'No,' he gasped. 'I won't. I won't scream.'
'Good. I can feel your heart, you know. It's coming right up the blade of the knife and into the palm of my hand. It must be beating really hard.' The man's mouth pulled up in a jerky, humorless smile. Flecks of spittle clung to the corners of his lips. 'Maybe you'll just keel over and die of a heart attack, save me the trouble of killing you.' Another gust of that sickening breath washed over Ralph's face. 'You're awful old.'
Blood was now running down his side in what felt like two streams, maybe even three. The pain of the knifepoint gouging into him was maddening - like the stinger of a gigantic bee.
Or a pin, Ralph thought, and discovered that this idea was funny in spite of the fix he was in . . . or perhaps because of it. This was the real pin-sticker man; James Roy Hong could be only a pale imitation.
And I never had a chance to cancel this appointment, Ralph thought. But then again, he had an idea that nuts like the guy in the Snoopy sweatshirt didn't take cancellations. Nuts like this had their own agenda and they stuck to it, come hell or high water.
Whatever else might happen, Ralph knew he couldn't stand that knife-tip boring into him much longer. He used his thumb to lift the flap of his coat pocket and slipped his hand inside. He knew what the object was the minute his fingertips touched it: the aerosol can Gretchen had taken out of her purse and put on his kitchen table. A little present from all your grateful friends at WomanCare, she had said.
Ralph had no idea how it had gotten from the top of the kitchen cabinet where he had put it into the pocket of his battered old fall jacket, and he didn't care. His hand closed around it, and he used his thumb again, this time to pop off the can's plastic top. He never took his eyes away from the twitching, frightened, exhilarated face of the man with the zany hair as he did this.
'I know something,' Ralph said. 'If you promise not to kill me, I'll tell you.'
'What?' the man with the zany hair asked. 'Jeepers, what could a scum like you know?'
What could a scum like me know? Ralph asked himself, and the answer came at once, popping into his mind like jackpot bars in the windows of a slot machine. He forced himself to lean into the green aura swirling around the man, into the terrible cloud of stink coming from his disturbed guts. At the same time he eased the small can from his pocket, held it against his thigh, and settled his index finger on the button which triggered the spray.
'I know who the Crimson King is,' he murmured.
The eyes widened behind the dirty hornrims - not just in surprise but in shock - and the man with the zany hair recoiled a little. For a moment the terrible pressure high on Ralph's left side eased. It was his chance, the only one he was apt to have, and he took it, throwing himself to the right, falling off his chair and tumbling to the floor. The back of his head smacked the tiles, but the pain seemed distant and unimportant compared to the relief at the removal of the knifepoint.
The man with the zany hair squawked - a sound of mingled rage and resignation, as if he had become used to such setbacks over his long and difficult life. He leaned over Ralph's now-empty chair, his twitching face thrust forward, his eyes looking like the sort of fantastic, glowing creatures which live in the ocean's deepest trenches. Ralph raised the spray-can and had just a moment to realize he hadn't had time to check which direction the pinhole in the nozzle was pointing - he might very well succeed only in giving himself a faceful of Bodyguard.
No time to worry about that now.
He pressed the nozzle as the man with the zany hair thrust his knife forward. The man's face was enveloped in a thin haze of droplets that looked like the stuff that came out of the pine-scented air-freshener Ralph kept on the bathroom toilet tank. The lenses of his glasses fogged over.
The result was immediate and all Ralph could have wished for. The man with the zany hair screamed in pain, dropped his knife (it landed on Ralph's left knee and came to rest between his legs), and clutched at his face, pulling his glasses off. They landed on the table. At the same time the thin, somehow greasy aura around him flashed a brilliant red and then winked out - out of Ralph's view, at least.
'I'm blind!' the man with the zany hair cried in a high, shrieky voice. 'I'm blind, I'm blind!'
'No, you're not,' Ralph said, getting shakily to his feet. 'You're just--'
The man with the zany hair screamed again and fell to the floor. He rolled back and forth on the black and white tiles with his hands over his face, howling like a child who has gotten his hand caught in a door. Ralph could see little pie-wedges of cheeks between his splayed fingers. The skin there was turning an alarming shade of red.
