Thinner

'How are you going to scare him?'

Ginelli touched the shopping bag with the toe of one Bally boot and told him how he meant to start. Billy was appalled. Billy argued with Ginelli, as he had foreseen; then he talked with Ginelli, as he had also foreseen; and although Ginelli never raised his voice, his eyes continued to whirl and twirl with that mad light and Billy knew he might as well have been talking to the man in the moon.

And as the fresh pain in his hand slowly subsided to the former throbbing ache, he began to feel sleepy again.

'When are you going?' he asked, giving up.

Ginelli glanced at his watch. 'Ten past ten now. I'll give them another four or five hours. They been doing a good little business out there, from what I heard downtown. Telling a lot of fortunes. And the dogs – those pit-bulls. Christ Almighty. The dogs you saw weren't pit-bulls, were they?'

'I never saw a pit-bull,' Billy said sleepily. 'The ones I saw all looked like hounds.'

'Pit-bulls look like a cross between terriers and bulldogs. They cost a lot of dough. If you want to see pit-bulls fight, you got to agree to pay for one dead dog before the wagers even get put down. It's one nasty business.

'They're into all the classy stuff in this town, ain't they, William – Ferrari sunglasses, dope boats, dogfights. Oh, sorry -and tarot and the I Ching.'

'Be careful,' Billy said.

'I'll be careful,' Ginelli said, 'don't worry.'

Billy fell asleep shortly after. When he woke up it was ten minutes until four and Ginelli was gone. He was seized with the certainty that Ginelli was dead. But Ginelli came in at a quarter to six, so fully alive that he seemed somehow too big for the place. His clothes, face, and hands were splattered with mud that reeked of sea salt. He was grinning. That crazy light danced in his eyes.

'William,' he said, 'we're going to pack your things and move you out of Bar Harbor. Just like a government witness going to a safe house.'

Alarmed, Billy asked, 'What did you do?'

'Take it easy, take it easy! Just what I said I was going to do – no more and no less. But when you stir up a hornet's nest with a stick, it's usually a good idea to flog your dogs on down the road afterward, William, don't you think so?'

'Yes, but

'No time now. I can talk and pack your stuff at the same time.'

'Where?' Billy almost wailed.

'Not far. I'll tell you on the way. Now, let's get going. And maybe you better start by changing your shirt. You're a good man, William, but you are starting to smell a little ripe.

Billy had started up to the office with his key when Ginelli touched him on the shoulder and gently took it out of his hand.

'I'll just put this on the night table in your room. You checked in with a credit card, didn't you?'

'Yes. but -'

'Then we'll just make this sort of an informal checkout. No harm done, less attention attracted to us guys. Right?'

A woman jogging by on the berm of the highway looked casually at them, back at the road … and then her head snapped back in a wide-eyed double-take that Ginelli saw but Billy mercifully missed.

'I'll even leave ten bucks for the maid,' Ginelli said. 'We'll take your car. I'll drive.'

'Where's yours?' He knew Ginelli had rented one, and was now realizing belatedly that he hadn't heard an engine before Ginelli walked in. All of this was going too fast for Billy's mind -he couldn't keep up with it.

'It's okay. I left it on a back road about three miles from here and walked. Pulled the distributor cap and left a note on the windshield saying I was having engine trouble and would be back in a few hours, just in case anybody should get nosy. I don't think anyone will. There was grass growing up the middle of the road, you know?'

A car went by. The driver got a look at Billy Halleck and slowed down. Ginelli could see him leaning over and craning his neck.

'Come on, Billy. People looking at you. The next bunch could be the wrong people.'

An hour later Billy was sitting in front of the television in another motel room – this the living room of a seedy little suite in the Blue Moon Motor Court and Lodge in Northeast Harbor. They were less than fifteen miles from Bar Harbor, but Ginelli seemed satisfied. On the TV screen, Woody Woodpecker was trying to sell insurance to a talking bear.

'Okay,' Ginelli said. 'You rest up the hand, William. I'm gonna be gone all day.'

'You're going back there?'

'What, go back to the hornet's nest while the hornets are still flying? Not me, my friend. No, today I'm gonna play with cars. Tonight'll be time enough for Phase Two. Maybe I'll get time enough to look in on you, but don't count on it.'

Billy didn't see Richard Ginelli again until the following morning at nine, when he showed up driving a dark blue Chevy Nova that had certainly not come from Hertz or Avis. The paint was dull and spotted, there was a hairline crack in the passenger-side window, and a big dent in the trunk. But it was jacked in the back and there was a supercharger cowling on the hood.

This time Billy had given him up for dead a full six hours ago, and he greeted Ginelli shakily, trying not to weep with relief. He seemed to be losing all control of his emotions as he lost weight … and this morning, as the sun came up, he had felt the first unsteady racings of his heart. He had gasped for breath and pounded at his chest with one closed fist. The beat had finally smoothed out again, but that had been it: the first instance of arrhythmia.

'I thought you were dead,' he told Ginelli as he came in.

'You keep saying that and I keep turning up. I wish you would relax about me, William. I can take care of myself. I am a big boy. If you thought I was going to underestimate this old fuck, that would be one thing. But I'm not. He's smart, and he's dangerous.'

'What do you mean?'

'Nothing. I'll tell you later.'

'Now!'

No.'.

'Why not?'

'Two reasons,' Ginelli said patiently. 'First, because you might ask me to back off. Second, because I haven't been this tired in about twelve years. I'm gonna go in there to the bedroom and crash out for eight hours. Then I'm gonna get up and eat three pounds of the first food I can snag. Then I'm gonna go back out and shoot the moon.'

Ginelli did indeed look tired – almost haggard. Except for his eyes, Billy thought. His eyes are still whirling and twirling like a couple of fluorescent carnival pinwheels.

'Suppose I did ask you to back off?' Billy asked quietly. 'Would you do it, Richard?'

Richard looked at him for a long, considering moment and then gave Billy the answer he had known he would give ever since he had first seen that mad light in Ginelli's eyes.

'I couldn't now,' Ginelli said calmly. 'You're sick, William. It's through your whole body. You can't be trusted to know where your own best interest lies.'

In other words, you've taken out your own set of committal papers on me. Billy opened his mouth to speak this thought aloud and then closed his mouth again. Because Ginelli didn't mean what he said; he had only said what sounded sane.

'Also because it's personal, right?' Billy asked him.

'Yeah,' Ginelli replied. 'Now it's personal.'

He went into the bedroom, took off his shirt and pants, and lay down. He was asleep on top of the coverlet five minutes later.

Billy drew a glass of water, swallowed an Empirin, and then drank the rest of the water standing in the doorway. His eyes moved from Ginelli to the pants crumpled on the chair. Ginelli had arrived in a pair of impeccable cotton slacks, but somewhere in the last couple of days he had picked up a pair of blue jeans. The keys to the Nova parked out front would undoubtedly be in them. Billy could take them and drive away … except he knew he wouldn't do that, and the fact that he would be signing his own death warrant by so doing now seemed actually secondary. The important thing now seemed to be how and where all of this would end.