Bag of Bones 17 страница

“Hello? ”

“I said to stay visible while you were with her. ”

“Good morning to you, too, Lawyer Storrow. ”

“You must be in another time-zone up there, chum. I’ve got one-fifteen down here in New York. ”

“I had dinner with her, ” I said. “Outside. It’s true that I read the little kid a story and helped put her to bed, but—”

“I imagine half the town thinks you’re bopping each other’s brains out by now, and the other half will think it if I have to show up for her in court. ” But he didn’t sound really angry; I thought he sounded as though he was having a happy-face day. “Can they make you tell who’s paying for your services? ” I asked.

“At the custody hearing, I mean? ”

“Nope. ”

“At my deposition on Friday? ”

“Christ, no. Durgin would lose all credibility as guardian adlitem if he went in that direction. Also, they have reasons to steer clear of the sex angle. Their focus is on Mattie as neglectful and perhaps abusive.

Proving that Mom isn’t a nun quit working around the time Kramer vs.

Kramer came out in the movie theaters. Nor is that the only problem they have with the issue. ” He now sounded positively gleeful.

“Tell me. ”

“Max Devore is eighty-five and divorced. Twice divorced, in point of fact. Before awarding custody to a single man of his age, secondary custody has to be taken into consideration. It is, in fact, the single most important issue, other than the allegations of abuse and neglect levelled at the mother. ”

“What are those allegations? Do you know? ”

“No. Mattie doesn’t either, because they’re fabrications. She’s a sweetie, by the way—”

“Yeah, she is. ”

“—and I think she’s going to make a great witness. I can’t wait to meet her in person. Meantime, don’t sidetrack me. We’re talking about secondary custody, right? ”

“Right. ”

“Devore has a daughter who has been declared mentally incompetent and lives in an institution somewhere in California—Modesto, I think.

Not a good bet for custody. ”

“It wouldn’t seem so. ”

“The son, Roger, is. . . ” I heard a faint fluttering of notebook pages.

”. . . fifty-four. So he’s not exactly a spring chicken, either. Still, there are lots of guys who become daddies at that age nowadays; it’s a brave new world. But Roger is a homosexual. ”

I thought of Bill Dean saying, Rump-wrangler. Understand there’s a lot of that going around out them in Calij3rnia.

“I thought you said sex doesn’t matter. ”

“Maybe I should have said hetero sex doesn’t matter. In certain states—California is one of themhomo sex doesn’t matter, either. . . or not as much. But this case isn’t going to be adjudicated in California.

It’s going to be adjudicated in Maine, where folks are less enlightened about how well two married men—married to each other, I meanan raise a little girl. ”

“Roger Devore is married? ” Okay. I admit it. I now felt a certain horrified glee myself. I was ashamed of it—Roger Devore was just a guy living his life, and he might not have had much or anything to do with his elderly dad’s current enterprise—but I felt it just the same.

“He and a software designer named Morris Ridding tied the knot in 1996, ” John said. “I found that on the first computer sweep. And if this does wind up in court, I intend to make as much of it as I possibly can. I don’t know how much that will be—at this point it’s impossible to predict—but if I get a chance to paint a picture of that bright-eyed, cheerful little girl growing up with two elderly gays who probably spend most of their lives in computer chat-rooms speculating about what Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock might have done after the lights were out in officers’ country. . . well, if I get that chance, I’ll take it. ”

“It seems a little mean, ” I said. I heard myself speaking in the tone of a man who wants to be dissuaded, perhaps even laughed at, but that didn’t happen.

“Of course it’s mean. It feels like swerving up onto the sidewalk to knock over a couple of innocent bystanders. Roger Devote and Morris Ridding don’t deal drugs, traffic in little boys, or rob old ladies. But this is custody, and custody does an even better job than divorce of turning human beings into insects. This one isn’t as bad as it could be, but it’s bad enough because it’s so naked. Max Devore came up there to his old hometown for one reason and one reason only: to buy a kid. That makes me mad. ”

I grinned, imagining a lawyer who looked like Elmer Fudd standing outside of a rabbit-hole marked DEVO with a shotgun.

