Peter Straub - Mr. X

Toby came out rubbing his fingers over a quilted cheek with what in him passed for melancholy. ‘Keep in touch, you hear? I want to know everything that happens. Your momma worked for me when you were just a squirt, did you know that?’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘How did the estate deal go?’ His eyes hardened, and I added, ‘The one you were telling me about.’

‘Oh, yeah. We’re moving, definitely.’ He gave me a sidelong look and strolled to the counter. ‘You staying at Nettie’s?’

I nodded.

‘If it gets tight over there, I can find you a room in a good clean place, no problem. And if you could use a couple extra bucks, maybe I’ll want some help in the shop. On account of you remind me of your momma.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind,’ I said.

He nodded, and I nodded back, as if we had agreed on a business deal. Toby put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me down into a miasma of smoke and hair gel. ‘Between you and I, you spot May doing something which it might seem out of character for an old lady like her? Turn a blind eye. Word to the wise.’

‘She already swiped everything that wasn’t nailed down,’ I said.

Toby batted the side of my head and chuckled.

‘Nettie said it runs in the family.’

‘Queenie, the woman was a virtuoso.’ He raised his furry hand to his mouth and kissed the tips of his fingers.

Dinner consisted of the same sandwiches, pickles, and potato salad as lunch. Clark negotiated a white pebble onto his fork and said, ‘Heard about you, boy.’

I waited.

‘Remember my mention of Piney Woods? I ran into Piney this afternoon. Six hundred dollars, he said.’

‘Is that right?’

‘A fellow named Joe Staggers and three of his friends are looking to get it back.’ Clark sent me another yellow glance. ‘These are Mountry boys. You don’t want to mess with boys from Mountry.’

‘Uncle Clark,’ I said, ‘the next time you run into Piney Woods, do me a favor. Tell him I didn’t take six hundred dollars off someone named Joe Staggers. I never met anyone named Joe Staggers. I don’t play cards, and I’m tired of hearing about it.’

Clark dipped his fork into the potato salad. ‘I did tell him some of that. Piney said he’d give out the same story himself, if it was him.’

Before the change of shift, I wandered up to the counter and noticed that the duffel had been partially unzipped. On one of her predatory rambles through the unit, May had opened the bag and nabbed whatever caught her magpie eye – she didn’t know it was mine. I knelt down and took out the blazer, which had been shoved back in by someone even less worried about wrinkles than me, and sorted through my clothes. Nothing seemed to be missing, including the Discman and the CDs. I went to the desk.

‘Nurse Zwick,’ I said, ‘did you see anyone touch my bag? Or open it up?’

‘Only you,’ she said.

After 7:00 P.M., a nurse said that Mrs Grenville Milton had sent a bouquet, but since flowers were not permitted in the ICU, it was being held downstairs. I told her to give it to the children’s ward.

Clark dropped into a chair and fell sonorously asleep.

Star kept rising toward clarity and fading back. My aunts told her she needed sleep. I thought my mother needed to talk to me, and that was why she never let go of my hand.

Around 9:00 P.M., Nettie poked her head around the curtain and whispered, ‘May, Clyde Prentiss has two visitors. You have to see them to believe them.’

‘Maybe it’s his gang ,’ May said, and hustled out.

The arrival of two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes detective at cubicle 3 that afternoon had roused them into an investigative flurry. Prentiss’s history of wrongdoing ranged from petty larceny, in my aunts’ book merely a technique of economic redistribution, through assault with a deadly weapon and conspiracy to distribute illegal substances, to the big-time villainy of armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, and one accusation of rape. That he had been acquitted of most of these charges in no way implied his innocence. Hadn’t he been shot by a night watchman while attempting to flee through a warehouse window? Hadn’t his accomplices made their getaway in a pickup truck laden with microwave ovens? Added to his transgressions was that world-class felony, the breaking of his mother’s heart. Nettie and May would have hammered a stake through Clyde Prentiss’s own heart in an instant, and they were not about to pass up an opportunity to inspect his partners in crime.

Star clutched my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me about my father?’ I asked.

Her eyes bore into mine. She opened her mouth and uttered a succession of vowels. She gasped with frustration.

‘Was his name Robert?’

‘Nnnn!’

‘I thought that’s what you were telling me before.’

She summoned her powers. ‘Not Rrrr. Bert .’ She spent a few seconds concentrating on her breathing. ‘Edwuh. Edward .’

‘What was his last name?’

She sipped air and met my eyes with a glance that nearly lifted me off the floor. ‘ Rnnn. T! ’

‘Rinnt?’

Star jerked herself up from the pillow. ‘ Rhine .’ A machine clamored. ‘ Hrrrt .’

A name came to me from the furthest reaches of my childhood. ‘Rinehart?’

The night nurse erupted through the curtain and threw me out, but not before I saw her nod.

Ten feet up the aisle, the aunts were poised at the counter like bird dogs.

Clark issued a thunderclap snore that jerked him to his feet. He staggered, recovered himself, and joined us. ‘What’re you gawping at?’

Nettie said, ‘The Clyde Prentiss gang is over there. The ones that got away when he almost met his Maker.’

A scrawny little weasel with a goatee and a black leather jacket twitched out through the curtain, followed by a sturdy blonde wearing a lot of mascara, a brief black leather skirt, and a denim jacket buttoned to her bra. Clark chuckled.

The blonde looked across the station and said, ‘Hey, Clark.’

‘You’re lookin’ mighty fine, Cassie,’ Clark said. ‘Sorry about your friend.’ The weasel glanced at him and pulled the blonde through the doors.

The aunts turned to Clark in astonishment. ‘How do you know trash like that?’

‘Cassie Little isn’t trash. She tends bar down at the Speedway. The shrimpy fellow, Frenchy, I don’t know him but to greet. Seems to me Cassie ought to be able to find a better man than that.’

I went back inside and said goodbye to Star. Her hands lay at her sides, and her chest rose and fell. I told her I would see her in the morning, said that I loved her, and kissed her cheek.

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