boy. If you thought I was going to underestimate this old fuck, that would be one thing. But I'm not. He's smart, and he's dangerous.'
'What do you mean?'
'Nothing. I'll tell you later.'
'Now!'
No.'.
'Why not?'
'Two reasons,' Ginelli said patiently. 'First, because you might ask me to back off. Second, because I haven't been this tired in about twelve years. I'm gonna go in there to the bedroom and crash out for eight hours. Then I'm gonna get up and eat three pounds of the first food I can snag. Then I'm gonna go back out and shoot the moon.'
Ginelli did indeed look tired - almost haggard. Except for his eyes, Billy thought. His eyes are still whirling and twirling like a couple of fluorescent carnival pinwheels.
'Suppose I did ask you to back off?' Billy asked quietly. 'Would you do it, Richard?'
Richard looked at him for a long, considering moment and then gave Billy the answer he had known he would give ever since he had first seen that mad light in Ginelli's eyes.
'I couldn't now,' Ginelli said calmly. 'You're sick, William. It's through your whole body. You can't be trusted to know where your own best interest lies.'
In other words, you've taken out your own set of committal papers on me. Billy opened his mouth to speak this thought aloud and then closed his mouth again. Because Ginelli didn't mean what he said; he had only said what sounded sane.
'Also because it's personal, right?' Billy asked him.
'Yeah,' Ginelli replied. 'Now it's personal.'
He went into the bedroom, took off his shirt and pants, and lay down. He was asleep on top of the coverlet five minutes later.
Billy drew a glass of water, swallowed an Empirin, and then drank the rest of the water standing in the doorway. His eyes moved from Ginelli to the pants crumpled on the chair. Ginelli had arrived in a pair of impeccable cotton slacks, but somewhere in the last couple of days he had picked up a pair of blue jeans. The keys to the Nova parked out front would undoubtedly be in them. Billy could take them and drive away ... except he knew he wouldn't do that, and the fact that he would be signing his own death warrant by so doing now seemed actually secondary. The important thing now seemed to be how and where all of this would end.
At midday, while Ginelli was still sleeping deeply in the other room, Billy had another episode of arrhythmia. Shortly after, he dozed off himself and had a dream. It was short and totally mundane, but it filled him with a queer mixture of terror and hateful pleasure. In this dream he and Heidi were sitting in the breakfast nook of the Fairview house. Between them was a pie. She cut a large piece and gave it to Billy. It was an apple pie. 'This will fatten you up,' she said. 'I don't want to be fat,' he replied. 'I've decided I like being thin. You eat it.' He gave her the piece of pie, stretching an arm no thicker than a bone across the table. She took it. He sat watching as she ate every bite, and with every bite she took, his feelings of terror and dirty joy grew.
Another spell of light arrhythmia jolted him awake from his dream. He sat there for a moment, gasping, waiting for his heart to slow to its proper rhythm, and eventually it did. He was seized by the feeling that he had had more than a dream - that he had just experienced a prophetic vision of some kind. But such feelings often accompany vivid dreams, and as the dream itself fades, so does the feeling. This happened to Billy Halleck, although he had cause to remember this dream not long after.
Ginelli got up at six in the evening, showered, pulled on the jeans and a dark turtleneck sweater.
'Okay,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow morning, Billy. Then we'll know.'
Billy asked again what Ginelli meant to do, what had happened so far, and once again Ginelli refused to tell him.
'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Meantime, I'll give her your love.'
'Give who my love?'
Ginelli smiled. 'Lovely Gina. The whore who put the ball bearing through your hand.'
'Leave her alone,' Billy said. When he thought of those dark eyes, it seemed to be impossible to say anything else, no matter what she had done to him.
'No one gets hurt,' Ginelli reiterated, and then he was gone. Billy listened to the Nova start