Bad Men

Bonnie turned the TV up in time to hear his name.

Moloch. Wasn’t that a biblical name? It sounded kind of biblical. Bonnie wasn’t much of one for churchgoing or Bible thumping, but the name gave her the creeps. She went back to preparing her food. The soaps would begin soon, her “stories” as her mother used to call them.

Soon she forgot all about the man named Moloch.

But her son did not. He continued to stare at the television with rapt attention, watching the parade of faces. There was the man with the piercing eyes, and the black man, and the young man with the blond hair. Their pictures had been on TV a lot lately.

Richie sat very still and took them all in.

They arrived in Portland shortly before one. Moloch had by now moved into the front bench seat, sick of being incarcerated in the back of the van. The changes he had made to his appearance meant that only someone who took the time to examine him very closely would even begin to connect him with the face on the news reports, and if Moloch found someone examining him that closely, well, that person wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone what he or she had seen.

They pulled up on Commercial and looked out to sea. Close by was the dock for the Dutch Island ferry. There was nobody onboard. Braun had gone to check the schedule.

“Last sailing is at ten,” he said when he returned. “Ferry comes back to the mainland first thing tomorrow morning.”

Moloch considered this. “For now, we rest up, get some motel rooms away from the center of town. We can talk about it again after we meet Scarfe.”

Dexter nodded. There was a Days Inn out by the mall. He’d seen the sign on the way into town. Dexter liked Days Inns. Once you got used to the fact that they all looked the same, they became a little like home.

Marianne had no problems at the banks. In total, she withdrew some $8,000 from three separate accounts, depositing each wad of notes carefully in the belt beneath her sweater. When she was done, she treated herself to a cab ride out to the Maine Mall, and allowed herself to be pampered in the hairdresser’s for a couple of hours. Then, feeling better than she had in many months, she ate Chinese food at the mall’s food court, then walked across the parking lot to T. J. Maxx, where she bought herself a DKNY leather jacket that, according to the tag, had been reduced by $300. She bought new sneakers for Danny and added them to the Harry Potter trading-card game in her bag.

She considered going to the movies. It had been so long since she’d sat in a movie theater to watch something that wasn’t a cartoon or a kids’ comedy. Maybe she could make the twilight showing over at the Maine Mall Cinema. She glanced at her watch, saw that it was just after six-ten, and broke into a trot as she headed for the theater.

“What the fuck is wrong with her mouth?” said Dexter.

He and Braun were watching a pay-per-view movie in their motel room. Tom Cruise was some kind of deformed guy in love with a Spanish chick with dark hair. Tom had dumped Cameron Diaz for the dark-haired chick, which made no sense to Dexter at all, especially since the dark-haired chick seemed to have picked up the wrong mouth somewhere along the line.

“Well?” he said to Braun. “Look at it.”

“Looks good to me,” said Braun. Dexter had run out of movies to watch on his DVD player, and had turned on the TV. Braun couldn’t concentrate on his book with the movie playing, so he had resigned himself to watching the screen. There was nothing else for them to do anyway, not until Scarfe contacted them.

“Nah. I ain’t saying she ain’t pretty or nothing. Hell, I’d fuck her for free. But her mouth…I don’t know, it’s just too big for her face. Who is she, anyway?”

“Penelope Cruz.”

“She married to him or something?”

“No, Cruz with a z. I hear he’s dating her, though.”

“Fucking Tom Cruise. You think it’s true about him?”

“What? That he’s-”

“Yeah.”

“No. You think he could be going out with her if he was?”

“It might be a front.”

“Hell of a front. Hell of an ass too.”

“Yeah, but that mouth. It just looks wrong…”

Tell and Shepherd were sitting in the IHOP beside the Days Inn, eating pancakes with lots of sugar and butter and cinnamon on top. Shepherd was listening to Tell. Tell was full of shit sometimes, but it was kind of interesting shit.

Like, there they were in the IHOP, and this guy had rolled by in his wheelchair. He was wearing khakis and one of those black POW/ MIA T-shirts. His legs were gone from the knees down, and his trousers were pinned up. His arms were huge. Shepherd figured the guy must be pushing himself up the side of mountains to get arms that big. Then Tell said: “You know my brother was a cripple?”

“No shit?”

“Lost a leg in Vietnam, couple of months before Tet.”

“Which leg?”

“Right leg.”

“No shit?”

“Came home on crutches with one trouser leg pinned up, just like that guy, except he still had one leg. He was real upset.”

“Man had a right to be upset, he lost a leg.”