“Yes, sir” Hinch said.
“And don’t go getting smart, Hinch. Just do like I told you. You remember what you got to do?”
“What am I, a birdbrain? Sure I remember. Hang around town, keep my ears open. Right, Fure?”
“That’s right. Nothing else. No more booze, no picking up a broad, no anything. Just listen. And don’t call attention to yourself.”
“The best place to hear the dirt is Freight Street,” Goldie said. “That’s the street that runs past the railroad station. The old town rummies hang out down there. Cash their social security checks and run to the liquor store. Buy a bottle of cheap port, Hinch, and pass it around. They’ll tell you what’s going on. They get the word before the Selectmen do. You can park the car in the railroad lot. Everybody uses it.”
“Yes, ma am” Hinch said, and started for the door.
“Wait a minute. I’m going with you. We can meet afterward at the lot.”
“The hell you say.” Furia banged on the table with the bottle. “You’re going no place, Goldie!”
“Will you listen to me?” Goldie said wearily. “Before you blow your stack. I’ve got to get a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Like Tampax, for one, if you must know. I fell olf the roof this morning. Also I need hair dye, I’m starting to sprout green around the roots. And some deodorant for Hinch. I can’t stand being around him any more. He stinks.”
“I ain’t heard no complaints from my broads,” Hinch said hotly.
“Well, I’m not one of your broads. Why don’t you break down and take a bath once in a while? We need some groceries, too, Fure. Bread, and there’s no milk for the kid.”
Furia considered this.
Hinch spat into the sink. “I thought you were the one so scared to show your pussy around here.”
“You’re sore because I wouldn’t put out for you,” Goldie said, smiling.
Furia went up to Hinch and stuck his jaw out. The top of his head came to Hinch’s chin. “You been making passes at Goldie?”
Hinch backed off. “Fure, I never! I swear to God. She’s just trying to get me in trouble. She don’t like me.”
“And that’s a fact,” Goldie said, still smiling.
“You lay one finger on her, Hinch, and you know what? You’re dead.”
“I never,” Hinch mumbled.
“Just remember I gave you the word. About going, Goldie, the answer is no. It’s too risky.”
“It might be if I went to a beauty parlor. But there’s a drug store in town that didn’t use to be here. And I noticed a supermarket last night that’s new, too. I’ll be careful, don’t worry.”
“The hell with the milk,” Furia said. “Nobody ever bought me no milk. I was lucky to get a glass of water without no cockaroach in it.”
“Whatever you say, Fure.”
“Tell you what, Goldie. Long as you’re going, bring me back some of that frozen pizza pie crap. I feel like a pizza. And some cherry-vanilla ice cream.”
“You’ll go to hell in a hand basket,” Goldie said, laughing. “Okay, pizza and ice cream.”
“And say. Does this wide place in the road have a newspaper?”
“Sure, a weekly. Comes out on Thursdays.”
“That’s today. Groovy. Pick me up one.” Furia chuckled. “I want to read my reviews.”
Goldie nodded. She was in slacks and tight turtleneck and pea jacket, she had her hair bound in a scarf. She picked up her purse. “Okay, Stinkfoot, let’s go. I’ll stick my nose out the window.”
“I swear to Christ,” Hinch gargled, “if it wasn’t for Fure I’d tear that bitch tongue of yours out by the roots.”
“Then what would he play with?” Goldie said, and sailed past him as if he weren’t there.
Malone awoke to pain. Something that felt like a needle was scratching his face and his back was one burning ache. For a moment he did not know where he was.
Then he remembered and he brushed the branch out of his face. He sat up in the darkness.
Dark.
He had slept all afternoon and into the evening, well into it. The moon was high. He could not see the hands of his watch but he knew it must be late. He had slept ten hours or more.
He stared over at the cabin. It was lit up; the shades were only half drawn. A figure passed, another. A third. They were careless. He could not see above their waists, but they were all there.
What chances have I missed?
How is God’s name could I have let myself fall asleep with Bibby in there?
He strained to see her.
Bibby Bibby.
There’s no sense to this.
There’s no sense to me.
Malone crouched in his bush for ten minutes arguing with the prosecution. While he argued he found himself working his muscles, beginning with his feet and going up. Isometric exercises got the aches and stiffness out. It was something he had learned to do during the cramped hours in the patrol car.
He worked at it with passion.
It was like a miracle. When he was altogether limbered up he had a plan readymade. He did not know where it came from. One moment he was blundering about in a mystery, the next it was all clear, solved, perfect.
He began to crawl about in the dark, feeling for dry twigs, brittle leaves, pine needles. He arranged them just outside the clearing on a line of sight with the cabin’s front windows, making a little pile of tinder in the heart of the brush and laying down thicker pieces of branch like the spokes of a wheel over it, Boy Scout fashion. It should be enough to blaze up and start a smoky fire. The bushes would burn slowly, it had been a wet month, there was not much danger of setting the woods on fire. But I’ll burn the whole damn county down if it means getting Bibby out of there.
They’re bound to see the fire or at least smell the smoke. They can’t afford to have half of New Bradford roaring into the woods to put it out. They’ll have to leave the shack and put it out themselves. If the woman stays inside I’ll break her neck.
He blocked the view from the cabin with his body and on hands and knees struck a paper match and very carefully touched the flame to the tinder.
It flared up.
Malone ducked into the woods and made his way rapidly around the perimeter of the clearing to a point at right angles to the porch. Here he stopped. He had both the fire and the front door in sight. The fire had grown taller and huskier, it was jumping. Then the bushes began to smoke. The smoke tumbled into the clearing like surf, a shifting wall through which the flames licked and darted. The sharp sweetness of burning leaves and green wood rolled through the clearing and struck the cabin. Malone’s eyes began to water.
Come on.
They came. One of them opened the door and Malone heard a startled yell, then something about blankets, and a moment later three figures dashed out of the shack and across the clearing and began slapping the fire and stamping on embers, shouting orders to one another. They ran around like hooched-up Indians in a Western.
But Malone was not there to applaud. Even before they were at the fire he was on his way around to the back door of the cabin and yanking at the knob. The door was locked. He ran at it and through it without feeling anything. He found Barbara immediately. She was lying on a cot in a tiny bedroom with a door open to the kitchen and he ran in and snatched a blanket and wrapped her in it and flung her over his shoulder fireman style and ran out and through the broken door and into the woods and made a great circle around to where he had hidden the Saab and then he was on the dirt road and a heartbeat after that on the blacktop speeding away from the Lake.
Only then did the smell from the sleeping child’s mouth register on his brain and he knew what they had done to her to keep her quiet.
Through the rage he kept telling himself well it could have been worse a lot worse I hope Ellen sees it that way God damn their slimy souls.