Umney's Last Case by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page A

jutting upward at that angle his supporters think
    of as jaunty and his detractors as
    arrogant. The picture was hanging slightly askew.
    `Ì don't need the laptop to do it,'' he said. He sounded a little embarrassed, as if
    I'd accused him of something. `Ì can
    do it just by concentrating--as you saw when the numbers disappeared from your
    blotter--but the laptop helps.
    Because I'm used to writing things down, I suppose. And then editing them. In a way,
    editing and rewriting are the most
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    fascinating parts of the job, because that's where the final changes--usually small
    but often crucial--take place and the
    picture really comes into focus.''
    I looked back at Landry, and when I spoke, my voice was dead. ``You made me up, didn't
    you?''
    He nodded, looking strangely ashamed, as if what he had done was something dirty.
    ``When?'' I uttered a strange, croaky little laugh. `Òr is that the right question?''
    `Ì don't know if it is or isn't,'' he said, `ànd I imagine any writer would tell you
    about the same. It didn't happen all at
    once--that much I'm sure of. It's been an ongoing process. You first showed up in
    Scarlet Town, but I wrote that back
    in 1977 and you've changed a lot since then.''
    1977, I thought. A Buck Rogers year for sure. I didn't want to believe this was
    happening, wanted to believe it was all a
    dream. Oddly enough, it was the smell of his cologne that kept me from being able to
    do that--that familiar smell I'd
    never smelled in my life. How could I have? It was Aramis, a brand as unfamiliar to me
    as Toshiba.
    But he was going on.
    ``You've grown a lot more complex and interesting. You were pretty one-dimensional to
    start with.'' He cleared his
    throat and smiled down at his hands for a moment. ``What a pisser for me.''
    He winced a little at the anger in my voice, but made himself look up again, just the
    same. ``Your last book was How
    Like a Fallen Angel. I started that one in 1990, but it took until 1993 to finish.
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    I've had some problems in the interim.
    My life has been . . . interesting.'' He gave the word an ugly, bitter twist.
    ``Writers don't do their best work during
    interesting times, Clyde. Take my word for it.''
    I glanced at the baggy way his hobo clothes hung on him and decided he might have a
    point there. ``Maybe that's why
    you screwed up in such a big way on this one,'' I said. ``That stuff about the lottery
    and the forty thousand dollars was
    pure guff--they pay off in pesos south of the border.''
    `Ì knew that,'' he said mildly. `Ì'm not saying I don't goof up from time to time--I
    may be a kind of God in this
    world, or to this world, but in my own I'm perfectly human--but when I do goof up, you
    and your fellow characters
    never know it, Clyde, because my mistakes and continuity lapses are part of your
    truth. No, Peoria was lying. I knew it,
    and I wanted you to know it.''
    ``Why?''
    He shrugged, again looking uneasy and a little ashamed. ``To prepare you for my coming
    a little, I suppose. That's what
    all of it was for, starting with the Demmicks. I didn't want to scare you any more
    than I had to.''
    Any private eye worth his salt has a pretty good idea when the person in the client's
    chair is lying and when he's telling
    the truth; knowing when the client is telling the truth but purposely leaving gaps is
    a rarer talent, and I doubt if even the
    geniuses among us can tap it all the time. Maybe I was only tapping it now because my
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    brainwaves and Landry's were
    marching in lock-step, but I was tapping it. There was stuff he wasn't telling me. The
    question was whether or not I
    should call him on it.
    What stopped me was a sudden, horrible intuition that came waltzing out of nowhere,
    like a ghost oozing out of the
    wall of a