Thinner

Ah, that was something else, wasn't it?

Failure to investigate? Hell, Billy, don't make me laugh. Failure to investigate is a sin of omission. What Hopley did was to throw as much dirt as he could over any possible culpability. Begi

The wind was picking up and the rain was harder now. He could see it cratering the puddles in the street. The water had a queer polished look under the amber highsecurity streetlamps that lined Lantern Drive. Overhead, branches moaned and creaked in the wind, and Billy Halleck looked up uneasily.

I ought to go see Duncan Hopley.

Something glimmered – something that might have been the spark of an idea. Then he thought of Leda Rossington's drugged, horrified face … he thought of Leda saying He's hard to talk to now … it's happening inside his mouth, you see … everything he says to me comes out in grunts.

Not tonight. He'd had enough for tonight.

'Where did you go, Billy?'

She was in bed, lying in a pool of light thrown by the reading lamp. Now she laid her book aside on the coverlet, looked at him, and Billy saw the dark brown hollows under her eyes. Those brown hollows did not exactly overwhelm him with pity . . . at least, not tonight.

For just a moment he thought of saying: I went to see Cary Rossington, but since he was gone I ended up having a few drinks with his wife – the kind of drinks the Green Giant must have when he's on a toot. And you'll never guess what she told me, Heidi, dear. Cary Rossington, who grabbed your tit once at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, is turning into an alligator. When he finally dies, they can turn him into a brand-new product: Here Come de Judge Pocketbooks.

'Nowhere,' he said. 'Just out. Walking. Thinking.'

'You smell like you fell into the juniper bushes on your way home.'

'I guess I did, in a ma

'How many did you have?'

'A couple.'

'It smells more like five.'

'Heidi, are you cross-examining me?'

'No, honey. But I wish you wouldn't worry so much. Those doctors will probably find out what's wrong when they do the metabolic series.'

Halleck grunted.

She turned her earnest, scared face toward him. 'I just thank God it isn't cancer.'

He thought – and almost said – that it must be nice for her to be on the outside; it must be nice to be able to see gradations of the horror. He didn't say it, but some of what he felt must have shown on his face, because her expression of tired misery intensified.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It just … it seems hard to say anything that isn't the wrong thing.'

You know it, babe, he thought, and the hate flashed up again, hot and sour. On top of the gin, it made him feel both depressed and physically ill. It receded, leaving shame in its wake. Cary's skin was changing into God knew what, something fit only to be seen in a circus-sideshow tent. Duncan Hopley might be just fine, or something even worse might be waiting for Billy there. Hell, losing weight wasn't so bad, was it?

He undressed, careful to turn off her reading lamp first, and took Heidi in his arms. She was stiff against him at first. Then, just when he began to think it was going to be no good, she softened. He heard the sob she tried to swallow back and thought unhappily that if all the storybooks were right, that there was nobility to be found in adversity and character to be built in tribulation, then he was doing a piss-poor job of both finding and building.

'Heidi, I'm sorry,' he said.

'If I could only do something,' she sobbed. 'If I could only do something, Billy, you know?'

'You can,' he said, and touched her breast.

They made love. He began thinking, This one is for her, and discovered it had been for himself after all; instead of seeing Leda Rossington's haunted face and shocked, glittering eyes in the darkness, he was able to sleep.

The next morning, the scale registered 176.

Chapter Twelve. Duncan Hopley

He had arranged a leave of absence from the office in order to accommodate the metabolic series – Kirk Penschley had been almost indecently willing to accommodate his request, leaving Halleck with a truth he would just as soon not have faced; they wanted to get rid of him. With two of his former three chins now gone, his cheekbones evident for the first time in years, the other bones of his face showing almost as clearly, he had turned into the office bogeyman.

'Hell yes!' Penschley had responded almost before Billy's request was completely out of his mouth. Penschley spoke in a too-hearty voice, the voice people adopt when everyone knows something is seriously wrong and no one wants to admit it. He dropped his eyes, staring at the place where Halleck's belly used to be. 'Take however much time you need, Bill.'

'Three days should do it,' he'd replied. Now he called Penschley back from the pay phone at Barker's Coffee Shop and told him he might have to take more than three days. More than three days, yes – but maybe not just for the metabolic series. The idea had returned, glimmering. It was not a hope yet, nothing as grand as that, but it was something.

'How much time?' Penschley asked him.

'I don't know for sure,' Halleck said. 'Two weeks, maybe. Possibly a month.'

There was a momentary silence at the other end, and Halleck realized Penschley was reading a subtext: What I really mean, Kirk, is that I'll never be back. They've finally diagnosed the cancer. Now comes the cobalt, the drugs for pain, the interferon if we can get it, the laetrile if we wig out and decide to head for Mexico. The next time you see me, Kirk, I'll be in a long box with a silk pillow under my head.

And Billy, who had been afraid and not much more for the last six weeks, felt the first thin stirrings of anger. That's not what I'm saying, goddammit. At least, not yet.

'No problem, Bill. We'll want to turn the Hood matter over to Ron Baker, but I think everything else can hang fire for a while longer.'

The fuck you do. You'll start turning over everything else to staff this afternoon, and as for the Hood litigation, you turned it over to Ron Baker last week – he called Thursday afternoon and asked me where Sally put the fucking ConGas depositions. Your idea of hanging fire, Kirk-baby, has to do solely with Sunday-afternoon chicken barbecues at your place in Vermont. So don't bullshit a bullshitter.

'I*ll see he gets the file,' Billy said, and could not resist adding, 'I think he's already got the Con-Gas deps.'

A thoughtful silence at Kirk Penschley's end as he digested this. Then: 'Well … if there's anything I can do . . .'

'There is something,' Billy said. 'Although it sounds a little Loony Tunes.'

'What's that?' His voice was cautious now.

'You remember my trouble this early spring? The accident?'

'Ye-es.'

'The woman I struck was a Gypsy. Did you know that?'

'It was in the paper,' Penschley said reluctantly.

'She was part of a … a … What? A band, I guess you'd say. A band of Gypsies. They were camping out here in Fairview. They made a deal with a local farmer who needed cash -'

'Hang on, hang on a second,' Kirk Penschley said, his voice a trifle waspy, totally unlike his former paid mourner's tone. Billy gri