Needful Things

CHAPTER TWENTY

After Buster finished with Myrtle, he fell into a deep fugue state.

All sense of purpose seemed to desert him. He thought of them-the whole town was crawling with Them-but instead of the clear, righteous anger the idea had brought only minutes before, he now felt only weariness and depression. He had a pounding headache.

His arm and back ached from wielding the hammer.

He looked down and saw that he was still holding it. He opened his hand and it fell to the kitchen linoleum, making a bloody splatter there. He stood looking at this splatter for almost a full minute with a kind of idiot attention. It looked to him like a sketch of his father’s face drawn in blood.

He plodded through the living room and into his study, rubbing his shoulder and upper arm as he went. The handcuff chain jingled maddeningly. He opened the closet door, dropped to his knees, crawled beneath the clothes which hung at the front, and dug out the box with the pacers on the front. He backed clumsily out of the closet again (the handcuff caught in one of Myrtle’s shoes and he threw it to the back of the closet with a sulky curse), took the box over to his desk, and sat down with it in front of him. Instead of excitement, he felt only sadness. Winning Ticket was wonderful, all right, but what good could it possibly do him now? It didn’t matter if he put the money back or not. He had murdered his wife.

She had undoubtedly deserved it, but They wouldn’t see it that way.

They would happily throw him in the deepest, darkest Shawshank Penitentiary cell they could find and throw away the key.

He saw that he had left large bloody smears on the box-top, and he looked down at himself. For the first time he noticed that he was covered with blood. His meaty forearms looked as though they belonged to a Chicago hog-butcher. Depression folded over him again in a soft, black wave. They had beaten him… okay. Yet he would escape Them.

He would escape Them just the same.

He got up, weary to his very center, and plodded slowly upstairs.

He undressed as he went, kicking off his shoes in the living room, dropping his pants at the foot of the stairs, then sitting down halfway up to peel off his socks. Even they were bloody. The shirt gave him the hardest time; pulling off a shirt while you were wearing a handcuff was the devil’s own job.

Almost Twenty minutes passed between the murder of Mrs.

Keeton and Buster’s trudge to and through the shower. He might have been taken into custody without a problem at almost any time during that period… but on Lower Main Street a transition of authority was going on, the Sheriff’s Office was in almost total disarray, and the whereabouts of Danforth “Buster” Keeton simply did not seem very important.

Once he had towelled dry, he put on a clean pair of pants and a tee-shirt-he didn’t have the energy to tussle again with long sleeves-and went back down to his study. Buster sat in his chair and looked at Winning Ticket again, hoping that his depression might prove to be just an ephemeral thing, that some of his earlier joy might return. But the picture on the box seemed to have faded, dulled. The brightest color in evidence was a smear of Myrtle’s blood across the flanks of the two-horse.

He took the top off and looked inside. He was shocked to see that the little tin horses were leaning sadly every whichway. Their colors had also faded. A broken bit of spring poked through the hole where you inserted the key to wind the machinery.

Someone’s been in here! his mind cried. Someone’s been at it!

One of Them! Ruining me wasn’t enough! They had to ruin my game, too!

But a deeper voice, perhaps the fading voice of sanity, whispered that this was not true. This is how i’t was from the very start, the voice whispered. You just didn’t see it.

He went back to the closet, meaning to take down the gun after all. It was time to use it. He was feeling around for it when the telephone rang. Buster picked it up very slowly, knowing who was on the other end.

Nor was he disappointed.

2

“Hello, Dan,” said Mr. Gaunt. “How are you this fine evening?”

“Terrible,” Buster said in a glum, draggy voice. “The world has turned to boogers. I’m going to kill myself.”

“Oh?” Mr. Gaunt sounded a trifle disappointed, nothing more.

“Nothing’s any good. Even the game you sold me is no good.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Mr. Gaunt replied with a touch of asperity. “I check all my merchandise very carefully, Mr. Keeton.

Very carefully indeed. Why don’t you look again?”

Buster did, and what he saw astounded him. The horses stood up straight in their slots. Each coat looked freshly painted and glistening. Even their eyes seemed to spark fire. The tin race-course was all bright greens and dusty summer browns. The track looks fast, he thought dreamily, and his eyes shifted to the box-top.

Either his eyes, dulled by his deep depression, had tricked him or the colors there had deepened in some amazing way in the few seconds since the telephone had rung. Now it was Myrtle’s blood he could barely see. It was drying to a drab maroon.

“My God!” he whispered.

“Well?” Mr. Gaunt asked. “Well, Dan? Am I wrong? Because if I am, you must defer your suicide at least long enough to return your purchase to me for a full refund. I stand behind my merchandise. I have to, you know. I have my reputation to protect, and that’s a proposition I take very seriously in a world where there’s billions of Them and only one of me.”

“No… no!” Buster said. “It’s… it’s beautiful!”

“Then you were in error?” Mr. Gaunt persisted.

“I… I guess I must have been.”

“You admit you were in error?”

“I… yes.”

“Good,” Mr. Gaunt said. His voice lost its edge. “Then by all means, go ahead and kill yourself Although I must admit I am disappointed. I thought I had finally met a man who had guts enough to help me kick Their asses. I guess you’re just a talker, like all the rest.” Mr. Gaunt sighed. It was the sigh of a man who realizes he has not glimpsed light at the end of the tunnel after all.

A strange thing was happening to Buster Keeton. He felt his vitality and purpose surging back. His own interior colors seemed to be brightening, intensifying again.

“You mean it’s not too late?”

“You must have skipped Poetry IO 1. ‘Tis never too late to seek a newer world. Not if you’re a man with some spine. Why, I had everything all set up for you, Mr. Keeton. I was counting on you, you see.”

“I like plain old Dan a lot better,” Buster said, almost shyly.

“All right. Dan. Are you really set on making such a cowardly exit from life?”

“No!” Buster cried. “It’s just… I thought, what’s the use?

There’s too many of Them.”

“Three good men can do a lot of damage, Dan.”

“Three? Did you say three?”

“Yes… there’s another of us. Someone else who sees the danger, who understands what They are up to.”

“Who?” Buster asked eagerly. “Who?”

“In time,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but for now, time is in short supply.

They’ll be coming for you.”

Buster looked out the study window with the narrowed eyes of a ferret which smells danger on the wind. The street was empty, but only for the time being. He could feel Them, sense Them massing against him.

“What should I do?”

“Then you’re on my team?” Mr. Gaunt asked. “I can count on you after all?”

