by Stephen King
"I repay," a woman's voice whispered. It was a sweet voice, and soft, but it was terrifying, just the same. There was no sanity in it.
"Good for you, bitch, Norman said in his dream. "You try to repay me and I'll change your whole fucking outlook.
She screamed, a sound that seemed to go directly to the center of his head without even passing through his ears, and he sensed her lunging toward him with her hands out. He drew in a deep breath, and blew the cigarette smoke apart. The woman disappeared. Norman felt her go. For a little while after that there was only darkness, with him floating peacefully in the middle of it, untouched by the fears and desires which haunted him when he was awake.
He woke up at ten past ten on Friday morning and shifted his eyes from the clock by the bed to the hotel room ceiling, almost expecting to see phantom figures moving through decaying stacks of cigarette smoke. There were no figures, of course, phantom or otherwise. No smoke, for that matter--just the lingering smell of Pall Malls, in hoc signo vinces. There was only Detective Norman Daniels, lying here in a sweaty bed that smelled of tobacco and used booze. His mouth tasted as if he had spent the previous evening sucking the end of a freshly polished cordovan shoe, and his left hand hurt like a mad bastard. He opened it and saw a shiny blister in the center of his palm. He looked at it for a long time, while pigeons fluttered and cooed at each other on the shit-encrusted ledge that ran past his window. At last the memory of blistering himself with the cigarette came back, and he nodded. He'd done it because he couldn't see Rose no matter how hard he tried ... and then, as if in compensation, he'd had crazy dreams about her all night long.
He placed two fingers on the sides of the blister and squeezed, slowly increasing the pressure until it popped. He wiped his hand on the sheet, relishing the waves of stinging pain. He lay looking at his hand--watching it throb, almost--for a minute or so. Then he reached under his bed for his traveling bag. There was a Sucrets tin at the bottom, and in it were a dozen or so assorted pills. A few were speedy, but most were downers. As a general rule, Norman found he could get up with no pharmacological help at all; it was getting back down again that sometimes presented a problem.
He took a Percodan with a small swallow of Scotch, then lay back, looking up at the ceiling and once again smoking one cigarette after another, stubbing them out in the overflowing ashtray when they were done.
This time it wasn't Rose he was thinking of, at least not directly; this time it was the picnic he was considering, the one being thrown by her new friends. He had been to Ettinger's Pier, and what he saw there wasn't encouraging. It was large--a combination beach, picnic area, and amusement park--and he didn't see any way he could stake it out with any confidence of seeing her arrive or leave. If he'd had six men (even four, if they knew what they were doing), he would have felt differently, but he was on his own. There were three ways in, assuming she didn't come by boat, and he could hardly watch all three of them at the same time. That meant working the crowd, and working the crowd would be a bitchkitty. He wished he could believe that Rose would be the only one there tomorrow who would recognize him, but if wishes were pigs, bacon would always be on sale. He had to assume they would be looking for him, and he would also have to assume they had received pictures of him from one of their sister groups back home. He didn't know about the x, but he was coming to believe that the first two letters in fax stood for Fucked Again.
That was one part of the problem. The other part was his own belief, backstopped by more than one bitter experience, that disguises were a recipe for disaster in situations like this. The only quicker, surer route to failure in the field was probably wearing the ever-popular wire, where you could lose six months' worth of surveillance and setup if a kid happened to be running a radio-controlled boat or racecar in the area where you were planning to bring the hammer down on some shitbag.
All right, he thought. Don't bitch about it. Remember what old Whitey Slater used to say--the situation is what the situation is. How you're going to work around it is the only question. And don't even think of putting it off. Their goddam party is just twenty-four hours away, and if you miss her there, you could hunt for her until Christmas and not find her. In case you hadn't noticed, this is a big city.
