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HesMyFameMonster commented on HesMyFameMonster's picture
@SomeRandomGuy I have other games too, and I also read a lot, so I can keep myself entertained. Haha.
Yes, they were certainly the best. :L
Some people do say that I'm different in a good way xD haha :333 commentsJanuary 13th, 2011
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Bookbooth snapped a picture
"Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan
2003
Meet PAUL. Gay his whole life, and finding love as wonderful, confusing and heartbreaking as every other teenager in his high school.
Meet Paul's friends: JONI (his best friend, who may not be his best friend anymore); TONY (his other best friend, who can't leave the house unless his parents think he's going on a date... with a girl); INFINITE DARLENE (homecoming queen and star quarterback on the football team); KYLE (the ex-boyfriend who won't go away); RIP (the school bookie who sets the odds); and NOAH (the boy who changes everything).
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I read a lot, so to call this one of my favourite books of all time is a very high honour indeed. It is so beautiful, so romantic, so random and so delicately wonderful, I fail to see how anyone could not be captivated. Every time I read it (four times now), I get something new from it.
The writing is magical, you just want to hang out with all the characters and it's a world where you aren't judged for who you are. This is how the world should be, and it is a shame that I have to turn to fiction for a world like this.
But not only that, this is a world where pancakes the shape of countries are commonplace, where a drag queen captains the football team, where death is considered an acceptable theme for school dances, and where orange and green sweaters look good.
I cannot fault this book one iota. You should read this, but it seems to be out of print for some tragic reason. It can be hunted down second hand. Just, however you manage it, read this book, whatever your sexuality.
This is a book for anyone who feels the romance slipping out of life. And everyone else.3 commentsMarch 31st, 2011
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Bookbooth snapped a picture
"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
2005
In one of the most acclaimed and original novels of recent years, Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, this book hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, the novel is charged throughout with a sense of fragility of life.
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I read a lot. So to call this, simply, one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life is no small accolade. A beautiful, haunting book that I will never, ever forget. You need to read this, but I can't tell you anything about it without spoiling it. If you like dystopia, romance or speculative fiction, it is a must. Even if you don't, give it a go.
The film was a good adaptation, so see it if you must, but, as always, the book is better. Read this. Read this now.9 commentsMarch 6th, 2011
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YooDanno snapped a picture
Fellow Intergalactic Websters.
*My webcam is screwd up so i'll just put this cyan effect on it to make it look cool*
*queer
Right for people who dont know who i am;
PLEASE READ IT JUST SO I CAN START A CONVERSATION :D
Hello. My name is Sam.
I am 16 years old.
I live in Oxford, and before you ask, no. I AM NOT POSH
AND FUNNILY ENOUGH I DONT LIKE TEA! ahah :')
I love art so much to an extent that i get sexual thrills from drawing.
Music is my passion for , yeah pretty much everything
.. even though a lot of people seriously do say that "music is life", for me it truly is and i fully respect my parents for getting me into it.
I can play : Guitar, Piano, Bass, Drums, Recorder, Harmonica, Ukulele, and a few others, mostly for about 8 - 10 years guitar is 11 years Booyaaa :') , I REALLY want to learn the banjo.
Music wize.. i like a lot of music, it ranges from Acoustic to Death metal aha "Dr. Dre" is an exception but i seriously hate hip hop, and the pop music like "n - dubs". Its just .. i dont even.
I got that t shirt today actually aha
That's all i guess you lot need to know, if you want to talk, im up for a chat any time :)
http://samsavedlatin.tumblr.com/17 commentsMarch 12th, 2011
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omi commented on omi's picture
@hailee CREEEEPPPY :) Where you at? I like it so far, but school makes reading it a lot less fun.
@reinventlove staniwho??
I'm enjoying it a lot, so I can read it and not do the homework the teacher sets about it and still get good grades on the test because it is fun to read! lol
^^does that make sense?0 commentsFebruary 2nd, 2010
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First Picture
DeathCard snapped a picture
15 Facts About Me:
1.) My name is Tanita, but I prefer being called Tan or Tannie because of people do. People always get my name wrong. I often get called Tanya or some variant of a name ending in “nita” with a different letter slapped on the front. I don’t see why it’s so difficult but it happens.
2.) I’m 19-years-old, born on 19th April 1991. I am an Aries but I don’t think it really has much relevance to my personality.
3.) I finished College in 2009 after studying a range of subjects which haven’t really helped me with anything. I started work as a Nursey/Afterschool club assistant which lasted for just after a year before I was made redundant. I am hoping to become a Young peoples Counsellor or a Youth Worker sometime in the future once I get my act together.
4.) I’m currently unemployed but actively seeking a job in whatever I can get at the moment.
5.) I enjoy creative writing, drawing and painting most of which come under the fantasy or horror genre. I usually just draw people but just last week I finished a painting of The Yellow Submarine for my friends birthday. I was pretty pleased with it.
6.) I like to read a lot when I can, mostly about Psychology, Ancient History and Folklore for use in my writing.
7.) I am a Carnivore. Meat brings happiness to my life. I especially enjoy steak while it’s still bloody and writhing on the plate. Yum!
8.) I like people who are considered strange by others, because I find them more interesting to talk to. I like trying to understand them.
9.) When it comes to music I’ll listen to almost anything and everything apart from that R ‘n’ B and Hip Pop rubbish. I can tolerate some but most of it is just really really awful. That’s just my opinion anyway.
10.) I love films. All different types of films though what I watch varies depending on my mood it’s normally dark & gothic films that take my interest and fantasy themed ones as well. I used to be a massive Lord of the Rings fanatic to the extent that I knew all the words to the movies, including the bits in Elvish. That may be sad but I don’t really care. =]
11.) My favourite TV show at the moment is Dexter. I’m watching the box sets. I don’t really watch TV very much anymore but when I do it’s only if I think there’s something on worth watching, I don’t just watch it for the sake of it.
12.) I like Cats & Wolves. They’re my favourite animals. I used to be scared of dogs but that’s no so bad now.
13.) I’m a messy person and I can’t help it. I have too many things running through my mind on a daily basis for me to be concerned about being tidy. Plus, cleaning is boring as hell.
14.) I hate crowded places, they send me crazy. So does too much noise. I like hanging around in smaller groups of people or I just feel uncomfortable. I’m also fairly shy but regardless of that I still like to meet new people.
15.) I am an opinionated person and sometimes a little blunt but I don’t mean to offend people. I just have a tendency to get overly passionate about things.
Anyway, it's nice to meet you. =] Tell me some things about yourself too?2 commentsApril 4th, 2011
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dejafeutre snapped a picture
I just got home from seeing Water for Elephants. It was great. It's been forever since I read the book, so I can't remember any of the small differences, but I don't think there was anything majorly different. I need to reread it.
My face is almost completely unpuffed now. :D And the bruise that's there is so light you can hardly see it. :D It still hurts a lot though.7 commentsApril 24th, 2011
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L109MR commented on L109MR's picture
@ifibreak Thanks! Good luck to you too!
