“At least.” He said it grudgingly. One hand was massaging the base of his throat. The bayonet had sagged. Grabbing it with my right hand would have been simple, and grabbing the revolver out of his belt with the other wouldn’t have been out of the question, but I didn’t want to. I thought the bug would take care of Mr. Bill Turcotte. I really thought it would be that simple. You see how easy it is to forget the obduracy of the past?

“So he took the bodies out in the woods and buried them and said they’d run off. There couldn’t have been much of an investigation.”

Turcotte turned his head and spat. “He come from a good old Derry fambly. Mine come down from the Saint John Valley in a rusty ole pickup truck when I was ten n Clara was eight. Just on parle trash. What do you think?”

I thought it was another case of Derry being Derry—that’s what I thought. And while I understood Turcotte’s love and sympathized with his loss, he was talking about an old crime. It was the one that was scheduled to happen in less than two hours that concerned me.

“You set me up with Frati, didn’t you?” This was now obvious, but still disappointing. I’d thought the guy was just being friendly, passing on a little local gossip over beer and Lobster Pickin’s. Wrong. “Pal of yours?”

Turcotte smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “Me friends with a rich kike pawnbroker?

That’s a laugh. You want to hear a little story?”

I took another peek at my watch and saw I still had some time to spare. While Turcotte was talking, that old stomach virus would be hard at work. The first time he bent over to puke, I intended to pounce.

“Why not?”

“Me, Dunning, and Chaz Frati are all the same age—forty-two. You believe that?”

“Sure.” But Turcotte, who had lived hard (and was now getting sick, little as he wanted to admit it), looked ten years older than either of them.

“When we was all seniors at the old Consolidated, I was assistant manager of the football team. Tiger Bill, they called me—ain’t that cute? I tried out for the team when I was a freshman and then again when I was a sophomore, but I got cut both times. Too skinny for the line, too slow for the backfield. Story of my fuckin life, mister. But I loved the game, and I couldn’t afford the dime to buy a ticket—my fambly didn’t have nothin—so I took on bein assistant manager. Nice name, but do you know what it means?”

Sure I did. In my Jake Epping life, I wasn’t Mr. Real Estate but Mr. High School, and some things don’t change. “You were the waterboy.”

“Yeah, I brought em water. And held the puke-bucket if someone got sick after runnin laps on a hot day or took a helmet in the nuts. Also the guy who stayed late to pick up all their crud on the field and fished their shit-stained jocks off the shower room floor.” He grimaced. I imagined his stomach turning into a yacht on a stormy sea. Up she goes, mateys . . . then the corkscrew plunge.

“So one day in September or October of ’34, I’m out there after practice all on my lonesome, pickin up dropped pads and elastic bandages and all the other stuff they used to leave behind, puttin it all in my wheelie-basket, and what do I see but Chaz Frati tear-assin across the football field, droppin his books behind him. A bunch of boys was chasin him and— Christ, what was that?” He stared around, eyes bulging in his pale face. Once again I maybe could have grabbed the pistol, and the bayonet for sure, but I didn’t. His hand was rubbing his chest again. Not his stomach, but his chest. That probably should have told me something, but I had too much on my mind. His story was not the least of it. That’s the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the least opportune moments.

“Relax, Turcotte. It’s just kids shooting off firecrackers. Halloween, remember?”

“I don’t feel so good. Maybe you’re right about that bug.” If he thought he might be getting sick enough to be incapacitated, he might do something rash. “Never mind the bug just now. Tell me about Frati.”

He grinned. It was an unsettling expression on that pale, sweaty, stubbly face. “Ole Chazzy ran like hell, but they caught up with him. There was a ravine about twenty yards past the goalposts at the south end of the field, and they pushed him down into it. Would you be s’prized to know that Frankie Dunning was one of em?”

I shook my head.

“They got him down in there, and they pantsed him. Then they started pushin him around and takin smacks at him. I yelled for em to quit it, and one of em looks up at me and yells, ‘Come on down and make us, fuckface. We’ll give you double what we’re givin him.’ So I ran for the locker room and told some of the football players that a bunch of yeggs were bullyin up on a kid and maybe they wanted to put a stop to it. Well, they didn’t give a shit about who was gettin bullied and who wasn’t, but those guys were always up for a fight. They run on out, some of em not wearin nothin but their underwear. And you want to know somethin really funny, Amberson?”

“Sure.” I took another quick glance at my watch. Almost quarter of seven now. In the Dunning house, Doris would be doing the dishes and maybe listening to Huntley-Brinkley on the television.

“You late for somethin?” Turcotte asked. “Got a fuckin train to catch?”

“You were going to tell me something funny.”

“Oh. Yeah. They was singin the school song! How do you like that?” In my mind’s eye I could see eight or ten beefy half-dressed boys churning across the field, eager to do a little post-practice hitting, and singing Hail Derry Tigers, we hold your banner high. It was sort of funny.

Turcotte saw my grin and answered with one of his own. It was strained but genuine. “The footballies baffed a couple of those guys around pretty good. Not Frankie Dunning, though; that yellabelly saw they was gonna be outnumbered and run into the woods. Chazzy was layin on the ground, holdin his arm. It was broke. Could have been a lot worse, though. They woulda put him in the hospital. One of the footballies looks at him layin there and kinda toes at him—the way you might toe a cow patty you almost stepped in—and he says, ‘We ran all the way out here to save a jewboy’s bacon?’ And a bunch of em laughed, because it was kind of a joke, you see. Jewboy?

Bacon?” He peered at me through clumps of his Brylcreem-shiny hair.

“I get it,” I said.

“‘Aw, who gives a fuck,’ another of em says. ‘I got to kick some ass and that’s good enough for me.’ They went on back, and I helped ole Chaz up the ravine. I even walked home with im, because I thought he might faint or somethin. I was scared Frankie and his friends might come back

—he was, too—but I stuck with him. Fuck if I know just why. You should have seen the house he lived in—a fuckin palace. That hockshop business must really pay. When we got there, he thanked me. Meant it, too. He was just about bawlin. I says, ‘Don’t mention it, I just didn’t like seeing six-on-one.’ Which was true. But you know what they say about Jews: they never forget a debt or a favor.”