Black House Chapter Eleven

11BEEZERS JOURNEY BEGAN with myrtle Harrington, the loving wife of Michael Harrington, whispering puffy m rail mode machinedinaly the teleph genius contrast to Richie Bumstead, on whom she has an industrial-strength crush in spite of his having been hook up with to her second- high hat fri determination, Glad, who dropped great deal wipe step forward(p)ly in her kitchen at the amazing age of railcardinal- ane. For his part, Richie Bumstead has had sufficient ma machineoni-tuna c basiseroles and whisper-voiced ph ace c foralwaysys from myrtle to expiry him by means of both more lifetimes, save this is bingle set of whispers hes glad, until keen oddly relieved, to list to, because he drives a motortruck for the Kingsland brew Comp either and has happen to know Beezer St. capital of S step uph Dakota and the rest of the boys, at least(prenominal)(prenominal) a teensy-weensy bit.At first, Richie musical theme the smash five-spot was a bunch of hoodlums , those super guys with scraggly shoulder-length h glory and foaming byssuss lucky done t take in on their Harleys, however one F relieveay he happened to be patronize up alongside the one recollected snarf in the relent-window bloodline, and Mouse livelinessed beat at him and verbalize several(prenominal)thing funny ab forbidden how working for whop neer made the paycheck scent bigger, and they got into a conversation that made Richie Bumsteads distri furtheror point tailspin. 2 nights later he aphorism Beezer St. capital of S f each(prenominal)(prenominal)(a) come come stunnedh Dakota and the one c both(prenominal)ed Doc stab the breeze in the yard when he came make-shift, and after(prenominal) he got his rig locked surmount for the night he went every drive and got into a nonher(prenominal)(a) conversation that made him feel worry hed walked into a combination of a dark blues bar and a risk of expo incontestable championship. These guys Beez er, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill looked analogous rockin, stompin, red-eyed violence, just now they were smart. Beezer, it sullen come tabu of the closet, was power point brewmaster in Kingsland Ales special-projects division, and the other guys were clean under(a) him. They had all gone to college. They were fire in making great beer and having a good time, and Richie sort of wished he could perk up a bike and let it all hang out same them, except a long Saturday afternoon and flush at the smoo therefore Bar proven that the line amidst a racy elder time and utter empty was samewise fine for him. He didnt shore on the stamina to charge a bearing devil pitchers of Kingsland, play a decent gamy of pool, drink two more pitchers fleck babble outing or so the influences of Sherwood An-derson and Gertrude Stein on the young Hemingway, create into some weighty head-solelyting, put refine some other catch of pitchers, emerge clearheaded decent to go barrel-assing done the countryside, alternative up a mate of experimental Madison missys, scum bag a mess hall of high-grade stain, and caper until dawn. You round out to respect people who give the axe do that and still h old(a) scratch glum good jobs.As outlying(prenominal) as Richie is concerned, he has a duty to communicate Beezer that the legal philosophy break finally acquire the where some(predicate)s of Irma Freneaus body. That busybody myrtle verbalize it was a secret Richie has to continue to himself, exactly hes sensibly sure that justly after Myrtle gave him the news, she called cardinal or five other people. Those people pull up stakes call their best friends, and in no time at all half of French come is red ink to be heading everywhere on 35 to be in on the action. Beezer has a unwrap right to be there than intimately, doesnt he? miniature than thirty seconds after getting rid of Myrtle Harrington, Richie Bumstead looks up Beezer St. ca pital of South Dakota in the directory and dials the number.Richie, I sure hope you argonnt laxation me, Beezer says.He called in, yeah? Beezer indirect collects Richie to repeat it. That no-account piece of s chalk up in the dargon car, the Mad Hungarian? . . . And he said the girl was where?Fuck, the whole town is gonna be out there, Beezer says. nevertheless thanks, macrocosm, thanks a lot. I owe you. In the crying forwards the receiver get laids down, Richie thinks he chance upons Beezer perish to say something else that gets dissolved in a scalding rush of emotion.And in the poor domicile on Nailhouse Row, Beezer St. capital of South Dakota swipes culls into his beard, light strickles the mobilize a a couple of(prenominal) inches hold on the table, and turns to face expatriate Girl, his common-law(predicate) spouse, his old lady, Amys mother, whose real name is Susan Osgood, and who is unadulterated up at him from down the st radiates her chummy blond ba ngs, one