"'Til hell freezes over or you say different!"
"Very good," Mr. Gaunt said. "Listen carefully, Dan." And as Mr. Gaunt talked and Buster listened, gradually sinking into that hypnotic state which Mr. Gaunt seemed to induce at will, the first rumbles of the approaching storm had begun to shake the air outside.
3
Five minutes later, Buster left his house. He had put a light jacket on over his tee-shirt and stuffed the hand with the cuff still on ' it deep into one of his pockets. Halfway down the block he found a van parked against the curb just where Mr. Gaunt had told him he would find it. It was bright yellow, a guarantee most passersby would look at the paint instead of the driver. It was almost windowless, and both sides were marked with the logo of a Portland TV station.
Buster took a quick but careful look in both directions, then got in. Mr. Gaunt had told him the keys would be under the seat.
They were. Sitting on the passenger seat was a paper shopping bag.
In it Buster found a blonde wig, a pair of yuppie wire-rimmed glasses, and a small glass bottle.
He put the wig on with some misgivings-long and shaggy, it looked like the scalp of a dead rock singer-but when he looked at himself in the van's rearview mirror, he was astounded by how well it fit. It made him look younger. Much younger. The lenses of the yuppie spectacles were clear glass, and they changed his appearance (at least in Buster's opinion) even more than the wig. They made him look smart, like Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.
He stared at himself in fascination. All at once he looked thirtysomething instead of fifty-two, like a man who might very well work for a TV station. Not as a news correspondent, nothing glamorous like that, but perhaps as a cameraman or even a producer.
He unscrewed the top of the bottle and grimaced-the stuff inside smelled like a melting tractor battery. Tendrils of smoke rose from the mouth of the bottle. Got to be careful with this stuff, Buster thought. Got to be real careful.
He put the empty cuff under his right thigh and pulled the chain taut. Then he poured some of the bottle's contents on the chain just below the cuff on his wrist, being careful not to drip any of the dark, viscous liquid on his skin. The steel immediately began to smoke and bubble. A few drops struck the rubber floormat and it also began to bubble. Smoke and a horrid frying smell rose from it. After a few moments Buster pulled the empty cuff out from under his thigh, hooked his fingers through it, and yanked briskly.
The chain parted like paper and he threw it on the floor. He was still wearing a bracelet, but he could live with that; the chain and the swinging empty cuff had been the real pain in the keister- He slotted the key in the ignition, started the engine, and drove away.
Not three minutes later, a Castle County Sheriff's car driven by Seaton Thomas turned into the driveway of the Keeton home, I and old Seat discovered Myrtle Keeton sprawled half in and half out of the doorway between the garage and the kitchen. Not long after, his car was joined by four State Police units. The cops tossed the house from top to bottom, looking for either Buster or some sign of where he might have gone. No one gave the game sitting on his study desk a second glance. It was old, dirty, and obviously broken. It looked like something that might have come out of a poor relation's attic.
4
Eddie Warburton, the janitor at the Municipal Building, had been pissed off at Sonny jackett for more than two years. Over the last couple of days, this anger had built into a red rage.
When the transmission of Eddie's neat little Honda Civic had seized up during the summer of 1989, Eddie hadn't wanted to take it to the nearest Honda dealership. That would have involved a large towing fee. Bad enough that the tranny hadn't expired until three weeks after the drive-train warranty had done the same thing.
So he had gone to Sonny jackett first, had asked Sonny if he had any experience working on foreign cars.
Sonny told him he did. He spoke in that expansive, patronizing way most back-country Yankees had of talking to Eddie. We're not prejudiced, boy, that tone said. This is the north, you know. We don't hold with all that southern crap. Of course you're a nigger, anyone can see that, but it don't mean a thing to us. Black, yellow, white, or green, we rook em all like you've never seen. Bring it on in here.