planning?”
“I’ll call you later tonight,” I said, and kissed her. Her lips were cold.
When I got home, Elaine was struggling into her parka and muttering black imprecations at people who sent other people down to Tom’s for milk and bread just when Dance Fever was coming on TV. She was prepared to be grumpy at me as well, but she cheered up when I offered to give her a lift down to the market and back. She also gave me a suspicious look, as if this unexpected kindness to the little sister might be the onset of some disease. Herpes, maybe. She asked me if I felt all right. I only smiled blandly and told her to hop in before I changed my mind, although by now my right leg was aching and my left was throbbing fiercely. I could talk on and on to Leigh about how Christine wouldn’t roll as long as Arnie was in Libertyville, and intellectually I knew that was right… but it didn’t change the instinctive rolling in my guts when I thought of Ellie walking the two blocks to Tom’s and crossing the dark suburban sidestreets in her bright yellow parka. I kept seeing Christine parked down one of those streets, crouched in the dark like an old bitch hunting dog.
When we got to Tom’s, I gave her a buck. “Get us each a Yodel and a Coke,” I said.
“Dennis, are you feeling all right?”
“Yes. And if you put my change in that Asteroids game, I’ll break your arm.”
That seemed to set her mind at rest. She went in, and I sat slumped behind the wheel of my Duster, thinking about what a terrible box we were in. We couldn’t talk to anyone—that was the nightmare. That was where Christine was so strong. Was I going to grab my dad down in his toy-shop and tell him that what Ellie called “Arnie Cunningham’s pukey old red car” was now driving itself? Was I going to call the cops and tell them that a dead guy wanted to kill my girlfriend and myself? No. The only thing on our side, other than the fact that the car couldn’t move until Arnie had an alibi, was the fact that it would want no witnesses—Moochie Welch, Don Vandenberg and Will Darnell had been killed alone, late at night; Buddy Repperton and his two friends had been killed out in the boonies.
Elaine came back with a bag clutched to her budding bosom, got in, gave me my Coke and my Yodel.
“Change,” I said.
“You’re such a boogersnot,” she said, but put some twenty-odd cents in my outstretched hand.
“I know, but I love you anyway,” I said. I pushed her hood back, ruffled her hair, and then kissed her ear. She looked surprised and suspicious—and then she smiled. She wasn’t such a bad sort, my sister Ellie. The thought of her being run down in the street simply because I fell in love with Leigh Cabot after Arnie went mad and left her… I simply wasn’t going to let that happen.
At home, I worked my way upstairs after saying hi to my mom. She wanted to know how the leg was doing, and I told her it was in good shape. But when I got upstairs, I made the bathroom medicine cabinet my first stop. I swallowed a couple of aspirin for the sake of my legs, which were now singing Ave Maria. Then I went down to my folks” bedroom, where the upstairs phone is, and sat down in Mom’s rocking chair with a sigh.
I picked up the phone and made the first of my calls.
“Dennis Guilder, scourge of the turnpike extension project!” Brad Jeffries said heartily. “Good to hear from you, kiddo. When you gonna come over and watch the Penguins with me again?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I get tired of watching handicapped people play hockey after a while. Now if you got interested in a good team, like the Flyers—”
“Christ, have I got to listen to this from a kid that isn’t even mine?” Brad asked. “The world really is going to hell, I guess.”
We chatted for a while longer, just kicking things back and forth, and then I told him why I had called.
He laughed. “What the fuck, Denny? You goin into business for yourself?”
“You might say so.” I thought of Christine. “For a limited time only.”
“Don’t want to talk about it?”
“Well, not just yet. Do you know someone who might have an item like that for rent?”
“I’ll tell you, Dennis. There’s only one guy I know who might do business with you on anything like that. Johnny Pomberton. Lives out on the Ridge Road. He’s got more rolling stock than Carter’s got liver pills.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Brad,”
“How’s Arnie?”
“All right, I guess. I don’t see as much of him as I used to.”
“Funny guy, Dennis. I never in my wildest dreams thought he’d last out the summer the first time I set eyes on him. But he had one hell of a lot of determination.”
“Yeah,” I said. “All of that and then some.”
“Say hi to him when you see him.”
“I’ll do it, Brad. Stay loose.”
“Can’t live if you do anything else, Denny. Come an over some night and peel a few cans with me.”
“I will. Good night.”
“Night.”
I hung up and then hesitated over the phone for a minute or two, not really wanting to make this next call. But it had to be done; it was central to the whole sorry, stupid business. I picked the telephone up and dialled the Cunninghams” number from memory. If Arnie answered, I would simply hang up without speaking. But my luck was in; it was Michael who answered.
“Hello?” His voice sounded tired and a bit slurred.
“Michael, this is Dennis.”
“Hey, hi!” He sounded genuinely pleased.
“Is Arnie there?”
“Upstairs. He came home from somewhere and went right to his room. He looked pretty thundery, but that’s far from unusual these days. Want me to call him?”
“No,” I said. “That’s okay. It was really you I wanted to talk to, anyhow. I need a favour.”
“Well, sure. Name it.” I realized what that slur in his voice was—Michael Cunningham was at least halfway snookered. “You did us a helluva favour, talking some sense to him about college.”
“Michael, I don’t think he listened to a thing I said.”
“Well, something sure happened. He’s applied to three schools just this month. Regina thinks you walk on water, Dennis. And just between me and thee, she’s pretty ashamed of the way she treated you when Arnie first told us about his car. But you know Regina. She’s never been able to say “I’m sorry'.”
I knew that, all right. And what Regina would think, I wondered, if she knew that Arnie—or whatever controlled Arnie—didn’t have any more interest in college than a hog has in mutual funds? That he was simply following Leigh’s tracks, hounding her, fixated on her? It was perversion on perversion—LeBay, Leigh, and Christine in some hideous menage a trois.
“Listen, Michael,” I said. “I’d like you to call me if Arnie decides to go out of town for some reason. Especially in the next day or two, or over the weekend. Day or night. I have to know if Arnie’s going to leave Libertyville. And I have to know before he leaves. It’s very important.”
“Why?”
“I’d just as soon not go into that. It’s complicated, and it would… well, it would sound crazy.”
There was a long, long silence, and when Arnie’s dad spoke again, his voice was a near-whisper. “It’s that goddam car of his, isn’t it?”
How much did he suspect? How much did he know? If he was like most people I knew, he probably suspected a little more drunk than sober. How much? Even now I don’t know for sure. But what I believe is that he suspected more than anyone—except maybe Will Darnell.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s the car.”
“I knew it,” he said dully. “I knew. What’s happening, Dennis? How is he doing it? Do you know?”
“Michael, I can’t say any more. Will you tell me if he plans a trip tomorrow or the next day?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, all right.”
“Thanks.”
“Dennis,” he said. “Do you think I’ll ever have my son back?”
He deserved the truth. That poor, devilled man deserved the truth. “I don’t know,” I said, and bit at my lower lip until it hurt. “I think… that it may have gone too far for that.”
“Dennis,” he almost wailed, “what is it? Drugs? Some kind of drugs?”