“My message to Devore is going to be very simple: the price of the kid just went up. Probably to a figure higher than even he can afford. ”

“/fit goes to court—you’ve said that a couple of times now. Do you think there’s a chance Devore might just drop it and go away? ”

’gk pretty good one, yeah. I’d say an excellent one if he wasn’t old and used to getting his own way. There’s also the question of whether or not he’s still sharp enough to know where his best interest lies. I’ll try for a meeting with him and his lawyer while I’m up there, but so far I haven’t managed to get past his secretary. . . ”

“Rogette Whitmore? ”

“No, I think she’s a step further up the ladder. I haven’t talked to her yet, either. But I will. ”

“Try either Richard Osgood or George Footman, ” I said. “Either of them may be able to put you in touch with Devore or Devore’s chief counsel. ”

“I’ll want to talk to the Whitmore woman in any case. Men like Devore tend to grow more and more dependent on their close advisors as they grow older, and she could be a key to getting him to let this go. She could also be a headache for us. She might urge him to fight, possibly because she really thinks he can win and possibly because she wants to watch the fur fly. Also, she might marry him. "

“Marry him? ”

“Why not? He could have her sign a pre-nup—I could no more’ introduce that in court than his lawyers could go fishing for who hired Mattie’s lawyer—and it would strengthen his chances. ”

“John, I’ve seen the woman. She’s got to be seventy herself. ”

“But she’s a potential female player in a custody case involving a little girl, and she’s a layer between old man Devore and the married gay couple. We just need to keep it in mind. ”

“Okay. ” I looked at the office door again, but not so longingly. There comes a point when you’re done for the day whether you want to be or not, and I thought I had reached that point. Perhaps in the evening. . . “The lawyer I got for you is named Romeo Bissonette. ” He paused. “Can that be a real name? ”

“Is he from Lewiston? ”

“Yes, how did you know? ”

“Because in Maine, especially around Lewiston, that can be a real name. Am I supposed to go see him? ” I didn’t want to go see him. It was fifty miles to Lewiston over two-lane roads which would now be crawling with campers and Winnebagos. What I wanted was to go swimming and then take a long nap. A long dream/ess nap. “You don’t need to. Call him and talk to him a little. He’s only a safety net, really—he’ll object if the questioning leaves the incident on the morning of July Fourth. About that incident you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Got it? ”

“Talk to him before, then meet him on Friday at. . . wait. . . it’s right here. . . ” The notebook pages fluttered again. “Meet him at the Route 120

Diner at nine-fifteen. Coffee. Talk a little, get to know each other, maybe flip for the check. I’ll be with Mattie, getting as much as I can.

We may want to hire a private dick. ”

“I love it when you talk dirty. ”

“Uh-huh. I’m going to see that bills go to your guy Goldacre. He’ll send them to your agent, and your agent can—”

“No, ” I said. “Instruct Goldacre to send them directly here. Harold’s a Jewish mother. How much is this going to cost me? ”

“Seventy-five thousand dollars, minimum, ” he said with no hesitation at all. With no apology in his voice, either.

“Don’t tell Mattie. ”

“LALL right. Are you having any fun yet, Mike? ”

“You know, I sort of am, ” I said thoughtfully. “For seventy-five grand, you should. ” We said our goodbyes and John hung up. As I put my own phone back into its cradle, it occurred to me that I had lived more in the last five days than I had in the last four years.

This time the phone didn’t ring and I made it all the way back into the office, but I knew I was definitely done for the day. I sat down at the IBM, hit the TU, N key a couple of times, and was beginning to write myself a next-note at the bottom of the page I’d been working on when the phone interrupted me. What a sour little doodad the telephone is, and what little good news we get from it! Today had been an exception, though, and I thought I could sign off with a grin. I was working, after all-working. Part of me still marvelled that I was sitting here at all, breathing easily, my heart beating steadily in my chest, and not even a glimmer of an anxiety attack on my personal event horizon. I wrote:

[NEXT: Drake to 1Zaiford. Stops on the way at vegetable stand to talk to the guy who runs it, old source, needs a good & colorful name. Straw hat. Disneyworld tee-shirt. They talk about Shackleford. ]

I turned the roller until the IBM spat this page out, stuck it on top of the manuscript, and jotted a final note to myself: “Call Ted Rosencrief about Raiford. ” Rosencriefwas a retired Navy man who lived in Derry. I had employed him as a research assistant on several books, using him on one project to find out how paper was made, what the migratory habits of certain common birds were for another, a little bit about the architecture of pyramid burial rooms for a third. And it’s always “a little bit” I want, never “the whole damn thing. ” As a writer, my motto has always been don’t confuse me with the facts. The Arthur Hailey type of fiction is beyond me—I can’t read it, let alone write it. I want to know just enough so I can lie colorfully. Rosie knew that, and we had always worked well together.

