Christine, Page 29

  He wet his lips and said, "Sell her, Arnie, why don't you? When she's completely restored, sell her away. You could get a lot of money. A couple-three thousand, maybe."

  Again that frightened, tired look seemed to sweep over Arnie's face, but Michael couldn't tell for sure. The sunset had faded to a bitter orange line on the western horizon, and the little yard was dark. Then the look--if it had been there at all--went away.

  "No, I couldn't do that, Dad," Arnie said gently, as if speaking to a child. "I couldn't do that now. I've put too much into her. Way too much." And then he was gone, cutting across the yard to the sidewalk, joining the other shadows, and there was only the sound of his footfalls coming back, soon lost.

  Put too much into her? Have you? Exactly what, Arnie? What have you put into her?

  Michael looked down at the leaves, then around at his yard. Beneath the hedge and under the overhang of the garage, cold snow glimmered in the coming dark, livid and stubbornly waiting for reinforcements. Waiting for winter.

  32 / Regina and Michael

  She's real fine, my 409,

  My four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction 409.

  --The Beach Boys

  Regina was tired--she tired more easily these days, it seemed--and they went to bed together around nine, long before Arnie came in. They made love that was dutiful and joyless (lately they made love a lot, it was almost always dutiful and joyless, and Michael had begun having the unpleasant feeling that his wife was using his penis as a sleeping pill), and as they lay in their twin beds after, Michael asked casually: "How did you sleep last night?"

  "Quite well," Regina said candidly, and Michael knew she was lying. Good.

  "I came up around eleven and Arnie seemed restless," Michael said, still keeping his voice casual. He was deeply uneasy now--there had been something in Arnie's face tonight, something he hadn't been able to read because of the damned shadows. It was probably nothing, nothing at all, but it glowed in his mind like a baleful neon sign that simply would not shut off. Had his son looked guilty and scared? Or had it just been the light? Unless he could resolve that, sleep would be a long time coming tonight--and it might not come at all.

  "I got up around one," Regina said, and then hurried to add, "Just to use the bathroom. I checked in on him." She laughed a little wistfully. "Old habits die hard, don't they?"

  "Yes," Michael said. "I guess they do."

  "He was sleeping deeply then. I wish I could get him to wear pajamas in cold weather."

  "He was in his skivvies?"

  "Yes."

  He settled back, immeasurably relieved and more than a little ashamed of himself as well. But it was better to know . . . for sure. It was all very well for him to tell Arnie that he knew the boy could no more commit a murder than he could walk on water. But the mind, that perverse monkey--the mind can conceive of anything and seems to take a perverse delight in doing so. Just maybe, Michael thought, lacing his hands behind his head and looking up at the dark ceiling, just maybe that's the peculiar damnation of the living. In the mind a wife can rut, laughing, with a best friend, a best friend can cast plots against you and plan backstabbings, a son can commit murder by auto.

  Better to be ashamed and put the monkey to sleep.

  Arnie had been here at one o'clock. It was unlikely Regina was mistaken about the time because of the digital clock-radio on their bureau--it told the time in numbers that were big and blue and unmistakable. His son had been here at one o'clock, and the Welch boy had been run down three miles away twenty-five minutes later. Impossible to believe that Arnie could have dressed, gone out (without Regina, who had surely been lying wakeful, hearing him), gone down to Darnell's, gotten Christine, and driven out to where Moochie Welch had been killed. Physically impossible.

  Not that he had ever believed it to begin with.

  The mind-monkey was satisfied. Michael rolled over on his right side, slept, and dreamed that he and his nine-year-old son were playing miniature golf on an endless series of small Astro-Turfed greens where windmills turned and tiny water-hazards lay in wait . . . and he dreamed that they were alone, all alone in the world, because his son's mother had died in childbirth--very sad; people still remarked on how inconsolable Michael had been--but when they went home, he and his son, the house would be theirs alone, they would eat spaghetti right from the pot like a couple of bachelor slobs, and when the dishes were washed they would sit at a kitchen table hidden beneath spread newspapers and build model cars with harmless plastic engines.

  In his sleep, Michael Cunningham smiled. Beside him, in the other bed, Regina did not. She lay awake and waited for the sound of the door that would tell her that her son had come in from the world outside.

