pie. He opened the door and wiped off the inside handle. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket, got out of the car, and pushed the door with his butt to close it. Then he looked around. A tired-looking mother was squabbling with a child who looked even more tired than she; two old men stood outside the office, talking. He saw no one else, sensed no one looking at him. He heard TV's inside motel rooms and, from town, barroom rock 'n' roll cranking up as Bar Harbor's summer denizens prepared to party hearty.
Billy crossed the forecourt, walked downtown, and followed his ears to the sound of the loudest rock band. The bar was called the Salty Dog, and as Billy had hoped, there were cabs -three of them, waiting for the lame, the halt, and the drunk -parked outside. Billy spoke to one of the drivers, and for fifteen dollars the cabbie was delighted to run Billy over to Northeast Harbor.
'I see you got y'lunch,' the cabbie said as Billy got in.
'Or somebody's,' Billy replied, and laughed. 'Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it? Just trying to make sure somebody gets their lunch.'
The cabbie looked dubiously at him in the rearview mirror for a moment, then shrugged. 'Whatever you say, my friend -you're paying the tab.'
A half-hour after that he had been on the phone to Heidi.
Now he lay here and listened to something breathe in the dark -something that looked like a pie but which was really a child he and that old man had created together.
Gina, he thought, almost randomly. Where is she? 'Don't hurt her' - that's what I told Ginelli. But I think if I could lay my hands on her, I'd hurt her myself ... hurt her plenty, for what she did to Richard. Her hand? I'd leave that old man her head ... I'd stuff her mouth full of ball bearings and leave him the head. And that's why it's a good thing I don't know where to lay my hands on her, because no one knows exactly how things like this get started; they argue about that and they finally lose the truth altogether if it's inconvenient, but everybody knows how they keep on keeping on: they take one, we take one, then they take two, and we take three ... they shoot up an airport so we blow a school ... and blood runs in the gutters. Because that's what it's really all about, isn't it? Blood in the gutters. Blood ...
Billy slept without knowing he slept; his thoughts simply merged into a series of ghastly, twisted dreams. In some of these he killed and in some he was killed, but in all of them something breathed and pulsed, and he could never see that something because it was inside himself.
Chapter Twenty-six
MYSTERY DEATH MAY HAVE BEEN GANGLAND SLAYING
A man found shot to death last evening in the cellar of a Union Street apartment building has been identified as a New York City gangland figure. Richard Ginelli, known as 'Richie the Hammer' in underworld circles, has been indicted three times - for extortion, trafficking and sale of illegal drugs, and murder - by New York State and federal authorities. A combined state and federal investigation into Ginelli's affairs was dropped in 1981 following the violent deaths of several prosecution witnesses.
A source close to the Maine state attorney general's office said last night that the idea of a so-called 'gangland hit' had come up even before the victim's identity was learned, because of the peculiar circumstances of the murder. According to the source, one of Ginelli's hands had been removed and the word 'pig' had been written on his forehead in blood.
Ginelli was apparently shot with a large-caliber weapon, but state-police ballistics officials have so far declined to release their findings, which one state-police official termed 'also a bit unusual.'
This story was on the front page of the Bangor Daily News Billy Halleck had bought that morning. He now scanned through it one final time, looked at the photograph of the apartment building where his friend had been found, then rolled the paper up and pushed it into a trashbin with the state seal of Connecticut on the side and PUT LITTER IN ITS PLACE written on the swinging metal door.
'That is what it's all about,' he said.
'What, mister?' It was a little girl of about six with ribbons in her hair and a smear of dried chocolate on