He got up, walked into the bathroom, and showered with his blistered hand stuck out through the shower curtain. He dressed in faded jeans and a nondescript green shirt, putting on his chisox cap and tucking the cheap sunglasses into his shirt pocket, at least for the time being. He took the elevator down to the lobby and went to the newsstand to get a paper and a box of Band-Aids. While he was waiting for the dope behind the counter to figure out his change, he looked over the guy's shoulder and through a glass panel at the back of the newsstand alcove. He could see the service elevators through this panel, and as he watched, one of them opened. Three chattering, laughing chambermaids stepped out. They were carrying their purses, and Norman guessed they were on their way to lunch. He had seen the one in the middle--slim, pretty fluffy blonde hair--someplace else. After a moment it came to him. He had been on his way to check out Daughters and Sisters. The blonde had walked beside him for a little while. Red slacks. Cute little ass.
"Here you are, sir, the counterman said. Norman stuffed his change into his pocket without looking at it. Nor did he look at the trio of maids as he shouldered past them, not even at the one with the cute tush. He had cross-referenced her automatically, that was all--it was a cop reflex, a knee that jerked on his own. His conscious mind was fixed on one thing and one thing only: the best way to spot Rose tomorrow without being spotted himself.
He was heading up the corridor toward the doors when he heard two words which he at first thought must have come out of his own head: Ettinger's Pier.
His stride faltered, his heart kicked into overdrive, and the blister in the palm of his hand began to throb fiercely. It was a single missed step, that was all--that one little hesitation, and then he went on heading toward the revolving doors with his head down. Someone looking at him might have thought he'd felt a brief muscle-twinge in his knee or calf, no more than that, and that was good. He didn't dare falter, that was the hell of it. If the woman who'd spoken was one of the cunts from their clubhouse over on Durham Avenue, she might recognize him if he drew attention to himself... might have already recognized him, if the speaker of those two magic words was the little honey he'd crossed the street beside the other day. He knew it was unlikely--as a cop he'd had first-hand experience of how amazingly, numbingly un-observant most civilians were--but from time to time it did happen. Killers and kidnappers and bank-thieves who had eluded capture long enough to make the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List suddenly found themselves back in the slam, dropped by a 7-Eleven clerk who read True Detective or a meter maid who watched all the reality-crime shows on TV. He didn't dare stop, but--
--but he had to stop.
Norman knelt abruptly to the left of the swinging door with his back to the women. He dropped his head and pretended to tie his shoe.
"--sorry to miss the concert, but if I want that car, I can't pass up the--"
Out the door they went, but what Norman had heard convinced him: it was the picnic the woman was talking about, the picnic and the concert that was going to round off the day, some group called the Indian Girls, probably lezzies. So there was a chance that this woman knew Rosie. Not a good chance--lots of people who weren't tight with Daughters and Sisters would be at Ettinger's Pier tomorrow--but a chance, just the same. And Norman was a man who believed emphatically in the fickle finger of fate. The hell of it was, he did not yet know which of the three had been talking.
Let it be Blondie, he prayed as he got quickly to his feet and went out through the swinging door. Let it be Blondie with the big eyes and the cute ass. Let it be her, what do you say?
It was dangerous to follow, of course--you could never tell when one of them might glance idly around and win the super bonus round of Place the Face--but at this point he could do nothing
else. He sauntered along behind them, his head casually turned to one side, as if the junkola in the shop windows he was passing was of vital interest to him.
"How are you making out on pillowcases today?" the tub of guts walking on the inside asked the other two.
"For once, they're all there, " the older woman walking on the outside said. "How about you, Pam?"
"I haven't counted yet, it's too depressing, " Blondie replied, and they all laughed--those high, giggly sounds that always made Norman feel as if his fillings were cracking in his mouth. He stopped at once, looking in a window at a bunch of sporting goods, letting the maids pull ahead. It was her, all right--no question about it. Blondie was the one who had said the magic words Ettinger's Pier. Maybe it changed everything, maybe it changed nothing. Right now he was too excited to figure it out. It was certainly an amazing stroke of luck, though-the kind of miraculous, coincidental break you always hoped for when you were working a longshot case, the break that happened more often than anyone would ever believe.
