Needful Things (Page 83)

He waited for the cruiser to come alive in a blaze of pulsing blue lights and rip out after him, but it didn’t happen. Ace blipped past at eighty, and the State Bear never made a move.

Hell, he must have been cooping.

But Ace knew better. When you saw a radar gun poking out of the window, you knew the guy inside was wide awake and hot to trot. No, what had happened was this: the State cop hadn’t been able to see the Talisman. It sounded crazy, but it felt exactly right.

The big yellow car with its three headlights screaming out of the front was invisible to both high-tech hardware and the cops that used it.

Grinning, Ace walked Mr. Gaunt’s Tucker Talisman up to a hundred and ten. He arrived back in The Rock at quarter past eight, with almost four hours to spare.

8

Mr. Gaunt emerged from his shop and stood beneath the canopy to watch Ace baby the Talisman into one of the three slant parking spaces in front of Needful Things.

"You made good time, Ace."

"Yeah. This is some car."

"Bet your fur," Mr. Gaunt said. He ran a hand along the Tucker’s smoothly sloping front deck. "One of a kind. You have brought my merchandise, I take it?"

"Yeah. Mr. Gaunt, I got some idea of just how special this car of yours is on the way back, but I think you still might consider getting some license plates for it, and maybe an inspection stick-"

"They are not necessary," Mr. Gaunt said Indifferently. "Park it in the alley behind the shop, Ace, if you please. I’ll take care of it later."

"How? Where?" Ace found himself suddenly reluctant to turn the car over to Mr. Gaunt. It was not just that he’d left his own car in Boston and needed wheels for his night’s work; the Talisman made every other car he had ever driven, including the Challenger, seem like street-trash.

"That," said Mr. Gaunt, "is my business." He looked at Ace imperturbably. "You’ll find that things go more smoothly for you, Ace, if you look at working for me the way you would look at serving in the Army. There are three ways of doing things for you now-the right way, the wrong way, and Mr. Gaunt’s way. If you always opt for the third choice, trouble will never find you. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"That’s fine. Now drive around to the back door."

Ace piloted the yellow car around the corner and drove slowly up the narrow alley which ran behind the business buildings on the west side of Main Street. The rear door of Needful Things was open. Mr.

Gaunt stood in a slanted oblong of yellow light, waiting.

He made no effort to help as Ace carried the crates into the shop’s back room, puffing with the effort. He did not know it, but a good many customers would have been surprised if they had seen that room. They had heard Mr. Gaunt back there behind the hanging velvet drape which divided the shop from the storage area, shifting goods, moving boxes around… but there was nothing at all in the room until Ace stacked the crates in one corner at Mr. Gaunt’s direction.

Yes-there was one thing. On the far side of the room, a brown Norway rat was lying beneath the sprung arm of a large Victory rat-trap. Its neck was broken, its front teeth exposed in a dead snarl.

"Good job," Mr. Gaunt said, rubbing his long-fingered hands together and smiling. "This has been a good evening’s work, all told.

You have performed to the top of my expectations, Ace-the very top."

"Thanks, sir." Ace was astounded. He had never in his life called any man sir until this moment.

"Here’s a little something for your trouble." Mr. Gaunt handed Ace a brown envelope. Ace pressed at it with the tips of his fingers and felt the loose grit of powder inside. "I believe you will want to do some investigating tonight, won’t you? This might give you a little extra go-power, as the old Esso ads used to say."

Ace started. "Oh, shit! Shit! I left that book-the book with the map in it-in my car! It’s back in Boston! God damn it!" He made a fist and slammed it against his thigh.

Mr. Gaunt was smiling. "I don’t think so," he said. "I think it’s in the Tucker."

"No, I-"

"Why not check for yourself?"

So Ace did, and of course the book was there, sitting on the dashboard with its spine pressing against the Tucker’s patented popout windshield. Lost and Buried Treasures of New England. He took it and thumbed it. The map was still inside. He looked at Mr.

Gaunt with dumb gratitude.

"I won’t require your services again until tomorrow evening, around this same time," Mr. Gaunt said. "I suggest you spend the daylight hours at your place in Mechanic Falls. That should suit you well enough; I believe you’ll want to sleep late. You still have a busy night ahead of you, if I am not mistaken."

Ace thought of the little crosses on the map and nodded.

"And," Mr. Gaunt added, "it might be prudent for you to avoid the notice of Sheriff Pangborn for the next day or two. After that, I don’t think it will matter." His lips pulled back; his teeth sprang forward in large, predatory clumps. "By the end of the week, I think a lot of things which heretofore mattered a great deal to the citizens of this town are going to cease to matter at all. Don’t you think so, Ace?"