“Yes!”

“All the way?”

” ‘Til hell freezes over or you say different!”

“Very good,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Listen carefully, Dan.” And as Mr. Gaunt talked and Buster listened, gradually sinking into that hypnotic state which Mr. Gaunt seemed to induce at will, the first rumbles of the approaching storm had begun to shake the air outside.

3

Five minutes later, Buster left his house. He had put a light jacket on over his tee-shirt and stuffed the hand with the cuff still on ‘ it deep into one of his pockets. Halfway down the block he found a van parked against the curb just where Mr. Gaunt had told him he would find it. It was bright yellow, a guarantee most passersby would look at the paint instead of the driver. It was almost windowless, and both sides were marked with the logo of a Portland TV station.

Buster took a quick but careful look in both directions, then got in. Mr. Gaunt had told him the keys would be under the seat.

They were. Sitting on the passenger seat was a paper shopping bag.

In it Buster found a blonde wig, a pair of yuppie wire-rimmed glasses, and a small glass bottle.

He put the wig on with some misgivings-long and shaggy, it looked like the scalp of a dead rock singer-but when he looked at himself in the van’s rearview mirror, he was astounded by how well it fit. It made him look younger. Much younger. The lenses of the yuppie spectacles were clear glass, and they changed his appearance (at least in Buster’s opinion) even more than the wig. They made him look smart, like Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.

He stared at himself in fascination. All at once he looked thirtysomething instead of fifty-two, like a man who might very well work for a TV station. Not as a news correspondent, nothing glamorous like that, but perhaps as a cameraman or even a producer.

He unscrewed the top of the bottle and grimaced-the stuff inside smelled like a melting tractor battery. Tendrils of smoke rose from the mouth of the bottle. Got to be careful with this stuff, Buster thought. Got to be real careful.

He put the empty cuff under his right thigh and pulled the chain taut. Then he poured some of the bottle’s contents on the chain just below the cuff on his wrist, being careful not to drip any of the dark, viscous liquid on his skin. The steel immediately began to smoke and bubble. A few drops struck the rubber floormat and it also began to bubble. Smoke and a horrid frying smell rose from it. After a few moments Buster pulled the empty cuff out from under his thigh, hooked his fingers through it, and yanked briskly.

The chain parted like paper and he threw it on the floor. He was still wearing a bracelet, but he could live with that; the chain and the swinging empty cuff had been the real pain in the keister- He slotted the key in the ignition, started the engine, and drove away.

Not three minutes later, a Castle County Sheriff’s car driven by Seaton Thomas turned into the driveway of the Keeton home, I and old Seat discovered Myrtle Keeton sprawled half in and half out of the doorway between the garage and the kitchen. Not long after, his car was joined by four State Police units. The cops tossed the house from top to bottom, looking for either Buster or some sign of where he might have gone. No one gave the game sitting on his study desk a second glance. It was old, dirty, and obviously broken. It looked like something that might have come out of a poor relation’s attic.

4

Eddie Warburton, the janitor at the Municipal Building, had been pissed off at Sonny jackett for more than two years. Over the last couple of days, this anger had built into a red rage.

When the transmission of Eddie’s neat little Honda Civic had seized up during the summer of 1989, Eddie hadn’t wanted to take it to the nearest Honda dealership. That would have involved a large towing fee. Bad enough that the tranny hadn’t expired until three weeks after the drive-train warranty had done the same thing.

So he had gone to Sonny jackett first, had asked Sonny if he had any experience working on foreign cars.

Sonny told him he did. He spoke in that expansive, patronizing way most back-country Yankees had of talking to Eddie. We’re not prejudiced, boy, that tone said. This is the north, you know. We don’t hold with all that southern crap. Of course you’re a nigger, anyone can see that, but it don’t mean a thing to us. Black, yellow, white, or green, we rook em all like you’ve never seen. Bring it on in here.

Sonny had fixed the Honda’s transmission, but the bill had been a hundred dollars more than Sonny had said it would be, and they’d almost gotten into a fist-fight over it one night at the Tiger. Then Sonny’s lawyer (Yankees or crackers, it was Eddie Warburton’s experience that all white men had lawyers) called Eddie and told him Sonny was going to take him to small claims court. Eddie ended up fifty dollars out of pocket as a result of that little experience and the fire in the Honda’s electrical system happened five months later. The car had been parked in the Municipal Building’s lot.

Someone had yelled to Eddie, but by the time he got outside with a fire extinguisher, the interior of his car was a dancing mass of yellow fire. It had been a total loss.

He’d wondered ever since if Sonny jackett had set that fire.

The insurance investigator said it was a bonafide accident which had been caused by a short-circuit… a one-in-a-million type of thing.

But what did that fellow know? Probably nothing, and besides, it wasn’t his money. Not that the insurance had been enough to cover Eddie’s investment.

And now he knew. He knew for sure.

Earlier today he had gotten a little package in the mail. The items inside had been extremely enlightening: a number of blackened alligator clips, an old, lop-eared photograph, and a note.

The clips were of the sort a man could use to start an electrical fire. One simply stripped the insulation from the right pairs of wires in the right places, clipped the wires together, and voili.

The snapshot showed Sonny and a number of his whitebread friends, the fellows who were always lounging on kitchen chairs in the gas station office when you went down there. The location was not Sonny’s Sunoco, however; it was Robicheau’s junkyard out on Town Road #5. The honkies were standing in front of Eddie’s burned-out Civic, drinking beer, laughing… and eating chunks of watermelon.

The note was short and to the point. Dear Nigger: Fucking with me was a bad mistake.

At first Eddie wondered why Sonny would send him such a note (although he did not relate it to the letter he himself had slipped through Polly Chalmers’s mail-slot at Mr. Gaunt’s behest). He decided it was because Sonny was even dumber and meaner than most honkies.

Still-if the business was still rankling in Sonny’s guts, why had he waited so long to reopen it? But the more he brooded over those old times (Dear Nigger:) the less the questions seemed to matter.

The note and the blackened alligator clips and that old photograph got into his head, buzzing there like a cloud of hungry mosquitoes.

Earlier tonight he had bought a gun from Mr. Gaunt.

The fluorescents in the Sunoco station’s office threw a white trapezoid on the macadam of the service tarmac as Eddie pulled in-driving the second-hand Olds which had replaced the Civic.

He got out, one hand in his)jacket pocket, holding the gun.