For now he would file this in the back of his mind and proceed with Plan A. He wouldn't even ask about Blondie back at the hotel, at least not yet. He knew her name was Pam, and that was plenty to start with.
Norman walked to the bus stop, waited fifteen minutes for the airport shuttle, and then hopped on board. It was a long ride; the terminal was on the edge of the city. When he finally disembarked in front of Terminal A, he slipped on his dark glasses, crossed the street, and made his way to the longterm parking area. The first car he tried jumping had been there so long the battery was dead. The second one, a nondescript Ford Tempo, started all right. He told the man in the collection booth that he'd been in Dallas for three weeks and had lost his ticket. He was always losing them, he said. He lost laundry tickets, too, and he was always having to show his driver's license at Photomat when he stopped in to pick up his snapshots. The man in the collection booth nodded and nodded, the way you do at a boring story you've already heard about ten thousand times. When Norman humbly offered him an extra ten dollars in lieu of the ticket, the man in the collection booth perked up a little. The money disappeared.
Norman Daniels drove out of longterm parking at almost exactly the same moment that Robbie Lefferts was offering his fugitive wife what he termed "a more solid business arrangement. "
Two miles down the road, Norman parked behind a beat-to-shit Le Sabre and swapped license plates. Another two miles on, he stopped at a Robo-Wash. He had a bet with himself that the Temp would turn out to be dark blue, but he lost. It was green. He didn't think it mattered-the man in the collection booth had only taken his eyes off his little black-and-white TV when the tenspot had appeared under his nose-but it was best to play safe. It increased the comfort level.
Norman turned on the radio and found an oldies station.
Shirley Ellis was on, and he sang along as Shirley instructed, "If the first two letters are ever the same/Drop them both and say the namelLike Barry-Barry, drop the B, oh-Arrylfhat's the only rule that is contrary. " Norman realized he knew every word of that stupid old song. What kind of world was it where you couldn't remember the fucking quadratic equation or the various forms of the French verb avoir two years after you got out of high school, but when you were getting on for forty years old you could still remember Nick-Nick-bo-bick, banana-fanna-fo-fick, fee-fi-mo-mick, Nick? What kind of world was that?
One that's slipping behind me now, Norman thought serenely, and yes, that seemed to be the truth. It was like in those science fiction movies where the spacemen saw Earth dwindling in the viewscreens, first a ball, then a coin, then a tiny glowing dot, then all gone. That was what the inside of his head was like now--a spacecraft headed out on a five-year mission to explore new worlds and go where no man had gone before. The Starship Norman, approaching warp-speed.
Shirley Ellis finished up and something by the Beatles came on. Norman twisted the radio's volume knob off so hard he broke it. He didn't want to listen to any of that hippy-dippy "Hey Jude" crap today.
He was still a couple of miles from where the real city began when he saw a place called The Base Camp. ARMY SURPLUS LIKE YOU NEVER FIND! the sign out front read, and for some reason that made him burst out laughing. He thought it was in some ways the single most peculiar motto he'd seen in his whole life; it seemed to mean something, but it was impossible to say just what. Anyway, the sign didn't matter. The store probably had one of the things he was looking for, and that did.
There was a big banner reading ALWAYS BE SAFE, NEVER BE SORRY over the middle aisle. Norman inspected three different kinds of "stun-gas, pepper-gas pellets, a rack of Ninja throwing-stars (the perfect weapon for home defense if you should happen to be attacked by a blind quadriplegic), gas guns that fired rubber bullets, slingshots, brass knuckles both plain and studded, blackjacks and bolas, whips and whistles.
Halfway down this aisle was a glass case containing what Norman considered to be the only really useful item in The Base Camp. For sixty-three-fifty he purchased a taser which produced a large (although probably not the 90,000 volts promised on the label) wallop of juice between its two steel poles when the triggers were pushed. Norman considered this weapon every bit as dangerous as a small-caliber pistol, and the best part was that one did not have to sign one's name anywhere in order to purchase one.
