Thinner - Stephen King [104]
'This thing is escalating,' Billy said. 'You know that? It's turning into Vietnam.'
'Fuck, no - don't be dumb, William.'
'Only the housekeeper flew up from New York.'
'Well, yeah. I don't know anyone in Maine, and the one connection I made here got his ass killed. Anyway, there was no problem. I got a full report last night. My associate got to Bankerton around noon yesterday, and the only guy at the station was this kid who looked like he was quite a few bricks short of a full load. Kid would pump gas when someone came, but mostly he was dicking around in one of the bays, lubing a car or something. While he was in there, my friend hot-wired the Ford and drove it away. Went right past the garage bay. Kid never even turned around. My associate drove to Bangor International Airport and parked the Ford car in one of the Hertz stalls. I told him to check for bloodstains, and when I talked to him on the phone he said he found some blood in the middle of the front seat - that was chicken blood, almost for sure - and cleaned it up with one of those Wet-Nap things. Then he filled in the information on the flap of the folder, dropped it into the Express Return box, and flew back to the Apple.'
'What about the keys? You said he hot-wired it.'
'Well,' Ginelli said, 'the keys were really the problem all along. That was another mistake. I chalk it up to short sleep, same as the other one, but maybe it really is old age creeping up. They were in Spurton's pocket and I forgot to get them when, I laid him to rest. But now ' Ginelli took out a pair of keys on a bright yellow Hertz tab. He jingled them. 'Ta-da!'
'You went back,' Billy said, his voice a little hoarse. 'Good Christ, you went back and dug him up to get the keys.'
'Well, sooner or later the woodchucks or the bears would have found him and dragged him around,' Ginelli said reasonably, 'or hunters would have found him. Probably in bird season, when they go out with their dogs. I mean, it's no more than a minor annoyance to the Hertz people to get an express envelope without the keys - people are always forgetting to return keys to rental cars and hotel rooms. Sometimes they send them back, sometimes they don't bother. The service manager just dials an eight-hundred number, reads off the car's VIN, number, and the guy at the other end - from Ford or GM or Chrysler - gives him the key pattern. Presto! New keys. But if someone found a body in a gravel pit with a steel ball-bearing in his head and a set of car keys in his pocket that could be traced to me bad. Very bad news. You get me?'
'Yes.'
'Besides, I had to go back out there anyway, you know,' Ginelli said mildly. 'And I couldn't go in the Nova.'
'Why not? They hadn't seen it.'
'I got to tell it in order, William. Then you'll see. Another shot?'
Billy shook his head. Ginelli helped himself.
'Okay. Early Tuesday morning, the dogs. Later Tuesday morning, the Nova. Tuesday night, the heavy firepower.'
Wednesday morning, early, the second rental car. You got all this?'
'I think so.'
'Now we're talking about a Buick sedan. The Avis guy wanted to give me an Aries K, said it was all he had left and I was lucky to get that, but an Aries K wasn't right. Had to be a sedan. Unobtrusive, but fairly big. Took twenty bucks to change his mind, but I finally got the car I wanted. I drove it back to the Bar Harbor Motor Inn, parked it, and made a couple more calls to make sure everything was happening the way I'd set it up. Then I drove over here in the Nova. I like that Nova, Billy - it looks like a mongrel and it smells like cowshit inside, but it's got bones.
'So I get here and finally set your mind at rest. By then I'm ready to crash again, and I'm too tired to even think about going back to Bar Harbor, and I spent the whole day in your bed.'
'You could have called me, you know, and saved at least