When Hodges arrived, James Belson was indeed beating on Howie. He was doing this work with a rake-handle, his bald head gleaming with sweat in the sunlight. Belson’s brother-in-law was lying in his weedy driveway by the rear bumper of the Acura, kicking ineffectually at Belson and trying to shield his bleeding face and broken nose with his hands. Hodges stepped up behind Belson and soothed him with the Happy Slapper. The Acura was back on the car dealership’s lot by noon, and Belson the Bald Beater was now up on assault.
“His lawyer is going to try to make you look like the bad guy,” Holly says. “He’s going to ask how you subdued Mr. Belson. You need to be ready for that, Bill.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Hodges says. “I thumped him one to keep him from killing his brother-in-law, that’s all. Applied acceptable force and practiced restraint.”
“But you used a weapon to do it. A sock loaded with ball bearings, to be exact.”
“True, but Belson doesn’t know that. His back was turned. And the other guy was semiconscious at best.”
“Okay . . .” But she looks worried and her teeth are working at the spot she nipped while talking to Tina. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble. Promise me you’ll keep your temper and not shout, or wave your arms, or—”
“Holly.” He takes her by the shoulders. Gently. “Go outside. Smoke a cigarette. Chillax. All will be well in court this morning and with Pete Saubers this afternoon.”
She looks up at him, wide-eyed. “Do you promise?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’ll just smoke half a cigarette.” She heads for the door, rummaging in her bag. “We’re going to have such a busy day.”
“I suppose we are. One other thing before you go.”
She turns back, questioning.
“You should smile more often. You’re beautiful when you smile.”
Holly blushes all the way to her hairline and hurries out. But she’s smiling again, and that makes Hodges happy.
14
Morris is also having a busy day, and busy is good. As long as he’s in motion, the doubts and fears don’t have a chance to creep in. It helps that he woke up absolutely sure of one thing: this is the day he becomes a wolf for real. He’s all done patching up the Culture and Arts Center’s outdated computer filing system so his fat fuck of a boss can look good to his boss, and he’s done being Ellis McFarland’s pet lamb, too. No more baa-ing yes sir and no sir and three bags full sir each time McFarland shows up. Parole is finished. As soon as he has the Rothstein notebooks, he’s getting the hell out of this pisspot of a city. He has no interest in going north to Canada, but that leaves the whole lower forty-eight. He thinks maybe he’ll opt for New England. Who knows, maybe even New Hampshire. Reading the notebooks there, near the same mountains Rothstein must have looked at while he was writing—that had a certain novelistic roundness, didn’t it? Yes, and that was the great thing about novels: that roundness. The way things always balanced out in the end. He should have known Rothstein couldn’t leave Jimmy working for that fucking ad agency, because there was no roundness in that, just a big old scoop of ugly. Maybe, deep down in his heart, Morris had known it. Maybe it was what kept him sane all those years.
He’s never felt saner in his life.
When he doesn’t show up for work this morning, his fat fuck boss will probably call McFarland. That, at least, is what he’s supposed to do in the event of an unexplained absence. So Morris has to disappear. Duck under the radar. Go dark.
Fine.
Terrific, in fact.
At eight this morning, he takes the Main Street bus, rides all the way to its turnaround point where Lower Main ends, and then strolls down to Lacemaker Lane. Morris has put on his only sportcoat and his only tie, and they’re good enough for him to not look out of place here, even though it’s too early for any of the fancy-schmancy stores to have opened. He turns down the alley between Andrew Halliday Rare Editions and the shop next door, La Bella Flora Children’s Boutique. There are three parking spaces in the small courtyard behind the buildings, two for the clothing shop and one for the bookshop. There’s a Volvo in one of the La Bella Flora spots. The other one is empty. So is the space reserved for Andrew Halliday.
Also fine.
Morris leaves the courtyard as briskly as he came, pauses for a comforting look at the CLOSED sign hanging inside the bookshop door, and then strolls back to Lower Main, where he catches an uptown bus. Two changes later, he’s stepping off in front of the Valley Plaza Shopping Center, just two blocks from the late Andrew Halliday’s home.
He walks briskly again, no strolling now. As if he knows where he is, where he’s going, and has every right to be here. Coleridge Street is nearly deserted, which doesn’t surprise him. It’s quarter past nine (his fat fuck of a boss will by now be looking at Morris’s unoccupied desk and fuming). The kids are in school; the workadaddies and workamommies are off busting heavies to keep up with their credit card debt; most delivery and service people won’t start cruising the neighborhood until ten. The only better time would be the dozy hours of mid-afternoon, and he can’t afford to wait that long. Too many places to go, too many things to do. This is Morris Bellamy’s big day. His life has taken a long, long detour, but he’s almost back on the mainline.
15
Tina starts feeling sick around the time Morris is strolling up the late Drew Halliday’s driveway and seeing his old pal’s car parked inside his garage. Tina hardly slept at all last night because she’s so worried about how Pete will take the news that she ratted him out. Her breakfast is sitting in her belly like a lump, and all at once, while Mrs. Sloan is performing “Annabel Lee” (Mrs. Sloan never just reads), that lump of undigested food starts to crawl up her throat and toward the exit.
She raises her hand. It seems to weigh at least ten pounds, but she holds it up until Mrs. Sloan raises her eyes. “Yes, Tina, what is it?”
She sounds annoyed, but Tina doesn’t care. She’s beyond caring. “I feel sick. I need to go to the girls’.”
“Then go, by all means, but hurry back.”
Tina scuttles from the room. Some of the girls are giggling—at thirteen, unscheduled bathroom visits are always amusing—but Tina is too concerned with that rising lump to feel embarrassed. Once in the hall she breaks into a run, heading for the bathroom halfway down the hall as fast as she can, but the lump is faster and she doubles over before she can get there and vomits her breakfast all over her sneakers.
Mr. Haggerty, the school’s head janitor, is just coming up the stairs. He sees her stagger backward from the steaming puddle of whoopsie and trots toward her, his toolbelt jingling.
“Hey, girl, you okay?”
Tina gropes for the wall with an arm that feels made of plastic. The world is swimming. Part of that is because she has vomited hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, but not all. She wishes with all her heart that she hadn’t let Barbara persuade her into talking to Mr. Hodges, that she had left Pete alone to work out whatever was wrong. What if he never speaks to her again?