Four Past Midnight (54 page)

“Mort? Are you still there?”

He closed his eyes. Now that Herb had dispensed with the bogus John Wayne imitation, it was okay. It was just Herb again, and always had been. Herb using that word, that had just been—

What?

Just another float in the Parade of Coincidences
?
Okay
.
Sure
.
No problem
:
I'll just stand on the curb and watch it slide past. Why not
?
I've already watched half a dozen bigger ones go by
.

“Right here, Herb,” he said, opening his eyes. “I was just trying to figure out how do I love thee. You know, counting the ways?”

“You're thilly,” Herb said, obviously pleased. “And you're going to handle this carefully and prudently, right?”

“Right.”

“Then I think I'll go eat supper with the light of my life.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Goodbye, Herb—and thanks.”

“You're welcome. I'll try to make it the day after tomorrow. Dee says goodbye, too.”

“If she wants to pour the wine, I bet she does,” Mort said, and they both hung up laughing.

As soon as he put the telephone back on its table, the fantasy came back. Shooter. He do the police in different voices. Of course, he was alone and it was dark, a condition which bred fantasies. Nevertheless, he did not believe—at least in his head—that John Shooter was either a supernatural being or a supercriminal. If he had been the former, he would surely know that Morton Rainey had not committed plagiarism—at least not on that particular story—and if he had been the latter, he would have been off knocking over a bank or something, not farting around western Maine, trying to squeeze a short story out of a writer who made a lot more money from his novels.

He started slowly back toward the living room, intending to go through to the study and try the word processor, when a thought (
at least not that particular story
)

struck him and stopped him.

What exactly did
that
mean, not that particular story? Had he ever stolen someone else's work?

For the first time since Shooter had turned up on his porch with his sheaf of pages, Mort considered this question seriously. A good many reviews of his books had suggested that he was not really an original writer; that most of his works consisted of twice-told tales. He remembered Amy reading a review of The
Organ-Grinder's
Boy which had first acknowledged the book's pace and readability, and then suggested a certain derivativeness in its plotting. She'd said, “So what? Don't these people know there are only about five really good stories, and writers just tell them over and over, with different characters?”

Mort himself believed there were at least six stories: success; failure; love and loss; revenge; mistaken identity; the search for a higher power, be it God or the devil. He had told the first four over and over, obsessively, and now that he thought of it, “Sowing Season” embodied at least three of those ideas. But was that plagiarism? If it was, every novelist at work in the world would be guilty of the crime.

Plagiarism, he decided, was outright theft. And he had never done it in his life.
Never
.

“Never,” he said, and strode into his study with his head up and his eyes wide, like a warrior approaching the field of battle. And there he sat for the next one hour, and words he wrote none.

His dry stint on the word processor convinced him that it might be a good idea to drink dinner instead of eat it, and he was on his second bourbon and water when the telephone rang again. He approached it gingerly, suddenly wishing he had a phone answering machine after all. They did have at least one sterling quality: you could monitor incoming calls and separate friend from foe.

He stood over it irresolutely, thinking how much he disliked the sound modem telephones made. Once upon a time they had rung—jingled merrily, even. Now they made a shrill ululating noise that sounded like a migraine headache trying to happen.

Well
,
are you going to pick it up or just stand here listening to it do that
?

I don't want to talk to him again. He scares me and he infuriates me
,
and I don't know which feeling I dislike more
.

Maybe it's not him
.

Maybe it is
.

Listening to those two thoughts go around and around was even worse than listening to the warbling
beep-yawp
of the phone, so he picked it up and said hello gruffly and it was, after all, no one more dangerous than his caretaker, Greg Carstairs.

Greg asked the now-familiar questions about the house and Mort answered them all again, reflecting that explaining such an event was very similar to explaining a sudden death—if anything could get you over the shock, it was the constant repetition of the known facts.

“Listen, Mort, I finally caught up with Tom Greenleaf late this afternoon,” Greg said, and Mort thought Greg sounded a little funny—a little cautious. “He and Sonny Trotts were painting the Methodist Parish Hall.”

“Uh-huh? Did you speak to him about my buddy?”

“Yeah, I did,” Greg said. He sounded more cautious than ever.

“Well?”

There was a short pause. Then Greg said, “Tom thought you must have been mixed up on your days.”

“Mixed up on my ... what do you mean?”

“Well,” Greg said apologetically, “he says he did swing down Lake Drive yesterday afternoon, and he did see you; he said he waved to you and you waved back. But, Mort—”

“
What
?” But he was afraid he already knew what.

“Tom says you were alone,” Greg finished.

For a long moment, Mort didn't say anything. He did not feel
capable
of saying anything. Greg didn't say anything, either, giving him time to think. Tom Greenleaf, of course, was no spring chicken; he was Dave Newsome's senior by at least three and perhaps as many as six years. But neither was he senile.

“Jesus,” Mort said at last. He spoke very softly. The truth was, he felt a little winded.

“My idea,” Greg said diffidently, “was maybe
Tom
was the one who got a little mixed up. You know he's not exactly—”

“A spring chicken,” Mort finished. “I know it. But if there's anybody in Tashmore with a better eye for strangers than Tom, I don't know who it is. He's been remembering strangers all his
life
, Greg. That's one of the things caretakers do, right?” He hesitated, then burst out: “He looked at us! He looked right at
both
of us!”

Carefully, speaking as if he were only joshing, Greg said: “Are you sure you didn't just dream this fella, Mort?”

“I hadn't even considered it,” Mort said slowly, “until now. If none of this happened, and I'm running around telling people it
did
, I guess that would make me crazy.”

“Oh, I don't think
that
at all,” Greg said hastily.

