CHAPTER 74
TWO BULLETS IN THE BRAIN .
Wearing his Kevlar chest protector and conscious of what an easy target his lionesque head would make, Hazard closed the car door and crossed the street.
The house of the mother-killer seemed to attract the incoming fog, which moved not in a monolithic bank but in curious eddies and lithe plumes: one quick-footed vaporous slinkiness after another, tail following tail of Angora mist, as though here were a thousand cats drawn home by the scent of tuna fresh from the can.
The aura of the house so entranced Hazard that he had crossed the street and followed the private walkway while remaining oblivious of the rain. Only when he reached the foot of the front-porch steps did he realize that he had approached with such deliberation that he had gotten wet to the skin.
Ascending the porch steps, he felt something in his hand-and discovered the cell phone on which he had spoken to Dunny Whistler.
I?m dead and alive, Dunny had said, and Hazard at the moment was of much that same sentiment.
At the top of the steps, instead of proceeding straight to the door and ringing the bell, he paused, realizing that he had neglected to do a [486] standard bit of follow-up to Dunny?s call that he would have done had he received a menacing message from anyone else who should not have had his mobile number. He pressed *69.
The call was answered on the second ring, but the person at the far end of the line said nothing.
?Somebody there?? Hazard asked.
A hard voice came back at him: ?Oh, somebody here. Somebody here, sure enough, you hook nigger.?
Gang talk: hook meaning phony, imitation.
?I be here, got lit up by you, punched twice, and still taste pencil.?
Pencil meaning lead, meaning bullets.
Hazard had never heard this voice before, but he knew to whom it might belong. He could not speak.
?When you come across after me, you wannabe ofay, better get ready for a million nightmares of eastlies. You know eastly, man??
?Yeah. An ugly person,? Hazard said, surprised that he had spoken, sensing at once that responding was a bad idea, that it was an invitation.
?Worse than ugly, man. Extreme butt-ugly. This crib ain?t got nothin? but eastlies. I be here when you come across, ofay. I be first in line.?
Hazard wanted to press END, clip the phone to his belt, but grim fascination held it to his ear.
He was standing ten feet from Vladimir Laputa?s front door. This wasn?t a wise place to engage in a phone chat with one of the restless dead.
?Ofay, you know that four-five I shoulda capped you with last night??
In his mind?s eye, Hazard saw Calvin Roosevelt, alias Hector X, on the lawn outside Reynerd?s apartment house, both hands around a.45, squeezing off a shot, the muzzle spitting fire in the rain.
?Check this out, queerboy. You get here, I have me somethin? [487] bigger than my four-five I?ll shove up your ass, and then all the eastlies can jam you, too. Gonna see you soon.?
Hazard pressed END, and at once the phone rang in his hand. No need to answer it, no way to answer it, knowing who it would be.
He was wet. Cold Scared.
The phone continued to ring.
He needed either to think hard about this or to think about it never again, and he couldn?t make up his mind which way to go while he stood here, on the mother-killer?s porch.
He shoved the ringing phone into a jacket pocket, turned his back to the door, and descended the steps, into the rain once more.