He turned the key and the engine started at once

He turned the key and the engine started at once. Mort hadn't heard it ticking and popping when he came out, but it started as if it were warm, all the same. Shooter's hat was now in the trunk. Mort had picked it up with the same distaste he had shown for the cigarette butt, putting only enough of his fingers on the brim to get a grip on it. There had been nothing under it, and nothing inside it but a very old sweat-stained inner band. It had some other smell, however, one which was sharper and more acrid than sweat. It was a smell which Mort recognized in some vague way but could not place. Perhaps it would come to him. He put the hat in the Buick back seat, then remembered he would be seeing Greg and Tom in a little less than an hour. He wasn't sure he wanted them to see the hat. He didn't know exactly why he felt that way, but this morning it seemed safer to follow his instincts than to question them, so he put the hat in the trunk and set off for town.
Chapter 32
He passed Tom's house again on the way to Bowie's,Moncler Outlet. The Scout was no longer in the driveway. For a moment this made Mort feel nervous, and then he decided it was a good sign, not a bad one - Tom must have already started his day's work. Or he might have gone to Bowie's himself - Tom was a widower, and he ate a lot of his meals at the lunch counter in the general store.
Most of the Tashmore Public Works Department was at the counter, drinking coffee and talking about the upcoming deer season, but Tom was
(dead he's dead Shooter killed him and guess whose car he used)
not among them.
'Mort Rainey!' Gerda Bowie greeted him in her usual hoarse, Bleacher Creature's shout. She was a tall woman with masses of frizzy chestnut hair and a great rounded bosom. 'Ain't seen you in a coon's age! Writing any good books lately,fake uggs boots?'
'Trying,' Mort said. 'You wouldn't make me one of your special omelettes, would you?'
'Shit, no!' Gerda said, and laughed to show she was only joking. The PW guys in their olive-drab coveralls laughed right along with her,replica gucci wallets. Mort wished briefly for a great big gun like the one Dirty Harry wore under his tweed sport-coats. Boom-bang-blam, and maybe they could have a little order around here. 'Coming right up, Mort.'
'Thanks.'
When she delivered it, along with toast, coffee, and OJ, she said in a lower voice: 'I heard about your divorce. I'm sorry.'
He lifted the mug of coffee to his lips with a hand that was almost steady. 'Thanks, Gerda.'
'Are you taking care of yourself?'
'Well ... trying.'
'Because you look a little peaky.'
'It's hard work getting to sleep some nights. I guess I'm not used to the quiet yet.'
'Bullshit - it's sleeping alone you're not used to yet. But a man doesn't have to sleep alone forever, Mort, just because his woman don't know a good thing when she has it. I hope you don't mind me talking to you this way -'
'Not at all,' Mort said. But he did. He thought Gerda Bowie made a shitty Ann Landers.
'- but you're the only famous writer this town has got.'
'Probably just as well.'
She laughed and tweaked his ear. Mort wondered briefly what she would say,Discount UGG Boots, what the big men in the olive-drab coveralls would say, if he were to bite the hand that tweaked him. He was a little shocked at how powerfully attractive the idea was. Were they all talking about him and Amy? Some saying she didn't know a good thing when she had it, others saying the poor woman finally got tired of living with a crazy man and decided to get out, none of them knowing what the fuck they were talking about, or what he and Amy had been about when they had been good? Of course they were, he thought tiredly. That's what people were best at. Big talk about people whose names they saw in the newspapers.