“I do,” Mort replied. He thought:
But maybe that's what he really wants
.
To make people think you are crazy
.
And
,
maybe in the end
,
to make what people think the truth
.

Oh yes. Right. And he partnered up with old Tom Greenleaf to do the job
.
In fact
,
it was probably Tom who went up to Derry and burned the house
,
while Shooter stayed down here and wasted the cat
—
right?

Now
,
think about it
.
Really THINK
.
Was he there
?
Was he REALLY
?

So Mort thought about it. He thought about it harder than he had ever thought about anything in his life; harder, even, than he had thought about Amy and Ted and what he should do about them after he had discovered them in bed together on that day in May. Had he hallucinated John Shooter?

He thought again of the speed with which Shooter had grabbed him and thrown him against the side of the car.

“Greg?”

“I'm here, Mort.”

“Tom didn't see the car, either? Old station wagon, Mississippi plates?”

“He says he didn't see a car on Lake Drive at all yesterday. Just you, standing up by the end of the path that goes down to the lake. He thought you were admiring the view.”

Is it live
,
or is it Memorex
?

He kept coming back to the hard grip of Shooter's hands on his upper arms, the speed with which the man had thrown him against the car. “You lie,” Shooter had said. Mort had seen the rage chained in his eyes, and had smelled dry cinnamon on his breath.

His hands.

The pressure of his hands.

“Greg, hold the phone a sec.”

“Sure.”

Mort put the receiver down and tried to roll up his shirt-sleeves. He was not very successful, because his hands were shaking badly. He unbuttoned the shirt instead, pulled it off, then held out his arms. At first he saw nothing. Then he rotated them outward as far as they would go, and there they were, two yellowing bruises on the inside of each arm, just above the elbow.

The marks made by John Shooter's thumbs when he grabbed him and threw him against the car.

He suddenly thought he might understand, and was afraid. Not for himself, though.

For old Tom Greenleaf.

He picked up the telephone. “Greg?”

“I'm here.”

“Did Tom seem all right when you talked to him?”

“He was exhausted,” Greg said promptly. “Foolish old man has got no business crawling around on a scaffold and painting all day in a cold wind. Not at his age. He looked ready to fall into the nearest pile of leaves, if he couldn't get to a bed in a hurry. I see what you're getting at, Mort, and I suppose that if he was tired enough, it could have slipped his mind, but—”

“No, that's not what I'm thinking about. Are you sure exhaustion was all it was? Could he have been scared?”

Now there was a long, thinking silence at the other end of the line. Impatient though he was, Mort did not break it. He intended to allow Greg all the thinking time he needed.

“He didn't seem himself,” Greg said at last. “He seemed distracted ... off, somehow. I chalked it up to plain old tiredness, but maybe that wasn't it. Or not all of it.”

“Could he have been hiding something from you?”

This time the pause was not so long. “I don't know. He might have been. That's all I can say for sure, Mort. You're making me wish I'd talked to him longer and pressed him a little harder.”

“I think it might be a good idea if we went over to his place,” Mort said. “Now. It happened the way I told you, Greg. If Tom said something different, it could be because my friend scared the bejesus out of him. I'll meet you there.”

“Okay.” Greg sounded worried all over again. “But, you know, Tom isn't the sort of man who'd scare easy.”

“I'm sure that was true once, but Tom's seventy-five if he's a day. I think that the older you get, the easier to scare you get.”

“Why don't I meet you there?”

“That sounds like a good idea.” Mort hung up the telephone, poured the rest of his bourbon down the sink, and headed for Tom Greenleaf's house in the Buick.

Greg was parked in the driveway when Mort arrived. Tom's Scout was by the back door. Greg was wearing a flannel jacket with the collar turned up; the wind off the. lake was keen enough to be uncomfortable.

“He's okay,” he told Mort at once.

“How do you know?”

They both spoke in low tones.

“I saw his Scout, so I went to the back door. There's a note pinned there saying he had a hard day and went to bed early.” Greg grinned and shoved his long hair out of his face. “It
also says
that if any of his regular people need him, they should call me.”

“Is the note in his handwriting?”

“Yeah. Big old-man's scrawl. I'd know it anywhere. I went around and looked in his bedroom window. He's in there. The window's shut, but it's a wonder he doesn't break the damned glass, he's snoring so loud. Do you want to check for yourself?”

Mort sighed and shook his head. “But something's wrong, Greg. Tom saw us.
Both
of us. The man got hot under the collar a few minutes after Tom passed and grabbed me by the arms. I'm wearing his bruises. I'll show you, if you want to see.”

Greg shook his head. “I believe you. The more I think about it, the less I like the way he sounded when he said you were all by yourself when he saw you. There was something ... off about it. I'll talk to him again in the morning. Or we can talk to him together, if you want.”

“That would be good. What time?”

“Why not come down to the Parish Hall around nine-thirty? He'll have had two-three cups of coffee—you can't say boo to him before he's had his coffee—and we can get him down off that damned scaffolding for awhile. Maybe save his life. Sound okay?”

“Yes.” Mort held out his hand. “Sorry I got you out on a wild goosechase.”

Greg shook his hand. “No need to be. Something's not right here. I'm good and curious to find out what it is.”

Mort got back into his Buick, and Greg slipped behind the wheel of his truck. They drove off in opposite directions, leaving the old man to his exhausted sleep.

Mort himself did not sleep until almost three in the morning. He tossed and turned in the bedroom until the sheets were a battlefield and he could stand it no longer. Then he walked to the living-room couch in a kind of daze. He barked his shins on the rogue coffee table, cursed in a monotone, lay down, adjusted the cushions behind his head, and fell almost immediately down a black hole.