@CodyCrawford it's the thought that you'd help that counts... maybe sometime I'll have to teach you to read and write so I can put up to some school slave labor :P
@cognitivecapacity no no WE can do it! :P I understand you have a lot of work as well
@liamu99 Thank you! it is a mad week, and I've wanted to do that, but I MUST NOT! :D
@sweetlullaby haha Yes we will all be zombies :P I am soo looking forward to summer :D
@cassandra2603 haha I would love it if my professors would give me an extension, but nope no luck... I just only got these papers this past friday... that is what sucks!
@belladonna20 Thanks I'm glad you have faith in me haha :P14 commentsApril 20th, 2009
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padraicmyprince commented on Digit's picture
1
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds. They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.
Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them.
There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something. Old Selma Thurmer--she was the headmaster's daughter--showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
The reason I was standing way up on Thomsen Hill, instead of down at the game, was because I'd just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't all my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way.
The other reason I wasn't down at the game was because I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I figured I probably wouldn't see him again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note saying he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to Pencey.
I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I wasn't supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself--especially around midterms, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer--but I didn't do it. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.
Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch's teat, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has--I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad goodby, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
I was lucky. All of a sudden I thought of something that helped make me know I was getting the hell out. I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building. They were nice guys, especially Tichener. It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway. It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing. Finally we had to. This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambesi, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one--at least, most of the time I can. As soon as I got it, I turned around and started running down the other side of the hill, toward old Spencer's house. He didn't live on the campus. He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue.
I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing--that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy, though.
Anyway, as soon as I got my breath back I ran across Route 204. It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down. I don't even know what I was running for--I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer's house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all. "C'mon, c'mon," I said right out loud, almost, "somebody open the door." Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened. it. They didn't have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn't have too much dough.
"Holden!" Mrs. Spencer said. "How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?" I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.
Boy, did I get in that house fast. "How are you, Mrs. Spencer?" I said. "How's Mr. Spencer?"
"Let me take your coat, dear," she said. She didn't hear me ask her how Mr. Spencer was. She was sort of deaf.
She hung up my coat in the hall closet, and I sort of brushed my hair back with my hand. I wear a crew cut quite frequently and I never have to comb it much. "How've you been, Mrs. Spencer?" I said again, only louder, so she'd hear me.
"I've been just fine, Holden." She closed the closet door. "How have you been?" The way she asked me, I knew right away old Spencer'd told her I'd been kicked out.
"Fine," I said. "How's Mr. Spencer? He over his grippe yet?"
"Over it! Holden, he's behaving like a perfect--I don't know what. . . He's in his room, dear. Go right in."
2
They each had their own room and all. They were both around seventy years old, or even more than that. They got a bang out of things, though--in a haif-assed way, of course. I know that sounds mean to say, but I don't mean it mean. I just mean that I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, and if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for. I mean he was all stooped over, and he had very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That's awful, in my opinion. But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn't doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer'd bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer'd got a big bang out of buying it. That's what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.
His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in a big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket I just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked. "Who's that?" he yelled. "Caulfield? Come in, boy." He was always yelling, outside class. It got on your nerves sometimes.
The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white and unhairy. "Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot." He'd written me this note asking me to stop by and say good-by before vacation started, on account of I wasn't coming back. "You didn't have to do all that. I'd have come over to say good-by anyway."
"Have a seat there, boy," old Spencer said. He meant the bed.
I sat down on it. "How's your grippe, sir?"
"M'boy, if I felt any better I'd have to send for the doctor," old Spencer said. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a madman. Then he finally straightened himself out and said, "Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said. Boy, his bed was like a rock.
He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would. "So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't know his ass from his elbow.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh. . . well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. "Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?" old Spencer asked me.
"He said he was going to write them Monday."
"Have you yourself communicated with them?"
"No, sir, I haven't communicated with them, because I'll probably see them Wednesday night when I get home."
"And how do you think they'll take the news?"
"Well. . . they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "They really will. This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head--the right side--is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am--I really do--but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
Old Spencer started nodding again. He also started picking his nose. He made out like he was only pinching it, but he was really getting the old thumb right in there. I guess he thought it was all right to do because it was only me that was in the room. I didn't care, except that it's pretty disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose.
Then he said, "I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They're grand people."
"Yes, they are. They're very nice."
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Then all of a sudden old Spencer looked like he had something very good, something sharp as a tack, to say to me. He sat up more in his chair and sort of moved around. It was a false alarm, though. All he did was lift the Atlantic Monthly off his lap and try to chuck it on the bed, next to me. He missed. It was only about two inches away, but he missed anyway. I got up and picked it up and put it down on the bed. All of a sudden then, I wanted to get the hell out of the room. I could feel a terrific lecture coming on. I didn't mind the idea so much, but I didn't feel like being lectured to and smell Vicks Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. I really didn't.
It started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you carry this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four." I moved my ass a little bit on the bed. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on. "I passed English all right," I said, "because I had all that Beowulf and Lord Randal My Son stuff when I was at the Whooton School. I mean I didn't have to do any work in English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while."
He wasn't even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said something.
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn't help it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please."
It was a very dirty trick, but I went over and brought it over to him--I didn't have any alternative or anything. Then I sat down on his cement bed again. Boy, you can't imagine how sorry I was getting that I'd stopped by to say good-by to him.
He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. "We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in
one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all
know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for
various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what
the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they
wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for
innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite
a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about
the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them
although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right
with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything
else except English anyway.
Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it--I really wouldn't. In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.
"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said. I wished to hell he'd stop calling me "boy" all the time.
He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It's boring to do that every two minutes.
"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."
Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
I'm lucky, though. I mean I could shoot the old bull to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. It's funny. You don't have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher. All of a sudden, though, he interrupted me while I was shooting the bull. He was always interrupting you.
"How do you feel about all this, boy? I'd be very interested to know. Very interested."
"You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?" I said. I sort of wished he'd cover up his bumpy chest. It wasn't such a beautiful view.
"If I'm not mistaken, I believe you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." He didn't say it just sarcastic, but sort of nasty, too.
"I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," I told him. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just quit, sort of."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Why? Oh, well it's a long story, sir. I mean it's pretty complicated." I didn't feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn't have understood it anyway. It wasn't up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn't hear him. I was thinking about old Haas. "What, sir?" I said.
"Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?"
"Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure. . . but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I guess it hasn't really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I'm doing right now is thinking about going home Wednesday. I'm a moron."
"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"
"Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess."
"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late."
I didn't like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing. "I guess I will," I said.
"I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides ot the pole, that's all. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do." I got up from the bed then. Boy, I couldn't've sat there another ten minutes to save my life. "The thing is, though, I have to get going now. I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get to take home with me. I really do." He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his face. I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. But I just couldn't hang around there any longer, the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, and the way he kept missing the bed whenever he chucked something at it, and his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place. "Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
"I don't know, boy. I don't know."
I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.
"Wouldn't you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs. Spencer would be--"
"I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir."
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
"I'll drop you a line, sir. Take care of your grippe, now."
"Good-by, boy."
