Christine (39 page)

Hurt his back somehow.

What had he been doing to hurt his back?

A strange phrase came to him in answer, floating up from his subconscious:
It's just a funny little glitch.

Did he really want to know? He didn't. In fact, there were times when he didn't want the car at all. There were times when he felt he would be better off just… well, junking it. Not that he ever would, or could. It was just that, sometimes (in the sweaty, shaking aftermath of that dream last night, for instance), he felt that if he got rid of it, he would be… happier.

The radio suddenly spat an almost feline burst of static.

"Don't worry," Arnie whispered. He ran his hand slowly over the, dashboard, loving the feel of it. Yes, the car frightened him sometimes. And he supposed his father was right; it had changed his life to some degree. But he could no more junk it than he could commit suicide.

The static cleared. The Marvelettes were singing "Please Mr Postman".

And then a voice said in his car, "Arnold Cunningham?" He jumped and snapped off the radio. He turned around. A small, dapper little man was leaning in Christine's window. His eyes were a dark brown, and his color was high—from the cold outside, Arnie guessed.

"Yes?"

"Rudolph Junkins. State Police, Detective Division." Junkins stuck his hand in through the open window.

Arnie looked at it for a moment. So his father had been right.

He grinned his most charming grin, took the hand, shook it firmly, and said, "Don't shoot, copper, I'll throw out my guns."

Junkins returned Arnie's grin, but Arnie noticed that the grin did no more than touch his eyes, which were exploring the car in a quick, thorough fashion that Arnie didn't like. Not at all.

"Whoo! I got the feeling from the local police that the guys who worked over your rolling iron had really tattooed it. It sure doesn't look like it."

Arnie shrugged and got out of the car. Friday nights were slow at the garage; Will himself rarely came in, and he wasn't in tonight. Across the way, in stall ten, a fellow named Gabbs was putting a new silencer on his old Valiant, and down at the far end of the garage there was the periodic burr on an air wrench as some fellow put on his snow tires. Otherwise, he and Junkins had the place to themselves.

"It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it looked," Arnie said. He thought that this smiling, dapper little man might be extremely clever. As if it was a natural outgrowth of the thought, he rested his hand easily on Christine's roof and immediately felt better. He could cope with this man, clever or not. After all, what was there to worry about? "There was no structural damage."

"Oh? I understood they punched holes in the body with some sharp instrument," Junkins said, looking closely at Christine's flank. "I'll be damned if I can see the fill. You must be a bodywork genius, Arnie. The way my wife drives, maybe I ought to put you on retainer," He smiled disarmingly, but his eyes went on running back and forth over the car. They would dart momentarily to Arnie's face and then go back to the car again. Arnie liked it less and less.

"I'm good but not God," Arnie said. "You can see the bodywork if you really look for it." He pointed at a minute ripple in Christine's back deck. And there. "He pointed at another. "I was lucky enough to find some original Plymouth body parts up in Ruggles, I replaced the entire back door on this side. You see the way the paint doesn't quite match?" He knocked his knuckles on the door.

"Nope," Junkins said. "I might be able to tell with a microscope, Arnie, but it looks like a perfect match to me."

He also knocked his knuckles on the door. Arnie frowned.

"Hell of a job " Junkins said. He walked slowly around to the front of the car. "
Hell
of a job, Arnie. You're to be congratulated."

"Thanks." He watched as Junkins, in the guise of the sincere admirer, used his sharp brown eyes to look for suspicious dents, flaked paint, maybe a spot of blood or a snarl of matted hair. Looking for signs of Moochie Welch. Arnie was suddenly sure that was just what the shitter was doing. "What exactly can I do for you, Detective Junkins?"

Junkins laughed. "Man, that's formal! I can't take that! Make it Rudy, okay?"

"Sure," Arnie said, smiling. "What can I do for you, Rudy?"

"You know, it's funny," Junkins said, squatting to look at the driver's side headlights. He tapped one of them reflectively with his knuckles and then, with seeming absent-mindedness, he ran his forefinger along the headlight's semicircular metal hood. His overcoat pooled on the oilstained cement floor for a moment; then he stood up. "We get reports on anything of this nature—the trashin of your car, I mean—"

"Oh, hey, they didn't really trash it," Arnie said. He was beginning to feel as if he was on a tightrope, and he touched Christine again. Her solidity, her reality, once more seemed to comfort him. "They tried, you know, but they didn't do a very good job."

