He let go of her hair, ready to snatch a fresh handful if she showed any sign of bolting. Myrtle didn't. She was cowed. She only wanted to be allowed back upstairs, where she would cuddle her beautiful doll to her and go to sleep. She felt like sleeping forever.
He took the tools from her unresisting hands. He placed the tip of the screwdriver against the doorhandle, then whacked the top of the screwdriver several times with the hammer. On the fourth blow, the doorhandle snapped off. Buster slipped the loop of the cuff out of it, then dropped both the handle and the screwdriver to the concrete floor.
He went first to the button which closed the garage door. Then, as it rattled noisily down on its tracks, he advanced on Myrtle with the hammer in his hand.
"Did you sleep with him, Myrtle?" he asked softly.
"What?" She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.
Buster began to whack the hammerhead into the palm of his hand.
It made a soft, fleshy sound-thuck! thuck! thuck!
"Did you sleep with him after the two of you put up those goddam pink slips all over the house?"
She looked at him dully, not understanding, and Buster himself had forgotten that she had been with him at Maurice when Ridgewick broke in and did his thing.
"Buster, what are you talking ah-" He stopped, his eyes widening.
"What did you call me?"
The apathy left her eyes. She began to retreat from him, hunching her shoulders protectively. Behind them, the garage door came to rest.
Now the only sounds in the garage were their scuffling feet and the soft clink of the handcuff chain as it swung back and forth.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Danforth." Then she turned and ran for the kitchen door.
He caught her three steps from it, once again using her hair to draw her to him. "What did you call me?" he screamed, and raised the hammer.
Her eyes turned up to follow its ascent. "Danforth, no, please!"
"What did you call me? What did you call me?"
He screamed it over and over again, and each time he asked the question he punctuated it with that soft, fleshy sound: Thuck.
Thuck. Thuck.
8
Ace drove into the Camber dooryard at five o'clock. He stuffed the treasure map into his back pocket, then opened the trunk. He got the pick and shovel which Mr. Gaunt had thoughtfully provided and then walked over to the leaning, overgrown porch which ran along one side of the house. He took the map out of his back pocket and sat on the steps to examine it. The short-term effects of the coke had worn off, but his heart was still thudding briskly along in his chest.
Treasure-hunting, he had discovered, was also a stimulant.
He looked around for a moment at the weedy yard, the sagging barn, the clusters of blindly staring sunflowers. It's not much, but I think this is it, just the same, he thought. The place where I put the Corson Brothers behind me forever and get rich in the bargain.
It's here-some of it or all of it. Right here. I can feel it.
But it was more than feeling-he could hear it, singing softly to him. Singing from beneath the ground. Not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. Perhaps as much as a million.
"A million dollars," Ace whispered in a hushed, choked voice, and bent over the map.
Five minutes later he was hunting along the west side of the Camber house. Most of the way down toward the back, almost obscured in tall weeds, he found what he was looking for-a large, flat stone. He picked it up, threw it aside, and began to dig frantically. Less than two minutes later, there was a muffled clunk as the blade struck rusty metal. Ace fell on his knees, rooted in the dirt like a dog hunting a buried bone, and a minute later he had unearthed the Sherwin-Williams paint-can which had been buried here.
Most dedicated cocaine users are also dedicated nail-biters and Ace was no exception. He had no fingernails to pry with and he couldn't get the lid off. The paint around the rim had dried to an obstinate glue. With a grunt of frustration and rage, Ace pulled out his pocket-knife, got the blade under the can's rim, and levered the cover off. He peered in eagerly.
Bills!
Sheafs and sheafs of bills!
With a cry he seized them, pulled them out... and saw that his eagerness had deceived him. It was only more trading stamps.
Red Ball Stamps this time, a kind which had been redeemable only south of the Mason-Dixon line... and there only until 1964, when the company had gone out of business.
"Shit fire and save matches!" Ace cried. He threw the stamps aside. They unfolded and began to tumble away in the light, hot breeze that had sprung up. Some of them caught and fluttered from the weeds like dusty banners. "Cunt! Bastard! Sonofawhore!"
He rooted in the can, even turned it over to see if there was anything taped to the bottom, and found nothing. He threw it away, stared at it for a moment, then rushed over and booted it like a soccer ball.