Thinner Read online

  A thoughtful silence at Kirk Penschley's end as he digested this. Then: 'Well ... if there's anything I can do . . .'

  'There is something,' Billy said. 'Although it sounds a little Loony Tunes.'

  'What's that?' His voice was cautious now.

  'You remember my trouble this early spring? The accident?'

  'Ye-es.'

  'The woman I struck was a Gypsy. Did you know that?'

  'It was in the paper,' Penschley said reluctantly.

  'She was part of a ... a ... What? A band, I guess you'd say. A band of Gypsies. They were camping out here in Fairview. They made a deal with a local farmer who needed cash -'

  'Hang on, hang on a second,' Kirk Penschley said, his voice a trifle waspy, totally unlike his former paid mourner's tone. Billy grinned a little. He knew this second tone, and liked it infinitely better. He could visualize Penschley, who was forty-five, bald, and barely five feet tall, grabbing a yellow pad and one of his beloved Flair Fineliners. When he was in high gear, Kirk was one of the brightest, most tenacious men Halleck knew. 'Okay, go on. Who was this local farmer?'

  'Arncaster. Lars Arncaster. After I hit the woman

  'Her name?'

  Halleck closed his eyes and dragged for it. It was funny ... all of this, and he hadn't even thought of her name since the hearing.

  'Lemke,' he said finally. 'Her name was Susanna Lemke.'

  'L-e-m-p-k-e?'

  'No P.'

  'Okay.'

  'After the accident, the Gypsies found that they'd worn out their welcome in Fairview. I've got reason to believe they went on to Raintree. I want to know if you can trace them from there. I want to know where they are now. I'll pay the investigative fees out of my own pocket.'

  'Damned right you will,' Penschley said jovially. 'Well, if they went north into New England, we can probably track them down. But if they headed south into the city or over into Jersey, I dunno. Billy, are you worried about a civil suit?'

  . 'No,' he said. 'But I have to talk to that woman's husband. If that's what he was.'

  'Oh,' Penschley said, and once again Halleck could read the man's thoughts as clearly as if he'd spoken them aloud: Billy Halleck is neatening up his affairs, balancing the books. Maybe he wants to give the old Gyp a check, maybe he only wants to face him and apologize and give the man a chance to pop him one in the eye.

  'Thank you, Kirk,' Halleck said.

  'Don't mention it,' Penschley said. 'You just work on getting better.'

  'Okay,' Billy said, and hung up. His coffee had gotten cold.

  He was really not very surprised to find that Rand Foxworth, the assistant chief, was running things down at the Fairview police station. He greeted Halleck cordially enough, but he had a harried look, and to Halleck's practiced eye there seemed to be far too many papers in the In basket on Foxworth's desk and nowhere near enough in the Out basket. Foxworth's uniform was impeccable ... but his eyes were bloodshot.

  'Dunc's had a touch of the flu,' he said in answer to Billy's question - the response had the canned feel of one that has been given many times. 'He hasn't been in for the last couple of days.'

  'Oh,' Billy said. 'The flu.'

  'That's right,' Foxworth said, and his eyes dared Billy to make something of it.

  The receptionist told Billy that Dr Houston was with a patient.

  'It's urgent. Please tell him I only need a word or two with him.'

  It would have been easier in person, but Halleck hadn't wanted to drive all the way across town. As a result, he was sitting in a telephone booth (an act he wouldn't have been able to manage not long ago) across the street from the police station. At last Houston came on the line.

  His voice was cool, distant, more than a bit irritated. Halleck, who was either getting very good at reading subtexts or becoming very paranoid indeed, heard a clear message in that cool tone: You're not my patient anymore, Billy. I smell some irreversible degeneration in you that makes me very, very nervous. Give me something I can diagnose and prescribe for, that's all I ask. If you can't give me that, there's really no basis for commerce between us. We played some pretty good golf together, but I don't think either of us would say we were ever friends. I've got a Sony beeper, $200,000 worth of diagnostic equipment, and a selection of drugs to call on so wide that ... well, if my computer printed them all out, the sheet would stretch from the front doors of the country club all the way down to the intersection of Park Lane and Lantern Drive. With all that going for me, I feel smart. I feel useful. Then you come along and make me look like a seventeenth-century doctor with a bottle of leeches for high blood pressure and a trepanning chisel for headaches. And I don't like to feel that way, big Bill. Not at all. Nothing toot-sweet about that. So get lost. I wash my hands of you. I'll come and see you in your coffin ... unless, of course, my beeper beeps and I have to leave.

