Thinner (12 page)

They parked their cars and campers in a circle, just as their ancestors had drawn their wagons and handcarts into a circle two hundred, four hundred, eight hundred years before them. They obtained a fire permit, and at night there was talk and laughter and undoubtedly a bottle or two passed from hand to hand.

All of this, Halleck thought, would have been acceptable to Hopley. It was the way things were-done. Those who wanted to buy some of whatever the gypsies were selling could drive out the West Fairview Road to the Arncaster place; at least it was out of sight, and the Arncaster place was something of an eyesore to begin with - the farms the Gypsies found always were. And soon they would move on to Raintree or Westport, and from thence out of view and thought. Except that, after the accident, after the old Gypsy man had made a nuisance of himself by turning up on the courthouse steps and touching Billy Halleck, 'the way things were done' was no longer good enough. Hopley had given the Gypsies two days, Halleck remembered, and when they showed no signs of moving along, he had
moved
them along. First Jim Roberts had revoked their Are permit. Although there had been heavy showers every day for the previous week, Roberts told them that the fire danger had suddenly gone way, way up. Sorry. And by the way, they wanted to remember that the same regulations which controlled campfires and cook-fires also applied to propane stoves, charcoal fires, and brazier fires.

Next, of course, Hopley would have gone around to visit a number of local businesses where Lars Arncaster had a credit line - a line of credit that was usually overextended. These would have included the hardware store, the feed-and-grain store on Raintree Road, the Farmers' Co-Op in Fairview Village, and Normie's Sunoco. Hopley might also have gone to visit Zachary Marchant at the Connecticut Union Bank ... the bank that held Amcaster's mortgage. All part of the job. Have a cup of coffee with this one, a spot of lunch with that one - perhaps something as simple as a couple of franks and lemonades purchased at Dave's Dog Wagon - a bottle of beer with the other one. And by sundown of the following day, everyone with a claim cheek on a little piece of Lars Arncaster's ass had given him a call, mentioning how really
good
it would be to have those damned Gypsies out of town . . how really
grateful
everyone would be. The result was just what Duncan Hopley had known it would be. Arncaster went to the Gypsies, refunded the balance of whatever sum they had agreed upon for rent, and had undoubtedly turned a deaf ear to any protests they might have made (Halleck was thinking specifically of the young man with the bowling pins, who apparently had not as yet comprehended the immutability of his station in life). It wasn't as if the Gypsies had a signed lease that would stand up in court. Sober, Arncaster might have told them they were just lucky he was an honest man and had refunded them the unused portion of what they had paid. Drunk - Arncaster was a three-six-packs-a-night man - he might have been slightly more expansive. There were forces in town that wanted the Gypsies gone, he might have told them. Pressure had been brought to bear, pressure that a poor dirt farmer like Lars Arncaster simply couldn't stand against. Particularly when half the so-called 'good people' in town had the knife out for him to begin with. Not that any of the Gypsies (with the possible exception of Juggler, Billy thought) would need a chapter-and-verse rendition.

Billy got up and walked slowly back home through a cold, drifting rain. There was a light burning in the bedroom; Heidi, waiting up for him.

Not the patrol-car jockey; no need for revenge there. Not Arncaster; he had seen a chance for five hundred dollars cash money and had sent them on their way because he'd had to do so.

Duncan Hopley?

Hopley, maybe. A
strong
maybe, Billy amended. In one way Hopley was just another species of trained dog whose most urgent directives were aimed at preserving Fairview's well-oiled status quo. But Billy doubted if the old Gypsy man would be disposed to take such a bloodlessly sociological view of things, and not just because Hopley had rousted them so efficiently following the hearing. Rousting was one thing. They were used to that. Hopley's failure to investigate the accident which had taken the old woman's life ...

Ah, that was something else, wasn't it?

Failure to investigate? Hell, Billy, don't make me laugh. Failure to investigate is a sin of omission. What Hopley did was
to throw as much dirt as he could over any possible culpability. Beginning with the conspicuous lack of a breathalyzer test.
It was a cover-up on general principles. You know it, and Cary Rossington knew it too.
The wind was picking up and the rain was harder now. He could see it cratering the puddles in the street. The water had a queer polished look under the amber highsecurity streetlamps that lined Lantern Drive. Overhead, branches moaned and creaked in the wind, and Billy Halleck looked up uneasily.

