Needful Things

1

Mr. Gaunt’s first “by appointment only” customer arrived promptly at eight o’clock on Tuesday morning. This was Lucille Dunham, one of the waitresses at Nan’s Luncheonette. Lucille had been struck by a deep, hopeless aching at the sight of the black pearls in one of the display cases of Needful Things. She knew she could never hope to buy such an expensive item, never in a million years. Not on the salary that skinflint Nan Roberts paid her. All the same, when Mr. Gaunt suggested that they talk about it without half the town leaning over their shoulders (so to speak), Lucille had leaped at the offer the way a hungry fish might leap at a sparkling lure.

She left Needful Things at eight-twenty, an expression of dazed, dreaming happiness on her face. She had purchased the black pearls for the unbelievable price of thirty-eight dollars and fifty cents. She had also promised to play a little prank, perfectly harmless, on that stuffed-shirt Baptist minister William Rose. That wouldn’t be work, as far as Lucille was concerned; it would be pure pleasure. The Bible-quoting stinker had never once left her a tip, not even so much as one thin dime. Lucille (a good Methodist who didn’t in the slightest mind shaking her tail to a hot boogie beat on Saturday night) had heard of storing up your reward in heaven; she wondered if Rev. Rose had heard that it was more blessed to give than to receive.

Well, she would pay him back a little… and it was really quite harmless. Mr. Gaunt had told her so.

That gentleman watched her go with a pleasant smile on his face.

He had an extremely busy day planned, extremely busy, with appointments every half hour or so and lots of telephone calls to make.

The carnival was well established: one major attraction had been tested successfully; the time to start up all the rides at once was now near at hand. As always when he reached this point, whether in Lebanon, Ankara, the western provinces of Canada, or right here in Hicksville, U.S.A he felt there were just not enough hours in the day. Yet one bent every effort toward one’s goal, for busy hands were happy hands, and to strive was in itself noble, and…. and if his old eyes did not deceive him, the day’s second customer, Yvette Gendron, was hurrying up the sidewalk toward the canopy right now.

“Busy, busy, busy day,” Mr. Gaunt murmured, and fixed a large, welcoming smile on his face.

2

Alan Pangborn arrived at his own office at eight-thirty, and there was already a message slip taped to the side of his phone. Henry Payton of the State Police had called at seven-forty-five. He wanted Alan to return the call ASAP. Alan settled into his chair, placed the telephone between his ear and his shoulder, and hit the button which auto-dialed the Oxford Barracks. From the top drawer of his desk he took four silver dollars.

“Hello, Alan,” Henry said. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news about your double murder.”

“Oh, so all at once it’s my double murder,” Alan said. He closed his fist around the four cartwheels, squeezed, and opened his hand again. Now there were three. He leaned back in his chair and cocked his feet up on his desk. “It really must be bad news.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

“Nope.” He squeezed his fist shut again and used his pinky finger to “force” the lowest silver dollar in the stack. This was an operation of some delicacy… but Alan was more than equal to the challenge. The silver dollar slipped from his fist and tumbled down his sleeve. There was a quiet chink! sound as it struck the first one, a sound that would be covered by the magician’s patter in an actual performance. Alan opened his hand again, and now there were only two cartwheels.

“Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me why not,” Henry said.

He sounded slightly testy.

“Well, I’ve spent most of the last two days thinking about it,” Alan said. Even this was an understatement. From the moment on Sunday afternoon when he had first seen that Nettle Cobb was one of the two women lying dead at the foot of the stop-sign, he had thought of little else. He even dreamed about it, and the feeling that all the numbers added up short had become a nagging certainty.

This made Henry’s call not an annoyance but a relief, and saved Alan the trouble of calling him.

He squeezed the two silver dollars in his hand.

Chink.

Opened his hand. Now there was one.

“What bothers you?” Henry asked.

“Everything,” Alan said flatly. “Starting with the fact that it happened at all. I suppose the thing that itches the worst is the way the time-table of the crime works… or doesn’t work. I keep trying to see Nettle Cobb finding her dog dead and then sitting down to write all those notes. And do you know what? I keep not being able to do it. And every time I can’t do it, I wonder how much of this stupid goddam business I’m not seeing.”

Alan squeezed his fist viciously shut, opened it, and then there were none.

“Uh-huh. So maybe my bad news is your good news. Someone else was involved, Alan. We don’t know who killed the Cobb woman’s dog, but we can be almost positive that it wasn’t Wilma Jersyck. “Alan’s feet came off the desk in a hurry. The cartwheels slid out of his sleeve and hit the top of his desk in a little silver runnel.

One of them came down on edge and rolled for the side of the desk.

Alan’s hand flicked out, spooky-quick, and snatched it back before it could get away. “I think you better tell me what you got, Henry.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s start with the dog. The body was turned over to John Palm, a D.V.M. in South Portland. He is to animals what Henry

Ryan is to people. He says that because the corkscrew penetrated the dog’s heart and it died almost instantly, he can give us a fairly restricted time of death.”

“That’s a nice change,” Alan said. He was thinking of the Agatha Christie novels which Annie had read by the dozen. In those, it seemed there was always some doddering village doctor who was more than willing to set the time of death as between 4:30 p.m. and quarter past five. After almost twenty years as a law enforcement officer, Alan knew a more realistic response to the time-of-death question was “Sometime last week. Maybe.”

“It is, isn’t it? Anyway, this Dr. Palm says the dog died between ten o’clock and noon. Peter jerzyck says that when he came into the master bedroom to get ready for church-at a little past tenhis wife was in the shower.”

“Yes, we knew it was tight,” Alan said. He was a little disappointed. “But this guy Palm must allow for a margin of error, unless he’s God. Fifteen minutes is all it takes to make Wilma look good for it.”

“Yeah? How good does she look to you, Alan?”

He considered the question, then said heavily: “To tell you the truth, old buddy, she doesn’t look that good. She never did.” Alan forced himself to add: “Just the same, we’d look pretty silly keeping this case open on the basis of some dog-doctor’s report and a gap of-what?-fifteen minutes?”

“Okay, let’s talk about the note on the corkscrew. You remember the note?”

“’Nobody slings mud at my clean sheets. I told you I’d get you.’ “The very one. The handwriting expert in Augusta is still mooning over it, but Peter jerzyck provided us with a sample of his wife’s handwriting, and I’ve got Xerox copies of both the note and the sample on the desk in front of me. They don’t match. No way do they match.”

“The hell you say!”

“The hell I don’t. I thought you were the guy who wasn’t surprised.”

“I knew something was wrong, but it’s been those rocks with the notes on them that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.

The time sequence is screwy, and that’s made me uncomfortable, yeah, but on the whole I guess I was willing to sit still for it.

Mostly because it seems like such a Wilma jerzyck thing to do. You’re sure she didn’t disguise her handwriting?” He didn’t believe it-the idea of travelling incognito had never been Wilma jerzyck’s style-but it was a possibility that had to be covered.

“Me? I’m positive. But I’m not the expert, and what I think won’t stand up in court. That’s why the note’s in graphanalysis.”

“When will the handwriting guy file his report?”

“Who knows? Meantime, take my word for it, Alan-they’re apples and oranges. Nothing alike.”

“Well, if Wilma didn’t do it, someone sure wanted Nettle to believe she did. Who? And why? Why, for God’s sake?”

