Stephen King - End of Watch

Brady pulls in, shifts to park, and opens the laptop. The message on the screen puts a significant crack right down the middle of his good mood.

He opens the Malibu’s glove compartment and there is Al Brooks’s battered cell phone, right where he always kept it. A good thing, too, because Brady forgot to bring Babineau’s.

So sue me, he thinks. You can’t remember everything, and I’ve been busy.

He doesn’t bother going to Contacts, just dials Freddi’s number from memory. She hasn’t changed it since the old Discount Electronix days.

When Hodges excuses himself to use the bathroom, Jerome waits until he’s out the door, then goes to Holly, who’s standing at the window and watching the snow fall. It’s still light here in the city, the flakes dancing in the air and seeming to defy gravity. Holly once more has her arms crossed over her chest so she can grip her shoulders.

‘How bad is he?’ Jerome asks in a low voice. ‘Because he doesn’t look good.’

‘It’s pancreatic cancer, Jerome. How good does anyone look with that?’

‘Can he get through the day, do you think? Because he wants to, and I really think he could use some closure on this.’

‘Closure on Hartsfield, you mean. Brady fracking Hartsfield. Even though he’s fracking dead .’

‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

‘I think it’s bad.’ She turns to him and forces herself to meet his eyes, a thing that always makes her feel stripped bare. ‘Do you see the way he keeps putting his hand against his side?’

Jerome nods.

‘He’s been doing that for weeks now and calling it indigestion. He only went to the doctor because I nagged him into it. And when he found out what was wrong, he tried to lie.’

‘You didn’t answer the question. Can he get through the day?’

‘I think so. I hope so. Because you’re right, he needs this. Only we have to stick with him. Both of us.’ She releases one shoulder so she can grip his wrist. ‘Promise me, Jerome. No sending the skinny girl home so the boys can play in the treehouse by themselves.’

He pries her hand loose and gives it a squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, Hollyberry. No one’s breaking up the band.’

‘Hello? Is that you, Dr Z?’

Brady has no time to play games with her. The snow is thickening every second, and Z-Boy’s crappy old Malibu, with no snow tires and over a hundred thousand miles on the clock, will be no match for the storm once it really gets whooping. Under other circumstances, he’d want to know how she’s even alive, but since he has no intention of turning back and rectifying that situation, it’s a moot question.

‘You know who it is, and I know what you tried to do. Try it again and I’ll send in the men who are watching the building. You’re lucky to be alive, Freddi. I wouldn’t tempt fate a second time.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Almost whispering. This is not the fuck-you-and-fuck-your-mother riot grrrl Brady worked with on the Cyber Patrol. Yet she’s not entirely broken, or she wouldn’t have tried messing with the computer gear.

‘Have you told anyone?’

‘No!’ She sounds horrified at the thought. Horrified is good.

‘Will you?’

‘No!’

‘That’s the right answer, because if you do, I’ll know. You’re under surveillance, Freddi. Remember it.’

He ends the call without waiting for a reply, more furious with her for being alive than for what she tried to do. Will she believe that fictitious men are watching the building, even though he left her for dead? He thinks so. She’s had dealings with both Dr Z and Z-Boy; who knows how many other drones he might have at his command?

In any case, there’s nothing else he can do about it now. Brady has a long, long history of blaming others for his problems, and now he blames Freddi for not dying when she was supposed to.

He drops the Malibu’s gearshift into drive and steps on the gas. The tires spin in the thin carpet of snow covering the defunct Porno Palace’s parking lot, but catch once they get on the state road again, where the formerly brown soft shoulders are now turning white. Brady eases Z-Boy’s car up to sixty. That will soon be too fast for conditions, but he’ll hold the needle there as long as he can.

Finders Keepers shares the seventh-floor bathrooms with the travel agency, but right now Hodges has the men’s to himself, for which he is grateful. He’s bent over one of the sinks, right hand gripping the washbasin’s rim, left pressed to his side. His belt is still unbuckled, and his pants are sinking past his hips under the weight of the stuff in his pockets: change, keys, wallet, phone.

He came in here to take a shit, an ordinary excretory function he’s been performing all his life, but when he started to strain, the left half of his midsection went nuclear. It makes his previous pain seem like a bunch of warm-up notes before the full concert begins, and if it’s this bad now, he dreads to think what may lie ahead.

No, he thinks, dread is the wrong word. Terror is the right one. For the first time in my life, I’m terrified of the future, where I see everything that I am or ever was first submerged, then erased. If the pain itself doesn’t do it, the heavier drugs they give me to stifle it will.

Now he understands why pancreatic is called the stealth cancer, and why it’s almost always deadly. It lurks, building up its troops and sending out secret emissaries to the lungs, the lymph nodes, the bones and the brain. Then it blitzkriegs, not understanding, in its stupid rapacity, that victory can only bring its own death.

Hodges thinks, Except maybe that’s what it wants. Maybe it’s self-hating, born with a desire not to murder the host but to kill itself. Which makes cancer the real suicide prince.

He brings up a long, resounding burp, and that makes him feel a little better, who knows why. It won’t last long, but he’ll take any measure of relief he can get. He shakes out three of his painkillers (already they make him think of shooting a popgun at a charging elephant) and swallows them with water from the tap. Then he splashes more cold water on his face, trying to bring up a little color. When that doesn’t work, he slaps himself briskly – two hard ones on each cheek. Holly and Jerome must not know how bad it’s gotten. He was promised this day and he means to take every minute of it. All the way to midnight, if necessary.

He’s leaving the bathroom, reminding himself to straighten up and stop pressing his side, when his phone buzzes. Pete wanting to resume his bitch-a-thon, he thinks, but it’s not. It’s Norma Wilmer.

‘I found that file,’ she says. ‘The one the late great Ruth Scapelli—’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘The visitors list. Who’s on it?’

‘There is no list.’

He leans against the wall and closes his eyes. ‘Ah, sh—’

‘But there is a single memo with Babineau’s letterhead on it. It says, and I quote, “Frederica Linklatter to be admitted both during and after visiting hours. She is aiding in B. Hartsfield’s recovery.” Does that help?’

Some girl with a Marine haircut, Hodges thinks. A ratty chick with a bunch of tats.

It rang no bells at the time, but there was that faint vibration, and now he knows why. He met a skinny girl with buzz-cut hair at Discount Electronix back in 2010, when he, Jerome, and Holly were closing in on Brady. Even six years later he can remember what she said about her co-worker on the Cyber Patrol: It’s something with his mom, betcha anything. He’s freaky about her .