I ought to go see Duncan Hopley.

Something glimmered - something that might have been the spark of an idea. Then he thought of Leda Rossington's drugged, horrified face
...
he thought of Leda saying
He's hard to talk to now ... it's happening inside his mouth, you see ...
everything he says to me comes out in grunts.

Not tonight. He'd had enough for tonight.

'Where did you go, Billy?'

She was in bed, lying in a pool of light thrown by the reading lamp. Now she laid her book aside on the coverlet, looked at him, and Billy saw the dark brown hollows under her eyes. Those brown hollows did not exactly overwhelm him with pity

. . . at least, not tonight.

For just a moment he thought of saying: I
went to see Cary Rossington, but since he was gone I ended up having a few
drinks with his wife - the kind of drinks the Green Giant must have when he's on a toot. And you'll never guess what she told
me, Heidi, dear. Cary Rossington, who grabbed your tit once at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, is turning into an
alligator. When he finally dies, they can turn him into a brand-new product: Here Come de Judge Pocketbooks.

'Nowhere,' he said. 'Just out. Walking. Thinking.'

'You smell like you fell into the juniper bushes on your way home.'

'I guess I did, in a manner of speaking. Only it was Andy's Pub I actually fell into.'

'How many did you have?'

'A couple.'

'It smells more like five.'

'Heidi, are you cross-examining me?'

'No, honey. But I wish you wouldn't worry so much. Those doctors will probably find out what's wrong when they do the metabolic series.'

Halleck grunted.

She turned her earnest, scared face toward him. 'I just thank God it isn't cancer.'

He thought - and almost said - that it must be nice for her to be on the outside; it must be nice to be able to see gradations of the horror. He didn't say it, but some of what he felt must have shown on his face, because her expression of tired misery intensified.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It just
...
it seems hard to say anything that isn't the wrong thing.'

You know it, babe,
he thought, and the hate flashed up again, hot and sour. On top of the gin, it made him feel both depressed and physically ill. It receded, leaving shame in its wake. Cary's skin was changing into God knew what, something fit only to be seen in a circus-sideshow tent. Duncan Hopley might be just fine, or something even worse might be waiting for Billy there. Hell, losing weight wasn't so bad, was it?

He undressed, careful to turn off her reading lamp first, and took Heidi in his arms. She was stiff against him at first. Then, just when he began to think it was going to be no good, she softened. He heard the sob she tried to swallow back and thought unhappily that if all the storybooks were right, that there was nobility to be found in adversity and character to be built in tribulation, then he was doing a piss-poor job of both finding and building.

'Heidi, I'm sorry,' he said.

'If I could only
do
something,' she sobbed. 'If I could only
do
something, Billy, you know?'

'You can,' he said, and touched her breast.

They made love. He began thinking, This
one is for her,
and discovered it had been for himself after all; instead of seeing Leda Rossington's haunted face and shocked, glittering eyes in the darkness, he was able to sleep. The next morning, the scale registered 176.

Chapter Twelve

Duncan Hopley

He had arranged a leave of absence from the office in order to accommodate the metabolic series - Kirk Penschley had been almost indecently willing to accommodate his request, leaving Halleck with a truth he would just as soon not have faced; they wanted to get rid of him. With two of his former three chins now gone, his cheekbones evident for the first time in years, the other bones of his face showing almost as clearly, he had turned into the office bogeyman.

'Hell
yes!'
Penschley had responded almost before Billy's request was completely out of his mouth. Penschley spoke in a too-hearty voice, the voice people adopt when everyone knows something is seriously wrong and no one wants to admit it. He dropped his eyes, staring at the place where Halleck's belly used to be. 'Take however much time you need, Bill.'

'Three days should do it,' he'd replied. Now he called Penschley back from the pay phone at Barker's Coffee Shop and told him he might have to take more than three days. More than three days, yes - but maybe not just for the metabolic series. The idea had returned, glimmering. It was not a hope yet, nothing as grand as that, but it was
something.