He paused outside the door for a minute, looking in. Sonny was sitting beside his cash register in a plastic chair which was rocked back on its rear legs. Eddie could just see the top of Sonny’s cap over his open newspaper. Reading the paper. Of course. White men always had lawyers, and after a day of shafting black fellows like Eddie, they always sat in their offices, rocked back in their chairs and reading the paper.

Fucking white men, with their fucking lawyers and their fucking newspapers.

Eddie drew the automatic pistol and went inside. A part of him which had been asleep suddenly woke up and screamed in alarm that he shouldn’t do this, it was a mistake. But the voice didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because suddenly Eddie didn’t seem to be inside himself at all. He seemed to be a spirit hovering over his own shoulder, watching all this happen. An evil imp had taken over his controls.

“I got something for you, you cheating sumbitch,” Eddie heard his mouth say, and watched his finger pull the trigger of the automatic twice. Two small black circles appeared in a headline which said MCKERNAN APPROVAL RATING SOARS. Sonny jackett screamed and jerked.

The rear legs of the tipped-back chair skidded and Sonny went tumbling to the floor with blood soaking into his coverall… except the name stitched on the coverall in gold thread was RICKY. It wasn’t Sonny at all but Ricky Bissonette.

“Ah, shit!” Eddie screamed. “I shot the wrong fuckin honky!”

“Hello, Eddie,” Sonny jackett remarked from behind him.

“Good thing for me I was in the shithouse, wasn’t it?”

Eddie began to turn. Three bullets from the automatic pistol Sonny had bought from Mr. Gaunt late that afternoon entered his lower back, pulverizing his spine, before he could get even halfway around.

He watched, eyes wide and helpless, as Sonny bent down toward him. The muzzle of the gun Sonny held was as big as the mouth of a tunnel and as dark as forever. Above it, Sonny’s face was pale and set. A streak of grease ran down one cheek.

“Planning to steal my new socket-wrench set wasn’t your mistake,”

Sonny said as he pressed the barrel of the automatic against the center of Eddie Warburton’s forehead. “Writing and telling me you were gonna do it… that was your mistake.”

A great white light-the light of understanding-suddenly went on in Eddie’s mind. Now he remembered the letter he had pushed through the Chalmers woman’s mail-slot, and he found himself able to put that piece of mischief together with the note he had received and the one Sonny was talking about.

“Listen!” he whispered. “You have to listen to me, jackett-we been played for suckers, both of us. We-” “Goodbye, black boy,” Sonny said, and pulled the trigger.

Sonny looked fixedly at what remained of Eddie Warburton for almost a full minute, wondering if he should have listened to what Eddie had to say. He decided the answer was no. What could a fellow dumb enough to send a note like that have to say that could possibly matter?

Sonny got up, walked into the office, and stepped over Ricky Bissonette’s legs. He opened the safe and took out the adjustable socket-wrenches Mr. Gaunt had sold him. He was still looking at them, picking each one up, handling it lovingly, then putting it back in the custom case again, when the State Police arrived to take him into custody.

5

Park at the corner of Birch and Main, Mr. Gaunt had told Buster on the telephone, and just wait. I will send someone to you.

Buster had followed these instructions to the letter. He had seen a great many comings and goings at the mouth of the service alley from his vantage point one block up-almost all his friends and neighbors, it seemed to him, had a little business to do with Mr. Gaunt this evening. Ten minutes ago the Rusk woman had walked down there with her dress unbuttoned, looking like something out of a bad dream.

Then, not five minutes after she came back out of the alley, putting something into her dress pocket (the dress was still unbuttoned and you could see a lot, but who in his right mind, Buster wondered, would want to look), there had been several gunshots from farther up Main Street. Buster couldn’t be sure, but he thought they came from the Sunoco station.

State Police cruisers came winding up Main from the Municipal Building, their blue lights flashing, scattering reporters like pigeons.

Disguise or no disguise, Buster decided it would be prudent to climb into the back of the van for a little while.

The State Police cars roared by, and their whirling blue lights picked out something which leaned against the van’s rear doorsa green canvas duffle bag. Curious, Buster undid the knot in the drawstring, pulled the mouth of the bag open, and looked inside.

There was a box on top of the bag’s contents. Buster took it out and saw the rest of the duffle was full of timers. Hotpoint clocktimers. There were easily two dozen of them. Their smooth white faces stared up at him like pupilless Orphan Annie eyes. He opened the box he had removed and saw it was full of alligator clips-the kind electricians sometimes used to make quick connections.

Buster frowned… and then, suddenly, his mind’s eye saw an office form-a Castle Rock fund-release form, to be exact. Typed neatly in the space provided for Goods and/or Services to Be Supplied were these words: 16 CASES OF DYNAMITE.

Sitting in the back of the van, Buster began to grin. Then he began to laugh. Outside, thunder boomed and rolled. A tongue of lightning licked out of the dragging belly of a cloud and jabbed down into Castle Stream.

Buster went on laughing. He laughed until the van shook with it.

“Them!” he cried, laughing. “Oh, boy, have we got something for Them! Have we ever!”

6

Henry Payton, who had come to Castle Rock to pull Sheriff Pangborn’s smoking irons out of the fire, stood in the doorway of the Sunoco station’s office with his mouth open. They had two more men down. One was white and one was black, but both were dead.

A third man, the station owner according to the name on his coverall, sat on the floor by the open safe with a dirty steel case cradled in his arms as if it were a baby. Beside him on the floor was an automatic pistol. Looking at it, Henry felt an elevator go down in his guts. It was the twin of the one Hugh Priest had used to shoot Henry Beaufort.

“Look,” one of the officers behind Henry said in a quiet, awed voice. “There’s another one.”

Henry turned his head to look, and heard the tendons in his neck creak. Another gun-a third automatic pistol-lay near the outstretched hand of the black guy.

“Don’t touch em,” he said to the other officers. “Don’t even get near em.” He stepped over the pool of blood, seized Sonny jackett by the lapels of his coverall, and pulled him to his feet. Sonny did not resist, but he clutched the steel case tighter against his breast.

“What went on here?” Henry yelled into his face. “What in God’s name went on?”

Sonny gestured toward Eddie Warburton, using his elbow so he would not have to let go of the case. “He came in. He had a gun. He was crazy. You can see he was crazy; look what he did to Ricky. He thought Ricky was me. He wanted to steal my adjustables. Look.”

Sonny smiled and tilted the steel case so Henry could look at the jumble of rusty ironmongery inside.

“I couldn’t let him do that, could I? I mean… these are mine.

