Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 46

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Multitaskers, Fran thought. That was okay with her, as long as they paid and didn’t make a mess of the public sidewalks.

As she rounded the last corner before reaching the Happy Brat, she saw that the lights were on inside, from the fluorescent ceiling fixtures. They cast a ghastly glow, adding age and angst to everyone inside. But it was summer and it wasn’t dark outside now. The night had been chased away, but recently. The diner shouldn’t yet be open. The notion that something might be wrong stirred in Fran, but she dispelled it. Henry had closed the diner last night, and had most likely simply forgotten to switch off the fluorescent overhead fixtures.

She was pleased that the red neon open sign in the window was off.

Fran realized her heart was banging away and told herself to slow down. Nobody was burglarizing the diner. Maybe Pablo had overslept again and Henry was getting a jump on things in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be the first time. She could smell the scent of the bratwurst rotating over the open oven, the special sauce crusting on the meat.

At least she thought she could smell it. She did have a powerful imagination when it came to food.

She saw now that someone, probably Henry, wearing a white shirt, dark pants, and a dark apron, was working in the kitchen, visible through the window and beyond the serving counter pass-through. Henry, all right. Or maybe the kid. Certainly not Willie. He was still home in bed, breaking the sound barrier with his snoring.

Or was he? He might have beaten her to the diner, if he’d left the double-wide right after she had.

The red neon bratwurst sign was still off, and most of the light in the diner was coming from the fixture in the kitchen, directly above the sink.

When Fran opened the door, the figure at the sink had his back to her, wearing the white and black outfit with the apron. He either heard or sensed something.

As Fran stepped inside, he turned.

The kid. Pablo.

When Pablo turned and saw her, his expression didn’t change for a few seconds. Then he forced a smile.

“Where’s Henry?” she asked.

“Still asleep.”

“What about May?”

He looked confused.

“Your wife,” Fran reminded him.

“Yeah. She’s still asleep. I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to get some brats ready to go. You know, for early customers.”

“I don’t know,” Fran said reasonably.

Pablo turned away from the sink to face her squarely. She saw the knife in his right hand. What looked like blood was on the blade.

“We need some buns,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of brats, but we need buns.” He placed the knife on the sink, wiped his hands on a towel, and removed his apron. “I’ll go see if I can find some.”

Fran decided there was no sense in arguing. Let the kid get out, get some fresh air in his search for buns.

She stepped around him, looked at what was on the cutting board, and recoiled. Her eyes were huge and horrified. “My God! What are you doing?”

“Nothing, really!” he said, backing away. Pablo had picked the knife back up. Time seemed to have solidified. He was the only thing in the diner moving.

Henry opened the door and came inside. His shirt was untucked and his hair was still wet and slicked back from showering. He glanced around. “What’ve we got going on here?” he asked.

“Good question,” Fran said.

Pablo noticed the others were staring at the knife, and he tossed it backhanded so it fell clattering behind the burners on the stove.

“What are you cutting there?” Henry asked calmly. He stepped toward Pablo, then to the side, and stared at the cutting board. “That what I think it is?”

Pablo couldn’t prevent a frightened smile that quickly disappeared as he regained control.

“It’s a rat!” Fran said in a horrified voice. “My God, he’s carving up a rat!”

“I got it here, in the kitchen,” Pablo said, as if that explained everything.

“This is a diner!” Fran said. “A restaurant!”

“That’s how the rat saw it.” He actually sounded sincere.

Henry glanced again at the carving board on the sink. “What were you gonna do with that?” he asked in a calm voice.

“I was just . . . looking at it. Studying it.”

“Studying a rat?”

“They do that at Harvard,” Pablo said.

Henry shook his head. “This ain’t Harvard. You ain’t Jonas Salk.”

“Jonas who?”

“Salk. He found a way to fight polio.”

“Who was polio?” Again he seemed serious.

“Don’t play dumb,” Fran said. “Like we’re supposed to believe you just happened to find that rat in here.”

“You can believe what you want,” Pablo said.

“Okay. You’re a medical doctor doing cancer research.”

“You got it first try. Now, I’m gonna leave here. Anybody tries to stop me, I’ll have to tell them about that rat. How I found him in the corner by the stove.”

“Maybe you’re not so dumb,” Henry said.

Fran walked behind the counter and scooped a handful of bills from the cash register. She placed the money on the counter where Pablo could reach it.

“Take that,” she said. “All of it. And then leave us the hell alone.”

Pablo kept his eyes on her as he picked up the money and stuffed it into a side pocket of his jeans.

“Now go someplace else where they’ll believe you and your so-called wife are Mexicans.”

“Gracias, senora,” he said, patting his bulging pocket.

He backed out of the diner, almost falling as he spun in his worn-down boots and ran away.

Fran walked to the door, held it open, and watched as Pablo—or whatever his name was—joined his wife, May, or whatever her name was.

They cut across a level stretch of bare earth that would, within about four hours, become a parking lot. Then they both turned to look back. May waved at Fran, looking as if she might be smiling. Then they disappeared into downtown St. Louis, where Cardinals fans, and Cubs fans from Chicago, would soon be roaming the city streets, looking for new places to eat lunch, or find that bar or restaurant they’d been to during their last trip to St. Louis. Some of them would recall the delicious bratwurst served at a neat little diner not far from the stadium, in an area soon to be developed by the city.

“Better wake up Willie and give him the bad news,” Fran said.

Henry said, “I best get rid of that rat, first.”

When he went to the sink and got a better look at the rat, he was surprised by how neatly it had been carved and partially skinned by Pablo. The incisions were neat and precise, as if the kid had studied medicine and at one point wanted to be a surgeon. When Pablo worked at the grill, he always wore a do-rag, knotted at the corners so it made a sort of skullcap. Henry had assumed it was to keep his hair out of his eyes and out of the food. But he’d glimpsed the kid’s ear once, when he had the do-rag off and was splashing cold faucet water on his face to cool down in the heat. He remembered the kid’s right ear. It looked something like Dr. Spock’s ears in Star Trek.

It took only a few seconds for Henry to figure out what he should do about the events of the morning—which was nothing. No way was he going to let anyone find out about the rat on the cutting board in the Happy Brat. Henry would tell no one. He might have been born yesterday, but it wasn’t at night.

He lifted what was left of the rat by its tail and dropped it into a plastic bag, then put everything else on the board down the garbage disposal.

“I’ll go drop this in the trash, then go wake up Willie,” he said to Fran. “You think we should tell him about the rat, and what the kid said?”

Fran said, “I don’t see why we should. It would just give him something else to worry about.”

“That’s for sure,” Henry said.

53

New York, the present

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