Needful Things (29 page)

“Our
chance,” she said calmly. “I like you very much, Alan, and I'm not too old to take a risk, but I'm old enough to have had some sad experience of where my emotions can lead me when they get out of control. I won't let them get anywhere close to that point until you're able to put Annie and Todd to rest.”

He looked at her, speechless. She regarded him gravely over her dinner in the old country inn, firelight flickering orange on one of her smooth cheeks and the left side of her brow. Outside, the wind played a long trombone note under the eaves.

“Have I said too much?” Polly asked. “If I have, I'd like you to take me home, Alan. I hate to be embarrassed almost as much as I hate not speaking my mind.”

He reached across the table and touched her hand briefly. “No, you haven't said too much. I like to listen to you, Polly.”

She had smiled then. It lit up her whole face. “You'll get your chance, then,” she said.

So it began for them. They had not felt guilty about seeing each other, but they had recognized the need to be careful—not
just because it was a small town where he was an elected official and she needed the good will of the community to keep her business afloat, but because both of them recognized the possibility of guilt. Neither of them was too old to take a risk, it seemed, but they were both a little too old to be reckless. Care needed to be taken.

Then, in May, he had taken her to bed for the first time, and she had told him about all the years between Then and Now . . . the story he did not completely believe, the one he was convinced she would someday tell him again, without the too-direct eyes and the left hand that tugged too often at the left earlobe. He recognized how difficult it had been for her to tell him as much as she had, and was content to wait for the rest.
Had
to be content. Because care had to be taken. It was enough—quite enough—to fall in love with her as the long Maine summer drowsed past them.

Now, looking up at the pressed-tin ceiling of her bedroom in the dimness, he wondered if the time had come to talk about marriage again. He had tried once, in August, and she had made that gesture with her finger again. Shush, you. He supposed . . .

But his conscious train of thought began to break up then, and Alan slipped easily into sleep.

In his dream he was shopping in some mammoth store, wandering down an aisle so long it dwindled to a point in the distance. Everything was here, everything he had ever wanted but could not afford—a pressure-sensitive watch, a genuine felt fedora from Abercrombie & Fitch, a Bell and Howell eight-millimeter movie camera, hundreds of other items—but someone was behind him, just behind his shoulder where he couldn't see.

“Down here we call these things fool's stuffing, old hoss,” a voice remarked.

It was one Alan knew. It belonged to that high-toned, Toronado-driving son of a bitch George Stark.

“We call this store Endsville,” the voice said, “because it's
the place where all goods and services terminate.”

Alan saw a large snake—it looked like a python with the head of a rattler—come sliding out of a huge selection of Apple computers marked
FREE TO THE PUBLIC
. He turned to flee, but a hand with no lines on the palm gripped his arm and stopped him.

“Go on,” the voice said persuasively. “Take what you want, hoss. Take
everything
you want . . . and pay for it.”

But every item he picked up turned out to be his son's charred and melted beltbuckle.

Danforth Keeton did not have a brain tumor, but he
did
have a terrible headache as he sat in his office early Saturday morning. Spread out on his desk beside a stack of red-bound town tax ledgers for the years 1982 to 1989 was a sprawl of correspondence—letters from the State of Maine Bureau of Taxation and Xeroxes of letters he had written in reply.

Everything was starting to come down around his ears. He knew it, but he was helpless to do anything about it.

Keeton had made a trip to Lewiston late yesterday, had returned to The Rock around twelve-thirty in the morning, and had spent the rest of the night pacing his study restlessly while his wife slept the sleep of tranquilizers upstairs. He had found his gaze turning more and more often to the small closet in the corner of his study. There was a high shelf in the closet, stacked with sweaters. Most of the sweaters were old and motheaten. Under them was a carved wooden box his father had made long before the Alzheimer's had stolen over him like a shadow, robbing him of all his considerable skills and memories. There was a revolver in the box.