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me,
I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
3
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym and get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing alter him. The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive--that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, be made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God--talk to Him and all--wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs. The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, then all of a sudden this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn't say anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the new dorms.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back--very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, He just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all. I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I'd only read about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains. Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that roomed right next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was probably the only guy in the whole dorm, besides me, that wasn't down at the game. He hardly ever went anywhere. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley." Not even Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack." If he ever gets married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley." He was one of these very, very tall, round-shouldered guys--he was about six four--with lousy teeth. The whole time he roomed next to me, I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful, and he damn near made you sick if you saw him in the dining room with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.
I could feel him standing on the shower ledge, right behind my chair, taking a look to see if Stradlater was around. He hated Stradlater's guts and he never came in the room if Stradlater was around. He hated everybody's guts, damn near.
He came down off the shower ledge and came in the room. "Hi," he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake.
"Hi," I said, but I didn't look up from my book. With a guy like Ackley, if you looked up from your book you were a goner. You were a goner anyway, but not as quick if you didn't look up right away.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did, picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. "How was the fencing?" he said. He just wanted me to quit reading and enjoying myself. He didn't give a damn about the fencing. "We win, or what?" he said.
"Nobody won," I said. Without looking up, though.
"What?" he said. He always made you say everything twice.
"Nobody won," I said. I sneaked a look to see what he was fiddling around with on my chiffonier. He was looking at this picture of this girl I used to go around with in New York, Sally Hayes. He must've picked up that goddam picture and looked at it at least five thousand times since I got it. He always put it back in the wrong place, too, when he was finished. He did it on purpose. You could tell.
"Nobody won," he said. "How come?"
"I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway." I still didn't look up at him.
"On the subway, for Chrissake! Ya lost them, ya mean?"
"We got on the wrong subway. I had to keep getting up to look at a goddam map on the wall."
He came over and stood right in my light. "Hey," I said. "I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddam hint. Not him, though. "Think they'll make ya pay for em?" he said.
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. How 'bout sitting down or something, Ackley kid? You're right in my goddam light." He didn't like it when you called him "Ackley kid." He was always telling me I was a goddam kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him "Ackley kid."
He kept standing there. He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him to. He'd do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you asked him to. "What the hellya reading?" he said.
"Goddam book."
He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name of it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific." I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood. He didn't get It, though. He started walking around the room again, picking up all my personal stuff, and Stradlater's. Finally, I put my book down on the floor. You couldn't read anything with a guy like Ackley around. It was impossible.
I slid way the hell down in my chair and watched old Ackley making himself at home. I was feeling sort of tired from the trip to New York and all, and I started yawning. Then I started horsing around a little bit. Sometimes I horse around quite a lot, just to keep from getting bored. What I did was, I pulled the old peak of my hunting hat around to the front, then pulled it way down over my eyes. That way, I couldn't see a goddam thing. "I think I'm going blind," I said in this very hoarse voice. "Mother darling, everything's getting so dark in here."
"You're nuts. I swear to God," Ackley said.
"Mother darling, give me your hand, Why won't you give me your hand?"
"For Chrissake, grow up."
I started groping around in front of me, like a blind guy, but without getting up or anything. I kept saying, "Mother darling, why won't you give me your hand?" I was only horsing around, naturally. That stuff gives me a bang sometimes. Besides, I know it annoyed hell out of old Ackley. He always brought out the old sadist in me. I was pretty sadistic with him quite often. Finally, I quit, though. I pulled the peak around to the back again, and relaxed.
"Who belongsa this?" Ackley said. He was holding my roommate's knee supporter up to show me. That guy Ackley'd pick up anything. He'd even pick up your jock strap or something. I told him it was Stradlater's. So he chucked it on Stradlater's bed. He got it off Stradlater's chiffonier, so he chucked it on the bed.
He came over and sat down on the arm of Stradlater's chair. He never sat down in a chair. Just always on the arm. "Where the hellja get that hat?" he said.
"New York."
"How much?"
"A buck."
"You got robbed." He started cleaning his goddam fingernails with the end of a match. He was always cleaning his fingernails. It was funny, in a way. His teeth were always mossy-looking, and his ears were always dirty as hell, but he was always cleaning his fingernails. I guess he thought that made him a very neat guy. He took another look at my hat while he was cleaning them. "Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake," he said. "That's a deer shooting hat."
"Like hell it is." I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. "This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."
"Your folks know you got kicked out yet?"
"Nope."
"Where the hell's Stradlater at, anyway?"
"Down at the game. He's got a date." I yawned. I was yawning all over the place. For one thing, the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. At Pencey, you either froze to death or died of the heat.
"The great Stradlater," Ackley said. "--Hey. Lend me your scissors a second, willya? Ya got 'em handy?"
"No. I packed them already. They're way in the top of the closet."
"Get 'em a second, willya?" Ackley said, "I got this hangnail I want to cut off."
He didn't care if you'd packed something or not and had it way in the top of the closet. I got them for him though. I nearly got killed doing it, too. The second I opened the closet door, Stradlater's tennis racket--in its wooden press and all--fell right on my head. It made a big clunk, and it hurt like hell. It damn near killed old Ackley, though. He started laughing in this very high falsetto voice. He kept laughing the whole time I was taking down my suitcase and getting the scissors out for him. Something like that--a guy getting hit on the head with a rock or something--tickled the pants off Ackley. "You have a damn good sense of humor, Ackley kid," I told him. "You know that?" I handed him the scissors. "Lemme be your manager. I'll get you on the goddam radio." I sat down in my chair again, and he started cutting his big horny-looking nails. "How 'bout using the table or something?" I said. "Cut 'em over the table, willya? I don't feel like walking on your crumby nails in my bare feet tonight." He kept right on cutting them over the floor, though. What lousy manners. I mean it.
"Who's Stradlater's date?" he said. He was always keeping tabs on who Stradlater was dating, even though he hated Stradlater's guts.
"I don't know. Why?"
"No reason. Boy, I can't stand that sonuvabitch. He's one sonuvabitch I really can't stand."
"He's crazy about you. He told me he thinks you're a goddam prince," I said. I call people a "prince" quite often when I'm horsing around. It keeps me from getting bored or something.
"He's got this superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I just can't stand the sonuvabitch. You'd think he--"
"Do you mind cutting your nails over the table, hey?" I said. "I've asked you about fifty--"
"He's got this goddam superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I don't even think the sonuvabitch is intelligent. He thinks he is. He thinks he's about the most--"
"Ackley! For Chrissake. Willya please cut your crumby nails over the table? I've asked you fifty times."
He started cutting his nails over the table, for a change. The only way he ever did anything was if you yelled at him.
I watched him for a while. Then I said, "The reason you're sore at Stradlater is because he said that stuff about brushing your teeth once in a while. He didn't mean to insult you, for cryin' out loud. He didn't say it right or anything, but he didn't mean anything insulting. All he meant was you'd look better and feel better if you sort of brushed your teeth once in a while."
"I brush my teeth. Don't gimme that."
"No, you don't. I've seen you, and you don't," I said. I didn't say it nasty, though. I felt sort of sorry for him, in a way. I mean it isn't too nice, naturally, if somebody tells you you don't brush your teeth. "Stradlater's all right He's not too bad," I said. "You don't know him, thats the trouble."
