بخش 03 - فصل 54

54

Red Lips is staring at the heap of Moleskine notebooks as if hypnotized. At last he raises his eyes to Pete. He also raises the gun.

‘Go ahead,’ Pete says. ‘Do it and see what happens to the notebooks when I drop the lighter. I only got a chance to really douse the ones on top, but by now it’ll be trickling down. And they’re old. They’ll go up fast. Then maybe the rest of the shit down here.’

‘So it’s a Mexican standoff,’ Red Lips says. ‘The only problem with that, Peter – I’m speaking from your perspective now – is that my gun will last longer than your lighter. What are you going to do when it burns out?’ He’s trying to sound calm and in charge, but his eyes keep ping-ponging between the Zippo and the notebooks. The covers of the ones on top gleam wetly, like sealskin.

‘I’ll know when that’s going to happen,’ Pete says. ‘The second the flame starts to go lower, and turns blue instead of yellow, I’ll drop it. Then, poof.’

‘You won’t.’ The wolf’s upper lip rises, exposing those yellow teeth. Those fangs.

‘Why not? They’re just words. Compared to my sister, they don’t mean shit.’

‘Really?’ Red Lips turns the gun on Tina. ‘Then douse the lighter or I’ll kill her right in front of you.’

Painful hands squeeze Pete’s heart at the sight of the gun pointing at his sister’s midsection, but he doesn’t close the Zippo’s cap. He bends over, very slowly lowering it toward the pile of notebooks. ‘There are two more Jimmy Gold novels in here. Did you know that?’

‘You’re lying.’ Red Lips is still pointing the gun at Tina, but his eyes have been drawn – helplessly, it seems – back toward the Moleskines again. ‘There’s one. It’s about him going west.’

‘Two,’ Pete says again. ‘The Runner Goes West is good, but The Runner Raises the Flag is the best thing he ever wrote. It’s long, too. An epic. What a shame if you never get to read it.’

A flush is climbing up the man’s pale cheeks. ‘How dare you? How dare you bait me? I gave my life for those books! I killed for those books!’

‘I know,’ Pete says. ‘And since you’re such a fan, here’s a little treat for you. In the last book, Jimmy meets Andrea Stone again. How about that?’

The wolf’s eyes widen. ‘Andrea? He does? How? What happens?’

Under such circumstances the question is beyond bizarre, but it’s also sincere. Honest. Pete realizes that the fictional Andrea, Jimmy’s first love, is real to this man in a way Pete’s sister is not. No human being is as real to Red Lips as Jimmy Gold, Andrea Stone, Mr Meeker, Pierre Retonne (also known as The Cat Salesman of Doom), and all the rest. This is surely a marker of true, deep insanity, but that must make Pete crazy, too, because he knows how this lunatic feels. Exactly how. He lit up with the same excitement, the same amazement, when Jimmy glimpsed Andrea in Grant Park, during the Chicago riots of 1968. Tears actually came to his eyes. Such tears, Pete realizes – yes, even now, especially now, because their lives hang upon it – mark the core power of make-believe. It’s what caused thousands to weep when they learned that Charles Dickens had died of a stroke. It’s why, for years, a stranger put a rose on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave every January 19th, Poe’s birthday. It’s also what would make Pete hate this man even if he wasn’t pointing a gun at his sister’s trembling, vulnerable midsection. Red Lips took the life of a great writer, and why? Because Rothstein dared to follow a character who went in a direction Red Lips didn’t like? Yes, that was it. He did it out of his own core belief: that the writing was somehow more important than the writer.

Slowly and deliberately, Pete shakes his head. ‘It’s all in the notebooks. The Runner Raises the Flag fills sixteen of them. You could read it there, but you’ll never hear any of it from me.’

Pete actually smiles.

‘No spoilers.’

‘The notebooks are mine, you bastard! Mine!’

‘They’re going to be ashes, if you don’t let my sister go.’

‘Petie, I can’t even walk!’ Tina wails.

