Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.
(The story so far: Colin and Bernie are on their way to Blande Boulevard. What else matters?)
9.
Oberman was being punished, which meant Campbell was also being punished, which meant Campbell was mad.
The two of them had been assigned the absolute worst job a police officer could get. They had to go notify some civilian’s mother that her son had died of an OD last night.
“You are going to pay for this,” said Campbell.
“I’m already paying for this,” said Oberman.
“Not yet you’re not.” Campbell was not driving, which meant he was chainsmoking, something, let us recall, he was not supposed to do in the patrol car, something no one was ever going to tell him not to do. Certainly not John Oberman.
“Look, I’ll do the talking. You can wait in the car if you want.” But Oberman did not want to do the talking. Silently—so Campbell would not make fun of him further—he was praying for a miracle. Anything to take him away from facing the mother and telling her her son was dead while she wailed and said, “Did you kill him?” Anything to put off this horrible task for just a little while longer.
10.
Always Colin and Carol, always Bernie and John. There were other people in town, of course. There was that anonymous hack who’d searched for “cottinend” on Twitter one day back in January, found @CottinendKing, and called it in to the police. There’s that poor mother, not yet told, not yet grieving. There will be the 911 operators, standing by; not answering yet, but they will be. And there are all these citizens in all these cars—who can count them all?—and they are driving obliviously down Blande Boulevard.
11.
It was after nine when Sp!der’s mother’s wall phone finally rang. Sp!der had to bolt from the basement, running, or at least jogging, up the stairs. His mother was shuffling towards the phone, but Sp!der skidded around her and snatched it away from her outstretched hand.
Ronnie’s voice said, “Mickey? I can’t talk long; I’m at work; but I have the info.”
Sp!der was about to scream “about damn time” but he stopped himself. He could scream at her after she gave him the information.
“It was actually very hard to get. It took a lot of digging,” Ronnie said.
“That doesn’t actually make any sense,” Sp!der thought. He also thought, “Come on, come on.” But he only said, “Uh huh.”
“The guy is named Bernard Feldstein.”
Bernard Feldstein. And now, now Sp!der opened his mouth to scream at her; but Ronnie had already hung up.
“What was that all about?” Sp!der’s mother asked. But her son had already dashed back to the basement door. Bernard Feldstein.
He considered stopping to research the name, present Oberman with a more complete dossier; but maybe now was the time for speed. “Deeds not words” was Sp!der’s motto. He dialed Oberman.
And the phone rang and rang.
12.
There was a small part inside Bernie that had figured it would not happen. It was too good. It was too bad.
There was a small part inside Bernie that had not decided. Whatever he had said earlier was just provisional; his true mind not made up. Everything, was it not, was just provisional. He started to cry as he drove. He started to cry in part from discomfort and despair. He was jackknifed over in his seat, his face practically pressed directly into the steering wheel. His eyes peeked just over the horn, seeing, through the mask’s ragged rubber eyeslits, very little. His hands, at ten and two, were in fact above his head. So hunchbacked was he at this moment that in order to face straight forward, his neck had to be tilted. “Titled up” is what it felt like, although his face was not up. It was horrible.
Riding on his back like a monkey, his elbow actually on his head, in his rubber hair, was the Colonel. Bernie could feel the weight of the gun, that terrible mass upon his shoulders. The Colonel was holding it, but the weight was on his shoulders.
He could hardly breathe in this position. He could wheeze a little. It was all he could do to keep the car on the road. His knees kept knocking against the steering wheel, or the dashboard, or his own left elbow. His right elbow was holding in place a plastic clip thing full of magazines wedged uncomfortably into his lap. He was completely helpless.
Mostly, therefore, he was crying from relief. Because he would not have to decide.
13.
Oberman’s phone began to ring in Sergeant Gaye’s desk. It was the loud, irritating ring, a WAV file of an old-fashioned telephone. Gaye had no idea how to shut off a phone like this. He’d never even brought his own flip phone to work, and could hardly figure out why anyone would. He opened his top drawer and glanced at the screen, which was lit up, reading “Spider”—that was how Oberman had spelled it—and a 720 number. Then he slid the drawer closed and pointedly ignored the ringing until it stopped.
Three minutes later it began to ring again.
Continued here.