“I dunno, scout-it’s your town. In the meantime, I have two more things for you.”

“Shoot.” Alan put the silver dollars back into his drawer, then made a tall, skinny man in a top-hat walk across the wall. On the return trip, the top-hat became a cane.

“Whoever killed the dog left a set of bloody fingerprints on the inner knob of Nettle’s front door-that’s big number one.”

“Hot damn!”

’Warm damn at the best, I’m afraid. They’re blurry. The perp probably left them grasping the doorknob to go out.”

“No good at all?”

“We’ve got some fragments that might be useful, although there isn’t much chance that they’d stand up in court. I’ve sent them to FBI Print-Magic in Virginia. They’re doing some pretty amazing reconstructive work on partials these days. They’re slower than cold molasses-it’ll probably be a week or even ten days before I hear back-but in the meantime, I compared the partials with the Jerzyck woman’s prints, which were delivered to me by the ever-thoughtful Medical Examiner’s office last evening.”

“No match?”

“Well, it’s like the handwriting, Alan-it’s comparing partials to totals, and if I testified in court on something like that, the defense would chew me a new asshole. But since we’re sitting at the bullshit table, so to speak, no-they’re nothing alike. There’s the question of size, for one thing. Wilma jerzyck had small hands. The partials came from someone with big hands. Even when you allow for the blurring, they are damned big hands.”

“A man’s prints?”

“I’m sure of it. But again, it’d never stand up in court.”

“Who gives a fuck?” On the wall, a shadow lighthouse suddenly appeared, then turned into a pyramid. The pyramid opened like a flower and became a goose flying through the sunshine. Alan tried to see the face of the man-not Wilma jerzyck but some manwho had gone into Nettle’s house after Nettle had left on Sunday morning. The man who had killed Nettle’s Raider with a corkscrew and then framed Wilma for it. He looked for a face and saw nothing but shadows. “Henry, who would even want to do something like this, if it wasn’t Wilma?”

“I don’t know. But I think we might have a witness to the rockthrowing incident.”

“What? Who?”

“I said might, remember.”

“I know what you said. Don’t tease me. Who is it?”

“A kid. The woman who lives next door to the jerzycks heard noises and came out to try and see what was going on. She said she thought maybe ’that bitch’-her words-had finally gotten mad enough at her husband to throw him out a window. She saw the kid pedaling away from the house, looking scared. She asked him what was going on. He said he thought maybe Mr. and Mrs. jerzyck were having a fight.

Well, that was what she thought, too, and since the noises had stopped by then, she didn’t think any more about it.”

“That must have beenjillian Mislaburski,” Alan said. “The house on the other side of the jerzyck place is empty-up for sale.”

“Yeah. Jillian Misla-whatski. That’s what I’ve got here.”

“Who was the kid?”

“Dunno. She recognized him but couldn’t come up with the name.

She says he’s from the neighborhood, though-probably from right there on the block. We’ll find him.”

“How old?”

“She said between eleven and fourteen.”

“Henry? Be a pal and let me find him. Would you do that?”

“Yep,” Henry said at once, and Alan relaxed. “I don’t understand why we have to roll these investigations when the crime happens right in the county seat, anyway. They let them fry their own fish in Portland and Bangor, so why not Castle Rock? Christ, I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce that woman’s name until you said it out loud!”

“There are a lot of Poles in The Rock,” Alan said absently. He tore a pink Traffic Warning form from the pad on his desk and jotted Jill Mislaburski’ and Boy, 11-14 on the back.

“If my guys find this kid, he’s gonna see three big State Troops and be so scared everything goes out of his head,” Henry said. “He probably knows you-don’t you go around and talk at the schools?”

“Yes, about the D.A.R.E. program and on Law and Safety Day,” Alan said. He was trying to think of families with kids on the block where the jerzycks and the Mislaburskis lived. If Jill Mislaburski recognized him but didn’t know his name, that probably meant the kid lived around the corner, or maybe on Pond Street. Alan wrote three names quickly on the sheet of scrap paper: DeLois, Rusk, Bellingham.

There were probably other families with boys in the right age-group that he couldn’t remember right off the bat, but those three would do for a start. A quick canvass would almost certainly turn the kid up.

“Did Jill know what time she heard the ruckus and saw the boy?”

Alan asked.

“She’s not sure, but she thinks it was after eleven.”

“So it wasn’t the jerzycks fighting, because the jerzycks were at Mass.”

“Right.), “Then it was the rock-thrower.”

“Right agin.”

“This one’s real weird, Henry.”

“That’s three in a row. One more and you win the toaster oven.”

“I wonder if the kid saw who it was?”

“Ordinarily I’d say ’too good to be true,’ but the Mislaburski woman said he looked scared, so maybe he did. If he did see the perp, I’ll bet you a shot and a beer it wasn’t Nettle Cobb. I think somebody played them off against each other, scout, and maybe just for the kick of the thing. just for that.”

But Alan, who knew the town better than Henry ever would, found this fantastical. “Maybe the kid did it himself,” he said.

“Maybe that’s why he looked scared. Maybe what we’ve got here is a simple case of vandalism.”

“In a world where there’s a Michael Jackson and an asshole like Axl Rose, anything’s possible, I suppose,” Henry said, “blit I’d like the possibility of vandalism a lot better if the kid was sixteen or seventeen, you know?”

“Yes,” Alan said.

“And why speculate at all, if you can find the kid? You can, can’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah. But I’d like to wait until school lets out, if that’s okay with you. It’s like you said-scaring him won’t do any good.”

“Fine by me; the two ladies aren’t going anywhere but into the ground. The reporters are around here, but they’re only a nuisance I swat em like flies.”

Alan looked out the window in time to see a newsvan from WMTW-TV go cruising slowly past, probably bound for the main courthouse entrance around the corner.

“Yeah, they’re here, too,” he said.

“Can you call me by five?”

“By four,” Alan said. “Thanks, Henry.”

“Don’t mention it,” Henry Payton said, and hung up.

Alan’s first impulse was to go get Norris Ridgewick and tell him all about this-Norris made a hell of a good sounding-board, if nothing else. Then he remembered that Norris was probably parked in the middle of Castle Lake with his new fishing rod in his hand.

He made a few more shadow-animals on the wall, then got up.

He felt restless, oddly uneasy. It wouldn’t hurt to cruise around the block where the murders had taken place. He might remember a few more families with kids in the right age-brackets if he actually looked at the houses… and who knew? Maybe what Henry had said about kids also held true for middle-aged Polish ladies who bought their clothes at Lane Bryant. Jill Mislaburski’s memory might improve if the questions were coming from someone with a familiar face.

He started to grab his uniform hat off the top of the coat tree by the door and then left it where it was. It might be better today, he decided, if I only look semi-official. As far as that goes, it wouldn’t kill me to take the station wagon.

He left the office and stood in the bullpen for a moment, bemused.

John LaPointe had turned his desk and the space around it into something that looked in need of Red Cross flood-relief. Papers were stacked up everywhere. The drawers were nested inside each other, making a Tower of Babel on John’s desk-blotter. it looked ready to fall over at any second. And John, ordinarily the most cheerful of police officers, was red-faced and cursing.

“I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap, Johnny,” Alan said, grinning.

John jumped, then turned around. He answered Alan with a grin of his own, one which was both shamefaced and distracted.

