Characters in Thinner

He had gone to see the Raintree chief of police, Allen Chalker, the following day. Chalker was a poker buddy, and he had been sympathetic.

Her name was Angelina Lemke. He put her picture next to the picture of Samuel Lemke. Brother and sister. The grandchildren of Susanna Lemke? he wondered.

… buddy Billy Halleck (Cary would sometimes clap him on the back and yell, “How they hangin’, Big Bill?”) came before him in court, not to argue some point of municipal law, but on a charge of vehicular manslaughter. And when Cary Rossington did not …

Billy thought that Bob smelled pretty ripe himself but decided that saying so might be rather imprudent.

“Did that bring your daughter back, Mr. Lemke? Did she come back when Cary Rossington hit the ground out there in Minnesota?” Lemke’s lips twisted. “I don’t need her back. Justice ain’t bringing the dead back, white man.

* * * He tried to think about David Duganfield on the way home—Duganfield was a good thing to think about—but instead of Duganfield he found himself thinking about Ginelli by the time he …

… , it may be the root cause of this psycho-anorexia, if that’s really what you’re suffering from, as Dr. Yount believes. You—” “Hopley,” Billy said. Sweat had broken out on his face. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He had a flicker-flash of …

But it had been Ginelli’s voice Billy wanted to hear on that terrible afternoon after Duncan Hopley, the Fairview chief of police, had let him go. “—or just sit there all day?” “Huh!” Billy said, startled.

… Fander arrived shortly before six o’clock. He was a little man with prematurely white hair who carried a country doctor’s bag. He gazed at Billy’s scrawny, emaciated body for a long moment without speaking and then carefully unwound the handkerchief from Billy’s left hand. Billy had to put his other …

* * * The realtor’s name was Frank Quigley, but he insisted that Billy call him Biff. There were framed pictures of a high-school-age Biff Quigley on the walls.

… He still did, but he now also believed this girl really could have been the one who killed Frank Spurton. “That pig!” she spat. “Han satte sig pa en av stolarna! Han sneglade pa nytt mot hyllorna i vild! Vild!” “I have a number of pictures of a …

He had arranged for a leave of absence with Glenn Petrie, who was shocked to hear his old friend, fellow jurist, and golf partner Cary Rossington had skin cancer.

Grand Lawlor was the county coroner. And now that he thought of it, yes, Grand Lawlor had testified before a grand jury or two in his time. This thought brought on an irrational giggling fit.

He had looked at the twenty-two-year-old Heidi Halleck and had asked politely, “Is your mother home, hon?” “Not hurting my appetite any,” he said, and that was certainly true.

… days . . . and then an embarrassing thing very nearly happened to him, in court and in front of Judge Hilmer Boynton, who had no more sense of humor than your average land turtle. It was stupid; the kind of thing you have bad dreams about when you’re a …

… larger houses on Lantern Drive—they were in walking distance of the country club, a fact of which Jenny Houston boasted when she was drunk. It meant that their house had cost well over a hundred and fifty K. Houston drove a brown Mercedes four-door.

“What?” “Mohonk,” he repeated. “If you don’t want to go, I’ll ask Jillian from the office.” “No, you won’t! Billy, what is this?” “Do you want to go or not?” “Of course I do! This weekend?”

First Jim Roberts had revoked their fire permit.

Can I tell Heidi? She’ll think I’m crazy. But Halleck had never felt saner in his life. The outer door of the men’s room banged open. Halleck retreated quickly into the stall and latched it, frightened. “Billy?” John Parker, his assistant. “In here.” “Boynton’s coming back soon. You okay?”

… He told her about how he had chased the Gypsies up the coast; about getting the photographs from Kirk Penschley; of finally catching up to the Gypsies in Bar Harbor. At that point the truth and Billy Halleck parted company. The dramatic confrontation …

Pressure had been brought to bear, pressure that a poor dirt farmer like Lars Arncaster simply couldn’t stand against. Particularly when half the so-called “good people” in town had the knife out for him to begin with.

Then he thought of Leda Rossington’s drugged, horrified face . . . he thought of Leda saying He’s hard to talk to now . . . it’s happening inside his mouth, you see . . . …

They always knocked Halleck out. “Asses are in these days.” “Linda Joan Halleck!” “I’ll have a Ring-Ding,” Halleck said. Heidi looked at him briefly, coolly—Oh . . . is that what you’ll have?—and then tossed it to him.

The old man looked like Lee Strasberg, the teacher and actor. “This is Lon Enders,” the bartender said. “He’s got a little place just on the west of town. Same side the Salt Shack’s on.

She was walking her dog. “Nothing,” Billy said, and smiled at her. “Marcy!” the little girl’s mother called anxiously. “Come over here!” “Well, ’bye,” Marcy said. “’Bye, hon.”

Samuel Lemke. Richard Crosskill. Maura Starbird. Taduz Lemke. “Ah!”

