It

of sweat from his forehead. He listened again. ‘Okay, Mr Kerpaskian. Yes. I’ll . . . yes, I got it, K-E-R-P-A-S-K-I-A-N, right! Czech-Jewish, is it? Really! That’s . . . that’s most unusual. Yes, I will. Goodnight. Thank you.’
He hung up and closed his eyes. ‘Jesus!’ he cried in a thick, low voice. ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!’ He made as if to shove the phone off the table and then simply let his hand fall. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his pyjama top.
‘He’s alive, but in grave condition,’ he told the others. ‘Henry sliced him up like a Christmas turkey. One of the cuts chopped into his femoral artery and he’s lost all the blood a man can and still stay alive. Mike managed to get some kind of tourniquet on it, or he would have been dead when they found him.’
Beverly began to cry. She did it like a child, with both hands plastered to her face. For a little while her hitching sobs and the rapid whistle of Eddie’s breathing were the only sounds in the room.
‘Mike wasn’t the only one who got sliced up like a Christmas turkey,’ Eddie said at last. ‘Henry looked like he just went twelve rounds with Rocky Balboa in a Cuisinart.’
‘D-Do you still w-w-want to g-g-go to the p-p-police, Bev?’
There were Kleenex on the nighttable but they were a caked and sodden mass in the middle of a puddle of Perrier. She went into the bathroom, making a wide circle around Henry, got a wash-cloth, and ran cool wate r on it. It felt delicious against her hot puffy face. She felt that she could think clearly again — not rationally but clearly. She was suddenly sure that rationality would kill them if they tried to use it now. That cop. Rademacher. He had been suspicious. Why not? People didn’t call the library at three-thirty in the morning. He had assumed some guilty knowledge. What would he assume if he found out that she had called him from a room where there was a dead man on the floor with a jagged bottle-neck planted in his guts? That she and four other strangers had just come into town the day before for a little reunion and this guy just happened to drop by? Would she buy the tale if the shoe were on the other foot? Would anyone? Of course, they could buttress their tale by adding that they had come back to finish the monster that lived in the drains under the city. That would certainly add a convincing note of gritty realism.
She came out of the bathroom and looked at Bill. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go to the police. I think Eddie’s right — something might happen to us. Something final. But that isn’t the real reason.’ She looked at the four of them. ‘We swore it,’ she said. ‘We swore. Bill’s brother . . . Stan . . . all the others . . . and now Mike. I’m ready, Bill.’
Bill looked at the others.
Richie nodded. ‘Okay, Big Bill. Let’s try.’
Ben said, ‘The odds look worse than ever. We’re two short now.’
Bill said nothing.
‘Okay.’ Ben nodded. ‘She’s right. We swore.’
‘E-E-Eddie?’
Eddie smiled wanly. ‘I guess I get another pigger-back down that ladder, huh? If the ladder’s still there.’
‘No one throwing rocks this time, though,’ Beverly said. ‘They’re dead. All three of them.’
‘Do we do it now, Bill?’ Richie asked.
‘Y-Y-Yes,’ Bill said. ‘I th-think this is the t –t-time.’
‘Can I say something?’ Ben asked abruptly.
Bill looked at him and grinned a little. ‘A-A-Any time.’
‘You guys are still the best friends I ever had,’ Ben said. ‘No matter how this turns out. I just . . . you know, wanted to tell you that.’
He looked around at them, and they looked solemnly back at him.
‘I’m glad I remembered you,’ he added. Richie snorted. Beverly giggled. Then they were all laughing, looking at each other in the old way, in spite of the fact that Mike was in the hospital, perhaps dying or already dead, in spite of the fact that Eddie’s arm was broken (again), in spite of the fact that it was the deepest ditch of the morning.
‘Haystack, you have such a way with words,’ Richie said, laughing and wiping his eyes. ‘He should have been the writer, Big Bill.’
Still smiling a little, Bill said: ‘And on that nuh-nuh-note — ‘
5
They took Eddie’s borrowed limo. Richie drove. The groundfog was thicker now, drifting through the streets like cigarette smoke, not quite reaching the hooded streetlamps. The stars overhead were bright chips of ice, spring stars . but by cocking his head to the half– open window on the passenger side, Bill thought he could hear summer thunder in the distance. Ram was being ordered up somewhere over the horizon.
Richie turned on the radio and there was Gene Vincent singing ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’ He hit one of the other buttons and got Buddy Holly. A third punch brought Eddie Cochran singing ‘Summertime Blues.’