Zeebe shaped his thick lips into a twist of a smile. "Boo."

Chapter Seventeen.

"Lung cancer," he said, first hacking more dark moisture into another fisted tissue, then dragging another nicotine hit into his ruined lungs. "Forty-six." He shrugged. "Young for cancer, but what're you gonna do?"

Jim Zeebe could have been a whole lot older than 46, judging by the way his body was wasting away under the big head and wide shoulders. Todd could see the man's skull under his taut, paper-thin flesh. His grin revealed a partial set of stained teeth that already seemed to be settling into a death mask. That's what had caused Todd to react when the cigarette glow had provided too much light.

Now he resisted the urge to dab his own dry lips after seeing the blood spotting the other man's mouth. Was that normal, even for advanced lung cancer?

"Sorry to hear it," he mumbled. Not sure what else to say and knowing it wouldn't be enough, no matter what came out of his mouth.

"Oh, that's alright," Jim Zeebe rasped. "Not the end of the world."

He profiled another contorted grin, and then his lips curdled into a tortured grimace. The tissue went up in time to catch most of another blood-spurting cough. Todd backed away as Zeebe pinched off a final drag on his butt before tossing it onto the greasy pavement. Then he slumped forward far enough that his hand could reach for and find a fresh pack in the messy glove compartment.

"Might say it's the start of the world rather than the end," he said. Then winked.

Todd had grown painfully aware of the new cancer stick he'd stuck between his own lips without even thinking about it. Nicotine magic. Now he reached up to throw it away, but couldn't quite bring himself to do so. In a sort of compromise, he didn't light it, but allowed it to perch uselessly in the corner of his mouth.

"Well that's good, your attitude," he said, propping up, in a way, Zeebe's bullshit bravado.

He wasn't sure how he'd shift gears and bring the dying garage owner around to the subject of his Oldsmobile, but hell, tact had never been his strong suit anyway. "I was just looking over my car there-the Eighty-Eight you picked up for Marty McConlon?-and I was wondering when you think it might be ready."

Zeebe's thick lips crawled down his tight face in a grotesque parody of concentration. "Olds Eighty-Eight," he said, confirming the make and model. "Needs work."

Todd waited for as long as his patience allowed, but that wasn't long. He sputtered, "I know it needs work, man. That's why it's here. What I need to know is, when'll it be done? And how much will it cost? Okay?" His voice dripped with more sarcasm than he'd intended under the circumstances, the fucker dying and all, but shit.

Zeebe didn't seem to take it personally. He continued to stare into the cracked windshield before erupting in a fresh spasm of coughs. This attack must have caught him unaware. There was no balled-up tissue. Or he just didn't give a shit anymore. He covered the glass in a fine mist of pink. "Sorry," he said, chuckling.

Finished for the moment, he soothed his blackened lungs with another drag of tobacco smoke.

Todd tried not to breathe until the blue smoke had left Zeebe's broken chest cavity and dissipated in the air.

"It needs a lot," Zeebe murmured so faintly it could have been his dying statement. "Plugs," he added after a brief pause. "Plugs and points."

"Are you kidding me? Any high school kid could've changed the plugs and points in an hour. You've had my car for two days."

If Todd had any concern about upsetting the mortally ill mechanic, it was unnecessary. Zeebe offered him another ghastly grin. "Needs other stuff, too." His voice sounded hollow, as if the chest cavity it came from was already a dry, empty husk. "The hoses are soft, brake pads and shoes worn. Muffler and pipes rusted out."

"I'll tell you what else it needs," Todd said too quietly. He leaned his head in the window, temporarily oblivious to the stench of stale smoke and motor oil and the iron scent of fresh blood. "Needs a battery. Mine was in okay shape when you brought it in, though. Newest thing on this damn car. So I'm figuring that two days of playing my radio-hell, who knows, maybe living in my car-well, that's just about kicked the shit out of that battery. What do you figure?"

The garage owner whipped his head toward Todd with more reflexive speed than Todd would have imagined he had left. His face, glistening with pain-sweat, was so pale it looked blue in the insufficient light.

"What I figure," Zeebe said, his voice sharp and brittle, "is that you're taking a hell of a chance talking to me like that."

Todd's feet stuttered away.

"I'm thinking," Zeebe continued, his voice rattling loose in his mouth, "that you'll never get yourself another good night's rest if you ever get on my bad side, little man."

"All I want is my car back," Todd said in a placating whine he hated to hear.

As if distracted by the windshield into which he stared, Zeebe said in an almost singsong voice, "No more sickness, nor death, nor fear. Hurts now, but it'll all be worth it once I'm free. I'm flying already, little man. Saw the town...the birds...the rooftops..."

He tilted his head skyward as though he could catch such fanciful sights somewhere in the vicinity of the Cadillac's smoke-stained dome.

With his neck exposed like that, Todd saw the purple welt. It look like the middle-aged mechanic might have been given a hickey by a high school girl, a possibility too disgusting to consider. Staring at it, Todd felt a desperate need to be outside again in the clean daylight.

"All I want to know," he said quietly, "is when I can pick up my car. In working condition."

