jump a little. “I’m thinking, without even asking a question, I might just swat you for the fun of it, pilgrim.”
“I’ll answer,” Glug said. “You ask, and I’ll answer.”
Booger clapped his hand on Glug’s shoulder, and Glug startled like a rabbit. “Oh, hell, I know that. I’m just talking about what I might do because I want to do it. There ain’t no other reason behind it than an urge. You ever get an urge, my man?”
Glug didn’t know how to answer that question, so he gave a statement. “Whatever you want, man. Whatever you want.”
Booger looked at me. “He wants what I want, bro. Ain’t he agreeable?”
“He is,” I said.
“What we want,” Booger said, “and I believe I can speak for my bro here, is some no-bullshit answers. No cleverness. No hesitation. You hesitate, and you meditate horizontally. So, what we want is to know where…” Booger turned to me. “What’s her name again?”
“Belinda,” I said.
“He wants to know where Belinda is. And if he wants to know, so do I. What me and him got going here is what they call one of them hive minds. He thinks it, I think it. That’s how we’re playing this. You understand?”
Glug nodded.
Booger turned to me, said, “Ask your question, bro.”
“I want to know where she is,” I said, “and I want to know what this is all about. I want to know everything, and I want it in a nutshell, and pretty damn quick. But mostly, I want to know where Belinda is.”
“She’s all right until the morning, ten a.m.,” Glug said.
“What happens then?” I said.
“Stitch pops the nigger.”
I thought about that a minute. “Judence?”
“That’s him,” Glug said.
“Why?” I said.
“He likes games, and there’s the money he’s getting.”
“And what do you get?”
“Money, sometimes a little poontang, depending on how Caroline is feeling. Mostly she’s just banging Stitch, but sometimes, she’ll do me a favor. She can make you crazy, way she acts.”
“Who’s giving Stitch this money that you get a piece of?”
“That white preacher,” Glug said. “The one on TV.”
“Reverend Dinkins?” I said.
“Yeah, him.”
“You got a real name other than Glug?” I asked.
“Gregore,” he said.
“What kind of fucking name is that?” Booger said. “Don’t hunchback assistants have that name?”
“That’s my name.”
“Well, it sucks,” Booger said.
Coming from a man who preferred to be called Booger, I wasn’t sure exactly how to take that.
Booger hauled off and hit Glug with the phone book in the back of the head, knocking him out of the chair, hitting him so hard he went smooth out.
“Goddamnit, Booger, what was that about?”
“Sorry,” Booger said, “I just got bored.”
41
When Booger slapped Gregore awake, the bastard began to chatter like a squirrel. There was no information he wanted to hold back; he was ready to tell us everything, including potty-training problems he’d had as a kid. I didn’t blame him for being so informative. Besides the slapping, Booger had done some things with his pocketknife that had to hurt and had given Gregore’s ears that look hunting hounds get after a number of vicious encounters with coons in the wild.
Even though he was open with his answers, Booger didn’t think he was quick enough or giving us enough of the answers we needed, so he took about ten minutes to beat him savagely with the phone book.
I had to go stand behind the car again. When the beating was over, I went back and Booger put Gregore in the chair again and I asked the questions I needed answers to the most.
I got them: Stitch and Caroline were well into their game, and the end of it was the assassination of Judence by Stitch. Dinkins was paying for the assassination to take place.
Way they had it fixed was they blackmailed all of the history teachers to not be in their offices that day. It was not an unknown custom for the professors to watch events in the plaza from their offices above. They were to be out. That was the request. It was a simple request. Vacate your offices on that day and don’t come back and we don’t show the DVDs of you humping Caroline. In fact, you stay out of your offices and meet at the old sawmill grounds with a thousand each, the DVDs will be returned and it’ll all be over.
It had a kind of poetry about it. Of course, I had the DVDs. Or at least some copies of them. There may have been more. I wanted to ask that, but Gregore, he was on a roll and I didn’t want to interrupt him. In the meantime, while the history teachers were out, thinking they were going to be paying off and getting the DVDs back, Stitch would show up in the history department dressed as a janitor, pushing a trash cart. He knew what to wear, and how to look and act like a janitor.
In Stitch’s trash cart would be a high-powered rifle. He would pick an office lock and go to the window and crank the old-fashioned thing open. He would point the gun and pick Judence out when he stood up to make his speech, and kill him. One shot, one kill.
Across the way was part two. I was going to be punished for meddling. Not by killing me, but by killing Belinda. The gears on the clock tower would do it. The minute the tower struck ten, Stitch would shoot, and Belinda would die. If there was some delay on the part of Judence, the plan would mutate.
“How will she die?” I said.
Gregore shook his head. When he did, blood and sweat flew off. His voice had turned raw. “I don’t know. I don’t have those details and don’t want them. I just know she’s supposed to die at ten. That way, when Judence is shot with a silenced gun, they’ll be trying to figure what happened, and in the meantime Stitch will go down the stairs and out the back way, and the girl will be dead in the tower. And after all the Judence stuff calms down, someone will go inside the clock tower, for maintenance maybe, and there will be the girl. Something extra, Caroline called it.”
“How do they get in the clock tower?” I said. “Won’t there be guards around for Judence’s speech?”
It was starting to be work for our boy. His voice sounded as if someone had used sandpaper on his vocal cords. “Some, but they won’t be concentrating on the clock tower; this isn’t a town with a real SWAT team or any kind of cops that matter. If there are guards there, Caroline, she’s not afraid to do what she thinks needs to be done. If they have to, she and Stitch will change plans. They’re versatile. They’re proud of it.”
“Shit, you’re one of them,” Booger said. “How proud are you?”
Gregore looked at Booger, fearing this was a trick question. “I’m not that proud,” he said.
“That’s good,” Booger said, giving him a gentle pat. “Otherwise I’d have to knock some pride out of you.”
“I’m just getting paid,” Gregore said.
Booger grinned at him. That alone made Gregore wince.
“So what about the clock tower?” I asked.
It was obvious that he was starting to wear down, but the way Booger looked at him gave him strength. He said, “Caroline will be wearing what looks like a janitor’s uniform. She will be pushing a trash cart, same as Stitch. But in her cart will be Belinda, drugged. She’ll work the lock. She knows how. She’ll go inside the tower with the cart. That’s when she’ll do whatever it is she plans to do to Belinda. Skin her most likely. They drugged the others and started in on them alive. Had rubber balls in their mouths, scarves tied over those for gags. I saw them do the Ronnie girl. It was really horrible. They eviscerated them so they wouldn’t smell so bad and put them in the freezer