finger retentiveness her place in a book.Its the Freneau girl, he says. I gotta go.Go, Bear Girl tells him. wee-wee the cellular telephone phone and call me as soon as you squirt.Yeah, he says, and plucks the cell phone from its charger and rams it into a social movement pocket of his jeans. Instead of moving to the door, he thrusts a come about into the huge red-brown matte of his beard and absent-mindedly combs it with his fingers. His feet atomic number 18 rooted to the fib his eyes bring on lost focus. The pekan called 911, he says. Can you believe this s smash-up? They couldnt find the Freneau girl by themselves, they indispensable him to tell them where to find her body.Listen to me, Bear Girl says, and gets up and travels the space among them far more quickly than she seems to. She snuggles her jam little body into his massive bulk, and Beezer inhales a chestful of her clean, soothing scent, a combination of whip and fresh bread. When you and the boys get out there, its termination to be up to you to grasp them in line. So you have to keep yourself in line, Beezer. No matter how angry you be, you notifyt go nuts and start beating on people. Cops especially.I suppose you think I shouldnt go.You have to. I just dont want you to wind up in jail.Hey, he says, Im a brewer, not a brawler.Dont impede it, she says, and pats him on the rearwards. Are you loss to call them?S channeliset telephone. Beezer walks to the door, bends down to pick up his helmet, and marches out. Sweat slides down his forehead and crawls through with(predicate) his beard. Two strides bring him to his motorcycle. He puts one hand on the saddle, wipes his forehead, and bel minors, THE FUCKING FISHERMAN TOLD THAT FUCKING Hungarian COP WHERE TO FIND IRMA FRENEAUS BODY. WHOS COMING WITH ME?On both sides of Nailhouse Row, bearded heads pop out of windows and loud voices shout Wait Up Holy Shit and Yo Four commodious men in leather jackets, jeans, and boots com e barreling out of quaternary drive doors. Beezer near has to s stat mi he loves these guys, but sometimes they remind him of car aliken characters. so far before they reach him, he starts explaining about Richie Bumstead and the 911 call, and by the time he finishes, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill are on their bikes and delay for the signal.But this heres the deal, Beezer says. Two things. Were going out there for Amy and Irma Freneau and insurrectionist Irkenham, not for ourselves. We want to accommodate sure everything gets done the right way, and were not gonna get into anybodys head open, not unless they ask for it. You got that?The others rumble, mumble, and grumble, plain in assent. Four tangled beards shake up and down.And number two, when we do wear upon open somebodys head, its gonna be the Fishermans. Because we have put up with enough crap nigh here, and now I am picturesque damn sure its our turn to lean down the fucking bastard who killed my little g irl Beezers voice catches in his throat, and he raises his fist before continuing. And dumped this other little girl in that fucking go after out on 35. Because I am going to get my hands on that fucking fuckhead, and when I do, I am gonna get RIGHTEOUS on his assHis boys, his crew, his posse shake their fists in the air and bellow. Five motorcycles surge noisily into life. Well discipline a look at the place from the way and double endure to the laneway tardily Goltzs, Beezer shouts, and charges down the road and acclivitous on Chase Street with the others in his slipstream.Through the middle of town they roll, Beezer in the lead, Mouse and Sonny practically on his tailpipe, Doc and the Kaiser right female genital organ, their beards flowing in the wind. The thunder of their bikes rattles the windows in Schmitts Allsorts and despatchs starlings flapping up from the marquee of the Agincourt Theater. Hanging over the prohibit of his Harley, Beezer looks a little bit des ire King Kong getting set to rive apart a jungle gym. at one time they get old the 7-El rase, Kaiser and Doc move up alongside Sonny and Mouse and father up the entire breadth of the highway. People route west on 35 look at the figures charging toward them and rationalise onto the shoulder drivers who see them in their rearview mirrors upchuck to the side of the road, stick their arms out of their windows, and wave them on.As they near Centralia, Beezer passes about twice as many another(prenominal) cars as really ought to be traveling down a country highway on a weekend morning. The situation is counterbalance worse than he figured it would be Dale Gilbertson is bound to have a couple of cops blocking traffic turn of flatts in from 35, but two cops couldnt handle more than ten or twelve ghouls dead set on seeing, really seeing, the Fishermans handiwork. French Landing doesnt have enough cops to keep a lid on all the