  When she heard the door open and close . . . when she heard his step on the stairs . . . then she would be able to sleep.

  Maybe.

  33 / Junkins

  I think you better slow down and drive

  with me, baby . . .

  You say what?

  Hush up and mind my own bidness?

  But Baby, you are my bidness!

  You gooood bidness, baby,

  And I love good bidness!

  What kind of car am I drivin?

  I'm drive a '48 Cadillac

  With Thunderbird wings,

  I tell you, baby, she's a movin thing,

  Ride on, Josephine, ride on . . .

  --Ellas McDaniel

  Junkins turned up at Darnell's around eight-forty-five that evening. Arnie had just finished with Christine for the night. He had replaced the radio antenna that Repperton's gang had snapped off with a new one, and for the last fifteen minutes or so he had been sitting behind the wheel, listening to WDIL's Friday Night Cavalcade of Gold.

  He had meant to do no more than turn the radio on and dial across once, making sure that he had hooked up the antenna plug properly and that there was no static. But he had run onto WDIL's strong signal and had sat there, looking straight through the windshield, his gray eyes musing and far away, as Bobby Fuller sang "I Fought the Law," as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers sang "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?," as Eddie Cochran sang "C'mon, Everybody," and Buddy Holly sang "Rave On." There were no commercials on WDIL Friday nights, and no deejays. Just the sounds. Gone from the charts but not from our hearts. Every now and then a soothing female voice would break in and tell him what he already knew--that he was listening to WDIL-Pitts-burgh, the sound of Blue Suede Radio.

  Arnie sat dreaming behind the wheel, the red idiot lights glowing on the dash, tapping his fingers lightly. The antenna was fine. Yes. He had done a good job. It was like Will said; he had a light touch. Look at Christine; Christine proved it. She had been a hunk of junk sitting on LeBay's lawn and he had brought her back; then she had been a hunk of junk sitting in the long-term lot out at the airport and he had brought her back again. He had . . .

  Rave on . . . rave on and tell me . . .

  Tell me . . . not to be lonely . . .

  He had what?

  Replaced the antenna, yes. And he had popped some of the dents, he could remember that. But he hadn't ordered any glass (although it was all replaced), he hadn't ordered any new seat covers (but they were all replaced, too), and he had only looked closely under the hood once before slamming it back down in horror at the damage they had done to Christine's mill.

  But now the radiator was whole, the engine block clean and glowing, the pistons moving free and clear. And it purred like a cat.

  But there had been dreams.

  He had dreamed of LeBay behind the wheel of Christine, LeBay dressed in an Army uniform that was spotted and splotched with blue-gray patches of graveyard mould. LeBay's flesh had sloughed and run. White, gleaming bone poked through in places. The sockets where LeBay's eyes had once been were empty and dark (but something was squirming in there, ah, yes, something). And then Christine's headlights had come on and someone had been pinned there, pinned like a bug on a white square of cardboard. Someone familiar.
<
br />   Moochie Welch?

  Maybe. But as Christine suddenly rocketed forward, tires screaming, it had seemed to Arnie that the terrified face out there on the street ran like tallow, changing even as the Plymouth bore down on it: now it was Repperton's face, now Sandy Galton's, now it was Will Darnell's heavy moon face.

  Whoever was out there had jumped aside, but LeBay had thrown Christine into reverse, working the shift lever with black rotting fingers --a wedding ring hung on one, as loose as a hoop thrown over the branch of a dead tree--and then he threw it back into drive as the figure raced for the far side of the street. And as Christine bore down again, the head had turned, throwing a terrified glance backward, and Arnie had seen the face of his mother . . . the face of Dennis Guilder . . . Leigh's face, all eyes under a floating cloud of dark-blond hair . . . and finally his own face, the twisted mouth forming the words No! No! No!

  Overriding everything, even the heavy thunder of the exhaust (something underneath had been damaged for sure), was LeBay's rotting, triumphant voice, coming from a decayed larynx, passing lips that were already shrivelled away from the teeth and tattooed with a delicate spidering of dark green mould, LeBay's triumphant, shrieking voice:

  Here you go, you shitter! See how you like it!

