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account the relaxed and unterrified atmosphere of the America where I was now living. The way the
deal worked was this: I paid my money and walked out with the gun. There was no paperwork and no
waiting period. I didn’t even have to give my current address.
Oswald had wrapped his gun in a blanket and hidden it in the garage of the house where his wife
was staying with a woman named Ruth Paine. But when I walked out of Machen’s with mine in my
briefcase, I thought I knew how he must have felt: like a man with a powerful secret. A man who
owned his own private tornado.
A guy who should have been at work in one of the mills was standing in the doorway of the Sleepy
Silver Dollar, smoking a cigarette and reading the paper. Appearing to read the paper, at least. I
couldn’t swear he was watching me, but then again I couldn’t swear he wasn’t.
It was No Suspenders.
7
That evening, I once more took up a position close to The Strand, where the marquee read OPENS
TOMORROW! THUNDER ROAD (MITCHUM) & THE VIKINGS (DOUGLAS)! More BLAZING
ACTION in the offing for Derry filmgoers.
Dunning once more crossed to the bus stop and climbed aboard. This time I didn’t follow. There
was no need; I knew where he was going. I walked back to my new apartment, looking around every
now and then for No Suspenders. There was no sign of him, and I told myself that seeing him across
from the sporting goods store had just been a coincidence. Not a big one, either. The Sleepy was his
joint of choice, after all. Because the Derry mills ran six days a week, the workers had rotating offdays.
Thursday could have been one of this guy’s. Next week he might be hanging at the Sleepy on
Friday. Or Tuesday.
The following evening I was once more at The Strand, pretending to study the poster for Thunder
Road (Robert Mitchum Roars Down the Hottest Highway on Earth!), mostly because I had nowhere else to
go; Halloween was still six weeks away, and I seemed to have entered the time-killing phase of our
program. But this time instead of crossing to the bus stop, Frank Dunning walked down to the threeway
intersection of Center, Kansas, and Witcham and stood there as if undecided. He was once more
looking reet in dark slacks, white shirt, blue tie, and a sport coat in a light gray windowpane check.
His hat was cocked back on his head. For a moment I thought he was going to head for the movies and
check out the hottest highway on earth, in which case I would stroll casually away toward Canal
Street. But he turned left, onto Witcham. I could hear him whistling. He was a good whistler.
There was no need to follow him; he wasn’t going to commit any hammer murders on the
nineteenth of September. But I was curious, and I had nothing better to do. He went into a bar and
grill called The Lamplighter, not as upper-crust as the one at the Town House, but nowhere near as
grotty as the ones on Canal. In every small city there are one or two borderland joints where bluecollar
and whitecollar workers meet as equals, and this looked like that kind of place. Usually the menu
features some local delicacy that makes outsiders scratch their head in puzzlement. The Lamplighter’s
specialty seemed to be something called Fried Lobster Pickin’s.
I passed the wide front windows, lounging rather than walking, and saw Dunning greet his way
across the room. He shook hands; he patted cheeks; he took one man’s hat and scaled it to a guy
standing at the Bowl Mor machine, who caught it deftly and to general hilarity. A nice man. Always
joking around. Laugh-and-the-whole-world-laughs-with-you type of thing.
I saw him sit down at a table close to the Bowl Mor and almost walked on. But I was thirsty. A
beer would go down fine just about now, and The Lamplighter’s bar was all the way across a crowded