downtown - except in this case downtown would be Harrisburg. No Miranda card. Everything is still fine for our hero, Arnold Cunningham.'
'I don't understand any of what you're - '
'You . . . understand. PLENTY!' Junkins roared at him. He had stopped next to a giant yellow hulk of a truck - another of Johnny Pomberton's dumpsters-in-the-making. He stared at Arnie. 'Three of the kids who beat on your car are dead. Autumn Red paint samples were taken at both crime scenes, leading us to believe that the vehicle the perpetrator used in both cases was at least in part Autumn Red. And gee whiz! It just turns out that the car those kids trashed is mostly Autumn Red. And you stand there and push your glasses up on your nose and tell me you don't understand what I'm talking about.'
'I was in Philadelphia when it happened,' Arnie said quietly. 'Don't you get that? Don't you get that at all?'
'Kiddo,' Junkins said flipping his cigarette away, 'that's the worst part of it. That's the part that really stinks.'
'I wish you'd get out of here or put me under arrest or something. Because I'm supposed to punch in and do some work.'
'For now,' Junkins said, 'talk is all I've got. The first time - when Welch got killed - you were supposed to be home in bed.'
'Pretty thin, I know,' Arnie said. 'Believe me, if I'd known this shit was going to come down on my head, I would have hired a sick friend to sit up with me.'
'Oh, no - that was good,' Junkins said. 'Your mother and father had no cause to doubt your tale. I could tell that from speaking to them. And alibis - the true ones - usually have more holes than a Salvation Army suit. It's when they start to look like suits of armour that I get nervous.'
'Holy Jumping Jesus!' Arnie almost screamed. 'It was a fucking chess meet! I've been in the chess club for four years now!'
Until today,' Junkins said, and Arnie grew still again. Junkins nodded. 'Oh yeah, I talked to the club advisor. Herbert Slawson. He says that the first three years you never missed a meeting, even came to a couple with a low-grade case of the flu. You were his star player. Then, this year, you were spotty right from the start - '
'I had my car to work on . . . and I got a girl - '
'He said you missed the first three tourneys, and he was pretty surprised when your name turned up on the trip sheet for the Northern States meet. He thought you'd lost all your interest in the club.'
'I told you - '
'Yes, you did. Too busy. Cars and girls, just what makes most kids too busy. But you regained your interest long enough to go to Philly - and then you dropped out. That strikes me as very odd.'
'I can't see anything funny about it,' Arnie said, but his voice seemed distant, almost lost in the surf-roar of blood in his ears.
'Bullshit. It looks as if you knew it was coming down and set yourself up with an airtight alibi.'
The roar in his head had even assumed the steady, wavelike beats of surf, each beat accompanied by a dull thrust of pain. He was getting a headache - why wouldn't this monstrous man with his prying brown eyes just go away? None of it was true, none of it, He hadn't set anything up, not an alibi, not anything. He had been as surprised as anyone else when he read in the paper what had happened. Of course he had been. There was nothing strange going on, unless it was this lunatic's paranoia, and
(how did you hurt your back anyway, Arnie? and by the way, do you see anything green? do you see)
he closed his eyes and for a moment the world seemed to lurch out of its orbit and he saw that green, grinning, rotting face floating before him, saying: Start her up. Get the heater going and let's motorvate. And while we're at it, let's get the shitters that wrecked our car. Let's grease the little cockknockers, kid, what do you say? Let's hit them so fucking hard the corpse-cutter down at city, hospital will have to pull the paint-chips out of their carcasses with pliers. What do you say? Find some doowop music on the radio and let's cruise. Let's -