Thinner

by Stephen King

  'You called Kirk Penschley and told him to lay off,' Billy said, bemused.

  'No, I called Kirk Penschley and told him to tell the Barton agency to lay off,' Ginelli corrected. 'And not exactly in those words, either. I can' be a little bit political when I have to be, William. Give me some credit.'

  'Man, I give you a lot of credit. More every minute.'

  'Well, thank you. Thank you, William. I appreciate that.' He lit a cigarette. 'Anyway, your wife and her doctor friend will continue to get reports, but they'll be a little bit off. I mean, they'll be like the National Enquirer and Reader's Digest version of the truth - do you dig what I am saying.

  Billy laughed. 'Yeah, I see.'

  'So, we got a week. And a week should be enough.'

  'What are you going to do?'

  'All you'll let me do, I guess. I am going to scare them, William. I'm going to scare him. I'm going to scare him so bad he's gonna need to put a fucking Delco tractor battery in his pacemaker. And I'm going to keep raising the level of the scares until one of two things happens. Either he is gonna cry uncle and take off what he put on you, or we decide he don't scare, that old man. If that happens, I come back to you and ask if you have changed your mind about hurting people. But maybe it won't go that far.'

  'How are you going to scare him?'

  Ginelli touched the shopping bag with the toe of one Bally boot and told him how he meant to start. Billy was appalled. Billy argued with Ginelli, as he had foreseen; then he talked with Ginelli, as he had also foreseen; and although Ginelli never raised his voice, his eyes continued to whirl and twirl with that mad light and Billy knew he might as well have been talking to the man in the moon.

  And as the fresh pain in his hand slowly subsided to the former throbbing ache, he began to feel sleepy again.

  'When are you going?' he asked, giving up.

  Ginelli glanced at his watch. 'Ten past ten now. I'll give them another four or five hours. They been doing a good little business out there, from what I heard downtown. Telling a lot of fortunes. And the dogs - those pit-bulls. Christ Almighty. The dogs you saw weren't pit-bulls, were they?'

  'I never saw a pit-bull,' Billy said sleepily. 'The ones I saw all looked like hounds.'

  'Pit-bulls look like a cross between terriers and bulldogs. They cost a lot of dough. If you want to see pit-bulls fight, you got to agree to pay for one dead dog before the wagers even get put down. It's one nasty business.

  'They're into all the classy stuff in this town, ain't they, William - Ferrari sunglasses, dope boats, dogfights. Oh, sorry -and tarot and the I Ching.'

  'Be careful,' Billy said.

  'I'll be careful,' Ginelli said, 'don't worry.'

  Billy fell asleep shortly after. When he woke up it was ten minutes until four and Ginelli was gone. He was seized with the certainty that Ginelli was dead. But Ginelli came in at a quarter to six, so fully alive that he seemed somehow too big for the place. His clothes, face, and hands were splattered with mud that reeked of sea salt. He was grinning. That crazy light danced in his eyes.

  'William,' he said, 'we're going to pack your things and move you out of Bar Harbor. Just like a government witness going to a safe house.'

  Alarmed, Billy asked, 'What did you do?'

  'Take it easy, take it easy! Just what I said I was going to do - no more and no less. But when you stir up a hornet's nest with a stick, it's usually a good idea to flog your dogs on down the road afterward, William, don't you think so?'

  'Yes, but

  'No time now. I can talk and pack your stuff at the same time.'

  'Where?' Billy almost wailed.

  'Not far. I'll tell you on the way. Now, let's get going. And maybe you better start by changing your shirt. You're a good man, William, but you are starting to smell a little ripe.

  Billy had started up to the office with his key when Ginelli touched him on the shoulder and gently took it out of his hand.

  'I'll just put this on the night table in your room. You checked in with a credit card, didn't you?'

  'Yes. but -'

  'Then we'll just make this sort of an informal checkout. No harm done, less attention attracted to us guys. Right?'

  A woman jogging by on the berm of the highway looked casually at them, back at the road ... and then her head snapped back in a wide-eyed double-take that Ginelli saw but Billy mercifully missed.

  'I'll even leave ten bucks for the maid,' Ginelli said. 'We'll take your car. I'll drive.'

