11/22/63

He snatched the bag before I could reach in. He used the hand that wasn’t holding the weapon, which turned out to be a bayonet. I don’t know if it was Japanese or not, but from the way it gleamed in the fading dusklight, I was willing to stipulate that it was plenty sharp.

He rummaged and brought out my Police Special. “Nothing but candybars, huh? This don’t look like candy to me, Mister Amberson.”

“I need that.”

“Yeah, and people in hell need icewater, but they don’t get it.”

“Keep your voice down,” I said.

He put my gun in his belt — exactly where I had imagined I’d put it, once I’d shoved through the hedge and into the Dunning backyard — then poked the bayonet toward my eyes. It took willpower to keep from flinching back. “Don’t you tell me what to—” He staggered on his feet. He rubbed first his stomach, then his chest, then the stubble-rough column of his neck, as if something were caught in there. I heard a click in his throat as he swallowed.

“Mr. Turcotte? Are you all right?”

“How do you know my name?” And then, without waiting for an answer: “It was Pete, wasn’t it? The bartender in the Sleepy. He told you.”

“Yes. Now I’ve got a question for you. How long have you been following me? And why?”

He grinned humorlessly, revealing a pair of missing teeth. “That’s two questions.”

“Just answer them.”

“You act like”—he winced again, swallowed again, and leaned against the back wall of the garage—“like you’re the one in charge.”

I gauged Turcotte’s pallor and distress. Mr. Keene might be a bastard with a streak of sadism, but I thought that as a diagnostician he wasn’t too bad. After all, who’s more apt to know what’s going around than the local druggist? I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to need the rest of the Kaopectate, but Bill Turcotte might. Not to mention the continence pants, once that bug really went to work.

This could be very good or very bad, I thought. But that was bullshit. There was nothing good about it.

Never mind. Keep him talking. And once the puking starts — assuming it does before he cuts my throat or shoots me with my own gun — jump him.

“Just tell me,” I said. “I think I have a right to know, since I haven’t done anything to you.”

“It’s him you mean to do something to, that’s what I think. All that real estate stuff you’ve been spouting around town — so much crap. You came here looking for him.” He nodded in the direction of the house on the other side of the hedge. “I knew it the minute his name jumped out of your mouth.”

“How could you? This town is full of Dunnings, you said so yourself.”

“Yeah, but only one I care about.” He raised the hand holding the bayonet and wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. I think I could have taken him right then, but I was afraid the sound of a scuffle might attract attention. And if the gun went off, I’d probably be the one to take the bullet.

Also, I was curious.

“He must have done you a hell of a good turn somewhere along the way to turn you into his guardian angel,” I said.

He voiced a humorless yap of a laugh. “That’s a hot one, bub, but in a way it’s true. I guess I am sort of his guardian angel. At least for now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s mine, Amberson. That son of a bitch killed my little sister, and if anyone puts a bullet in him… or a blade”—he brandished the bayonet in front of his pale, grim face—“it’s going to be me.”

9

I stared at him with my mouth open. Somewhere in the distance there was a rattle of pops as some Halloween miscreant set off a string of firecrackers. Kids were shouting their way up and down Witcham Street. But here it was just the two of us. Christy and her fellow alcoholics called themselves the Friends of Bill; we were the Enemies of Frank. A perfect team, you would say… except Bill “No Suspenders” Turcotte didn’t look like much of a team player.

“You…” I stopped and shook my head. “Tell me.”

“If you’re half as bright as you think you are, you should be able to put it together for yourself. Or didn’t Chazzy tell you enough?”

At first that didn’t compute. Then it did. The little man with the mermaid on his forearm and the cheerful chipmunk face. Only that face hadn’t looked so cheerful when Frank Dunning had clapped him on the back and told him to keep his nose clean, because it was too long to get dirty. Before that, while Frank was still telling jokes at the Tracker brothers’ bullshit table at the back of The Lamplighter, Chaz Frati had filled me in about Dunning’s bad temper… which, thanks to the janitor’s essay, was no news to me. He got a girl pregnant. After a year or two, she collected the baby and scrammed.

“Is somethin comin through on the radio waves, Commander Cody? Looks like it might be.”

“Frank Dunning’s first wife was your sister.”