Mr. Mercedes

At that moment, the main doors swing open. Some girls cheer; most continue singing, and louder than ever.

‘IT’S GONNA BE A NEW DAY … I’LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!’

Chicks wearing ’Round Here tops and their first makeup pour in, their parents (mostly mommies) struggling to keep up and stay co

‘Hey, watch it!’ the wheelchair-girl’s mother shouts, but the fat bitch in the double-wide jeans is already gone, waving a ’Round Here pe

Close one, Brady thinks, and grins.

It’s happy confusion in the hallway, and all but one of the security guards who were checking the handicapped concertgoers move to do what they can with this new influx of crazed singing teens and pre-teens. The one guard who remains on the handicapped side of the corridor is a young woman, and she’s waving the wheelchairs through with barely a glance. As Brady approaches her he spots the guy in charge, Hat Honcho, standing on the far side of the corridor almost directly opposite. At six-three or so, he’s easy to see, because he towers over the girls, and his eyes never stop moving. In one hand he holds a piece of paper, which he glances down at every now and again.

‘Show me your tickets and go,’ the security woman says to the pretty wheelchair-girl and her mother. ‘Righthand door.’

Brady sees something interesting. The tall security guy in the hat grabs a guy of twenty or so who looks to be on his own and pulls him out of the scrum.

‘Next!’ the security woman calls to him. ‘Don’t hold up the line!’

Brady rolls forward, ready to push Frankie’s picture against the toggle-switch on Thing Two if she shows even a passing interest in the pockets of his wheelchair. The corridor is now wall to wall with pushing, singing girls, and his score will be a lot higher than thirty. If the corridor has to do, that will be fine.

The security woman points at the picture. ‘Who’s that, hon?’

‘My little boy,’ Brady says with a game smile. ‘He was killed in an accident last year. The same one that left me …’ He indicates the chair. ‘He loved ’Round Here, but he never got to hear their new album. Now he will.’

She’s harried, but not too harried for sympathy; her eyes soften. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Brady says, thinking: You stupid cunt.

‘Go straight ahead, sir, then bear to the right. You’ll find the two handicapped aisles halfway down the auditorium. Great views. If you need help getting down the ramp – it’s pretty steep – look for one of the ushers wearing the yellow armbands.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ Brady says, smiling at her. ‘Great brakes on this baby.’

‘Good for you. Enjoy the show.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, I sure will. Frankie will, too.’

Brady rolls toward the main entrance. Back at the security checkpoint, Larry Windom – known to his police colleagues as Romper-Stomper – releases the young man who decided on the spur of the moment to use his kid sister’s ticket when she came down with mono. He looks nothing like the creep in the photo Bill Hodges sent him.

The auditorium features stadium seating, which delights Brady. The bowl shape will concentrate the explosion. He can imagine the packets of ball bearings taped under his seat fa

Pop music plays from the overhead speakers, but the girls who are filling the seats and choking the aisles drown it out with their own young and fervent voices. Spotlights swing back and forth over the crowd. Frisbees fly. A couple of oversized beachballs bounce around. The only thing that surprises Brady is that there’s no sign of the Ferris wheel and all that midway shit onstage. Why did they haul it all in, if they weren’t going to use it?

An usher with a yellow armband has just finished placing the pretty girl with the stick legs, and comes up to assist Brady, but Brady waves him off. The usher gives him a grin and a pat on the shoulder as he goes by to help someone else. Brady rolls down to the first of the two sections reserved for the handicapped. He parks next to the pretty girl with the stick legs.

She turns to him with a smile. ‘Isn’t this exciting?’

Brady smiles back, thinking, You don’t know the half of it, you crippled bitch.

30

Tanya Robertson is looking at the stage and thinking of the first concert she ever went to – it was the Temps – and how Bobby Wilson kissed her right in the middle of ‘My Girl.’ Very romantic.

She’s roused from these thoughts by her daughter, who’s shaking her arm. ‘Look, Mom, there’s the crippled man. Over there with the other wheelchair-people.’ Barbara points to the left and down a couple of rows. Here the seats have been removed to make room for two ranks of wheelchairs.

‘I see him, Barb, but it’s not polite to stare.’

‘I hope he has a good time, don’t you?’

Tanya smiles at her daughter. ‘I sure do, honey.’

‘Can we have our phones back? We need them for the start of the show.’

To take pictures with is what Tanya Robinson assumes … because it’s been a long time since she’s been to a rock show. She opens her purse and doles out the candy-colored phones. For a wonder, the girls just hold them. For the time being, they’re too busy goggling around to call or text. Tanya puts a quick kiss on top of Barb’s head and then sits back, lost in the past, thinking of Bobby Wilson’s kiss. Not quite the first, but the first good one.

She hopes that when the time comes, Barb will be as lucky.

31

‘Oh my happy clapping Jesus,’ Holly says, and hits her forehead with the heel of her hand. She’s finished with Brady’s Number One – nothing much there – and has moved on to Number Two.

Jerome looks up from Number Five, which seems to have been exclusively dedicated to video games, most of the Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty sort. ‘What?’

‘It’s just that every now and then I run across someone even more screwed in the head than me,’ she says. ‘It cheers me up. That’s terrible, I know it is, but I can’t help it.’

Hodges gets up from the stairs with a grunt and comes over to look. The screen is filled with small photos. They appear to be harmless cheesecake, not much different from the kind he and his friends used to moon over in Adam and Spicy Leg Art back in the late fifties. Holly enlarges three of them and arranges them in a row. Here is Deborah Hartsfield wearing a filmy robe. And Deborah Hartsfield wearing babydoll pajamas. And Deborah Hartsfield in a frilly pink bra-and-panty set.

‘My God, it’s his mother,’ Jerome says. His face is a study in revulsion, amazement, and fascination. ‘And it looks like she posed.’

It looks that way to Hodges, too.

‘Yup,’ Holly says. ‘Paging Dr Freud. Why do you keep rubbing your shoulder, Mr Hodges?’

‘Pulled a muscle,’ he says. But he’s starting to wonder about that.

Jerome glances at the desktop screen of Number Three, starts to check out the photos of Brady Hartsfield’s mother again, then does a double-take. ‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘Look at this, Bill.’

Sitting in the lower lefthand corner of Number Three’s desktop is a Blue Umbrella icon.