pin money, that's what she said. I guess I racked the hell out of it in a very short time. Of course I don't remember it, but she says she just sat right down and bawled.' Arnie smiled a little, 'Up until this year, I couldn't feature my mother doing that. Now I think I can. Maybe I'm growing up a little, what do you think?'
Junkins lit a cigarette. 'Am I missing the point, Arnie? Because I don't see it yet.'
'She said that she would rather have had me in diapers until I was three than have had me do that. Because, she said, shit wipes off.' Arnie smiled. 'You flush it away and it's gone.'
'The way Moochie Welch is gone?' Junkins asked.
'I know nothing about that.'
'No?'
'No.'
'Scout's honour?' Junkins asked. The question was humorous but the eyes were not; they probed at Arnie, looking for the smallest break, a crucial flicker.
Down the aisle, the fellow who had been putting on his winter snows dropped a tool on the concrete. It clanged musically and the fellow chanted, almost chorally, 'Oh shit on you, you whore.'
Junkins and Arnie both glanced that way briefly, and the moment was broken.
'Sure, Scout's honour,' Arnie said. 'Look, I suppose you have to do this, it's your job - '
'Sure its my job,' Junkins agreed softly. 'The boy was run over three times each way. He was meat. They scraped him up with a shovel.'
'Come on,' Arnie said sickly. His stomach did a lazy barrel roll.
'Why? Isn't that what you're supposed to do with shit? Scrape it up with a shovel?'
'I had nothing to do with it!' Arnie cried, and the man across the way, who had been tinkering with his silencer looked up, startled.
Arnie lowered his voice.
'I'm sorry. I just wish you'd leave me alone. You know damn well I didn't have anything to do with it. You just went over the whole car. If Christine had hit that Welch kid that many times and that hard, it would be all busted up. I know that much just from watching TV. And when I was taking Auto Shop II two years ago, Mr Smolnack said that the two best ways he knew to totally destroy a car's front end was to either hit a deer or a person . He was joking a little, but he wasn't kidding. . . if you know what I mean.' Arnie swallowed and heard a click in his throat, which was very dry.
'Sure,' Junkins said. 'Your car looks all right. But you don't, kid. You look like a sleepwalker. You look absolutely fucked over. Pardon my French.' He flicked his cigarette away. 'You know something, Arnie?'
'What?'
'I think you're lying faster than a horse can trot.' He slapped Christine's hood. 'Or maybe I should say faster than a Plymouth can run.'
Arnie looked at him, his hand on the outside mirror on the passenger side. He said nothing.
'I don't think you're lying about killing the Welch boy. But I think you're lying about what they did to your car; your girl said they mashed the crap out of it, and she's a hell of a lot more convincing than you are. She cried while she told me. She said there was broken glass everywhere . . . Where did you buy replacement glass, by the way?'
'McConnell's,' Arnie said promptly. 'In the Burg.'
'Still got the receipt?'
'Tossed it out.'
'But they'll remember you. Big order like that.'
'They might,' Arnie said, 'but I wouldn't count on it, Rudy. They're the biggest auto-glass specialists west of New York and east of Chicago. That covers a lot of ground. They do yea business, and a lot of it's old cars.'
'Still, they'll have the paperwork.'
'I paid cash.'
'But your name will be on the invoice.'
'No,' Arnie said, and smiled a wintry smile. 'Darnell's Do-It-Yourself Garage. That way I got a ten per cent discount.'
'You got it all covered, don't you?'
'Lieutenant Junkins - '
'You're lying about the glass too, although I'll be goddamned if I know why.'
'You'd think Christ was lying on Calvary, that's what I think,' Arnie said angrily. 'Since when is it a crime to buy replacement glass if someone busts up your windows? Or pay cash? Or get a discount?'
'Since never,' Junkins said.
'Then leave me be.'
'More important, I think you're lying about not knowing anything about what happened to the Welch boy. You know something. I want to know what.'
'I don't know anything,' Arnie said.
'What about - '
'I don't have anything more to say to you,' Arnie said.