and they have a way of self-destructing. That process has already started with Deepneau. He's lost his wife, he's lost his job... did you know that?"
"Uh-huh. Helen told me."
"Now he's losing his more moderate followers. They're peeling off like jet fighters heading back to base because they're running out of fuel.
Not Ed, though-he's going on come hell or high water. I imagine he'll keep at least some of them with him until the Susan Day speech, but after that I think it's gonna be a case of the cheese stands alone."
???? "Has it occurred to you that he might try something Friday? That he
???? might try to hurt Susan Day?"
???? "Oh yes," Leydecker said. "It's occurred to us, all right. It
???? certainly has."
????
Ralph was extremely happy to find the perch door locked this time.
He unlocked it just long enough to let himself in, then trudged up the front stairs, which seemed longer and gloomier than ever this afternoon.
The apartment seemed too silent in spite of the steady beat of the rain on the roof, and the air seemed to smell of too many sleepless nights. Ralph took one of the chairs from the kitchen table over to the counter, stood on it, and looked at the top of the cabinet closest to the sink. It was as if he expected to find another can of Bodyguard-the original can, the one he'd put up here after seeing Helen and her friend Gretchen off-on top of that cabinet, and part of him actually did expect that. There was nothing up there, however, but a toothpick, an old Buss fuse, and a lot of dust.
He got carefully down off the chair, saw he had left muddy footprints on the seat, and used a swatch of paper towels to wipe them away. Then he replaced the chair at the table and went into the living room. He stood there, letting his eyes run from the couch with its dingy floral coverlet to the wing-chair to the old television sitting on its oak table between the two windows looking out on Harris Avenue.
From the TV his gaze moved into the far corner. When he had come into the apartment yesterday, still a little on edge from finding the porch door unlatched, Ralph had briefly mistaken his jacket hanging on the coat-tree in that corner for an intruder. Well, 2 33 no need to be coy; he had thought for a moment that Ed had decided to pay him a visit.
I never hang my coat up, though. It was one of the things about me-one of the few, I think-that used to genuinely irritate Carolyn.
And if I never managed to get in the habit of hanging it up when she was alive, I sure as shit haven't since she died. No, I'm not the one who hung thisjacket up.
Ralph crossed the r(Rom, rummaging in the pockets of the gray leather jacket and putting the stuff he found on top of the television.
Nothing in the left but an old roll of Life Savers with lint clinging to the top one, but the right hand pocket was a treasure-trove even with the aerosol can gone. There was a lemon Tootsie Pop, still in its wrapper; a crumpled advertising circular from the Derry House of Pizza; a double-a battery; a small empty carton that had once contained an apple pie from McDonald's; his discount card from Dave's Video Stop, just four punches away from a free rental (the card had been MIA for ever two weeks and Ralph had been sure it was lost); a book of matches; various scraps of tinfoil... and a folded piece of lined blue paper.
Ralph unfolded it and read a single sentence, written in a scrawling, slightly unsteady old man's script: Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else.
That was all there was, but it was enough to confirm for his brain what his heart already knew: Dorrance Marstellar had been on the porch steps when Ralph had returned from Back Pages with his paperbacks, but he'd had other stuff to do before sitting down to wait. He had gone up to Ralph's apartment, taken the aerosol can from the top of the kitchen shelf, and put it in the right hand pocket of Ralph's old gray jacket.
He had even left his calling-card: a bit of poetry scrawled on a piece of paper probably torn from the battered notebook in which he sometimes recorded arrivals and departures along Runway