Christine, Page 39

  "This is the Pennsylvania State Police!" Junkins cried into the loudhailer. The words echoed and bounced. He found, even at this instant, that his eyes were drawn to the white-over-red Plymouth sitting empty in stall twenty. He had handled half a dozen murder weapons in his time, sometimes at the scene, more frequently in the witness box, but just looking at that car made him feel cold.

  Gitney, the IRS man who had come along for this particular sleighride, was frowning at him to go on. None of you know what this is about. None of you. But he raised the loudhailer to his lips again.

  "This place of business is closed! I repeat, this place of business is closed! You may take your vehicles if they are in running order--if not, please leave quickly and quietly! This place is closed!"

  The loudhailer made an amplified click as he turned it off.

  He looked toward the office and saw that Will Darnell was talking on the telephone, an unlit cigar jammed in his face. Jimmy Sykes was standing by the Coke machine, his simple face a picture of confused dismay--he didn't look much different from Bill Upshaw's kid at the moment before he burst into tears.

  "Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?" The cop in charge was Rick Mercer. Behind them, the garage was empty except for four uniformed cops, who were doing paperwork on the cars which had been impounded when the garage was closed.

  "Yeah," Will said. His face was composed; the only sign of his upset was his deepening wheeze, the fast rise and fall of his big chest under his open-throated white shirt, the way he held his aspirator constantly in one hand.

  "Do you have anything to say to us at this time?" Mercer asked.

  "Not until my lawyer gets here."

  "Your lawyer can meet us in Harrisburg," Junkins said.

  Will glanced at Junkins contemptuously and said nothing. Outside, more uniformed police had finished affixing seals to every door and window of the garage except for the small side door. Until the state of impound ceased, all traffic would use that door.

  "This is the craziest thing I ever heard of," Will Darnell said at last.

  "It'll get crazier," Mercer said, smiling sincerely. "You're going away for a very long time, Will. Maybe someday they'll put you in charge of the prison motor pool."

  "I know you," Will said, looking at him. "Your name is Mercer. I knew your father well. He was the crookedest cop that ever came out of King's County."

  The blood fell out of Rick Mercer's face and he raised his hand.

  "Stop it, Rick," Junkins said.

  "Sure," Will said. "You guys have your fun. Make your jokes about the prison motor pool. I'll be back here doing business in two weeks. And if you don't know it, you're even stupider than you look."

  He glanced around at them, his eyes intelligent, sardonic . . . and trapped. Abruptly he raised his aspirator to his mouth and breathed in deeply.

  "Get this bag of shit out of here," Mercer said. He was still white.

  "Are you all right?" Junkins asked. They were sitting in an unmarked state Ford half an hour later. The sun had decided to come out and shone blindingly on melting snow and wet streets. Darnell's Garage sat silent. Darnell's records--and Cunningham's street-rod Plymouth-were safely penned up inside.

  "That crack he made about my father," Mercer said heavily. "My father shot himself, Rudy. Blew his head off. And I always thought . . . in college I read . . ." He shrugged. "Lots of cops eat the gun. Melvin Purvis did it, you know. He was the man who got Dillinger. But you wonder."

  Mercer lit a cigarette and drew smoke downstairs in a long, shuddery breath.

  "He didn't know anything," Junkins said.

  "The fuck he didn't," Mercer said. He unrolled his window and threw the cigarette out. He unclipped the mike under the dash. "Home, this is Mobile Two."

  "Ten-four, Mobile Two."

  "What's happening with our carrier pigeon?"

  "He's on Interstate Eighty-four, coming up on Port Jervis." Port Jervis was the crossover point between Pennsylvania and New York.

  "New York is all ready?"

  "Affirmative."

  "You tell them again that I want him northeast of Middletown before they grab him, and his toll-ticket taken in evidence."

  "Ten-four."

  Mercer put the mike back and smiled thinly. "Once he crosses into New York, there's not a question in the world about it being Federal-- but we've still got first dibs. Isn't that beautiful?"

