He slipped the fragment into his pocket.
He took a final look around the dingy store. Something had happened here. He still doubted the owner's story, but the man seemed sure of what he was saying. And the metal fragment only added to the larger mystery.
When they left Santa's Package Store a moment later, Remo's face was troubled.
Chapter 10
"I was astonished at how awful it was. I mean, it really was that bad. Shockingly so."
Every word was a knife in Duncan Allen's heart. But in spite of the inhuman callousness of his critic, he had no choice but to sit there and take it. As he fidgeted in the overstuffed chair in the dusty old living room in Bangor, Maine, he gave a sickly, lopsided smile to the evil little man who stood in judgment above him.
"I bought it assuming you'd have improved over the years. You know, since back when I bought those first five manuscripts from you. But I wish I'd looked at it sooner. I'll do my best, but I don't know if it's salvageable at all. Of course, you won't be getting a bonus for this shit."
And at this, Stewart McQueen laughed. It was a mirthless laugh that was all smarmy condescension. That his laugh would be devoid of joviality wasn't a surprise. McQueen was the most humorless human being Duncan Allen had ever met. As an individual far superior to all things that walked, crawled or flew, Stewart McQueen didn't have time for a sense of humor. The world-famous novelist was too busy standing astride the very peak of a fiction writer's Mount Olympus, glaring down contemptuously at the pathetic mortals who scurried upon the Earth below.
"You haven't learned a thing since you started writing for me," McQueen said. He was a slight man with a too perfect beard. When he spoke, his tongue had a hard time negotiating around his protruding rabbit's teeth.
"But you're still buying my next book?" Allen asked, trying to keep the desperate pleading from his voice. "After the other two books you bought, you promised you'd take Boiling Point to the publisher for me."
Another sneering laugh. "That's not gonna happen now," Stewart McQueen said dismissively.
And that was that. With that one phrase, Duncan Allen felt the world collapse beneath his worn-out, three-year-old sneakers. Mind whirling, he tumbled into the dark abyss.
After that McQueen's cruel words-and there were a lot of them-were nothing more than white noise. The logical part of Duncan's mind knew that McQueen could be wrong. After all, others had said he had talent. But McQueen was the only professional writer he knew. Yes, he was an insufferable little prick with a Napoleon complex so grand that it had driven away everyone save the two cats who shared his lonely Maine mansion. But if he said someone had no talent, well, maybe they didn't.
When McQueen eventually grew tired of the nasal drone of his own voice, he ushered a shell-shocked Duncan Allen to the front door. So dazed was Duncan that he had forgotten even to blink. His eyes were wide and dry as McQueen coaxed him out onto the broad front porch.
"If writing's what you want to do with your life, you've got to start taking it more seriously," McQueen instructed. With a superior smirk he slammed the door on the mute and defeated young writer.
Alone in his foyer, Stewart McQueen quickly snapped out the light and drew back the curtains an inch. He put a delighted eye up to the grimy windowpane.
He had shut off the porch light. In the long shadows of late afternoon, Duncan Allen just stood there for an agonizingly long time. Shoulders hunched, back to the door. Eventually, he found his feet, trudging down the creaky front steps. The winding walk led him to the high wrought-iron gate. The last McQueen saw of him, the young man was walking like a zombie down the dusty sidewalk.
As he watched the hunching figure he had done his best to destroy disappear from sight, Stewart McQueen laughed out loud. He was still laughing when he dropped the curtain.
This was one of the few joys in his miserable life: finding someone young, talented and struggling. And then beating the hell out of their self-esteem. Usually he hit so hard they never, ever recovered.
Sniffling, laughing, his big eyes watering, Stewart turned back for his living room.
His weight was wrong. He knew it the instant his knee seized up.
The sudden stiffness in his leg caused the laughter to die in his throat.
Sucking in a lungful of air, McQueen braced himself against the foyer wall, clasping a hand to his knee.
When the pain washed over him, it came in splendid starbursts. He gasped as the sharp ache clutched every bone in his leg like a squeezing fist.
And, as quickly as it came, it fled.
Quickly, before it could return, he limped beyond the living room and into his shadowy study, dropping roughly into an overstuffed easy chair.
Dust rose into the musty air.
He had hoped his meeting with Duncan Allen would be the balm he was looking for. The ego boost he got from making others feel like talentless bugs used to sustain him for hours. Days if he was really on his game, as he had been this day. But thanks to the leg, he was no longer feeling it.
"Dammit," he grunted.
This should have been perfect. After he'd bought the young man's last two books, McQueen had made a load of promises to the struggling writer. During the previous two and a half hours he had broken every single one of them.
For a creature of pure malice like Stewart McQueen, it should have been a thing of lasting beauty. As the icing on the cake, there actually was a publisher out there who might be interested in Duncan Allen's work. But McQueen had quit working for them eight months before and, in spite of yet another promise, had never bothered to mention it to Allen until this day. He had left his young ghostwriter dangling in the wind for almost a year without so much as a phone call.
There was no doubt that this was Stewart McQueen's best work so far. Yet, thanks to the intermittent, blinding pain in his knee, he couldn't even enjoy it.
It was coming again.
Hauling his leg onto an ottoman, McQueen clasped both hands tightly around it, encircling the entire knee.
He rode the wave of pain like a rodeo rider. When it was done a minute later, McQueen was covered with sweat. Exhausted from the pain, he collapsed back into his chair.
Though it was old by now, he feared he would never get used to the pain. It had been like this for the past two years. Ever since that fateful summer afternoon.
The accident had made national headlines. America's most famous horror novelist struck by a hit-and-run driver.
McQueen was out for a walk on a lonely country road. He never dreamed that a simple stroll to the mailbox would almost prove fatal.
The car had come out of nowhere. Instead of paying attention to where he was going, the careless driver had been yelling on his cell phone while simultaneously swatting his three rottweilers in the back seat with a rolled-up newspaper. When car met novelist, the writer lost.
McQueen was thrown thirty feet in the air, slamming to the pavement with bone-crushing force. The next year was a nightmare of painful surgeries and grueling therapy.
At first, revenge had kept him going. But after the driver was apprehended, McQueen was advised by his agent and manager to do his best to preserve his public image as a nice guy. So rather than watch gleefully as a hired hit man chopped the careless motorist to bits with a hatchet, McQueen was forced to settle for a revoked driver's license.
It was a hollow victory.
Gripping his knee, McQueen struggled to his feet. Breathing deeply a few times, he tested the leg.
It felt solid.
He put his whole weight on it. The knee didn't buckle.
Exhaling, McQueen limped into the kitchen. A collection of stone gargoyles clustered around the cold fireplace watched in silence as he hobbled from sight. He reappeared a moment later, a can of Fresca clutched in his hand. Walking with more confidence, he returned to his favorite chair.
He spent most of his time here these days. Sitting. There was a time when Stewart McQueen didn't have an idle moment. It was well-known that he wrote every day of the year with the exception of Christmas and his birthday. He was so prolific that he sometimes worried that he was watering down the market by competing with his own books.
But the most productive toboggan ride in the history of popular fiction had ended at the bumper of a speeding Chevy Blazer. Press releases had him working on a book from his hospital bed. They were false.
His computer sat in the corner of his study, silent and dark. He didn't even bother turning it on anymore. What was the point?