“You can’t make me learn anything,” Mike said, but still his eyes were staring at the screen displays in his head; even his voice was a little dreamy.

“You’re right, I can’t. You have a choice. Either you agree to let me teach you some moves, or you go back to delivering newspapers and we’ll just call it a day.”

That jolted the focus right back into Mike’s eyes and he stared hard at Crow, shocked disbelief crackling there. “You’d really fire me…?”

Crow held his face hard for a few seconds, and then he laughed. “Oh, hell no, you lunkhead. I’m talking outta my ass here, Mike. Truth is, I don’t really know how to do what I’m trying to do. I want to do for you what someone once did for me, and I’m making a piss-poor job of it.” He shook his head. “Help me out here, kid.”

The moment stretched, and just about the time Crow was thinking I lost him, Mike said, “Let’s just say I did stick around…how would it go? I mean, do I have to wear some kind of uniform and bow and stuff?”

Crow shook his head. “Nope. No uniforms, no bowing, none of that shit. Mind you, I’d really like to teach you jujutsu the old-fashioned way, be kind of an Obi-wan Kenobi sort of role model, but we don’t have that kind of time. Jujutsu takes years, and we don’t have years. So, instead I’m going to teach you how to fight. Quick and dirty, no pretty moves—just old-fashioned bust-up-the-bad-guys stuff. You with me?”

It took Mike a while and Crow gave him the time. Mike got up and went into the storeroom to fetch a dustpan and brush to clean up the mess, his blue eyes thoughtful, his freckled cheeks flushed with the aftereffects of their conversation. It wasn’t until all of the popcorn had been swept up and tossed back into the box, and all of the plastic roaches tagged and set on a shelf that he stopped, turning around to face Crow. Mike was fourteen years old—fifteen on December 28—but when he looked at Crow his face was ten years older. Crow could see the man that Mike would become. In a weird aside inside his own head, Crow tried to superimpose Mike’s face over that of Big John Sweeney, but it didn’t fit. Not at all. The mouth and the nose were Lois’s, yet those cold eyes, the red hair, the square jaw all made him look, strangely, like a young Terry Wolfe. But that was stupid. Crow shook the thought away so he could focus on what he was seeing in those eyes. Mike Sweeney, at that moment, had a look in his eyes as old as all of the pain in the world. Crow had been hoping to see a spark, a flicker of damn-the-torpedoes there, but all he saw was a young man with ancient eyes staring at him with no trace of hope, no fear of death. They were dead eyes.

“Sure,” Mike said, “what have I got to lose?’

(5)

Vic chain-lit another cigarette and tossed the old butt out the window. The inside of the pickup’s cab was nearly opaque with smoke but Vic didn’t care. His truck was parked on a side street near Corn Hill, engine off, all of the windows except one rolled up, and the driver’s window was only cracked three inches. His cell phone lay on the dash where he’d placed it after he’d hung up on Lois, his brain churning over the conversation he’d just had. “Vic,” she had said with placating brightness in her voice, “you’ll be happy to know that Michael has gotten a new job. It pays better and he’ll have regular hours so he’ll always be home on time.” She said that as if it was what Vic wanted to hear. “In a store. He’s going to be a sales assistant in a store on Corn Hill.”

“What store?”

“Why, the craft store owned by Malcolm Crow. You remember him? He’s been in the papers…”

If she had said anything else of importance, Vic had not paid attention to it. He’d mumbled something about it being a good thing and had hung up, tossed the cell phone on the dash, and started smoking his way through a pack of Camels.

The fact that Mike was no longer delivering papers was a problem, that much at least was clear. Vic had pressured him into taking that job in the first place because it was the best way to steer him into the path of Tow-Truck Eddie. Now that was going to be harder—and it was hard enough because apparently Eddie couldn’t find his own dick with both hands and a road map. He knew the Man needed Eddie to do the kid, but as far as Vic was concerned that whole scheme was a waste of effort. Mike should have been dead meat days ago, weeks ago, and instead he’d had one near miss and caught some bruises and since then all Eddie had managed was the occasional glimpse. It was already the sixth and Halloween was just twenty-five days away. Mike needed to be dead long before then, and certainly he needed to be dead by then.

It doesn’t matter.

The voice echoed in his head, not his own thoughts but as familiar as his own.

“Your boy Eddie should have killed that little faggot by now, boss. What’s the problem?”

It isn’t Eddie Oswald’s failure. It’s mine. I cannot touch the boy…sometimes I cannot see him. Much of the time I am blind to him.