This time I needed to know a little bit about Florida’s Raiford Prison, and what the deathhouse down there is really like. I also needed a little bit on the psychology of serial killers. I thought Rosie would probably be glad to hear from me. . . almost as glad as I was to finally have something to call him about.

I picked up the eight double-spaced pages I had written and fanned through them, still amazed at their existence. Had an old IBM typewriter and a Courier type-ball been the secret all along? That was certainly how it seemed.

What had come out was also amazing. I’d had ideas during my four-year sabbatical; there had been no writer’s block in that regard. One had been really great, the sort of thing which certainly would have become a novel if I’d still been able to write novels. Half a dozen to a dozen were of the sort I’d classify “pretty good, ” meaning they’d do in a pinch. . . or if they happened to unexpectedly grow tall and mysterious overnight, like Jack’s beanstalk. Sometimes they do. Most were glimmers, little “what-ifs” that came and went like shooting stars while I was driving or walking or just lying in bed at night and waiting to go to sleep.

The Red-Shirt & lan was a what-if. One day I saw a man in a bright red shirt washing the show windows of the JCPENNEY store in Derry—this was not long before Penney’s moved out to the mall. A young man and woman walked under his ladder. . . very bad luck, according to the old superstition. These two didn’t know where they were walking, though—they were holding hands, drinking deeply of each other’s eyes, as completely in love as any two twenty-year-olds in the history of the world. The man was tall, and as I watched, the top of his head came within an ace of clipping the window-washer’s feet. If that had happened, the whole works might have gone over.

The entire incident was history in five seconds. Writing The Red-Shirt & lan took five months. Except in truth, the entire book was done in a what-if second. I imagined a collision instead of a near-miss.

Everything else followed from there. The writing was just secretarial.

The idea I was currently working on wasn’t one of Mike’s Really Great Ideas (Jo’s voice carefully made the capitals), but it wasn’t a what-if, either. Nor was it much like my old gothic suspense yarns; V. C. Andrews with a prick was nowhere in sight this time. But it felt solid, like the real thing, and this morning it had come out as naturally as a breath.

Andy Drake was a private investigator in Key Largo. He was forty years old, divorced, the father of a three-year-old girl. At the open he was in the Key West home of a woman named Regina Whiting. Mrs. Whiting also had a little girl, hers five years old. Mrs. Whiting was married to an extremely rich developer who did not know what Andy Drake knew: that until 1992, Regina Taylor Whiting had been Tiffany Taylor, a high-priced Miami call-girl.

That much I had written before the phone started ringing. Here is what I knew beyond that point, the secretarial work I’d do over the next several weeks, assuming that my marvellously recovered ability to work held up:

One day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didn’t feel comfortable about asking a stranger for a favor. Cautioning her daughter to sit still, Regina hopped out to answer the phone. When Karen put up a hand to keep from being splashed as her mother left the tub, she dropped the doll she had been bathing. When she bent to pick it up, her hair became caught in one of the hot tub’s powerful intakes. (It was reading of a fatal acci dent like this that had originally kicked the story off in my mind two or three years before. )

The yard-man, some no-name in a khaki shirt sent over by a day-labor outfit, saw what was happening. He raced across the lawn, dove headfirst into the tub, and yanked the child from the bottom, leaving hair and a good chunk of scalp clogging the jet when he did. He’d give her artificial respiration until she began to breathe again. (This would be a wonderful, suspenseful scene, and I couldn’t wait to write it. ) He would refuse all of the hysterical, relieved mother’s offers of recompense, although he’d finally give her an address so that her husband could talk to him. Only both the address and his name, John Sanborn, would turn out to be a fake.

Two years later the ex-hooker with the respectable second life sees the man who saved her child on the front page of the Miami paper. His name is given as John Shackleford and he has been arrested for the rape-murder of a nine-year-old girl. And, the article goes on, he is suspected in over forty other murders, many of the victims children.

