"What's the matter?" Jerry asked. And then followed the Goober's eyes. Goob was staring at something across the street. Jerry looked and saw that it was not something but someone. There was no mistaking who that someone was. Emile Janza. The blunt, compact body, head sunk into his shoulders, the small eyes visibly piglike even at this distance. Or maybe he couldn't see the eyes after all but remembered them vividly. He remembered vividly everything about Emile Janza. The fight in the boxing ring; the day Emile and his buddies had attacked him in a wooded area near the school. And now Emile Janza stood across the street, hands on hips, looking in Jerry's direction. The noise of passing cars and trucks, the movement of pedestrians on the sidewalk, the quick dart of a small kid faded into the background. And for a moment Jerry and Janza seemed to be locked in a confrontation by eyeball. But were they? Jerry couldn't be certain. Too far away to tell, really. Janza might be merely staring vacantly into space, eyes unfocused.
A bus lumbered into view from Jerry's right and slowed down, veering toward the curb, passing in front of Janza, obliterating him completely as if wiping him from the surface of the earth. Jerry waited, not looking at the Goober, not speaking, not even thinking. Remaining blank, a cipher, zero. The bus lurched into action again, belching purple exhaust, moving forward, revealing the sidewalk and the spot where Janza had stood. Janza was no longer there. Had evidently boarded the bus. Or walked away while the bus paused at the curb.
"Do you think he saw us?" the Goober asked.
"Maybe."
"What an animal."
"I know."
Jerry leaped to his feet.
"Come on, Goober," he urged. The hell with Emile Janza. "I'll race you to the library."
And as he started to run, he knew he was really racing toward another place, altogether, to Canada. Hey, Canada, here I come.
"What time is it?" Janza asked.
Obie glanced at his watch. "Ten after."
"Ten after what?"
Obie tried to hide his exasperation. "What do you think? I told you to meet me here at seven o'clock. That was ten minutes ago. You think an hour's gone by?"
Obie wondered whether he had made a mistake by enlisting Janza's aid in his confrontation with Cornacchio. They were standing in a shadowed doorway across the street from Vivaldi's Supermarket, the small grocery store where Cornacchio worked part-time. The store closed at seven, but Cornacchio always stayed behind to bring inside the vegetables and other groceries the market displayed on the sidewalk. Obie had once worked in a store after school, but was fired for being late because of the demands of Archie and the Vigils.
"I'm getting hungry," Janza said.
Obie didn't bother to answer. He didn't want to engage in conversation with him. He hated the thought of using Janza, becoming involved with him at all, and yet Janza was the muscle he needed. Both Cornacchio and Janza were brutes: either one would cancel the threat of the other. Obie's instructions to Janza had been simple: "You don't have to say anything. Just play dumb." Which wouldn't require any acting at all on Janza's part. "Look menacing." As if he had to make an effort to look menacing.
The evening had turned cool, and the wind hustled assorted debris along the sidewalk: pages of a newspaper, dry leaves, candy wrappers. Obie's eyes were slits. Painful dry slits. As if someone had removed them for inspection and put them back in the wrong sockets.
Cornacchio finally emerged from the store, arching his back, stretching his muscles. Looked tough. Which made Obie glad now that he'd brought Janza along.
"There he is," Janza said. He had a faculty for stating the obvious.
Cornacchio walked with a swagger, the rhythmic bouncing gait of an athlete, as if his shoes contained hidden springs. Broad shoulders, legs like tree stumps.
As Cornacchio crossed the street at an angle, Obie moved forward to intercept him, Janza at his elbow. Obie checked the damaged loafer, the brass buckle winking in the dusk, and felt again the anger and horror of that terrible night.
"Hi, Cornacchio," he said, stepping in front of him.
Cornacchio looked at Janza, although Obie had greeted him. And he got the message immediately, knew what this was all about. Turned his attention to Obie, Obie's deadly calm, his attitude of determination joined with Janza's silent menace. Cornacchio was not a coward and not shy about using his muscle: he had emerged triumphant from countless schoolyard skirmishes since the third grade. But he knew when he was hopelessly outclassed, not only by Janza, who was probably the only guy in school whose strength he respected, but by Obie, who was a key figure in the Vigils, powerful, next to Archie Costello. He knew that Bunting couldn't help him at this moment, no matter how clever Bunting was.
"What's happening?" Cornacchio asked, dancing a bit like a fighter warming up, instinctively putting up a front, not wanting to betray his nervousness.
"It's not what's happening, Corny," Obie said, deliberately using the nickname Cornacchio despised. "It's what's already happened."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Cornacchio said, making an effort to pass by.
Janza stepped into his path.
"You know what I'm talking about," Obie said. So calm, so certain of himself, so implacable. Voice flat, deadly, quiet. And something terrible in the quietness.
"Okay, okay," Cornacchio said, lifting his arms, his shoulders, like a spy discovered in enemy territory, knowing that he would be shot at dawn, alone and friendless, abandoned by his comrades.
"It's not what you think it was," Cornacchio said.
Obie felt himself sagging, relaxing, unfolding, the relief from his tension so sudden and strong that he was afraid he would collapse on the sidewalk like a puppet whose strings had been severed. "What was it, then?" he asked.
Cornacchio hesitated, glanced down at his feet, kicked at a piece of broken glass, looked up at Obie, then at Janza, then at Obie again. Held on to Obie's eyes. Obie sensed a hidden message there. Then got the message. Of course: Janza. Cornacchio didn't want to talk in front of Janza. And Obie realized how ridiculous it was to have brought Janza along. He had been duped by loss of sleep, the obsessive nature of his search for the attacker, had lost all perspective. He realized that he certainly didn't want Janza to know what had happened. The less Janza knew, the better it would be for everybody.
"Hey, Janza," Obie said.
Janza had not removed his eyes from Cornacchio for an instant. He had decided that he didn't like Cornacchio. He didn't like the way Cornacchio had ignored him, had barely glanced his way. Janza liked to be recognized, did not like to be ignored.
"What?" Janza said, his voice a brief bark.
"Check the other end of the street," Obie said. "I thought I saw someone there."
Janza didn't want to appear to be taking orders from Obie or anybody else. On the other hand, if somebody was lurking down the street, it was an opportunity for action, for the use of muscle.
"Okay," he said, spitting out the word, continuing to glare at Cornacchio to show that he was not simply an errand boy.
Obie and Cornacchio watched Janza lumbering away, shoulders swinging.
"I hate that scumbag," Cornacchio said.
Obie ignored the remark. He knew that he and Cornacchio were connected with each other by the Vigils and that Janza was an outsider. But the brotherhood of the Vigils did not make any difference to Obie as far as the attack was concerned Cornacchio was the enemy; hie was the scumbag, not Janza.
"Okay, Corny, explain. If it's not what I think it was, then what was it?"
Cornacchio flinched at the use of his nickname, knew that Obie was deliberately taunting him. But he was in no position to protest.
"The Vigils," Cornacchio said.
Obie stepped back as if Cornacchio had spit in his face.