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.