'Well, you think what it would do to him if that really had been acid I threw in your face. Think what it would do to him if instead of you I decided to throw it in the faces of those two kids in the GI Joe pajamas. I could do it, whore. I could do it and then go back home and eat a good dinner. You look into my face and you are gonna know I could.'
Now at last he saw confusion and a dawning of something that could have been fear - but not for herself.
'He cursed you,' he said. 'I was the curse.'
'Fuck his curse, that pig,' she whispered, and wiped blood from her face with a contemptuous flick of her fingers.
'He tells me not to hurt anyone,' Ginelli went on, as if she had not spoken. 'I haven't. But that ends tonight. I don't know how many times your old gramps has gotten away with this before, but he ain't going to get away with it this time. You tell him to take it off. You tell him it's the last time I ask. Here. Take this.'
He pressed a scrap of paper into her hand. On it he had Written the telephone number of the 'safe kiosk' in New York.
'You gonna call this number by midnight tonight and tell me what that old man says. If you need to hear back from me, you call that number again two hours later. You can pick up your message ... if there is one. And that's it. One way or another, the door is gonna be closed. No one at that number is gonna know what the f**k you are talking about after two o'clock tomorrow morning.-'
'He'll never take it off.'
'Well, maybe he won't,' he said, 'because that is the same thing your brother said last night. But that's not your business. You just play square with him and let him make up his own mind what he's gonna do - make sure you explain to him that if he says no, that's when the boogiewoogie really starts. You go first, then the two kids, then anybody else I can get my hands on. Tell him that. Now, get in the car.'
'No. I*
Ginelli rolled his eyes. 'Will you wise up? I just want to make sure I have time to get out of here without twelve cops on my tail. If I had wanted to kill you, I wouldn't have given you a message to deliver.'
The girl got up. She was a little wobbly, but she made it. She got in behind the wheel and then slid across the seat.
'Not far enough.' Ginelli wiped blood off his forehead and showed it to her on his fingers. 'After this, I want to see you crouched up against that door over there like a wallflower on her first date.'
She slid against the door. 'Good,' Ginelli said, getting in. 'Now, stay there.'
He backed out to Finson Road without turning on his lights - the Buick's wheels spun a little on the dry timothy grass. He shifted to drive with his gun hand, saw her twitch, and pointed the gun at her again.
'Wrong,' he said. 'Don't move. Don't move at all. You understand?'
'I understand.'
'Good.'
He drove back the way he had come, holding the gun on her.
'Always it's this way,' she said bitterly. 'For even a little justice we are asked to pay so much. He is your friend, this pig Halleck?'
'I told you, don't call him that. He's no pig.'
'He cursed us,' she said, and there was a kind of wondering contempt in her voice. 'Tell him for me, mister, that God cursed us long before him or any of his tribe ever were,'
'Save it for the social worker, babe.'
She fell silent.
A quarter of a mile before the gravel pit where Frank Spurton rested, Ginelli stopped the car.
'Okay, this is far enough. Get out.'
'Sure.' She looked at him steadily with those unfathomable eyes. 'But there is one thing you should know, mister - our paths will cross again. And when they do, I will kill you.'
'No,' he said. 'You won't. Because you owe me your life tonight. And if that ain't enough for you, you ungrateful bitch, you can add in your brother's life last night. You talk, but you still don't understand the way things are, or why you ain't home-free on this, or why you ain't never gonna be home-free on this until you quit. I got a friend you could fly like a kite if you hooked up some twine to his belt. What have you got? I'll tell you what you got. You got an old man with no nose who put a curse on my friend and then ran away in the night like a hyena.'
Now she was crying, and crying hard. The tears ran down her face in streams.
'Are you saying God is on your side?' she asked him, her voice so thick the words were almost unintelligible. 'Is that what I hear you saying? You should burn in hell for such! blasphemy. Are we hyenas? If we are, it was people like your friend who made us so, My great-grandfather says there are no curses, only mirrors you hold up to the souls of men and women.'
'Get out,' he said. 'We can't talk. We can't even hear each other.'
'That's right.'
She opened the door and got out. As he pulled away she screamed: 'Your friend is a pig and he'll die thin!'
'But I don't think you will,' Ginelli said.
'What do you mean?'
Ginelli looked at his watch. It was after three o'clock. 'Tell you in the car,' he said. 'You've got an appointment at seven o'clock.'
Billy felt that sharp, hollow needle of fear in his belly again. 'With him?'
'That's right. Let's go.'