"I still say he's a sonuvabitch. He's a conceited sonuvabitch."
"He's conceited, but he's very generous in some things. He really is," I said. "Look. Suppose, for instance, Stradlater was wearing a tie or something that you liked. Say he had a tie on that you liked a helluva lot--I'm just giving you an example, now. You know what he'd do? He'd probably take it off and give it ta you. He really would. Or--you know what he'd do? He'd leave it on your bed or something. But he'd give you the goddam tie. Most guys would probably just--"
"Hell," Ackley said. "If I had his dough, I would, too."
"No, you wouldn't." I shook my head. "No, you wouldn't, Ackley kid. If you had his dough, you'd be one of the biggest--"
"Stop calling me 'Ackley kid,' God damn it. I'm old enough to be your lousy father."
"No, you're not." Boy, he could really be aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen. "In the first place, I wouldn't let you in my goddam family," I said.
"Well, just cut out calling me--"
All of a sudden the door opened, and old Stradlater barged in, in a big hurry. He was always in a big hurry. Everything was a very big deal. He came over to me and gave me these two playful as hell slaps on both cheeks--which is something that can be very annoying. 'Listen," he said. "You going out anywheres special tonight?"
"I don't know. I might. What the hell's it doing out--snowing?" He had snow all over his coat.
"Yeah. Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how 'bout lending me your hound's-tooth jacket?"
"Who won the game?" I said.
"It's only the half. We're leaving," Stradlater said. "No kidding, you gonna use your hound's-tooth tonight or not? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
"No, but I don't want you stretching it with your goddam shoulders and all," I said. We were practically the same heighth, but he weighed about twice as much as I did. He had these very broad shoulders.
"I won't stretch it." He went over to the closet in a big hurry. "How'sa boy, Ackley?" he said to Ackley. He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phony kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.
Ackley just sort of grunted when he said "How'sa boy?" He wouldn't answer him, but he didn't have guts enough not to at least grunt. Then he said to me, "I think I'll get going. See ya later."
"Okay," I said. He never exactly broke your heart when he went back to his own room.
Old Stradlater started taking off his coat and tie and all. "I think maybe I'll take a fast shave," he said. He had a pretty heavy beard. He really did.
"Where's your date?" I asked him.
"She's waiting in the Annex." He went out of the room with his toilet kit and towel under his arm. No shirt on or anything. He always walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build. He did, too. I have to admit it.
4
I didn't have anything special to do, so I went down to the can and chewed the rag with him while he was shaving. We were the only ones in the can, because everybody was still down at the game. It was hot as hell and the windows were all steamy. There were about ten washbowls, all right against the wall. Stradlater had the middle one. I sat down on the one right next to him and started turning the cold water on and off--this nervous habit I have. Stradlater kept whistling 'Song of India" while he shaved. He had one of those very piercing whistles that are practically never in tune, and he always picked out some song that's hard to whistle even if you're a good whistler, like "Song of India" or "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue." He could really mess a song up.
You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, you should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did. The reason he fixed himself up to look good was because he was madly in love with himself. He thought he was the handsomest guy in the Western Hemisphere. He was pretty handsome, too--I'll admit it. But he was mostly the kind of a handsome guy that if your parents saw his picture in your Year Book, they'd right away say, "Who's this boy?" I mean he was mostly a Year Book kind of handsome guy. I knew a lot of guys at Pencey I thought were a lot handsomer than Stradlater, but they wouldn't look handsome if you saw their pictures in the Year Book. They'd look like they had big noses or their ears stuck out. I've had that experience frequently.
Anyway, I was sitting on the washbowl next to where Stradlater was shaving, sort of turning the water on and off. I still had my red hunting hat on, with the peak around to the back and all. I really got a bang out of that hat.
"Hey," Stradlater said. "Wanna do me a big favor?"
"What?" I said. Not too enthusiastic. He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themseif, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.
"You goin' out tonight?" he said.
"I might. I might not. I don't know. Why?"
"I got about a hundred pages to read for history for Monday," he said. "How 'bout writing a composition for me, for English? I'll be up the creek if I don't get the goddam thing in by Monday, the reason I ask. How 'bout it?"
It was very ironical. It really was.
"I'm the one that's flunking out of the goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition," I said.
"Yeah, I know. The thing is, though, I'll be up the creek if I don't get it in. Be a buddy. Be a buddyroo. Okay?"
I didn't answer him right away. Suspense is good for some bastards like Stradlater.
"What on?" I said.
"Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something you once lived in or something-- you know. Just as long as it's descriptive as hell." He gave out a big yawn while he said that. Which is something that gives me a royal pain in the ass. I mean if somebody yawns right while they're asking you to do them a goddam favor. "Just don't do it too good, is all," he said. "That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you're a hot-shot in English, and he knows you're my roommate. So I mean don't stick all the commas and stuff in the right place."
That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. He was a little bit like Ackley, that way. I once sat next to Ackley at this basketball game. We had a terrific guy on the team, Howie Coyle, that could sink them from the middle of the floor, without even touching the backboard or anything. Ackley kept saying, the whole goddam game, that Coyle had a perfect build for basketball. God, how I hate that stuff.
I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can't really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need's an audience. I'm an exhibitionist. "I'm the goddarn Governor's son," I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. "He doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it's in my goddam blood, tap-dancing." Old Stradlater laughed. He didn't have too bad a sense of humor. "It's the opening night of the Ziegfeld Follies." I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. "The leading man can't go on. He's drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that's who. The little ole goddam Governor's son."
"Where'dja get that hat?" Stradlater said. He meant my hunting hat. He'd never seen it before.
I was out of breath anyway, so I quit horsing around. I took off my hat and looked at it for about the ninetieth time. "I got it in New York this morning. For a buck. Ya like it?"
Stradlater nodded. "Sharp," he said. He was only flattering me, though, because right away he said, "Listen. Are ya gonna write that composition for me? I have to know."
"If I get the time, I will. If I don't, I won't," I said. I went over and sat down at the washbowl next to him again. "Who's your date?" I asked him. "Fitzgerald?"
"Hell, no! I told ya. I'm through with that pig."
"Yeah? Give her to me, boy. No kidding. She's my type."
"Take her . . . She's too old for you."
All of a sudden--for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around--I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That's a wrestling hold, in case you don't know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. So I did it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.
"Cut it out, Holden, for Chrissake!" Stradlater said. He didn't feel like horsing around. He was shaving and all. "Wuddaya wanna make me do--cut my goddam head off?"
I didn't let go, though. I had a pretty good half nelson on him. "Liberate yourself from my viselike grip." I said.
"Je-sus Christ." He put down his razor, and all of a sudden jerked his arms up and sort of broke my hold on him. He was a very strong guy. I'm a very weak guy. "Now, cut out the crap," he said. He started shaving himself all over again. He always shaved himself twice, to look gorgeous. With his crumby old razor.
"Who is your date if it isn't Fitzgerald?" I asked him. I sat down on the washbowl next to him again. "That Phyllis Smith babe?"