"Okay. I guess I'm not up on the current terminology." Junkins laughed. "Anyway, when it came to my attention, what do you think I said? "Where's the photographs?" That's what I said. I thought it was an oversight, you know. So I called the Libertyville PD and they said there were no photographs."

"No," Arnie said. "A kid my age can't get anything but liability insurance, you know that. Even the liability comes with a seven-hundred-dollar deductible. If I had damage insurance, I would have taken plenty of pictures. But since I didn't, why would I? I sure wouldn't want them for my scrapbook."

"No, I guess not," Junkins said, and walked idly around to the rear of the car, eyes searching for broken glass, for scrapes, for guilt. "But you know what else I thought was funny? You didn't even report the crime!" He raised his dark questioning eyes to Arnie's, looked at him closely and then smiled a phony, bewildered little smile. "Didn't even report it!" Huh," I said. "Sonofabitch! Who reported it?" Guy's father, they tell me." Junkins shook his head. "I don't get that, Arnie, I don't mind telling you. A guy works his ass off restoring an old car until it's worth two, maybe five thousand dollars, then some guys come along and beat the hell out of it—"

"I told you—"

Rudy Junkins raised his hand and smiled disarmingly. For one weird second Arnie thought he was going to say "Peace", as Dennis sometimes did when things got heavy.

"Damaged it. Sorry."

"Sure," Arnie said.

"Anyhow, according to what your girlfriend said, one of the perpetrators… well, defecated on the dashboard. I would have thought you would have been mad as hell. I would have thought you would have reported it."

Now the smile faded altogether and Junkins looked at Arnie soberly, even sternly.

Arnie's cool gray eyes met Junkins's brown ones.

"Shit wipes off," he said finally. "You want to know something, Mr—Rudy? You want me to tell you something?"

"Sure, son."

"When I was one and a half, I got hold of a fork and marked up an antique bureau that my mother had saved up for over a period of maybe five years. Saved up her pin money, that's what she said. I guess I racked the hell out of it in a very short time. Of course I don't remember it, but she says she just sat right down and bawled." Arnie smiled a little, "Up until this year, I couldn't feature my mother doing that. Now I think I can. Maybe I'm growing up a little, what do you think?"

Junkins lit a cigarette. "Am I missing the point, Arnie? Because I don't see it yet."

"She said that she would rather have had me in diapers until I was three than have had me do that. Because, she said, shit wipes off." Arnie smiled. "You flush it away and it's gone."

"The way Moochie Welch is gone?" Junkins asked.

"I know nothing about that."

"No?"

"No."

"Scout's honor?" Junkins asked. The question was humorous but the eyes were not; they probed at Arnie, looking for the smallest break, a crucial flicker.

Down the aisle, the fellow who had been putting on his winter snows dropped a tool on the concrete. It clanged musically and the fellow chanted, almost chorally, "Oh shit on you, you whore."

Junkins and Arnie both glanced that way briefly, and the moment was broken.

"Sure, Scout's honor," Arnie said. "Look, I suppose you have to do this, it's your job—"

"Sure its my job," Junkins agreed softly. "The boy was run over three times each way. He was meat. They scraped him up with a shovel."

"Come on," Arnie said sickly. His stomach did a lazy barrel roll.

"Why? Isn't that what you're supposed to do with shit? Scrape it up with a shovel?"

"
I had nothing to do with it!
" Arnie cried, and the man across the way, who had been tinkering with his silencer looked up, startled.

Arnie lowered his voice.

"I'm sorry. I just wish you'd leave me alone. You know damn well I didn't have anything to do with it. You just went over the whole car. If Christine had hit that Welch kid that many times and that hard, it would be all busted up. I know that much just from watching TV. And when I was taking Auto Shop I two years ago, Mr Smolnack said that the two best ways he knew to totally destroy a car's front end was to either hit a deer or a person. He was joking a little, but he wasn't kidding… if you know what I mean." Arnie swallowed and heard a click in his throat, which was very dry.

"Sure," Junkins said. "Your car looks all right. But you don't, kid. You look like a sleepwalker. You look absolutely fucked over. Pardon my French." He flicked his cigarette away. "You know something, Arnie?"

