left at the corner, moving out of sight.
Jack pounded through the snow, which was almost over the tops of his
boots in some places, and his heart triphammered, and his breath spurted
from him in white clouds, and he slipped, almost fell, regained his
balance, ran, ran, and it seemed to him that he wasn’t running along a
real street, that this was only a street in a dream, a nightmare place
from which there was no escape.
In the elevator, on the way up to the fourteenth floor, where Anson and
Francine Dorset had an apartment, Faye said, “Not a word about voodoo or
any of that nonsense. You hear me? They’ll think you’re crazy.”
Keith said, “Well, I don’t know about voodoo. But I sure as hell saw
something strange.”
“Don’t you dare go raving about it to Anson and Francine. He’s your
business partner, for heaven’s sake.
You’ve got to go on working with the man. That’s going to be hard to do
if he thinks you’re some sort of superstitious nut. A broker’s got to
have an image of stability. A banker’s image. Bankers and brokers.
People want to see stable, conservative men at a brokerage firm before
they trust it with their investments. You can’t afford the damage to
your reputation. Besides, they were only rats.”
“They weren’t rats,” he said. “I saw-”
“Nothing but rats.”
“I know what I saw.”
“Rats,” she insisted. “But we’re not going to tell Anson and Francine
we have rats. What would they think of us? I won’t have them knowing
we live in a building with rats. Why, Francine already looks down on
me, she looks down on everyone; she thinks she’s such a blueblood, that
family she comes from. I won’t give her the slightest advantage. I
swear I won’t. Not a word about rats. What we’ll tell them is that
there’s a gas leak. They can’t see our building from their apartment
and they won’t be going out on a night like this, so we’ll tell them
we’ve been evacuated because of a gas leak.”
“Faye-”
“And tomorrow morning,” she said determinedly, “I’ll start looking for a
new place for us.”
“But-”
“I won’t live in a building with rats. I simply won’t do it, and you
can’t expect me to. You should want out of there yourself, just as fast
as it can be arranged.”
“But they weren’t-”
“We’ll sell the apartment. And maybe it’s even time we got out of this
damned dirty city altogether. I’ve been half wanting to get out for
years. You know that.
Maybe it’s time we start looking for a place in Connecticut. I know you
won’t be happy about commuting, but the train isn’t so bad, and think of
all the advantages.
Fresh air. A bigger place for the same money. Our own pool. Wouldn’t
that be nice? Maybe Penny and Davey could come and stay with us for the
entire summer.
They shouldn’t spend their entire childhood in the city.
It isn’t healthy. Yes, definitely, I’ll start looking into it
tomorrow.”
“Faye, for one thing, everything’ll be shut up tight on account of the
blizzard-”
“That won’t stop me. You’ll see. First thing tomorrow.”
The elevator doors opened.
In the fourteenth-floor corridor, Keith said, “Aren’t you worried about
Penny and Davey? I mean, we left them-”
“They’ll be fine,” she said, and she even seemed to believe it. “It was
only rats. You don’t think rats are going to follow them out of the
building? They’re in no danger from a few rats. What I’m most worried
about is that father of theirs, telling them it’s voodoo, scaring them
like that, stuffing their heads full of such nonsense. What’s gotten
into that man? Maybe he does have a psychotic killer to track down, but
voodoo has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t sound rational. Honestly,
I just can’t understand him; no matter how hard I try, I just can’t.”
They had reached the door to the Dorset apartment.
Keith rang the bell.
Faye said, “Remember, not a word!”
Anson Dorset must have been waiting with his hand on the doorknob ever
since they phoned up from downstairs, for he opened up at once, just as