I paid for them, and they’re mine.”

Henry opened his mouth to say something. He had no idea what it would have been, and it never got out. Before he could say the first word, there were more gunshots, this time from up on Castle View.

7

Lenore Potter stood over the body of Stephanie Bonsaint with a smoking automatic pistol in her hand. The body lay in the flowerbed behind the house, the only one the evil, vindictive bitch hadn’t torn up on her previous two trips.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Lenore said. She had never fired a gun in her life before and now she had killed a woman… but the only feeling she had was one of grim exultation. The woman had been on her property, tearing up her garden (Lenore had waited until the bitch actually got going-her mamma hadn’t raised any fools), and she had been within her rights. Perfectly within her rights.

“Lenore?” her husband called. He was leaning out of the upstairs bathroom window with shaving cream on his face. His voice was alarmed.

“Lenore, what’s going on?”

”I’ve shot a trespasser,” Lenore said calmly, without looking around. She placed her foot under the heavy weight of the body and lifted. Feeling her toe sink into the Bonsaint bitch’s unresisting side gave her a sudden mean pleasure. “It’s Stephanie Bon-” The body rolled over. It was not Stephanie Bonsaint- It was that nice Deputy Sheriff’s wife.

She had shot Melissa Clutterbuck.

Quite suddenly, Lenore Potter’s calava went past blue, past purple, past magenta. It went all the way to midnight black.

8

Alan Pangborn sat looking down at his hands, looking past them into a darkness so black it could only be felt. It had occurred to him that he might have lost Polly this afternoon, not for just a little while-until this current misunderstanding was ironed out-but forever.

And that was going to leave him with about thirty-five years to kill.

He heard a small scuffing sound and looked up quickly. It was Miss Hendrie. She looked nervous, but she also looked as if she had come to a decision.

“The Rusk boy is stirring,” she said. “He’s not awake-they gave him a tranquilizer and he won’t be really awake for some time yet-but he is stirring.”

“Is he?” Alan asked quietly, and waited.

Miss Hendrie bit at her lip and then pressed on. “Yes. I’d let you see him if I could, Sheriff Pangborn, but I really can’t. You understand, don’t you? I mean, I know you have problems in your home town, but this little boy is only seven.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going down to the carr for a cup of tea. Mrs. Evans is lateshe always is-but she’ll be here in a minute or two. If you went down to Sean Rusk’s room-Room Nine-right after I leave, she probably wouldn’t know you were here at all. Do you see?”

“Yes,” Alan said gratefully.

“Rounds aren’t until eight, so if you were in his room, she probably wouldn’t notice you. Of course if she did, you would tell her that I followed hospital directives and refused you admission.

That you snuck in while the desk was temporarily unattended.

Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Alan said. “You bet I would.”

“You could leave by the stairs at the far end of the corridor. If you went into Sean Rusk’s room, that is. Which, of course, I told you not to do.”

Alan stood up and impulsively kissed her cheek.

Miss Hendrie blushed.

“Thanks,” Alan said.

“For what? I haven’t done a thing. I believe I’ll go get my tea now. Please sit right where you are until I’m gone, Sheriff.”

Alan obediently sat down again. He sat there, his head positioned between Simple Simon and the pie-man until the double doors had whooshed most of the way shut behind Miss Hendrie.

Then he got up and walked quietly down the brightly painted corridor, with its litter of toys and jigsaw puzzles, to Room 9.

9

Sean Rusk looked totally awake to Alan.

This was the pediatric wing and the bed he was in was a small one, but he still seemed lost in it. His body created only a small hump beneath the counterpane, making him seem like a disembodied head resting on a crisp white pillow. His face was very pale.

There were purple shadows, almost as dark as bruises, beneath his eyes, which looked at Alan with a calm lack of surprise. A curl of dark hair lay across the center of his forehead like a comma.

Alan took the chair by the window and pulled it to the side of the bed, where bars had been raised to keep Sean from falling out.

Sean did not turn his head, but his eyes moved to follow him.

“Hello, Sean,” Alan said quietly. “How are you feeling?”

“My throat is dry,” Sean said in a husky whisper.

There was a pitcher of water and two glasses on the table by the bed. Alan poured a glass of water and bent with it over the hospital bars.

Sean tried to sit up and couldn’t do it. He fell back against the pillow with a small sigh that hurt Alan’s heart. His mind turned to his own son-poor, doomed Todd. As he slipped a hand beneath Sean Rusk’s neck to help him sit up, he had a moment of hellish total recall. He saw Todd standing by the Scout that day, answering Alan’s goodbye wave with one of his own, and in the eye of memory a kind of nacreous, failing light seemed to play around Todd’s head, illuminating every loved line and feature.

His hand shook. A little water spilled down the front of the hospital Johnny Sean wore.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” Sean replied in his husky whisper, and drank thirstily.

He almost emptied the glass. Then he burped.

Alan lowered him carefully back down. Sean seemed a little more alert now, but there was still no luster in his eyes. Alan thought he had never seen a little boy who looked so dreadfully alone, and his mind tried once again to call up that final image of Todd.

He pushed it away. There was work to do here. It was distasteful work, and damned ticklish in the bargain, but he felt more and more that it was also desperately important work. Regardless of what might be going on in Castle Rock right now, he felt increasingly sure that at least some of the answers lay here, behind that pale forehead and those sad, lusterless eyes.

He looked around the room and forced a smile. “Boring room,” he said.

“Yeah,” Sean said in his low, husky voice. “Totally dopey.”

“Maybe a few flowers would liven it up,” Alan said, and passed his right hand in front of his left forearm, deftly plucking the folding bouquet from its palming well beneath his watchband.

He knew he was pressing his luck but had decided, on the spur of the moment, to go for it anyway. He was almost sorry. Two of the tissue-paper blooms tore as he slipped the loop and popped the bouquet open. He heard the spring give a tired twang. It was undoubtedly the final performance of this version of the Folding Flower Trick, but Alan did get away with it… just. And Sean, unlike his brother, was clearly amused and delighted in spite of his state of mind and the drugs perking through his system.

“Awesome! How’d you do that?”

“Just a little magic… Want them?” He moved to put the spray of tissue-paper flowers in the water pitcher.

“Naw. They’re just paper. Also, they’re ripped in a few places.”

Sean thought about this, apparently decided it sounded ungrateful, and added: “Neat trick, though. Can you make them disappear?”

I doubt it, son, Alan thought. Aloud he said, “I’ll try.”