Ralph told himself to leave the guy alone, that he was crazy as a loon and dangerous as a rattlesnake, but he found himself too horrified and ashamed of what he had done to take this no doubt excellent advice. The idea that it had been a matter of survival, of disabling his assailant or dying, had already begun to seem unreal. He bent down and put a tentative hand on the man's arm. The nut rolled away from him and began to drum his dirty low-top sneakers on the floor like a child having a tantrum. 'Oh you son of a bitch!' he was screaming. 'You shot me with something!' And then, incredibly: 'I'll sue the pants off you!'
'You'll have to explain about the knife before you're able to progress much with your lawsuit, I think,' Ralph said. He saw the knife lying on the floor, reached for it, then thought again. It would be better if his fingerprints weren't on it. As he straightened, a wave of dizziness rushed through his head and for a moment the rain beating against the window sounded hollow and distant. He kicked the knife away, then tottered on his feet and had to grab the back of the chair he'd been sitting in to keep from falling over. Things steadied again. He heard approaching footsteps from the main lobby and murmuring, questioning voices.
Now you come, Ralph thought wearily. Where were you three minutes ago, when this guy was on the verge of popping my left lung like a balloon?
Mike Hanlon, looking slim and no more than thirty despite his tight cap of gray hair, appeared in the doorway. Behind him was the teenage boy Ralph recognized as the weekend desk assistant, and behind the teenager were four or five gawkers, probably from the periodicals room.
'Mr Roberts!' Mike exclaimed. 'Christ, how bad are you hurt?'
'I'm fine, it's him that's hurt,' Ralph said. But he happened to look down at himself as he pointed at the man on the floor and saw he wasn't fine. His coat had pulled up when he pointed, and the left side of the plaid shirt beneath had gone a deep, sodden red in a teardrop shape that started just below the armpit and spread out from there. 'Shit,' he said faintly, and sat down in his chair again. He bumped the hornrimmed glasses with his elbow and they skittered almost all the way across the table. The mist of droplets on their lenses made them look like eyes which had been blinded by cataracts.
'He shot me with acid!' the man on the floor screamed. 'I can't see and my skin is melting! I can feel it melting!' To Ralph, he sounded like an almost conscious parody of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Mike tossed a quick glance at the man on the floor, then sat down in the chair next to Ralph. 'What happened?'
'Well, it sure wasn't acid,' Ralph said, and held up the can of Bodyguard. He set it on the table beside Patterns of Dreaming. 'The lady who gave it to me said it's not as strong as Mace, it just irritates your eyes and makes you sick to your--'
'It's not what's wrong with him that I'm worried about,' Mike said impatiently. 'Anyone who can yell that loud probably isn't going to die in the next three minutes. It's you I'm worried about, Mr Roberts - any idea how bad he stabbed you?'
'He didn't actually stab me at all,' Ralph said. 'He . . . sort of poked me. With that.' He pointed at the knife lying on the tile floor. At the sight of the red tip, he felt another wave of faintness track through his head. It felt like an express train made of feather pillows. That was stupid, of course, made no sense at all, but he wasn't in a very sensible frame of mind.
The assistant was looking cauti
ously down at the man on the floor. 'Uh-oh,' he said. 'We know this guy, Mike - it's Charlie Pickering.'
'Goodness-gracious, great balls of fire,' Mike said. 'Now why aren't I surprised?' He looked at the teenage assistant and sighed. 'Better call the cops, Justin. It looks like we've got us a situation here.'
5
'Am I in trouble for using that?' Ralph asked an hour later, and pointed to one of the two sealed plastic bags sitting on the cluttered surface of the desk in Mike Hanlon's office. A strip of yellow tape, marked EVIDENCE Aerosol can DATE 3 October 93 and SITE Derry Public Library ran across the front.
'Not as much as our old pal Charlie's going to be in for using this,' John Leydecker said, and pointed to the other sealed bag. The hunting knife was inside, the blood on the tip now dried to a tacky maroon. Leydecker was wearing a University of Maine football sweater today. It made him look approximately the size of a dairy barn. 'We still pretty much believe in the concept of self-defense out here in the sticks. We don't talk it up much, though - it's sort of like admitting you believe the world is flat.'
