The Regulators - Stephen King [47]
ZERO PROBLEMS
kind of guy. His wife was also a good sort, easygoing and equipped with mild, sleepy eyes, a good sense of humor, beautiful breasts and not, so far as Steve could tell, an unfaithful bone
in her body. Best of all, Sandy was also a recovering bridge addict. Steve had had many deep conversations with her about the almost uncontrollable urge to overbid, especially in a money game.
In May of this year, Deke had purchased a very large club — a House of Blues kind of deal — in San Francisco. He and Sandy had left the east coast three weeks ago. He had promised Steve a good job if Steve would pack up all their shit (albums, mostly, over two thousand of them, anachronisms like Hot Tuna and Quicksilver Messenger Service and Canned Heat) and drive it out in a rental truck. Steve's response:
NO PROBLEM, DEKE.
Hey, he hadn't been out to the West Coast in almost seven years, and he reckoned the change would do him good. Recharge those old Duracells.
It had taken him a little longer than he had expected to settle his Albany shit, get the truck, load the truck, and get rolling. There had been several phone calls from Deke, the last one sort of testy, and when Steve had mentioned this, Deke had said, well, that was what three weeks of sleeping bags and making do with the same half a dozen tee-shirts did to a person — was he coming or not? I'm coming, I'm coming, Steve had replied. Cool it, big guy. And he had. Left three days ago, in fact. Everything groovy at first. Then, this afternoon, he had blown a hose or something, he had taken the Wentworth exit in search of the Great American Service Station, and then — whoa, dude — there had come a big bang from under the hood and all the dials on the dashboard started showing bad news. He hoped it was just a blown seal, but it had actually sounded more like a piston. In any case, the Ryder truck, which had been a beauty ever since he had left New York, had suddenly turned into a beast. Still,
NO PROBLEM;
just find Mr Goodwrench and let him do his thing.
Steve had taken a wrong turn, though, away from the turnpike business area and into a much more suburban neighborhood, not the sort of place where Mr Goodwrench was apt to hang out during working hours. He had really been babying the truck by then, steam coming out through the grille, oil-pressure dropping, temperature rising, an unpleasant fried smell coming in through the air vents . . . but really
NO PROBLEM, MAN.
Well . . . maybe a
very small problem
for the Ryder people, that was true, but Steve had an idea they'd be able to bear up under the burden. Then — hey, beautiful, baby — a little neighborhood store with a blue pay-phone sign hung over the door. . . and the number to call if you had engine trouble was right up there on the driver's side sun-visor.
ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM,
story of his life.
Only now there was a problem. One that made learning the sound-board at Club Smile look like a minor annoyance in comparison.
He was in a little house that smelled of pipe tobacco, he was in a living room with framed photos of animals — pretty special ones, according to the captions — on the walls, a living room where only the huge, shapeless chair in front of the TV looked really used, and he had just tied his bandanna around his leg where he had sustained a bullet-wound, shallow but a bona fide bullet-wound just the same, and people were yelling, scared and yelling, and the skinny woman in the sleeveless blouse was also wounded (nothing shallow about hers, either) and outside people were dead, and if all this wasn't a problem, then Steve guessed that 'problem' was a concept without meaning.
His arm was grabbed above the wrist, and painfully. He wasn't just being