Needful Things Read online

  "Huh?"

  Alan rolled his eyes. "Go find something to do. I think John and I can handle this; we're trained investigators. If it turns out we can't, we'll let you know."

  "Oh, sure. Just trying to help, you know. I've seen his wallet. It looks like he's got the whole Library of Congress in there. In fact--"

  "Thanks for your input, Clut. We'll see you."

  "Okay," Clut said. "Always glad to help. Later, dudes."

  Alan rolled his eyes. He felt like laughing again, but controlled himself. It was clear from John's unhappy expression that it was no joke to him. He was embarrassed, but that was only part of it. Alan had lost a wallet or two in his time, and he knew what a shitty feeling it was. Losing the money in it and the hassle of reporting credit cards gone west was only part of it, and not necessarily the worst part, either. You kept remembering stuff you had tucked away in there, stuff that might seem like junk to someone else but was irreplaceable to you.

  John was hunkered down on his hams, picking up papers, sorting them, stacking them, and looking disconsolate. Alan helped.

  "Did you really hurt your toes, Alan?"

  "Nah. You know these shoes--it's like wearing Brinks trucks on your feet. How much was in the wallet, John?"

  "Aw, no more'n twenty bucks. I guess. But I got my hunting license last week, and that was in there. Also my MasterCard. I'll have to call the bank and tell them to cancel the number if I can't find the damned wallet. But what I really want are the pictures. Mom and Dad, my sisters ... you know. Stuff like that."

  But it wasn't the picture of his mother and father or the ones of his sisters that John really cared about; the really important one was the picture of him and Sally Ratcliffe. Clut had taken it at the Fryeburg State Fair about three months before Sally had broken up with John in favor of that stonebrain Lester Pratt.

  "Well," Alan said, "it'll turn up. The money and the plastic may be gone, but the wallet and pictures will probably come home, John. They usually do. You know that."

  "Yeah," John said with a sigh. "It's just that ... damn, I keep trying to remember if I had it this morning when I came in to work. I just can't."

  "Well, I hope you find it. Stick a LOST notice up on the bulletin board, why don't you?"

  "I will. And I'll get the rest of this mess cleaned up."

  "I know you will, John. Take it easy."

  Alan went out to the parking lot, shaking his head.

  3

  The small silver bell over the door of Needful Things tinkled and Babs Miller, member in good standing of the Ash Street Bridge Club, came in a little timidly.

  "Mrs. Miller!" Leland Gaunt welcomed her, consulting the sheet of paper which lay beside his cash register. He made a small tick-mark on it. "How good that you could come! And right on time! It was the music box you were interested in, wasn't it? A lovely piece of work."

  "I wanted to speak to you about it, yes," Babs said. "I suppose it's sold." It was difficult for her to imagine that such a lovely thing could not have been sold. She felt her heart break a little just at the thought. The tune it played, the one Mr. Gaunt claimed he could not remember ... she thought she knew just which one it must be. She had once danced to that tune on the Pavillion at Old Orchard Beach with the captain of the football team, and later that same evening she had willingly given up her virginity to him under a gorgeous May moon. He had given her the first and last orgasm of her life, and all the while it had been roaring through her veins, that tune bad been twisting through her head like a burning wire.

  "No, it's right here," Mr. Gaunt said. He took it from the glass case where it had been hiding behind the Polaroid camera and set it on top. Babs Miller's face lit up at the sight of it.

  "I'm sure it's more than I could afford," Babs said, "all at once, that is, but I really like it, Mr. Gaunt, and if there was any chance that I could pay for it in installments ... any chance at all ..."

  Mr. Gaunt smiled. It was an exquisite, comforting smile. "I think you're needlessly worried," said he. "You're going to be surprised at how reasonable the price of this lovely music box is, Mrs. Miller. Very surprised. Sit down. Let's talk about it."

  She sat down.

  He came toward her.

  His eyes captured hers.

  That tune started up in her head again.

  And she was lost.

  4

  "I remember now," Jillian Mislaburski told Alan, "It was the Rusk boy. Billy, I think his name is. Or maybe it's Bruce."

  They were standing in her living room, which was dominated by the Sony TV and a gigantic plaster crucified Jesus which hung on the wall behind it. Oprah was on the tube. Judging from the way Jesus had His eyes rolled up under His crown of thorns, Alan thought He would maybe have preferred Geraldo. Or Divorce Court. Mrs. Mislaburski had offered Alan a cup of coffee, which he had refused.

