Later - Stephen King Page 0,33

break,” Liz said. “All we need is one more.”

23

The Frederick Arms was twelve or fourteen stories high, gray brick, with bars on the windows of the first- and second-floor apartments. To a kid who grew up in the Palace on Park, it looked more like that Shawshank Redemption prison than an apartment building. And Liz knew right away that we were never going to get inside, let alone to Kenneth Therriault’s apartment. The place was swarming with cops. Lookie-loos were standing in the middle of the street, as close to the police sawhorse barricades as they could get, snapping photos. TV news vans were parked on both sides of the block with their antennas up and cables snaking everywhere. There was even a Channel 4 helicopter hovering overhead.

“Look,” I said. “Stacy-Anne Conway! She’s on NY1!”

“Ask me if I give a shit,” Liz said.

I didn’t.

We had been lucky not to run into reporters at Central Park or City of Angels, and I realized the only reason we hadn’t was because they were all here. I looked at Liz and saw a tear trickling down one of her cheeks. “Maybe we can go to his funeral,” I said. “Maybe he’ll be there.”

“He’ll probably be cremated. Privately, at the city’s expense. No relatives. He outlived them all. I’ll take you home, Champ. Sorry to drag you all this way.”

“That’s okay,” I said, and patted her hand. I knew Mom wouldn’t like me doing that, but Mom wasn’t there.

Liz pulled a U-turn and headed back toward the Queens-boro bridge. A block away from the Frederick Arms, I glanced at a little grocery on my side and said, “Oh my God. There he is.”

She snapped a wide-eyed glance at me. “Are you sure? Are you sure, Jamie?”

I leaned forward and vomited between my sneakers. That was all the answer she needed.

24

I can’t really say if he was as bad as the Central Park man, that was a long time ago. He could have been worse. Once you’ve seen what can happen to a human body that’s suffered an act of violence—accident, suicide, murder—maybe it doesn’t even matter. Kenneth Therriault, alias Thumper, was bad, okay? Really bad.

There were benches on either side of the grocery’s door, so people could eat the snacks they bought, I suppose. Therriault was sitting on one of them with his hands on the thighs of his khaki pants. People were passing by, headed for whatever they were headed for. A black kid with a skateboard under his arm went into the store. A lady came out with a steaming paper cup of coffee. Neither of them glanced at the bench where Therriault was sitting.

He must have been right-handed, because that side of his head didn’t look too bad. There was a hole in his temple, maybe the size of a dime, maybe a little smaller, surrounded by a dark corona that was either bruising or gunpowder. Probably gunpowder. I doubt if his body had time to muster enough blood to make a bruise.

The real damage was on the left, where the bullet exited. The hole on that side was almost as big as a dessert plate and surrounded by irregular fangs of bone. The flesh on his head was swelled, like from a gigantic infection. His left eye had been yanked sideways and bulged from its socket. Worst of all, gray stuff had dripped down his cheek. That was his brain.

“Don’t stop,” I said. “Just keep going.” The smell of puke was strong in my nose and the taste of it was in my mouth, all slimy. “Please, Liz, I can’t.”

She swerved to the curb in front of a fire hydrant near the end of the block instead. “You have to. And I have to. Sorry, Champ, but we have to know. Now pull yourself together so people don’t stare at us and think I’ve been abusing you.”

But you are, I thought. And you won’t stop until you get what you want.

The taste in my mouth was the ravioli I’d eaten in the school caff. As soon as I realized that I opened the door, leaned out, and puked some more. Like on the day of the Central Park man, when I never made it to Lily’s birthday party at fancy-shmancy Wave Hill. That was déjà vu I could have done without.

“Champ? Champ!”

I turned to her and she was holding out a wad of Kleenex (show me a woman without Kleenex in her purse and I’ll show you no one at