"No. It was supposed to he, but the arrangements got all screwed up. I got Bud Thaw's girl's roommate now . . . Hey. I almost forgot. She knows you."
"Who does?" I said.
"My date."
"Yeah?" I said. "What's her name?" I was pretty interested.
"I'm thinking . . . Uh. Jean Gallagher."
Boy, I nearly dropped dead when he said that.
"Jane Gallagher," I said. I even got up from the washbowl when he said that. I damn near dropped dead. "You're damn right I know her. She practically lived right next door to me, the summer before last. She had this big damn Doberman pinscher. That's how I met her. Her dog used to keep coming over in our--"
"You're right in my light, Holden, for Chrissake," Stradlater said. "Ya have to stand right there?"
Boy, was I excited, though. I really was.
"Where is she?" I asked him. "I oughta go down and say hello to her or something. Where is she? In the Annex?"
"Yeah."
"How'd she happen to mention me? Does she go to B.M. now? She said she might go there. She said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. How'd she happen to mention me?" I was pretty excited. I really was.
"I don't know, for Chrissake. Lift up, willya? You're on my towel," Stradlater said. I was sitting on his stupid towel.
"Jane Gallagher," I said. I couldn't get over it. "Jesus H. Christ."
Old Stradlater was putting Vitalis on his hair. My Vitalis.
"She's a dancer," I said. "Ballet and all. She used to practice about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. She was worried that it might make her legs lousy--all thick and all. I used to play checkers with her all the time."
"You used to play what with her all the time?"
"Checkers."
"Checkers, for Chrissake!"
"Yeah. She wouldn't move any of her kings. What she'd do, when she'd get a king, she wouldn't move it. She'd just leave it in the back row. She'd get them all lined up in the back row. Then she'd never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row."
Stradlater didn't say anything. That kind of stuff doesn't interest most people.
"Her mother belonged to the same club we did," I said. "I used to caddy once in a while, just to make some dough. I caddy'd for her mother a couple of times. She went around in about a hundred and seventy, for nine holes."
Stradlater wasn't hardly listening. He was combing his gorgeous locks.
"I oughta go down and at least say hello to her," I said.
"Why don'tcha?"
"I will, in a minute."
He started parting his hair all over again. It took him about an hour to comb his hair.
"Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound," I said. "Skinny guy with hairy legs. I remember him. He wore shorts all the time. Jane said he was supposed to be a playwright or some goddam thing, but all I ever saw him do was booze all the time and listen to every single goddam mystery program on the radio. And run around the goddam house, naked. With Jane around, and all."
"Yeah?" Stradlater said. That really interested him. About the booze hound running around the house naked, with Jane around. Stradlater was a very sexy bastard.
"She had a lousy childhood. I'm not kidding."
That didn't interest Stradlater, though. Only very sexy stuff interested him.
"Jane Gallagher. Jesus . . . I couldn't get her off my mind. I really couldn't. "I oughta go down and say hello to her, at least."
"Why the hell don'tcha, instead of keep saying it?" Stradlater said.
I walked over to the window, but you couldn't see out of it, it was so steamy from all the heat in the can.. "I'm not in the mood right now," I said. I wasn't, either. You have to be in the mood for those things. "I thought she went to Shipley. I could've sworn she went to Shipley." I walked around the can for a little while. I didn't have anything else to do. "Did she enjoy the game?" I said.
"Yeah, I guess so. I don't know."
"Did she tell you we used to play checkers all the time, or anything?"
"I don't know. For Chrissake, I only just met her," Stradlater said. He was finished combing his goddam gorgeous hair. He was putting away all his crumby toilet articles.
"Listen. Give her my regards, willya?"
"Okay," Stradlater said, but I knew he probably wouldn't. You take a guy like Stradlater, they never give your regards to people.
He went back to the room, but I stuck around in the can for a while, thinking about old Jane. Then I went back to the room, too.
Stradlater was putting on his tie, in front of the mirror, when I got there. He spent around half his goddam life in front of the mirror. I sat down in my chair and sort of watched him for a while.
"Hey," I said. "Don't tell her I got kicked out, willya?"
"Okay."
That was one good thing about Stradlater. You didn't have to explain every goddam little thing with him, the way you had to do with Ackley. Mostly, I guess, because he wasn't too interested. That's really why. Ackley, it was different. Ackley was a very nosy bastard.
He put on my hound's-tooth jacket.
"Jesus, now, try not to stretch it all over the place" I said. I'd only worn it about twice.
"I won't. Where the hell's my cigarettes?"
"On the desk." He never knew where he left anything. "Under your muffler." He put them in his coat pocket--my coat pocket.
I pulled the peak of my hunting hat around to the front all of a sudden, for a change. I was getting sort of nervous, all of a sudden. I'm quite a nervous guy. "Listen, where ya going on your date with her?" I asked him. "Ya know yet?"
"I don't know. New York, if we have time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."
I didn't like the way he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably just didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning."
"Goddam right," Stradlater said. You couldn't rile him too easily. He was too conceited. "No kidding, now. Do that composition for me," he said. He had his coat on, and he was all ready to go. "Don't knock yourself out or anything, but just make it descriptive as hell. Okay?"
I didn't answer him. I didn't feel like it. All I said was, "Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."
"Okay," Stradlater said, but I knew he wouldn't. "Take it easy, now." He banged the hell out of the room.
I sat there for about a half hour after he left. I mean I just sat in my chair, not doing anything. I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stradlater having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was.
All of a sudden, Ackley barged back in again, through the damn shower curtains, as usual. For once in my stupid life, I was really glad to see him. He took my mind off the other stuff.
He stuck around till around dinnertime, talking about all the guys at Pencey that he hated their guts, and squeezing this big pimple on his chin. He didn't even use his handkerchief. I don't even think the bastard had a handkerchief, if you want to know the truth. I never saw him use one, anyway.
5
We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I'll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys' parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody's mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he'd say, "Steak." What a racket. You should've seen the steaks. They were these little hard, dry jobs that you could hardly even cut. You always got these very lumpy mashed potatoes on steak night, and for dessert you got Brown Betty, which nobody ate, except maybe the little kids in the lower school that didn't know any better--and guys like Ackley that ate everything.
It was nice, though, when we got out of the dining room. There were about three inches of snow on the ground, and it was still coming down like a madman. It looked pretty as hell, and we all started throwing snowballs and horsing around all over the place. It was very childish, but everybody was really enjoying themselves.
I didn't have a date or anything, so I and this friend of mine, Mal Brossard, that was on the wrestling team, decided we'd take a bus into Agerstown and have a hamburger and maybe see a lousy movie. Neither of us felt like sitting around on our ass all night. I asked Mal if he minded if Ackley came along with us. The reason I asked was because Ackley never did anything on Saturday night, except stay in his room and squeeze his pimples or something. Mal said he didn't mind but that he wasn't too crazy about the idea. He didn't like Ackley much. Anyway, we both went to our rooms to get ready and all, and while I was putting on my galoshes and crap, I yelled over and asked old Ackley if he wanted to go to the movies. He could hear me all right through the shower curtains, but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of a guy that hates to answer you right away. Finally he came over, through the goddam curtains, and stood on the shower ledge and asked who was going besides me. He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in a goddam boat, he'd want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he'd even get in. I told him Mal Brossard was going. He said, "That bastard . . . All right. Wait a second." You'd think he was doing you a big favor.