  "Brian," he said.

  "That's right!" she said. "Brian!"

  She was wearing her bright green wrapper but had dispensed with the red doo-rag this morning. Curls the size of the cardboard cylinders one finds at the centers of toilet-paper rolls stood out around her head in a bizarre corona.

  "Are you sure, Mrs. Mislaburski?"

  "Yes. I remembered who he was this morning when I got up. His father put the aluminum siding on our house two years ago. The boy came over and helped out for awhile. He seemed like a nice boy to me."

  "Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?"

  "He said he wanted to ask if they'd hired anyone to shovel their driveway this winter. I think that was it. He said he'd come back later, when they weren't fighting. The poor kid looked scared to death, and I don't blame him." She shook her head. The large curls bounced softly. "I'm sorry she died the way she did ..." Jill Mislaburski lowered her voice confidentially. "But I'm happy for Pete. No one knows what he had to put up with, married to that woman. No one." She looked meaningfully at Jesus on the wall, then back at Alan again.

  "Uh-huh," Alan said. "Did you notice anything else, Mrs. Mislaburski? Anything about the house, or the sounds, or the boy?"

  She put a finger against her nose and cocked her head. "Well, not really. The boy--Brian Rusk--had a cooler in his bike basket. I remember that, but I don't suppose that's the kind of thing--"

  "Whoa," Alan said, raising his hand. A bright light had gone on for a moment at the front of his mind. "A cooler?"

  "You know, the kind you take on picnics or to tailgate parties? I only remember it because it was really too big for his bike basket. It was in there crooked. It looked like it might fall out."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Mislaburski," Alan said slowly. "Thank you very much."

  "Does it mean something? Is it a clue?"

  "Oh, I doubt it." But he wondered.

  I'd like the possibility of vandalism a lot better if the kid was sixteen or seventeen, Henry Payton had said. Alan had felt the same way... but he had come across twelve-year-old vandals before, and he guessed you could tote a pretty fair number of rocks in one of those picnic coolers.

  Suddenly he began to feel a good deal more interested in the talk he would be having with young Brian Rusk this afternoon.

  5

  The silver bell tinkled. Sonny Jackett came into Needful Things slowly, warily, kneading his grease-stained Sunoco cap in his hands. His manner was that of a man who sincerely believes he will soon break many expensive things no matter how much he doesn't want to; breaking things, his face proclaimed, was not his desire but his karma.

  "Mr. Jackett!" Leland Gaunt cried his customary welcome with his customary vigor, and then made another tiny check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. "So glad you could stop by!"

  Sonny advanced three steps farther into the room and then stopped, glancing warily from the glass cases to Mr. Gaunt.

  "Well," he said, "I didn't come in to buy nuthin. Got to put you straight on that. Ole Harry Samuels said you ast if I'd stop by this mornin if I had a chance. Said you had a socket-wrench set
that was some nice. I been lookin for one, but this ain't no store for the likes of me. I'm just makin my manners to you, sir."

  "Well, I appreciate your honesty," Mr. Gaunt said, "but you don't want to speak too soon, Mr. Jackett. This is one nice set of sockets--double-measure adjustable."

  "Oh, ayuh?" Sonny raised his eyebrows. He knew there were such things, which made it possible to work on both foreign and domestic cars with the same socket-wrenches, but he had never actually seen such a rig. "That so?"

  "Yes. I put them in the back room, Mr. Jackett, as soon as I heard you were looking. Otherwise they would have gone almost at once, and I wanted you to at least see them before I sold the set to someone else."

  Sonny Jackett reacted to this with instant Yankee suspicion. "Now, why would you want to do that?"

  "Because I have a classic car, and classic cars need frequent repairs. I've been told you're the best mechanic this side of Derry."

  "Oh." Sonny relaxed. "Mayhap I am. What've you got for wheels?"

  "A Tucker."

  Sonny's eyebrows shot up and he looked at Mr. Gaunt with a new respect. "A Torpedo! Fancy that!"

  "No. I have a Talisman."

  "Ayuh? Never heard of a Tucker Talisman."

  "There were only two built--the prototype and mine. In 1953, that was. Mr. Tucker moved to Brazil not long after, where he died." Mr. Gaunt smiled mistily. "Preston was a sweet fellow, and a wizard when it came to auto design ... but he was no businessman."

