there,' I said. 'See if you can find a broom, or a long stick of wood.'
'What good will that do?' she asked, crying harder.
'Just get it, and then we'll see.'
She we into the dark maw of the open door and disappeared from view . I held onto my leg and sparred with terror. If I really had broken my leg again, there was a good chance I'd be wearing a built-up heel on my left foot for the rest of my life. But there might not even be that much of my life left if we couldn't put a stop to Christine. Now there was a cheery thought.
Leigh came back with a push broom. 'Will this do?' she asked.
'To get us inside, yes. Then we'll have to see if we can find something better.'
The handle was the type that unscrews. I got hold of it, unthreaded it, and tossed the bristle end aside. Holding it in my left hand along my side - just another goddam crutch I pushed down the clutch with it. It held for a moment, then slipped off. The clutch sprang back up. The top of the handle almost bashed me in the mouth. Lookin good, Guilder. But it would have to do.
'Come on, get in,' I said.
'Dennis, are you sure?'
'As sure as I can be,' I said.
She looked at me for a moment, and then nodded. 'Okay.'
She went around to the passenger side and got in. I slammed my own door, depressed Petunia's clutch with the broom-handle, and geared into first. I had the clutch halfway out and Petunia was just starting to roll forward when the broom-handle slipped off the clutch again. The septic tanker ran inside Darnell's Garage with a series of neck-snapping jerks, and when I slammed my right foot down on the brake, the truck stalled. We were mostly inside.
'Leigh, I've got to have something with a wider foot,' I said. 'This broom-handle don't cut it.'
'I'll see what there is.'
She got out and began to walk around the edge of the garage floor, hunting. I stared around. Creepy, Leigh had said, and she was right. The only cars left were four or five old soldiers so gravely wounded that no one had cared enough to claim them. All the rest of the slant spaces with their numbers stencilled in white paint were empty. I glanced at stall twenty and then glanced away.
The overhead tyre racks were likewise nearly empty. A few baldies remained, heeled over against one another like giant doughnuts blackened in a fire, but that was all. One of the two lifts was partially up, with a wheel-rim caught beneath it. The front-end alignment chart on the right-hand wall glimmered faintly red and white, the two headlight targets like bloodshot eyes. And shadows, everywhere. Overhead, big box-shaped heaters pointed their louvers this way and that, roosting up there like weird bats.
It seemed very much like a death-place.
Leigh had used another of Jimmy's keys to open Will's office. I could see her moving back and forth in there through the window Will had used to look out at his customers . . . those working joes who had to keep their cars running so they could blah-blah-blah. She flipped some switches, and the overhead fluorescents came on in snowcold ranks. So the electric company hadn't cut off the juice. I'd have to have her turn the lights off again - we couldn't afford to risk attracting attention - but at least we could have some heat.
She opened another door and disappeared temporarily from view. I glanced at my watch. One-thirty now.
She came back, and I saw that she was holding an O-Cedar mop, the kind with the wide yellow sponge along the foot.
'Would this be any good?'
'Only perfect,' I said. 'Get in, kiddo. We're in business.'
She climbed up once more, and I pushed the clutch down with the mop. 'Lots better,' I said. 'Where did you find it?'
'In the bathroom,' she said, and wrinkled her nose.
'Bad in there?'
'Dirty, reeking of cigars, and there's a whole pile of mouldy books in the corner. The kind they sell at those little hole-in-the-wall stores.'
So that was what Darnell left behind him, I thought: an empty garage, a pile of Beeline Books, and a phantom reek of Roi-Tan cigars. I felt cold again, and thought that if I had my way, I'd see this place bulldozed flat and pasted over with hottop. I could not shake the feeling that it was an unmarked grave