Strained something really bad. So he had said. And one of the junkers had started to slip, and he had pushed it back up, but that hadn't been how he hurt his back, had it? No.
That night after he and Leigh had found Christine smashed to hell in the parking lot, sitting on four slashed tyres . . . that night at Darnell's, after everyone was gone . . . he had tuned the radio in Will's office to the oldies on WDIL. Will trusted him now, why not? He was running cigarettes across the state line into New York, he was running fireworks all the way over to Burlington, and twice he had run something wrapped in flat brown-paper packages into Wheeling, where a young guy in an old Dodge Challenger traded him another, slightly larger, brown-paper package, for it. Arnie thought maybe he was trading cocaine for money, but he didn't want to know for sure.
He drove a boat on these trips, Will's private car, a 1966 Imperial as black as midnight in Persia. It was whisper-quiet, and the boot had a false bottom. If you kept to the speed limit, it was no problem. Why should it be? The important thing was that he now had the keys to the garage. He could come in after everyone else was gone. Like he had that night. And he had turned on WDIL and he had . . . he had . . .
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 colour 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 tyres. 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