"Turn around."
Tina doesn't move quickly enough to suit Morris, who is still furious with her brother. He grabs her shoulders and whirls her. Tina doesn't cry out this time, but a groan escapes her tightly compressed lips. Her beloved yellow blouse is now smeared with basement dirt.
He secures the orange electrical cord to the computer cord binding her wrists, then throws the cage-light over one of the furnace pipes. He pulls the cord taut, eliciting another groan from the girl as her bound hands are jerked up almost to her shoulder blades.
Morris ties off the new cord with a double knot, thinking, They were here all along, and he thinks that's funny? If he wants funny, I'll give him all the funny he can stand. He can die laughing.
He bends down, hands on knees, so he's eye to eye with the thief's sister. "I'm going upstairs to get my property, girlfriend. Also to kill your pain-in-the-ass brother. Then I'm going to come back down and kill you." He kisses the tip of her nose. "Your life is over. I want you to think about that while I'm gone."
He trots toward the stairs.
52
Pete is in the pantry. The door is only open a crack, but that's enough to see Red Lips as he goes hustling by, the little red and black gun in one hand, Tina's phone in the other. Pete listens to the echo of his footfalls as they cross the empty downstairs rooms, and as soon as they become the thud-thud-thud of feet climbing the stairs to what was once known as the Saturday Movie Palace, he pelts for the stairs to the basement. He drops his shoes on the way. He wants his hands free. He also wants Red Lips to know exactly where he went. Maybe it will slow him down.
Tina's eyes widen when she sees him. "Pete! Get me out of here!"
He goes to her and looks at the tangle of knots--white cord, orange cord--that binds her hands behind her and also to the furnace. The knots are tight, and he feels a wave of despair as he looks at them. He loosens one of the orange knots, allowing her hands to drop a little and taking some of the pressure off her shoulders. As he starts work on the second, his cell phone vibrates. The wolf has found nothing upstairs and is calling back. Instead of answering, Pete hurries to the box below the window. His printing is on the side: KITCHEN SUPPLIES. He can see footprints on top, and knows to whom they belong.
"What are you doing?" Tina says. "Untie me!"
But getting her free is only part of the problem. Getting her out is the rest of it, and Pete doesn't think there's enough time to do both before Red Lips comes back. He has seen his sister's ankle, now so swollen it hardly looks like an ankle at all.
Red Lips is no longer bothering with Tina's phone. He yells from upstairs. Screams from upstairs. "Where are you, you fucking son of a whore?"
Two little piggies in the basement and the big bad wolf upstairs, Pete thinks. And us without a house made of straw, let alone one made of bricks.
He carries the carton Red Lips used as a step to the middle of the room and pulls the folded flaps apart as footfalls race across the kitchen floor above them, pounding hard enough to make the old strips of insulation hanging between the beams sway a little. Tina's face is a mask of horror. Pete upends the carton, pouring out a flood of Moleskine notebooks.
"Pete! What are you doing? He's coming!"
Don't I know it, Pete thinks, and opens the second carton. As he adds the rest of the notebooks to the pile on the basement floor, the footfalls above stop. He's seen the shoes. Red Lips opens the door to the basement. Being cautious now. Trying to think it through.
"Peter? Are you visiting with your sister?"
"Yes," Peter calls back. "I'm visiting her with a gun in my hand."
"You know what?" the wolf says. "I don't believe that."
Pete unscrews the cap on the can of lighter fluid and upends it over the notebooks, dousing the jackstraw heap of stories, poems, and angry, half-drunk rants that often end in mid-thought. Also the two novels that complete the story of a fucked-up American named Jimmy Gold, stumbling through the sixties and looking for some kind of redemption. Looking for--in his own words--some kind of shit that means shit. Pete fumbles for the lighter, and at first it slips through his fingers. God, he can see the man's shadow up there now. Also the shadow of the gun.
Tina is saucer-eyed with terror, hogtied with her nose and lips slathered in blood. The bastard beat her, Pete thinks. Why did he do that? She's only a little kid.
But he knows. The sister was a semi-acceptable substitute for the one Red Lips really wants to beat.
"You better believe it," Pete says. "It's a forty-five, lots bigger than yours. It was in my father's desk. You better just go away. That would be the smart thing."
