Lloyd thought it over. Outside, a stronger-than-average gust of wind shrieked by, sounding lonely and lost in the desert. Dinny raised his head uneasily for a moment and then bent back to play.
"I think he's around somewhere," Lloyd said finally. "I don't know why, but I do. I think he's around waiting for something to happen. I dunno what."
Whitney said in a low voice, "You think he got it out of her?"
"No," Lloyd said, watching Dinny. "I don't think he did. It went wrong for him somehow. She... she got lucky or she outthought him. And that doesn't happen often."
"It won't matter in the long run," Ken said, but he looked troubled just the same.
"No, it won't." Lloyd listened to the wind for a while. "Maybe he's gone back to L.A." But he didn't really think so, and his face showed it.
Whitney went back to the kitchen and produced another round of beer. They drank in silence, thinking disquieting thoughts. First the Judge, now the woman. Both dead. And neither had talked. Neither had been unmarked as he had ordered. It was as if the old Yankees of Mantle and Maris and Ford had lost the opening two games of the World Series; it was hard for them to believe, and frightening.
The wind blew hard all night.
BOOK III THE STAND Chapter 63-64
On the late afternoon of September 10, Dinny was playing in the small city park that lies just north of the city's hotel and casino district. His "mother" that week, Angelina Hirschfield, was sitting on a park bench and talking with a young girl who had drifted into Las Vegas about five weeks before, ten days or so after Angie herself had come in.
Angie Hirschfield was twenty-seven. The girl was ten years younger, now clad in tight bluejeans shorts and a brief middy blouse which left absolutely nothing to the imagination. There was something obscene about the contrast between the tight allure of her young body and the childish, pouty, and rather vacuous expression on her face. Her conversation was monotonous and seemingly without end: rock stars, sex, her lousy job cleaning Cosmoline preservative off armaments at Indian Springs, sex, her diamond ring, sex, the TV programs that she missed so much, and sex.
Angie wished she would go have sex with someone and leave her alone. And she hoped Dinny would be at least thirty before he ever worked around to having this girl for a mother.
At that moment Dinny looked up, smiled, and yelled: "Tom! Hey, Tom!"
On the other side of the park, a big man with straw-blond hair was shambling along with a big workman's lunch bucket slamming against his leg.
"Say, that guy looks drunk," the girl said to Angie.
Angie smiled. "No, that's Tom. He's just - "
But Dinny was off and running, hollering "Tom! Wait up, Tom!" at the top of his lungs.
Tom turned, grinning. "Dinny! Hey-hey!"
Dinny leaped at Tom. Tom dropped his lunch bucket and grabbed him. Swung him around.
"Airplane me, Tom! Airplane me!"
Tom grabbed Dinny's wrists and began to spin him around, faster and faster. Centrifugal force pulled the boy's body out until his whizzing legs were parallel to the ground. He shrieked with laughter. After two or three spins, Tom set him gently on his feet.
Dinny wobbled around, laughing and trying to get his balance back.
"Do it again, Tom! Do it again some more!"
"No, you'll puke if I do. And Tom's got to get to his home. Laws, yes."
"Kay, Tom. 'Bye!"
Angie said, "I think Dinny loves Lloyd Henreid and Tom Cullen more than anyone else in town. Tom Cullen is simple, but - " She looked at the girl and broke off. She was watching Tom, her eyes narrowed and thoughtful.
"Did he come in with another man?" she asked.
"Who? Tom? No - as far as I know, he came in all by himself about a week and a half ago. He was with those other people in their Zone, but they drove him out. Their loss is our gain, that's what I say."
"And he didn't come in with a dummy? A deaf-and-dummy?"
"A deaf-mute? No, I'm pretty sure he came in alone. Dinny just loves him."
The girl watched Tom out of sight. She thought of Pepto-Bismol in a bottle. She thought of a scrawled note that said: We don't need you. That had been back in Kansas, a thousand years ago. She had shot at them. She wished she had killed them, particularly the dummy.
"Julie? Are you all right?"
Julie Lawry didn't answer. She stared after Tom Cullen. In a little while, she began to smile.
Chapter 64
The dying man opened the Permacover notebook, uncapped his pen, paused a moment, and then began to write.