“Sorry, Alan. I-” Then Alan was moving. He crossed the room with the same liquid, silent speed that had so struck Polly Chalmers on Friday evening. John LaPointe’s mouth fell open. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw what Alan was up to-the two drawers on top of the stack he had made were starting to tumble.

Alan was fast enough to avert an utter disaster, but not fast enough to catch the first drawer. It landed on his feet, scattering papers, paper-clips, and loose bunches of staples everywhere. He pinned the other two against the side of John’s desk with his palms.

“Holy Jesus! That was lickety-split, Alan!” John exclaimed.

“Thank you, John,” Alan said with a pained smile. The drawers were starting to slip. Pushing harder did no good; it only made the desk start to move. Also, his toes hurt. “Toss all the compliments you want, by all means. But in between, maybe you could take the goddam drawer off my feet.”

“Oh! Shit! Right! Right!” John hurried to do it. In his eagerness to remove the drawer, he bumped Alan. Alan lost his tenuous pressure-hold on the rwo drawers he had caught in time. They also landed on his feet.

“Ouch!” Alan yelled. He started to grab his right foot and then decided the left one hurt worse. “Bastard!”

“Holy Jesus, Alan, I’m sorry!”

“What have you got in there?” Alan asked, hopping away with his left foot in his hand. “Half of Castle Land Quarry?”

“I guess it has been awhile since I cleaned em out.” John smiled guiltily and began stuffing papers and office supplies helter-skelter back into the drawers. His conventionally handsome face was flaming scarlet. He was on his knees, and when he pivoted to get the paper-clips and staples which had gone under Clut’s desk, he kicked over a tall stack of forms and reports that he had stacked on the floor. Now the bullpen area of the Sheriff’s Office was beginning to resemble a tornado zone.

“Whoops!” John said.

“Whoops,” Alan said, sitting on Norris Ridgewick’s desk and trying to massage his toes through his heavy black police-issue shoes. “Whoops is good, John. A very accurate description of the situation. This is a whoops if I ever saw one.”

“Sorry,” John said again, and actually wormed under his desk on his stomach, sweeping errant clips and staples toward him with the sides of his hands. Alan was not sure if he should laugh or cry.

John’s feet were wagging back and forth as he moved his hands, spreading the papers on the floor widely and evenly.

“John, get out of there!” Alan yelled. He was trying hard not to laugh, but he could tell already it was going to be a lost cause.

LaPointe jerked. His head honked briskly against the underside of his desk. And another stack of papers, one which had been deposited on the very edge of gravity to make room for the drawers, fell over the side. Most floomped straight to the floor, but dozens went seesawing lazily back and forth through the air.

He’s gonna be filing those all day, Alan thought resignedly.

Maybe all week.

Then he could hold on no longer. He threw back his head and bellowed laughter. Andy Clutterbuck, who had been in the dispatcher’s office, came out to see what was going on.

“Sheriff?” he asked. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Alan said. Then he looked at the reports and forms, scattered hell to breakfast, and began to laugh again. “John’s doing a little creative paperwork here, that’s all.”

John crawled out from under his desk and stood up. He looked like a man who wishes mightily that someone would ask him to stand at attention, or maybe hit the deck and do forty pushupsThe front of his previously immaculate uniform was covered with dust, and in spite of his amusement, Alan made a mental note it had been a long time since Eddie Warburton had taken care of the floor under these bullpen desks.

Then he began laughing again.

There was simply no help for it. Clut looked from John to Alan and then back to John again, puzzled.

“Okay,” Alan said, getting himself under control at last. “What were you looking for, John? The Holy Grail? The Lost Chord?

What?”

“My wallet,” John said, brushing ineffectually at the front of his uniform. “I can’t find my goddam wallet.”

“Did you check your car?”

“Both of them,” John said. He passed a disgusted glance over the asteroid belt of junk around his desk. “The cruiser I was driving last night and my Pontiac. But sometimes when I’m here I stick it in a desk drawer because it makes a lump against my butt when I sit down. So I was checking-”

“It wouldn’t bust your ass like that if you didn’t keep your whole goddam life in there, John,” Andy Clutterbuck said reasonably.

“Clut,” Alan said, “go play in the traffic, would you?”

“Huh?”

Alan rolled his eyes. “Go find something to do. I think John and I can handle this; we’re trained investigators. If it turns out we can’t, we’ll let you know.”

“Oh, sure. just trying to help, you know. I’ve seen his wallet.

It looks like he’s got the whole Library of Congress in there. In fact-”

“Thanks for your input, Clut. We’ll see you.”

“Okay,” Clut said. “Always glad to help. Later, dudes.”

Alan rolled his eyes. He felt like laughing again, but controlled himself. It was clear from John’s unhappy expression that it was no joke to him. He was embarrassed, but that was only part of it. Alan had lost a wallet or two in his time, and he knew w@at a shitty feeling it was. Losing the money in it and the hassle of reporting credit cards gone west was only part of it, and not necessarily the worst part, either. You kept remembering stuff you had tucked away in there, stuff that might seem like junk to someone else but was irreplaceable to you.

John was hunkered down on his hams, picking up papers, sorting them, stacking them, and looking disconsolate. Alan helped.

“Did you really hurt your toes, Alan?”

“Nah. You know these shoes-it’s like wearing Brinks trucks on your feet. How much was in the wallet, John?”

“Aw, no more’n twenty bucks, I guess. But I got my hunting license last week, and that was in there. Also my MasterCard. I’ll have to call the bank and tell them to cancel the number if I can’t find the damned wallet. But what I really want are the pictures.

Mom and Dad, my sisters… you know. Stuff like that.”

But it wasn’t the picture of his mother and father or the ones of his sisters that John really cared about; the really important one was the picture of him and Sally Ratcliffe. Clut had taken it at the Fryeburg State Fair about three months before Sally had broken up with John in favor of that stonebrain Lester Pratt.

“Well,” Alan said, “it’ll turn up. The money and the plastic may be gone, but the wallet and pictures will probably come home, John. They usually do. You know that.”

“Yeah,” John said with a sigh. “It’s just that damn, I keep trying to remember if I had it this morning when I came in to work.

I just can’t.”

“Well, I hope you find it. Stick a LOST notice up on the bulletin board, why don’t you?”

“I will. And I’ll get the rest of this mess cleaned up.”

“I know you will, John. Take it easy.”

Alan went out to the parking lot, shaking his head.

3

The small silver bell over the door of Needful Things tinkled and Babs Miller, member in good standing of the Ash Street Bridge Club, came in a little timidly.

“Mrs. Miller!” Leland Gaunt welcomed her, consulting the sheet of paper which lay beside his cash register. He made a small tickmark on it. “How good that you could come! And right on time!

It was the music box you were interested in, wasn’t it? A lovely piece of work.”

“I wanted to speak to you about it, yes,” Babs said. “I suppose it’s sold.” It was difficult for her to imagine that such a lovely thing could not have been sold. She felt her heart break a little just at the thought. The tune it played, the one Mr. Gaunt claimed he could not remember… she thought she knew just which one it must be.

She had once danced to that tune on the Pavillion at Old Orchard Beach with the captain of the football team, and later that same evening she had willingly given up her virginity to him under a gorgeous May moon.

He had given her the first and last orgasm of her life, and all the while it had been roaring through her veins, that tune had been twisting through her head like a burning wire.