It took him about five hours to get ready. While he was doing it, I went over to my window and opened it and packed a snowball with my bare hands. The snow was very good for packing. I didn't throw it at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn't throw it at anything. All I did was close the window and walk around the room with the snowball, packing it harder. A little while later, I still had it with me when I and Brossnad and Ackley got on the bus. The bus driver opened the doors and made me throw it out. I told him I wasn't going to chuck it at anybody, but he wouldn't believe me. People never believe you.
Brossard and Ackley both had seen the picture that was playing, so all we did, we just had a couple of hamburgers and played the pinball machine for a little while, then took the bus back to Pencey. I didn't care about not seeing the movie, anyway. It was supposed to be a comedy, with Cary Grant in it, and all that crap. Besides, I'd been to the movies with Brossard and Ackley before. They both laughed like hyenas at stuff that wasn't even funny. I didn't even enjoy sitting next to them in the movies.
It was only about a quarter to nine when we got back to the dorm. Old Brossard was a bridge fiend, and he started looking around the dorm for a game. Old Ackley parked himself in my room, just for a change. Only, instead of sitting on the arm of Stradlater's chair, he laid down on my bed, with his face right on my pillow and all. He started talking in this very monotonous voice, and picking at all his pimples. I dropped about a thousand hints, but I couldn't get rid of him. All he did was keep talking in this very monotonous voice about some babe he was supposed to have had sexual intercourse with the summer before. He'd already told me about it about a hundred times. Every time he told it, it was different. One minute he'd be giving it to her in his cousin's Buick, the next minute he'd be giving it to her under some boardwalk. It was all a lot of crap, naturally. He was a virgin if ever I saw one. I doubt if he ever even gave anybody a feel. Anyway, finally I had to come right out and tell him that I had to write a composition for Stradlater, and that he had to clear the hell out, so I could concentrate. He finally did, but he took his time about it, as usual. After he left, I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and my old hunting hat, and started writing the composition.
The thing was, I couldn't think of a room or a house or anything to describe the way Stradlater said he had to have. I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. I'll tell you what kind of red hair he had. I started playing golf when I was only ten years old. I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a sudden, I'd see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence--there was this fence that went all around the course--and he was sitting there, about a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That's the kind of red hair he had. God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair. I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist any more--not a tight one, I mean--but outside of that I don't care much. I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.
Anyway, that's what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. Old Allie's baseball mitt. I happened to have it with me, in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied down the poems that were written on it. All I had to do was change Allie's name so that nobody would know it was my brother and not Stradlater's. I wasn't too crazy about doing it, but I couldn't think of anything else descriptive. Besides, I sort of liked writing about it. It took me about an hour, because I had to use Stradlater's lousy typewriter, and it kept jamming on me. The reason I didn't use my own was because I'd lent it to a guy down the hall.
It was around ten-thirty, I guess, when I finished it. I wasn't tired, though, so I looked out the window for a while. It wasn't snowing out any more, but every once in a while you could hear a car somewhere not being able to get started. You could also hear old Ackley snoring. Right through the goddam shower curtains you could hear him. He had sinus trouble and he couldn't breathe too hot when he was asleep. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch.
6
Some things are hard to remember. I'm thinking now of when Stradlater got back from his date with Jane. I mean I can't remember exactly what I was doing when I heard his goddam stupid footsteps coming down the corridor. I probably was still looking out the window, but I swear I can't remember. I was so damn worried, that's why. When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go. If you knew Stradlater, you'd have been worried, too. I'd double-dated with that bastard a couple of times, and I know what I'm talking about. He was unscrupulous. He really was.
Anyway, the corridor was all linoleum and all, and you could hear his goddam footsteps coming right towards the room. I don't even remember where I was sitting when he came in--at the window, or in my chair or his. I swear I can't remember.
He came in griping about how cold it was out. Then he said, "Where the hell is everybody? It's like a goddam morgue around here." I didn't even bother to answer him. If he was so goddam stupid not to realize it was Saturday night and everybody was out or asleep or home for the week end, I wasn't going to break my neck telling him. He started getting undressed. He didn't say one goddam word about Jane. Not one. Neither did I. I just watched him. All he did was thank me for letting him wear my hound's-tooth. He hung it up on a hanger and put it in the closet.
Then when he was taking off his tie, he asked me if I'd written his goddam composition for him. I told him it was over on his goddam bed. He walked over and read it while he was unbuttoning his shirt. He stood there, reading it, and sort of stroking his bare chest and stomach, with this very stupid expression on his face. He was always stroking his stomach or his chest. He was mad about himself.
All of a sudden, he said, "For Chrissake, Holden. This is about a goddam baseball glove."
"So what?" I said. Cold as hell.
"Wuddaya mean so what? I told ya it had to be about a goddam room or a house or something."
"You said it had to be descriptive. What the hell's the difference if it's about a baseball glove?"
"God damn it." He was sore as hell. He was really furious. "You always do everything backasswards." He looked at me. "No wonder you're flunking the hell out of here," he said. "You don't do one damn thing the way you're supposed to. I mean it. Not one damn thing."
"All right, give it back to me, then," I said. I went over and pulled it right out of his goddam hand. Then I tore it up.
"What the hellja do that for?" he said.
I didn't even answer him. I just threw the pieces in the wastebasket. Then I lay down on my bed, and we both didn't say anything for a long time. He got all undressed, down to his shorts, and I lay on my bed and lit a cigarette. You weren't allowed to smoke in the dorm, but you could do it late at night when everybody was asleep or out and nobody could smell the smoke. Besides, I did it to annoy Stradlater. It drove him crazy when you broke any rules. He never smoked in the dorm. It was only me.
He still didn't say one single solitary word about Jane. So finally I said, "You're back pretty goddam late if she only signed out for nine-thirty. Did you make her be late signing in?"
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, cutting his goddam toenails, when I asked him that. "Coupla minutes," he said. "Who the hell signs out for nine-thirty on a Saturday night?" God, how I hated him.
"Did you go to New York?" I said.
"Ya crazy? How the hell could we go to New York if she only signed out for nine-thirty?"
"That's tough."
He looked up at me. "Listen," he said, "if you're gonna smoke in the room, how 'bout going down to the can and do it? You may be getting the hell out of here, but I have to stick around long enough to graduate."
I ignored him. I really did. I went right on smoking like a madman. All I did was sort of turn over on my side and watched him cut his damn toenails. What a school. You were always watching somebody cut their damn toenails or squeeze their pimples or something.
"Did you give her my regards?" I asked him.
"Yeah."
The hell he did, the bastard.
"What'd she say?" I said. "Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row?"
"No, I didn't ask her. What the hell ya think we did all night--play checkers, for Chrissake?"
I didn't even answer him. God, how I hated him.
"If you didn't go to New York, where'd ya go with her?" I asked him, after a little while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place. Boy, was I getting nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny.