Keeton found himself thinking about the revolver more and more frequently. Not for himself, no; at least not at first. For Them. The Persecutors.

At quarter to six he had left the house and had driven the dawn-silent streets between his house and the Municipal Building. Eddie Warburton, a broom in his hand and a
Chesterfield in his mouth (the solid-gold Saint Christopher's medal he had purchased at Needful Things the day before was safely hidden under his blue chambray shirt), had watched him trudge up the stairs to the second floor. Not a word passed between the two men. Eddie had become used to Keeton's appearances at odd hours over the last year or so, and Keeton had long ago ceased seeing Eddie at all.

Now Keeton swept the papers together, fought an impulse to simply rip them to shreds and fling the pieces everywhere, and began to sort through them. Bureau of Taxation correspondence in one pile, his own replies in another. He kept these letters in the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet—a drawer to which only he had the key.

At the bottom of most of the letters was this notation: DK/sl. DK was of course Danforth Keeton. sl was Shirley Laurence, his secretary, who took dictation and typed correspondence. Shirley had typed none of his responses to the Bureau's letters, however, initials or no initials.

It was wiser to keep some things to yourself.

A phrase jumped out at him as he sorted: “. . . and we notice discrepancies in quarterly Town Tax Return 11 for the tax-year 1989 . . .”

He put it aside quickly.

Another: “. . . and in examining a sampling of Workmen's Compensation forms during the last quarter of 1987, we have serious, questions concerning . . .”

Into the file.

Yet another: “. . . believe that your request for an examination deferral seems premature at this time . . .”

They blurred past him in a sickening swoop, making him feel as if he were on an out-of-control carnival ride.

“. . . questions about these tree-farm funds are . . .”

“. . . we find no record that the Town has filed . . .”

“. . . dispersal of the State's share of funding has not been adequately documented . . .”

“. . . missing expense-account receipts must be . . .”

“. . . cash slips are not sufficient for . . .”

“. . . may request complete documentation of expenses . . .”

And now this last, which had come yesterday. Which had in turn driven him to Lewiston, where he had vowed to
never again go during harness-racing season, last night.

Keeton stared at it bleakly. His head pounded and throbbed; a large drop of sweat rolled slowly down the center of his back. There were dark, exhausted circles under his eyes. A cold sore clung to one corner of his mouth.

BUREAU OF TAXATION

State House

Augusta, Maine 04330

The letterhead, below the State Seal, screamed at him, and the salutation, which was cold and formal, threatened:

To the Selectmen of Castle Rock.

Just that. No more “Dear Dan” or “Dear Mr. Keeton.” No more good wishes for his family at the closing. The letter was as cold and hateful as the stab of an icepick.

They wanted to audit the town books.

All
the town books.

Town tax records, State and Federal revenue-sharing records, town expense records, road-maintenance records, municipal law-enforcement budgets, Parks Department budgets, even financial records pertaining to the State-funded experimental tree farm.

They wanted to see everything, and They wanted to see it on the 17th of October. That was only five days from now.

They.

The letter was signed by the State Treasurer, the State Auditor, and, even more ominous, by the Attorney General—Maine's top cop. And these were personal signatures, not reproductions.

“They,”
Keeton whispered at the letter. He shook it in his fist and it rattled softly. He bared his teeth at it.
“Theyyyyyyy!”

He slammed the letter down on top of the others. He closed the file. Typed neatly on the tab was
CORRESPONDENCE, MAINE BUREAU OF TAXATION
. Keeton stared at the closed file for a moment. Then he snatched a pen from its holder (the set had been a gift from the Castle County Jaycees) and slashed the words
MAINE BUREAU OF KAKA
! across the file in large, trembling letters.
He stared at it a moment and then wrote.
MAINE BUREAU OF ASSHOLES
! below it. He held the pen in his closed fist, wielding it like a knife. Then he threw it across the room. It landed in the corner with a small clatter.