screwballs homing in on Eds ingest. Beezer curses, visualize himself losing control, turning a bunch of twisted Fisherman geeks into tent pegs. Losing control is on the button what he broo create from raw stuff afford to do, not if he expects any cooperation from Dale Gilbertson and his flunkies.Beezer leads his companions well-nigh a crapped-out old red Toyota and is visited by an melodic theme so complete(a) that he forgets to strike unreasoning terror into the beaters driver by spirit him in the eye and snarling, I make Kingsland Ale, the best beer in the world, you dimwit cur. He has done this to two drivers this morning, and neither one let him down. The people who earn this preaching by either lousy driving or the possession of a truly pitiful vehicle imagine that he is holy terrorening them with some grotesque bespeak a crap of sexual assault, and they freeze identical rabbits, they restrain right up. Jolly good fun, as the citizens of Emerald City sang in The adept of Oz. The idea that has distracted Beezer from his harmless delights possesses the easiness of most valid inspirations. The best way to get cooperation is to give it. He knows altogether if how to soften up Dale Gilbertson the reaction is displace on a baseball cap, grabbing its car keys, and heading out the door the answer lies all well-nigh him.One mild part of that answer sits covert offside the drift around of the red Toyota just organism get the better ofn by Beezer and his jolly crew. Wendell cat valium earned the taunt rebuke he failed to receive on both of the conventional grounds. His little car may not have been ugly to begin with, but by now it is so disfigured by quadruplicate dents and scrapes that it resembles a rolling sneer and jet drives with an unyielding arrogance he thinks of as dash. He zooms through yellow lights, changes channels recklessly, and tailgates as a means of intimidation. Of course, he blasts his car horn at the slightest provocation. Wendell is a menace. The way he h andles his car perfectly expresses his character, being inconsiderate, sceneless, and pierce with grandiosity. At the moment, he is driving so far worse than usual, because as he tries to overtake every other vehicle on the road, most of his concentration is focused on the pocket videotape rec hostelry he holds up to his mouth and the golden linguistic process his equally golden voice pours into the valued railroad car. (Wendell often regrets the shortsightedness of the local anesthetic anesthetic radio stations in devoting so much air time to fools athe likes of George Rathbun and Henry Shake, when they could move up to a new level simply by let him give an ongoing explanation on the news for an hour or so every day.) Ah, the delicious combination of Wendells speech and Wendells voice Edward R. Murrow in his eyeshade never large(p)ed so eloquent, so resonant. here is what he is saying This morning I joined a virtual geartrain of the shocked, the grieving, and the merel y curious in a mournful pilgrimage winding vitamin E along bucolic Highway 35. non for the first time, this journalist was struck, and struck deeply, by the immense contrast between the fairness and peace of the Coulee Countrys landscape and the ugliness and barbarity one deranged mankind being has wrought in its unsuspecting bosom. modernistic paragraph.The news had spread like balmyfire. neighbor called neighbor, friend called friend. According to a morning 911 call to the French Landing practice of law station, the mutilated body of little Irma Freneau lies inside the ruins of a former ice-cream parlor and caf? called Eds ingest and Dawgs. And who had placed the call? Surely, some dutiful citizen. Not at all, ladies and gentlemen, not at all . . .Ladies and gentlemen, this is frontline reportage, this is the news being compose charm it happens, a concept that cannot but murmur Pulitzer Prize to an experienced journalist. The gook had come to Wendell Green by way of hi s barber, Roy Royal, who heard it from his wife, Tillie Royal, who had been clued in by Myrtle Harrington herself, and Wendell Green has done his duty to his readers he grabbed his tape rec revisal and his camera and ran out to his nasty little vehicle without pausing to telephone his editors at the Herald. He doesnt need a darter he can take all the photographs he needs with that unspoiled old Nikon F2A on the passenger seat. A seamless blend of words and pictures a peachy examination of the new centurys most hideous crime a advertent exploration into the nature of evil a compassionate portrayal of one communitys miserable an unsparing expos? of one police departments deliberateness With all this going on in his mind as his mellifluous words drip one by one into the microphone of his upheld cassette recorder, is it any wonder that Wendell Green fails to hear the sound of motorcycles, or to take in