He was finished cutting his damn toenails. So he got up from the bed, in just his damn shorts and all, and started getting very damn playful. He came over to my bed and started leaning over me and taking these playful as hell socks at my shoulder. "Cut it out," I said. "Where'd you go with her if you didn't go to New York?"
"Nowhere. We just sat in the goddam car." He gave me another one of those playtul stupid little socks on the shoulder.
"Cut it out," I said. "Whose car?"
"Ed Banky's."
Ed Banky was the basketball coach at Pencey. Old Stradlater was one of his pets, because he was the center on the team, and Ed Banky always let him borrow his car when he wanted it. It wasn't allowed for students to borrow faculty guys' cars, but all the athletic bastards stuck together. In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.
Stradlater kept taking these shadow punches down at my shoulder. He had his toothbrush in his hand, and he put it in his mouth. "What'd you do?" I said. "Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddam car?" My voice was shaking something awful.
"What a thing to say. Want me to wash your mouth out with soap?"
"Did you?"
"That's a professional secret, buddy."
This next part I don't remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed. I didn't connect. All I did was sort of get him on the side of the head or something. It probably hurt him a little bit, but not as much as I wanted. It probably would've hurt him a lot, but I did it with my right hand, and I can't make a good fist with that hand. On account of that injury I told you about.
Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was on the goddam floor and he was sitting on my chest, with his face all red. That is, he had his goddam knees on my chest, and he weighed about a ton. He had hold of my wrists, too, so I couldn't take another sock at him. I'd've killed him.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he kept saying, and his stupid race kept getting redder and redder.
"Get your lousy knees off my chest," I told him. I was almost bawling. I really was. "Go on, get off a me, ya crumby bastard."
He wouldn't do it, though. He kept holding onto my wrists and I kept calling him a sonuvabitch and all, for around ten hours. I can hardly even remember what all I said to him. I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
"Shut up, now, Holden," he said with his big stupid red face. "just shut up, now."
"You don't even know if her first name is Jane or Jean, ya goddam moron!"
"Now, shut up, Holden, God damn it--I'm warning ya," he said--I really had him going. "If you don't shut up, I'm gonna slam ya one."
"Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest."
"If I letcha up, will you keep your mouth shut?"
I didn't even answer him.
He said it over again. "Holden. If I letcha up, willya keep your mouth shut?"
"Yes."
He got up off me, and I got up, too. My chest hurt like hell from his dirty knees. "You're a dirty stupid sonuvabitch of a moron," I told him.
That got him really mad. He shook his big stupid finger in my face. "Holden, God damn it, I'm warning you, now. For the last time. If you don't keep your yap shut, I'm gonna--"
"Why should I?" I said--I was practically yelling. "That's just the trouble with all you morons. You never want to discuss anything. That's the way you can always tell a moron. They never want to discuss anything intellig--"
Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddam floor again. I don't remember if he knocked me out or not, but I don't think so. It's pretty hard to knock a guy out, except in the goddam movies. But my nose was bleeding all over the place. When I looked up old Stradlater was standing practically right on top of me. He had his goddam toilet kit under his arm. "Why the hell don'tcha shut up when I tellya to?" he said. He sounded pretty nervous. He probably was scared he'd fractured my skull or something when I hit the floor. It's too bad I didn't. "You asked for it, God damn it," he said. Boy, did he look worried.
I didn't even bother to get up. I just lay there in the floor for a while, and kept calling him a moron sonuvabitch. I was so mad, I was practically bawling.
"Listen. Go wash your face," Stradlater said. "Ya hear me?"
I told him to go wash his own moron face--which was a pretty childish thing to say, but I was mad as hell. I told him to stop off on the way to the can and give Mrs. Schmidt the time. Mrs. Schmidt was the janitor's wife. She was around sixty-five.
I kept sitting there on the floor till I heard old Stradlater close the door and go down the corridor to the can. Then I got up. I couldn't find my goddam hunting hat anywhere. Finally I found it. It was under the bed. I put it on, and turned the old peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I went over and took a look at my stupid face in the mirror. You never saw such gore in your life. I had blood all over my mouth and chin and even on my pajamas and bath robe. It partly scared me and it partly fascinated me. All that blood and all sort of made me look tough. I'd only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them. I'm not too tough. I'm a pacifist, if you want to know the truth.
I had a feeling old Ackley'd probably heard all the racket and was awake. So I went through the shower curtains into his room, just to see what the hell he was doing. I hardly ever went over to his room. It always had a funny stink in it, because he was so crumby in his personal habits.
7
A tiny bit of light came through the shower curtains and all from our room, and I could see him lying in bed. I knew damn well he was wide awake. "Ackley?" I said. "Y'awake?"
"Yeah."
It was pretty dark, and I stepped on somebody's shoe on the floor and danm near fell on my head. Ackley sort of sat up in bed and leaned on his arm. He had a lot of white stuff on his face, for his pimples. He looked sort of spooky in the dark. "What the hellya doing, anyway?" I said.
"Wuddaya mean what the hell am I doing? I was tryna sleep before you guys started making all that noise. What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
"Where's the light?" I couldn't find the light. I was sliding my hand all over the wall.
"Wuddaya want the light for? . . . Right next to your hand."
I finally found the switch and turned It on. Old Ackley put his hand up so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes.
"Jesus!" he said. "What the hell happened to you?" He meant all the blood and all.
"I had a little goddam tiff with Stradlater," I said. Then I sat down on the floor. They never had any chairs in their room. I don't know what the hell they did with their chairs. "Listen," I said, "do you feel like playing a little Canasta?" He was a Canasta fiend.
"You're still bleeding, for Chrissake. You better put something on it."
"It'll stop. Listen. Ya wanna play a little Canasta or don'tcha?"
"Canasta, for Chrissake. Do you know what time it is, by any chance?"
"It isn't late. It's only around eleven, eleven-thirty."
"Only around!" Ackley said. "Listen. I gotta get up and go to Mass in the morning, for Chrissake. You guys start hollering and fighting in the middle of the goddam--What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
"It's a long story. I don't wanna bore ya, Ackley. I'm thinking of your welfare," I told him. I never discussed my personal life with him. In the first place, he was even more stupid than Stradlater. Stradlater was a goddam genius next to Ackley. "Hey," I said, "is it okay if I sleep in Ely's bed tonight? He won't be back till tomorrow night, will he?" I knew damn well he wouldn't. Ely went home damn near every week end.
"I don't know when the hell he's coming back," Ackley said.
Boy, did that annoy me. "What the hell do you mean you don't know when he's coming back? He never comes back till Sunday night, does he?"
"No, but for Chrissake, I can't just tell somebody they can sleep in his goddam bed if they want to."
That killed me. I reached up from where I was sitting on the floor and patted him on the goddam shoulder. "You're a prince, Ackley kid," I said. "You know that?"
"No, I mean it--I can't just tell somebody they can sleep in--"
"You're a real prince. You're a gentleman and a scholar, kid," I said. He really was, too. "Do you happen to have any cigarettes, by any chance?--Say 'no' or I'll drop dead."
"No, I don't, as a matter of fact. Listen, what the hell was the fight about?"
