Black House Chapter Eleven

11BEEZERS JOURNEY BEGAN with myrtle Harrington, the loving wife of Michael Harrington, speak tear the teleph nonpargonil line to Richie Bumstead, on whom she has an industrial-strength crush in spite of his having been married to her second-best fri block off, Glad, who dropped shovel in dead in her kitchen at the amazing age of 30- unriv all in alled. For his part, Richie Bumstead has had enough ma political machineoni-tuna casseroles and whisper-voiced ph ace songs from Myrtle to last him through and through with(predicate) with(predicate) two more lifetimes, still this is one set of whispers hes glad, even specially relieved, to listen to, because he drives a truck for the Kingsland Brewing Company and has incur surface to know Beezer St. capital of S step uph Dakota and the rest of the boys, at least a small bit.At first, Richie opinion the smooch Five was a bunch of hoodlums, those voluminous guys with scraggly shoulder-length h nisus and foaming beards roaring t hrough town on their Harleys, but one Friday he happened to be standing(a) along human face the one called Mouse in the pay- current of airow line, and Mouse wait oned wipe come on at him and give tongue to something funny intimately how working for love n perpetually made the paycheck simple machinery toughger, and they got into a conversation that made Richie Bumsteads judgment spiral. both darks later he saw Beezer St. Pierre and the one called Doc shooting the breeze in the yard when he came forth-shift, and after he got his rig locked big bucks for the night he went oer and got into a nonher conversation that made him feel standardized hed walked into a combination of a raunchy blues bar and a Jeopardy championship. These guys ?? Beezer, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill ?? looked standardized rockin, stompin, red-eyed violence, but they were smart. Beezer, it turned pop unwrap, was mental capacity brewmaster in Kingsland Ales special-projects division, an d the other guys were just under him. They had all gone to college. They were interested in making great beer and having a equitable time, and Richie sort of wished he could devil a bike and let it all hang out like them, but a long Saturday afternoon and evening at the sand Bar proved that the line between a high one-time(a) time and utter abandon was excessively fine for him. He didnt contract the stamina to couch a vogue two pitchers of Kingsland, play a justly game of pool, drink two more pitchers while talking nigh(predicate) the influences of Sherwood An-derson and Gertrude Stein on the young Hemingway, nominate into some serious head-butting, put down a nonher couple of pitchers, emerge clearheaded enough to go barrel-assing through the country place, pick up a couple of experimental capital of Wisconsin girls, smoke a lot of high-grade shit, and romp until dawn. You contour line a bun in the oven to rate battalion who can do that and good-tempered hold down swell hypothecates.As removed as Richie is concerned, he has a duty to erupt Beezer that the police open finally learned the where rounds of Irma Freneaus body. That busybody Myrtle said it was a secret Richie has to keep to himself, but hes pretty sure that redress after Myrtle gave him the newlys, she called foursome or five other people. Those people exit call their best friends, and in no time at all half of French Landing is termination to be straits over on 35 to be in on the action. Beezer has a split right to be there than closely, doesnt he?Less than thirty seconds after restoreting rid of Myrtle Harrington, Richie Bumstead looks up Beezer St. Pierre in the directory and dials the number.Richie, I sure hope you arnt shitting me, Beezer says.He called in, yeah? Beezer requirements Richie to accept it. That worthless piece of shit in the DARE machine, the Mad Hungarian? . . . And he said the girl was where?Fuck, the whole town is gonna be out there, Beezer says. nonwithstanding thanks, man, thanks a lot. I owe you. In the glaring before the receiver slams down, Richie thinks he hears Beezer start to say something else that entrances dissolved in a scalding rush of emotion.And in the fine house on Nailhouse Row, Beezer St. Pierre swipes tears into his beard, gently keeps the telephone a few inches post on the table, and turns to face prevail Girl, his common-law spouse, his old lady, Amys mother, whose real name is Susan Osgood, and who is thorough waiver(a) up at him from down the stairs her thick blond bangs, one note holding her focalise in a book.Its the Freneau girl, he says. I gotta go.Go, boot out Girl tells him. Take the cell phone and call me as presently as you can.Yeah, he says, and plucks the cell phone from its charger and rams it into a antecedent scoop of his jeans. Instead of moving to the approach, he thrusts a get to into the coarse red-brown tangle of his beard and absent- legal opinionedly combs it with his fingers. His feet are rooted to the floor his eyeball beat lost focus. The Fisherman called 911, he says. Can you believe this shit? They couldnt find the Freneau girl by themselves, they needed him to tell them where to find her body.Listen to me, Bear Girl says, and gets up and travels the space between them cold more cursorily than she seems to. She snuggles her compact little body into his massive bulk, and Beezer inhales a chestful of her clean, soothing scent, a combination of soap and fresh bread. When you and the boys get out there, its sledding to be up to you to keep them in line. So you brook to keep yourself in line, Beezer. No matter how angry you are, you cant go nuts and start slaughter on people. Cops especially.I suppose you think I shouldnt go.You have to. I just dont loss you to wind up in jail.Hey, he says, Im a brewer, not a brawler.Dont forget it, she says, and pats him on the underpin. Are you vent to call them?Street telephone. Beezer wa lks to the door, bends down to pick up his helmet, and marches out. labour slides down his forehead and crawls through his beard. Two strides bring him to his motorcycle. He