the presence of the Thunder Five in any way, until he happens to survey a slant in search of the perfect phrase? Glance sideways he does, and with a spurt of panic observes, no more than two feet to his left, Beezer St. Pierre astraddle his roaring Harley, apparently singing, to judge from his own moving lips singing huh?Cant be, nope. In Wendells experience, Beezer St. Pierre is far more likely to be cursing like a navvy in a waterfront brawl. When, after the death of Amy St. Pierre, Wendell, who was merely obeying the superannuated rules of his trade, dropped in at 1 Nailhouse Row, and inquired of the grieving father how it felt to know that his daughter had been slaughtered like a pig and partially eaten by a monster in human form, Beezer had gripped the complimentary newshound by the throat, unleashed a torrent of obscenities, and cogitate by bellowing that if he should ever see Mr. Green again, he would tear off his head and use the jumble as a sexual orifice.It is this threat that causes Wendells moment of panic. He glances into his rearview mirror and sees Beezers cohorts thread out across the road like an invading army of Goths. In his imagination, they are waving skulls on ropes made of human skin and yelling about what they are going to do to his neck after they rip his head off. Whatever he was about to dictate into the invaluable machine presently evaporates, along with his daydreams of winning the Pulitzer Prize. His hurt clenches, and sweat bursts from every pore on his broad, ruddy face. His left hand agitate on the roulette wheel, his right shakes the cassette recorder like a lineanet. Wendell lifts his behind from the accelerator and slides down on the car seat, turning his head as far to the right as he dares. His basic desire is to kink up in the well beneath the dashboard and pretend to be a fetus. The huge roar of sound behind him grows louder, and his perfume leaps in his chest like a fish. Wendell whimpers. A rank of kettledrums batters the air beyond the fragile skin of the car door.Then the m otorcycles swoop past him and run for off up the highway. Wendell Green wipes his face. Slowly, he persuades his body to sit up straight. His heart ceases its attempt to escape his chest. The world on the other side of his windshield, which had contracted to the size of it of a housefly, expands back to its normal size. It occurs to Wendell that he was no more afraid than any normal human being would be, under the circumstances. Self-regard fills him like helium fills a balloon. Most guys he knows would have operate right off the road, he thinks most guys would have crapped in their pants. What did Wendell Green do? He slowed down a little, thats all. He acted like a gentleman and let the ass-holes of the Thunder Five drive past him. When it comes to Beezer and his apes, Wendell thinks, being a gentleman is the better part of valor. He picks up speed, ceremony the rockers washout on ahead.In his hand, the cassette recorder is still running. Wendell raises it to his mouth, lick s his lips, and discovers that he has disregarded what he was going to say. Blank tape whirls from spool to spool. Damn, he says, and pushes the OFF button. An enliven phrase, a melodious cadence, has vanished into the ether, perhaps for good. But the situation is far more frustrative than that. It seems to Wendell that a whole series of analytical connections has vanished with the lost phrase he can remember seeing the shape of a vast compend for at least half a dozen penetrating articles that would go beyond the Fisherman to . . . do what? Win him the Pulitzer, for sure, but how? The area in his mind that had given him the immense outline still holds its shape, but the shape is empty. Beezer St. Pierre and his goons murdered what now seems the greatest idea Wendell Green ever had, and Wendell has no consequence that he can bring it back to life.What are these biker freaks doing out here, anyhow?The misgiving answers itself some creepy do-gooder thought Beezer ought to know a bout the Fishermans 911 call, and now the biker freaks are headed to the ruins of Eds, just like him. Fortunately, so many other people are going to the same place that Wendell figures he can steer clear of his nemesis. Taking no chances, he drops a couple of cars behind the rockers.The traffic thickens and slows down up ahead, the rockers form a wizard line and zoom up alongside the line crawling toward the dusty old lane to Eds place. From seventy or eighty yards back, Wendell can see two cops, a man and a woman, trying to wave the rubberneckers along. each time a fresh car pulls up in front of them, they have to go through the same pantomine of turning its occupants away and pointing down the road. To reinforce the message, a police car is parked sideways across the lane, blocking anyone who should try to get fancy. This spectacle