‘Easy,’ the man who had been hiding in his back seat said. ‘Go easy, man. Lighten up.’
And Warren Richardson felt an absurd emotion. It was gratitude. The man who had scared him wasn’t going to scare him anymore. He must be a nice man, he must be-
‘Who are you?’ he managed this time.
‘A friend,’ Sonny said.
Richardson started to turn and fingers as hard as pincers bit into the sides of his flabby neck. The pain was excruciating. Richardson drew breath in a convulsive, heaving whine.
‘You don’t need to turn around, man. You can see me as well as you need to see me in your rear-view. Can you dig that?’
‘Yes,’ Richardson gasped. ‘Yes yes yes just let me go I’
The pincers began to ease up, and again he felt that irrational sense of gratitude. But he no longer doubted that the man in the back seat was dangerous, or that he was in this car on purpose although he couldn’t think why anyone would -And then he could think why someone would, at least why someone might, it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect any ordinary candidate for office to do, but Greg Stillson wasn’t ordinary, Greg Stillson was a crazy man, and-Very softly, Warren Richardson began to blubber.
‘Got to talk to you, man,’ Sonny said. His voice was kind and regretful, but in the rear-view mirror his eyes glittered green. amusement. ‘Got to talk to you like a Dutch uncle.’
‘It’s Stillson, isn’t it? It’s – .
The pincers were suddenly back, the man’s fingers were buried in his neck, and Richardson uttered a high-pitched shriek.
‘No names,’ the terrible man in the back seat told him in that same kind-yet-regretful voice. ‘You draw your own conclusions, Mr. Richardson, but keep the names to yourself.
I’ve got one thumb just over your carotid artery and my fingers are over by your jugular, and I can turn you into a human turnip, if I want to.’
‘What do you want?’ Richardson asked. He did not exactly moan, but it was a near thing; he had never felt more like moaning in his life. He could not believe that this was happening in the parking lot behind his real estate office in Capital City. New Hampshire.
on a bright summer’s day. He could see the clock set into the red brick of the town hall tower. It said ten minutes to five. At home, Norma would be putting the pork chops, nicely coated with Shake ‘n Bake, into the oven to broil. Sean would be watching Sesame Street on TV. And there was a man behind him threatening to cut off the flow of blood to his brain and turn him into an idiot. No, it wasn’t real; it was like a nightmare. The sort of nightmare that makes you moan in your sleep.
‘I don’t want anything,’ Sonny Elliman said. ‘It’s all a matter of what you want.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ But he was terribly afraid that he did.
‘That story in the New Hampshire Journal about funny real estate deals,’ Sonny said.
‘You surely did have a lot to say, Mr. Richardson, didn’t you? Especially about certain people.’
‘I…’
‘That stuff about the Capital Mail, for instance. Hinting around about kickbacks and payoffs and one hand washing the other. All that horseshit.’ The fingers tightened on Richardson’s neck again, and this time he did moan. But he hadn’t been identified in the story, he had just been ‘an informed source’. How had they known? How had Greg Stillson known?
The man behind him began to speak rapidly into Warren Richardson’s ear now, his breath warm and ticklish.
‘You could get certain people into trouble talking horseshit like that, Mr. Richardson, you know it? People running for public office, let’s say. Running for office, it’s like playing bridge, you dig it? You’re vulnerable. People can sling mud and it sticks, especially these days. Now, there’s no trouble yet. I’m happy to tell you that, because if there was trouble, you might be sitting here picking your teeth out of your nose instead of having a nice little talk with me.’