  There had been the heavy, mortal thud of Christine's bumper striking flesh, the gleam of a pair of spectacles rising in the night air, turning over and over, and then Arnie had awakened in his room, curled into a trembling ball and clutching his pillow. It had been quarter of two in the morning, and his first feeling had been a great and terrible relief, relief that he was still alive. He was alive, LeBay was dead, and Christine was safe. The only three things in the world that mattered.

  Oh but Arnie, how did you hurt your back?

  Some voice inside, sly and insinuating--asking a question he was afraid to answer.

  I hurt it at Philly Plains, he had told everyone. One of the junkers started to slip back down the ramp of Will's flatbed and I pushed it back up--didn't think about it; I just did it. Strained something really bad. So he had said. And one of the junkers had started to slip, and he had pushed it back up, but that hadn't been how he hurt his back, had it? No.

  That night after he and Leigh had found Christine smashed to hell in the parking lot, sitting on four slashed tires . . . that night at Darnell's, after everyone was gone . . . he had tuned the radio in Will's office to the oldies on WDIL . . . Will trusted him now, why not? He was running cigarettes across the state line into New York, he was running fireworks all the way over to Burlington, and twice he had run something wrapped in flat brown-paper packages into Wheeling, where a young guy in an old Dodge Challenger traded him another, slightly larger, brown-paper package for it. Arnie thought maybe he was trading cocaine for money, but he didn't want to know for sure.

  He drove a boat on these trips, Will's private car, a 1966 Imperial as black as midnight in Persia. It was whisper-quiet, and the trunk had a false bottom. If you kept to the speed limit, it was no problem. Why should it be? The important thing was that he now had the keys to the garage. He could come in after everyone else was gone. Like he had that night. And he had turned on WDIL . . . and he had . . . he had . . .

  Hurt his back somehow.

  What had he been doing to hurt his back?

  A strange phrase came to him in answer, floating up from his subconscious: It's just a funny little glitch.

  Did he really want to know? He didn't. In fact, there were times when he didn't want the car at all. There were times when he felt he would be better off just. . . well, junking it. Not that he ever would, or could. It was just that, sometimes (in the sweaty, shaking aftermath of that dream last night, for instance), he felt that if he got rid of it, he would be . . . happier.

  The radio suddenly spat an almost feline burst of static.

  "Don't worry," Arnie whispered. He ran his hand slowly over the dashboard, loving the feel of it. Yes, the car frightened him sometimes. And he supposed his father was right; it had changed his life to some degree. But he could no more junk it than he could commit suicide.

  The static cleared. The Marvelettes were singing "Please Mr. Postman."

  And then a voice said in his ear, "Arnold Cunningham?"

  He jumped and snapped off the radio. He turned around. A small, dapper little man was leaning in Christine's window. His eyes were a dark brown, and his color was high--from the cold outside, Arnie guessed.

  "Yes?"

  "Rudolph Junkins. State Police, Detective Division." Junkins stuck his hand in through the open window.

  Arnie looked at it for a moment. So his father had been right.

  He grinned his most charming grin, took the hand, shook it firmly, and said, "Don't shoot, copper, I'll throw out my guns."

  Junkins returned Arnie's grin, but Arnie noticed that the grin did no more than touch his eyes, which were exploring the car in a quick, thorough fashion that Arnie didn't like. Not at all.

  "Whoo! I got the feeling from the local police that the guys who worked over your rolling iron had really tattooed it. It sure doesn't look like it."

  Arnie shrugged and got out of the car. Friday nights were slow at the garage; Will himself rarely came in, and he wasn't in tonight. Across the way, in stall ten, a fellow named Gabbs was putting a new muffler on his old Valiant, and down at the far end of the garage there was the periodic burr of an air wrench as some fellow put on his snow tires. Otherwise, he and Junkins had the place to themselves.

  "It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it looked," Arnie said. He thought that this smiling, dapper little man might be extremely clever. As if it was a natural outgrowth of the thought, he rested his hand easily on Christine's roof and immediately felt better. He could cope with this man, clever or not. After all, what was there to worry about? "There was no structural damage."