“Have you caught Baseball Cap? ” one of the reporters would yell at the press conference. “Is John Shackleford Baseball Cap? ”

“Well, ” I said, going downstairs, “they sure think he is. ”

I could hear too many boats out on the lake this afternoon to make nude bathing an option. I pulled on my suit, slung a towel over my shoulders, and started down the path—the one which had been lined with glowing paper lanterns in my dream—to wash off the sweat of my nightmares and my unexpected morning’s labors.

There are twenty-three railroad-tie steps between Sara and the lake. I had gone down only four or five before the enormity of what had just happened hit me. My mouth began to tremble. The colors of the trees and the sky mixed together as my eyes teared up. A sound began to come out of me—a kind of muffled groaning. The strength ran out of my legs and I sat down hard on a railroad tie. For a moment I thought it was over, mostly just a false alarm, and then I began to cry. I stuffed one end of the towel in my mouth during the worst of it, afraid that if the boaters on the lake heard the sounds coming out of me, they’d think someone up here was being murdered.

I cried in grief for the empty years I had spent without Jo, without friends, and without my work. I cried in gratitude because those work-less years seemed to be over. It was too early to tell for sure—one swallow doesn’t make a summer and eight pages of hard copy don’t make a career resuscitation—but I thought it really might be so.

And I cried out of fear, as well, as we do when some awful experience is finally over or when some terrible accident has been narrowly averted. I cried because I suddenly realized that I had been walking a white line ever since Jo died, walking straight down the middle of the road. By some miracle, I had been carried out of harm’s way. I had no idea who had done the carrying, but that was all right—it was a question that could wait for another day.

I cried it all out of me. Then I went on down to the lake and waded in.

The cool water felt more than good on my overheated body; it felt like a resurrection.

State your name for the record. ”

“Michael Noonan. ”

“Your address? ”

“Derry is my permanent address, 14 Benton Street, but I also maintain a home in TR-90, on Dark Score Lake. The mailing address is Box 832. The actual house is on Lane Forty-two, off Route 68. ” Elmer Durgin, Kyra Devore’s guardian aa’/item, waved a pudgy hand in front of his face, either to shoo away some troublesome insect or to tell me that was enough. I agreed that it was. I felt rather like the little girl in Our 7aw, who gave her address as Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, America, the Northern Hemisphere, the World, the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Mind of God. Mostly I was nervous. I’d reached the age of forty still a virgin in the area of court proceedings, and although we were in the conference room of Durgin, Peters, and Jarrette on Bridge Street in Castle Rock, this was still a court proceeding. There was one mentionably odd detail to these festivities. The stenographer wasn’t using one of those keyboards-on-a-post that look like adding machines, but a Stenomask, a gadget which fit over the lower half of his face. I had seen them before, but only in old black-and-white crime movies, the ones where Dan Duryea or John Payne is always driving around in a Buick with portholes on the sides, looking grim and smoking a Camel. Glancing over into the corner and seeing a guy who looked like the world’s oldest fighter-pilot was weird enough, but hearing everything you said immediately repeated in a muffled monotone was even weirder. “Thank you, Mr. Noonan. My wife has read all your books and says you are her favorite author. I just wanted to get that on the record. ” Durgin chuckled fatly. Why not? He was a fat guy. Most fat people I like—they have expansive natures to go with their expansive waistlines. But there is a subgroup which I think of as the Evil Little Fat Folks. You don’t want to fuck with the ELFFS if you can help it; they will burn your house and rape your dog if you give them half an excuse and a quarter of an opportunity. Few of them stand over five-foot-two (Durgin’s height, I estimated), and many are under five feet. They smile a lot, but their eyes don’t smile. The Evil Little Fat Folks hate the whole world. Mostly they hate folks who can look down the length of their bodies and still see their own feet. This included me, although just barely. “Please thank your wife for me, Mr. Durgin. I’m sure she could recommend one for you to start on. ” Durgin chuckled. On his right, Durgin’s assistant—a pretty young woman who looked approximately seventeen minutes out of law school—chuckled. On my left, Romeo Bissonette chuckled. In the corner, the world’s oldest IF- 111 pilot only went on muttering into his Stenomask. “I’ll wait for the big-screen version, ” he said. His eyes gave an ugly little gleam, as if he knew a feature film had never been made from one of my books—only a made-for-TV movie of Being Two that pulled ratings roughly equal to the National Sofa Refinishing Championships. I hoped that we’d completed this chubby little fuck’s idea of the pleasantries. “I am Kyra Devore’s guardian aa’/item, ” he said. “Do you know what that means, Mr. Noonan? ”

