LITMIR.BIZ

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that he didn’t need a reason to kill someone, only a strong desire, and his appearance argued that he was imaginative enough to think of a score of bloody ways to end this.

      I was acutely aware of how far away the stables were from any inhabited buildings in Roseland.

      Hoping there was nothing he would find incendiary in these nine words, I said, “Well, sir, I’m an invited guest, not a trespasser.”

      His expression was not that of a man convinced. “Invited guest? Since when do they let candy-ass punk boys through the gate?”

      I decided not to be offended by his unkind characterization of me. “I’m staying in the tower in the eucalyptus grove. Been there three nights, two days.”

      He pressed the muzzle of the Uzi into my chest. “Three days and nobody told me? You think I’m dumb enough to eat crap on toast?”

      “No, sir. Not on toast.”

      His nostrils flared so wide that I feared his brain might fall out through one nostril or the other. “What’s that mean, candy-ass?”

      “It means you’re way smarter than me, or otherwise I wouldn’t be on this end of the gun. But it’s true. I’ve been here almost three days. Of course, it wasn’t my charm that got us invited, it was the girl I’m with. Nobody can say no to her.”

      I believed that I saw a sudden sympathy in his expression at the mention of a girl. Maybe he thought that I meant a child. Even some of the most hard-case violence junkies can have a soft spot for children.

      “Now that makes sense,” he said. “You bring in some super-hot piece of tail, and nobody wants Kenny to know about her.”

      Instead of appealing to Kenny’s compassion gland, I had inflamed other glands best left unconsidered and undisturbed. “Well, sir, no. No, that’s not exactly the situation.”

      “What isn’t?”

      “She’s very sweet, kind of spiritual, not hot at all, kind of dowdy, seven months pregnant, not that much to look at, but everybody likes her, you know, because it’s such a sad case, a girl alone with nothing and a baby on the way, it tugs at your heart.”

      Kenny stared at me as if I had suddenly begun speaking in a foreign language. A foreign language, the sound of which offended him so much that he might shoot me just to shut me up.

      To change the subject, I put one finger to my upper lip, at the same spot at which a cold sore blazed on Kenny’s lip. “That’s got to hurt.”

      I didn’t think he could bristle any further, but he seemed to swell with umbrage. “You saying I’m diseased?”

      “No. Not at all. You look as healthy as a bull. Any bull should be happy to be as healthy as you. I’m just saying that one little thing you’ve got there, it must hurt.”

      His quills relaxed a little. “Hurts like a sonofabitch.”

      “What’re you doing for it?”

      “Nothing you can do for a sonofabitch canker. Sonofabitch has to heal itself.”

      “That’s not a canker. It’s a cold sore.”

      “Everybody says it’s a canker.”

      “Cankers are inside the mouth. They look different. How long have you had it?”

      “Been six days. Sonofabitch makes me want to scream sometimes.”

      I winced to express sympathy. “Before you got it, was there a tingling in your lip, just where it eventually showed up?”

      “That’s exactly right,” Kenny said, his eyes widening as if I had proven to be clairvoyant. “A tingle.”

      Casually pushing the barrel of the Uzi away from me, I said, “Within twenty-four hours before the tingle, were you out in very hot sun or cold wind?”

      “Wind. Week before last, we had a cold snap. Blew in from the northwest like a sonofabitch.”

      “You got a little windburn. Too much hot sun or a cold wind can trigger a sore like that. Now that you’ve got it, dab just a little Vaseline on it and stay out of the sun, out of the wind. If you stop irritating the thing, it’ll close up fast enough.”

      Kenny touched his tongue to the sore, saw that I disapproved, and said, “You some kind of doctor?”

      “No, but I’ve known a couple doctors pretty well. You’re on the security team, I guess.”

      “Do I look like I’m the entertainment director?”

      I took a chance that we had bonded enough for me to laugh warmly and say, “I suspect you’d be entertaining as hell over a few beers.”

      Full of crooked dark-yellow teeth, his cold-sore grin was as appealing as a possum run down by an eighteen-wheeler. “Everybody says old Kenny’s a hoot when you pour some beers in him. Only problem is, after about ten of ’em, I stop feeling hilarious and start tearing things up.”

      “Me too,” I claimed, though I’d never had more than two beers in the same day. “But I have to say, with some regret, I doubt that I can do such a handsome amount of damage to a place as you can.”

      I had plucked a perfect note from his pride.

      “I have committed some memorable ruination, for sure,” he said, and his fearsome facial scars grew a brighter red, as if the memory of past rampages raised the temperature of his self-esteem.

      Gradually I had become aware that the quality of light in the stable was changing. Now I glanced to my right and saw that the eastern windows were still aglow with sunlight made ruddy by the coppery tint of the glass, but were not as bright as they had been.

      Pointing the Uzi at the floor or perhaps at my feet, Kenny said, “So, kid, what’s your name?”

      I tensed a little and returned my attention fully to the giant, whom I had by no means yet won over.

      “Listen,” I said, “don’t think I’m shining you on or anything, this really is my name, strange as it might sound. My name is Odd. Odd Thomas.”

      “Nothing wrong with the Thomas part.”

      “Thank you, sir.”

      “And, you know, Odd isn’t as bad as some things parents do to kids. Parents can wreck you, man. My parents were the nastiest—”

      To complete Kenny’s observation of his parents as he made it, conjure in your mind several words, never spoken in polite company, that suggest incest, self-gratification, gross violations of laws protecting animals from the perverse desires of human beings, erotic obsession with the product of a major cereal company, and the most bizarre use of the tongue that you can imagine. …

      On second thought, forget it. Kenny’s characterization of his parents was unique in the colorful history of gutter speech. No matter how long you pondered the puzzle I’ve set before you, your solution would be the palest approximation of what he said.

      Then he continued: “My born last name is Keister. You know what Keister means?”

      Although we seemed to be laying the foundations of a friendship, I suspected that I could go from Kenny’s A-list to his death list from one second to the next. I was concerned that acknowledging my awareness of the meaning of the word Keister might light his fuse.

      But he had asked. So I said, “Well, sir, it’s slang, and some people use it to mean a person’s bottom, you know, like what you sit on, you know, like the seat of your pants, or even sometimes, well, buttocks.”

      “Ass,” he declared, managing to hiss and growl the word at the same time, while thundering it out loud enough to rattle the stable windows. “Keister means ass.”

      I dared to glance to my left, and I saw that the western windows admitted more and much ruddier light than

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