His own three-gram stash was intact. He carried it out of the bathroom and then stopped again as a fresh shock struck his eyes.
He hadn't seen this particular abomination as he crossed the bedroom from the hall, but from this angle it was impossible to miss.
He stood where he was for a long moment, eyes wide with amazed horror, his throat working convulsively. The nests of veins at his temples beat rapidly, like the wings of small birds. He finally managed to produce one small, strangled word:... mom...!"
Downstairs, behind George T. Nelson's oatmeal-colored sofa, Frank jewett slept on.
30
The bystanders on Lower Main, who had been called out to the sidewalk by the yelling and the gunshot, were now being entertained by a new novelty: the slow-motion escape of their Head Selectman.
Buster leaned as far into his Cadillac as he could and turned the ignition switch to the oN position. He then pushed the button that lowered the power window on the driver's side. He closed the door again and carefully began to wriggle in through the window.
He was still sticking out from the knees down, his left arm pulled back behind him at a severe angle by the handcuff around the doorhandle, the chain lying across his large left thigh, when Scott Garson came up.
"Uh, Danforth," the banker said hesitantly, "I don't think you're supposed to do that. I believe you're arrested."
Buster looked under his right armpit, smelling his own aromaquite spicy by now, quite spicy indeed-and saw Garson upside down. He was standing directly behind Buster. He looked as if he might be planning to try to haul Buster back out of his own car.
Buster pulled his legs up as much as he could and then shot them out, hard, like a pony kicking up dickens in the @asture. The heels of his shoes struck Garson's face with a smack which Buster found entirely satisfying. Garson's gold-rimmed spectacles shattered. He howled, reeled backward with his bleeding face in his hands, and fell on his back in Main Street.
"Hah!" Buster grunted. "Didn't expect that, did you? Didn't expect that at all, you persecuting son of a bitch, did you?"
He wriggled the rest of the way into his car. There was just enough chain. His shoulder-joint creaked alarmingly and then rotated enough in its socket to allow him to wriggle under his own arm and scoot his ass back along the seat. Now he was sitting behind the wheel with his cuffed arm out the window. He started the car.
Scott Garson sat up in time to see the Cadillac bearing down on him. Its grille seemed to leer at him, a vast chrome mountain which was going to crush him.
He rolled frantically to the left, avoiding death by less than a second. One of the Cadillac's large front tires rolled over his right hand, squashing it pretty efficiently. Then the rear tire rolled over it, finishing the job. Garson lay on his back, looking at his grotesquely mashed fingers, which were now roughly the size of puttyknives, and began to scream up into the hot blue sky.
31
"TAMMMEEEEE FAYYYYE!"
This shriek hauled Frank jewett out of his deepening doze. He had absolutely no idea where he was in those first confused seconds-only that it was some tight, close place. An unpleasant place.
There was something in his hand, too... what was it?
He raised his right hand and almost poked out his own eye with the steak-knife. itoooooohhhh, noooooooh! TAMMEEEEEEE FAYYYYE!"
It came back to him all at once. He was behind the couch of his good old "friend," George T. Nelson, and that was George T.
Nelson himself, in the flesh, noisily mourning his dead parakeet.
Along with this realization, everything else returned to Frank: the magazines scattered all over the office, the blackmail note, the possible (no, probable-the more he thought about it, the more probable it seemed) ruin of his career and his life.
Now, incredibly, he could hear George T. Nelson sobbing. Sobbing over a goddam flying shithouse. Well, Frank thought, I'm going to put you out of your misery, George. Who knows-maybe you'll even wind up in bird heaven.
The sobs were approaching the sofa. Better and better. He would jump up-surprise, George!-and the bastard would be dead before he had any idea of what was up. Frank was on the verge of making his spring when George T. Nelson, still sobbing as if his heart would break, seat-dropped onto his sofa. He was a heavy man, and his weight drove the sofa back smartly toward the wall. He did not hear the surprised, breathless "Oooof."' from behind him; his own sobs covered it. He fumbled for the telephone, dialed through a shimmer of tears and got (almost miraculously) Fred Rubin on the first ring.
"Fred!" he cried. "Fred, something terrible has happened!
Maybe it's still happening! Oh Jesus, Fred! Oh Jesus!"