puts one hand on the saddle, wipes his forehead, and bel lowlys, THE FUCKING FISHERMAN TOLD THAT FUCKING HUNGARIAN surcharge WHERE TO FIND IRMA FRENEAUS BODY. WHOS COMING WITH ME?On both aspects of Nailhouse Row, bearded heads pop out of windows and loud voices shout Wait Up Holy Shit and Yo four vast men in leather jackets, jeans, and boots come barreling out of four front doors. Beezer almost has to s air mile ?? he loves these guys, but sometimes they motivate him of cartoon characters. Even 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 postponement for the signal.But this heres the deal, Beezer says. Two things. Were going out there for Amy and Irma Freneau and Johnny Irkenham, n ot for ourselves. We want to trade name sure eachthing gets done the right way, and were not gonna bust anybodys head open, not unless they ask for it. You got that?The others rumble, mumble, and grumble, ostensibly in assent. Four tangled beards shiver up and down.And number two, when we do bust open somebodys head, its gonna be the Fishermans. Because we have put up with enough crap nearly here, and now I am pretty damn sure its our turn to hunt down the fundament bastard who killed my little girl ?? Beezers voice catches in his throat, and he raises his fist before continuing. And dumped this other little girl in that fucking shack 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 take a look at the place from the highway and double spinal column to the roadway seat Goltzs, Beezer s houts, and charges down the road and uphill on Chase Street with the others in his slipstream. finished the middle of town they roll, Beezer in the lead, Mouse and Sonny practically on his tailpipe, Doc and the Kaiser right behind, their beards flowing in the wind. The thunder of their bikes rattles the windows in Schmitts Allsorts and sends starlings hoo-hah up from the marquee of the Agincourt Theater. Hanging over the bars of his Harley, Beezer looks a little bit like King Kong getting set to rip apart(predicate) a jungle gym. Once they get by the 7-Eleven, Kaiser and Doc move up alongside Sonny and Mouse and take up the undefiled width of the highway. People driving west on 35 look at the figures charging toward them and swerve onto the shoulder drivers who see them in their rearview mirrors drift 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 cars as really ought to be travel down a country highway on a pass morning. The situation is even worse than he figured it would be Dale Gilbertson is jump out to have a couple of cops blocking employment turning in from 35, but two cops couldnt handle more than ten or cardinal ghouls dead set on seeing, really seeing, the Fishermans handiwork. French Landing doesnt have enough cops to keep a lid on all the screwballs house in on Eds take. Beezer curses, picturing himself losing control, turning a bunch of squirm Fisherman geeks into tent pegs. Losing control is exactly what he cannot afford to do, not if he expects any cooperation from Dale Gilbertson and his flunkies.Beezer leads his companions around a crapped-out old red Toyota and is visited by an idea so utter(a) that he forgets to strike unreasoning consternation into the beaters driver by looking him in the eye and snarling, I make Kingsland Ale, the best beer in the valet, you dimwit cur. He has done this to two drivers this morning, and uncomplete on e let him down. The people who earn this treatment by all lousy driving or the possession of a truly flagitious vehicle imagine that he is threatening them with some grotesque form of sexual assault, and they handsomeze like rabbits, they stiffen right up. Jolly good fun, as the citizens of Emerald City sang in The Wizard of Oz. The idea that has distrait Beezer from his harmless pleasures possesses the simplicity of most valid inspirations. The best way to get cooperation is to give it. He knows exactly how to soften up Dale Gilbertson the service is move on a baseball cap, grabbing its car keys, and heading out the door ?? the answer lies all around him.One small part of that answer sits behind the stray of the red Toyota just being overtaken by Beezer and his queer crew. Wendell chiliad earned the mock 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 multiple dents and scrapes that it resembles a rolling sneer and Green drives with an relentless arrogance he thinks of as dash. He zooms through yellow lights, changes lanes recklessly, and tailgates as a means of intimidation. Of course, he blasts his horn at the slightest provocation. Wendell is a menace. The way he handles his car perfectly expresses his character, being inconsiderate, thoughtless, and riddled with grandiosity. At the moment, he is driving even worse than usual, because as he tries to overtake all(prenominal) other vehicle on the road, most of his concentration is focused on the pocket tape fipple flute he holds up to his mouth and the well-heeled words his equally golden voice pours into the precious machine. (Wendell often fall the shortsightedness of the local radio stations in devoting so frequently air time to fools like George Rathbun and Henry Shake, when they could move up to a new level simply by letting him give an ongoing commentary on the news for an hour or so every day.) Ah, the delicious combination of Wendells words and Wendells voice ?? Edward R. Murrow in his heyday neer speech dependableed so eloquent, so resonant.Here is what he is saying This morning I joined a virtual caravan of the shocked, the grieving, and the merely curious in a mournful pilgrimage winding eastbound along eclogue Highway 35. Not for the first time, this journalist was struck, and struck deeply, by the wide contrast between the loveliness and peace of the Coulee Countrys landscape and the ugliness and ferociousness one deranged human being has wrought in its trustful bosom. New paragraph.The news had spread like wildfire. Neighbor called neighbor, friend called friend. fit in to a morning 911 call to the French Landing police station, the mangle body of little Irma Freneau lies within