“Oh,” Vic said, surprised, and for a long time he processed that. It was the first time the Man had ever admitted a weakness—ever—and Vic didn’t like the feel of it. He said, “And that’s why Eddie hasn’t been able to find him? You can’t—what—steer him in the right direction?” There was a profound silence and Vic knew that the Man would never respond to a question like that. He cleared his throat and said, “Boss, you should have told me you were having troubles seeing him. I’d have cooked up something, found some way to get the word out to Eddie. I know where the kid’s going to be every day in the afternoons. You can steer Eddie there.”

There was no answer, but Vic could sense a shift, as if the Man was somehow making himself more comfortable after sitting tensely for a while. It was an illusion, but the image worked for Vic. “Besides, Boss, we always have a fallback plan for the kid if it gets down to the wire and he’s still alive. If he’s still walking by Halloween morning then I’ll take a baseball bat to his knees. He can’t do us any harm with his legs broken in a dozen places.” Vic grinned. “And boy would that be fun.”

Yessss, the voice hissed in his head.

“It’ll keep you safe, too, because as long as I don’t kill him myself then what he is won’t spread to the whole town. I know the risks, Boss. Stop fussing with Eddie Oswald—leave it me and I’ll see that it gets done right.”

Not yet, whispered the voice in his mind. Eddie is still a useful tool.

“Okay,” Vic said, but a cloud of uncertainty was beginning to darken his heart.

Chapter 16

(1)

Tow-Truck Eddie was tired and he knew that weariness would make him inattentive. For three days now he had worked shifts as a part-time police officer, first guarding Malcolm Crow at the hospital and then patrolling the roads looking for the godless cop-killer Kenneth Boyd, and each afternoon he had gone home to pray and then take his wrecker out looking for the Beast. So far all he had gotten was one fleeting maddening glimpse of a boy on a bike turning a corner, and even then it may or not have been the Beast. Even the bike looked like a hundred other bikes in town. Patience, God had said…patience.

But how much patience? He prayed and prayed for guidance, and sometimes God spoke to him and sometimes there was nothing but an aching silence in his head. God always told him to be strong, to stay true, to have patience…and each day he rose from his prayers and went out with renewed hope that today—today!—he would find the Beast…and each time after driving for hours upon hours through roads clogged with tourists he came home with nothing more than his grief at failure.

“God! Sweet Lord of Hosts, grant me strength!” he cried aloud, kneeling before his altar, naked, humble, abased. He bent down and beat his forehead against the floor once, twice…seven times, harder with each blow until the floor-boards rattled and blood sang like angels’ voices in his ears. He pounded his fists against his temples and his thighs and then against the floor and his tears fell like rain. “What must I do?” he begged.

Then the voice of God whispered a single word in his mind, the whisper of it as soothing as Gilead’s balm. Now, it said. After such a long silence the voice caught him off guard and for a moment—just a moment—he knelt there and listened to it echo there in the vastness of his celestial thoughts. Then Tow-Truck Eddie leapt to his feet, his heart hammering with joy, and raced to get his clothes.

Now! Now…now…now! He was out there now!

Without bothering to pull on underwear Eddie dragged on a pair of workpants, pulled a sweatshirt over his head, and ran down the stairs, taking them three at a time and then leaping the last five. His shoes were by the door and he jumped into them without socks, without tying the laces, and he grabbed for the doorknob with one hand and his keys with the other. He slammed the door behind him hard enough to knock a cross from its nail on the wall and mere seconds after its plaster arms broke off on the floor the engine of the wrecker howled to life.

Now…now…now…now…

(2)

LaMastra held the door for him and gave him a nod as he entered the conference room. Detective Sergeant Ferro was seated in what had become his regular seat at the head of the table. Terry glanced at him and saw on the detective’s face a look of quirky amusement.

“What’s this I hear about Boyd taking a shot at Gaither Carby?” Terry asked sharply, his face cast into a harsh scowl.

Gesturing to a chair, Ferro said, “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Mayor, I have a very strange story to tell you.”

Terry looked down at him with an angry, weary face. “Detective, I’m not really in the mood for any kind of story. Just tell me what’s going on and cut the crap, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Ferro said stiffly, but again he indicated the chair. With poor grace Terry sat down. LaMastra came over and parked one muscular haunch on the corner of a smaller nearby table; he sat there, casually swinging his leg.

“You know,” said Terry, looking at his watch, “I’m supposed to be outside helping my town get ready for its busy season. I’m supposed to be shaking hands and talking to the press and generating business. I’m supposed to be meeting with horologists and other specialists to work on the blight program. I’m supposed to be trying to keep half of the farms in this borough from going under. Ever since your three bad boys came here—gee, was that only Thursday night? Feels like a frigging month ago!—ever since then, my quiet, artsy-fartsy little town has gone to hell in a handbasket.”