"If you say so," Ace replied. He was falling into that strange, dazed state again, and he didn’t mind at all. "I don’t know how I’m going to get around, though."

"All taken care of," Mr. Gaunt said. "You’ll find a car parked out front with the keys in the ignition. A company car, so to speak.

I’m afraid it’s only a Chevrolet-a perfectly ordinary Chevrolet-but it will provide you with reliable, unobtrusive transportation, just the same. You’ll enjoy the TV newsvan more, of course, but-"

"Newsvan?

What newsvan?"

Mr. Gaunt elected not to answer. "But the Chevrolet will meet all your current transportation needs, I assure you. just don’t try to run any State Police speed-traps in it. I’m afraid that wouldn’t do.

Not with this vehicle. Not at all."

Ace heard himself say: "I sure would like to have a car like your Tucker, Mr. Gaunt, sir. It’s great."

"Well, perhaps we can do a deal. You see, Ace, I have a very simple business policy. Would you like to know what it is?"

"Sure." And Ace was sincere.

"Everything is for sale. That’s my philosophy. Everything is for sale."

"Everything’s for sale," Ace said dreamily. "Wow! Heavy!"

"Right! Heavy! Now, Ace, I believe I’ll have a bite to eat.

I’ve just been too busy to do it, holiday or no holiday. I’d ask you to join me, but-"

"Gee, I really can’t."

"No, of course not. You have places to go and holes to dig."

don’t you? I’ll expect you tomorrow night, between eight and nine."

"Between eight and nine."

"Yes. After dark."

"When nobody knows and nobody sees," Ace said dreamily.

"Got it in one! Goodnight, Ace."

Mr. Gaunt held out his hand. Ace began to reach for it… and then saw there was already something in it. It was the brown rat from the trap in the storeroom. Ace pulled back with a little grunt of disgust. He hadn’t the slightest idea when Mr. Gaunt had picked up the dead rat. Or perhaps it was a different one?

Ace decided he didn’t care, one way or another. All he knew was that he had no plans to shake hands with a dead rat, no matter how cool a dude Mr. Gaunt was.

Smiling, Mr. Gaunt said: "Excuse me. Every year I grow a little more forgetful. I believe I just tried to give you my dinner, Ace!"

"Dinner," Ace said in a faint little voice.

"Yes indeed." A thick yellow thumbnail plunged into the white fur which covered the rat’s belly; a moment later, its intestines were oozing into Mr. Gaunt’s unmarked palm. Before Ace could see more, Mr.

Gaunt had turned away and was pulling the alley door closed. "Now, where did I put that cheese-?"

There was a heavy metallic snick! as the lock engaged.

Ace leaned over, sure he was going to vomit between his shoes.

His stomach clenched, his gorge rose… and then sank back again.

Because he hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen. "It was a joke," he muttered. "He had a rubber rat in his coat pocket, or something. It was just a joke."

Was it? What about the intestines, then? And the cold, jellylike mung which had surrounded them? What about that?

You’re just tired, he thought. You imagined it, that’s all. It was a rubber rat. As for the rest… poof But for a moment everything-the deserted garage, the selfdirected Tucker, even that ominous piece of graffiti, YOGSOTHOTH RULES-tried to cram in on him, and a powerful voice yelled: Get out of here! Get out while there’s still time!

But that was the really crazy thought. There was money waiting for him out there in the night. Maybe a lot of it. Maybe a son-ofa-bitching fortune.

Ace stood in the darkness for a few minutes like a robot with a flat power-pack. Little by little some sense of reality-some sense of himself-returned, and he decided the rat didn’t matter. Neither did the Tucker Talisman. The blow mattered, and the ma mattered, and he had an idea that Mr. Gaunt’s very simple business policy mattered, but nothing else. He couldn’t let anything else matter.

He walked down the alley and around the corner to the front of Needful Things. The shop was closed and dark, like all the shops on Lower Main Street. A Chevy Celebrity was parked in one of the slant spaces in front of Mr. Gaunt’s shop, just as promised. Ace tried to remember if it had been there when he arrived with the Talisman, and really couldn’t do it. Every time he tried to cast his mind back to any memories before the last few minutes, it ran into a roadblock; he saw himself moving to accept Mr. Gaunt’s offered hand, most natural thing in the world, and suddenly realizing that Mr. Gaunt was holding a large dead rat.