  Junkins didn't answer. There was nothing beautiful about it--from Darnell with his aspirator to Mercer's father eating his gun, there was nothing beautiful about it. Junkins was filled with a spooky feeling of inevitability, a feeling that the ugly things were not ending but only just beginning to happen. He felt halfway through a dark story that might prove too terrible to finish. Except he had to finish it now, didn't he? Yes.

  The terrible feeling, the terrible image persisted: that the first time he had talked to Arnie Cunningham, he had been talking to a drowning man, and the second time he had talked to him, the drowning had happened--and he was talking to a corpse.

  The cloud cover over western New York was breaking, and Arnie's spirits began to rise. It always felt good to get away from Libertyville, away from . . . from everything. Not even the knowledge that he had contraband in the trunk could quench that feeling of lift. And at least it wasn't dope this time. Far in the back of his mind--hardly even acknowledged, but there--was the idle speculation about how things would be different and how his life would change if he just dumped the cigarettes and kept on going. If he just left the entire depressing mess behind.

  But of course he wouldn't. Leaving Christine after he had put so much into her was of course impossible.

  He turned up the radio and hummed along with something current. The sun, weakened by December but still trying to be bold, broke cover entirely and Arnie grinned.

  He was still grinning when the New York Police car pulled up beside him in the passing lane and paced him. The loudspeaker on top began to chant, "This is for the Chrysler! Pull over, Chrysler! Pull over!"

  Arnie looked over, the grin fading from his lips. He stared into a pair of black sunglasses. Copglasses. The terror that seized him was deeper than he would have believed any emotion could be--and it wasn't for himself. His mouth went totally dry. His mind went into a blurring overdrive. He saw himself tramping the gas pedal and running for it, and perhaps he would have done it if he had been driving Christine . . . but he wasn't. He saw Will Darnell telling him that if he got caught holding a bag, it was his bag. Most of all he saw Junkins, Junkins with his sharp brown eyes, and knew this was Junkins's doing.

  He wished Rudolph Junkins was dead.

  "Pull over, Chrysler! I'm not talking to hear my own voice! Pull over right now!"

  Can't say anything, Arnie thought incoherently as he veered over into the breakdown lane. His balls were crawling, his stomach churning madly. He could see his own eyes in the rearview, wall-eyed with fear behind his glasses--not for him, though. Not for him. Christine. He was afraid for Christine. What they might do to Christine.

  His panic-stricken mind spun up a kaleidoscope of jumbled images. College application forms with the words REJECTED--CONVICTED FELON stamped across them. Prison bars, blued steel. A judge bending down from a high bench, his face white and accusing. Big bull queers in a prison yard looking for fresh meat. Christine riding the conveyor into the car-crusher in the junkyard behind the garage.

  And then, as he stopped the Chrysler and put it in park, the State Police car pulling in behind him (and another, appearing like magic, pulling in ahead of him), a thought came from nowhere, full of cold comfort: Christine can take care of herself.

  Another thought came as the cops got out and came toward him, one holding a search warrant in his hand. It also seemed to come from nowhere, but it reverberated in Roland D. LeBay's raspy, old man's tones:

  And she'll take care of you, boy. All you got to do is go on believing in her and she'll take care of you.

 
Arnie opened the car door and got out a moment before one of the cops could open it.

  "Arnold Richard Cunningham?" one of the cops asked.

  "Yes, indeed," Arnie said calmly. "Was I speeding?"

  "No, son," one of the others said. "But you are in a world of hurt, all the same."

  The first cop stepped forward as formally as a career Army officer. "I have a duly executed document here permitting the search of this 1966 Chrysler Imperial in the name of the People of New York State and of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and of the United States of America. Further--"

  "Well, that just about covers the motherfucking waterfront, doesn't it?" Arnie said. His back flared dully, and he jammed his hands against it.

  The cop's eyes widened slightly at the old voice coming out of this kid, but then he went on.

  "Further, to seize any contraband found in the course of this search in the name of the People of New York State and of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and of the United States of America."

  "Fine," Arnie said. None of it seemed real. Blue lights flashed a confusion. People passing in their cars turned to look, but he found he had no desire to turn from them, to hide his face, and that was something of a relief.

