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cuntwipe. What he needs is forty years or so in the Shank, where if he drops the soap in the shower, he
won’t fuckin dare to bend over and pick it up. Where the only booze he gets’ll be prune squeeze.” His
voice dropped. “And you know what else?”
“What?” I felt cold all over.
“When he sobers up, he’ll miss em. He’ll be sorry he did it. He’ll wish he could take it back.” Now
almost whispering—a hoarse and phlegmy sound. It’s how the irretrievably mad must talk to
themselves late at night in places like Juniper Hill, when their meds wear off. “Maybe he wun’t regret
the wife s’much, but the kiddies, sure.” He laughed, then grimaced as if it hurt him. “You’re probably
fulla shit, but you know what? I hope you’re not. We’ll wait and see.”
“Turcotte, those kids are innocent.”
“So was Clara. So was little Mikey.” His shadow-shoulders went up and down in a shrug. “Fuck
em.”
“You don’t mean th—”
“Shut up. We’ll wait.”
10
There were glow-in-the-dark hands on the watch Al had given me, and I watched with horror and
resignation as the long hand moved down toward the bottom of the dial, then started up once more.
Twenty-five minutes until the start of The New Adventures of Ellery Queen. Then twenty. Then fifteen.
I tried to talk to him and he told me to shut up. He kept rubbing his chest, only stopping long
enough to take his cigarettes from his breast pocket.
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” I said. “That’ll help your heart a lot.”
“Put a sock in it.”
He stuck the bayonet in the gravel behind the garage and lit his cigarette with a battered Zippo. In
the momentary flicker of flame, I saw sweat running down his cheeks, even though the night was
chilly. His eyes seemed to have receded into their sockets, making his face look like a skull. He
sucked in smoke, coughed it out. His thin body shook, but the gun remained steady. Pointed at my
chest. Overhead, the stars were out. It was now ten of eight. How far along had Ellery Queen been when
Dunning arrived? Harry’s theme hadn’t said, but I was guessing not long. There was no school
tomorrow, but Doris Dunning still wouldn’t want seven-year-old Ellen out much later than ten, even
if she was with Tugga and Harry.
Five minutes of eight.
And suddenly an idea occurred to me. It had the clarity of undisputed truth, and I spoke while it
was still bright.
“You chickenshit.”
“What?” He straightened as if he’d been goosed.
“You heard me.” I mimicked him. “‘Nobody messes with Frankie Dunning but me. He’s mine.’
You’ve been telling yourself that for twenty years, haven’t you? And you haven’t messed with him
yet.”
“I told you to shut up.”
“Hell, twenty-two! You didn’t mess with him when he went after Chaz Frati, either, did you? You
ran away like a little girl and got the football players.”
“There was six of em!”
“Sure, but Dunning’s been on his own plenty of times since, and you haven’t even put a banana peel
down on the sidewalk and hoped he’d slip on it. You’re a chickenshit coward, Turcotte. Hiding over