Стивен Кинг - Later

“Okay, one more shot. And stop looking at your dumb phone, Champ. I know what time it is, and no matter how much trouble you’re in if I don’t get you home before your mother shows up, I’ll be in more.”

“She’ll probably take Barbara out for a drink before she goes home, anyway. Barbara works for the agency now.” I don’t know why I said that, exactly. Because I also wanted to save innocent lives, I suppose, although that seemed rather academic to me, because I didn’t think we were going to find Kenneth Therriault. I think it was because Liz looked so beaten down. So backed into a corner.

“Well, that’s a lucky break,” Liz said. “All we need is one more.”

The Frederick Arms was twelve or fourteen stories high, gray brick, with bars on the windows of the first- and second-floor apartments. To a kid who grew up in the Palace on Park, it looked more like that Shawshank Redemption prison than an apartment building. And Liz knew right away that we were never going to get inside, let alone to Kenneth Therriault’s apartment. The place was swarming with cops. Lookie-loos were standing in the middle of the street, as close to the police sawhorse barricades as they could get, snapping photos. TV news vans were parked on both sides of the block with their antennas up and cables snaking everywhere. There was even a Channel 4 helicopter hovering overhead.

“Look,” I said. “Stacy-Anne Conway! She’s on NY1!”

“Ask me if I give a shit,” Liz said.

I didn’t.

We had been lucky not to run into reporters at Central Park or City of Angels, and I realized the only reason we hadn’t was because they were all here. I looked at Liz and saw a tear trickling down one of her cheeks. “Maybe we can go to his funeral,” I said. “Maybe he’ll be there.”

“He’ll probably be cremated. Privately, at the city’s expense. No relatives. He outlived them all. I’ll take you home, Champ. Sorry to drag you all this way.”

“That’s okay,” I said, and patted her hand. I knew Mom wouldn’t like me doing that, but Mom wasn’t there.

Liz pulled a U-turn and headed back toward the Queens-boro bridge. A block away from the Frederick Arms, I glanced at a little grocery on my side and said, “Oh my God. There he is.”

She snapped a wide-eyed glance at me. “Are you sure? Are you sure , Jamie?”

I leaned forward and vomited between my sneakers. That was all the answer she needed.

I can’t really say if he was as bad as the Central Park man, that was a long time ago. He could have been worse. Once you’ve seen what can happen to a human body that’s suffered an act of violence—accident, suicide, murder—maybe it doesn’t even matter. Kenneth Therriault, alias Thumper, was bad, okay? Really bad.

There were benches on either side of the grocery’s door, so people could eat the snacks they bought, I suppose. Therriault was sitting on one of them with his hands on the thighs of his khaki pants. People were passing by, headed for whatever they were headed for. A black kid with a skateboard under his arm went into the store. A lady came out with a steaming paper cup of coffee. Neither of them glanced at the bench where Therriault was sitting.

He must have been right-handed, because that side of his head didn’t look too bad. There was a hole in his temple, maybe the size of a dime, maybe a little smaller, surrounded by a dark corona that was either bruising or gunpowder. Probably gunpowder. I doubt if his body had time to muster enough blood to make a bruise.

The real damage was on the left, where the bullet exited. The hole on that side was almost as big as a dessert plate and surrounded by irregular fangs of bone. The flesh on his head was swelled, like from a gigantic infection. His left eye had been yanked sideways and bulged from its socket. Worst of all, gray stuff had dripped down his cheek. That was his brain.

“Don’t stop,” I said. “Just keep going.” The smell of puke was strong in my nose and the taste of it was in my mouth, all slimy. “Please, Liz, I can’t.”

She swerved to the curb in front of a fire hydrant near the end of the block instead. “You have to. And I have to. Sorry, Champ, but we have to know. Now pull yourself together so people don’t stare at us and think I’ve been abusing you.”

But you are , I thought. And you won’t stop until you get what you want .

The taste in my mouth was the ravioli I’d eaten in the school caff. As soon as I realized that I opened the door, leaned out, and puked some more. Like on the day of the Central Park man, when I never made it to Lily’s birthday party at fancy-shmancy Wave Hill. That was déjà vu I could have done without.

“Champ? Champ!”

I turned to her and she was holding out a wad of Kleenex (show me a woman without Kleenex in her purse and I’ll show you no one at all). “Wipe your mouth and then get out of the car. Try to look normal. Let’s get this done.”

I could see she meant it—we weren’t going to leave until she had what she wanted. Man up , I thought. I can do this. I have to, because lives are at stake .

I wiped my mouth and got out. Liz put her little sign on the dashboard—the police version of Get Out of Jail Free—and came around to where I was standing on the sidewalk, staring into a laundromat at a woman folding clothes. That wasn’t very interesting, but at least it kept me from looking at the ruined man up the street. For the time being, anyway. Soon I’d have to. Worse—oh God—I’d have to talk to him. If he even could talk.

I held out my hand without thinking. Thirteen was probably too old to be holding hands with a woman the people passing by would assume was my mother (if they bothered thinking about us at all), but when she took it, I was glad. Glad as hell.

We started back to the store. I wished we’d had miles to walk, but it was only half a block.

“Where is he, exactly?” she asked in a low voice.

I risked a look to make sure he hadn’t moved. Nope, he was still on the bench, and now I could look directly into the crater where there had once been thoughts. His ear was still on, but it was crooked and I found myself remembering a Mr. Potato Head I’d had when I was four or five. My stomach clenched again.

“Get it together, Champ.”

“Don’t call me that anymore,” I managed to say. “I hate it.”

“Duly noted. Where is he?”

“Sitting on the bench.”

“The one on this side of the door, or—”

“This side, yeah.”

I was looking at him again, we were close now so I couldn’t help it, and I saw an interesting thing. A man came out of the store with a newspaper under his arm and a hot dog in one hand. The hot dog was in one of those foil bags that’s supposed to keep them hot (believe that and you’ll believe the moon is made of green cheese). He started to sit down on the other bench, already pulling his hot dog out of the bag. Then he stopped, looked either at me and Liz or the other bench, and walked on down the block to eat his pup somewhere else. He didn’t see Therriault—he would have run if he had, most likely screaming his head off—but I think he felt him. No, I don’t just think it, I know it. I wish I’d paid more attention at the time, but I was upset, as I’m sure you understand. If you don’t, you’re an idiot.

Therriault turned his head. It was a relief because the move hid the worst of the exit wound. It wasn’t a relief because his face was normal on one side and all bloated out of shape on the other, like that guy Two-Face in the Batman comics. Worst of all, now he was looking at me.