“No, it’s right here,” Mr. Gaunt said. He took it from the glass case where it had been hiding behind the Polaroid camera and set it on top. Babs Miller’s face lit up at the sight of it.

“I’m sure it’s more than I could afford,” Babs said, “all at once, that is, but I really like it, Mr. Gaunt, and if there was any chance that I could pay for it in installments… any chance at all - -.”

Mr. Gaunt smiled. It was an exquisite, comforting smile. “I think you’re needlessly worried,” said he. “You’re going to be surprised at how reasonable the price of this lovely music box is, Mrs.

Miller.

Very surprised. Sit down. Let’s talk about it.”

She sat down.

He came toward her.

His eyes captured hers.

That tune started up in her head again.

And she was lost.

4

“I remember now,” Jillian Mislaburski told Alan. “It was the Rusk boy. Billy, I think his name is. Or maybe it’s Bruce.”

They were standing in her living room, which was dominated by the Sony TV and a gigantic plaster crucified Jesus which hung on the wall behind it. Oprah was on the tube. judging from the way Jesus had His eyes rolled up under His crown of thorns, Alan thought He would maybe have preferred Geraldo. Or Divorce Court. Mrs. Mislaburski had offered Alan a cup of coffee, which he had refused.

“Brian,” he said.

“That’s right!” she said. “Brian!”

She was wearing her bright green wrapper but had dispensed with the red doo-rag this morning. Curls the size of the cardboard cylinders one finds at the centers of toilet-paper rolls stood out around her head in a bizarre corona.

“Are you sure, Mrs. Mislaburski?”

“Yes. I remembered who he was this morning when I got up.

His father put the aluminum siding on our house two years ago.

The boy came over and helped out for awhile. He seemed like a nice boy to me.”

“Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?”

“He said he wanted to ask if they’d hired anyone to shovel their driveway this winter. I think that was it. He said he’d come back later, when they weren’t fighting. The poor kid looked scared to death, and I don’t blame him.” She shook her head. The large curls bounced softly. “I’m sorry she died the way she did…” Jill Mislaburski lowered her voice confidentially. “But I’m happy for Pete.

No one knows what he had to put up with, married to that woman.

No one.” She looked meaningfully at Jesus on the wall, then back at Alan again.

“Uh-huh,” Alan said. “Did you notice anything else, Mrs.

Mislaburski? Anything about the house, or the sounds, or the boy?”

She put a finger against her nose and cocked her head. “Well, not really. The boy-Brian Rusk-had a cooler in his bike basket.

I remember that, but I don’t suppose that’s the kind of thing-”

“Whoa,” Alan said, raising his hand. A bright light had gone on I for a moment at the front of his mind. “A cooler?”

“You know, the kind you take on picnics or to tailgate parties?

I only remember it because it was really too big for his bike basket.

It was in there crooked. It looked like it might fall out.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mislaburski,” Alan said slowly. “Thank you very much.”

“Does it mean something? Is it a clue?”

“Oh, I doubt it.” But he wondered.

I’d like the possibility of vandalism a lot better if the kid was sixteen or seventeen, Henry Payton had said. Alan had felt the same way… but he had come across twelve-year-old vandals before, and he guessed you could tote a pretty fair number of rocks in one of those picnic coolers.

Suddenly he began to feel a good deal more interested in the talk he would be having with young Brian Rusk this afternoon.

5

The silver bell tinkled. Sonny jackett came into Needful Things slowly, warily, kneading his grease-stained Sunoco cap in his hands.

His manner was that of a man who sincerely believes he will soon break many expensive things no matter how much he doesn’t want to; breaking things, his face proclaimed, was not his desire but his karma.

“Mr. jackett!” Leland Gaunt cried his customary welcome with his customary vigor, and then made another tiny check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. “So glad you could stop by!”

Sonny advanced three steps farther into the room and then stopped, glancing warily from the glass cases to Mr. Gaunt.

“Well,” he said, “I didn’t come in to buy nuthin. Got to put you straight on that. Ole Harry Samuels said you ast if I’d stop by this mornin if I had a chance. Said you had a socket-wrench set that was some nice. I been lookin for one, but this ain’t no store for the likes of me. I’m just makin my manners to you, sir.”

“Well, I appreciate your honesty,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but you don’t want to speak too soon, Mr. jackett. This is one nice set of sockets-double-measure adjustable.”

“Oh, ayuh?” Sonny raised his eyebrows. He knew there were such things, which made it possible to work on both foreign and domestic cars with the same socket-wrenches, but he had never actually seen such a rig. “That so?”

“Yes. I put them in the back room, Mr. Jackett, as soon as I heard you were looking. Otherwise they would have gone almost at once, and I wanted you to at least see them before I sold the set to someone else.”

Sonny jackett reacted to this with instant Yankee suspicion.

“Now, why would you want to do that?”

“Because I have a classic car, and classic cars need frequent repairs. I’ve been told you’re the best mechanic this side of Derry.”

“Oh.” Sonny relaxed. “Mayhap I am. What’ve you got for wheels?”

“A Tucker.”

Sonny’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at Mr. Gaunt with a new respect. “A Torpedo! Fancy that!”

“No. I have a Talisman.”

“Ayuh? Never heard of a Tucker Talisman.”

“There were only two built-the prototype and mine. In 1953, that was. Mr. Tucker moved to Brazil not long after, where he died.” Mr.

Gaunt smiled mistily. “Preston was a sweet fellow, and a wizard when it came to auto design… but he was no businessman.”

“That so?”

“Yes.” The mist in Mr. Gaunt’s eyes cleared. “But that’s yesterday, and this is today! Turn the page, eh, Mr. jackett? Turn the page, I always say-face front, march cheerily into the future, and never look back!”

Sonny regarded Mr. Gaunt from the corners of his eyes with some unease and said nothing.

“Let me show you the socket-wrenches.”

Sonny didn’t agree at once. Instead, he looked doubtfully at the contents of the glass cases again. “Can’t afford nothing too nice.

Got bills a mile high. Sometimes I think I ought to get right the hell out of hiness and go on the County.”

“I know what you mean,” Mr. Gaunt said. “It’s the damned Republicans, that’s what I think.”

Sonny’s knotted, distrustful face relaxed all at once. “You’re goddamned right about that, chummy!” he exclaimed. “George Bush has damn near ruint this country… him and his goddam war! But do you think the Democrats have anyone to put up against ’im next year who can win?”

“Doubtful,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“Jesse Jackson, for instance-a nagger.”

He looked truculently at Mr. Gaunt, who inclined his head slightly, as if to say Yes, my friend-speak your mind. We are both men of the world who are not afraid to call a spade a spade. Sonny jackett relaxed a little more, less self-conscious about the grease on his hands now, more at home.

“I got nothing against niggers, you understand, but the idear of ajigintheWhiteHouse theWhiteHouse!-givesmetheshivers.”

“Of course it does,” Mr. Gaunt agreed.

“And that wop from New York-Mar-i-o Koo-whoa-mo! Do you think a guy with a name like that can beat that four-eyed dink in the White House?”

“No,” Mr. Gaunt said. He held up his right hand, the long first finger placed about a quarter of an inch from his spatulate, ugly thumb. “Besides, I mistrust men with tiny heads.”

