And since my wife died, there hardly ever seems to be any reason to drive. The bus does me just fine for most things.”
All true enough; Ralph saw no need to add that he had increasingly come to mistrust both his reflexes and his short vision. A year ago, a kid of about seven had chased his football out into Harris Avenue as Ralph was coming back from the movies, and although he had been going only twenty miles an hour, Ralph had thought for two endless, horrifying seconds that he was going to run the little boy down. He hadn’t, of course-it hadn’t even been close, not really-but since then he thought he could count the number of times he’d driven the Olds on both hands.
He saw no need to tell John that, either.
“Well, whatever does it for you,” Leydecker said, giving the Olds a vague wave. “How does one o’clock tomorrow afternoon sound for that statement, Ralph? I come on at noon, so I could kind of look over your shoulder. Bring you a coffee, if you wanted one.”
“That sounds fine. And thanks for the ride home.”
“No problem. One other thing…”
Ralph had started to open the car door. Now he closed it again and turned back to Leydecker, eyebrows raised.
Leydecker looked down at his hands, shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel, cleared his throat, then looked up again. “I just wanted to say that I think you’re a class act,” Leydecker said. “Lots of guys forty years younger than you would have finished today’s little adventure in the hospital. Or the morgue.”
“My guardian angel was looking out for me, I guess,” Ralph said, thinking of how surprised he had been when he realized what the round shape in his jacket pocket was.
“Well, maybe that was it, but you still want to be sure to lock your door tonight. You hear what I’m saying?”
Ralph smiled and nodded. Warranted or not, Leydecker’s praise had made a warm spot in his chest. “I will, and if I can just get McGovern to cooperate, everything will be hunky-dory.”
Also, he thought, I can always go down and double-check the lock myself when I wake up. That should be just about two and a half hours after I fall asleep, the way things are going.
“Everything is going to be hunky-dory,” Leydecker said. “No one down where I work was very pleased when Deepneau more or less co-opted The Friends of Life, but I can’t say we were surprised-Ed’s an attractive, charismatic guy. If, that is, you happen to catch him on a day when he hasn’t been using his wife for a punchingbag.”
Ralph nodded.
“On the other hand, we’ve seen guys like him before, and they have a way of self-destructing. That process has already started with Deepneau. He’s lost his wife, he’s lost his job… did you know that?”
“Uh-huh. Helen told me.”
“Now he’s losing his more moderate followers. They’re peeling off like jet fighters heading back to base because they’re running out of fuel.
Not Ed, though-he’s going on come hell or high water. I imagine he’ll keep at least some of them with him until the Susan Day speech, but after that I think it’s gonna be a case of the cheese stands alone.”
???? "Has it occurred to you that he might try something Friday? That he
???? might try to hurt Susan Day?”
???? "Oh yes,” Leydecker said. "It’s occurred to us, all right. It
???? certainly has.”
????
Ralph was extremely happy to find the perch door locked this time.
He unlocked it just long enough to let himself in, then trudged up the front stairs, which seemed longer and gloomier than ever this afternoon.
The apartment seemed too silent in spite of the steady beat of the rain on the roof, and the air seemed to smell of too many sleepless nights. Ralph took one of the chairs from the kitchen table over to the counter, stood on it, and looked at the top of the cabinet closest to the sink. It was as if he expected to find another can of Bodyguard-the original can, the one he’d put up here after seeing Helen and her friend Gretchen off-on top of that cabinet, and part of him actually did expect that. There was nothing up there, however, but a toothpick, an old Buss fuse, and a lot of dust.
He got carefully down off the chair, saw he had left muddy footprints on the seat, and used a swatch of paper towels to wipe them away. Then he replaced the chair at the table and went into the living room. He stood there, letting his eyes run from the couch with its dingy floral coverlet to the wing-chair to the old television sitting on its oak table between the two windows looking out on Harris Avenue.
From the TV his gaze moved into the far corner. When he had come into the apartment yesterday, still a little on edge from finding the porch door unlatched, Ralph had briefly mistaken his jacket hanging on the coat-tree in that corner for an intruder. Well, 2 33 no need to be coy; he had thought for a moment that Ed had decided to pay him a visit.
I never hang my coat up, though. It was one of the things about me-one of the few, I think-that used to genuinely irritate Carolyn.
And if I never managed to get in the habit of hanging it up when she was alive, I sure as shit haven’t since she died. No, I’m not the one who hung thisjacket up.
Ralph crossed the r(Rom, rummaging in the pockets of the gray leather jacket and putting the stuff he found on top of the television.
Nothing in the left but an old roll of Life Savers with lint clinging to the top one, but the right hand pocket was a treasure-trove even with the aerosol can gone. There was a lemon Tootsie Pop, still in its wrapper; a crumpled advertising circular from the Derry House of Pizza; a double-a battery; a small empty carton that had once contained an apple pie from McDonald’s; his discount card from Dave’s Video Stop, just four punches away from a free rental (the card had been MIA for ever two weeks and Ralph had been sure it was lost); a book of matches; various scraps of tinfoil… and a folded piece of lined blue paper.
Ralph unfolded it and read a single sentence, written in a scrawling, slightly unsteady old man’s script: Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.
That was all there was, but it was enough to confirm for his brain what his heart already knew: Dorrance Marstellar had been on the porch steps when Ralph had returned from Back Pages with his paperbacks, but he’d had other stuff to do before sitting down to wait. He had gone up to Ralph’s apartment, taken the aerosol can from the top of the kitchen shelf, and put it in the right hand pocket of Ralph’s old gray jacket.
He had even left his calling-card: a bit of poetry scrawled on a piece of paper probably torn from the battered notebook in which he sometimes recorded arrivals and departures along Runway 3. Then, instead of returning the jacket to wherever Ralph had left it, Old Dor had hung it neatly on the coat-tree. With that accomplished (done-bun-can’the-undone) he had returned to the porch to wait.
Last night Ralph had given McGovern a scolding for leaving the front door unlocked again, and McGovern had borne it as patiently as Ralph himself had borne Carolyn’s scoldings about tossing his jacket onto the nearest chair when he came in instead of hanging it up, but now Ralph found himself wondering if he hadn’t accused Bill unjustly.
Perhaps Old Dor had picked the lock… or witched it. Under the circumstances, witchery seemed the more likely choice. Because…
“Because look,” Ralph said in a low voice, mechanically scooping his pocket-litter up from the top of the TV and dumping it back into his pockets. “It isn’t just like he knew I’d need the Stuff; he knew where to find it, and he knew where to put it.”
A chill zigzagged up his back at that, and his mind tried to gavel the whole idea down-to label it mad, illogical, just the sort of thing a man with a grade-a case of insomnia would think up. Maybe so.