Roadwork - Stephen King [98]
"Give me a number," he said.
"Number-?"
"Phone number. I'll call you this afternoon and tell you my decision."
"It would be ever so much better if we could wrap it up right now."
You'd like that, wouldn't you? Referee, let's extend this round thirty seconds. I've got this man on the ropes.
"No, I don't think so. Please get out of my house."
Fenner gave a smooth, expressionless shrug. "Here's my card. The number is on it. I expect to be in between two-thirty and four o'clock."
"I'll call."
Fenner left. He watched him through the window beside the front door as he walked down the path to his dark blue Buick, got in, and cruised away. Then he slammed his fist against the wall, hard.
He mixed himself another drink and sat down at the kitchen table to go over the situation. They knew about Olivia. They were willing to use that knowledge as a lever. As a lever to move him it wasn't very good. They could no doubt end his marriage with it, but his marriage was in serious trouble already. But they had spied on him.
The question was, how?
If there had been men watching him, they undoubtedly would have known about the world-famous crackle-crackle-boom-boom. If so, they would have used it on him. Why bother with something paltry like a little extramarital boogie-woogie when you can have the recalcitrant home owner slapped in jail for arson? So they had bugged him. When he thought how close he had come to drunkenly spilling the crime to Magliore over the phone, cold little dots of perspiration broke out on his skin. Thank God Magliore had shut him up. Crackle-crackle-boom-boom was bad enough.
So he was living in a bugged house and the question remained: What to do about Fenner's offer and Fenner's clients' methods?
He put a TV dinner in the oven for his lunch and sat down with another drink to wait for it. They had spied on him, tried to bribe him. The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him.
He took the TV dinner out and ate it. He wandered around the house, looking at things. He began to have an idea.
At three o'clock he called Fenner and told him to send out the form. He would sign it if Fenner took care of the two items they had discussed. Fenner sounded very pleased, even relieved. He said he would be glad to take care of things, and would see he had a form tomorrow. Fenner said he was glad he had decided to be sensible.
"There are a couple of conditions," he said.
"Conditions," Fenner repeated, and sounded instantly wary.
"Don't get excited. It's nothing you can't handle."
"Let's hear them," Fenner said. "But I'm warning you, Dawes, you've squeezed us for about all you can."
"You get the form over to the house tomorrow," he said. "I'll bring it to your office on Wednesday. I want you to have a check for sixty-eight thousand five hundred dollars waiting for me. A cashier's check. I'll trade you the release form for the check. "
"Mr. Dawes, we can't do business that way-"
"Maybe you're not supposed to, but you can. The same way you're not supposed to tap my phone and God knows what else. No check, no form. I'll get the lawyer instead."
Fenner paused. He could almost hear Fenner thinking.
"All right. What else?"
"I don't want to be bothered anymore after Wednesday. On the twentieth, it's yours. Until then it's mine."
"Fine," Fenner said instantly, because of course that wasn't a condition at all. The law said the house was his until midnight on the nineteenth, incontrovertibly the city's property a minute later. If he signed the city's release form and took the city's money, he could holler his head off to every newspaper and TV station in town and not get a bit of sympathy.
"That's all," he said.
"Good," Fenner said, sounding extremely happy. "I'm glad we could finally get together on this in a rational way, Mr.-'
"Fuck you," he said, and hung up.
January 8, 1974
He wasn't there when the courier dropped the bulky brown envelope containing form 6983-426-73-74 (blue folder) through his letter slot. He had gone out into darkest Norton