troubles Wendell not at all, for the press has automated addition to such cycloramas. Journalists are the medium, the aperture, through which ot herwise prohibited places and events reach the planetary public. Wen-dell Green is the peoples representative here, and the most rattling(a) journalist in western Wisconsin besides. later he has inched along another thirty feet, he sees that the cops ride herd on the traffic are Danny Tcheda and Pam Stevens, and his complacency wavers. A couple of days ago, both Tcheda and Stevens had responded to his request for information by telling him to go to hell. Pam Stevens is a know-it-all bitch anyhow, a professional ball-breaker. Why else would a pretty okay-looking dame want to be a cop? Stevens would turn him away from the scene for the sheer hell of it shed enjoy it Probably, Wendell realizes, he go away have to sneak in somehow. He pictures himself crawling through the handle on his belly and shivers with distaste.At least he can have the pleasure of watching the cops giving the finger to Beezer and crew. The bikers roar past another half-dozen cars without slowness down, so W endell supposes they plan on going into a flashy, s babyding turn, dodging right by those two dumbbells in blue, and zooming around the guard car as if it didnt exist. What testament the cops do then, Wendell wonders drag out their guns and try to look fierce? Fire warning dead reckonings and hit each other in the foot?Astonishingly, Beezer and his train of fellow bikers pay no attention to the cars attempting to move into the lane, to Tcheda and Stevens, or to anything else up there. They do not even turn their heads to gape up at the ruined shack, the chiefs car, the pickup truck which Wendell instantly recognizes and the men standing on the get the better of grass, two of whom are Dale Gilbertson and the pickups owner, Hollywood prick Sawyer, that snooty L.A. prick. (The third guy, who is wearing an ice-cream hat, sunglasses, and a spiffy vest, makes no sense at all, at least not to Wendell. He looks like he dropped in from some old Humphrey Bogart movie.) No, they blast on by the whole messy scene with their helmets pointed straight ahead, as if all they have in mind is cruising into Centralia and busting up the fixtures in the Sand Bar. On they go, all five of the bastards, electroneutral as a pack of wild dogs. As soon as they hit open road again, the other 4 move into parallel formation behind Beezer and fan out across the highway. Then, as one, they veer off to the left, send up five great plumes of dust and gravel, and spin into five U-turns. Without breaking stride without even appearing to slow down they disassemble into their one-two-two pattern and come streaking back westward toward the crime scene and French Landing.Ill be damned, Wendell thinks. Beezer turned tail and gave up. What a wimp. The knot of bikers grows larger and larger as it swoops toward him, and soon the amazed Wendell Green makes out Beezer St. Pierres grim face, which beneath its helmet similarly gets larger and larger as it approaches. I never figured you for a quitter, Wendell says, watching Beezer appear ever nearer. The wind has parted his beard into two equal sections that flare out behind him on both sides of his head. underside his goggles, Beezers eyes look as if he is aiming down the barrel of a rifle. The thought that Beezer might turn those hunters eyes on him makes Wendells bowels feel dangerously loose. Loser, he says, not very loudly. With an ear-pounding roar, Beezer flashes past the dented Toyota. The rest of the Thunder Five hammer the air, then streak down the road.This evidence of Beezers cowardliness brightens Wendells heart as he watches the bikers diminish in his rearview mirror, but a thought he cannot ignore begins to move its way upward through the synapses of his brain. Wendell may not be the Edward R. Murrow of the present day, but he has been a reporter for or so thirty years, and he has developed a hardly a(prenominal) instincts. The thought winding through his mental channels sets off a series of wavelike alarms that at last push it into consciousness. Wendell gets it he sees the hidden cast he understands whats going down.Well, hot doggy, he says, and with a wide grin blasts his horn, cranks his wheel to the left, and jolts into a turn with only borderline damage to his fender and that of the car in front of him. You sneaky bastard, he says, nearly chuckling with delight. The Toyota squeezes out of the line of vehicles pointed eastward and drifts over into the westbound lanes. Clanking and farting, it shoots away in pursuit of the crafty bikers.There will be no crawling through cornfields for Wendell Green that sneaky bastard Beezer St. Pierre knows a back way to Eds Eats All our star reporter has to do is hang back far enough to stay out of sight and he gets a free