Please, God, please.
But Pete's voice wavers on the last words, rising to the uncertain treble of the thirteen-year-old boy who found these notebooks in the first place. Red Lips hears it, laughs, and starts down the stairs. Pete grabs the lighter again--tight, this time--and thumbs up the top as Red Lips comes fully into view. Pete flicks the spark wheel, realizing that he never checked to see if the lighter had fuel, an oversight that could end his life and that of his sister in the next ten seconds. But the spark produces a robust yellow flame.
Peter holds the lighter a foot above the pile of notebooks. "You're right," he says. "No gun. But I did find this in his desk."
53
Hodges and Jerome run across the baseball field. Jerome is pulling ahead, but Hodges isn't too far behind. Jerome stops at the edge of the sorry little basketball court and points to a green Subaru parked near the loading dock. Hodges reads the vanity license plate--BOOKS4U--and nods.
They have just started moving again when they hear a furious yell from inside: "Where are you, you fucking son of a whore?"
That's got to be Bellamy. The fucking son of a whore is undoubtedly Peter Saubers. The boy let himself in with his father's key, which means the front door is open. Hodges points to himself, then to the Rec. Jerome nods, but says in a low voice, "You have no gun."
"True enough, but my thoughts are pure and my strength is that of ten."
"Huh?"
"Stay here, Jerome. I mean it."
"You sure?"
"Yes. You don't happen to have a knife, do you? Even a pocketknife?"
"No. Sorry."
"All right, then look around. Find a bottle. There must be some, kids probably come back here to drink beer after dark. Break it and then slash you some tires. If this goes sideways, he's not using Halliday's car to get away."
Jerome's face says he doesn't much care for the possible implications of this order. He grips Hodges's arm. "No kamikaze runs, Bill, you hear me? Because you have nothing to make up for."
"I know."
The truth is he knows nothing of the kind. Four years ago, a woman he loved died in an explosion that was meant for him. There's not a day that goes by when he doesn't think of Janey, not a night when he doesn't lie in bed thinking, If only I had been a little quicker. A little smarter.
He hasn't been quick enough or smart enough this time, either, and telling himself that the situation developed too quickly isn't going to get those kids out of the potentially lethal jam they're in. All he knows for sure is that neither Tina nor her brother can die on his watch today. He'll do whatever he needs to in order to prevent that from happening.
He pats the side of Jerome's face. "Trust me, kiddo. I'll do my part. You just take care of those tires. You might yank some plug wires while you're at it."
Hodges starts away, looking back just once when he reaches the corner of the building. Jerome is watching him unhappily, but this time he's staying put. Which is good. The only thing worse than Bellamy killing Peter and Tina would be if he killed Jerome.
He goes around the corner and runs to the front of the building.
This door, like the one at 23 Sycamore Street, is standing open.
54
Red Lips is staring at the heap of Moleskine notebooks as if hypnotized. At last he raises his eyes to Pete. He also raises the gun.
"
Go ahead," Pete says. "Do it and see what happens to the notebooks when I drop the lighter. I only got a chance to really douse the ones on top, but by now it'll be trickling down. And they're old. They'll go up fast. Then maybe the rest of the shit down here."
"So it's a Mexican standoff," Red Lips says. "The only problem with that, Peter--I'm speaking from your perspective now--is that my gun will last longer than your lighter. What are you going to do when it burns out?" He's trying to sound calm and in charge, but his eyes keep ping-ponging between the Zippo and the notebooks. The covers of the ones on top gleam wetly, like sealskin.
"I'll know when that's going to happen," Pete says. "The second the flame starts to go lower, and turns blue instead of yellow, I'll drop it. Then, poof."
"You won't." The wolf's upper lip rises, exposing those yellow teeth. Those fangs.
"Why not? They're just words. Compared to my sister, they don't mean shit."
"Really?" Red Lips turns the gun on Tina. "Then douse the lighter or I'll kill her right in front of you."
Painful hands squeeze Pete's heart at the sight of the gun pointing at his sister's midsection, but he doesn't close the Zippo's cap. He bends over, very slowly lowering it toward the pile of notebooks. "There are two more Jimmy Gold novels in here. Did you know that?"
