Pete grabs another decanter and lunges at Red Lips with it raised like a cudgel, the gun forgotten. He trips over Halliday’s sprawled legs, goes to one knee, and when Red Lips shoots—the sound in the closed room is like a flat handclap—the bullet goes over his head almost close enough to part his hair. Pete hears it: zzzzz. He throws the second decanter and this one strikes Red Lips just below the mouth, drawing blood. He cries out, staggers backward, hits the wall.
The last two decanters are behind him now, and there is no time to turn and grab another. Pete pushes to his feet and snatches the hatchet from the desk, not by the rubberized handle but by the head. He feels the sting as the blade cuts into his palm, but it’s distant, pain felt by somebody living in another country. Red Lips has held on to the gun, and is bringing it around for another shot. Pete can’t exactly think, but a deeper part of his mind, perhaps never called upon until today, understands that if he were closer, he could grapple with Red Lips and get the gun away from him. Easily. He’s younger, stronger. But the desk is between them, so he throws the hatchet, instead. It whirls at Red Lips end over end, like a tomahawk.
Red Lips screams and cringes away from it, raising the hand holding the gun to protect his face. The blunt side of the hatchet’s head strikes his forearm. The gun flies up, strikes one of the bookcases, and clatters to the floor. There’s another handclap as it discharges. Pete doesn’t know where this second bullet goes, but it’s not into him, and that’s all he cares about.
Red Lips crawls for the gun with his fine white hair hanging in his eyes and blood dripping from his chin. He’s eerily fast, somehow lizardlike. Pete calculates, still without thinking, and sees that if he races Red Lips to the gun, he’ll lose. It will be close, but he will. There’s a chance he might be able to grab the man’s arm before he can turn the gun to fire, but not a good one.
He bolts for the door instead.
“Come back, you shit!” Red Lips shouts. “We’re not done!”
Coherent thought makes a brief reappearance. Oh yes we are, Pete thinks.
He rakes the door open and goes through hunched over. He slams it shut behind him with a hard fling of his left hand and sprints for the front of the shop, toward Lacemaker Lane and the blessed lives of other people. There’s another gunshot—muffled—and Pete hunches further, but there’s no impact and no pain.
He pulls at the front door. It doesn’t open. He casts a wild glance back over his shoulder and sees Red Lips shamble out of Halliday’s office, his chin wreathed in a blood goatee. He’s got the gun and he’s trying to aim it. Pete paws at the thumb-lock with fingers that have no feeling, manages to grasp it, and twists. A moment later he’s on the sunny sidewalk. No one looks at him; no one is even in the immediate vicinity. On this hot weekday afternoon, the Lacemaker Lane walking mall is as close to deserted as it ever gets.
Pete runs blindly, with no idea of where he’s going.
30
It’s Hodges behind the wheel of Holly’s Mercedes. He obeys the traffic signals and doesn’t weave wildly from lane to lane, but he makes the best time he can. He isn’t a bit surprised that this run from the North Side to the Halliday bookshop on Lacemaker Lane brings back memories of a much wilder ride in this same car. It had been Jerome at the wheel that night.
“How sure are you that Tina’s brother went to this Halliday guy?” Jerome asks. He’s in the back this afternoon.
“He did,” Holly says without looking up from her iPad, which she has taken from the Benz’s capacious glove compartment. “I know he did, and I think I know why. It wasn’t any signed book, either.” She taps at the screen and mutters, “Come on come on come on. Load, you bugger!”
“What are you looking for, Hollyberry?” Jerome asks, leaning forward between the seats.
She turns to glare at him. “Don’t call me that, you know I hate that.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jerome rolls his eyes.
“Tell you in a minute,” she says. “I’ve almost got it. I just wish I had some WiFi instead of this buggery cell connection. It’s so slow and poopy.”
Hodges laughs. He can’t help it. This time Holly turns her glare on him, punching away at the screen even as she does so.
Hodges climbs a ramp and merges onto the Crosstown Connector. “It’s starting to fit together,” he tells Jerome. “Assuming the book Pete talked about to Ricker was actually a writer’s notebook—the one Tina saw. The one Pete was so anxious to hide under his pillow.”
“Oh, it was,” Holly says without looking up from her iPad. “Holly Gibney says that’s a big ten-four.” She punches something else in, swipes the screen, and gives a cry of frustration that makes both of her companions jump. “Oooh, these goddam pop-up ads make me so fracking crazy!”
“Calm down,” Hodges tells her.
She ignores him. “You wait. You wait and see.”
“The money and the notebook were a package deal,” Jerome says. “The Saubers kid found them together. That’s what you think, right?”
“Yeah,” Hodges says.
“And whatever was in the notebook was worth more money. Except a reputable rare book dealer wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot po—”
“GOT IT!” Holly screams, making them both jump. The Mercedes swerves. The guy in the next lane honks irritably and makes an unmistakable hand gesture.
“Got what?” Jerome asks.
“Not what, Jerome, who! John Fracking Rothstein! Murdered in 1978! At least three men broke into his farmhouse—in New Hampshire, this was—and killed him. They also broke into his safe. Listen to this. It’s from the Manchester Union Leader, three days after he was killed.”
As she reads, Hodges exits the Crosstown onto Lower Main.
“‘There is growing certainty that the robbers were after more than money. “They may also have taken a number of notebooks containing various writings Mr. Rothstein did after retiring from public life,” a source close to the investigation said. The source went on to speculate that the notebooks, whose existence was confirmed late yesterday by John Rothstein’s housekeeper, might be worth a great deal on the black market.’”
Holly’s eyes are blazing. She is having one of those divine passages where she has forgotten herself entirely.
“The robbers hid it,” she says.
“Hid the money,” Jerome says. “The twenty thousand.”
“And the notebooks. Pete found at least some of them, maybe even all of them. He used the money to help his folks. He didn’t get in trouble until he tried selling the notebooks to help his sister. Halliday knows. By now he may even have them. Hurry up, Bill. Hurry up hurry up hurry up!”
31
Morris lurches to the front of the store, heart pounding, temples thudding. He drops Andy’s gun into his sportcoat pocket, snatches up a book from one of the display tables, opens it, and slams it against his chin to stanch the blood. He could have wiped it with the sleeve of his coat, almost did, but he’s thinking again now and knows better. He’ll have to go out in public, and he doesn’t want to do that smeared with blood. The boy had some on his pants, though, and that’s good. That’s fine, in fact.
I’m thinking again, and the boy better be thinking, too. If he is, I can still rescue this situation.