Sonny gaped for a moment, then slapped his knee and gasped wheezy laughter. “Mistrust men with tiny- Say! That’s pretty good, mister!

That’s pretty goddam good!”

Mr. Gaunt was grinning.

They grinned at each other.

Mr. Gaunt got the set of socket-wrenches, which came in a leather case lined with black velvet-the most beautiful set of chrome-steel alloy socket-wrenches Sonny jackett had ever seen.

They grinned over the socket-wrenches, baring their teeth like monkeys that will soon fight.

And, of course, Sonny bought the set. The price was amazingly low-a hundred and seventy dollars, plus a couple of really amusing tricks to be played on Don Hemphill and the Rev. Rose. Sonny told Mr.

Gaunt it would be a pleasure-he would enjoy stinking up those psalm-singing Republican sonofawhores’ lives.

They grinned over the tricks to be played on Steamboat Willie and Don Hemphill.

Sonny jackett and Leland Gaunt-just a couple of grinning men of the world.

And over the door, the little silver bell jingled.

6

Henry Beaufort, owner and operator of The Mellow Tiger, lived in a house about a quarter of a mile from his place of business.

Myra Evans parked in the Tiger’s parking-lot-empty now in the hot, unseasonable morning sunshine-and walked to the house.

Considering the nature of her errand, this seemed a reasonable precaution. She needn’t have worried. The Tiger didn’t close until one in the a.m and Henry rarely rose much before that same hour in the p.m. All the shades, both upstairs and down, were drawn. His car, a perfectly maintained 1960 Thunderbird that was his pride and joy, stood in the driveway.

Myra was wearing a pair of jeans and one of her husband’s blue work-shirts. The tail of the shirt was out and hung almost to her knees. It concealed the belt she wore beneath, and the scabbard hanging from the belt. Chuck Evans was a collector of World War II memorabilia (and, although she did not know it, he had already made a purchase of his own in this area at the town’s new shop), and there was a Japanese bayonet in the scabbard. Myra had taken it half an hour ago from the wall of Chuck’s basement den. It bumped solidly against her right thigh at every step.

She was very anxious to get this job done, so she could get back to the picture of Elvis. Holding the picture, she had discovered, produced a kind of story. It wasn’t a real story, but in most waysall ways, actually-she considered it better than a real story. Act I was The Concert, where The King pulled her up on stage to dance with him.

Act II was The Green Room After The Show, and Act III was In the Limo- One of Elvis’s Memphis guys was driving the limo, and The King didn’t even bother to put up the black glass between the driver and them before doing the most outrageous and delicious things to her in the back seat as they drove to the airport.

Act IV was titled On the Plane. In this act they were in the Lisa Marie, Elvis’s Convair jet… in the big double bed behind the partition at the back of the cabin, to be exact. That was the act Myra had been enjoying yesterday and this morning: cruising at thirty-two thousand feet in the Lisa Marie, cruising in bed with The King.

She wouldn’t have minded staying there with him forever, but she knew that she wouldn’t. They were bound for Act V: Graceland.

Once they were there, things could only get better.

But she had this little piece of business to take care of first.

She had been lying in bed this morning after her husband left, naked except for her garter-belt (The King had been very clear in his desire for Myra to leave that on), the picture clasped tightly in her hands, moaning and writhing slowly on the sheets. And then, suddenly, the double bed was gone. The whisper-drone of the Lisa Marie’s engines was gone. The smell of The King’s English Leather was gone.

In the place of these wonderful things was Mr. Gaunt’s face… only he no longer looked as he did in his shop. The skin on his face looked blistered, seared with some fabulous secret heat. It pulsed and writhed, as if there were things beneath, struggling to get out. And when he smiled, his big square teeth had become a double row of fangs.

“It’s time, Myra,” Mr. Gaunt had said. “I want to be with Elvis,” she whined. “I’ll do it, but not right now-please, not right now.”

“Yes, right now. You promised, and you’re going to make good on your promise. You’ll be very sorry if you don’t, Myra.”

She had heard a brittle cracking. She looked down and saw with horror that a ’agged crack now split the glass over The King’s face.

“No!” she cried. “No, don’t do that!”

“I’m not doing it,” Mr. Gaunt had responded with a laugh.

“You’re doing it. You’re doing it by being a silly, lazy little cuntThis is America, Myra, where only whores do business in bed. In America respectable people have to get out of bed and earn the things they need, or lose them forever. I think you forgot that. Of course, I can always find somebody else to play that little trick on Mr. Beaufort, but as for your beautiful affaire de coeur with The King-” Another crack raced like a silver lightning-bolt across the glass covering the picture. And the face beneath it, she observed with mounting horror, was growing old and wrinkled and raddled as the corrupting air seeped in and went to work on it.

“No! I’ll do it! I’ll do it right now! I’m getting up right now, see?

Only make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!”

Myra had leaped to the floor with the speed of a woman who has discovered she is sharing her bed with a nest of scorpions.

“When you keep your promise, Myra,” Mr. Gaunt said. Now he was speaking from some deep sunken hollow in her mind. “You know what to do, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know!” Myra looked despairingly at the picture-the image of an old, ill man, his face puffy from years of excess and indulgence.

The hand which held the microphone was a vulture’s talon.

“When you come back with your mission accomplished,” Mr.

Gaunt said, “the picture will be fine. Only don’t let anyone see you, Myra. If anyone sees you, you’ll never see him again.”

“I won’t!” she babbled. “I swear I won’t!”

And now, as she reached Henry Beaufort’s house, she remembered that admonition. She looked around to make sure no one was coming along the road. It was deserted in both directions. A crow cawed somnolently in someone’s October-barren field. There was no other sound. The day seemed to throb like a living thing, and the land lay stunned within the slow beat of its unseasonable heart.

Myra walked up the driveway, pulling up the tail of the blue shirt, feeling to make sure of the scabbard and the bayonet inside it.

Sweat ran, trickling and itching, down the center of her back and under her bra. Although she didn’t know it and wouldn’t have believed it if told, she had achieved a momentary beauty in the rural stillness.

Her vague, unthoughtful face had filled, at least during these moments, with a deep purpose and determination which had never been there before. Her cheekbones were clearly defined for the first time since high school, when she had decided her mission in life was to eat every Yodel and Ding-Dong and Hoodsie Rocket in the world. During the last four days or so, she had been much too busy having progressively weirder and weirder sex with The King to think much about eating. Her hair, which usually hung around her face in a lank, floppy rug, was tied back in a tight little horsetail, exposing her brow. Perhaps shocked by the sudden overdose of hormones and the equally sudden cutback in sugar consumption after years of daily overdoses, most of the pimples that had flared on her face like uneasy volcanoes ever since she was twelve had gone into remission. Even more remarkable were her eyes-wide, blue, almost feral. They were not the eyes of Myra Evans, but of some jungle beast that might turn vicious at any moment.

She reached Henry’s car. Now something was coming along 117-an old, rattling farm-truck headed for town. Myra slipped around to the front of the T-Bird and crouched behind its grille until the truck was gone. Then she stood up again. From the breast pocket of her shirt she took a folded sheet of paper. She opened it, smoothed it carefully, and then stuck it under one of the Bird’s windshield wipers so the brief message written there showed clearly.

DON’T YOU EVER CUT ME OFF AND THEN KEEP MY CAR KEYS YOU DAMNED FROG IT READ. it was time for the bayonet.