  "Oh? I understood they punched holes in the body with some sharp instrument," Junkins said, looking closely at Christine's flank. "I'll be damned if I can see the fill. You must be a bodywork genius, Arnie. The way my wife drives, maybe I ought to put you on retainer." He smiled disarmingly, but his eyes went on running back and forth over the car. They would dart momentarily to Arnie's face and then go back to the car again. Arnie liked it less and less.

  "I'm good but not God," Arnie said. "You can see the bodywork if you really look for it." He pointed at a minute ripple in Christine's back deck. "And there." He pointed at another. "I was lucky enough to find some original Plymouth body parts up in Ruggles. I replaced the entire back door on this side. You see the way the paint doesn't quite match?" He knocked his knuckles on the door.

  "Nope," Junkins said. "I might be able to tell with a microscope, Arnie, but it looks like a perfect match to me."

  He also knocked his knuckles on the door. Arnie frowned.

  "Hell of a job," Junkins said. He walked slowly around to the front of the car. "Hell of a job, Arnie. You're to be congratulated."

  "Thanks." He watched as Junkins, in the guise of the sincere admirer, used his sharp brown eyes to look for suspicious dents, flaked paint, maybe a spot of blood or a snarl of matted hair. Looking for signs of Moochie Welch. Arnie was suddenly sure that was just what the shitter was doing. "What exactly can I do for you, Detective Junkins?"

  Junkins laughed. "Man, that's formal! I can't take that! Make it Rudy, okay?"

  "Sure," Arnie said, smiling. "What can I do for you, Rudy?"

  "You know, it's funny," Junkins said, squatting to look at the driver's side headlights. He tapped one of them reflectively with his knuckles and then, with seeming absent-mindedness, he ran his forefinger along the headlight's semicircular metal hood. His overcoat pooled on the oil-stained cement floor for a moment; then he stood up. "We get reports on anything of this nature--the trashing of your car, I mean--"

  "Oh, hey, they didn't really trash it," Arnie said. He was beginning to feel as if he was on a tightrope, and he touched Christine again. Her solidity, her reality, once more seemed to
comfort him. "They tried, you know, but they didn't do a very good job."

  "Okay. I guess I'm not up on the current terminology." Junkins laughed. "Anyway, when it came to my attention, what do you think I said? 'Where's the photographs?' That's what I said. I thought it was an oversight, you know. So I called the Libertyville P.D. and they said there were no photographs."

  "No," Arnie said. "A kid my age can't get anything but liability insurance, you know that. Even the liability comes with a seven-hundred-dollar deductible. If I had damage insurance, I would have taken plenty of pictures. But since I didn't, why would I? I sure wouldn't want them for my scrapbook."

  "No, I guess not," Junkins said, and walked idly around to the rear of the car, eyes searching for broken glass, for scrapes, for guilt. "But you know what else I thought was funny? You didn't even report the crime!" He raised his dark questioning eyes to Arnie's, looked at him closely--and then smiled a phony, bewildered little smile. "Didn't even report it! 'Huh,' I said. 'Sonofabitch! Who reported it?' Guy's father, they tell me." Junkins shook his head. "I don't get that, Arnie, I don't mind telling you. A guy works his ass off restoring an old car until it's worth two, maybe five thousand dollars, then some guys come along and beat the hell out of it--"

  "I told you--"

  Rudy Junkins raised his hand and smiled disarmingly. For one weird second Arnie thought he was going to say "Peace," as Dennis sometimes did when things got heavy.

  "Damaged it. Sorry."

  "Sure," Arnie said.

  "Anyhow, according to what your girlfriend said, one of the perpetrators . . . well, defecated on the dashboard. I would have thought you would have been mad as hell. I would have thought you would have reported it."

  Now the smile faded altogether and Junkins looked at Arnie soberly, even sternly.

  Arnie's cool gray eyes met Junkins's brown ones.

  "Shit wipes off," he said finally. "You want to know something, Mr. --Rudy? You want me to tell you something?"

  "Sure, son."

  "When I was one and a half, I got hold of a fork and marked up an antique bureau that my mother had saved up for over a period of maybe five years. Saved up her pin money, that's what she said. I guess I racked the hell out of it in a very short time. Of course I don't remember it, but she says she just sat right down and bawled." Arnie smiled a little. "Up until this year, I couldn't feature my mother doing that. Now I think I can. Maybe I'm growing up a little, what do you think?"