بخش 03 - فصل 04

4

Hodges is barely inside his front door and still taking off his coat when his cell rings. “Hey, Holly.”

“Are you all right?”

He can see a lot of calls from her starting with this exact same greeting. Well, it’s better than Drop dead, motherfucker. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“One more day, and then you start treatments. And once you start, you don’t stop. Whatever the doctors say, you do.”

“Stop worrying. A deal is a deal.”

“I’ll stop worrying when you’re cancer free.”

Don’t, Holly, he thinks, and closes his eyes against the unexpected sting of tears. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

“Jerome is coming tonight. He called from his plane to ask about Barbara, and I told him everything she told me. He’ll be in at eleven o’clock. A good thing he left when he did, because a storm is coming. It’s supposed to be a bad one. I offered to rent him a car the way I do for you when you go out of town, it’s very easy now that we have the corporate account—”

“That you lobbied for until I gave in. Believe me, I know.”

“But he doesn’t need a car. His father is picking him up. They’ll go in to see Barbara at eight tomorrow, and bring her home if the doctor says she can go. Jerome said he can be at our office by ten, if that’s okay.”

“Sounds fine,” Hodges says, wiping his eyes. He doesn’t know how much Jerome can help, but he knows it will be very good to see him. “Anything more he can find out from her about that damn gadget—”

“I asked him to do that. Did you get Dinah’s?”

“Yeah. And tried it. There’s something up with the Fishin’ Hole demo screen, all right. It makes you sleepy if you look at it too long. Purely accidental, I think, and I don’t see how most kids would be affected, because they’d want to go right to the game.”

He fills her in on the rest of what he learned from Dinah.

Holly says, “So Dinah didn’t get her Zappit the same way as Barbara and the Ellerton woman.”

“No.”

“And don’t forget Hilda Carver. The man calling himself Myron Zakim gave her one, too. Only hers didn’t work. Barb said it just gave a single blue flash and died. Did you see any blue flashes?”

“Nope.” Hodges is peering at the scant contents of his refrigerator for something his stomach might accept, and settles on a carton of banana-flavored yogurt. “And there were pink fish, but when I succeeded in tapping a couple—which ain’t easy—no numbers appeared.”

“I bet they did on Mrs. Ellerton’s.”

Hodges thinks so, too. It’s early to generalize, but he’s starting to think the number-fish only show up on the Zappits that were handed out by the man with the briefcase, Myron Zakim. Hodges also thinks someone is playing games with the letter Z, and along with a morbid interest in suicide, games were part of Brady Hartsfield’s modus operandi. Except Brady is stuck in his room at Kiner Memorial, goddammit. Hodges keeps coming up against that irrefutable fact. If Brady Hartsfield has stooges to do his dirt, and it’s starting to seem that he does, how is he running them? And why would they run for him, anyway?

“Holly, I need you to heat up your computer and check something out. Not a biggie, just a t that needs to be crossed.”

“Tell me.”

“I want to know if Sunrise Solutions sponsored the ’Round Here tour in 2010, when Hartsfield tried to blow up the Mingo Auditorium. Or any ’Round Here tour.”

“I can do that. Did you have supper?”

“Taking care of that right now.”

“Good. What are you having?”

“Steak, shoestring potatoes, and a salad,” Hodges says, looking at the carton of yogurt with a mixture of distaste and resignation. “Got a leftover apple tart for dessert.”

“Heat it up in the microwave and put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Yummy!”

“I’ll take that under consideration.”

He shouldn’t be amazed when she calls back five minutes later with the information he requested, it’s just Holly being Holly, but he still is. “Jesus, Holly, already?”

With no idea that she is echoing Freddi Linklatter almost word for word, Holly says, “Ask for something hard next time. You might like to know that ’Round Here broke up in 2013. Those boy bands don’t seem to last very long.”

“No,” Hodges says, “once they start having to shave, the little girls lose interest.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Holly says. “I was always a Billy Joel fan. Also Michael Bolton.”

Oh, Holly, Hodges mourns. And not for the first time.

“Between 2007 and 2012, the group did six nationwide tours. The first four were sponsored by Sharp Cereals, which gave out free samples at their concerts. The last two, including the one at the Mingo, were sponsored by PepsiCo.”

“No Sunrise Solutions.”

“No.”

“Thanks, Holly. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes. Are you eating your dinner?”

“Sitting down to it now.”

“All right. And try to see Barbara before you start your treatments. She needs friendly faces, because whatever was wrong with her hasn’t worn off yet. She said it was like it left a trail of slime inside her head.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Hodges says, but that is a promise he’s not able to keep.