Stephen King - Mr. Mercedes

Hodges enlarges the news photo until that grinning yellow face fills the computer screen. The mark of the beast, he thinks, twenty-first-century style.

This time the number he speed-dials isn’t PD Reception but Pete’s cell. His old partner picks up on the second ring. “Yo, you ole hossy-hoss. How’s retirement treating you?” He sounds really pleased, and that makes Hodges smile. It also makes him feel guilty, yet the thought of backing off never crosses his mind.

“I’m good,” he says, “but I miss your fat and hypertensive face.”

“Sure you do. And we won in Iraq.”

“Swear to God, Peter. How about we have lunch and catch up a little? You pick the place and I’ll buy.”

“Sounds good, but I already ate today. How about tomorrow?”

“My schedule is jammed, Obama was coming by for my advice on the budget, but I suppose I could rearrange a few things. Seeing’s how it’s you.”

“Go fuck yourself, Kermit .”

“When you do it so much better?” The banter is an old tune with simple lyrics.

“How about DeMasio’s? You always liked that place.”

“DeMasio’s is fine. Noon?”

“That works.”

“And you’re sure you’ve got time for an old whore like me?”

“Billy, you don’t even need to ask. Want me to bring Isabelle?”

He doesn’t, but says: “If you want.”

Some of the old telepathy must still be working, because after a brief pause Pete says, “Maybe we’ll make it a stag party this time.”

“Whatever,” Hodges says, relieved. “Looking forward.”

“Me too. Good to hear your voice, Billy.”

Hodges hangs up and looks at the teeth-bared smile-face some more. It fills his computer screen.

He sits in his La-Z-Boy that night, watching the eleven o’clock news. In his white pajamas he looks like an overweight ghost. His scalp gleams mellowly through his thinning hair. The big story is the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico where the oil is still gushing. The newsreader says the bluefin tuna are endangered, and the Louisiana shellfish industry may be destroyed for a generation. In Iceland, a billowing volcano (with a name the newsreader mangles to something like Eeja-fill-kull ) is still screwing up transatlantic air travel. In California, police are saying they may have finally gotten a break in the Grim Sleeper serial killer case. No names, but the suspect (the perk , Hodges thinks) is described as “a well-groomed and well-spoken African-American.” Hodges thinks, Now if only someone would bag Turnpike Joe. Not to mention Osama bin Laden.

The weather comes on. Warm temperatures and sunny skies, the weather girl promises. Time to break out the bathing suits.

“I’d like to see you in a bathing suit, my dear,” Hodges says, and uses the remote to turn off the TV.

He takes his father’s .38 out of the drawer, unloads it as he walks into the bedroom, and puts it in the safe with his Glock. He has spent a lot of time during the last two or three months obsessing about the Victory .38, but tonight it hardly crosses his mind as he locks it away. He’s thinking about Turnpike Joe, but not really; these days Joe is someone else’s problem. Like the Grim Sleeper, that well-spoken African-American.

Is Mr. Mercedes also African-American? It’s technically possible—no one saw anything but the pullover clown mask, a long-sleeved shirt, and yellow gloves on the steering wheel—but Hodges thinks not. God knows there are plenty of black people capable of murder in this city, but there’s the weapon to consider. The neighborhood where Mrs. Trelawney’s mother lived is predominantly wealthy and predominantly white. A black man hanging around a parked Mercedes SL500 would have been noticed.

Well. Probably. People can be stunningly unobservant. But experience has led Hodges to believe rich people tend to be slightly more observant than the general run of Americans, especially when it comes to their expensive toys. He doesn’t want to say they’re paranoid , but…

The fuck they’re not. Rich people can be generous, even the ones with bloodcurdling political views can be generous, but most believe in generosity on their own terms, and underneath (not so deep, either), they’re always afraid someone is going to steal their presents and eat their birthday cake.

How about neat and well spoken, then?

Yes, Hodges decides. No hard evidence, but the letter suggests he is. Mr. Mercedes may dress in suits and work in an office, or he may dress in jeans and Carhartt shirts and balance tires in a garage, but he’s no slob. He may not talk a lot—such creatures are careful in all aspects of their lives, and that includes promiscuous blabbing—but when he does talk, he’s probably direct and clear. If you were lost and needed directions, he’d give you good ones.

As he’s brushing his teeth, Hodges thinks: DeMasio’s. Pete wants to have lunch at DeMasio’s.

That’s okay for Pete, who still carries the badge and gun, and it seemed okay to Hodges when they were talking on the phone, because then Hodges had been thinking like a cop instead of a retiree who’s thirty pounds overweight. It probably would be okay—broad daylight and all—but DeMasio’s is on the edge of Lowtown, which is not a vacation community. A block west of the restaurant, beyond the turnpike spur overpass, the city turns into a wasteland of vacant lots and abandoned tenements. Drugs are sold openly on streetcorners, there’s a burgeoning trade in illegal weaponry, and arson is the neighborhood sport. If you can call Lowtown a neighborhood, that is. The restaurant itself—a really terrific Italian joint—is safe, though. The owner is connected, and that makes it like Free Parking in Monopoly.

Hodges rinses his mouth, goes back into the bedroom, and—still thinking of DeMasio’s—looks doubtfully at the closet where the safe is hidden behind the hanging pants, shirts, and the sportcoats he no longer wears (he’s now too big for all but two of them).

Take the Glock? The Victory, maybe? The Victory’s smaller.

No to both. His carry-concealed license is still in good standing, but he’s not going strapped to a lunch with his old partner. It would make him self-conscious, and he’s already self-conscious about the digging he plans to do. He goes to his dresser instead, lifts up a pile of underwear, and looks underneath. The Happy Slapper is still there, has been there since his retirement party.

The Slapper will do. Just a little insurance in a high-risk part of town.

Satisfied, he goes to bed and turns out the light. He puts his hands into the mystic cool pocket under the pillow and thinks of Turnpike Joe. Joe has been lucky so far, but eventually he’ll be caught. Not just because he keeps hitting those highway rest areas but because he can’t stop killing. He thinks of Mr. Mercedes writing, That is not true in my case, because I have absolutely no urge to do it again.

Telling the truth, or lying the way he was lying with his CAPITALIZED PHRASES and MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS and ONE-SENTENCE PARAGRAPHS?

Hodges thinks he’s lying—perhaps to himself as well as to K. William Hodges, Det. Ret.—but right now, as Hodges lies here with sleep coming on, he doesn’t care. What matters is the guy thinks he’s safe. He’s positively smug about it. He doesn’t seem to realize the vulnerability he has exposed by writing a letter to the man who was, until his retirement, the lead detective on the City Center case.

You need to talk about it, don’t you? Yes you do, honeybunch, don’t lie to your old uncle Billy. And unless that Debbie’s Blue Umbrella site is another red herring, like all those quotation marks, you’ve even opened a conduit into your life. You want to talk. You need to talk. And if you could goad me into something, that would just be the cherry on top of a sundae, wouldn’t it?