Keeton closed the other file, the one which contained copies of letters he had written himself (and to which he always added his secretary's lower-case initials), letters he had concocted on long, sleepless nights, letters which had ultimately proved fruitless. A vein pulsed steadily in the center of his forehead.

He got up, took the two files over to the cabinet, put them in the bottom drawer, slammed it shut, checked to make sure it was locked. Then he went to the window and stood looking out over the sleeping town, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself.

They had it in for him. The Persecutors. He found himself wondering for the thousandth time who had sicced Them on him in the first place. If he could find that person, that dirty Chief Persecutor, Keeton would take the gun from where it lay in its box under the motheaten sweaters and put an end to him. He would not do it quickly, however. Oh no. He would shoot off a piece at a time and make the dirty bastard sing the National Anthem while he did it.

His mind turned to the skinny deputy, Ridgewick. Could it have been him? He didn't seem bright enough . . . but looks could be deceiving. Pangborn said Ridgewick had ticketed the Cadillac on his orders, but that didn't make it true. And in the men's room, when Ridgewick had called him Buster, there had been a look of knowing, jeering contempt in his eyes. Had Ridgewick been around when the first letters from the Bureau of Taxation began to come in? Keeton was quite sure he had been. Later today he would look up the man's employment record, just to be sure.

What about Pangborn himself?
He
was certainly bright enough, he most certainly hated Danforth Keeton (didn't They all? didn't. They all hate him?), and Pangborn knew lots of people in Augusta. He knew Them well. Hell, he was on the phone to Them every fucking
day
, it seemed. The phone bills, even with the WATS line, were horrible.

Could it be both of them? Pangborn
and
Ridgewick?

In on it together?

“The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto,” Keeton said in a low voice, and smiled balefully. “If it was you, Pangborn, you'll be sorry. And if it was both of you, you'll
both
be sorry,” His hands slowly rolled themselves into fists. “I won't stand this persecution forever, you know.”

His carefully manicured nails cut into the flesh of his palms. He did not notice the blood when it began to flow. Maybe Ridgewick. Maybe Pangborn, maybe Melissa Clutterbuck, the frigid bitch who was the Town Treasurer, maybe Bill Fullerton, the Second Selectman (he knew for a fact that Fullerton wanted his job and wouldn't rest until he had it) . . .

Maybe
all
of them.

All of them together.

Keeton let out his breath in a long, tortured sigh, making a fog-flower on the wire-reinforced glass of his office window. The question was, what was he going to do about it? Between now and the 17th of the month, what was he going to
do?

The answer was simple: he didn't know.

Danforth Keeton's life as a young man had been a thing of clear blacks and whites, and he had liked that just fine. He had gone to Castle Rock High School and began working part-time at the family car dealership when he was fourteen, washing the demonstrators and waxing the showroom models. Keeton Chevrolet was one of the oldest Chevrolet franchises in New England and keystone of the Keeton financial structure. That had been a solid structure indeed, at least until fairly recently.

During his four years at Castle Rock High, he had been Buster to just about everyone. He took the commercial courses, maintained a solid B average, ran the student council almost single-handed, and went on to Traynor Business College in Boston. He made straight A's at
Traynor and graduated three semesters early. When he came back to The Rock, he quickly made it clear that his Buster days were over.

It had been a fine life until the trip he and Steve Frazier had made to Lewiston nine or ten years ago. That was when the trouble had started; that was when his neat black-and-white life began to fill with deepening shades of gray.

He had never gambled—not as Buster at C.R.H.S., not as Dan at Traynor Business, not as Mr. Keeton of Keeton Chevrolet and the Board of Selectmen. As far as Keeton knew, no one in his whole family had gambled; he could not remember even such innocent pastimes as nickel skat or pitching pennies. There was no taboo against these things, no
thou shalt not,
but no one did them. Keeton had not laid down a bet on anything until that first trip to Lewiston Raceway with Steve Frazier. He had never placed a bet anywhere else, nor did he need to. Lewiston Raceway was all the ruin Danforth Keeton ever needed.