He held the bouquet up so Sean could see it clearly, then curved his right hand slightly and drew it downward. He made this pass much more slowly than usual in deference to the sad state of the MacGuffin, and found himself surprised and impressed with the result. Instead of snapping out of sight as they usually did, the Folding Flowers seemed to disappear into his loosely curled fist like smoke. He felt the loosened, overstressed spring try to buckle and jam, but in the end it decided to cooperate one last time.

“That’s really radical,” Sean said respectfully, and Alan privately agreed. It was a wonderful variation on a trick he’d wowed schoolkids with for years, but he doubted that it could be done with a new version of the Folding Flower Trick. A brand-new spring would make that slow, dreamy pass impossible.

“Thanks,” he said, and stowed the folding bouquet under his watchband for the last time. “If you don’t want flowers, how about a quarter for the Coke machine?”

Alan leaned forward and casually plucked a quarter from Sean’s nose. The boy grinned.

“Whoops, I forgot-it takes seventy-five cents these days, doesn’t it? Inflation. Well, no problem.” He pulled a coin from Sean’s mouth and discovered a third one in his own ear. By then Sean’s smile had faded a little and Alan knew that he had better get down to business quickly. He stacked the three quarters on the low dresser beside the bed. “For when you feel better,” he said.

“Thanks, mister.”

“You’re welcome, Sean.”

“Where’s my daddy?” Sean asked. His voice was marginally stronger now.

The question struck Alan as odd. He would have expected Sean to ask first for his mother. The boy was, after all, only seven.

“He’ll be here soon, Sean.”

“I hope so. I want him.”

“I know you do.” Alan paused and said, “Your mommy will be here soon, too.”

Sean thought about this, then shook his head slowly and deliberately. The pillowcase made little rustling noises as he did it.

“No she won’t. She’s too busy.”

“Too busy to come and see you?” Alan asked.

“Yes. She’s very busy. Mommy’s visiting with The King. That’s why I can’t go in her room anymore. She shuts the door and puts on her sunglasses and visits with The King.”

Alan saw Mrs. Rusk responding to the State Police who were questioning her. Her voice slow and disconnected. A pair of sunglasses on the table beside her. She couldn’t seem to leave them alone; one hand toyed with them almost constantly. She would draw it back, as if afraid someone would notice, and then, after only a few seconds, her hand would return to them agal’n, seemingly on its own.

At the time he had thought she was either suffering from shock or under the influence of a tranquilizer. Now he wondered.

He also wondered if he should ask Sean about Brian or pursue this new avenue. Or were they both the same avenue?

“You’re not really a magician,” Sean said. “You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you a State Policeman with a blue car that goes really fast?”

“No-I’m County Sheriff. Usually I have a brown car with a star on the side, and it does go pretty fast, but tonight I’m driving my old station wagon that I keep forgetting to trade in.” Alan grinned. “It goes really slow.”

This sparked some interest. “Why aren’t you driving your brown policeman car?”

So I wouldn’t spook Jill Mislaburski or your brother, Alan thought. I don’t know about Jill, but I guess it didn’t work so well with Brian.

“I really don’t remember,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

“Are you a Sheriff like in Young Guns?”

“Uh-huh. I guess so. Sort of like that.”

“Me and Brian rented that movie and watched it. It was most totally awesome. We wanted to go see Young Guns II when it was at The Magic Lantern in Bridgton last summer but my mom wouldn’t let us because it was an R-picture. We ain’t allowed to see R-pictures, except sometimes our dad lets us watch them at home on the VCR. Me and Brian really liked Young Guns.” Sean paused, and his eyes darkened.

“But that was before Brian got the card.”

“What card?”

For the first time, a real emotion appeared in Sean’s eyes. It was terror.

“The baseball card. The great special baseball card.”

“Oh?” Alan thought of the Playmate cooler and the baseball cards-traders, Brian had called them-inside. “Brian liked baseball cards, didn’t he, Sean?”

“Yes. That was how he got him. I think he must use different things to get different people.”

Alan leaned forward. “Who, Sean? Who got him?”

“Brian killed himself I saw him do it. It was in the garage.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Gross stuff came out of the back of his head. Not just blood.

Stu It was yellow.”

Alan could think of nothing to say. His heart was pounding slowly and heavily in his chest, his mouth was as dry as a desert, and he felt sick to his stomach. His son’s name clanged in his mind like a funeral bell rung by idiot hands in the middle of the night.

“I wished he didn’t,” Sean said. His voice was strangely matterof-fact, but now a tear rose in each of his eyes, grew, and spilled down his smooth cheeks. “We won’t get to see Young Guns II together when they put it out for VCRS. I’ll have to watch it by myself, and it won’t be any fun without Brian making all his stupid jokes. I know it won’t.”

“You loved your brother, didn’t you?” Alan said hoarsely. He reached through the hospital bars. Sean Rusk’s hand crept into his and then closed tightly upon it. It was hot. And small. Very small.

“Yeah. Brian wanted to pitch for the Red Sox when he grew up. He said he was gonna learn to throw a dead-fish curve, just like Mike Boddicker. Now he never will. He told me not to come any closer or I’d get the mess on me. I cried. I was scared. It wasn’t like a movie. It was just our garage.”

“I know,” Alan said. He remembered Annie’s car. The shattered windows. The blood on the seats in big black puddles. That hadn’t been like a movie, either. Alan began to cry. “I know, son.”

“He asked me to promise, and I did, and I’m going to keep it.

I’ll keep that promise all my life.”

“What did you promise, son?”

Alan swiped at his face with his free hand, but the tears would not stop. The boy lay before him, his skin almost as white as the pillowcase on which his head rested; the boy had seen his brother commit suicide, had seen the brains hit the garage wall like a fresh wad of snot, and where was his mother? Visiting with The King, he had said. She shuts the door and puts on her sunglasses and visits with The King.

“What did you promise, son?”

“I tried to swear it on Mommy’s name, but Brian wouldn’t let me.

He said I had to swear on my own name. Because he got her, too.

Brian said he gets everyone who swears on anyone else’s name.

So I swore on my own name like he wanted, but Brian made the gun go bang anyway.” Sean was crying harder now, but he looked earnestly up at Alan through his tears. “It wasn’t just blood, Mr.

Sheriff. It was other stuff. Yellow stuff.”

Alan squeezed his hand. “I know, Sean. What did your brother want you to promise?”

“Maybe Brian won’t go to heaven if I tell.”

“Yes he will. I promise. And I’m a Sheriff.”

