Mr. Mercedes: A Novel by Stephen King Page A

longer want the other shit we sell.” Brady thinks only Tones Frobisher would say the great majority . “This is partly because of the technological revolution, but it’s also because—”
    Together, Freddi and Brady chant, “— Barack Obama is the worst mistake this country ever made! ”
    Frobisher regards them sourly for a moment, then says, “At least you listen. Brady, you’re off at two, is that correct?”
    “Yes. My other gig starts at three.”
    Frobisher wrinkles the overlarge schnozzola in the middle of his face to show what he thinks of Brady’s other job. “Did I hear you say something about returning to school?”
    Brady doesn’t reply to this, because anything he says might be the wrong thing. Anthony “Tones” Frobisher must not know that Brady hates him. Fucking loathes him. Brady hates everybody, including his drunk mother, but it’s like that old country song says: no one has to know right now.
    “You’re twenty-eight, Brady. Old enough so you no longer have to rely on shitty pool coverage to insure your automobile—which is good—but a little too old to be training for a career in electrical engineering. Or computer programming, for that matter.”
    “Don’t be a turd,” Freddi says. “Don’t be a Tones Turd.”
    “If telling the truth makes a man a turd, then a turd I shall be.”
    “Yeah,” Freddi says. “You’ll go down in history. Tones the Truth-Telling Turd. Kids will learn about you in school.”
    “I don’t mind a little truth,” Brady says quietly.
    “Good. You can don’t-mind all the time you’re cataloguing and stickering DVDs. Starting now.”
    Brady nods good-naturedly, stands up, and dusts the seat of his pants. The Discount Electronix fifty-percent-off sale starts the following week; management in New Jersey has mandated that DE must be out of the digital-versatile-disc business by January of 2011. That once profitable line of merchandise has been strangled by Netflix and Redbox. Soon there will be nothing in the store but home computers (made in China and the Philippines) and flat-screen TVs, which in this deep recession few can afford to buy.
    “You,” Frobisher says, turning to Freddi, “have an out-call.” He hands her a pink work invoice. “Old lady with a screen freeze. That’s what she says it is, anyway.”
    “Yes, mon capitan . I live to serve.” She stands up, salutes, and takes the call-sheet he holds out.
    “Tuck your shirt in. Put on your cap so your customer doesn’t have to be disgusted by that weird haircut. Don’t drive too fast. Get another ticket and life as you know it on the Cyber Patrol is over. Also, pick up your fucking cigarette butts before you go.”
    He disappears inside before she can return his serve.
    “DVD stickers for you, an old lady with a CPU probably full of graham cracker crumbs for me,” Freddi says, jumping down and putting her hat on. She gives the bill a gangsta twist and starts across to the VWs without even glancing at her cigarette butts. She does pause long enough to look back at Brady, hands on her nonexistent boy hips. “This is not the life I pictured for myself when I was in the fifth grade.”
    “Me, either,” Brady says quietly.
    He watches her putt away, on a mission to rescue an old lady who’s probably going crazy because she can’t download her favorite mock-apple pie recipe. This time Brady wonders what Freddi would say if he told her what life was like for him when he was a kid. That was when he killed his brother. And his mother covered it up.
    Why would she not?
    After all, it had sort of been her idea.
    12
    As Brady is slapping yellow 50% OFF stickers on old Quentin Tarantino movies and Freddi is helping out elderly Mrs. Vera Willkins on the West Side (it’s her keyboard that’s full of crumbs, it turns out), Bill Hodges is turning off Lowbriar, the four-lane street that bisects the city and gives Lowtown its name, and in to the parking lot beside DeMasio’s Italian Ristorante.