“Go away,” he whispered. “Get the fuck away from me.”
The shadow drew near to the curtain, growing bigger and more diffuse, and then abruptly resolved itself into Bobby’s sharp little silhouette. Then the light disappeared and, letting out his breath, Hanshaw could feel the room empty of life. The curtain hung gray, streaked with its darker gray splashes. He shook his head, disgusted with himself: and now the cops would have his own size fifteens imprinted in the snow to look at.
He heard the door slam at the front of the house, and moved deeper into the shadows to watch Argenziano come up the driveway. He took mincing little steps. When the motion sensor light clicked on he turned and looked sharply at it, as if it were someone who’d spoken out of turn. He carried a stained towel, and his shirt and slacks were splattered with blood. He also carried his shoes, which explained the funny walk. As he reached the garage he stuffed the towel under his arm and reached down to grasp the garage door, lifting it with an audible grunt. The door moved up and back noisily on its tracks. He disappeared inside and lowered the door about halfway. Hanshaw thought about following him inside and shooting him right there, but he knew that would lead to complications. Deviating from the plan always did. He sternly reminded himself that the unfortunate people in that house, whoever they were, had nothing to do with his business. He’d caught a glimpse of a boy’s bicycle inside the garage: still nothing to do with him. And plus there were the size fifteens, plain as day in the snow. He didn’t think there was any purpose in bringing unnecessary trouble down on himself. He would answer the questions he needed to answer when the time came. He edged closer to the garage and got on his hands and knees to look inside. The cold, wet snow instantly soaked through the knees of his jeans. Argenziano stood before the open trunk of the Mercedes in his underwear, stuffing his clothes and the towel into a plastic garbage bag. He was shaking with the cold, and the loose flesh on his torso quivered. He carried his shoes to a utility sink in the rear and rinsed them off. Then he washed his hands. As he watched, Hanshaw was reminded of the meticulous cleansing motions performed by flies.
He got to his feet. His knees were stinging. He looked down at the dark circles of moisture and involuntarily recalled the appearance of the blood-saturated curtain. He moved down the driveway, leaving Bobby to his ritual cleansing. He could wait, and think, in the truck.
TODAY
“I don’t appreciate this,” Argenziano said. He sat in the backseat of the Mercedes beside Kat, his gun hand resting on his knee. “At our age, we really shouldn’t play these sorts of games. If we feel that we’re in possession of information that has a certain value, we present a proposal. Or we hang on to the information, for whatever reason. Discretion, strategy, what have you. We don’t play games. And this is a game for children. An imaginary friend. Come on. That’s the idea you come up with? Which one? Which one of you hatched the brilliant plan to intimidate me with the notion that Jackie Crackers was walking and, more pertinently, talking?” They were entering the outskirts of Cherry City, and Argenziano studied the landscape morosely for a moment. “Was it you? The noted author?” He smiled. “I knew an author once, a long time ago. He said he wanted to write a book about people like me as he put it. He wanted to know things. What he said was he wanted to learn things, he knew enough to say that, but what he really wanted was to know things. There’s a difference, you know. People know all sorts of things but that doesn’t mean that they learn. If it did, they wouldn’t write stupid, lying books that embarrass people, that lie about people. Would they?”
He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.
“With learning comes understanding, with understanding comes empathy, identification, other highly civilized things. But knowing things just makes you want to tell people. That’s what authors do. You fucking parasite. Now, me, for example, I learned something from that experience. I learned that you never, ever trust a fucking author as far as you can throw him.”
He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.
“Now, you, Kat. Maybe you’re not writing a book, like your friend here, but I know you’re not planning on spending your life at the Chicago Banana. We already discussed this. There’s something bigger out there for you. Who knows? Sky’s the limit.” He shook his head. “Turn here,” he told Mulligan. “You know where the old loony bin is? Go through the main entrance when we get to it.”
He went on. “It feels terrible to know you’re just a stepping stone. You try to deal with people fair and square, and what do they do? They try to manipulate you. They tell you fairy tales about imaginary friends. What did you want from me, Kat?” He sounded genuinely anguished. “Had you come to me candidly, honestly, I would have responded in kind. In fact, I did respond to you in that way. As you anticipated. And you took advantage. You and your friend the author.”
Mulligan had turned into the driveway that wound through the grounds of the state hospital and was driving slowly toward the complex.
“Veer off here,” said Argenziano. The pavement ended and the Mercedes was bumping over the snow-covered earth. “You can stop now. Turn it off.” He opened his door. “Get out.”
Argenziano waved his gun toward the cherry orchard and the dark corridors running between the rows of trees.
“Lead on,” he said. “Right up here.”
Kat and Mulligan walked in silence, not quite side by side. Argenziano huffed and grumbled and cleared his throat behind them. As they proceeded deeper into the grove, the darkness surrounding them nearly completely under the jagged shadows of the bare and untended trees, Mulligan gazed at the great wash of the galaxy spanning the sky.
“What’re you looking at?” demanded Argenziano. “I didn’t tell you to look at anything.”
Finally, they arrived at a broad avenue of open ground where the orchard ended. Across it were the haggard outlines of dead cornstalks standing in an adjacent field. Kat could see two dark forms that stood out amid all the snow there. One was a fresh pile of dirt. The other was an open pit.
“Get over there,” said Argenziano. “That who you’re looking for?” He shoved Mulligan at the pit. “That your star source?” Mulligan looked down. At the bottom was a skeleton, somberly dressed in dark rags.
“That’s twice I’ve dug that fucking hole,” Argenziano said. “When I fill it in again, it’ll be for the last time.”
“Can I see?” said Kat.
“Well, Jesus Christ,” said Argenziano. “You really are a regular Lois Lane, aren’t you? Go ahead, take a look.”
Kat stepped up to the edge and looked in.
“Now tell me who that is. You know, don’t you, author?”
“Saltino?”
“Louder.”
“Saltino,” Mulligan said clearly.