Pete can’t afford to look at her, only at Red Lips. Only at the wolf. ‘What’s your name? I think I deserve to know your name.’

Red Lips shrugs, as if it no longer matters. ‘Morris Bellamy.’

‘Throw the gun away, Mr Bellamy. Kick it along the floor and under the furnace. Once you do that, I’ll close the lighter. I’ll untie my sister and we’ll go. I’ll give you plenty of time to get away with the notebooks. All I want to do is take Tina home and get help for my mom.’

‘I’m supposed to trust you?’ Red Lips sneers it.

Pete lowers the lighter farther. ‘Trust me or watch the notebooks burn. Make up your mind fast. I don’t know the last time my dad filled this thing.’

Something catches the corner of Pete’s eye. Something moving on the stairs. He doesn’t dare look. If he does, Red Lips will, too. And I’ve almost got him, Pete thinks.

This seems to be so. Red Lips starts to lower the gun. For a moment he looks every year of his age, and more. Then he raises the gun and points it at Tina again.

‘I won’t kill her.’ He speaks in the decisive tone of a general who has just made a crucial battlefield decision. ‘Not at first. I’ll just shoot her in the leg. You can listen to her scream. If you light the notebooks on fire after that, I’ll shoot her in the other leg. Then in the stomach. She’ll die, but she’ll have plenty of time to hate you first, if she doesn’t alre—’

There’s a flat double clap from Morris’s left. It’s Pete’s shoes, landing at the foot of the stairs. Morris, on a hair trigger, wheels in that direction and fires. The gun is small, but in the enclosed space of the basement, the report is loud. Pete gives an involuntary jerk, and the lighter falls from his hand. There’s an explosive whump, and notebooks on top of the pile suddenly grow a corona of fire.

‘No!’ Morris screams, wheeling away from Hodges even as Hodges comes pelting down the stairs so fast he can barely keep his balance. Morris has a clear shot at Pete. He raises the gun to take it, but before he can fire, Tina swings forward on her bonds and kicks him in the back of the leg with her good foot. The bullet goes between Pete’s neck and shoulder.

The notebooks, meanwhile, are burning briskly.

Hodges closes with Morris before he can fire again, grabbing at Morris’s gun hand. Hodges is the heavier of the two, and in better shape, but Morris Bellamy possesses the strength of insanity. They waltz drunkenly across the basement, Hodges holding Morris’s right wrist so the little automatic points at the ceiling, Morris using his left hand to rip at Hodges’s face, trying to claw out his eyes.

Pete races around the notebooks – they are blazing now, the lighter fluid that has trickled deep into the pile igniting – and grapples with Morris from behind. Morris turns his head, bares his teeth, and snaps at him. His eyes are rolling in their sockets.

‘His hand! Get his hand!’ Hodges shouts. They have stumbled under the stairs. Hodges’s face is striped with blood, several pieces of his cheek hanging in strips. ‘Get it before he skins me alive!’

Pete grabs Bellamy’s left hand. Behind them, Tina is screaming. Hodges pounds a fist into Bellamy’s face twice: hard, pistoning blows. That seems to finish him; his face goes slack and his knees buckle. Tina is still screaming, and the basement is growing brighter.

‘The roof, Petie! The roof is catching!’

Morris is on his knees, his head hanging, blood gushing from his chin, lips, and broken nose. Hodges grabs his right wrist and twists. There’s a crack as Morris’s wrist breaks, and the little automatic clatters to the floor. Hodges has a moment to think it’s over before the bastard rams his free hand forward and upward, punching Hodges squarely in the balls and filling his belly with liquid pain. Morris scuttles between his spread legs. Hodges gasps, hands pressed to his throbbing crotch.

‘Petie, Petie, the ceiling!’