"You wah niy-vole baddery widdat?" the clerk asked. He was a bullet-headed young man with a harelip. He wore a teeshirt which said BETTER TO HAVE A GUN AND NOT NEED ONE THAN NEED ONE AND NOT HAVE ONE. To Norman he looked like the sort of fellow whose parents might have been blood relatives. "Dass waddit runs on--a niy-vole. "
Norman realized what the young man with the harelip was trying to say and nodded. "Give me two," he said. "Let's live a little. "
The young man laughed as if this was the funniest line he'd ever heard, even funnier than Army Surplus Like You Never Find!, and then he bent down, got two nine-volt batteries from under the counter, and slapped them down beside Norman's Omega taser.
"Dull-feetcha!" the young man cried, and laughed some more. Norman figured this one out, too, after a moment, and laughed right along with Young Mister Harelip and later he thought that was the exact moment when he hit warp-speed and all the stars turned into lines. All ahead, Mr. Sulu--this time we're going way past the Klingon Empire.
He drove the stolen Tempo back into the city and in a part of town where the smiling models on the cigarette billboards started being black rather than white, he found a barber shop by the charming name of Cut Me Some Slack. He went in and found a young black man with a cool moustache sitting in a old-fashioned barber chair. There were Walkman earphones on his head and a copy of Jet in his lap.
"Whatchoo want?" the black barber asked. He spoke perhaps more brusquely than he would have to a black man, but not discourteously, either. You weren't discourteous to a man like this without a damned good reason, especially when you were alone in your shop. He was six-two at least, with broad shoulders and big, thick legs. Also, he smelled like a cop.
Above the mirror were photographs of Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Jalen Rose. Jordan was wearing a Birmingham Barons baseball uniform. Above his picture was a slip of paper with THE ONCE & FUTURE BULL typed on it. Norman pointed. "Do me like that, " he said.
The black barber looked at Norman carefully, first making sure he wasn't drunk or stoned, then trying to make sure he wasn't joking. The second was harder than the first. "Whatchoo saying, brother? Are you saying you want a cleanhead?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying." Norman ran a hand through his hair, which was a thick black just starting to show flecks of gray at the temples. It was neither exceptionally short nor exceptionally long. He had worn it at this same length for almost twenty years. He looked at himself in the mirror, trying to imagine what he was going to look like, as bald as Michael Jordan, only white. He couldn't do it. With luck, Rose and her new friends wouldn't be able to, either.
"You sure?"
Suddenl
y Norman felt almost sick with the desire to knock this man down and drop both knees onto his chest and lean over and bite his entire upper lip, cool moustache and all, right off his face. He supposed he knew why, too. He looked like that memorable little cocksucker, Ramon Sanders. The one who had tried to cash in on the ATM card his lying bitch of a wife had stolen.
Oh, barber, Norman thought. Oh barber, you're so close to being nothing but taillights. Ask one more question, say one more wrong word in my face, and that's all you'll be. And I can't say anything to you; I couldn't warn you even if I wanted to, because right now my own voice is all the firing-pin I'd need. So here we are, and here we go.
The barber gave him another long, careful look. Norman stood where he was and let him do it. Now he felt composed. What happened would be what happened. It was all in this jiggedy-jig's hands.
"All right, I guess you are, " the barber said at last. His voice was mild and disarming. Norman relaxed his right hand, which had been shoved deep into his pocket and gripping the handle of the taser. The barber put his magazine on the counter beside his bottles of tonic and cologne (there was a little brass sign there that said SAMUEL LOWE), then got up and shook out a plastic apron. "You wanna be like Mike, let's do it. "
Twenty minutes later, Norman was staring at himself thoughtfully in the mirror. Samuel Lowe stood beside his chair, watching him look. Lowe seemed apprehensive, but he also seemed interested. He looked like a man seeing something familiar from an entirely new perspective. Tivo new customers had come in. They were also looking at Norman look at himself, and they wore identical expressions of appraisal.