Zeebe once more turned that ghastly grin on him. "It's going to be expensive, little man."

"For what, plugs and points? Brake pads? How much can it be?"

"Forgot to tell you about the transmission."

Todd felt acid gnawing away at his insides. He'd felt the engine lurch a time or two, but the transmission was fine. Jesus, it had to be, because he could guess what a new one could cost. Definitely more than he paid for the car. He was being screwed. Let the cops handle it.

That last thought made him almost giggle out loud, an outburst he feared even more than his anger.

He stumbled away from the dying man and aimed his sights on the faint crack lining the door. He knew what he'd known all along and just hadn't admitted to himself: Marty McConlon was never going to let him and his family out of Babylon without more car repairs than they could possibly afford.

And that meant they'd never get out.

He felt something black and cancerous squeezing his lungs and knew he had to get out fast. He spat his unlit cigarette to the floor, even though he knew he'd light its replacement as soon as he left the darkness.

Behind him came a phlegm-filled chuckle that ended in a painfully wet cough. "One of these nights, little man," the moist voice wheezed. "Be all fixed real soon."

The mechanic was still speaking, but Todd lost the message in the wet, choked cackle that accompanied it.

Chapter Eighteen.

"Todd, when's Joy's interview? It's five-fifteen now."

"Relax," he said, sniffing Kathy Lee's lovely beer breath.

Why bust his ass to get home when all he'd get was a whiny earful about the car? He'd tried, hadn't he? Joy would never understand how he'd left Zeebe's without the Olds or some idea of what he owed or when it would be fixed.

More to the point, why was it so damn important that she make this interview when all she could talk about was getting out of Babylon?

There's something not right about this place, she'd told him the night before.

No shit. She'd never be able to imagine the terror he'd felt that morning, staring at that dying man with blood in his phlegm and nicotine staining his fingers and rotted teeth and smoke on his breath. And that bruise at his throat...

Todd would never make her understand what had propelled him out the door that morning and sent him hiking down that gravel road to a box factory that didn't need him. She wouldn't understand because even he couldn't explain his unmanly fear.

When the golden content of his first frosted mug slid down his throat and started kicking ass with his brain cells, he was able to push aside the need to know. He had cash in his pocket, thanks to his fortuitous discovery that the bearded bartender cashed local payroll checks. Todd also had a corner of the Winking Dog Saloon filled with his new neighbors and friends.

"I don't know," Kathy Lee was saying. "I think you oughta at least call and tell her you can't make it. What's she gonna do with the kids?"

"I was detained," Todd said, trying out a possible alibi for later. By not making the call just then, he could at least postpone the inevitable clash. "She'll understand," he added, a lie so boldfaced he couldn't even make himself believe it.

"You're goddamn right," shouted the pesky kid with the muscles and buzz cut. He stood behind them, throwing darts with D.B. and Judd, but somehow still managing to insinuate himself into the conversation. "These women, you gotta keep them in place or they'll run your life for you. No one's running mine."

His ever-flexed forearm sported ink that looked like a fire-breathing stag with a set of initials tattooed below it. Likely an ex-girlfriend who was no longer running his life for him.

Todd wished the kid hadn't taken his side. It made him doubt his judgment a little. He thought of calling Joy just to spite him, but didn't. She'd have plenty to say about him plunking his ass down on a bar stool with her stuck home with three hungry and bored kids and a job interview in...Todd sneaked a look at Kathy Lee's watch and saw that it was too late to worry about it. The interview was starting without her.

"We don't really even need it no more," he told a new beer bottle, one that had magically appeared on the counter when he wasn't looking. "Not with me working."

"Trust me, you need it." This came from Jermaine Whittock, sitting with Tonya and others at a table behind him, "We got three kids, too. The grandparents get our money once a month, what we can afford to send, and it's never enough." Jermaine drained the rest of his bottle in a single gulp. "Damn, I miss them," he said quietly.

"I'm making good money," Todd insisted. "Good enough for now, anyhow."

D.B. leaned over Todd's stool to chime in. "I'm up to eighteen-and-a-half an hour now for lugging cement bags. I was getting an even eighteen, but I saw that this week's check was off. In my favor. I added it up and found out they'd given me another raise they didn't even tell me about."

"Don't tell no one," Judd said. "They know about it, they'll take it away."

"I don't know," Denver Dugan said from another barstool. "I can't figure out this blasted town. Never believed in no worker's paradise, least not till I got pulled off the road in Babylon, Michigan. Now I don't know what to think."

"I'll bet you weren't even in Babylon when you got pulled over," Todd said. "Bet you were on a state highway when you got stopped by that Marty cop."

"Wasn't Marty," Denver drawled. "The younger one."

"My point being, it was a local cop pulling you off a state highway," Todd insisted. "Anyone see anything funny about that?"

They sat and thought and drank while .38 Special pounded from the jukebox.

Todd was feeling too good to work up any real anger. Most of two beers in him, he somehow knew the alcohol was achieving peak performance right about now and that he wouldn't stop pouring it in and it would all be downhill from here. He clicked his bottle against the top of the bar in solemn recognition of the wrongs he'd do tonight, and prepared to do them.

