“You can see no one has been here from the snow. No footprints,” Jakob said.
“You’re probably right. But we’ll look anyway. Just to be sure. You know about me and the secret broadcast? I ever told you about that? The radio in my head? No? When I was twelve, I could put my hand on a silent radio and close my eyes and I could hear the DJ introducing ‘Walk This Way.’ I could hear him in my mind. Like I was the antenna, pulling the signal right into my brain. I’d tell my buddies, I’ll bet every one of you that if we turn on the radio, it’ll be playing ‘Walk This Way.’ Everyone would pitch in a buck. I’d turn on the radio, and Steven Tyler would be right there, braggin’ how his girl is a real good bleeder. Or, like, when I was old enough to drive. I’d be sitting in my friend’s crap Trans Am, the car turned off, waiting for him to come out of a corner store with a six-pack of Schlitz. And suddenly I’d know Mo Vaughn had just slugged a home run. I’d know. My pal would come out, turn the keys—and all of Fenway would be cheering for the big hit, Joe Castiglione shouting about how far Mo smashed it. For a long time I thought maybe I was picking signals up on my fillings somehow. But ever since the plague days started, I’ve been hearing new signals. Sometimes I’ll hear my own voice on the secret broadcast, reading a news report. I’ll hear myself talking about how a dozen burners were discovered hiding in the basement of Portsmouth Library, and they were shot dead by a heroic Cremation Crew. So I’ll get the gang together and we’ll go down there, and sure enough—burners, hiding in the cellar. Remember that, Marty? Remember the time I said we ought to go down to Portsmouth Library and check things out? We killed every one of those motherfuckers. It all went down just exactly the way I heard it on my telepathic news report.”
“That’s true!” cried the third man, his voice piping and obsequious. “You knew they were going to be there, Marlboro Man! You knew before any of us.”
“So that’s why we had to come over here today? You had a psychic tickle that my wife might’ve come home?” Jakob asked. He didn’t sound like a believer.
“Maybe. Maybe I heard a little voice that said why not run by and have a look. Then again, maybe I just remembered you saying you had some good Scotch and I wanted a taste. Why don’t you have a peek around and we’ll find out which it is.”
“Sure,” Jakob said. “Check behind the bar. See what’s left.”
A door opened across the room. Sheetrock and shattered lath tumbled out with a crash. Jakob cursed. The one named Marty made hyena sounds that approximated laughter. Jakob clambered away over sliding, tumbling, clattering debris.
Someone approached the bar. Harper could dimly see a man in snow pants through the tinted glass. A skinny guy with a bushy Afro of reddish wiry hair bent over, opened the liquor cabinet, pulled out the Balvenie.
“Is this stuff good?”
“Fuckin’ A. Hand it over. Let me have a look.” Silence. “Goddamn, this costs more than I used to make in a week. You think his wife is half as nice as his pool table and his whiskey?” said the Marlboro Man.
“Don’t matter,” Marty said. “She’s got the skeeve. You ain’t gonna fuck that.”
“True. Speaking of skeeve, see if there are some glasses. I don’t want your backwash in the bottle.”
The skinny guy bent and dug around and came up with tumblers.
“You want music? Based on his pool table and his whiskey, I bet he’s got a sweet fuckin’ sound system,” Marty said. He turned toward the stereo cabinet and pressed the magnetic catch. The glass door sprang open half an inch. Harper shut her eyes and thought, Despair is no more than a synonym for consciousness.
“No power, asshole,” said the Marlboro Man. “A Porsche is just a half ton of worthless iron if there’s no gas in the tank.”
“Ah, fuck. Good point, Marlboro Man! I wasn’t thinking!” He pushed the cabinet door shut without looking in.
“There’s some breaking news.”
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. She heard the gurgle of whiskey splashing into the glass, swallowing, and reverential sighs.
When Marty spoke again, his voice was pitched low. “He’s kinda scary, don’cha think?”
“Who? Public Works?”
“Yeah. Jakob. With that burn on his neck. That black hand—cooked right in the skin. And his eyes, you know? Like dusty old glass. Like doll’s eyes.”
“Listen to you. You’re practically Lord Byron, with the similes.”
“Tell you what. I think he’d rather find the Fireman here than his wife. I think he’s got a bigger hard-on for him than he does for the runaway bride.”
“There ain’t no Fireman.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“Well,” Marty said. “Marlboro Man . . . someone burned his neck. And the other night? Eighty guys saw the devil, two stories high, down by the police station. Eighty guys. And Arlo Granger, in the fire department, he wrestled with some dude in the smoke. Some dude with a British accent, dressed up in a fire helmet and everything. Arlo would’ve kicked his head in, except the Fireman had friends, like five friends, and they ganged up on him . . .”
“I know Arlo Granger, and that guy is a fuckin’ liar. He told me once that he got backstage at a Rush concert and snorted coke with Neil Peart. I wish the guys in Rush snorted coke. Maybe it would amp ’em up and they’d try playing some real rock and roll for once, instead of that limp-dick prog-rock bullshit.”
“My cousin is in the National Guard. Amy Castigan, you’ve hung out with Amy—”
“Amy . . . your cousin Amy . . . maybe. Yeah, I think she sucked my dick once.”
“Yeah, yeah, me, too, but listen, listen, Marlboro Man. Amy was manning the checkpoint on the Piscataqua Bridge back in September, middle of the night . . . and she sees this red blaze coming up the river. Like someone shot a rocket at them. Her and the other guys hit the deck and just in time, too. This giant fuckin’ bird of flame, thirty feet from wing tip to wing tip, dive-bombed ’em. It dived so close the sandbags caught fire! And while Amy and the guys in her unit were duckin’ for cover, a car ran the checkpoint and some burners escaped into Maine. That was him, too! That’s what he does! He’s figured out how to weaponize Dragonscale, man.”
“That’s one possibility,” the Marlboro Man said. “The other possibility is your cousin is the biggest fuckin’ ho-bag on the East Coast, and someone ran the checkpoint while she was treating her entire unit to the Amy Castigan blow-job special. There ain’t no Fireman. And Satan didn’t turn up at the police department last night. People see things in flame. Freaky faces and stuff. That’s all.”
Harper thought, inevitably, of the girl in John’s furnace: Sarah Storey, she was sure. The Marlboro Man could believe what he liked, but sometimes the face in the fire really was someone looking back at you.
Boards and plaster sheeting slid and thumped in the stairwell.
“Nothing,” Jakob said. “Nothing and no one. I told you. If someone had been here, there’d be tracks. She’s six months pregnant. I doubt she can go a hundred paces without running out of breath.”
“That is a fair point, squire,” said the Marlboro Man. “My ex, when she was pregnant, if she wanted anything—cigarettes, beer, ice cream, anything—she’d make me get it, even if it was only in the next room.
“Sorry the psychic flash didn’t work out. But at least you found the Balvenie. We can take it with us. That’s five hundred dollars a bottle, so drink it slow.”
“What’s the hurry? Have a couple drinks and I’ll polish you off in a game of pool.”
“I’d need more than a couple before that would happen,” Jakob said.
“Want to wager on it?”
“With what? Money isn’t what it used to be.”
“I win, you have to go upstairs and find me a pair of your wife’s panties,” said the Marlboro Man.
“If I win, you have to wear them,” Jakob said.
“Hey, what if I win?” Marty asked.