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By Root 705 0

road, almost at the point where the Heights ceased being the Heights, Will Darnell sat in the living room of the simple two-storey frame house he had owned for thirty years. He was wearing a bald and fading blue terrycloth robe over his pyjama bottoms, his huge sack of stomach pushing out like a swollen moon. He was watching the final conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge to the side of Goodness and Generosity, but not really seeing it. His mind was once more sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that grew steadily more fascinating: Arnie, Welch, Repperton, Christine. Will had aged a decade in the week or so since the bust. He had told that cop Mercer that he would be back doing business at the same old stand in two weeks, but in his heart he wondered. It seemed that lately his throat was always slimy from the taste of that goddam aspirator.

Arnie, Welch Repperton Christine

'Boy!' Scrooge hailed down from his window, a caricature of the Christmas Spirit in his nightgown and cap. 'Is the prize turkey still in the butcher's window?'

'Wot?' the boy asked. 'The one as big as I am?'

'Yes, yes,' Scrooge answered, giggling wildly. It was as if the three spirits had, instead of saving him, driven him mad. 'The one as big as you are!'

Arnie, Welch, Repperton LeBay?

Sometimes he thought it was not the bust that had tired him out and made him feel so constantly beaten and afraid. That it was not even the fact that they had busted his pet accountant or that the Federal tax people were in on it and were obviously loaded for bear this time. The tax people weren't the reason that he had begun scanning the street before going out mornings; the State Attorney General's Office didn't have anything to do with the sudden glances he had begun throwing back over his shoulder when he was driving home nights from the garage.

He had gone over what he had seen that night - or what he thought he had seen - again and again, trying to convince himself that it was absolutely not real or that it absolutely was. For the first time in years he found himself doubting his own senses. And as the event receded into the past, it became easier to believe he had fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing.

He hadn't seen Arnie since the bust, or tried to call him on the telephone. At first he had thought to use his knowledge about Christine as a lever to keep Arnie's mouth shut if the kid weakened and took a notion to talk - God knew the kid could go a long way toward sending him to jail if he cooperated with the cops. It wasn't until after the police had landed everywhere that Will realized how much the kid knew, and he had had a few panicky moments of self-appraisal (something else that was upsetting because it was so foreign to his nature): had all of them known that much? Repperton, and all the hoody Repperton clones stretching back over the years? Could he actually have been so stupid?

No, he decided. It was only Cunningham. Because Cunningham was different. He seemed to understand things almost intuitively. He wasn't all brag and booze and bullshit. In a queer way, Will felt almost fatherly toward the boy - not that he would have hesitated to cut the kid loose if it started to look as if he was going to rock the boat. And not that I'd hesitate now, he assured himself.

On the TV, a scratchy black-and-white Scrooge was with the Cratchets. The film was almost over. The whole bunch of them looked like loonies, and that was the truth, but Scrooge was definitely the worst. The look of mad joy in his eye was not so different from the last look in the eye of a man Will had known twenty years before, a fellow named Everett Dingle who had gone home from the garage one afternoon and murdered his entire family.

Will lit a cigar. Anything to take the taste of the aspirator out of his mouth, that rotten taste. Lately it seemed harder than ever to catch his breath. Damned cigars didn't help, but he was too old to change now.

The kid hadn't talked - at least not yet he hadn't. They had turned Henry Buck, Will's lawyer had told him; Henry, who was sixty-three and a grandfather,