not three weeks ago. Leandro did not of course know this. That was probably just as well.
You're crazy, he told himself again. You bled like a stuck pig, there's two teeth less in your head, and you're planning to go back there. You're crazy!
Right, he thought, getting out of the old car. I'm twenty-four, unmarried, getting bulgy around the middle, and if I'm crazy it's because I found this, I did, me, I tripped over it. It's big, and it's mine. My story. No, use the other word. It's old-fashioned, but who gives a fuck - it's the right word. My scoop. I'm not going to let it kill me, but I am going to ride it until it bucks me off.
Leandro stood in the parking lot at a quarter past one on what was rapidly becoming the longest day of his life (it would also be the last, despite all his mental avowals to the contrary) and thought: Good for you. Gonna ride it till it bucks you off. Probably Robert Capa, Ernie Pyle, thought the same thing from time to time.
Sensible. Sarcastic, but sensible. That deeper part of his mind seemed to be beyond such sense, however. My story, it returned stubbornly. My scoop.
John Leandro, now clad in a T-shirt reading WHERE TH' HELL IS TROY, MAINE? (David Bright would probably have laughed himself into a hemorrhage over that one), crossed the small parking lot of Maine Med Supplies ('Specializing in Respiration Supplies and Respiration Therapy since 1946') and went inside.
2
'Thirty bucks is a stiff deposit for an air mask, don't you think?' Leandro asked the clerk, thumbing through his cash. He guessed he had the thirty, but it was going to leave him with about a buck and a half. 'Wouldn't think they'd be a big black-market item.'
'We never used to require one at all,' the clerk said, 'and we still don't if we know the individual or the organization, you know. But I lost one a couple, three weeks ago. Old man came in and told me he wanted some air. I figured he meant for diving, you know - he was old, but he looked tough enough for it - so I started telling him about Downeast ScubaDive in Bangor. But he said no, he was interested in ground portability. So I rented it to him. I never got it back. Brand-new Bell flat-pack. Two-hundred-dollar piece of equipment.'
Leandro looked at the clerk, almost sick with excitement. He felt like a man following arrows deeper and deeper into a frightening but fabulous and totally unexplored cavern.
You rented this mask? Personally?'
Well, it was a flat-pack, actually, but yes. My dad and I run the place. He was delivering oxy bottles down to Augusta. I caught hell from him. I don't know if he'll like me renting another Bell, even, but with the deposit I guess it's okay.'
'Can you describe the man?'
'Mister, do you feel okay? You look a little white around the
'I'm fine. Can you describe the man who rented the flat-pack?'
'Old. Had a tan. He was mostly bald. He was skinny ... stringy, I guess you'd say. Like I say, he looked tough.' The clerk thought. 'He was driving a Valiant.'
'Could you check the day he rented the flat-pack?'
'You a cop?'
Reporter. Bangor Daily News.' Leandro showed the clerk his press card. Now the clerk also began to look excited.
'He do Somethin' else? Besides rip off our flat-pack, I mean?'
'Could you look up the name and date for me?'
'Sure.'
The clerk flipped back through his rental book. He found the entry and turned the book so Leandro could read it. The date was July 26th. The name was scrawled but still legible. Everett Hillman.
'You never reported the loss of the equipment to the police,' Leandro said. It was not a question. If a complaint of theft had been lodged against the old geezer to complement his landlady's understandable unhappiness at being stiffed for two weeks' rent, the cops might have taken more interest in how or why Hillman had disappeared ... or where he had disappeared to.
'No, Dad said not to bother. Our insurance doesn't cover the theft of rented equipment, see, and ... well, that's why.'
The clerk shrugged and smiled, but the shrug was slightly embarrassed, the smile slightly uneasy, and taken together they told Leandro a lot. He might be a terminal twerp, as David Bright feared, but he was not a stupid one. If they had reported the theft or disappearance of the flat-pack, the