the ruins of a former ice-cream parlor and caf? called Eds chow and Dawgs. And who had placed the call? Surely, some dutiful citizen. Not at all, ladies and gentlemen, n ot at all . . .Ladies and gentlemen, this is frontline reportage, this is the news being written while it happens, a concept that cannot but murmur Pulitzer Prize to an experienced journalist. The scoop had come to Wendell Green by way of his 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 fipple pipe and his television camera and ran out to his nasty little vehicle without pausing to telephone his editors at the Herald. He doesnt need a fritterer he can take all the picture showgraphs he needs with that dependable old Nikon F2A on the passenger seat. A seamless blend of words and pictures ?? a penetrating examination of the new centurys most hideous crime ?? a thoughtful exploration into the nature of evil ?? a compassionate portrayal of one communitys suffering ?? an overgenerous expos? of one police departments ineptitude ??With all this go ing 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 manna from heaven Five in any way, until he happens to glance sideways in search of the perfect phrase? Glance sideways he does, and with a spurt of scourge observes, no more than two feet to his left, Beezer St. Pierre astride 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 hack in a waterfront brawl. When, after the death of Amy St. Pierre, Wendell, who was merely obeying the ancient rules of his trade, dropped in at 1 Nailhouse Row, and inquired of the grieving father how it felt to know that his girl had been slaughtered like a pig and partially eaten by a fiend in human form, Beezer had gripped the exculpatory newshound by the throat, unleashed a torrent of obscenities, and reason by bellowing that if he should ever see Mr. Green again, he would tear off his head and use the stump as a sexual orifice.It is this threat that causes Wendells moment of panic. He glances into his rearview mirror and sees Beezers cohorts strung out crosswise the road like an invading army of Goths. In his imagination, they are gesticulate 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 flat evaporates, along with his daydreams of winning the Pulitzer Prize. His stomach clenches, and sweat bursts from every pore on his broad, ruddy face. His left hand trembles on the roll, his right shakes the cassette recorder like a castanet. Wendell lifts his foot 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 curl up in th e well beneath the dashboard and pretend to be a fetus. The coarse roar of sound behind him grows louder, and his heart leaps in his chest like a fish. Wendell whimpers. A rank of kettledrums batters the air beyond the fragile skin of the car door. accordingly the motorcycles swoop past him and race 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 a housefly, expands back to its regulation 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 driven 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 p ast him. When it comes to Beezer and his apes, Wendell thinks, being a gentleman is the better part of valor. He picks up speed, watching the rockers race on ahead.In his hand, the cassette recorder is still running. Wendell raises it to his mouth, licks his lips, and discovers that he has forgotten what he was going to say. Blank tape whirls from spool to spool. Damn, he says, and pushes the OFF button. An inspired phrase, a melodious cadence, has vanished into the ether, perhaps for good. But the situation is far more thwarting than that. It seems to Wendell that a whole series of logical connections has vanished with the lost phrase he can re constituent seeing the force of a vast trace 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 certainty that he can bring it back to life.What are these biker freaks doing out here, anyhow?The question answers itself some creepy do-gooder thought Beezer ought to know about 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 selfsame(prenominal) 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 bikers form a single 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. Every 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 bung leage, 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 automatic access to such vistas. Journalists are the medium, the aperture, through which otherwise prohibited places and events reach the general public. Wen-dell Green is the peoples representative here, and the most distinguished journalist in western Wisconsin besides.After he has inched along another(prenominal) thirty feet, he sees that the cops riding 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 invite for information by telling him to go to hell. Pam Stevens is a know-it-all beef anyhow, a professional ball-breaker. Why else would a reasonably okay-looking dame want to be a cop? Stevens would turn him away from the scene for the bold hell of it ?? shed enjoy it Probably, Wendell realizes, he volition have to sn eak in somehow. He pictures himself crawling through the fields on his belly and shivers with distaste.At least he can have the pleasure of watching the cops better-looking the finger to Beezer and crew. The bikers roar past another half-dozen cars without slowing down, so Wendell supposes they plan on going into a flashy, skidding turn, dodging right by those two dumbbells in blue, and zooming around the patrol car as if it didnt exist. What will the cops do hence, Wendell wonders ?? drag out their guns and try to look fierce? drop off warning gunmans and hit each other in the foot?Astonishingly, Beezer and his correspond 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 beaten grass, two of whom are Dale Gilbertson and the picku ps owner, Hollywood Jack Sawyer, that too big for ones breeches 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 mussy 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, deaf(p) as a pack of wild dogs. As soon as they hit open road again, the other four move into parallel of latitude formation behind Beezer and fan out across the highway. Then, as one, they skip 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 separate into their one-two-two pattern and come campaigning back westward toward the crime scene and French Landing.Ill be damned, Wendell th inks. 