Billy Halleck's lips - they were thinner too now, and higher, so that they never quite met - drew back in a grin of frightening intensity and unearthly boniness. 'Yes, Biff, I mind.'
Biff recoiled for a moment, and then he nodded and leaned back in his chair again. His Quoddy mocs came down on his desk again. One crossed over the other and tapped thoughtfully at the turds.
'That's fine, Bill. A man's business ought to be his own. A man's reasons ought to be his own.'
'Good,' Billy said. He felt the rage coming back and was grappling with it. Getting mad at this disgusting man with his Quoddy mocs and his crude ethnic slurs and his blowdried Jay-Cees haircut wasn't going to do him any good. 'Then since we agree -'
'But it's still going to cost you two hundred bucks.'
'What?' Billy's mouth dropped open. For a moment his anger was so great he was simply unable to move at all or to say anything else. This was probably just as well for Biff Quigley, because if Billy could have moved, Billy would have leapt upon him. His self-control had also lost quite a bit of weight over the last two months.
'Not the information I give you,' Biff Quigley said. 'That's a freebie. The two hundred's for the information I won't give them.'
'Won't . . . give . . who?' Billy managed.
'Your wife,' Biff said, 'and your doctor, and a man who says he works for an outfit called Barton Detective Services.'
Billy saw everything in a flash. Things weren't as bad as his paranoid mind had imagined; they were even worse. Heidi and Mike Houston had gone to Kirk Penschley and had convinced him that Billy Halleck was mad. Penschley was still using the Barton agency to track the Gypsies, but now they were all like astronomers looking for Saturn only so they could study Titan - or bring Titan back to the Glassman Clinic.
He could also see the Barton operative who had sat in this chair a few days ago, talking to Biff Quigley, telling him that a very skinny man named Bill Halleck was going to show up soon, and when he did, this was the number to call.
This was followed by an even clearer vision: he saw himself leaping across Biff Quigley's desk, seizing the bronzed pile of dog turds in mid-leap, and then bashing Biff Quigley's head in with them. He saw this in utter, savage clarity: the skin breaking, the blood flying up in a fine spray of droplets (some of them splashing on the framed pictures), the white glimmer of bone shattering to reveal the physical texture of the man's creepy mind; then he saw himself slamming the dog turds back where they belonged - where, in a manner of speaking, they had come from.
Quigley must have seen this - or some of it - on Billy's haggard face, for an expression of alarm appeared on his own face. He hurriedly removed his feet from his desk and his hands from behind his neck. The chair emitted its mechanical pig squeal again.
'Now, we could talk this over' he began, and Billy saw one manicured hand straying toward the intercom.
Billy's anger abruptly deflated, leaving him shaken and cold. He had just visualized beating the man's brains out, not in any vague way but in the mental equivalent of Technicolor and Dolby sound. And good old Biff had known he was doing it, too.
Whatever happened to the old Bill Halleck who used to give to the United Fund and make wassail on Christmas Eve?
His mind returned: Yeah, that was the Billy Halleck that lived in Fat City. He moved. Gone, no forwarding.
'No need for that,' Billy said, nodding at the intercom.
The hand jerked, then diverted to a desk drawer, as if that had been its objective all the time. Biff brought out a pack of cigarettes.
'Wasn't even thinking of it, ha-ha. Smoke, Mr Halleck?'
Billy took one, looked at it, and then leaned forward to get a light. One drag and he was light-headed. 'Thanks.'
'About the two hundred, maybe I was wrong- I'
'No - you were right,' Billy said. He had cashed three hundred dollars' worth of traveler's checks on his way over here, thinking it might be necessary to grease the skids a little - but it had never occurred to him that he might have to grease them for such a reason as this. He took out his wallet, removed four fifties, and tossed them onto Biff's desk beside the dog turds. 'You'll keep your mouth shut when Penschley calls you?'
'Oh, yes, sir!' Biff took the money and put it into the drawer with the cigarettes. 'You know it!'
'I hope I do,' Billy said. 'Now, tell me about the Gypsies.'
It was short and easy to follow; the only really complicated part had been the preliminaries. The Gypsies had arrived in Bangor on June 10. Samuel Lemke, the young juggler, and a man who answered the description of Richard Crosskill had come to Biff's office. After a call to Mr Parsons and one to the Bangor chief of police, Richard Crosskill had signed a standard short-term renewable lease form - the short term in this case was specified to be twenty-four hours. Crosskill signed as secretary of the Taduz Corporation while young Lemke stood by the door of Biffs office with his muscular arms crossed.
'And just how much silver did they cross your palm with?' Billy asked.