  'Modern medicine,' Billy muttered.

  'What, Billy? You'll have to speak up. I don't want to give you short shrift, but my P.A. called in sick and I'm going out of my skull this morning.'

  'Just a single question, Mike,' Billy said. 'What's wrong with Duncan Hopley?'

  Utter silence from the other end for almost ten seconds. Then: 'What makes you think anything is?'

  'He's not at the station. Rand Foxworth says he has the flu, but Rand Foxworth lies like old people fuck.'

  There was another long pause. 'As a lawyer, Billy, I shouldn't have to tell you that you're asking for privileged information. I could get my ass in a sling.'

  'If somebody tumbles to what's in that little bottle you keep in your desk, your ass could be in a sling, too. A sling so high it would give a trapeze artist acrophobia.'

  More silence. When Houston spoke again, his voice was stiff with anger ... and there was an undercurrent of fear. 'Is that a threat?'

  'No,' Billy said wearily. 'Just don't go all prissy on me, Mike. Tell me what's wrong with Hopley and that'll be the end of it.'

  -'Why do you want to know?'

  'Oh, for Christ's sake. You're living proof that a man can be just as dense as he wants to be, do you know that, Mike?'

  'I don't have the slightest idea what

  'You've seen three very strange illnesses in Fairview over the last month. You didn't make any connection among them. In a way, that's understandable enough; they were all different in their specifics. On the other hand, they were all similar in the very fact of their strangeness. I have to wonder if another doctor - one who hadn't discovered the pleasure of plugging fifty dollars' worth of cocaine up his pump every day, for instance – might not have made the connection in spite of the diverse symptoms.'

  'Now, wait just a goddamn minute!'

  'No, I won't. You asked why I wanted to know, and by God, I am going to tell you. I'm losing weight steadily - I go on losing weight even if I stuff eight thousand calories a day down my throat. Cary Rossington has gotten some bizarre skin disease. His wife says he's turning into a

  sideshow freak. He's gone to the Mayo Clinic. Now, I want to know what's wrong with Duncan Hopley, and secondarily' I want to know if you've had any other inexplicable cases.'

  'Billy, it's not like that at all. You sound like you've got some crazy idea or other. I don't know what it is -'

  'No, and that's all right. But I want an answer. If I don't get it from you, I'll get it some other way.'

  'Hang on one second. If we're going to talk about this, I want to go into the study. It's a little more private there.'

  'Fine.'

  There was a click as Houston put Billy on hold. He sat in the phone booth, sweating, wondering if this was Houston's way of ditching him. Then there was another click.

  'You still there, Billy?'

  'Yes.'

  'Okay,' Houston said, the note of disappointment in his voice both unmistakable and somehow comic. Houston sighed. 'Duncan Hopley has got a case of runaway acne.'

  Billy got to his feet and opened the door of the phone booth. Suddenly it was too hot in there.
'Acne!'

  'Pimples. Blackheads. Whiteheads. That's all. You happy?'.

  'Anyone else?'

  'No. And, Billy, I don't exactly consider pimples off the-wall. You were starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel for a while there, but it's not like that. Dunc Hopley has got a temporary glandular imbalance, that's all. And it's not exactly a new thing with him, either. He has a history of skin problems going back to the seventh grade.'

  'Very rational. But if you add Cary Rossington with his alligator skin and William J. Halleck with his case of involuntary anorexia nervosa into the equation, it starts to sound a little like Stephen King again, wouldn't you say?'

  Patiently Houston said: 'You've got a metabolic problem, Bill. Cary ... I don't know. I've seen some -'

  'Strange things, yes, I know,' Billy said. Had this cocaine-sniffing gasbag really been his family doctor for ten years? Dear God, was that the truth? 'Have you seen Lars Arncaster lately?'

  'No,' Houston said impatiently. 'He's not my patient. I thought you said you only had one question.'