“Do Sheriffs ever break their promises?”

“They never break them when they’re made to little kids in the hospital,” Alan said. “Sheriffs can’t break their promises to kids like that.”

“Do they go to hell if they do?”

“Yes,” Alan said. “That’s right. They go to hell if they do.”

“Do you swear Brian will go to heaven even if I tell? Do you swear on your very own name?”

“On my very own name,” Alan said.

“Okay,” Sean said. “He made me promise I would never go to the new store where he got the great special baseball card. He thought Sandy Koufax was on that card, but that wasn’t who it was. it was some other player. It was old and dirty, but I don’t think Brian knew that.” Sean paused a moment, thinking, and then went on in his eerily calm voice. “He came home one day with mud on his hands.

He washed off the mud and later on I heard him in his room, crying.”

The sheets, Alan thought. Wilma’s sheets. It was Brian.

“Brian said Needful Things is a poison place and he’s a poison man and I should never go there.”

“Brian said that? He said Needful Things?”

“Yes.”

“Sean-” He paused, thinking. Electric sparks ‘Were shooting through him everywhere, jigging and jagging in tiny blue splinters.

“What?”

“Did… did your mother get her sunglasses at Needful Things?”

“Yes.”

“She told you that she did?”

“No. But I know she did. She wears the sunglasses and that’s how she visits with The King.”

“What King, Sean? Do you know?”

Sean looked at Alan as though he were crazy. “Elvis. He’s The King. ” “Elvis,” Alan muttered. “Sure-who else?”

“I want my father.”

“I know, honey. just a couple more questions and I’ll leave you alone. Then you’ll go back to sleep and when you wake up, your father will be here.” He hoped. “Sean, did Brian say who the poison man was?”

“Yes. Mr. Gaunt. The man who runs the store. He’s the poison man.”

Now his mind jumped to Polly-Polly after the funeral, saying I guess it was just a matter of finally meeting the right doctor… Dr.

Gaunt. Dr. Leland Gaunt.

He saw her holding out the little silver ball she had bought in Needful Things so he could see it… but cupping her hand protectively over it when he put a hand out to touch it. There had been an expression on her face in that moment which was totally unlike Polly.

A look of narrow suspicion and possessiveness. Then, later, speaking in a strident, shaky, tear-filled voice which was also totally unlike her: It’s hard to find out the face you thought you loved is only a mask… How could you go behind my back?… How could you?

“What did you tell her?” he muttered. He was totally unaware that he had seized the counterpane of the hospital bed in one hand and was twisting it slowly into his clenched fist. “What did you tell her?

And how the hell did you make her believe it?”

“Mr. Sheriff? Are you okay?”

Alan forced himself to open his fist. “Yes-fine. You’re sure Brian said Mr. Gaunt, aren’t you, Sean?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” Alan said. He bent over the bars, took Sean’s hand, and kissed his cool, pale cheek. “Thank you for talking to me.” He let go of the boy’s hand and stood up.

During the last week, there had been one piece of business on his agenda which simply hadn’t gotten done-a courtesy call on Castle Rock’s newest businessman. No big deal; just a friendly hello, a welcome to town, and a quick rundown on what the procedure was in case of trouble.

He had meant to do it, had once even dropped by, but it kept not getting done. And today, when Polly’s behavior began to make him wonder if Mr. Gaunt was on the upand-up, the shit had really hit the fan, and he had wound up here, more than twenty miles away.

Is he keeping me away? Has he been keeping me away all along?

The idea should have seemed ridiculous, but in this quiet, shadowy room, it did not seem ridiculous at all.

Suddenly he needed to get back. He needed to get back just as fast as he could.

“Mr. Sheriff.” Alan looked down at him.

“Brian said something else, too,” Sean said.

“Did he?” Alan asked. “What was that, Sean?”

Brian said Mr. Gaunt wasn’t really a man at all.”

Alan walked down the hall toward the door with the EXIT sign over it as quietly as he could, expecting to be frozen in his tracks by a challenging shout from Miss Hendrie’s replacement at any moment. But the only person who spoke to him was a little girl.

She stood in the doorway of her room, her blonde hair tied in braids which lay on the front of her faded pink flannel nightie. She was holding a blanket. Her favorite, from its ragged well-used look.

Her feet were bare, the ribbons at the ends of her braids were askew, and her eyes were enormous in her haggard face. It was a face which knew more about pain than any child’s face should know.

“You’ve got a gun,” she announced.

“Yes.”

“My dad has a gun.”

“Does he?”

“Yes. It’s bigger than yours. It’s bigger than the world. Are you the Boogeyman?”

“No, honey,” he said, and thought: I think maybe the Boogeyman is in my home town tonight.

He pushed through the door at the end of the corridor, went downstairs, and pushed through another door into a late twilight as sultry as any midsummer evening. He hurried around to the parking lot, not quite running. Thunder bumbled and grumbled out of the west, from the direction of Castle Rock.

He unlocked the driver’s door of the station wagon, got in, and pulled the Radio Shack microphone off its prongs. “Unit One to base.

Come back.”

His only response was a rush of brainless static.

The goddam storm.

Maybe the Boogeyman ordered it up special, a voice whispered from somewhere deep inside. Alan smiled with his lips pressed together.

He tried again, got the same response, then tried the State Police in Oxford. They came through loud and clear. Dispatch told him there was a big electrical storm in the vicinity of Castle Rock, and communications had become spotty. Even the telephones only seemed to be working when they wanted to.

“Well, you get through to Henry Payton and tell him to take a man named Leland Gaunt into custody. As a material witness will do to begin with. That’s Gaunt, G as in George. Do you copy?

Ten-four.”

“I copy you five-by, Sheriff. Gaunt, G as in George. Ten-four.”

“Tell him I believe Gaunt may be an accessory before the fact in the murders of Nettle Cobb and Wilma jerzyck. Ten-four.”

“Copy. Ten-four.”

“Ten-forty, over and out.”

He replaced the mike, keyed the engine, and headed back toward The Rock. On the outskirts of Bridgton, he swerved into the parking lot of a Red Apple store and used the telephone to dial his office. He got two clicks and then a recorded voice telling him the number was temporarily out of service.

He hung up and went back to his car. This time he was running.

Before he pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Route 117, he turned on the Porta-Bubble and stuck it on the roof again. By the time he was half a mile down the road he had the shuddering, protesting Ford wagon doing seventy-five.

Ace Merrill and full dark returned to Castle Rock together.

