Full Dark, No Stars

Elvid flapped his hand and accompanied the gesture with a roguish rol of his eyes. “I wouldn’t, as the saying goes, know a soul if it bit me on the buttocks. No, money’s the answer, as it usual y is.

Fifteen percent of your income over the next fifteen years should do it. An agenting fee, you could cal it.”

“That’s the length of my extension?” Streeter contemplated the idea of fifteen years with wistful greed. It seemed like a very long time, especial y when he stacked it next to what actual y lay ahead: six months of vomiting, increasing pain, coma, death. Plus an obituary that would undoubtedly include the phrase “after a long and courageous battle with cancer.” Yada-yada, as they said on Seinfeld.

Elvid lifted his hands to his shoulders in an expansive who-knows gesture. “Might be twenty. Can’t say for sure; this is not rocket science. But if you’re expecting immortality, fuggeddaboudit. Al I sel is fair extension. Best I can do.”

“Works for me,” Streeter said. The guy had cheered him up, and if he needed a straight man, Streeter was wil ing to oblige. Up to a point, anyway. Stil smiling, he extended his hand across the card

table. “Fifteen percent, fifteen years. Although I have to tel you, fifteen percent of an assistant bank manager’s salary won’t exactly put you behind the wheel of a Rol s-Royce. A Geo, maybe, but—”

“That’s not quite al ,” Elvid said.

“Of course it isn’t,” Streeter said. He sighed and withdrew his hand. “Mr. Elvid, it’s been very nice talking to you, you’ve put a shine on my evening, which I would have thought was impossible, and I

hope you get help with your mental prob—”

“Hush, you stupid man,” Elvid said, and although he was stil smiling, there was nothing pleasant about it now. He suddenly seemed tal er—at least three inches tal er—and not so pudgy.

It’s the light, Streeter thought. Sunset light is tricky. And the unpleasant smel he suddenly noticed was probably nothing but burnt aviation fuel, carried to this little graveled square outside the Cyclone fence by an errant puff of wind. It al made sense… but he hushed as instructed.

“Why does a man or woman need an extension? Have you ever asked yourself that?”

“Of course I have,” Streeter said with a touch of asperity. “I work in a bank, Mr. Elvid—Derry Savings. People ask me for loan extensions al the time.”

“Then you know that people need extensions to compensate for shortfalls —short credit, short dick, short sight, et cetera.”

“Yeah, it’s a short-ass world,” Streeter said.

“Just so. But even things not there have weight. Negative weight, which is the worst kind. Weight lifted from you must go somewhere else. It’s simple physics. Psychic physics, we could say.”

Streeter studied Elvid with fascination. That momentary impression that the man was tal er (and that there were too many teeth inside his smile) had gone. This was just a short, rotund fel ow who

probably had a green outpatient card in his wal et—if not from Juniper Hil , then from Acadia Mental Health in Bangor. If he had a wal et. He certainly had an extremely wel -developed delusional geography, and that made him a fascinating study.

“Can I cut to the chase, Mr. Streeter?”

“Please.”

“You have to transfer the weight. In words of one syl able, you have to do the dirty to someone else if the dirty is to be lifted from you.”

“I see.” And he did. Elvid was back on message, and the message was a classic.

“But it can’t be just anyone. The old anonymous sacrifice has been tried, and it doesn’t work. It has to be someone you hate. Is there someone you hate, Mr. Streeter?”

“I’m not too crazy about Kim Jong-il,” Streeter said. “And I think jail’s way too good for the evil bastards who blew up the USS Cole, but I don’t suppose they’l ever—”

“Be serious or begone,” Elvid said, and once again he seemed tal er. Streeter wondered if this could be some peculiar side-effect of the medications he was taking.

“If you mean in my personal life, I don’t hate anyone. There are people I don’t like —Mrs. Denbrough next door puts out her garbage cans without the lids, and if a wind is blowing, crap ends up al over my law—”

“If I may misquote the late Dino Martino, Mr. Streeter, everybody hates somebody sometime.”

“Wil Rogers said—”

“He was a rope-twirling fabricator who wore his hat down around his eyes like a little kid playing cowboy. Besides, if you real y hate nobody, we can’t do business.”

Streeter thought it over. He looked down at his shoes and spoke in a smal voice he hardly recognized as his own. “I suppose I hate Tom Goodhugh.”

“Who is he in your life?”

Streeter sighed. “My best friend since grammar school.”