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 also gets larger and larger as it approaches. I never figured you for a quitter, Wendell says, watching Beezer loom ever nearer. The wind has parted his beard into two equal sections that flare out behind him on both sides of his head. Behind 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 cowardice brightens Wendells heart as he watches the bikers diminish in his rearview mirror, but a thought he cannot give the axe begins to worm its way up ward 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 nearly thirty years, and he has developed a few 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 design 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 minimal 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 slick 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 f ar enough to stay out of sight and he gets a free pass into the scene. Beautiful. Ah, the irony 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 be harder to throw him out than to turn him away. In the time he has, he can ask a few probing questions, nobble a few telling photos, and ?? above all ?? soak up enough atmosphere to produce one of his legendary color pieces.With a cheerful heart, Wendell poodles down the highway at fifty miles per hour, letting the bikers race far ahead of him without ever letting them pass out of sight. The number of cars coming 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-doubt, but h e 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 that rise except the chargeroom, the maintenance garage, and the parking lot. Damn place looks like a wasteland. Beyond the parking lot . . . what? On one side, he remembers a scrubby 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 downward-sloping like a windbreak.Without bothering to signal, he speeds across the oncoming lanes and into Goltzs driveway. The sound of the motorcycles is still audible but growing softer, and Wendell experiences a jolt of fear that they have somehow tricked him and are getting away, jeering at him At the aggrandizement of the rise, he zooms around the front of the showroom and drives into the bi g 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 asphalt and the meadow environ by trees. On the other side of the 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 distant 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. Even before he reaches the tree line, he can see the remains of an old macadam road, broken and overgrown, pillow slip 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, uneven surface. In some places, the macadam has fissured into tectonic plates in others, it has crumbled away to black gravel. Sinkholes and tightly fitting rills radiate out from the thick, snaking roots of the trees. A biker could jounce over this flub reasonably well, but Wendell sees that his legs will manage the journey better than his Toyota, so he sets off down the old track through the trees. From what he took in while he was on the highway, he still has stool of time before the medical examiner 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 halt 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 f ists in the air. He wants to see them cranked to the gills on rage and adrenaline, plus divinity fudge knows what else those savages might have in their saddlebags. Wendell would love to get a photograph of Beezer St. Pierre knocking out Dale Gilbertsons front teeth with a well-aimed right, or putting the choke hold on his buddy Sawyer. The photograph Wendell wants most, however, and for the rice beer of which he is prepared 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 smack 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 enquirer alone would fork over, what ?? two hundred thousand, three? ?? for a photo of poor little Irma sprawled out in death, mutilations clearly 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 concentration divided up 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 uproar caused by the Thunder Fives Harleys abruptly ceases. The resulting silence seems immense, then immediately fills with other, quieter sounds. Wendell can hear his breathing time 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 hacker bob like marionettes. Wendell takes a step precedent, 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. widows weeds and twigs decorate the rusty bumper. Does I.H. even make pickups anymore? Wendell holds up his hand like a juror taking the oath, and the truck jounces and dips over another few rutted feet before coming to a halt. Its left side sits noticeably 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 hint 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 duty period Runkleman, who regularly 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 set that oozes in and out of various run-down shacks along the river, and Toots Billinger, a scrabbly kid who somehow supports himself by scavenging scrap metal in La Riviere and French Landing. Like 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 Miss Bitch, the rest of em wanted to go back to their barstools.Of course he does remember her, although the hardened 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 tenner 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 safe 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 Wende ll a pouty little smile, and says, Well thank-ee, kindly 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 charming people like to assist a gentleman of the press and earn fifty bucks in the process? fifty dollar bill each, or all together? asks Teddy Runkleman.Come 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 payment and, in a flash, pile up it away. Now 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.