"What?"

"I think you're lying faster than a horse can trot." He slapped Christine's hood. "Or maybe I should say faster than a Plymouth can run."

Arnie looked at him, his hand on the outside mirror on the passenger side. He said nothing.

"I don't think you're lying about killing the Welch boy. But I think you're lying about what they did to your car; your girl said they mashed the crap out of it, and she's a hell of a lot more convincing than you are. She cried while she told me. She said there was broken glass everywhere… Where did you buy replacement glass, by the way?"

"McConnell's," Arnie said promptly. "In the Burg."

"Still got the receipt?"

"Tossed it out."

"But they'll remember you. Big order like that."

"They might," Arnie said, "but I wouldn't count on it, Rudy. They're the biggest auto-glass specialists west of New York and east of Chicago. That covers a lot of ground. They do yea business, and a lot of it's old cars."

"Still, they'll have the paperwork."

"I paid cash."

"But your name will be on the invoice."

"No," Arnie said, and smiled a wintry smile. "Darnell's Do-It-Yourself Garage. That way I got a ten per cent discount."

"You got it all covered, don't you?"

"Lieutenant Junkins—"

"You're lying about the glass too, although I'll be goddamned if I know why."

"You'd think Christ was lying on Calvary, that's what I think," Arnie said angrily. "Since when is it a crime to buy replacement glass if someone busts up your windows? Or pay cash? Or get a discount?"

"Since never," Junkins said.

"Then leave me be."

"More important, I think you're lying about not knowing anything about what happened to the Welch boy. You know something. I want to know what."

"I don't know anything," Arnie said.

"What about—"

"I don't have anything more to say to you," Arnie said. "I'm sorry."

"All right," Junkins said, giving up so quickly that Arnie was immediately suspicious. He rummaged around in the sportcoat he was wearing under his topcoat and took out his wallet. Arnie saw that Junkins was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster and suspected Junkins had wanted him to see it. He produced a card and gave it to Arnie. "I can be reached at either of those numbers, If you want to talk about anything. Anything at all."

Arnie put the card in his breast pocket.

Junkins took one more leisurely stroll around Christine. "Hell of a restoration job," he repeated. He looked squarely at Arnie. "Why didn't you report it?"

Arnie let out a low shuddering sigh. "Because I thought that would be the end," he said. "I thought they'd let off."

"Yeah," Junkins said. "I thought that might be it. Good night, son."

"Good night."

Junkins started away, turned, came back. "Think it over," he said. "You really do look like hell, you know what I mean? You have a nice girl there. She's worried about you, and she feels bad about what happened to your car. Your dad's worried about you, too. I could get that even over the phone. Think it over and then give me a call, son. You'll sleep better."

Arnie felt something trembling behind his lips, something small and tearful, something that hurt. Junkins's brown eyes were kind. He opened his mouth—God alone knew what might have spilled out—and then a monstrous jab of pain walloped him in the back, making him straighten suddenly. It also had the effect of a slap on a hysteric. He felt calmer, clear-headed again.

"Good night," he repeated. "Good night, Rudy."

Junkins looked at him a moment longer, troubled, and then left.

Arnie began to shake all over. The trembling started in his hands and spread up his forearms to his elbows, and then it was suddenly everywhere. He grabbed blindly for the doorhandle, found it at last, and slipped into Christine, into the comforting smells of car and fresh upholstery. He turned the key to ACC, the dash lights glowed, and he felt for the radio dial.

As he did so his eyes fell on the swinging leather tab with R.D.L. branded into it and his dream recurred with sudden terrible force: the rotting corpse sitting where he was sitting now; the empty eyesockets staring out through the windshield; the fingerbones gripping the wheel; the empty grin of the skull's teeth as Christine bore down on Moochie Welch while the radio, tuned to WDIL, played "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.

He suddenly felt sick—puking-sick. Nausea fluttered sickeningly in his stomach and in the back of his throat. Arnie scrambled out of the car and ran for the head, his footfalls hammering crazily in his cars. He just made it. Everything came up; he vomited again and again until there was nothing left but sour spit. Lights danced in front of his eyes. His ears rang and the muscles in his gut throbbed tiredly.