Needful Things - Stephen King [167]
As he talked, Ace found himself remembering what his uncle had said before the bust at The Mellow Tiger. Careless people end up in the Shank. That's if they're lucky. If they ain't, they wind up fertilizing a patch of swamp about sixfeet long and threeftet deep.
Well, Pop had been right about the first half; Ace intended to exercise all his persuasiveness to avoid the second half There were no prerelease programs from the swamp.
He was very persuasive. And at some point he said two magic words: Ducky Morin.
. "You bought that crap from Ducky?" Mike Corson said, his bloodshot eyes opening wide. "You sure that's who it was?"
"Sure I'm sure," Ace had replied. "Why?"
The Flying Corson Brothers looked at each other and began to laugh. Ace didn't know what they were laughing about, but he was glad they were doing it, just the same. It seemed like a good sign.
"What did he look like?" Dave Corson asked.
"He's a tall guy-not as tall as him"-Ace cocked a thumb at the driver, who was wearing a pair of Walkman earphones and rocking back and forth to a beat only he could hear-"but tall. He's a Canuck.
Talks like dis, him. Got a little gold earring."
"That's ole Daffy Duck," Mike Corson agreed.
"Tell you the truth, I'm amazed nobody's whacked the guy yet,"
Dave Corson said. He looked at his brother, Mike, and they shook their heads at each other in perfectly shared wonder.
"I thought he was okay," Ace said. "Ducky always used to be okay."
"But you took some time off, dintcha?" Mike Corson asked.
"Little vacation at the Crossbar Hotel," Dave Corson said.
"You must have been inside when the Duckman discovered free-base,"
Mike said. "That was when his act started goin downhill fast."
"Ducky has a little trick he likes to pull these days," Dave said.
"Do you know what bait-and-switch is, Ace?"
Ace thought about it. Then he shook his head.
"Yes, you do," Dave said. "Because that's the reason your ass is in a crack. Ducky showed you a lot of Baggies filled with white powder. One was full of good coke. The rest were full of shit. Like you, Ace."
"We tested!" Ace said. "I picked a bag at random, and we tested it!"
Mike and Dave looked at each other with dark drollery.
"They tested," Dave Corson said.
"He picked a bag at random," Mike Corson added.
They rolled their eyes upward and looked at each other in the mirror on the ceiling.
"Well?" Ace said, looking from one to the other. He was glad they knew who Ducky was, he was also glad they believed he hadn't meant to cheat them, but he was distressed just the same. They were treating him like a chump, and Ace Merrill was nobody's chump.
" Well what?" Mike Corson asked. "If you didn't think you picked the test bag yourself, the deal wouldn't go down, would it?
Ducky is like a magician doing the same raggedy-ass card trick over and over again. 'Pick a card, any card.' You ever hear that one, AceHole?"
Guns or no guns, Ace bridled. "Don't you call me that."
"We'll call you anything we want," Dave said. "You owe us eighty-five large, Ace, and what we've got for collateral on that money so far is a shitload of Arm & Hammer baking soda worth about a buck-fifty. We'll call you Hubert J. Motherfucker if we want to."
He and his brother looked at each other. Wordless communication passed between them. Dave got up and tapped Too-Tall Timmy on the shoulder. He gave Too-Tall his gun. Then Dave and Mike left the van and stood close together by a drift of sumac at the edge of some farmer's field, talking earnestly. Ace didn't know what words they were saying, but he knew perfectly well what was going on. They were deciding what to do with him.
He sat on the edge of the mud-bed, sweating like a pig, waiting for them to come back in. Too-Tall Timmy sprawled in the upholstered