He drove the Chevy Celebrity across Castle Stream Bridge while thunder rolled heavily back and forth in the sky overhead and lightning jabbed the unresisting earth. He drove with the windows open; there was still no rain falling and the air was as thick as syrup.

He was dirty and tired and furious. He had gone to three more locations on the map in spite of the note, unable to believe what had happened, unable to believe it could have happened. To coin a phrase, he was unable to believe he had been aced out. At each one of the spots he had found a flat stone and a buried tin can.

Two had contained more wads of dirty trading stamps. The last, in the marshy ground behind the Strout farm, had contained nothing but an old ball-point pen. There was a woman with a forties hairdo on the pen’s barrel. She was wearing a forties tank-style bathing suit as well. When you held the pen up, the bathing suit disappeared.

Some treasure.

Ace had driven back to Castle Rock at top speed, his eyes wild and his jeans splattered with swamp-goo up to the knees, for one reason and one reason only: to kill Alan Pangborn. Then he would simply haul ass for the West Coast-he should have done it long before. He might get some of the money out of Pangborn; he might get none of it. Either way, one thing was certain: that son of a bitch was going to die, and he was going to die hard.

Still three miles from the bridge, he realized that he didn’t have a weapon. He had meant to take one of the autos from the crate in the Cambridge garage, but then that damned tape recorder had started up, scaring the life out of him. But he knew where they were.

Oh yes.

He crossed the bridge… and then stopped at the intersection of Main Street and Watermill Lane, although the right-of-way was his.

“What the fuck?” he muttered.

Lower Main was a tangled confusion of State Police cruisers, flashing blue lights, TV vans, and little knots of people. Most of the action was swirling around the Municipal Building. It looked almost as though the town fathers had decided to throw a streetcarnival on the spur of the moment.

Ace didn’t care what had happened; the whole town could dry up and blow away as far as he was concerned. But he wanted Pangborn, wanted to tear the fucking thief’s scalp off and hang it on his belt, and how was he supposed to do that with what looked like every State cop in Maine hanging out at the Sheriff’s Office?

The answer came at once. Mr. Gaunt will know. Mr. Gaunt has the artillery, and he’ll have the answers to go with it. Go see Mr.

Gaunt.

He glanced in his mirror and saw more blue lights top the nearest rise on the other side of the bridge. Even more cops on the way.

What the fuck happened here this afternoon? he wondered again, but that was a question which could be answered another time… or not at all, if that was how things fell out. Meantime, he had his own business, and it began with getting out of the way before the arriving cops rear-ended him.

Ace turned left on Watermill Lane, then right onto Cedar Street, skirting the downtown area before cutting back to Main Street. He paused at the stop-light for a moment, looking at the nest of flashing blue lights at the bottom of the hill. Then he parked in front of Needful Things.

He got out of the car, crossed the street, and read the sign in the window. He felt a moment of crashing disappointment-it was not just a gun he needed, but a little more of Mr. Gaunt’s blow as well-and then he remembered the service entrance in the alley.

He walked up the block and around the corner, not noticing the bright yellow van parked twenty or thirty yards farther up, or the man who sat inside it (Buster had moved to the passenger seat now), watching him.

As he entered the alley, he bumped into a man who was wearing a tweed cap pulled low over his forehead.

” Ace said.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, Daddy-o, The man in the tweed cap raised his head, bared his teeth at Ace, and snarled. At the same moment he pulled an automatic from his pocket and pointed it in Ace’s general direction. “Don’t fuck with me, my friend, unless you want some, too.”

Ace raised his hands and stepped back. He was not afraid; he was utterly astonished. “Not me, Mr. Nelson,” he said. “Leave me out of it.”

“Right,” the man in the tweed cap said. “Have you seen that cocksucker jewett?”

“Uh… the one from the Junior high?”

“The Middle School, right-are there any otherjewetts in town?

Get real, for Christ’s sake!”

“I just got here,” Ace said cautiously. “I really haven’t seen anyone, Mr. Nelson.”

“Well, I’m going to find him, and he’s going to be one sorry sack of shit when I do. He killed my parakeet and shit on my mother.”

George T. Nelson narrowed his eyes and added: “This is a good night to stay out of my way.”

Ace didn’t argue.

Mr. Nelson stuffed the gun back into his pocket and disappeared around the corner, walking with the purposeful strides of one who is indeed highly pissed off. Ace stood right where he was for a moment, hands still raised. Mr. Nelson taught wood shop and metal shop at the high school. Ace had always believed he was one of those guys who wouldn’t have nerve enough to slap a deerfly if it lit on his eyeball, but he thought he might just have to change his opinion on that. Also, Ace had recognized the gun. He should have; he had brought a whole case of them back from Boston just the night before.

12

“Ace!” Mr. Gaunt said. “You’re just in time.”

“I need a gun,” Ace said. “Also, some more of that high-class boogerjuice, if you’ve got any.”

“Yes, yes… in time. All things in time. Help me with this table, Ace.”

“I’m going to kill Pangborn,” Ace said. “He stole my fucking treasure and I’m going to kill him.”

Mr. Gaunt looked at Ace with the flat yellow stare of a cat stalking a mouse… and in that moment, Ace felt like a mouse.

“Don’t waste my time telling me things I already know,” he said.

“If you want my help, Ace, help me.”

Ace grabbed one side of the table, and they carried it back into the storeroom. Mr. Gaunt bent down and picked up a sign which leaned against the wall.

THIS TIME I’M REALLY CLOSED, it read. He put it on the door and then shut it. He was turning the thumb-lock before Ace realized there had been nothing on the sign to hold it in place-no tack, no tape, no nothing. But it had stayed up just the same.

Then his eye fell upon the crates which had contained the automatic pistols and the clips of ammunition. There were only three guns and three clips left.

“Holy Jesus! Where’d they all go?”

“Business has been good this evening, Ace,” Mr. Gaunt said, rubbing his long-fingered hands together. “Extremely good. And it’s going to get even better. I have work for you to do.”

“I told you,” Ace said. “The Sheriff stole my-” Leland Gaunt was upon him before Ace even saw him move.

Those long, ugly hands seized him by the front of the shirt and lifted him into the air as if he were made of feathers. A startled cry fell out of his mouth. The hands which held hirri were like iron.

Mr. Gaunt lifted him high, and Ace suddenly found himself looking down into that blazing, hellish face with only the haziest idea of how he had gotten there. Even in the extremity of his sudden terror, he noticed that smoke or perhaps it was steam-was coming out of Mr.