I started to realize they could have been right at the Glassman Clinic after all. Even Michael Houston could have been at least partly right, as much as I dislike the little prick.” “Billy . . .” She touched his arm. “Never mind,” he said.

Miss Nearing said she was especially proud of you, he says. It’s a small lie. Miss Nearing hadn’t said precisely that, but she had certainly spoken well of Linda, and that meant almost as much to Halleck as it did to his daughter.

Yes, Biff said, he had rented the space to the old Gyp with Mr. Parsons’ approval. “He figured it couldn’t look any worse than it does right now,” Biff Quigley said, “and I guess he was right, at that.”

“Tomorrow, if you can get Mrs. Bean to come in and check on Linda and make sure the wash gets done and that there aren’t any orgies going on in front of the TV in the family …

“You know what scares me the most? I can live like this for quite a while. That scares me. Mrs. Callaghee does my grocery shopping and she comes in twice a week to clean and do the washing. I’ve got the TV, and I like to read.

“I finally realized that he was having these . . . these fits . . . on the nights after Mrs. Marley came in to clean,” she said dully. “He’d go up into the attic when she was here, you see.

Then: “What makes you think anything is?” “He’s not at the station. Rand Foxworth says he has the flu, but Rand Foxworth lies like old people fuck.” There was another long pause.

… deep loneliness both seemed strongest, he had found his old battered address book and had called Rhoda Simonson in Westchester County. A moment or two later he had been talking to Linda, who was deliriously glad to hear from him. She had indeed found …

Here was the elderly man who had been handing out fliers—Richard Crosskill. Other Crosskills were named. Stanchfields. Starbirds. More Lemkes. And then . . . near the bottom . . . It was him.

… s, but Billy’s first impulse had been to take his client to Three Brothers, the restaurant in which Richard Ginelli held an informal silent partnership. It had been years now since he had actually been in the Brothers—with Ginelli’s reputation it would …

… “The Hammer” Ginelli they had overheard giving the orders to kill a Brooklyn dope baron named Richovsky. Westport. Southport. Almost home. He was leaning over again, feeling around in the glove compartment . . . Aha! Here was an only partially …

… over everything else to staff this afternoon, and as for the Hood litigation, you turned it over to Ron Baker last week—he called Thursday afternoon and asked me where Sally put the fucking Con-Gas depositions. Your idea of hanging fire, Kirk-baby, …

Yard was screeching in a horrid, crowlike voice, and when he turned toward Halleck, he saw it was not Yard at all, but Ronald Reagan. “Where’s the rest of me?” he screamed. “Where’s the rest of me? WHERE’S THE REST OF ME?”

… you turned it over to Ron Baker last week—he called Thursday afternoon and asked me where Sally put the fucking Con-Gas depositions. Your idea of hanging fire, Kirk-baby, has to do solely with Sunday-afternoon chicken barbecues at your …

Linda and the Houston girl had had some sort of kids’ falling-out the previous winter, and Samantha Houston had just about broken both legs getting to Linda to tell her that her dear old mom was trying to get her dear old dad committed to a basket …

From somewhere there was a growl of rage. Samuel Lemke started forward. Taduz Lemke turned his head and spat a single word in Romany. The younger man stopped, uncertain and confused.

“Lemke,” he said finally. “Her name was Susanna Lemke.” “L-e-m-p-k-e?” “No P.” “Okay.” “After the accident, the Gypsies found that they’d worn out their welcome in Fairview.

… when he opened the trunk it wasn’t Ginelli but a bloody naked boy-child with the ageless eyes of Taduz Lemke and a gold hoop in one earlobe. The boy-child held gore-stained hands out to Billy. It grinned, and its teeth were silver needles.

“But I’d talk for free. Hell, when you get old you find out you’d pay someone to listen . . . ask Timmy there if I can have a glass of cold water, would you?

“How much did you have to drink when you hit her, Halleck? My best guess is that if Tom Rangely had given you the breathalyzer, that little balloon would have floated straight up to heaven.” “Nothing to drink, no drugs,” Billy said.

Been here ever since. I learned how to turn a tip from a master—Lonesome Tommy McGhee, dead these many years now. Yelled my guts out, I did, and what you hear now is all that’s left.”

The man looked at him sullenly for a moment longer and then said, “My name’s Heilig. Trey Heilig. You coulda gotten it from those guys.” He nodded. “They’ve got their jobs to do, I’ve got mine. Now, are you going to talk to me?”

… He’s got a souped-up metabolism; he’s burning the calories off at twice the pace of, let’s say, Yard Stevens.” Halleck nodded. Yard Stevens owned and operated Heads Up, Fairview’s only barber shop. He went maybe three hundred pounds. You looked at …

Hopley might also have gone to visit Zachary Marchant at the Connecticut Union Bank . . . the bank that held Arncaster’s mortgage. All part of the job.