  "Give me the keys, kid," one of the cops said.

  "Why don't you just get them yourself, you shitter?" Arnie said.

  "You're not helping yourself, kiddo," the cop said, but he looked startled and a little fearful all the same; for a moment the kid's voice had deepened and roughened and he had sounded forty years older and a pretty tough customer--nothing like the skinny kid he saw before him at all.

  He leaned in, got the keys, and three of the cops immediately headed for the trunk. They know, Arnie thought, resigned. At least this had nothing to do with Junkins's obsession with Buddy Repperton and Moochie Welch and the others (at least not directly, he amended cautiously); this smelled like a well-planned and well-coordinated operation against Will's smuggling operations from Libertyville into New York and New England.

  "Kid," one of the cops said, "would you like to answer some questions or make a statement? If you think you would, I'll read you the Miranda right now."

  "No," Arnie said calmly. "I don't have anything to say."

  "Things could go a lot easier with you."

  "That's coercion," Arnie said, smiling a little. "Watch out or you'll put a big fat hole in your own case."

  The cop flushed. "If you want to be an asshole, that's your lookout."

  The Chrysler trunk was open. They had pulled out the spare tire, the jack, and several boxes of small parts--springs, nuts, bolts, and the like. One of the cops was almost entirely in the trunk; only his blue-gray-clad legs stuck out. For a moment Arnie hoped vaguely that they wouldn't find the under-compartment; then he dismissed the thought--it was just the childish part of him, the part he now wished burned away, because all that part of him did lately was hurt. They would find it. The quicker they found it, the quicker this nasty roadside scene would end.

  As if some god had heard his wish and decided to grant it posthaste, the cop in the trunk called triumphantly, "Cigarettes!"

  "All right," the cop who had read the warrant said. "Close it up." He turned to Arnie and read him the Miranda warning. "Do you understand your rights as I have read them to you?''

  "Yes," Arnie said.

  "Do you want to make a statement?"

  "No."

  "Get in the car, son. You're under arrest."

  I'm under arrest, Arnie thought, and almost brayed laughter, the thought was so foolish. This was all a dream and he would wake up soon. Under arrest. Being hustled to a State Police cruiser. People looking at him--

  Desperate, childish tears, hot salt, welled up in his throat and closed it.

  His chest hitched--once, twice.

  The cop who had read him his rights touched his shoulder and Arnie shrugged it off with a kind of desperation. He felt that if he could get deep down inside himself quickly enough, he would be okay--but sympathy might drive him mad.

  "Don't touch me!"

  "You do it the way you want to do it, son," the cop said, removing his hand. He opened the cruiser's rear door for Arnie and handed him in.

  Do you cry in dreams? Of course you could--hadn't he read about people waking up from sad dreams with tears on their cheeks? But, dream or no dream, he wasn't going to cry.

  Instead he would think of Christine. Not of his mother or father, not of Leigh or Will Darnell, not of Slawson--all the miserable shitters who had betrayed him.

  He would think of Christine.

  Arnie closed his eyes and leaned his pale, gaunt face forward into his hands and did just that. And as always, thinking about Christine made things better. After a while he was able to straighten up and look out at the passing scenery and think about his position.

  Michael Cunningham put the telephone back into its cradle slowly-- with infinite care--as if to do less might cause it to explode and spray his upstairs study with jagged black hooks of shrapnel.

  He sat back in the swivel chair behind his desk, on which there sat his IBM Correcting Selectric II typewriter, an ashtray with the blue-and-gold legend HORLICKS UNIVERSITY barely legible across the dirty bottom, and the manuscript of his third book, a study of the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac. He had been halfway through a page when the telephone rang. Now he flipped the paper release on the right side of the typewriter and pulled the page bonelessly out from under the roller, observing its slight curve clinically. He put it down on top of the manuscript, which was now little more than a jungle of pencilled-in corrections.

