The dark, considering eyes dropped for a moment to the puddle of white sauce on Big Jim's plate, then rose again to his father's face. 'Not hungry. When should I find the bodies?'
'Bodies?' Big Jim stared. 'What do you mean, bodies}'
Junior smiled, lips lifting just enough to show the tips of his teeth.'Never mind. It'll help your cred if you're surprised like everyone else. Let's put it this way - once we pull the trigger, this town will be ready to hang Baaarbie from a sour apple tree. When do you want to do it? Tonight? Because that'll work.'
Big Jim considered the question. He looked down at his yellow pad. It was crammed with notes (and splattered with alfredo sauce), but only one was circled: newspaper bitch.
'Not tonight. We can use him for more than Coggins if we play this right.'
'And if the Dome comes down while you're playing it?'
'We'll be fine,' Big Jim said. Thinking, And if Mr Barbara is somehow able to squirm free of the frame - not likely, but cockroaches have a way of finding cracks when the lights go on - there's always you. You and those other bodies. 'Now get yourself something to eat, even if it's only a salad.'
But Junior didn't move. 'Don't wait too long, Dad,' he said. 1 won t.
Junior considered it, considered him with those dark eyes that seemed so strange now, then seemed to lose interest. He yawned. 'I'm going! up to my room and sleep awhile. I'll eat later.'
'Just make sure you do. You're getting too thin.'
'Thin is in,' his son replied, and offered a hollow smile that was even more disquieting than his eyes. To Big Jim, it looked like a skull's smile. It made him think of the fellow who now just called himself The Chef- as if his previous life as Phil Bushey had been canceled. When Junior left the room. Big Jim breathed a sigh of relief without even being aware of it.
He picked up his pen: so much to do. He would do it, and do it well. It was not impossible that when this thing was over, his picture would be on the cover of Time magazine.
4
With her generator still running - although it wouldn't be for much longer unless she could find some more LP canisters - Brenda Perkins was able to fire up her husband's printer and make a hard copy of everything in the VADER file. The incredible list of offenses Howie had compiled - and which he had apparently been about to act on at the time of his death - seemed more real to her on paper than they had on the computer screen. And the more she looked at them, the more they seemed to fit the Jim Rennie she'd known for most of her life. She had always known he was a monster; just not how big a monster.
Even the stuff about Coggins's Jesus-jumping church fit... although if she was reading this right, it was really not a church at all but a big old holy Maytag that washed money instead of clothes. Money from a drug-manufacturing operation that was, in her husband's words,'maybe one of the biggest in the history of the United States.'
But there were problems, which both Police Chief Howie 'Duke' Perkins and the State AG had acknowledged. The problems were why the evidence-gathering phase of Operation Vader had gone on as long as it had. Jim Rennie wasn't just a big monster; he was a smart monster. That was why he had always been content to remain the Second Selectman. He had Andy Sanders to break trail for him.
And to wear a target - that, too. For a long time, Andy was the only one against whom Howie had had hard evidence. He was the frontman and probably didn't even know it, cheery gladhanding dumb-shit that he was. Andy was First Selectman, First Deacon at Holy Redeemer, first in the hearts of the townsfolk, and out front on a trail of corporate documents that finally disappeared into the obfus-catory financial swamps of Nassau and the Grand Cayman Island. If Howie and the State Attorney General had moved too soon, he would also have been first to get his picture taken while holding a number. Maybe the only one, should he believe Big Jim's inevitable promises that ill would be well if Andy just kept mum. And he probably would. Who was better at dummying up than a dummy?
Last summer, things had begun working toward what Howie had seen as the endgame. That was when Rennie's name had started showing up on some of the paperwork the AG had obtained, most notably that of a Nevada corporation called Town Ventures. The Town Ventures money had disappeared west instead of east, not into the Caribbean but into mainland China, a country where the key ingredients of decongestant drugs could be bought in bulk, with few or any questions.
Why would Rennie allow such exposure? Howie Perkins had been able to think of only one reason: the money had gotten too big too fast for one holy washing machine. Rennie's name had subsequently appeared on papers concerning half a dozen other fundamentalist churches in the northeast. Town Ventures and the other churches (not to mention half a dozen other religious radio stations and AM talkers, none as big as WCIK) were Rennie's first real mistakes. They left dangling strings. Strings could be pulled, and sooner or later! - usually sooner - everything unraveled.
You couldn't let go, could you? Brenda thought as she sat behind her husband's desk, studying the papers. You'd made millions - maybe tens of millions - and the risks were becoming outrageous, but you still couldn't let go. Like a monkey who traps himself because he won't let go of the food. You were sitting on a damn fortune and you just kept on living in that old three-story and selling cars at that pit of yours out on 119. Why?
But she knew. It wasn't the money; it was the town. What he saw as his town. Sitting on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica or presiding over a guarded estate in Namibia, Big Jim would become Small Jim. Because a man without a sense of purpose, even one whose bank accounts are stuffed with money, is always a small man.
If she confronted him with what she had, could she make a deal with him? Force him out in return for her silence? She wasn't sure. And she dreaded the confrontation. It would be ugly, possibly dangerous. She would want to have Julia Shumway with her. And Barbie. Only Dale Barbara was now wearing his own target.