"You're lying." Red Lips is still pointing the gun at Tina, but his eyes have been drawn--helplessly, it seems--back toward the Moleskines again. "There's one. It's about him going west."
"Two," Pete says again. "The Runner Goes West is good, but The Runner Raises the Flag is the best thing he ever wrote. It's long, too. An epic. What a shame if you never get to read it."
A flush is climbing up the man's pale cheeks. "How dare you? How dare you bait me? I gave my life for those books! I killed for those books!"
"I know," Pete says. "And since you're such a fan, here's a little treat for you. In the last book, Jimmy meets Andrea Stone again. How about that?"
The wolf's eyes widen. "Andrea? He does? How? What happens?"
Under such circumstances the question is beyond bizarre, but it's also sincere. Honest. Pete realizes that the fictional Andrea, Jimmy's first love, is real to this man in a way Pete's sister is not. No human being is as real to Red Lips as Jimmy Gold, Andrea Stone, Mr. Meeker, Pierre Retonne (also known as The Car Salesman of Doom), and all the rest. This is surely a marker of true, deep insanity, but that must make Pete crazy, too, because he knows how this lunatic feels. Exactly how. He lit up with the same excitement, the same amazement, when Jimmy glimpsed Andrea in Grant Park, during the Chicago riots of 1968. Tears actually came to his eyes. Such tears, Pete realizes--yes, even now, especially now, because their lives hang upon it--mark the core power of make-believe. It's what caused thousands to weep when they learned that Charles Dickens had died of a stroke. It's why, for years, a stranger put a rose on Edgar Allan Poe's grave every January 19th, Poe's birthday. It's also what would make Pete hate this man even if he wasn't pointing a gun at his sister's trembling, vulnerable midsection. Red Lips took the life of a great writer, and why? Because Rothstein dared to follow a character who went in a direction Red Lips didn't like? Yes, that was it. He did it out of his own core belief: that the writing was somehow more important than the writer.
Slowly and deliberately, Pete shakes his head. "It's all in the notebooks. The Runner Raises the Flag fills sixteen of them. You could read it there, but you'll never hear any of it from me."
Pete actually smiles.
"No spoilers."
"The notebooks are mine, you bastard! Mine!"
"They're going to be ashes, if you don't let my sister go."
"Petie, I can't even walk!" Tina wails.
Pete can't afford to look at her, only at Red Lips. Only at the wolf. "What's your name? I think I deserve to know your name."
Red Lips shrugs, as if it no longer matters. "Morris Bellamy."
"Throw the gun away, Mr. Bellamy. Kick it along the floor and under the furnace. Once you do that, I'll close the lighter. I'll untie my sister and we'll go. I'll give you plenty of time to get away with the notebooks. All I want to do is take Tina home and get help for my mom."
"I'm supposed to trust you?" Red Lips sneers it.
Pete lowers the lighter farther. "Trust me or watch the notebooks burn. Make up your mind fast. I don't know the last time my dad filled this thing."
Something catches the corner of Pete's eye. Something moving on the stairs. He doesn't dare look. If he does, Red Lips will, too. And I've almost got him, Pete thinks.
This seems to be so. Red Lips starts to lower the gun. For a moment he looks every year of his age, and more. Then he raises the gun and points it at Tina again.
"I won't kill her." He speaks in the decisive tone of a general who has just made a crucial battlefield decision. "Not at first. I'll just shoot her in the leg. You can listen to her scream. If you light the notebooks on fire after that, I'll shoot her in the other leg. Then in the stomach. She'll die, but she'll have plenty of time to hate you first, if she doesn't alre--"
There's a flat double clap from Morris's left. It's Pete's shoes, landing at the foot of the stairs. Morris, on a hair trigger, wheels in that direction and fires. The gun is small, but in the enclosed space of the basement, the report is loud. Pete gives an involuntary jerk, and the lighter falls from his hand. There's an explosive whump, and notebooks on top of the pile suddenly grow a corona of fire.
"No!" Morris screams, wheeling away from Hodges even as Hodges comes pelting down the stairs so fast he can barely keep his balance. Morris has a clear shot at Pete. He raises the gun to take it, but before he can fire, Tina swings forward on her bonds and kicks him in the back of the leg with her good foot. The bullet goes between Pete's neck and shoulder.
