“I still don’t like it,” Dean said, but it was clear he’d go along with it, like it or not. The thought of his kiddies had convinced him. “And it’s to be tonight? You’re sure?”
“If we’re going to do it, it had better be tonight,” Harry said. “If I get a chance to think about it, I’ll most likely lose my nerve.”
“Let me be the one to go by the infirmary,” Dean said. “I can do that much at least, can’t I?”
“As long as you can do what needs doing without getting caught,” Brutal said.
Dean looked offended, and I clapped him on the shoulder. “As soon after you clock in as you can … all right?”
“You bet.”
My wife popped her head through the door as if I’d given her a cue to do so. “Who’s for more iced tea?”
she asked brightly. “What about you, Brutus?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “What I’d like is a good hard knock of whiskey, but under the circumstances, that might not be a good idea.”
Janice looked at me; smiling mouth, worried eyes. “What are you getting these boys into, Paul?” But before I could even think of framing a reply, she raised her hand and said, “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
3.
Later, long after the others were gone and while I was dressing for work, she took me by the arm, swung me around, and looked into my eyes with fierce intensity.
“Melinda?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Can you do something for her, Paul? Really do something for her, or is it all wishful dreaming brought on by what you saw last night?”
I thought of Coffey’s eyes, of Coffey’s hands, and of the hypnotized way I’d gone to him when he’d wanted me. I thought of him holding out his hands for Mr. Jingles’s broken, dying body. While there’s still time, he had said. And the black swirling things that turned white and disappeared.
“I think we might be the only chance she has left,” I said at last.
“Then take it,” she said, buttoning the front of my new fall coat. It had been in the closet since my birthday at the beginning of September, but this was only the third or fourth time I’d actually worn it.
“Take it.”
And she practically pushed me out the door.
4.
I clocked in that night – in many ways the strangest night of my entire life – at twenty past six. I thought I could still smell the faint, lingering odor of burned flesh on the air. It had to be an illusion – the doors to the outside, both on the block and in the storage room, had been open most of the day, and the previous two shifts had spent hours scrubbing in there – but that didn’t change what my nose was telling me, and I didn’t think I could have eaten any dinner even if I hadn’t been scared almost to death about the evening which lay ahead.
Brutal came on the block at quarter to seven, Dean at ten ’til. I asked Dean if he would go over to the infirmary and see if they had a heating pad for my back, which I seemed to have strained that early morning, helping to carry Delacroix’s body down into the tunnel. Dean said he’d be happy to. I believe he wanted to tip me a wink, but restrained himself.
Harry clocked on at three minutes to seven.
“The truck?” I asked.
“Where we talked about.”
So far, so good. There followed a little passage of time when we stood by the duty desk, drinking coffee and studiously not mentioning what we were all thinking and hoping: that Percy was late, that maybe Percy wasn’t going to show up at all. Considering the hostile reviews he’d gotten on the way he’d handled the electrocution, that seemed at least possible.
But Percy apparently subscribed to that old axiom about how you should get right back on the horse that had thrown you, because here he came through the door at six minutes past seven, resplendent in his blue uniform, with his sidearm on one hip and his hickory stick in its ridiculous custom-made holster on the other. He punched his time-card, then looked around at us warily (except for Dean, who hadn’t come back from the infirmary yet). “My starter busted,” he said. “I had to crank.-“