  Of course he's not your patient, Billy thought giddily, he doesn't pay his bills on time, does he? And a fellow like you, a fellow with expensive tastes, really can't afford to wait, can he?

  'This really is the last one,' Billy said. 'When did you last see Duncan Hopley?'

  'Two weeks ago.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Make an appointment next time, Billy,' Houston said in an unfriendly voice, and hung up.

  Hopley did not, of course, live on Lantern Drive, but the police chief's job paid well, and he had a trim New England saltbox on Ribbonmaker Lane.

  Billy parked in the driveway at dusk, went to the door, and rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again. No answer. He leaned on the bell. Still no answer. He went to the garage, cupped his hands around his face, and peered in. Hopley's car, a conservative cordovan-colored Volvo, was parked in there. FVW 1, the license plate read. There was no second car. Hopley was a bachelor. Billy went back to the door and began hammering on it. He hammered for nearly three minutes and his arm was getting tired when a hoarse voice yelled: 'Go away! Fuck off!'

  'Let me in!' Billy shouted back. 'I have to talk to you!'

  There was no answer. After a minute, Billy began to hammer again. There was no response at all this time ... but when he stopped suddenly, he heard a whisper of movement on the other side of the door. He could suddenly picture Hopley standing there - crouching there - waiting for the unwelcome, insistent visitor to go away and leave him in peace. Peace, or whatever passed for it in Duncan Hopley's world these days. Billy uncurled his throbbing fist.

  'Hopley, I think you're there,' he said quietly. 'You don't have to say anything; just listen to me. It's Billy Halleck. Two months ago I was involved in an accident. There was an old Gypsy woman who was jaywalking -'

  Movement behind the door; definite now. A shuffle rustle.

  'I hit her and killed her. Now I'm losing weight. I'm not on a diet or anything like that; I'm just losing weight. About seventy-five pounds so far. If it doesn't stop soon, I'm going to look like the Human Skeleton in a carny sideshow.

  'Cary Rossington - Judge Rossington - presided at the preliminary hearing and declared that there was no case. He's developed some weird skin disease -'

  Billy thought he heard a low gasp of surprise.

  and he's gone out to the Mayo Clinic. The doctors have told him it isn't cancer, but they don't know what it is. Rossington would rather believe it is cancer than what he knows it really is.'

  Billy swallowed. There was a painful click in his throat.

  'It's a Gypsy curse, Hopley. I know how crazy that sounds, but it's the truth. There was an old man. He touched me when I came out of the hearing. He touched Rossington when he and his wife were at a flea market in Raintree. Did he touch you, Hopley?'

  There was a long, long silence ... and then one word drifted to Billy's ears through the mail slot, like a letter full of bad news from home:

  'Yes . . .'

  'When? Where?'

  No answer.

  'Hopley, where did the Gypsies go when they left Raintree? Do you know?'

  No answer.

  'I have to talk to you!' Billy said desperately. 'I've got an idea, Hopley. I think -'

  'You can't do anything,' Hopley whispered. 'It's gone too far. You understand, Halleck? Too ... far.'

  That sigh again - papery, dreadful.

  'It's a chance!' Halleck said furiously. 'Are you so far gone that doesn't mean anything to you?'

  No answer. Billy waited, hunting inside himself for more words, other arguments. He could find none. Hopley simply wasn't going to let him in. He had begun to turn away when the door clicked open.

  Billy looked at the black crack between the door and the jamb. He heard those rustling movements again, now going away, back down the darkened front hall. He felt goose flesh scutter down his back and sides and arms, and for a moment he almost went away anyhow - Never mind Hopley, he thought, if anyone can find those Gypsies, Kirk Penschley can, so never mind Hopley, you don't need him, you don't need to see what he's turned into.

  Pushing the voice back, Billy grasped the knob of the police chief's front door, opened it, and stepped inside.

  He saw a dim shape at the far end of the hall. A door on the left opened; the shape went in. A dim light glowed, and for a moment a shadow stretched long and gaunt across the hall floor, bending to go halfway up the far wall, where there was a framed photograph of Hopley receiving an award from the Fairview Rotary Club, The shadow's misshapen head lay on the photograph like an omen.