Pete thinks Bellamy is going after the gun, but the man ignores it entirely. His goal is the notebooks. They are now a bonfire, the covers curling back, the pages browning and sending up sparks that have ignited several strips of hanging insulation. The fire begins spreading above them, dropping burning streamers. One of these lands on Tina’s head, and there’s a stench of frying hair to go with the smell of the burning paper and insulation. She shakes it away with a cry of pain.

Pete runs to her, punting the little automatic deep into the basement as he goes. He beats at her smoldering hair and then begins struggling with the knots.

‘No!’ Morris screams, but not at Pete. He goes to his knees in front of the notebooks like a religious zealot in front of a blazing altar. He reaches into the flames, trying to push the pile apart. This sends fresh clouds of sparks spiraling upward. ‘No no no no!’

Hodges wants to run to Peter and his sister, but the best he can manage is a drunken shamble. The pain in his groin is spreading down his legs, loosening the muscles he has worked so hard to build up. Nevertheless, he gets to work on one of the knots in the orange electrical cord. He again wishes for a knife, but it would take a cleaver to cut this stuff. The shit is thick.

More blazing strips of insulation fall around them. Hodges bats them away from the girl, terrified that her gauzy blouse will catch fire. The knot is letting go, finally letting go, but the girl is struggling—

‘Stop, Teens,’ Pete says. Sweat is pouring down his face. The basement is getting hot. ‘They’re slipknots, you’re pulling them tight again, you have to stop.’

Morris’s screams are changing into howls of pain. Hodges has no time to look at him. The loop he’s pulling on abruptly loosens. He pulls Tina away from the furnace, her hands still tied behind her.

There’s going to be no exit by way of the stairs; the lower ones are burning and the upper ones are catching. The tables, the chairs, the boxes of stored paperwork: all on fire. Morris Bellamy is also on fire. Both his sportcoat and the shirt beneath are blazing. Yet he continues to root his way into the bonfire, trying to get at any unburned notebooks still left at the bottom. His fingers are turning black. Although the pain must be excruciating, he keeps going. Hodges has time to think of the fairy tale where the wolf came down the chimney and landed in a pot of boiling water. His daughter Alison didn’t want to hear that one. She said it was too sca—

‘Bill! Bill! Over here!’

Hodges sees Jerome at one of the basement windows. Hodges remembers saying Neither one of you minds worth a tinker’s dam, and now he’s delighted that they don’t. Jerome is on his belly, sticking his arms through and down.

‘Lift her! Lift her up! Quick, before you all cook!’

It’s mostly Pete who carries Tina across to the basement window, through the falling sparks and burning scarves of insulation. One lands on the kid’s back, and Hodges swipes it away. Pete lifts her. Jerome grabs her under the arms and hauls her out, the plug of the computer cord Morris used to tie her hands trailing and bumping behind.

‘Now you,’ Hodges gasps.

Pete shakes his head. ‘You first.’ He looks up at Jerome. ‘You pull. I’ll push.’

‘Okay,’ Jerome says. ‘Lift your arms, Bill.’

There’s no time to argue. Hodges lifts his arms and feels them grabbed. He has time to think, Feels like wearing handcuffs, and then he’s being hoisted. It’s slow at first – he’s a lot heavier than the girl – but then two hands plant themselves firmly on his ass and shove. He rises into clear, clean air – hot, but cooler than the basement – and lands next to Tina Saubers. Jerome reaches through again. ‘Come on, kid! Move it!’

Pete lifts his arms, and Jerome seizes his wrists. The basement is filling with smoke and Pete begins coughing, almost retching, as he uses his feet to pedal his way up the wall. He slides through the window, turns over, and peers back into the basement.

A charred scarecrow kneels in there, digging into the burning notebooks with arms made of fire. Morris’s face is melting. He shrieks and begins hugging the blazing, dissolving remnants of Rothstein’s work to his burning chest.

‘Don’t look at that, kid,’ Hodges says, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t.’

But Pete wants to look. Needs to look.

He thinks, That could have been me on fire.

He thinks, No. Because I know the difference. I know what matters.

He thinks, Please God, if you’re there … let that be true.