Mike Hanlon, who was leaning in the doorway, laughed.
Ralph hoped his face didn't show how deeply relieved he felt. As a paramedic (one of the guys who had run Helen Deepneau to the hospital back in August, for all he knew) worked on him - first photographing, then disinfecting, finally butterfly-clamping and bandaging - he had sat with his teeth gritted, imagining a judge sentencing him to six months in the county clink for assault with a semi-deadly weapon. Hopefully, Mr Roberts, this will serve as an example and a warning to any other old farts in this vicinity who may feel justified in carrying around spray-cans of disabling nerve gas . . .
Leydecker looked once more at the six Polaroid photographs lined up along the side of Hanlon's computer terminal. The fresh-faced emergency medical technician had taken the first three before patching Ralph up. These showed a small dark circle - it looked like the sort of oversized period made by children just learning to print - low down on Ralph's side. The EMT had taken the second set of three after applying the butterfly clamp and getting Ralph's signature on a form attesting to the fact that he had been offered hospital service and had refused it. In this latter group of photographs, the beginnings of what was going to be an absolutely spectacular bruise could be seen.
'God bless Edwin Land and Richard Polaroid,' Leydecker said, putting the photographs into another EVIDENCE Baggie.
'I don't think there ever was a Richard Polaroid,' Mike Hanlon said from his spot in the doorway.
'Probably not, but God bless him just the same. No jury who got a look at these photos would do anything but give you a medal, Ralph, and not even Clarence Darrow could keep em out of evidence.' He looked back at Mike. 'Charlie Pickering.'
Mike nodded. 'Charlie Pickering.'
'Fuckhead.'
Mike nodded again. 'Fuckhead deluxe.'
The two of them looked at each other solemnly, then burst into gales of laughter at the same moment. Ralph understood exactly how they felt - it was funny because it was awful and awful because it was funny - and he had to bite his lips savagely to keep from joining them. The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was get laughing; it would hurt like a bastard.
Leydecker took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, mopped his streaming eyes with it, and began to get himself under control.
'Pickering's one of the right-to-lifers, isn't he?' Ralph asked. He was remembering how Pickering had looked when Hanlon's teenage assistant had helped him sit up. Without his glasses, the man had looked about as dangerous as a bunny in a petshop window.
'You could say that,' Mike agreed dryly. 'He's the one they caught last year in the parking garage that services the hospital and WomanCare. He had a can of gasoline in his hand and a knapsack filled with empty bottles on his back.'
'Also strips of sheeting, don't forget those,' Leydecker said. 'Those were going to be his fuses. That was back when Charlie was a member in good standing of Daily Bread.'
'How close did he come to lighting the place up?' Ralph asked curiously.
Leydecker shrugged. 'Not very. Someone in the group apparently decided firebombing the local women's clinic might be a little closer to terrorism than politics and made an anonymous phone call to your local police authority.'
'Good deal,' Mike said. He snorted another little chuckle, then crossed his arms as if to hold any further outburst inside.
'Yeah,' Leydecker said. He laced his fingers together, stretched out his arms, and popped his knuckles. 'Instead of prison, a thoughtful, caring judge sent Charlie to Juniper Hill for six months' worth of treatment and therapy, and they must have decided he was okay, because he's been back in town since July or so.'
'Yep,' Mike agreed. 'He's down here just about every day. Kind of improving the tone of the place. Buttonholes everyone who comes in, practically, and gives them his little peptalk on how any woman who has an abortion is going to perish in brimstone, and how the real baddies like Susan Day are going to burn forever in a lake of fire. But I can't figure out why he'd take after you, Mr Roberts.'
'Just lucky, I guess.'
'Are you okay, Ralph?' Leydecker asked. 'You look pale.'
'I'm fine,' Ralph said, although he did not feel fine; in fact, he had begun to feel very queasy.