  'Where's yours?' He knew Ginelli had rented one, and was now realizing belatedly that he hadn't heard an engine before Ginelli walked in. All of this was going too fast for Billy's mind -he couldn't keep up with it.

  'It's okay. I left it on a back road about three miles from here and walked. Pulled the distributor cap and left a note on the windshield saying I was having engine trouble and would be back in a few hours, just in case anybody should get nosy. I don't think anyone will. There was grass growing up the middle of the road, you know?'

  A car went by. The driver got a look at Billy Halleck and slowed down. Ginelli could see him leaning over and craning his neck.

  'Come on, Billy. People looking at you. The next bunch could be the wrong people.'

  An hour later Billy was sitting in front of the television in another motel room - this the living room of a seedy little suite in the Blue Moon Motor Court and Lodge in Northeast Harbor. They were less than fifteen miles from Bar Harbor, but Ginelli seemed satisfied. On the TV screen, Woody Woodpecker was trying to sell insurance to a talking bear.

  'Okay,' Ginelli said. 'You rest up the hand, William. I'm gonna be gone all day.'

  'You're going back there?'

  'What, go back to the hornet's nest while the hornets are still flying? Not me, my friend. No, today I'm gonna play with cars. Tonight'll be time enough for Phase Two. Maybe I'll get time enough to look in on you, but don't count on it.'

  Billy didn't see Richard Ginelli again until the following morning at nine, when he showed up driving a dark blue Chevy Nova that had certainly not come from Hertz or Avis. The paint was dull and spotted, there was a hairline crack in the passenger-side window, and a big dent in the trunk. But it was jacked in the back and there was a supercharger cowling on the hood.

  This time Billy had given him up for dead a full six hours ago, and he greeted Ginelli shakily, trying not to weep with relief. He seemed to be losing all control of his emotions as he lost weight ... and this morning, as the sun came up, he had felt the first unsteady racings of his heart. He had gasped for breath and pounded at his chest with one closed fist. The beat had finally smoothed out again, but that had been it: the first instance of arrhythmia.

  'I thought you were dead,' he told Ginelli as he came in.

  'You keep saying that and I keep turning up. I wish you would relax about me, William. I can take care of myself. I am a big boy. If you thought I was going to underestimate this old fuck, that would be one thing. But I'm not. He's smart, and he's dangerous.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Nothing. I'll tell you later.'

  'Now!'

  No.'.

  'Why not?'

  'Two reasons,' Ginelli said patiently. 'First, because you might ask me to back off. Second, because I haven't been this tired in about twelve years. I'm gonna go in there to the bedroom and crash out for eight hours. Then I'm gonna get up and eat three pounds of the first food I can snag. Then I'm gonna go back out and shoot the moon.'

  Ginelli did indeed look tired - almost haggard. Except for his eyes, Billy thought. His eyes are still whirling and twirling like a couple of fluorescent carnival pinwheels.

  'Suppose I did ask you to back off?' Billy asked quietly. 'Would you do it, Richard?'

  Richard looked at him for a long, considering moment and then gave Billy the answer he had known he would give ever since he had first seen that mad light in Ginelli's eyes.

  'I couldn't now,' Ginelli said calmly. 'You're sick, William. It's through your
whole body. You can't be trusted to know where your own best interest lies.'

  In other words, you've taken out your own set of committal papers on me. Billy opened his mouth to speak this thought aloud and then closed his mouth again. Because Ginelli didn't mean what he said; he had only said what sounded sane.

  'Also because it's personal, right?' Billy asked him.

  'Yeah,' Ginelli replied. 'Now it's personal.'

  He went into the bedroom, took off his shirt and pants, and lay down. He was asleep on top of the coverlet five minutes later.

  Billy drew a glass of water, swallowed an Empirin, and then drank the rest of the water standing in the doorway. His eyes moved from Ginelli to the pants crumpled on the chair. Ginelli had arrived in a pair of impeccable cotton slacks, but somewhere in the last couple of days he had picked up a pair of blue jeans. The keys to the Nova parked out front would undoubtedly be in them. Billy could take them and drive away ... except he knew he wouldn't do that, and the fact that he would be signing his own death warrant by so doing now seemed actually secondary. The important thing now seemed to be how and where all of this would end.

