“wordless The Carolyn inside his head responded to this idea with incredulity.
Never mind, he told her as he started up the walk. I’m dolg ihi, for me, not for him. Or for you, as far as that goes.
He was amazed and amused to discover how guilty that last thought made him feel-almost as if he had committed an act of sacrilege. But that didn’t make the thought any less true.
He was feeling around in his pocket for his latchkey when he saw a note thumbtacked to the door. Ralph felt for his glasses, but he had left them upstairs on the kitchen table. He leaned back, squinting to read Bill’s scrawling hand: true, Dear Ralph/Lois/Fave/Whoever, I expect to be spending most of the day at Derry Home.
Bob Polburst’s niece called and told me that this time it’s almost certainly the real thing,-the poor man has almost finished his struggle. Room 313 in Derry Home I.C.U. I’s about the last place on earth I want to be on a beautiful day in October, but I guess I’d better see this through to the end.
Ralph, I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time this morning.
You came to me for help and I damned near clawed your face off instead. All I can say by way of apology is that this thing with Bob has completely wrecked my nerves. Okay? I think I owe you a dinner.
… if you still want to eat with the likes of me, that is.
Faye, please please PLEASE quit bugging me about your damned chess tournament. I promised I’d play, and I keep my promises.
Goodbye, cruel world, Ralph straightened up with a feeling of relief and gratitude. If only everything else that had been happening to him lately could straighten itself out as easily as this part had done!
He went upstairs, shook the teakettle, and was filling it at the sink when the telephone rang. It was John Leydecker. “Boy, I’m glad I finally got hold of you,” he said. “I was getting a little worried, old buddy.”
“Why?” Ralph asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing, maybe something. Charlie Pickering made bail after all.”
“You told me that wouldn’t happen.”
“I was wrong, okay?” Leydecker said, clearly irritated. “It wasn’t the only thing I was wrong about, either. I told you the ’judge’d probably set bail in the forty-thousand-dollar range, but I didn’t know Pickering was going to draw judge Steadman, who has been known to say that he doesn’t even believe in insanity.
Steadman set bail at eighty grand. Pickering’s court-appointed bellowed like a calf in the moonlight, but it didn’t make any difference.”
Ralph looked down and saw he was still holding the teakettle in one hand. He put it on the table. “And he still made bail?”
“Yep. Remember me telling you that Ed would throw him away like a paring knife with a broken blade?”
“Yes.”
“Well, score it as another strikeout for John Leydecker. Ed marched into the bailiff’s office at eleven o’clock this morning with a briefcase full of money.”
“Eight thousand dollars?” Ralph asked.
“I said briefcase, not envelope,” Leydecker replied. “Not eight but eighty. They’re still buzzing down at the courthouse. Hell, they’ll be buzzing about it even after the Christmas tinsel comes down.”
Ralph tried to imagine Ed Deepneau in one of his baggy old sweaters and a pair of worn corduroys-Ed’s mad-scientist outfits, Carolyn had called them-pulling banded stacks of twenties and fifties out of his briefcase, and couldn’t do it. “I thought you said ten percent was enough to get out.”
“It is, if you can also escrow something-a house or a piece of property, for instance-that stacks up somewhere near the total bail amount. Apparently Ed couldn’t do that, but he did have a little rainy-day cash under the mattress. Either that or he gave the toothfairy one hell of a blowjob.”
Ralph found himself remembering the letter he had gotten from, Helen about a week after she had left the hospital and moved out to High Ridge. She had mentioned a check she’d gotten from Ed-seven hundred and fifty dollars. It seems to indicate he understands his responsibilities, she had written. Ralph wondered if Helen would still feel that way if she knew that Ed had walked into the Derry County Courthouse with enough money to send his daughter sailing through the first fifteen years of her life… and pledged it to free a crazy guy who liked to play with knives and Molotov cocktails,”
“Where in God’s name did he get it?” he asked Leydecker.
“Don’t know.”
“And he isn’t required to say?”
“Nope. It’s a free country. I understand he said something about cashing in some stocks.”
Ralph thought back to the old days-the good old days before Carolyn had gotten sick and died and Ed had just gotten sick.
Thought back to meals the four of them had had together once every two weeks or so, take-out pizza at the Deepneaus, or maybe Carol’s chicken pot-pie in the Robertses’ kitchen, and remembered Ed saying on one occasion that he was going to treat them all to prime rib at the Red Lion in Bangor when his stock accounts matured. That’s right, Helen had replied, smiling at Ed fondly. She had been pregnant then, just beginning to show, and looking all of fourteen with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a checkered smock that was still yards too big for her. Which do you think will mature first, Edward?
The two thousand shares of United Toejam or the six thousand of Amalgamated Sourballs? And he had growled at her, a growl that had made them all laugh because Ed Deepneau didn’t have a mean bone in his body, anyone who had known him more than two weeks knew that Ed wouldn’t hurt a fly. Except Helen might have known a little different-even back then Helen had almost surely known a little different, fond look or no fond look.
“Ralph?” Leydecker asked. “Are you still there?”
“Ed didn’t have any stocks,” Ralph said. “He was a research chemist, for Christ’s sake, and his father was foreman in a bottling plant in some crazy place like Plaster Rock, Pennsylvania. No dough there.”
“Well, he got it somewhere, and I’d be lying if I said I liked it.”
“From the other Friends of Life, do you think?”
“No, I don’t. First, we’re not talking rich folks here-most of the people who belong to The Friends are blue-collar types, working class heroes. They give what they can, but this much? No.
They could have gotten together enough property deeds among them to spring Pickering, I suppose, but they didn’t. Most of them wouldn’t, even if Ed had asked. Ed’s all but persona non grata with them now, and I imagine they wish they’d never heard of Charles Pickering.
Dan Dalton’s taken back the leadership of The Friends of Life, and to most of them, that’s a big relief. Ed and Charlie and two other people-a man named Frank Felton and a woman named Sandra McKay-seem to be operating very much on their own hook now.
Felton I don’t know anything about and there’s no jacket on him, but the McKay woman has toured some of the same fine institutions as Charlie. She’s unmissable, too-pasty complexion, lots of acne, glasses so thick they make her eyes look like poached eggs, goes about three hundred pounds.”
“You joking?”
“No. She favors stretch pants from K-mart and can usually be observed travelling in the company of assorted Ding-Dongs, Funny Bones, and Hostess Twinkies. She often wears a big sweatshirt with the words BABY FACTORY on the front. Claims to have given birth to fifteen children. She’s never actually had any, and probably can’t.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I want you to watch out for these people,” Leydecker said. He spoke patiently, as if to a child. “They may be dangerous.
Charlie is for sure, that you know without me telling you, and Charlie is out. Where Ed got the money to spring him is secondary-he got it, that’s what matters. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he came after you again. Him, or Ed, or the others.”