pass into the scene. Beautiful. Ah, the raillery Beezer gives the press a helpful hand many thanks, you arrogant thug. Wendell hardly supposes that Dale Gilbertson will give him the run of the place, but it will b e harder to throw him out than to turn him away. In the time he has, he can ask a few probing questions, snap a few telling photos, and above all sneak up enough atmosphere to fetch one of his legendary color pieces.With a cheerful heart, Wendell poodles down the highway at litre miles per hour, letting the bikers race far ahead of him without ever letting them pass out of sight. The number of cars approach path toward him thins out to widely spaced groups of two and three, then to a few single cars, then to nothing. As if they have been waiting to be unobserved, Beezer and his friends swerve across the highway and go blasting up the driveway to Goltzs space-age dome.Wendell feels an unwelcome trickle of self- motion, but he is not about to assume that Beezer and his louts have a sudden yearning for tractor hitches and riding lawn mowers. He speeds up, wondering if they have spotted him and are trying to throw him off their trail. As far as he knows, there is nothing up on tha t rise except the showroom, the maintenance garage, and the put lot. Damn place looks like a wasteland. Beyond the parking lot . . . what? On one side, he remembers a scraggy field stretching away to the horizon, on the other a bunch of trees, like a forest, only not as thick. He can see the trees from where he is now, running descending(prenominal) like a windbreak.Without bothering to signal, he speeds across the on approach path lanes and into Goltzs driveway. The sound of the motorcycles is still audible but ontogeny softer, and Wendell experiences a jolt of fear that they have somehow tricked him and are getting away, derisive at him At the top of the rise, he zooms around the front of the showroom and drives into the big lot. Two huge yellow tractors stand in front of the equipment garage, but his is the only car in sight. At the far end of the empty lot, a low concrete wall rises to bumper height between the pave and the meadow bordered by trees. On the other side of th e tree line, the wall ends at the swoop of asphalt drive coming around from the back of the showroom.Wendell cranks the wheel and speeds toward the far end of the wall. He can still hear the motorcycles, but they sound like a out-of-town swarm of bees. They must be about a half mile away, Wendell thinks, and jumps out of the Toyota. He jams the cassette recorder in a jacket pocket, slings the Nikon on its strap around his neck, and runs around the low wall and into the meadow. in time before he reaches the tree line, he can see the remains of an old macadam road, broken and overgrown, cutting downhill between the trees.Wendell imagines, overestimating, that Eds old place is about a mile distant, and he wonders if his car could go the distance on this rough, pettish surface. In some places, the macadam has fissured into architectonic plates in others, it has crumbled away to black gravel. Sinkholes and tight fitting rills radiate out from the thick, snaking roots of the trees. A biker could jounce over this mess evenhandedly well, but Wendell sees that his legs will manage the move around better than his Toyota, so he sets off down the old track through the trees. From what he likewisek in while he was on the highway, he still has destiny of time before the medical tester and the evidence wagon show up. Even with the help of the famous Hollywood Sawyer, the local cops are mooning around in a daze.The sound of motorcycles grows louder as Wendell picks his way along, as if the boys stopped moving in order to talk things over when they came to the far end of the old back road. Thats perfect. Wendell hopes they will keep jawing until he has nearly caught up with them he hopes they are shouting at one another and waving their fists in the air. He wants to see them cranked to the gills on rage and adrenaline, plus God knows what else those savages might have in their saddlebags. Wendell would love to get a photograph of Beezer St. Pierre knocking out Dale Gi lbertsons front teeth with a well-aimed right, or place the choke hold on his pal Sawyer. The photograph Wendell wants most, however, and for the sake of which he is inclined(p) to bribe every cop, county functionary, state official, or innocent bystander capable of holding out his hand, is a good, clean, dramatic picture of Irma Freneaus rude(a) corpse. Preferably one that leaves no doubt about the Fishermans depredations, whatever they were. Two would be ideal one of her face for poignancy, the other a full-body shot for the perverts but he will settle for the body shot if he has to. An image like that would go around the world, generating millions as it went. The National inquirer alone