“Thanks.” He watched as Junkins, in the guise of the sincere admirer, used his sharp brown eyes to look for suspicious dents, flaked paint, maybe a spot of blood or a snarl of matted hair. Looking for signs of Moochie Welch. Arnie was suddenly sure that was just what the shitter was doing. “What exactly can I do for you, Detective Junkins?”
Junkins laughed. “Man, that’s formal! I can’t take that! Make it Rudy, okay?”
“Sure,” Arnie said, smiling. “What can I do for you, Rudy?”
“You know, it’s funny,” Junkins said, squatting to look at the driver’s side headlights. He tapped one of them reflectively with his knuckles and then, with seeming absent-mindedness, he ran his forefinger along the headlight’s semicircular metal hood. His overcoat pooled on the oilstained cement floor for a moment; then he stood up. “We get reports on anything of this nature—the trashin of your car, I mean—”
“Oh, hey, they didn’t really trash it,” Arnie said. He was beginning to feel as if he was on a tightrope, and he touched Christine again. Her solidity, her reality, once more seemed to comfort him. “They tried, you know, but they didn’t do a very good job.”
“Okay. I guess I’m not up on the current terminology.” Junkins laughed. “Anyway, when it came to my attention, what do you think I said? “Where’s the photographs?” That’s what I said. I thought it was an oversight, you know. So I called the Libertyville PD and they said there were no photographs.”
“No,” Arnie said. “A kid my age can’t get anything but liability insurance, you know that. Even the liability comes with a seven-hundred-dollar deductible. If I had damage insurance, I would have taken plenty of pictures. But since I didn’t, why would I? I sure wouldn’t want them for my scrapbook.”
“No, I guess not,” Junkins said, and walked idly around to the rear of the car, eyes searching for broken glass, for scrapes, for guilt. “But you know what else I thought was funny? You didn’t even report the crime!” He raised his dark questioning eyes to Arnie’s, looked at him closely and then smiled a phony, bewildered little smile. “Didn’t even report it! “Huh,” I said. “Sonofabitch! Who reported it?” Guy’s father, they tell me.” Junkins shook his head. “I don’t get that, Arnie, I don’t mind telling you. A guy works his ass off restoring an old car until it’s worth two, maybe five thousand dollars, then some guys come along and beat the hell out of it—”
“I told you—”
Rudy Junkins raised his hand and smiled disarmingly. For one weird second Arnie thought he was going to say “Peace”, as Dennis sometimes did when things got heavy.
“Damaged it. Sorry.”
“Sure,” Arnie said.
“Anyhow, according to whiat your girlfriend said, one of the perpetrators… well, defecated on the dashboard. I would have thought you would have been mad as hell. I would have thought you would have reported it.”
Now the smile faded altogether and Junkins looked at Arnie soberly, even sternly.
Arnie’s cool grey eyes met Junkins’s brown ones.
“Shit wipes off,” he said finally. “You want to know something, Mr—Rudy? You want me to tell you something?”
“Sure, son.”
“When I was one and a half, I got hold of a fork and marked up an antique bureau that my mother had saved up for over a period of maybe five years. Saved up her pin money, that’s what she said. I guess I racked the hell out of it in a very short time. Of course I don’t remember it, but she says she just sat right down and bawled.” Arnie smiled a little, “Up until this year, I couldn’t feature my mother doing that. Now I think I can. Maybe I’m growing up a little, what do you think?”
Junkins lit a cigarette. “Am I missing the point, Arnie? Because I don’t see it yet.”
“She said that she would rather have had me in diapers until I was three than have had me do that. Because, she said, shit wipes off.” Arnie smiled. “You flush it away and it’s gone.”
“The way Moochie Welch is gone?” Junkins asked.
“I know nothing about that.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Scout’s honour?” Junkins asked. The question was humorous but the eyes were not; they probed at Arnie, looking for the smallest break, a crucial flicker.
Down the aisle, the fellow who had been putting on his winter snows dropped a tool on the concrete. It clanged musically and the fellow chanted, almost chorally, “Oh shit on you, you whore.”
Junkins and Arnie both glanced that way briefly, and the moment was broken.
“Sure, Scout’s honour,” Arnie said. “Look, I suppose you have to do this, it’s your job—”
“Sure its my job,” Junkins agreed softly. “The boy was run over three times each way. He was meat. They scraped him up with a shovel.”
“Come on,” Arnie said sickly. His stomach did a lazy barrel roll.
“Why? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with shit? Scrape it up with a shovel?”
“I had nothing to do with it!” Arnie cried, and the man across the way, who had been tinkering with his silencer looked up, startled.
Arnie lowered his voice.