She took another quick glance around, but the only thing moving in the whole hot daylight world was a single crow, perhaps the one which had called before. It flapped down to the top of a telephone pole directly across from the driveway and seemed to watch her.

Myra took the bayonet out, gripped it tightly in both hands, stooped, and rammed it up to the hilt in the whitewall on the driver’s-side front. Her face was pulled back in a wincing snarl, anticipating a loud bang, but there was only a sudden breathless hooooosh!-the sound a big man might make after a sucker-punch to the gut. The T-Bird settled appreciably to the left. Myra yanked the bayonet, tearing the hole wider, grateful Chuck liked to keep his toys sharp.

When she had cut a ragged rubber smile in the rapidly deflating tire, she went around to the one on the passenger-side front and did it again. She was still anxious to get back to her picture, but she found she was glad she had come, just the same. This was sort of exciting.

The thought of Henry’s face when he saw what had happened to his precious Thunderbird was actually making her horny. God knew why, but she thought that when she finally got back on board the Lisa Marie, she might have a new trick or two to show The King.

She moved on to the rear tires. The bayonet did not cut quite so easily now, but she made up for it with her own enthusiasm, sawing energetically through the sidewalls of the tires.

When the job was done, when all four tires were not just punctured but gutted, Myra stepped back to survey her work. She was breathing rapidly, and she armed sweat off her forehead in a quick, mannish gesture. Henry Beaufort’s Thunderbird now sat a good six inches lower on the driveway than it had when she arrived. It rested on its wheeirims with the expensive radials spread out around them in wrinkled rubber puddles. And then, although she had not been asked to do so, Myra decided to add the extra touch that means so much. She raked the tip of the bayonet down the side of the car, splitting the deeply polished surface with a long, jagged scratch.

The bayonet made a small, wailing screech against the metal and Myra looked at the house, suddenly sure that Henry Beaufort must have heard, that the shade in the bedroom window was suddenly going to flap up and he would be looking out at her.

It didn’t happen, but she knew it was time to leave. She had overstayed her welcome here, and besides-back in her own bedroom, The King awaited. Myra hurried down the driveway, reseating the bayonet in its scabbard and then dropping the tail of Chuck’s shirt over it again.

One car passed her before she got back to The Mellow Tiger, but it was going the other way-assuming the driver wasn’t ogling her in his rearview mirror, he would have seen only her back.

She slid into her own car, yanked the rubber band out of her hair, allowing her locks to fall around her face in their usual limp fashion, and drove back to town. She did this one-handed. Her other hand had business to take care of below her waist. She let herself into her house and bounded up the stairs by twos. The picture was on the bed, where she had left it. Myra kicked off her shoes, pushed her jeans down, grabbed the picture, and jumped into bed with it. The cracks in the glass were gone; The King had been restored to youth and beauty.

The same could be said for Myra Evans… at least temporarily.

7

Over the door, the silver bell sang its ’ingly little tune.

“Hello, Mrs. Potter!” Leland Gaunt said cheerily. He made a tick-mark on the sheet by the cash register. “I’d about decided you weren’t going to come by.”

“I almost didn’t,” Lenore Potter said. She looked upset, distracted. Her silver hair, usually coiffed to perfection, had been tacked up in an indifferent bun. An inch of her slip was showing beneath the hem of her expensive gray twill skirt, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. The eyes themselves were restless, shooting from place to place with baleful, angry suspicion.

“It was the Howdy Doody puppet you wanted to look at, wasn’t it?

I believe you told me you have quite a collection of children’s memorab-”

“I really don’t believe I can look at such gentle things today, you know,” Lenore said. She was the wife of the richest lawyer in Castle Rock, and she spoke in clipped, lawyerly tones. “I’m in an extremely poor frame of mind. I’m having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!”

Mr. Gaunt stepped around the main display case and came toward her, his face instantly filled with concern and sympathy. “My dear lady, what’s happened? You look dreadful!”

“Of course I look dreadful!” she snapped. “The normal flow of my psychic aura has been disrupted-badly disrupted! Instead of blue, the color of calm and serenity, my entire calava has gone bright magenta!

And it’s all the fault of that bitch across the street!

That high-box bitch!”

Mr. Gaunt made peculiar soothing gestures which never quite touched any part of Lenore Potter’s body. “What bitch is that, Mrs.

Potter?” he asked, knowing perfectly well.

“Bonsaint, of course! Bonsaint! That nasty lying Stephanie Bonsaint! My aura has never been magenta before, Mr. Gaunt! Deep pink a few times, yes, and once, after I was almost run down in the street by a drunk in Oxford, I think it might have turned red for a few minutes, but it has never been magenta! I simply cannot live like this!”

“Of course not,” Mr. Gaunt soothed. “No one could expect you to, my dear.”

His eyes finally captured hers. This was not easy with Mrs.

Potter’s gaze darting around in such a distracted manner, but he did finally manage. And when he did, Lenore calmed almost at once.

Looking into Mr. Gaunt’s eyes, she discovered, was almost like looking into her own aura when she had been doing all her exercises, eating the right foods (bean-sprouts and tofu, mostly), and maintaining the surfaces of her calava with at least an hour of meditation when she arose in the morning and again before she went to bed at night. His eyes were the faded, serene blue of desert skies.

“Come,” he said. “Over here.” He led her to the short row of three high-backed plush velvet chairs where so many citizens of Castle Rock had sat over the last week. And when she was seated, Mr. Gaunt invited: “Tell me all about it.”

“She’s always hated me,” Lenore said. “She’s always thought that her husband hasn’t risen in the Firm as fast as she wanted because my husband kept him back. And that I put him up to it. She is a woman with a small mind and a big bosom and a dirty-gray aura.

You know the type.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“But I never knew how much she hated me until this morning!”

Lenore Potter was growing agitated again in spite of Mr. Gaunt’s settling influence. “I got up and my flowerbeds were absolutely ruined! Ruined! Everything that was lovely yesterday is dying today!

Everything which was soothing to the aura and nourishing to the calava has been murdered! By that bitch! By that fucking Bonsaint BITCH!”

Lenore’s hands closed into fists, hiding the elegantly manicured nails. The fists drummed on the carved arms of the chair.

“Chrysanthemums, cimicifuga, asters, marigolds… that bitch came over in the night and tore them all out of the ground! Threw them everywhere! Do you know where my ornamental cabbages are this morning, Mr. Gaunt?”

“No-where?” he asked her tenderly, still making those stroking motions just above her body.

He actually had a good idea of where they were, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who was responsible for the calavadestroying mess: Melissa Clutterbuck. Lenore Potter did not suspect Deputy Clutterbuck’s wife because she didn’t know Deputy Clutterbuck’s wife-nor did Melissa Clutterbuck know Lenore, except to say hello to on the street. There had been no malice on Melissa’s part (except, of course, Mr. Gaunt thought, for the normal malicious pleasure anyone feels when tearing hell out of someone else’s much-beloved possessions). She had torn up Lenore Potter’s flowerbeds in partial payment for a set of Limoges china. When you got right down to the bottom of the thing, it was strictly business.

Enjoyable, yes, Mr. Gaunt thought, but whoever said that business always had to be a drag?

“My flowers are in the street!” Lenore shouted. “In the middle of Castle View! She didn’t miss a trick! Even the African daisies are gone! All gone! All… gone!”

