starting to show his age. Still had this solitary yard-bull intensity to him, like a very few guys in the joint who stood their ground alone. With no group affiliation. The way you fought that kind of guy was, you caught him asleep with a club.
Griffin sat down in the opposite seat, casually leaned his elbows on the table, and said, “This is about proxies-you with me so far?”
“Like stand ins?” Gator nodded, working at keeping his face calm.
“Yeah, like for instance, if Jimmy Klumpe got into something he couldn’t handle and someone was to stand in for him. Say sneak into a guy’s house, steal stuff, and knife his truck tire. Chickenshit stuff like that.”
“You lost me,” Gator said, not real comfortable with the cold disquiet in Griffin’s ash-colored eyes. Sure had a lot of leftover balls for an AARP fart.
“Okay, let’s get you found,” Griffin said. “The house where Broker’s staying, that somebody was snooping in- it’s my fucking house. Anybody comes around, like in through the woods on skis, they’re gonna find me standing in.” Griffin paused. “What goes around, comes around.”
“Yeah, I recall reading that saying in a book about the sixties. And I think maybe you’re reaching a little, connecting the dots. What I heard,” Gator said carefully, “is they made up. No reason for anybody to do anything on it. Like dumping garbage.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Just so we understand each other,” Griffin said.
“Hey, you’re a badass old man, and I was brought up to respect my elders, what can I say,” Gator said with a straight face.
“You’re on notice; we’ll leave it there for now,” Griffin said, standing up. “Oh, yeah, and nice meeting you.”
“My pleasure,” Gator said in an icy fuck-you tone.
As Griffin turned to leave, he paused, raised his finger and pointed. “And, Gator?”
“Now what?”
Griffin smiled. “You got egg on your chin.”
Driving home from his weekly sit-down breakfast, Gator briefly entertained the notion of shutting Griffin off like an antique tractor. Then he calmed down and went over the story about Griffin beating up that bunch of drunks in Skeet’s with a pool cue. But that was three, four years ago. And he only
Had more important business to think about.
Griffin drove back to his cabin fast, drifting the Jeep around the turns with an almost adolescent glee. The whole aggravated knot of insult and age and punk-ass youth and past and present unraveled when you yanked one cord:
