Dead Man's Song полностью

The fact that Mike was no longer delivering papers was a problem, that much at least was clear. Vic had pressured him into taking that job in the first place because it was the best way to steer him into the path of Tow-Truck Eddie. Now that was going to be harder—and it was hard enough because apparently Eddie couldn’t find his own dick with both hands and a road map. He knew the Man needed Eddie to do the kid, but as far as Vic was concerned that whole scheme was a waste of effort. Mike should have been dead meat days ago, weeks ago, and instead he’d had one near miss and caught some bruises and since then all Eddie had managed was the occasional glimpse. It was already the sixth and Halloween was just twenty-five days away. Mike needed to be dead long before then, and certainly he needed to be dead by then.

It doesn’t matter.

The voice echoed in his head, not his own thoughts but as familiar as his own.

“Your boy Eddie should have killed that little faggot by now, boss. What’s the problem?”

It isn’t Eddie Oswald’s failure. It’s mine. I cannot touch the boy…sometimes I cannot see him. Much of the time I am blind to him.

“Oh,” Vic said, surprised, and for a long time he processed that. It was the first time the Man had ever admitted a weakness—ever—and Vic didn’t like the feel of it. He said, “And that’s why Eddie hasn’t been able to find him? You can’t—what—steer him in the right direction?” There was a profound silence and Vic knew that the Man would never respond to a question like that. He cleared his throat and said, “Boss, you should have told me you were having troubles seeing him. I’d have cooked up something, found some way to get the word out to Eddie. I know where the kid’s going to be every day in the afternoons. You can steer Eddie there.”

There was no answer, but Vic could sense a shift, as if the Man was somehow making himself more comfortable after sitting tensely for a while. It was an illusion, but the image worked for Vic. “Besides, Boss, we always have a fallback plan for the kid if it gets down to the wire and he’s still alive. If he’s still walking by Halloween morning then I’ll take a baseball bat to his knees. He can’t do us any harm with his legs broken in a dozen places.” Vic grinned. “And boy would that be fun.”

Yessss, the voice hissed in his head.

“It’ll keep you safe, too, because as long as I don’t kill him myself then what he is won’t spread to the whole town. I know the risks, Boss. Stop fussing with Eddie Oswald—leave it me and I’ll see that it gets done right.”

Not yet, whispered the voice in his mind. Eddie is still a useful tool.

“Okay,” Vic said, but a cloud of uncertainty was beginning to darken his heart.

Chapter 16

(1)

Tow-Truck Eddie was tired and he knew that weariness would make him inattentive. For three days now he had worked shifts as a part-time police officer, first guarding Malcolm Crow at the hospital and then patrolling the roads looking for the godless cop-killer Kenneth Boyd, and each afternoon he had gone home to pray and then take his wrecker out looking for the Beast. So far all he had gotten was one fleeting maddening glimpse of a boy on a bike turning a corner, and even then it may or not have been the Beast. Even the bike looked like a hundred other bikes in town. Patience, God had said…patience.

But how much patience? He prayed and prayed for guidance, and sometimes God spoke to him and sometimes there was nothing but an aching silence in his head. God always told him to be strong, to stay true, to have patience…and each day he rose from his prayers and went out with renewed hope that today—today!—he would find the Beast…and each time after driving for hours upon hours through roads clogged with tourists he came home with nothing more than his grief at failure.

“God! Sweet Lord of Hosts, grant me strength!” he cried aloud, kneeling before his altar, naked, humble, abased. He bent down and beat his forehead against the floor once, twice…seven times, harder with each blow until the floor-boards rattled and blood sang like angels’ voices in his ears. He pounded his fists against his temples and his thighs and then against the floor and his tears fell like rain. “What must I do?” he begged.

Then the voice of God whispered a single word in his mind, the whisper of it as soothing as Gilead’s balm. Now, it said. After such a long silence the voice caught him off guard and for a moment—just a moment—he knelt there and listened to it echo there in the vastness of his celestial thoughts. Then Tow-Truck Eddie leapt to his feet, his heart hammering with joy, and raced to get his clothes.

Now! Now…now…now! He was out there now!