Gaunt reached down, grasped one of Myra's sweat-slimy hands, and helped her to her feet.
"That," he said, "is something we can talk about while you write your check, Myra." He smiled then, and all his charm flooded back into his face. His brown eyes sparkled and danced. "And by the way, would you like your picture gift-wrapped?"
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Alan slid into a booth in Nan's Luncheonette across from Polly and saw at once that the pain was still bad-bad enough for her to have taken a Percodan in the afternoon, which was rare. He knew it even before she opened her mouth-it was something in the eyes.
A sort of shine. He had come to know it... but not to like it.
He didn't think he would ever like it. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was addicted to the stuff yet. In Polly's case, he supposed that addiction was just another side-effect, something to be expected, noted, and then sublimated to the main problem-which was, simply put, the fact that she was living with pain he probably couldn't even comprehend.
His voice showed none of this as he asked, "How's it going, pretty lady?"
She smiled. "Well, it's been an interesting day. Verrrrry... inderesting, as that guy used to say on Laugh-In."
"You're not old enough to remember that."
"I am so. Alan, who's that?"
He turned in the direction of her gaze just in time to spot a woman with a rectangular package cradled in her arms drift past Nan's wide plate-glass window. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, and a man coming the other way had to jig rapidly out of her way to avol I I names and faces he kept in his head and came up with what Norris, who was deeply in love with police language, would undoubtedly have called "a partial."
"Evans. Mabel or Mavis or something like that. Her husband's Chuck Evans."
"She looks like she just smoked some very good Panamanian Red," Polly said. "I envy her."
Nan Roberts herself came over to wait on them. She was one of William Rose's Baptist Christian Soldiers, and today she wore a small yellow button above her left breast. It was the third one Alan had seen this afternoon, and he guessed he would see a great many more in the weeks ahead. It showed a slot machine inside a black circle with a red diagonal line drawn through it. There were no words on the button; it made the wearer's feelings about Casino Nite perfectly clear without them.
Nan was a middle-aged woman with a huge bosom and a sweetly pretty face that made you think of Mom and apple pie. The apple pie at Nan's was, as Alan and all his deputies knew, very good, too-especially with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream melting on top. It was easy to take Nan at face value, but a good many business people-realtors, for the most part-had discovered that doing so was a bad idea. Behind the sweet face there was a clicking computer of a mind, and beneath the motherly swell of bosom there was a pile of account books where the heart should have been. Nan owned a very large chunk of Castle Rock, including at least five of the business buildings on Main Street, and now that Pop Merrill was in the ground, Alan suspected she was probably the wealthiest person in town.
She reminded him of a whorehouse madam he had once arrested in Utica. The woman had offered him a bribe, and when he turned that down, she had tried very earnestly to knock his brains out with a birdcage. The tenant, a scrofulous parrot who sometimes said "I f**ked your mamma, Frank" in a morose and thoughtful voice, had still been in the cage at the time. Sometimes, when Alan saw the vertical frown-line between Nan Roberts's eyes deepen down, he felt she would be perfectly capable of doing the same thing. And he found it perfectly natural that Nan, who did little these days but sit at the cash register, would come over to serve the County Sheriff herself. It was the personal touch that means so much.
'd a collision. Alan flicked rapidly through the huge file of "Hullo, Alan," she said, "I haven't seen you in a dog's age!
Where you been?"
"Here and there," he said. "I get around, Nan."
"Well, don't forget your old friends while you're doing it," she said, giving him her shining, motherly smile. You had to spend quite awhile around Nan, Alan reflected, before you started to notice how rarely that smile made it all the way to her eyes. "Come see us once in awhile."
"And, lo! Here I be!" Alan said.
Nan pealed laughter so loud and lusty that the men at the counter-loggers, for the most part-craned briefly around. And later, Alan thought, they'll tell their friends that they saw Nan Roberts and the Sheriff yukking it up together. Best of friends.
"Coffee, Alan?"
"Please."
"How about some pie to go with that? Home-made apples from McSherry's Orchard over in Sweden. Picked yesterday." At least she didn't try to tell us she picked them herself, Alan thought.
"No, thanks."
"Sure? What about you, Polly?"
Polly shook her head.
Nan went to get the coffee. "You don't like her much, do you?"