The Winking Dog was the kind of joint that didn't think entertainment could be found in simple conversation. It was a square, dusky room with a pine plank floor, scarred walls and decades of cigarette smoke still floating in the air. A long bar and mirror with bottle reflections occupied one wall, a few tables and a pool table with its accumulation of sticks, chalk and players taking up most of the space in the open area. Three dartboards, a video golf game, a basket-shooting game and the guitar-heavy jukebox kept bodies occupied and conversation to a minimum.

The cacophony of sound put Todd more at ease than he'd felt since being yanked into town. It didn't surprise him that no one noticed his late arrival at work that morning. He put in another long day of dust and glares, simple tasks and long smoke breaks. It felt good to be among friends now, in a commandeered corner of a loud bar.

When he broke away from his thoughts, he found yet another sweating beer bottle in front of him. Yessiree, it was going to be a fine evening-if only he could ignore the sight of the pay phone in the alcove by the restrooms.

"I got nothing to feel bad about," he told his latest beer.

"What's that?" Kathy Lee asked, dragging herself none too reluctantly out of a conversation with the buzzcut kid who'd abandoned darts to pull up a stool next to her.

"I wanted to know," said Todd, making up the question on the spot, "what you were about to tell me before Melanie got her flip-flop nibbled by the rat that first night."

She stared at him blankly.

"How Officer Marty was able to pull you into Babylon. You were starting to tell me."

"I'm getting us more beer," Buzzcut said, standing wobbly. Naturally, he was frowning. Todd couldn't tell if the kid was pissed off at having Kathy Lee's attention diverted, or if he was born that way.

"Get me another one, too," Todd said, shoving a ten dollar bill across the table.

The attitude didn't go away, but the kid and the money did.

"Dukey likes me," Kathy Lee said.

"Dukey?"

"Duke Gates. Real name's probably Ralphie or Byron, but Duke's what he goes by."

"You're not avoiding the subject," Todd said, scooting closer. He accidentally knocked his beer bottle against hers as if sealing a pact he knew nothing about. "What's he holding over you? The cop, I mean."

Kathy Lee stared at Dukey's empty stool on her other side as if willing someone interesting to take it. "He let me keep my kids," she said, still facing away.

Todd barely heard her. When he asked her to repeat it, she swiveled in her seat and said it again, right to him this time. While burning him with a look that dared him to find fault with her words.

She twirled a bottle that had been half full the last time he'd looked, but was empty now. "My kids, they're loud, obnoxious and semi-evil," she said. "I can't spend too much time around them or they'd drive me nuts. But I do love them in my way." She sucked on the bottle, her eyes so lost in thought she didn't even seem to mind that it was empty.

"Skip, he was my husband." She laughed. "Good name, now that I think of it. As in, 'he skipped.' So he's gone, and I get into a tiff with the landlord, right?"

Todd wasn't sure he was keeping up, but he nodded anyway. "Right."

"This bastard's all gung-ho about raising my rent, but he won't fix the locks on the windows-and three of the neighbors have had break-ins. So he comes over one night after work with his hand out for last month's rent which is late 'cuz I'm not getting any child support and Skip's skipped without a forwarding address. I tell him-the landlord-he's not gonna see another rent check until I get some locks on those windows. That's fair, right? He screams at me and I scream at him and the next thing I know there's cops pounding on the door. I'm busted for disturbing the peace and for assaulting my pig of a landlord. By that he means that I shoved him away when he got his face into mine. Now I've got the cops on my ass and my landlord's lawyer, too. And now Skip's back in town long enough to tell me he wants the kids 'cuz I'm obviously a violent, unfit mother."

"Here ya go, Kathy Lee," young Duke said, plopping another bottle in front of her. He wordlessly slid Todd his, but not a dime of change.

"So what happened?" Todd asked, nudging her back into the story. He squinted to narrow his field of vision and miss Duke leaning into the picture.

She shrugged. "Skip didn't want the kids. He was just pissed at me for chasing him down for child support. He'd found a job of some kind in Knoxville-miracle of miracles-and his employer was about to start garnering his wages. So..." She shrugged again and sucked down a throatful of suds. "...I packed up the demon seeds and took off for somewhere Skip wouldn't look. Knowing, of course, that he wouldn't look too hard when he learned his wages weren't going to be attached."

Kathy Lee turned the other way and let Duke ramble on about a new pair of speakers he was thinking of installing in his ride, but Todd didn't let her off that easy.

He tapped her. "I don't see why you didn't stay put. Okay, you were late with the rent and you tussled with your landlord, but compared to the way your asshole husband took off, that don't seem too bad."

She sighed. "Right. The lesser of two evils. Mommy's violent and Daddy's a deadbeat. Let's flip a coin and see who wins. Skip had what passed, for the moment anyway, as a steady job, while I was tending bar. Leaving the kids alone, I might add, 'cuz I wasn't making near enough to pay a babysitter on top of everything else. Whoever's got the best lawyer wins, and I couldn't even afford a bad one."