(37)

I hung out there for a time because I wasn’t sure I could walk off without Winston unscrewing my head from my neck. I was trying to read the situation carefully before I made what could be a fatal false move.

Winston sat across from me as before, with his mouth open, and in all those flashlight beams, I could see that half his tongue was gone. It looked to me like it had been cut out, or perhaps it was a birth defect. His rats were crawling on him, making a carpet of squeaking gray fur. A few of them were gathering around my feet. I gently toed them away.

Winston couldn’t carry on a conversation, and I wasn’t in the mood for one even if he could have. In time, I decided to find out if his level of understanding was greater than it seemed. I said, “Winston. You dug up graves for those clothes, right?”

He pondered my words like a dog that had been asked to perform a certain trick it hadn’t done in a long time.

He nodded.

I was putting more and more of what I had seen down there together. The bones stolen from the graves had to lead to the car trunks. Had something to do with that lock being put on the gate. I took a flier. “Did you ever put bodies or bones in car trunks?”

He gave this question less consideration. He nodded.

I didn’t know how to ask a man who couldn’t speak why he’d done that or how the cars ended up in the lake. There was no way for him to explain, but that didn’t keep me from trying.

“I was wondering why,” I said.

He looked down and shook his head. Then he rolled on his side and pulled his knees to his chest. He was demonstrating what seemed to be the position of the bones in the car trunks.

I sat awhile longer, then finally stood up. “I need to go, Winston. Thank you for protecting me and showing me your world. But I need to go.”

His mood changed. His eyes narrowed as if he had stepped out into bright sunlight. He ran a finger across his throat, then put it to his lips.

“No. I won’t tell where you are if you want to be left alone.”

He nodded and grunted. I hoped that was an agreement.

Picking up his flashlight, he stood so fast he shed quite a few rats. He started for the tunnel that we had used to enter his sanctuary. I followed him, which, like before, took some work. He was swift and knew the small geography of his world quite well.

By the time we came to the exit, I could feel my blood sugar dropping like an anvil off the Empire State Building. When we came to the door, he threw the latch, pushed it open, and let the wet night come in. He grabbed me by the shoulder and with no more effort than it takes to remove a dust mote from a windowsill, set me outside in the rain.

I held up my hand in a “stop” motion, then reached into my pocket and took out the knife Mr. Candles had given me, the one with everything on it but a tommy gun and a concrete drill. I gave it to him. It seemed like a small thing I could do for being rescued and shown the inner workings of the Long Lincoln Country Club.

He examined the knife under his flashlight, then looked at me and smiled. Without so much as a grunt or a lingering fart for me to pass the time with, he closed the door and left me there. He seemed a firm believer in having a time limit for guests.

It was still night. It was still raining.

Typical.

The night was so dark I couldn’t see which way to go, so I leaned against the concrete lichen-covered door and let my eyes adjust a bit. I was successful enough with that to at least see the brush-lined rain-beaten trail we had used to arrive at the door.

I carefully started down the trail, eventually coming to the spot where Winston had tossed the tall man. The man was gone. So was his clown hair. The stocky man was gone as well. I looked around and found my ax handle.

Using it like a cane, I worked my way back to my car, saw that the tires had been slashed.

No harsh notes had been left under my windshield wiper. In fact, they had twisted the wipers off. They were sore losers and held a grudge.

Their car was gone.

I unlocked my ride and sat behind the wheel for a moment. Then, metaphorically girding my loins, I got out and started walking back toward New Long Lincoln in the dead dark and the pounding rain.