  "That so?"

  "Yes." The mist in Mr. Gaunt's eyes cleared. "But that's yesterday, and this is today! Turn the page, eh, Mr. Jackett? Turn the page, I always say--face front, march cheerily into the future, and never look back!"

  Sonny regarded Mr. Gaunt from the comers of his eyes with some unease and said nothing.

  "Let me show you the socket-wrenches."

  Sonny didn't agree at once. Instead, he looked doubtfully at the contents of the glass cases again. "Can't afford nothing too nice. Got bills a mile high. Sometimes I think I ought to get right the hell out of bi'ness and go on the County."

  "I know what you mean," Mr. Gaunt said. "It's the damned Republicans, that's what I think."

  Sonny's knotted, distrustful face relaxed all at once. "You're goddamned right about that, chummy!" he exclaimed. "George Bush has damn near ruint this country ... him and his goddam war! But do you think the Democrats have anyone to put up against 'im next year who can win?"

  "Doubtful," Mr. Gaunt said.

  "Jesse Jackson, for instance--a nigger."

  He looked truculently at Mr. Gaunt, who inclined his head slightly, as if to say Yes, my friend--speak your mind. We are both men of the world who are not afraid to call a

  spade a spade. Sonny Jackett relaxed a little more, less self-conscious about the grease on his hands now, more at home.

  "I got nothing against niggers, you understand, but the idear of a jig in the White House--the White House!--gives me the shivers."

  "Of course it does," Mr. Gaunt agreed.

  "And that wop from New York--Mar-i-o Koo-whoamo! Do you think a guy with a name like that can beat that four-eyed dink in the White House?"

  "No," Mr. Gaunt said. He held up his right hand, the long first finger placed about a quarter of an inch from his spatulate, ugly thumb. "Besides, I mistrust men with tiny heads."

  Sonny gaped for a moment, then slapped his knee and gasped wheezy laughter. "Mistrust men with tiny--Say! That's pretty good, mister! That's pretty goddam good!"

  Mr. Gaunt was grinning.

  They grinned at each other.

  Mr. Gaunt got the set of socket-wrenches, which came in a leather case lined with black velvet--the most beautiful set of chrome-steel alloy socket-wrenches Sonny Jackett had ever seen.

  They grinned over the socket-wrenches, baring their teeth like monkeys that will soon fight.

  And, of course, Sonny bought the set. The price was amazingly low--a hundred and seventy dollars, plus a couple of really amusing tricks to be played on Don Hemphill and the Rev. Rose. Sonny told Mr. Gaunt it would be a pleasure--he would enjoy stinking up those psalm-singing Republican sonofawhores' lives.

  They grinned over the tricks to be played on Steamboat Willie and Don Hemphill.

  Sonny Jackett and Leland Gaunt--just a couple of grinning men of the world.

  And over the door, the little silver bell jingled.

  6

  Henry Beaufort, owner and operator of The Mellow Tiger, lived in a house about a quarter of a mile from his place of business. Myra Evans parked in the Tiger's parking-lot--empty now in the hot, unseasonable morning sunshine--and walked to the house. Considering the nature of her errand, this seemed a reasonable precaution. She needn't have worried. The Tiger didn't close until one in the a.m., and Henry rarely rose much before that same hour in the p.m. All the shades, both upstairs and down, were drawn. His car, a perfectly maintained 1960 Thunderbird that was his pride and joy, stood in the driveway.

  Myra was wearing a pair of jeans and one of her husband's blue work-shirts. The tail of the shirt was out and hung almost to her knees. It concealed the belt she wore beneath, and the scabbard hanging from the belt. Chuck Evans was a collector of World War II memorabilia (and, although she did not know it, he had already made a purchase of his own in this area at the town's new shop), and there was a Japanese bayonet in the scabbard. Myra had taken it half an hour ago from the wall of Chuck's basement den. It bumped solidly against her right thigh at every step.

  She was very anxious to get this job done, so she could get back to the picture of Elvis. Holding the picture, she had discovered, produced a kind of story. It wasn't a real story, but in most ways--all ways, actually--she considered it better than a real story. Act I was The Concert, where The King pulled her up on stage to dance with him. Act II was The Green Room After The Show, and Act III was In the Limo. One of Elvis's Memphis guys was driving the limo, and The King didn't even bother to put up the black glass between the driver and them before doing the most outrageous and delicious things to her in the back seat as they drove to the airport.

