Black House

"Duz you know uff Fridz Haarman, him who wazz zo loff-ly? Dey called him, dey called him, dey called him ‘da Vamp, Vamp, Vamp of Hanover,’ yez dey dud, dud, dud. Evveybuddy, evveybuddy, evvey-buddy haz godz nide-marez all da dime, dime, dime, ha ha ho ho."

"Stop talking like that!" Rebecca shouts."You’re not fooling me!"

For a moment, the new intelligence flares within Burny’s dim eyes. It almost instantly retreats. He licks his lips and says, "Way-gup, Burn-Burn."

"Whatever," Rebecca says. "Dinner is downstairs at seven, if you want it. Go take a nap or something, will you?"

Burny gives her a peeved, murky look and plops a foot down on the floor, beginning the tedious process that will turn him around again. "You could write it down. Fritz Haarman. In Hanover." His mouth twists into a smile of unsettling slyness. "When the king comes here, maybe we can dance together."

"No, thanks." Rebecca turns her back on the old horror and clacks down the hallway on her high heels, uncomfortably aware of his eyes following her.

Rebecca’s nice little Coach handbag lies flat on her desk in the windowless vestibule to Chipper’s office. Before going in, she pauses to rip off a sheet of notepaper, write down Fritz Harmann(?), Hanover(?), and slip the paper into the bag’s central compartment. It might be nothing — it probably is — but who knows? She is furious that she let Burnside frighten her, and if she can find a way to use his nonsense against him, she will do her best to expel him from Maxton’s.

"Kiddo, is that you?" Chipper calls out.

"No, it’s Lady Magowan and her freakin’ nightmare." She strides into Chipper’s office and finds him behind his desk, happily counting out the bills contributed that afternoon by the sons and daughters of his clientele.

"My li’l Becky looks all ticked off," he says. "What happened, one of our zombies stomp on your foot?"

"Don’t call me Becky."

"Hey, hey, cheer up. You won’t believe how much your silver-tongued boyfriend conned out of the relatives today. A hundred and twenty-six smackers! Free money! Okay, what went wrong, anyhow?"

"Charles Burnside spooked me, that’s what. He ought to be in a mental hospital."

"Are you kidding? That particular zombie is worth his weight in gold. As long as Charles Burnside can draw breath into his body, he will always have a place in my heart." Grinning, he brandishes a handful of bills. "And if you have a place in my heart, honey-baby, you’ll always have a place at Maxton’s."

The memory of Burnside saying, The king was in his countinghouse, counting out his honeys makes her feel unclean. If Chipper were not grinning in that exultant, loose-lipped way, Rebecca supposes, he would not remind her so unpleasantly of his favorite resident. Evveybuddy haz godz nide-marez all da dime, dime, dime — that wasn’t a bad description of the Fisherman’s French Landing. Funny, you wouldn’t think Old Burny would take more notice of those murders than Chipper. Rebecca had never heard him mention the Fisherman’s crimes, apart from the time he groused that he would not be able to tell anyone he was going fishing until Dale Gilbertson finally got off his big fat butt, and what kind of crappy deal was that?

8

TWO TELEPHONE CALLS and another, private matter, one he is doing his best to deny, have conspired to pluck Jack Sawyer from his cocoon in Norway Valley and put him on the road to French Landing, Sumner Street, and the police station. The first call had been from Henry, and Henry, calling from the Maxton cafeteria during one of the Symphonic One’s breaks, had insisted on speaking his mind. A child had apparently been abducted from the sidewalk in front of Maxton’s earlier that day. Whatever Jack’s reasons for staying out of the case, which by the way he had never explained, they didn’t count anymore, sorry. This made four children who had been lost to the Fisherman, because Jack didn’t really think Irma Freneau was going to walk in her front door anytime soon, did he? Four children!

— No, Henry had said, I didn’t hear about it on the radio. It happened this morning.

— From a janitor at Maxton’s, Henry had said. He saw a worried-looking cop pick up a bicycle and put it in his trunk.

— All right, Henry had said, maybe I don’t know for certain, but I am certain. By tonight, Dale will identify the poor kid, and tomorrow his name will be all over the newspaper. And then this whole county is going to flip out. Don’t you get it? Just knowing you are involved will do a lot to keep people calm. You no longer have the luxury of retirement, Jack. You have to do your part.

Jack had told him he was jumping to conclusions, and that they would talk about it later.

Forty-five minutes later, Dale Gilbertson had called with the news that a boy named Tyler Marshall had vanished from in front of Maxton’s sometime that morning, and that Tyler’s father, Fred Marshall, was down there right now, in the station, demanding to see Jack Sawyer. Fred was a great guy, a real straight arrow and family man, a solid citizen, a friend of Dale’s, you could say, but at the moment he was at the end of his rope. Apparently Judy, his wife, had been having some kind of mental problems even before the trouble started, and Tyler’s disappearance had driven her off the edge. She talked in gibberish, injured herself, tore the house apart.

— And I kind of know Judy Marshall, Dale had said. Beautiful, beautiful woman, a little thing but tough as all get-out on the inside, both feet on the ground, a great person, a tremendous person, someone you’d think would never lose her grip, no matter what. It seems she thought, knew, whatever, that Tyler had been snatched even before his bicycle turned up. Late this afternoon, she got so bad Fred had to call Dr. Skarda and get her over to French County Lutheran in Arden, where they took one look at her and put her in Ward D, the mental wing. So you can imagine what kind of shape Fred’s in. He insists on talking to you. I have no confidence in you, he said to me.