Страница 45 из 108
“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” said Sweeney virtuously.
“You mean you don’t want to get yourself in trouble.”
Jerry Sweeney cradled his jaw with a fleshy hand. “That too.”
Leo Fly
“Sal and Frank,” said Sweeney, lowering his voice and taking a quick glance toward the kitchen, “they’d been knocking off some liquor stores.”
“I already know that. Where can I find Frank?”
“He left town.”
“I know that as well. Where’d he go?”
“No place around here. Someplace out of state. He said he was going back to school, he made a joke about it.”
“Yeah? And what was he pla
Sweeney looked at Fly
“And?”
“He made it clear he was going to do a number, at least that’s what I took him to be saying. But it’d be different from the others. He said it’d be something new for him. Like that was what he was going to school to learn.”
“What’d he mean by that?”
“Beats me. I told you, he gave me the willies. He’d get mad and you couldn’t figure how it happened. Like one moment he’d be laughing and the next he’d be all over you.”
“So what do you think he might have meant?”
“I figured he’d been hired to ice someone but it was going to be different from his other jobs. Jesus, what do you expect me to say? Just different, that’s all. Maybe he’d iced a bunch a short people and now he was going to do a tall guy.”
Leo Fly
“I’m just telling you I don’t know.”
Fly
“Who hired him?”
“No one around here. Least that was my impression.”
“Was it somebody from Portsmouth?” Fly
“If it was, he didn’t share it with me.” Sweeney widened his eyes in mock i
“We could still go downtown,” said Fly
A drop of perspiration appeared on Jerry Sweeney’s puffy brow and Fly
“Murderous.”
“Yeah, that too.” Sweeney wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“How well’d you know him?”
“I’d see him in the bar with Sal. Even Sal was scared of him.”
“You’re lying to me again.”
Another drop of sweat seemed to emerge from nowhere. “Okay, okay, he wanted me to drive for him. I didn’t like it. I said I was busy. He started to get pissed off and I told him about Sal. That Sal was a good bet.”
“So you introduced them and now Sal’s dead.”
“Yeah, well, at least it’s not me. But before that I’d see him in the bar. We shot pool a few times. Like we’d be partners. He bet the dogs; he even won some.”
“And he talked about doing a number now and then.”
“Not directly, but, yeah, it’d come up.”
“You never thought of giving us a call? An anonymous tip?”
“Hey,” said Sweeney, looking offended, “I got my reputation to consider.”
Fly
“Different, that’s all. Frank didn’t confide in me. But it worried him. I don’t mean it scared him, I don’t think anything scared him. It was just something he had trouble making jokes about. And it was co
—
Scott McKi
There were eleven kids seated in a semicircle and Dr. Hawthorne was up at the blackboard, drawing several lines indicating the northern boundary of the Roman Empire in what was now Austria, Hungary, and Romania. He had gotten chalk on his jacket but he didn’t seem to care. He was talking about the Second Marcoma
It was last period on Monday and getting dark. All afternoon Scott had been thinking about Mr. Evings’s office being wrecked. While not exactly exciting, it was more interesting than most of the stuff at Bishop’s Hill. Scott had caught a glimpse of the room before he got shooed away: a great pile of busted books. And Scott had seen the police arrive in two different cars. A little later Dr. Hawthorne had taken the cops into his office. Scott felt frustrated because he knew nothing about who might have done it, nor did he know who might be suspected. Usually he knew stuff, but today he hadn’t heard anything and nobody looked guilty. Scott looked forward to prowling around the dorms after di
As for history, Scott enjoyed the battles best and Mr. Campbell had made them exciting. The Greek and Persian wars had been absolutely great. Dr. Hawthorne wasn’t as good at battles as Mr. Campbell. And Scott didn’t really get stuff like Stoicism. “Everything that happens, happens justly.” What kind of sense did that make? “For a thrown stone there is no more evil in falling than there is good in rising.” Not only did Scott not understand it, he didn’t care about the riddle it posed except to stay friendly with Dr. Hawthorne. “The business of the healthy eye is to see everything that is visible.” Now, that made sense, because Scott prided himself on trying to see everything there was to be seen. Secret agents had to be on the alert.