Thinner - Stephen King [103]
He turned to go.
'You don't understand,' Lemke said hoarsely. 'He'll never take it off. He's the last of the great Magyar chiefs - his heart is a brick. Please, mister, I'll remember, but he'll never take it off.'
On the road a pickup truck went bucketing by toward the Gypsy camp. Ginelli glanced in that direction and then back at Lemke.
'Bricks can be crushed,' he said. 'Tell him that, too.'
Ginelli broke out to the road again, crossed it, and jogged back toward the gravel pit. Another pickup truck passed him, then three cars in a line. These people, understandably curious about who had been firing an automatic weapon in their little town in the dead of night, presented no real problem for Ginelli. The glow of the approaching headlights allowed him plenty of time to fade back into the woods each time. He heard an approaching siren just as he ducked into the gravel pit.
He started the Nova up and rolled it dark to the end of the short access lane. A Chevrolet with a blue bubble on the dashboard roared by.
'After it was gone, I wiped the crap off my face and hands and followed it,' Ginelli said.
'Followed it?' Billy broke in.
'Safer. If there's shooting, innocent people break their legs getting to it so they can see some blood before the cops come and hose it off the sidewalk. People going in another direction are suspicious. Lots of times they are leaving because they've got guns in their pockets.'
By the time he reached the field again there were half a dozen cars parked along the shoulder of the road. Headlight beams crisscrossed each other. People were running back and forth and yelling. The constable's car was parked near the spot where Ginelli had sapped the second young man; the bubble light on the dash whipped flickers of blue across the trees. Ginelli unrolled the Nova's window. 'What's up, officer?'
'Nothing you need to worry about. Move along.' And just in case the fellow in the Nova might speak English but only understand Russian, the constable whipped his flashlight impatiently in the direction Finson Road was going.
Ginelli rolled slowly on up the road, threading his way between the parked vehicles - the ones that belonged to the local folks, he guessed. It was maybe harder for you to move along gawkers who were your neighbors, he told Billy. There were two distinct knots of people in front of the station wagon Ginelli had shot up. One comprised Gypsy men in pajamas and nightshirts. They were talking among themselves, some of them gesticulating extravagantly. The other comprised town men. They stood silently, hands in pockets, gazing at the wreck of the station wagon. Each group ignored the other.
Finson Road continued on for six miles, and Ginelli almost ditched the car not once but twice as people came barreling along what was little more than a dirt track at high speed.
'Just guys out in the middle of the night hoping to see a little blood before the cops hosed it off the sidewalk, William. Or off the grass, in this case.'
He connected with a feeder road that took him into Bucksport, and from there he turned north. He was back in the John Tree motel room by two in the morning. He set the alarm for seven-thirty and turned in.
Billy stared at him. 'You mean that all the time I was worrying that you were dead you were sleeping in the same motel we left?'
'Well, yeah.' Ginelli looked ashamed of himself for a moment, and then he grinned and shrugged at the same time. 'Put it down to inexperience, William. I am not used to people worrying about me. Except my momma, of course, and that is different.'
'You must have overslept - you didn't get here until nine or so.'
'No - I was up as soon as the alarm went off. I made a call and then walked downtown. Rented another car. From Avis this time. I don't have such good luck with Hertz.'
'You're going to be in trouble about that Hertz car, aren't you?' Billy asked.
'Nope. All's well. It could have been hairy, though. That's what the call was about - the Hertz car.