'How much time?' Penschley asked him.

'I don't know for sure,' Halleck said. 'Two weeks, maybe. Possibly a month.'

There was a momentary silence at the other end, and Halleck realized Penschley was reading a subtext:
What I really
mean, Kirk, is that I'll never be back. They've finally diagnosed the cancer. Now comes the cobalt, the drugs for pain, the
interferon if we can get it, the laetrile if we wig out and decide to head for Mexico. The next time you see me, Kirk, I'll be in
a long box with a silk pillow under my head.

And Billy, who had been afraid and not much more for the last six weeks, felt the first thin stirrings of anger.
That's not
what I'm saying, goddammit. At least, not yet.

'No problem, Bill. We'll want to turn the Hood matter over to Ron Baker, but I think everything else can hang fire for a while longer.'

The fuck you do. You'll start turning over everything else to staff this afternoon, and as for the Hood litigation, you
turned it over to Ron Baker last week - he called Thursday afternoon and asked me where Sally put the fucking ConGas
depositions. Your idea of hanging fire, Kirk-baby, has to do solely with Sunday-afternoon chicken barbecues at your place in
Vermont. So don't bullshit a bullshitter.

'I’ll see he gets the file,' Billy said, and could not resist adding, 'I think he's already got the Con-Gas deps.'

A thoughtful silence at Kirk Penschley's end as he digested this. Then: 'Well ... if there's anything I can do . . .'

'There is something,' Billy said. 'Although it sounds a little Loony Tunes.'

'What's that?' His voice was cautious now.

'You remember my trouble this early spring? The accident?'

'Ye-es.'

'The woman I struck was a Gypsy. Did you know that?'

'It was in the paper,' Penschley said reluctantly.

'She was part of a ... a ... What? A band, I guess you'd say. A band of Gypsies. They were camping out here in Fairview. They made a deal with a local farmer who needed cash -'

'Hang on, hang on a second,' Kirk Penschley said, his voice a trifle waspy, totally unlike his former paid mourner's tone. Billy grinned a little. He knew this second tone, and liked it infinitely better. He could visualize Penschley, who was fortyfive, bald, and barely five feet tall, grabbing a yellow pad and one of his beloved Flair Fineliners. When he was in high gear, Kirk was one of the brightest, most tenacious men Halleck knew. 'Okay, go on. Who was this local farmer?'

'Arncaster. Lars Arncaster. After I hit the woman

'Her name?'

Halleck closed his eyes and dragged for it. It was funny
...
all of this, and he hadn't even thought of her name since the hearing.

'Lemke,' he said finally. 'Her name was Susanna Lemke.'

'L-e-m-p-k-e?'

'No P.'

'Okay.'

'After the accident, the Gypsies found that they'd worn out their welcome in Fairview. I've got reason to believe they went on to Raintree. I want to know if you can trace them from there. I want to know where they are now. I'll pay the investigative fees out of my own pocket.'

'Damned right you will,' Penschley said jovially. 'Well, if they went north into New England, we can probably track them down. But if they headed south into the city or over into Jersey, I dunno. Billy, are you worried about a civil suit?'

. 'No,' he said. 'But I have to talk to that woman's husband. If that's what he was.'

'Oh,' Penschley said, and once again Halleck could read the man's thoughts as clearly as if he'd spoken them aloud:
Billy
Halleck is neatening up his affairs, balancing the books. Maybe he wants to give the old Gyp a check, maybe he only wants
to face him and apologize and give the man a chance to pop him one in the eye.

'Thank you, Kirk,' Halleck said.

'Don't mention it,' Penschley said. 'You just work on getting better.'

'Okay,' Billy said, and hung up. His coffee had gotten cold.

He was really not very surprised to find that Rand Foxworth, the assistant chief, was running things down at the Fairview police station. He greeted Halleck cordially enough, but he had a harried look, and to Halleck's practiced eye there seemed to be far too many papers in the In basket on Foxworth's desk and nowhere near enough in the Out basket. Foxworth's uniform was impeccable
...
but his eyes were bloodshot.