Characters in Dolan’s Cadillac

Dolan’s voice was suddenly wary. The man outside, the man on top, knew his name. Which meant this was an extremely dangerous situation. “Jimmy, I can see the bones in my legs!” “Shut up,” Dolan said coldly. It was eerie to hear their voices drifting up like that.

Do you want details? You won’t get them from me. If you want them, look them up in the back issues of the papers. Her name was Elizabeth. She taught in the same school where I taught and where I teach still. She taught first-graders.

The municipal employment office stamped a tentative approval on my form and sent me along to a district foreman named Harvey Blocker. Blocker was a tall man, burned almost black by the Nevada sun. He wore jeans, dusty workboots, and a blue tee-shirt with cut-off sleeves.

And with an eerie, frightening suddenness, Dolan said: “Is your name Robinson?” I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. He had made the connection that fast, winnowing through all the half-remembered names and faces and coming up with exactly the right one.

… one of them, because a little boy named Timothy Urich burst into tears and I had to soothe him. Sheets, I thought, comforting Timmy. Sheets and pillowcases and bedding and silverware; the rugs; the grounds. Everything has to look just so. He’ll want everything just so. Of course. Having things …

He said this in tones of amazement. “No.” “You’d give the watch to Tinker to hold?” He cocked his thumb at a humongous black man in a tie-dyed shirt who was sitting nearby in the cab of a bulldozer, eating a fruit-pie from McDonald’s and listening. “Is he trustworthy?”