“Did you see her?”

“I didn’t need to see her! She’s the only one who hates me enough to do something like that. And the flowerbeds are full of the marks of her high heels. I swear that little trollop wears her heels even to bed.

“Oh Mr. Gaunt,” she wailed, “every time I close my eyes everything goes all purple! What am I going to do?”

Mr. Gaunt said nothing for a moment. He only looked at her, fixing her with his eyes until she grew calm and distant.

“Is that better?” he asked finally.

“Yes!” she replied in a faint, relieved voice. “I believe I can see the blue again…”

“But you’re too upset to even think about shopping.”

“Yes.

“Considering what that bitch did to you.”

“Yes…”

“She ought to pay.”

“Yes.”

“If she ever tries anything like that again, she will pay.”

“Yes!”

“I may have just the thing. Sit right there, Mrs. Potter. I’ll be back in a l’iffy- In the meantime, think blue thoughts.”

“Blue,” she agreed dreamily.

When Mr. Gaunt returned, he put one of the automatic pistols Ace had brought back from Cambridge into Lenore Potter’s hands.

It was fully loaded and gleamed a greasy blue-black under the display lights.

Lenore raised the gun to eye level. She looked at it with deep pleasure and even deeper relief “Now, I would never urge anyone to shoot anyone else,” Mr.

Gaunt said. “Not without a very good reason, at least. But you sound like a woman who might have a very good reason, Mrs. Potter.

Not the flowers-we both know they are not the important thing. Flowers are replaceable. But your karma… your calava… well, what else do we-any of us-really have?” And he laughed deprecatingly.

“Nothing,” she agreed, and pointed the automatic at the wall.

“Pow. Pow, pow, pow. That’s for you, you envying little roundheels trollop. I hope your husband ends up town garbage collector. It’s what he deserves. It’s what you both deserve.”

“You see that little lever there, Mrs. Potter?” He pointed it out to her.

“Yes, I see it.”

“That’s the safety catch. If the bitch should come over again, trying to do more damage, you’d want to push that first. Do you understand?”

“Oh yes,” Lenore said in her sleeper’s voice. “I understand perfectly. Ka-pow.”

“No one would blame you. After all, a woman has to protect her property. A woman has to protect her karma. The Bonsaint creature probably won’t come again, but if she does.

He looked at her meaningfully.

“If she does, it will be for the last time.” Lenore raised the short barrel of the automatic to her lips and kissed it softly.

Now put that in your purse,” Mr. Gaunt said, “and get on home.

Why, for all you know, she could be in your yard right now.

In fact, she could be in your house.”

Lenore looked alarmed at this. Thin threads of sinister purple began to twist and twine through her blue aura. She got up, stuffing the automatic into her purse. Mr. Gaunt looked away from her and she blinked her eyes rapidly several times as soon as he did.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to look at Howdy Doody another time, Mr.

Gaunt. I think I’d better go home. For all I know, that Bonsaint woman could be in my yard right now, while I’m here. She might even be in my house!”

“What a terrible idea,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“Yes, but property is a responsibility-it must be protected. We have to face these things, Mr. Gaunt. How much do I owe you for the… the…” But she could not remember exactly what it was he had sold her, although she was sure she would very soon now.

She gestured vaguely at her purse instead.

“No charge to you. Those are on special today. Think of it as…” His smile widened. “… as a free get-acquainted gift.”

“Thank you,” Lenore said. “I feel ever so much better.”

“As always,” said Mr. Gaunt with a little bow, “I am glad to have been of service.”

8

Norris Ridgewick was not fishing.

Norris Ridgewick was looking in Hugh Priest’s bedroom window.

Hugh lay on his bed in a loose heap, snoring at the ceiling. He wore only a pair of pee-stained boxer shorts. Clutched in his big, knuckly hands was a matted piece of fur. Norris couldn’t be sureHugh’s hands were very big and the window was very dirty-but he thought it was an old moth-eaten fox-tail. It didn’t matter what it was, anyway; what mattered was that Hugh was asleep.

Norris walked back down the lawn to where his personal car stood parked behind Hugh’s Buick in the driveway. He opened the passenger door and leaned in. His fishing reel was sitting on the floor. The Bazun rod was in the back seat-he found he felt better, safer, if he kept it with him.

It was still unused. The truth was just this simple: he was afraid to use it. He had taken it out on Castle Lake yesterday, all fitted up and ready to go… and then had hesitated just before making his first cast, with the rod cocked back over his shoulder.

What if, he thought, a really big fish takes the lure? Smokey, for instance?

Smokey was an old brown trout, the stuff of legend among the fisherpeople of Castle Rock. He was reputed to be over two feet long, wily as a weasel, strong as a stoat, tough as nails. According to the oldtimers, Smokey’s jaw bristled with the steel of anglers who had hooked him… but had been unable to hold him.

What if he snaps the rod?

It seemed crazy to believe that a lake-trout, even a big one like Smokey (if Smokey actually existed), could snap a Bazun rod, but Norris supposed it was possible… and the way his luck had been running just lately, it might really happen. He could hear the brittle snap in his head, could feel the agony of seeing the rod in two pieces, one of them in the bottom of the boat and the other floating alongside. And once a rod was broken, it was Katy bar the doorthere wasn’t a thing you could do with it except throw it away.

So he had ended up using the old Zebco after all. There had been no fish for dinner last night… but he had dreamed of Mr.

Gaunt. In the dream Mr. Gaunt had been wearing hip-waders and an old fedora with feathered lures dancing jauntily around the brim.

He was sitting in a rowboat about thirty feet out on Castle Lake while Norris stood on the west shore with his dad’s old cabin, which had burned down ten years before, behind him. He stood and listened while Mr. Gaunt talked. Mr. Gaunt had reminded Norris of his promise, and Norris had awakened with a sense of utter certainty: he had done the right thing yesterday, putting the Bazun aside in favor of the old Zebco. The Bazun rod was too nice, far too nice. It would be criminal to risk it by actually using it.

Now Norris opened his reel. He took out a long fish-gutting knife and walked over to Hugh’s Buick.

Nobody deserves it more than this drunken slob, he told himself, but something inside didn’t agree. Something inside told him he was making a black and woeful mistake from which he might never recover.

He was a policeman; part of his job was to arrest people who did the sort of thing he was about to do. It was vandalism, that was exactly what it came down to, and vandals were bad guys.

You decide, Norris. The voice of Mr. Gaunt spoke up suddenly in his mind. It’s your fishing rod. And it’s your God-given right offree will, too. You have a choice. You always have a choice. ButThe voice in Norris Ridgewick’s head didn’t finish. It didn’t need to. Norris knew what the consequences of turning away now would be. When he went back to his car, he would find the Bazun broken in two. Because every choice had consequences. Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn’t pay, or refused to pay, you would remain needful forever.

Besides, he’d do it to me, Norris thought petulantly. And not for a nice fishing rod like my Bazun, either. Hugh Priest would cut his own mother’s throat for a bottle of Old Duke and a pack of Luckies.

Thus he refuted guilt. When the something inside tried to protest again, tried to tell him to please think before he did this, think, he smothered it. Then he bent down and began to carve up the tires of Hugh’s Buick. His enthusiasm, like Myra Evans’s, grew as he worked.