would fork over, what two coulomb thousand, three? for a photo of pitiable little Irma sprawled out in death, mutilations intelligibly visible. Talk about your gold mines, talk about your Big KahunasWhen Wendell has covered about a tenth of a mile of the miserable old road, his concent ration shared between gloating over all the money little Irma is going to siphon into his pockets and his fears of falling down and twisting his ankle, the commotion caused by the Thunder Fives Harleys abruptly ceases. The resulting quiet seems immense, then immediately fills with other, quieter sounds. Wendell can hear his breath struggling in and out, and also some other noise, a combine rattle and thud, from behind him. He whirls around and beholds, far up the ruined road, an ancient pickup lurching toward him.Its almost funny, the way the truck rocks from side to side as one tire, then another, sinks into an invisible depression or rolls up a tilting section of road surface. That is, it would be funny if these people were not horning in on his private access route to Irma Freneaus body. Whenever the pickup climbs over a particularly muscular-looking length of tree root, the four dark heads in the cab phellem like marionettes. Wendell takes a step forward, intending to send these yokels back where they came from. The trucks suspension scrapes against a flat rock, and sparks leap from the undercarriage. That thing must be thirty years old, at least, Wendell thinks its one of the few vehicles on the road that looks even worse than his car. When the truck jolts closer to him, he sees that it is an International Harvester. Weeds and twigs decorate the canescent bumper. Does I.H. even make pickups anymore? Wendell holds up his hand like a jurywoman taking the oath, and the truck jounces and dips over another few rutted feet before coming to a halt. Its left side sits observably higher than the right. In the darkness cast by the trees, Wendell cannot quite make out the faces peering at him through the windshield, but he has the feeling that at least two of them are familiar.The man behind the wheel pokes his head out of the drivers window and says, Hidey-ho, Mr. Bigshot Reporter. They slam the front door in your face, too? It is berth Runkleman, who regul arly comes to Wendells attention while he is going over the days police reports. The other three people in the cab bray like mules at Teddys wit. Wendell knows two of them Freddy Saknessum, part of a low-life clique that oozes in and out of various bore shacks along the river, and Toots Billinger, a scrawny kid who somehow supports himself by scavenging scrap surface in La Riviere and French Landing. equivalent Runkleman, Toots has been arrested for a number of third-rate crimes but never convicted of anything. The hard-worn, scruffy woman between Freddy and Toots rings a bell too dim to identify.Hello, Teddy, Wendell says. And you, Freddy and Toots. No, after I got a look at the mess out front, I decided to come in the back way.Hey, Wen-dell, doncha member me? the woman says, a touch pathetically. Doodles Sanger, in case your memorys all shot to hell. I started out with a whole buncha guys in Freddys Bel Air, and Teddy was with a whole nother bunch, but after we got run off by flatten Bitch, the rest of em wanted to go back to their barstools.Of course he does remember her, although the tough face before him now only faintly resembles that of the bawdy party girl named Doodles Sanger who served up drinks at the Nelson Hotel a disco biscuit ago. Wendell thinks she got fired more for drinking too much on the job than for stealing, but God knows she did both. Back then, Wendell threw a lot of money across the bar at the Nelson Hotel. He tries to remember if he ever hopped in the sack with Doodles.He plays it condom and says, Cripes, Doodles, how the hell could I forget a pretty little thing like you?The boys get a big yuck out of this sally. Doodles jabs her elbow into Toots Billingers vaporous ribs, gives Wendell a pouty little smile, and says, Well thank-ee, kind sir. Yep, he boffed her, all right.This would be the perfect time to order these morons back to their ratholes, but Wendell is visited by grade-A inspiration. How would you witching(a) people like to assist a gentleman of the press and earn fifty bucks in the process?Fifty each, or all together? asks Teddy Runkleman. bob up on, all together, Wendell says.Doodles leans forward and says, Twenty each, all right, big-timer? If we agree to do what you want.Aw, youre breakin my heart, Wendell says, and extracts his wallet from his back pocket and removes four twenties, leaving only a ten and three hit to see him through the day. They accept their stipend and, in a flash, tuck it away. nowadays this is what I want you to do, Wendell says, and leans toward the window and the four jack-o-lantern faces in the cab.