The Stand

had a hunch that no one was going to see Trash. He had given them a little hotfoot and had gone running back into the desert in his sand-crawler.

He looked down at the solitaire game spread out in front of him and carefully controlled an urge to sweep the whole thing onto the floor. Instead, he cheated out another ace and went on playing. It didn’t matter. When Flagg wanted him, he would just reach out and gather him up. Old Trashy was going to end up riding a crosspiece just like Hec Drogan. Hard luck, guy.

But in his secret heart, he wondered.

Things had happened lately that he didn’t like. Dayna, for instance. Flagg had known about her, that was true, but she hadn’t talked. She had somehow escaped into death instead, leaving them no further ahead in the matter of the third spy.

That was another thing. How come Flagg didn’t just know about the third spy? He had known about the old fart, and when he had come back from the desert he had known about Dayna, and had told them exactly how he was going to handle her. But it hadn’t worked.

And now, Trashcan Man.

Trash wasn’t a nobody. Maybe he had been back in the old days, but not anymore. He wore the black man’s stone just as he himself did. After Flagg had crisped that bigmouth lawyer’s brains in L.A., Lloyd had seen Flagg lay his hands on Trashcan’s shoulders and tell him gently that all the dreams had been true dreams. And Trash had whispered, “My life for you.”

Lloyd didn’t know what else might have passed between them, but it seemed clear that he had wandered the desert with Flagg’s blessing. And now Trashcan Man had gone berserk.

Which raised some pretty serious questions.

Which was why Lloyd was sitting here alone at nine in the evening, cheating at solitaire and wishing he was drunk.

“Mr. Henreid?”

Now what? He looked up and saw a girl with a pretty, pouty face. Tight white shorts. A halter that didn’t quite cover the areolae of her nipples. Sexpot type for sure, but she looked nervous and pale, almost ill. She was biting compulsively at one of her thumbnails, and he saw that all her nails were bitten and ragged.

“What.”

“I… I have to see Mr. Flagg,” she said. The strength went rapidly out of her voice, and it ended as a whisper.

“You do, huh? What do you think I am, his social secretary?”

“But… they said… to see you.”

“Who did?”

“Well, Angie Hirschfield did. It was her.”

“What’s your name?”

“Uh, Julie.” She giggled, but it was only a reflex. The scared look never left her face, and Lloyd wondered wearily what sort of shit was up in the fan now. A girl like this wouldn’t ask for Flagg unless it was very serious indeed. “Julie Lawry.”

“Well, Julie Lawry, Flagg isn’t in Las Vegas now.”

“When will he be back?”

“I don’t know. He comes and goes, and he doesn’t wear a beeper. He doesn’t explain himself to me, either. If you have something, give it to me and I’ll see that he gets the message.” She looked at him doubtfully and Lloyd repeated what he had told Carl Hough that afternoon. “It’s what I’m here for, Julie.”

“Okay.” Then, in a rush: “If it’s important, you tell him I’m the one told you. Julie Lawry.”

“Okay.”

“You won’t forget?”

“No, for Chrissake! Now what is it?”

She pouted. “Well, you don’t have to be so mean about it.”

He sighed and put the handful of cards he had been holding down on the table. “No,” he said. “I guess I don’t. Now, what is it?”

“That dummy. If he’s around, I figure he’s spying. I just thought you should know.” Her eyes glinted viciously. “Motherfucker pulled a gun on me.”

“What dummy?”

“Well, I saw the retard, and so I figured the dummy must be with him, you know? And they’re just not our type. I figure they must have come from the other side.”

“That’s what you figure, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t know what the Christ you’re talking about. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. If you don’t start talking some sense, Julie, I’m going up to bed.”

Julie sat down, crossed her legs, and told Lloyd about her meeting with Nick Andros and Tom Cullen in Pratt, Kansas, her hometown. About the Pepto-Bismol (“I was just having a little fun with the softie, and this deaf-and- dumb pulls a gun on me!”). She even told him about shooting at them as they left town.

“Which all proves what?” Lloyd asked when she finished. He had been a little intrigued with the word “spy,” but since then had lapsed into a semidaze of boredom.

Julie pouted again and lit a cigarette. “I told you. That feeb, he’s over here now. I just bet he’s spying.”

“Tom Cullen, you said his name was?”

“Yes.”

He had the vaguest sort of memory. Cullen was a big blond guy, a few cards short the deck for sure, but surely not as bad as this high-iron bitch was making out. He tried for more and came up empty. People were still streaming into Vegas in numbers of sixty to a hundred a day. It was becoming impossible to keep them all straight, and Flagg said the immigration was going to get a lot heavier before it tapered off. He supposed he could go to Paul Burlson, who was keeping a file of Vegas residents and find something out about this Cullen dude.

“Are you going to arrest him?” Julie asked.

Lloyd looked at her. “I’ll arrest you if you don’t get off my case,” he said.

“Nice fucking guy!” Julie Lawry cried, her voice rising shrewishly. She jumped to her feet, glaring at him. In her tight white cotton shorts, her legs seemed to go all the way up to her chin. “Try to do you a favor!”

“I’ll check it.”

“Yeah, right, I know that story.”

She stomped off, fanny swinging in tight little circles of indignation.

Lloyd watched her with a certain weary amusement, thinking there were a lot of chicks like her in the world —even now, after the superflu, he was willing to bet there were a lot around. Easy to slap the make on, but watch out for the fingernails afterward. Kissing cousins to those spiders that gobble up their mates after sex. Two months had gone by and she still bore that mute guy a grudge. What did she say his name was? Andros?

Lloyd pulled a battered black notebook from his back pocket, wet his finger, and paged over to a blank sheet. This was his memory book, and it was chock-full of little notes to himself—everything from a reminder to take a shave before meeting with Flagg to a boxed memorandum to get the contents of Las Vegas’ pharmacies inventoried before they started to lose morphine and codeine. It would be time to get another little book soon.

In his flat and scrawling grammar school script he wrote: Nick Andros or maybe Androtes—mute. In town? And below that: Tom Cullen, check out with Paul. He tucked the book back into his pocket. Forty miles northeast, the dark man had consummated his long-term relationship with Nadine Cross under the glittering desert stars. He would have been very interested to know that a friend of Nick Andros’s was in Las Vegas.

But he slept.

Lloyd looked morosely down at his solitaire game, forgetting about Julie Lawry and her grudge and her tight little ass. He cheated out another ace, and his thoughts turned dolefully back to the Trashcan Man and what Flagg