As an extra added attraction, he smashed the Buick’s headlights and the taillights, too. He finished by putting a note which read)7(/sr AwAo2Aji#v40 @oo KWOcj Wft,+TILt- ONE AFriFit mexr r#mF ftsejei-,)(0 p if A v jr 14 C KC- D M y’ f OCKOLA it 0T-#tf- L*$T -rlmg. 5-rAY OUTOF- MY t5tie under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side.

With the job done he crept back up to the bedroom window, his heart hammering heavily in his narrow chest. Hugh Priest was still deeply asleep, clutching that ratty runner of fur.

Who in God’s name would want a dirty old thing like that?

Norris wondered. He’s holding onto it like it was his fucking teddy bear.

He went back to his car. He got in, shifted into neutral, and let his old Beetle roll soundlessly down the driveway. He didn’t start the engine until the car was on the road. Then he drove away as fast as he could. He had a headache. His stomach was rolling around nastily in his guts. And he kept telling himself it didn’t matter; he felt good, he felt good, goddammit, he felt really good.

It didn’t work very well until he reached back between the seats and grasped the limber, narrow fishing rod in his left fist. Then he began to feel calm again.

Norris held it like that all the way home.

9

The silver bell jingled.

Slopey Dodd walked into Needful Things.

“Hullo, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said.

“Huh-Huh-Hello, Mr. G-G-Guh-”

“You don’t need to stutter around me, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said.

He raised one of his hands with the first two fingers extended in a fork. He drew them down through the air in front of Slopey’s homely face, and Slopey felt something-a tangled, knotted snarl in his mind-magically dissolve. His mouth fell open.

“What did you do to me?” he gasped. The words ran perfectly out of his mouth, like beads on a string.

“A trick Miss Ratcliffe would undoubtedly love to learn,” Mr.

Gaunt said. He smiled and made a mark beside Slopey’s name on his sheet. He glanced at the grand father clock ticking contentedly away in the corner. It was quarter to one. “Tell me how you got out of school early. Will anyone be suspicious?”

“No.” Slopey’s face was still amazed, and he appeared to be trying to look down at his own mouth, as if he could actually see the words tumbling from it in such unprecedented good order. “I told Mrs.

DeWeese I felt sick to my stomach. She sent me to the school nurse. I told the nurse I felt better, but still sick. She asked me if I thought I could walk home. I said yes, so she let me go.”

Slopey paused. “I came because I fell asleep in study hall. I dreamed you were calling me.”

“I was.” Mr. Gaunt tented his oddly even fingers beneath his chin and smiled at the boy. “Tell me-did your mother like the pewter teapot you got her?”

A blush mounted into Slopey’s cheeks, turning them the color of old brick. He started to say something, then gave up and inspected his feet instead.

In his softest, kindest voice, Mr. Gaunt said: “You kept it yourself, didn’t you?”

Slopey nodded, still looking at his feet. He felt ashamed and confused. Worst of all, he felt a terrible sense of loss and griefsomehow Mr. Gaunt had dissolved that tiresome, infuriating knot in his head… and what good did it do? He was too embarrassed to talk.

“Now what, pray tell, does a twelve-year-old boy want with a pewter teapot?”

Slopey’s cowlick, which had bobbed up and down a few seconds ago, now waved from side to side as he shook his head. He didn’t know what a twelve-year-old boy wanted with a pewter teapot. He only knew that he wanted to keep it. He liked it. He really… really… liked it.

“… feels,” he muttered at last.

“Pardon me?” Mr. Gaunt asked, raising his single wavy eyebrow.

“I like the way it feels, I said!”

“Slopey, Slopey,” Mr. Gaunt said, coming around the counter, “you don’t have to explain to me. I know all about that peculiar thing people call ’pride of possession.’ I have made it the cornerstone of my career.”

Slopey Dodd shrank away from Mr. Gaunt in alarm. “Don’t you touch me! Please don’t!”

“Slopey, I have no more intention of touching you than I do of telling you to give your mother the teapot. It’s yours. You can do anything you want with it. In fact, I applaud your decision to keep it.”

“You… you do?”

“I do! Indeed I do! Selfish people are happy people. I believe that with all my heart. But Slopey…”

Slopey raised his head a little and looked fearfully through the hanging fringe of his red hair at Leland Gaunt.

“The time has come for you to finish paying for it.”

“Oh!” An expression of vast relief filled Slopey’s face. “Is that all you wanted me for? I thought maybe…” But he either couldn’t or didn’t dare finish. He hadn’t been sure what Mr. Gaunt had wanted.

“Yes. Do you remember who you promised to play a trick on?”

“Sure. Coach Pratt.”

“Right. There are two parts to this prank-you have to put something somewhere, plus you have to tell Coach Pratt something.

And if you follow directions exactly, the teapot will be yours forever.”

“Can I talk like this, too?” Slopey asked eagerly. “Can I talk without stuttering forever, too?”

Mr. Gaunt sighed regretfully. “I’m afraid you’ll go back to the way you were as soon as you leave my shop, Slopey. I believe I do have an anti-stuttering device somewhere in stock, but-”

“Please! Please, Mr. Gaunt! I’ll do anything! I’ll do anything to anyone! I hate to stutter!”

“I know you would, but that’s just the problem, don’t you see?

I am rapidly running out of pranks which need to be played; my dance-card, you might say, is nearly full. So you couldn’t pay me.”

Slopey hesitated a long time before speaking again. When he did, his voice was low and diffident. “Couldn’t you… I mean, do you ever just… give things away, Mr. Gaunt?”

Leland Gaunt’s face grew deeply sorrowful. “Oh, Slopey! How often I’ve thought of it, and with such longing! There is a deep, untapped well of charity in my heart. But…

“But?”

“It just wouldn’t be business,” Mr. Gaunt finished. He favored Slopey with a compassionate smile… but his eyes sparkled so wolfishly that Slopey took a step backward. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Uh… yeah! Sure!”

“Besides,” Mr. Gaunt went on, “the next few hours are crucial to me. Once things really get rolling, they can rarely be stopped… but for the time being, I must make prudence my watchword.

If you suddenly stopped stuttering, it might raise questions.

That would be bad. The Sheriff is already asking questions he has no business asking.” His face darkened momentarily, and then his ugly, charming, jostling smile burst forth again. “But I intend to take care of him, Slopey. Ah, yes.”

“Sheriff Pangborn, you mean?”

“Yes-Sheriff Pangborn, that’s what I mean to say.” Mr. Gaunt raised his first two fingers and once again drew them down in front of Slopey Dodd’s face, from forehead to chin. “But we never talked about him, did we?”

“Talked about who?” Slopey asked, bewildered.

“Exactly. “Leland Gaunt was wearing a jacket of dark-gray suede today, and from one of its pockets he produced a black leather wallet.

He held it out to Slopey, who took it gingerly, being careful not to touch Mr. Gaunt’s fingers.

“You know Coach Pratt’s car, don’t you?”

“The Mustang? Sure.”

“Put this in it. Under the passenger seat, with just a corner sticking out. Go to the high school right now-it wants to be there before the last bell. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re to wait until he comes out. And when he does…

Mr. Gaunt went on speaking in a low murmur, and Slopey looked up at him, jaw slack, eyes dazed, nodding every once in awhile.

Slopey Dodd left a few minutes later with john LaPointe’s wallet tucked into his shirt.