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 Cat 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 Allen 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.’