  Outside, a cold wind whined around the house. The morning's cloudy warmth had given way to a frigid, clear December evening. The earlier melt had frozen tight, and his son was being held in Albany on charges of what amounted to smuggling: no Mr. Cunningham it is not marijuana it is cigarettes, two hundred cartons of Winston cigarettes with no tax stamps.

  From downstairs he could hear the whir of Regina's sewing machine. He would have to get up now, go to the door and open it, go down the hall to the stairs, walk down the stairs, walk into the dining room, then into the plant-lined little room that had once been a laundry but which was now a sewing room, and stand there while Regina looked up at him (she would be wearing her half-glasses for the close work), and say "Regina, Arnie has been arrested by the New York State Police."

  Michael attempted to begin this process by getting up from his desk chair, but the chair seemed to sense he was temporarily offguard. It swivelled and rolled backward on its casters at the same moment, and Michael had to clutch the edge of his desk to keep from falling. He slipped heavily back into the chair, heart thudding with painful rapidity in his chest.

  He was struck suddenly by such a complex wave of despair and sorrow that he groaned aloud and grabbed his forehead, squeezing his temples. The old thoughts swarmed back in, as predictable as summer mosquitoes and just as maddening. Six months ago, things had been okay. Now his son was sitting in a jail cell somewhere. What were the watershed moments? How could he, Michael, have changed things? What was the history of it, exactly? Where had the sickness started to creep in?

  "Jesus--"

  He squeezed harder, listening to the winter-whine outside the windows. He and Arnie had put the storms on just last month. That had been a good day, hadn't it? First Arnie holding the ladder and looking up, then him down and Arnie up there, him shouting for Arnie to be careful, the wind in his hair and dead brown leaves blowing over his shoes, their colors gone. Sure, it had been a good day. Even after that beastly car had come, seeming to overshadow everything in their son's life like a fatal disease, there had been some good days. Hadn't there?

  "Jesus," he said again in a weak, teary voice that he despised.

  Unbidden images rose behind his eyes. Colleagues looking at him sideways, maybe whispering in the faculty club. Discussions at cocktail parties in which his name bobbed uneasily up and down like a waterlogged body. Arnie wouldn't be eig
hteen for almost two months and he supposed that meant his name couldn't be printed in the paper, but everyone would still know. Word got around.

  Suddenly, crazily, he saw Arnie at four, astride a red trike he and

  Regina had gotten at a rummage sale (Arnie at four had called them "Momma's rubbage sales"). The trike's red paint was flaked with scales of rust, the tires were bald, but Arnie had loved it; he would have taken that trike to bed with him, if he could. Michael closed his eyes and saw Arnie riding up and down the sidewalk, wearing his blue corduroy jumper, his hair flopping in his eyes, and then his mind's eye blinked or wavered or did something and the rusty rubbage-sale trike was Christine, her red paint scummed with rust, her windows milky-white with age.

  He gritted his teeth together. Someone looking in might have thought he was smiling crazily. He waited until he had some kind of control, and then he got up and went downstairs to tell Regina what had happened. He would tell her and she would think of what they were going to do, just as she always had; she would steal the forward motion from him, taking whatever sorry balm that actually doing things had to give, and leave him with only sick sorrow and the knowledge that now his son was someone else.

  41 / The Coming of the Storm

  She took the keys to my Cadillac car,

  Jumped in my kitty and drove her far.

  --Bob Seger

  The first of that winter's great northeast storms came to Libertyville on Christmas Eve, beating its way across the upper third of the U.S. on a wide and easily predictable storm track. The day began in bright thirty-degree sunshine, but morning deejays were already cheerfully predicting doom and gloom, urging those who had not finished their last-minute shopping to do so by mid-afternoon. Those planning trips to the old homestead for an old-fashioned Christmas were urged to rethink their plans if the trip could not be made in four to six hours.

  "If you don't want to be spending Christmas Day in the breakdown lane of I-76 somewhere between Bedford and Carlisle, I'd leave early or not at all," the FM-104 jock advised his listening audience (a large part of which was too stoned to even consider going anyplace), and then resumed the Christmas Block Party with Springsteen's version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."