“I believe I do. ”

“It means, ” Durgin rolled on, “that I’ve been appointed by Judge Rancourt to decide—if I can—where Kyra Devore’s best interests lie, should a custody judgment become necessary. Judge Rancourt would not, in such an event, be required to base his decision on my conclusions, but in many cases that is what happens. ” He looked at me with his hands folded on a blank legal pad. The pretty assistant, on the other hand, was scribbling madly. Perhaps she didn’t trust the fighter-pilot. Durgin looked as if he expected a round of applause. “Was that a question, Mr. Durgin? ” I asked and Romeo Bissonette delivered a light, practiced chip to my ankle. I didn’t need to look at him to know it wasn’t an accident.

Durgin pursed lips so smooth and damp that he looked as if he were wearing a clear gloss on them. On his shining pate, roughly two dozen strands of hair were combed in smooth little arcs. He gave me a patient, measuring look. Behind it was all the intransigent ugliness of an Evil Little Fat Folk. The pleasantries were over, all right. I was sure of it. “No, Mr. Noonan, that was not a question. I simply thought you might like to know why we’ve had to ask you to come away from your lovely lake on such a pleasant morning. Perhaps I was wrong. Now, if” There was a peremptory knock on the door, followed by your friend and his, George Footman. Today Cleveland Casual had been replaced by a khaki Deputy Sheriff’s uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and sidearm. He helped himself to a good look at the assistant’s bustline, displayed in a blue silk blouse, then handed her a folder and a cassette tape recorder. He gave me one brief gander before leaving. I remember you, buddy, that glance said. The smartass writer, the cheap date. Romeo Bissonette tipped his head toward me. He used the side of his hand to bridge the gap between his mouth and my ear. “Devore’s tape, ” he said. I nodded to show I understood, then turned to Durgin again. “Mr. Noonan, you’ve met Kyra Devore and her mother, Mary Devore, haven’t you? ” How did you get Mattie out of Mary, I wondered. . . and then knew, just as I had known about the white shorts and halter top. Mattie was how Ki had first tried to say Mary. “Mr. Noonan, are we keeping you up? ”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic, is there? ” Bissonette asked. His tone was mild, but Elmer Durgin gave him a look which suggested that, should the ELFFS succeed in their goal of world domination, Bissonette would be aboard the first gulag-bound boxcar. “I’m sorry, ” I said before Durgin could reply. “I just got derailed there for a second or two. ”

“New story idea? ” Durgin asked, smiling his glossy smile. He looked like a swamp-toad in a sportcoat. He turned to the old jet pilot, told him to strike that last, then repeated his question about Kyra and Mattie. Yes, I said, I had met them. “Once or more than once? ”

“More than once. ”

“How many times have you met them? ”

“Twice. ”

“Have you also spoken to Mary Devore on the phone? ” Already these questions were moving in a direction that made me uncomfortable. “Yes. ”

“How many times? ”

“Three times. ” The third had come the day before, when she had asked if I would join her and John Storrow for a picnic lunch on the town common after my deposition. Lunch right there in the middle of town before God and everybody. . . although, with a New York lawyer to play chaperone, what harm in that? “Have you spoken to Kyra Devore on the telephone? ” What an odd question! Not one anybody had prepared me for, either. I supposed that was at least partly why he had asked it. “Mr. Noonan? ”

“Yes, I’ve spoken to her once. ”

“Can you tell us the nature of that conversation? ”

“Well. . . ” I looked doubtfully at Bissonette, but there was no help there. He obviously didn’t know, either. “Mattie—”

“Pardon me? ” Durgin leaned forward as much as he could. His eyes were intent in their pink pockets of flesh. “Mattie? ”

“Mattie Devore.