'I don't know about fine, but you're sure lucky. Lucky those women gave you that can of pepper-gas, lucky you had it with you, and luckiest of all that Pickering didn't just walk up behind you and stick that knife of his into the nape of your neck. Do you feel like coming down to the station and making a formal statement now, or--'
Ralph abruptly lunged out of Mike Hanlon's ancient swivel chair, bolted across the room with his left hand over his mouth, and clawed open the door in the rear right corner of the office, praying it wasn't a closet. If it was, he was probably going to fill up Mike's galoshes with a partially processed grilled cheese sandwich and some slightly used tomato soup.
It turned out to be the room he needed. Ralph dropped to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited with his eyes closed and his left arm clamped tightly against the hole Pickering had made in his side. The pain as his muscles first locked and then pushed was still enormous.
'I take it that's a no,' Mike Hanlon said from behind him, and then put a comforting hand on the back of Ralph's neck. 'Are you okay? Did you get that thing bleeding again?'
'I don't think so,' Ralph said. He started to unbutton his shirt, then paused and clamped his arm tight against his side again as his stomach gave another lurch before quieting once more. He raised his arm and looked at the dressing. It was pristine. 'I appear to be okay.'
'Good,' Leydecker said. He was standing just behind the librarian. 'You done?'
'I think so, yes.' Ralph looked at Mike shamefacedly. 'I apologize for that.'
'Don't be a goof.' Mike helped Ralph to his feet.
'Come on,' Leydecker said,'I'll give you a ride home. Tomorrow will be time enough for the statement. What you need is to put your feet up the rest of today, and a good night's sleep tonight.'
'Nothing like a good night's sleep,' Ralph agreed. They had reached the office door. 'You want to let go of my arm now, Detective Leydecker? We're not going steady just yet, are we?'
Leydecker looked startled, then dropped Ralph's arm. Mike started to laugh again. '"Not going -" That's pretty good, Mr Roberts.'
Leydecker was smiling. 'I guess we're not, but you can call me Jack, if you want. Or John. Just not Johnny. Since my mother died, the only one who calls me Johnny is old Prof McGovern.'
Old Prof McGovern, Ralph thought. How strange that sounds.
'Okay - John it is. And both of you guys can call me Ralph. As far as I'm concerned, Mr Roberts is always going to be a Broadway play starring Henry Fonda.'
'You got it,' Mike Hanlon said. 'And take care of yourself.'
'I'll try,' he said, then stopped in his tracks. 'Listen, I have something to thank you for, quite apart from your help
today.'
Mike raised his eyebrows. 'Oh?'
'Yes. You hired Helen Deepneau. She's one of my favorite people, and she desperately needed the job. So thanks.'
Mike smiled and nodded. 'I'll be happy to accept the bouquets, but she's the one who did me the favor, really. She's actually over-qualified for the job, but I think she wants to stay in town.'
'So do I, and you've helped make it possible. So thanks again.'
Mike grinned. 'My pleasure.'
6
As Ralph and Leydecker stepped out behind the circulation desk, Leydecker said: 'I guess that honeycomb must have really turned the trick, huh?'
Ralph at first had absolutely no idea what the big detective was talking about - he might as well have asked a question in Esperanto.
'Your insomnia,' Leydecker said patiently. 'You got past it, right? Must have - you look a gajillion times better than on the day I first met you.'
'I was a little stressed that day,' Ralph said. He found himself remembering the old Billy Crystal routine about Fernando - the one that went, Listen, dahling, don't be a schnook; it's not how you feel, it's how you look! And you . . . look . . . MAHVELLOUS!
'And you're not today? C'mon, Ralph, this is me. So give - was it the honeycomb?'
Ralph appeared to think this over, then nodded. 'Yes, I guess that must have been what did it.'
'Fantastic! Didn't I tell you?' Leydecker said cheerfully as they pushed their way out into the rainy afternoon.
7
They were waiting for the light at the top of Up-Mile Hill when Ralph turned to Leydecker and asked what the chances were of nailing Ed as Charlie Pickering's accomplice. 'Because Ed put him up to it,' he said. 'I know that as well as I know that's Strawford Park over there.'