  At midday, while Ginelli was still sleeping deeply in the other room, Billy had another episode of arrhythmia. Shortly after, he dozed off himself and had a dream. It was short and totally mundane, but it filled him with a queer mixture of terror and hateful pleasure. In this dream he and Heidi were sitting in the breakfast nook of the Fairview house. Between them was a pie. She cut a large piece and gave it to Billy. It was an apple pie. 'This will fatten you up,' she said. 'I don't want to be fat,' he replied. 'I've decided I like being thin. You eat it.' He gave her the piece of pie, stretching an arm no thicker than a bone across the table. She took it. He sat watching as she ate every bite, and with every bite she took, his feelings of terror and dirty joy grew.

  Another spell of light arrhythmia jolted him awake from his dream. He sat there for a moment, gasping, waiting for his heart to slow to its proper rhythm, and eventually it did. He was seized by the feeling that he had had more than a dream - that he had just experienced a prophetic vision of some kind. But such feelings often accompany vivid dreams, and as the dream itself fades, so does the feeling. This happened to Billy Halleck, although he had cause to remember this dream not long after.

  Ginelli got up at six in the evening, showered, pulled on the jeans and a dark turtleneck sweater.

  'Okay,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow morning, Billy. Then we'll know.'

  Billy asked again what Ginelli meant to do, what had happened so far, and once again Ginelli refused to tell him.

  'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Meantime, I'll give her your love.'

  'Give who my love?'

  Ginelli smiled. 'Lovely Gina. The whore who put the ball bearing through your hand.'

  'Leave her alone,' Billy said. When he thought of those dark eyes, it seemed to be impossible to say anything else, no matter what she had done to him.

  'No one gets hurt,' Ginelli reiterated, and then he was gone. Billy listened to the Nova start up, listened to the rough sound of its motor - that roughness would smooth out only when it got up to around sixty-five miles an hour - as Ginelli backed it out of the space, and reflected that No one gets hurt wasn't the same thing as agreeing to leave the girl alone. Not at all.

  This time it was noon before Ginelli returned. There was a deep cut across his forehead and along his right arm there the turtleneck sweater's sleeve hung in two flaps.

  'You lost some more weight,' he said to Billy. 'You eating.

  'I'm trying,' Billy said, 'but anxiety isn't much good for the appetite. You look like you lost some blood.'

  'A little. I'm okay.'

  'A ' you going to tell me now what the hell you've been doing?

  'Yes. I'm going to tell you everything just as soon as I get out of the shower and bandage myself up. You're going to meet with him tonight, Billy. That's the important thing. That's what you want to psych yourself up for.'

  A stab of mingled fear and excitement poked at his belly like a shard of glass. 'Him? Lemke?'

  'Him,' Ginelli agreed. 'Now, let me get a shower, William. I must not be as young as I thought - all this excitement has got my ass dragging.' He called back over his shoulder, 'And order some coffee. Lots of coffee. Tell the guy to just leave it outside the door and slide the check underneath for you to sign.'

  Billy watched him go, his mouth hanging open. Then, when he heard the shower start, he closed his mouth with a snap and went to the phone to order the coffee.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Ginelli's Story

  He spoke at first in quick bursts, falling silent for a few moments after each to consider what came next. Ginelli's energy seemed really low for the first time since he had turned up at the Bar Harbor Motor Inn on Monday afternoon. He did not seem much hurt - his wounds were really only deep scratches - but Billy believed he was badly shaken.

  All the same, that crazy glow eventually began to dawn in his eyes again, at first stuttering on and off like a neon sign just after you turn the switch at dusk, then glowing steadily. He pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his jacket and dumped a capful of Chivas into his coffee.. He offered Billy the flask. Billy declined - he didn't know what the booze might do to his heart.

  Ginelli sat up straighter, brushed the hair off his forehead, and began to talk in a more normal rhythm.