Gaunt’s ears and nostrils. He looked like a human dragon.

“You tell me NOTHING!” Mr. Gaunt screamed up at him. His tongue licked out between those jostling tombstone teeth, and Ace saw it came to a double point, like the tongue of a snake. “I tell you EVERYTHING!

Shut up when you are in the company of your elders and betters, Ace!

Shut up and listen! Shut up and listen! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!”

He whirled Ace twice around his head like a carnival wrestler giving his opponent an airplane spin, and threw him against the far wall. Ace’s head connected with the plaster. A large fireworks display went off in the center of his brain. When his vision cleared, he saw Leland Gaunt bearing down on him. His face was a horror of eyes and teeth and blowing steam.

“No!” Ace shrieked. “No, Mr. Gaunt, please! NO!”

The hands had become talons, the nails grown long and sharp in a moment’s time… or were they that way all along? Ace’s mind gibbered. Maybe they were that way all along and you just didn’t see it.

They cut through the fabric of Ace’s shirt like razors, and Ace was jerked back up into that fuming face.

“Are you ready to listen, Ace?” Mr. Gaunt asked. Hot blurts of steam stung Ace’s cheeks and mouth with each word. “Are you ready, or should I just unzip your worthless guts and have done with it?”

“Yes!” he sobbed. “I mean no! I’ll listen!”

“Are you going to be a good little errand boy and follow orders?”

“Yes!”

“Do you know what will happen if you don’t?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“You’re disgusting, Ace,” Mr. Gaunt said. “I like that in a person.” He slung Ace against the wall. Ace slid down it into a loose kneeling position, gasping and sobbing. He looked down at the floor.

He was afraid to gaze directly into the monster’s face.

“If you should even think of going against my wishes, Ace, I’ll see that you get the grand tour of hell. You’ll have the Sheriff, don’t worry. For the moment, however, he is out of town. Now.

Stand up.”

Ace got slowly to his feet. His head throbbed; his tee-shirt hung in ribbons.

“Let me ask you something.” Mr. Gaunt was urbane and smiling again, not a hair out of place. “Do you like this little town? Do you love it? Do you keep snapshots of it on the walls of your shitty little shack to remind yourself of its rustic charm on those days when the bee stings and the dog bites?”

“Hell, no,” Ace said in an unsteady voice. His voice rose and fell with the pounding of his heart. He made it to his feet only with the greatest effort. His legs felt as if they were made of spaghetti.

He stood with his back to the wall, watching Mr. Gaunt warily.

“Would it appall you if I said I wanted you to blow this shitty little burg right off the face of the map while you wait for the Sheriff to come back?”

“I… I don’t know what that word means,” Ace said nervously.

“I’m not surprised. But I think you understand what I mean, Ace.

Don’t you?”

Ace thought back. He thought back all the way to a time, many years ago, when four snotnosed kids had cheated him and his friends (Ace had had friends back in those days, or at least a reasonable approximation thereof) out of something Ace had wanted. They had caught one of the snotnoses-Gordie LaChance-later on and had beaten the living shit out of him, but it hadn’t mattered. These days LaChance was a bigshot writer living in another part of the state, and he probably wiped his ass with ten-dollar bills. Somehow the snotnoses had won, and things had never been the same for Ace after that. That was when his luck had turned bad. Doors that had been open to him had begun to close, one by one. Little by little he had begun to realize that he was not a king and Castle Rock was not his kingdom. If that had ever been true, those days had begun to pass that Labor Day weekend when he was sixteen, when the snots had cheated him and his friends out of what was rightfully theirs. By the time Ace was old enough to drink legally in The Mellow Tiger, he had gone from being a king to being a soldier without a uniform, skulking through enemy territory.

“I hate this fucking toilet,” he said to Leland Gaunt.

“Good,” Mr. Gaunt said. “Very good. I have a friend-he’s parked just up the street-who is going to help you do something about that, Ace. You’ll have the Sheriff… and you’ll have the whole town, too. Does that sound good?” He had captured Ace’s eyes with his own.

Ace stood before him in the tattered rags of his tee-shirt and began to grin. His head no longer ached.

“Yeah,” he said. “It sounds absolutely t-fine.”

Mr. Gaunt reached into his coat pocket and brought out a plastic sandwich bag filled with white powder. He held it out to Ace.

“There’s work to do, Ace,” he said.

Ace took the sandwich bag, but it was still Mr. Gaunt’s eyes he looked at, and into.

“Good,” he said. “I’m ready.”

13

Buster watched as the last man he had seen enter the service alley came back out again. The guy’s tee-shirt hung in ragged strips now, and he was carrying a crate. Tucked into the waistband of his bluejeans were the butts of two automatic pistols.

Buster drew back in sudden alarm as the man, whom he now recognized as John “Ace” Merrill, walked directly to the van and set the crate down.

Ace tapped on the glass. “Open up the back, Daddy-O,” he said.

“We got work to do.”

Buster unrolled his window. “Get out of here,” he said. “Get out, you ruffian! Or I’ll call the police!”

“Good fucking luck,” Ace grunted.

He drew one of the pistols from the waistband of his pants.

Buster stiffened, and then Ace thrust it through the window at him, butt first. Buster blinked at it.

“Take it,” Ace said impatiently, “and then open the back. If you don’t know who sent me, you’re even dumber than you look.” He reached out with his other hand and felt the wig. “Love your hair,” he said with a small smile. “Simply marvelous.”

“Stop that,” Buster said, but the anger and outrage had gone out of his voice. Three good men can do a lot of damage, Mr. Gaunt had said. I will send someone to you.

But Ace? Ace Merrill? He was a criminal!

“Look,” Ace said, “if you want to discuss the arrangements with Mr. Gaunt, I think he might still be in there. But as you can see”he fluttered his hands through the long strips of tee-shirt hanging over his chest and belly-“his mood is a little touchy.”

“You’re supposed to help me get rid of Them?” Buster asked.

“That’s right,” Ace said. “We’re gonna turn this whole town into a Flame-Broiled Whopper.” He picked up the crate. “Although I don’t know how we’re supposed to do any real damage with just a box of blasting caps. He said you’d know the answer to that one.”

Buster had begun to grin. He got up, crawled into the back of the van, and slid the door open on its track. “I believe I do,” he said.

“Climb in, Mr. Merrill. We’ve got an errand to run.”

“Where?”

“The town motor pool, to start with,” Buster said. He was still grinning.