The notebooks, meanwhile, are burning briskly.
Hodges closes with Morris before he can fire again, grabbing at Morris's gun hand. Hodges is the heavier of the two, and in better shape, but Morris Bellamy possesses the strength of insanity. They waltz drunkenly across the basement, Hodges holding Morris's right wrist so the little automatic points at the ceiling, Morris using his left hand to rip at Hodges's face, trying to claw out his eyes.
Peter races around the notebooks--they are blazing now, the lighter fluid that has trickled deep into the pile igniting--and grapples with Morris from behind. Morris turns his head, bares his teeth, and snaps at him. His eyes are rolling in their sockets.
"His hand! Get his hand!" Hodges shouts. They have stumbled under the stairs. Hodges's face is striped with blood, several pieces of his cheek hanging in strips. "Get it before he skins me alive!"
Pete grabs Bellamy's left hand. Behind them, Tina is screaming. Hodges pounds a fist into Bellamy's face twice: hard, pistoning blows. That seems to finish him; his face goes slack and his knees buckle. Tina is still screaming, and the basement is growing brighter.
"The roof, Petie! The roof is catching!"
Morris is on his knees, his head hanging, blood gushing from his chin, lips, and broken nose. Hodges grabs his right wrist and twists. There's a crack as Morris's wrist breaks, and the little automatic clatters to the floor. Hodges has a moment to think it's over before the bastard rams his free hand forward and upward, punching Hodges squarely in the balls and filling his belly with liquid pain. Morris scuttles between his spread legs. Hodges gasps, hands pressed to his throbbing crotch.
"Petie, Petie, the ceiling!"
Pete thinks Bellamy is going after the gun, but the man ignores it entirely. His goal is the notebooks. They are now a bonfire, the covers curling back, the pages browning and sending up sparks that have ignited several strips of hanging insulation. The fire begins spreading above them, dropping burning streamers. One of these lands on Tina's head, and there's a stench of frying hair to go with the smell of the burning paper and insulation. She shakes it away with a cry of pain.
Pete runs to her, punting the little automatic deep into the basement as he goes. He beats at her smoldering
hair and then begins struggling with the knots.
"No!" Morris screams, but not at Pete. He goes to his knees in front of the notebooks like a religious zealot in front of a blazing altar. He reaches into the flames, trying to push the pile apart. This sends fresh clouds of sparks spiraling upward. "No no no no!"
Hodges wants to run to Peter and his sister, but the best he can manage is a drunken shamble. The pain in his groin is spreading down his legs, loosening the muscles he has worked so hard to build up. Nevertheless, he gets to work on one of the knots in the orange electrical cord. He again wishes for a knife, but it would take a cleaver to cut this stuff. The shit is thick.
More blazing strips of insulation fall around them. Hodges bats them away from the girl, terrified that her gauzy blouse will catch fire. The knot is letting go, finally letting go, but the girl is struggling--
"Stop, Teens," Pete says. Sweat is pouring down his face. The basement is getting hot. "They're slipknots, you're pulling them tight again, you have to stop."
Morris's screams are changing into howls of pain. Hodges has no time to look at him. The loop he's pulling on abruptly loosens. He pulls Tina away from the furnace, her hands still tied behind her.
There's going to be no exit by way of the stairs; the lower ones are burning and the upper ones are catching. The tables, the chairs, the boxes of stored paperwork: all on fire. Morris Bellamy is also on fire. Both his sportcoat and the shirt beneath are blazing. Yet he continues to root his way into the bonfire, trying to get at any unburned notebooks still left at the bottom. His fingers are turning black. Although the pain must be excruciating, he keeps going. Hodges has time to think of the fairy tale where the wolf came down the chimney and landed in a pot of boiling water. His daughter, Alison, didn't want to hear that one. She said it was too sca--
"Bill! Bill! Over here!"
Hodges sees Jerome at one of the basement windows. Hodges remembers saying Neither one of you minds worth a tinker's dam, and now he's delighted that they don't. Jerome is on his belly, sticking his arms through and down.
"Lift her! Lift her up! Quick, before you all cook!"