  Billy walked down the hall, spooked now - no use kidding himself. He half-expected the door behind him to slam shut and lock ... and then the Gypsy will dart out of the shadows and grab me from behind, just like the big scare scene in a cheap horror movie. Sure. Come on, asshole, get your act together! But his triphammering heartbeat did not slow.

  He realized that Hopley's little house had an unpleasant smell - low and ripe, like slowly spoiling meat.

  He stood outside the open door for a moment. It looked like a study or a den, but the light was so faint it was impossible to tell for sure.

  'Hopley.'

  'Come in,' the papery voice whispered.

  Billy did.

  It was Hopley's den, all right. There were rather more books than Billy would have expected, and a warm Turkish rug on the floor. The room was small, probably cozy and pleasant under the right circumstances.

  There was a blondwood desk in the center. A Tensor lamp stood on it. Hopley had bent the lamp's neck so that the shade was less than an inch from the desk blotter. There was a small and savagely concentrated circle of light on the blotter; the rest of the room was a cold land of shadows.

  Hopley himself was a manlike bulk in what might have been an Eames chair.

  Billy stepped over the threshold. There was a chair in the corner. Billy sat in it, aware that he had picked the chair in the room which was farthest from Hopley. Nevertheless, he found himself straining to see Hopley clearly. It was impossible. The man was nothing but a silhouette. Billy found himself almost waiting for Hopley to flip the Tensor lamp up so that it glared into his, Billy's eyes. Then Hopley would lean forward, a cop out of a 1940's film noir, screaming: 'We know you did it, McGonigal! Stop trying to deny it! Confess! Confess and we'll let you have a cigarette! Confess and we'll give you a glassa icewadduh! Confess and we'll let you go to the batroom!'

  -But Hopley only sat canted back in his Eames chair. There was a soft rustle as he crossed his legs.

  'Well? You wanted to come in. You're in. Tell your tale, Halleck, and get out. You're not exactly my favorite person in all the world these days.'

  'I'm not Leda Rossington's favorite person, either,' Billy said, 'and frankly, I don't give much of a shit what she thinks, or what you think, either. She thinks it's my fault. Probably you do too.'

  'How much did you have to drink when you hit her, Hallec
k? My best guess is that if Tom Rangely had given you the breathalyzer, that little balloon would have floated straight up to heaven.'

  'Nothing to drink, no drugs,' Billy said. His heart was still thudding, but now it was powered by rage rather than fear. Each thud sent a sick bolt of pain through his head. 'You want to know what happened? Huh? My wife of sixteen years picked that day to give me a handjob in the car. She never did anything like that before. I don't have the slightest clue why she picked that day to do it. So while you and Leda Rossington -and probably Cary Rossington as well - have been busy laying it off on me because I was behind the wheel, I've been busy laying it off on my wife because she had a hand inside my pants. And maybe we should all just lay it off on fate or destiny or something and stop worrying about blame.'

  Hopley grunted.

  'Or do you want me to tell you how I begged Tom Rangely on my knees for him not to give me a breath test or a blood test? How I cried on your shoulder to soft pedal the investigation and kick those Gypsies out of town?'

  This time Hopley didn't even grunt. He was only a silent slumped shape in the Eames chair.

  'Isn't it just a little late for all these games?' Billy asked. His voice had hoarsened, and he realized with some astonishment that he was on the verge of tears. 'My wife was jerking me off, true. I hit the old woman and killed her, true. She herself was at least fifty yards from the nearest crosswalk and came out from between two cars, true. You soft-pedaled the investigation and hustled them out of town as soon as Cary Rossington slapped a quick coat of whitewash on me, also true. And none of it means shit. But if you do want to sit here in the dark and hand out the guilt, my friend, don't forget to give yourself a. plateful.'

  'A great closing summation, Halleck. Great. You ever seen Spencer Tracy in that movie about the Monkey Trial? You must have.'

  'Fuck you,' Billy said, and got up.

  Hopley sighed. 'Sit down.'

  Billy Halleck stood uncertainly, realizing that part of him wanted to use his anger for its own less-than-noble purposes. That part wanted to get him out of here in a manufactured huff simply because that dark slumped shape in the Eames chair scared him shitless.