  At three o'clock on Tuesday morning, Ginelli had parked on a woods road which branched off from Route 37-A near the Gypsies' camp. He fiddled with the steaks for a while and then walked back to the highway carrying the shopping bag. High clouds were sliding across the halfmoon like shutters. He waited for them to clear off, and when they did for a moment he was able to spot the circle of vehicles. He crossed the road and set off cross-country in that direction.

  'I'm a city boy, but my sense of direction ain't as bad as it could be,' he said. 'I can trust it in a pinch. And I didn't want to go in the same way you did, William.'

  He cut through a couple of fields and a thin copse of woods; splashed through one boggy place that smelled, he said, like twenty pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag. He also caught the seat of his pants in some very old barbed wire that had been all but invisible in the moonless dark.

  'If all that is country living, William, the rubes can have it,' he said.

  He had not expected any trouble from the camp hounds; Billy was a case in point. They hadn't bothered to make a sound until he actually stepped into the circle of the campfire, although they surely must have caught his scent before then.

  'You'd expect Gypsies to have better watchdogs than that,' Billy commented. 'At least that's the image.'

  'Nah,' Ginelli said. 'People can find all kinds of reasons to roust Gypsies without the Gyps themselves giving them more.'

  'Like dogs that bark all night long?'

  'Yeah, like that. You got much smarter, William, and people are gonna think you're Italian.'

  Still, Ginelli had taken no chances - he moved slowly along the backs of the parked vehicles, skipping the vans and campers where people would be sleeping and only looking in the cars and station wagons. He saw what he wanted after checking only two or three vehicles: an old suit coat crumpled up on the seat of a Pontiac station wagon.

  'Car wasn't locked,' he said. 'Jacket wasn't a bad fit, but it smelled like a weasel died in each pocket. I seen a pair of old sneakers on the floor in the back. They was a little tight, but I crammed 'em on just the same. Two cars later I found a hat that looked like something left over from a kidney transplant and put that on.'

  He had wanted to smell like one of the Gypsies, Ginelli explained, but not just as insurance against a bunch of worthless mutts sleeping by the embers of the campfire it was the other bunch of dogs that interested him. The valuable dogs. The pit-bulls.

  Three-quarters of the way around the circle, he spotted a camper with a small rear window that had been covered with wire mesh instead of glass. He peered in and saw nothi
ng at all - the back of the camper was completely bare.

  'But it smelled of dog, William,' Ginelli said. 'Then I looked the other way and risked a quick poke on the penlight I brought. The hay-grass was all broken down in a path going away from the back of that camper. You didn't have to be Dan'l Boone to see it. They took the fucking dogs out of the rolling kennel and stashed them somewhere else so the local dog warden or humane-society babe wouldn't find them if someone blabbed. Only they left a path even a city boy could pick up with one quick poke of his flashlight. Stupid. That's when I really started to believe we could put some blocks to them.'

  Ginelli followed the path over a knoll and to the edge of another small wooded area.

  'I lost the path,' he said. 'I just stood there for a minute or two wondering what to do next. And then I heard it, William. I heard it loud and clear. Sometimes the gods give you a break.'

  'What did you hear?'

  'A dog farting,' Ginelli said. 'Good and loud. Sounded like someone blowing a trumpet with a mute on it.'

  Less than twenty feet into the woods he had found a rough corral in a clearing. It was no more than a circle of thick branches driven into the ground and then laced up with barbed wire. Inside were seven pit-bulls. Five were fast asleep. The other two were looking dopily at Ginelli.

  They looked dopy because they were dopy. 'I thought they'd be stoned, although it wasn't safe to count on it. Once you train dogs to fight, they become a pain in the ass - they will fight with each other and wreck your investment unless you're careful. You either put them in separate cages or you dope them. Dope is cheaper and it's easy to hide. And if they had been straight, a rinky-dink piece of work like that dog corral wouldn't have held them. The ones getting their asses chewed would have busted out even if it meant leaving half their hides hanging on the wires behind them. They were only sobering them up when the betting line got heavy enough to justify the risk. First the dope, then the show, then more dope.' Ginelli laughed.

  'See? Pit-bulls are just like fucking rock stars. It wears them out quick, but as long as you stay in the black, you can always find more pit-bulls. They didn't even have a guard. '