Mary Devore. ”

“You call her Mattie? ”

24o “Yes, ” I said, and had a wild impulse to add: In bed/In bed I call her that/" Oh Mattie, don’t stop, don’t stop, ” I cry/" It’s the name she gave me when she introduced herself. I met her—”

“We may get to that, but right now I’m interested in your telephone conversation with Kyra Devote. When was that? ”

“It was yesterday. ”

“July ninth, 1998. ”

“Yes. ”

“Who placed that call? ”

“Ma. . . Mary Devote. ” Now he’ll ask why she called, I thought, and I’ll say she wanted to have yet another sex marathon, JSREPLAY to consist of sgeding each other chocolate-dipped strawberries while we look at pictures of naked mai-firmed dwarves. “How did Kyra Devote happen to speak to you? ”

“She asked if she could. I heard her saying to her mother that she had to tell me something. ”

“What was it she had to tell you? ”

“That she had her first bubble bath. ”

“Did she also say she coughed? ” I was quiet, looking at him. In that moment I understood why people hate lawyers, especially when they’ve been dusted over by one who’s good at the job. “Mr. Noonan, would you like me to repeat the question? ”

“No, ” I said, wondering where he’d gotten his information. Had these bastards tapped Mattie’s phone? My phone? Both?

Perhaps for the first time I understood on a gut level what it must be like to have half a billion dollars. With that much dough you could tap a lot of telephones. “She said her mother pushed bubbles in her face and she coughed. But she was—”

“Thank you, Mr. Noonan, now let’s turn to—”

“Let him finish, ” Bissonette said. I had an idea he had already taken a bigger part in the proceedings than he had expected to, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was a sleepy-looking man with a bloodhound’s mournful, trustworthy face. “This isn’t a courtroom, and you’re not cross-examining him. ”

“I have the little girl’s welfare to think of, ” Durgin said. He sounded both pompous and humble at the same time, a combination that went together like chocolate sauce on creamed corn. “It’s a responsibility I take very seriously. If I seemed to be badgering you, Mr. Noonan, I apologize. ” I didn’t bother accepting his apology—that would have made us both phonies. “All I was going to say is that Ki was laughing when she said it. She said she and her mother had a bubble-fight. When her mother came back on, she was laughing, too. ” Durgin had opened the folder Footman had brought him and was paging rapidly through it while I spoke, as if he weren’t hearing a word. “Her mother. . . Mattie, as you call her. ”

“Yes. Mattie as I call her. How do you know about our private telephone conversation in the first place? ”

“That’s none of your business, Mr. Noonan. ” He selected a single sheet of paper, then closed the folder. He held the paper up briefly, like a doctor studying an X-ray, and I could see it was covered with single-spaced typing. “Let’s turn to your initial meeting with Mary and Kyra Devore. That was on the Fourth of July, wasn’t it? ”

“Yes. ” Durgin was nodding. “The morning of the Fourth. And you met Kyra Devote first. ”

“Yes. ”

“You met her first because her mother wasn’t with her at that time, was she? ”

“That’s a badly phrased question, Mr. Durgin, but I guess the answer is yes. ”

“I’m flattered to have my grammar corrected by a man who’s been on the bestseller lists, ” Durgin said, smiling. The smile suggested that he’d like to see me sitting next to Romeo Bissonette in that first gulag-bound boxcar. “Tell us about your meeting, first with Kyra Devore and then with Mary Devore. Or Mattie, if you like that better. ” I told the story. When I was finished, Durgin centered the tape player in front of him. The nails of his pudgy fingers looked as glossy as his lips.

“Mr. Noonan, you could have run Kyra over, isn’t that true? ”

“Absolutely not. I was going thirty-five—that’s the speed limit there by the store.

I saw her in plenty of time to stop. ”

“Suppose you had been coming the other way, though—heading north instead of south. Would you still have seen her in plenty of time? ”

That was a fairer question than some of his others, actually. Someone coming the other way would have had a far shorter time to react.

Still. . . “Yes, ” I said. Durgin went up with the eyebrows. “You’re sure of that? ”

“Yes, Mr. Durgin. I might have had to come down a little harder on the brakes, but—” ’5t thirty-five. ”

“Yes, at thirty-five. I told you, that’s the speed limit—”

“—on that particular stretch of Route 68. Yes, you told me that. You did. Is it your experience that most people obey the speed limit on that part of the road? ”

“I haven’t spent much time on the TR since 1993, so I can’t—”

“Come on, Mr. Noonan—this isn’t a scene from one of your books. Just answer my questions, or we’ll be here all morning. ”

“I’m doing my best, Mr. Durgin. ” He sighed, put-upon. “You’ve owned your place on Dark Score Lake since the eighties, haven’t you? And the speed limit around the Lakeview General Store, the post office, and Dick Brooks’s All-Purpose Garage-what’s called The North Village—hasn’t changed since then, has it? ”

⇐ Предыдущая 13 14 15 16 171819 20 21 22 Следующая ⇒