  Act IV was titled On the Plane. In this act they were in the Lisa Marie, Elvis's Convair jet ... in the big double bed behind the partition at the back of the cabin, to be exact. That was the act Myra had been enjoying yesterday and this morning: cruising at thirty-two thousand feet in the Lisa Marie, cruising in bed with The King. She wouldn't have minded staying there with him forever, but she knew that she wouldn't. They were bound for Act V: Graceland. Once they were there, things could only get better.

  But she had this little piece of business to take care of first.

  She had been lying in bed this morning after her husband left, naked except for her garter-belt (The King had been very clear in his desire for Myra to leave that on), the picture clasped tightly in her hands, moaning and writhing slowly on the sheets. And then, suddenly, the double bed was gone. The whisper-drone of the Lisa Marie's engines was gone. The smell of The King's English Leather was gone.

  In the place of these wonderful things was Mr. Gaunt's face ... only he no longer looked as he did in his shop. The skin on his face looked blistered, seared with some fabulous secret heat. It pulsed and writhed, as if there were things beneath, struggling to get out. And when he smiled, his big square teeth had become a double row of fangs.

  "It's time, Myra," Mr. Gaunt had said.

  "I want to be with Elvis," she whined. "I'll do it, but not right now--please, not right now."

  "Yes, right now. You promised, and you're going to make good on your promise. You'll be very sorry if you don't, Myra."

  She had heard a brittle cracking. She looked down and saw with horror that a jagged crack now split the glass over The King's face.

  "No!" she cried. "No, don't do that!"

  "I'm not doing it," Mr. Gaunt had responded with a laugh. "You're doing it. You're doing it by being a silly, lazy little cunt. This is America, Myra, where only whores do business in bed. In America re
spectable people have to get out of bed and earn the things they need, or lose them forever. I think you forgot that. Of course, I can always find somebody else to play that little trick on Mr. Beaufort, but as for your beautiful affaire de coeur with The King--"

  Another crack raced like a silver lightning-bolt across the glass covering the picture. And the face beneath it, she observed with mounting horror, was growing old and wrinkled and raddled as the corrupting air seeped in and went to work on it.

  "No! I'll do it! I'll do it right now! I'm getting up right now, see? Only make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!"

  Myra had leaped to the floor with the speed of a woman who has discovered she is sharing her bed with a nest of scorpions.

  "When you keep your promise, Myra," Mr. Gaunt said. Now he was speaking from some deep sunken hollow in her mind. "You know what to do, don't you?"

  "Yes, I know!" Myra looked despairingly at the picture--the image of an old, ill man, his face puffy from years of excess and indulgence. The hand which held the microphone was a vulture's talon.

  "When you come back with your mission accomplished," Mr. Gaunt said, "the picture will be fine. Only don't let anyone see you, Myra. If anyone sees you, you'll never see him again."

  "I won't!" she babbled. "I swear I won't!"

  And now, as she reached Henry Beaufort's house, she remembered that admonition. She looked around to make sure no one was coming along the road. It was deserted in both directions. A crow cawed somnolently in someone's October-barren field. There was no other sound. The day seemed to throb like a living thing, and the land lay stunned within the slow beat of its unseasonable heart.

  Myra walked up the driveway, pulling up the tail of the blue shirt, feeling to make sure of the scabbard and the bayonet inside it. Sweat ran, trickling and itching, down the center of her back and under her bra. Although she didn't know it and wouldn't have believed it if told, she had achieved a momentary beauty in the rural stillness. Her vague, unthoughtful face had filled, at least during these moments, with a deep purpose and determination which had never been there before. Her cheekbones were clearly defined for the first time since high school, when she had decided her mission in life was to eat every Yodel and Ding-Dong and Hoodsie Rocket in the world. During the last four days or so, she had been much too busy having progressively weirder and weirder sex with The King to think much about eating. Her hair, which usually hung around her face in a lank, floppy rug, was tied back in a tight little horsetail, exposing her brow. Perhaps shocked by the sudden overdose of hormones and the equally sudden cutback in sugar consumption after years of daily overdoses, most of the pimples that had flared on her face like uneasy volcanoes ever since she was twelve had gone into remission. Even more remarkable were her eyes--wide, blue, almost feral. They were not the eyes of Myra Evans, but of some jungle beast that might turn vicious at any moment.