I didn't answer him. All I did was, I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.
"What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?" Ackley said, for about the fiftieth time. He certainly was a bore about that.
"About you," I said.
"About me, for Chrissake?"
"Yeah. I was defending your goddam honor. Stradlater said you had a lousy personality. I couldn't let him get away with that stuff."
That got him excited. "He did? No kidding? He did?"
I told him I was only kidding, and then I went over and laid down on Ely's bed. Boy, did I feel rotten. I felt so damn lonesome.
"This room stinks," I said. "I can smell your socks from way over here. Don'tcha ever send them to the laundry?"
"If you don't like it, you know what you can do," Ackley said. What a witty guy. "How 'bout turning off the goddam light?"
I didn't turn it off right away, though. I just kept laying there on Ely's bed, thinking about Jane and all. It just drove me stark staring mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky's car. Every time I thought about it, I felt like jumping out the window. The thing is, you didn't know Stradlater. I knew him. Most guys at Pencey just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time--like Ackley, for instance--but old Stradlater really did it. I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That's the truth.
"Tell me the story of your fascinating life, Ackley kid," I said.
"How 'bout turning off the goddam light? I gotta get up for Mass in the morning."
I got up and turned it off, if it made him happy. Then I laid down on Ely's bed again.
"What're ya gonna do--sleep in Ely's bed?" Ackley said. He was the perfect host, boy.
"I may. I may not. Don't worry about it."
"I'm not worried about it. Only, I'd hate like hell if Ely came in all of a sudden and found some guy--"
"Relax. I'm not gonna sleep here. I wouldn't abuse your goddam hospitality."
A couple of minutes later, he was snoring like mad. I kept laying there in the dark anyway, though, trying not to think about old Jane and Stradlater in that goddam Ed Banky's car. But it was almost impossible. The trouble was, I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. That made it even worse. We once double-dated, in Ed Banky's car, and Stradlater was in the back, with his date, and I was in the front with mine. What a technique that guy had. What he'd do was, he'd start snowing his date in this very quiet, sincere voice--like as if he wasn't only a very handsome guy but a nice, sincere guy, too. I damn near puked, listening to him. His date kept saying, "No--please. Please, don't. Please." But old Stradlater kept snowing her in this Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this terrific silence in the back of the car. It was really embarrassing. I don't think he gave that girl the time that night--but damn near. Damn near.
While I was laying there trying not to think, I heard old Stradlater come back from the can and go in our room. You could hear him putting away his crumby toilet articles and all, and opening the window. He was a fresh-air fiend. Then, a little while later, he turned off the light. He didn't even look around to see where I was at.
It was even depressing out in the street. You couldn't even hear any cars any more. I got feeling so lonesome and rotten, I even felt like waking Ackley up.
"Hey, Ackley," I said, in sort of a whisper, so Stradlater couldn't hear me through the shower curtain.
Ackley didn't hear me, though.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He still didn't hear me. He slept like a rock.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He heard that, all right.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said. "I was asleep, for Chrissake."
"Listen. What's the routine on joining a monastery?" I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. "Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"
"Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me just to ask me a dumb ques--"
"Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not gonna join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards."
When I said that, old Ackley sat way the hell up in bed. "Listen," he said, "I don't care what you say about me or anything, but if you start making cracks about my goddam religion, for Chrissake--"
"Relax," I said. "Nobody's making any cracks about your goddam religion." I got up off Ely's bed, and started towards the door. I didn't want to hang around in that stupid atmosphere any more. I stopped on the way, though, and picked up Ackley's hand, and gave him a big, phony handshake. He pulled it away from me. "What's the idea?" he said.
"No idea. I just want to thank you for being such a goddam prince, that's all," I said. I said it in this very sincere voice. "You're aces, Ackley kid," I said. "You know that?"
"Wise guy. Someday somebody's gonna bash your--"
I didn't even bother to listen to him. I shut the damn door and went out in the corridor.
Everybody was asleep or out or home for the week end, and it was very, very quiet and depressing in the corridor. There was this empty box of Kolynos toothpaste outside Leahy and Hoffman's door, and while I walked down towards the stairs, I kept giving it a boot with this sheep-lined slipper I had on. What I thought I'd do, I thought I might go down and see what old Mal Brossard was doing. But all of a sudden, I changed my mind. All of a sudden, I decided what I'd really do, I'd get the hell out of Pencey--right that same night and all. I mean not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn't want to hang around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome. So what I decided to do, I decided I'd take a room in a hotel in New York--some very inexpensive hotel and all--and just take it easy till Wednesday. Then, on Wednesday, I'd go home all rested up and feeling swell. I figured my parents probably wouldn't get old Thurmer's letter saying I'd been given the ax till maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. I didn't want to go home or anything till they got it and thoroughly digested it and all. I didn't want to be around when they first got it. My mother gets very hysterical. She's not too bad after she gets something thoroughly digested, though. Besides, I sort of needed a little vacation. My nerves were shot. They really were.
Anyway, that's what I decided I'd do. So I went back to the room and turned on the light, to start packing and all. I already had quite a few things packed. Old Stradlater didn't even wake up. I lit a cigarette and got all dressed and then I packed these two Gladstones I have. It only took me about two minutes. I'm a very rapid packer.
One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions--and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates--I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey--but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
After I got all packed, I sort of counted my dough. I don't remember exactly how much I had, but I was pretty loaded. My grandmother'd just sent me a wad about a week before. I have this grandmother that's quite lavish with her dough. She doesn't have all her marbles any more--she's old as hell--and she keeps sending me money for my birthday about four times a year. Anyway, even though I was pretty loaded, I figured I could always use a few extra bucks. You never know. So what I did was, I went down the hail and woke up Frederick Woodruff, this guy I'd lent my typewriter to. I asked him how much he'd give me for it. He was a pretty wealthy guy. He said he didn't know. He said he didn't much want to buy it. Finally he bought it, though. It cost about ninety bucks, and all he bought it for was twenty. He was sore because I'd woke him up.
When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.
8
It was too late to call up for a cab or anything, so I walked the whole way to the station. It wasn't too far, but it was cold as hell, and the snow made it hard for walking, and my Gladstones kept banging hell out of my legs. I sort of enjoyed the air and all, though. The only trouble was, the cold made my nose hurt, and right under my upper lip, where old Stradlater'd laid one on me. He'd smacked my lip right on my teeth, and it was pretty sore. My ears were nice and warm, though. That hat I bought had earlaps in it, and I put them on--I didn't give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway. Everybody was in the sack.
I was quite lucky when I got to the station, because I only had to wait about ten minutes for a train. While I waited, I got some snow in my hand and washed my face with it. I still had quite a bit of blood on.
Usually I like riding on trains, especially at night, with the lights on and the windows so black, and one of those guys coming up the aisle selling coffee and sandwiches and magazines. I usually buy a ham sandwich and about four magazines. If I'm on a train at night, I can usually even read one of those dumb stories in a magazine without puking. You know. One of those stories with a lot of phony, lean-jawed guys named David in it, and a lot of phony girls named Linda or Marcia that are always lighting all the goddam Davids' pipes for them. I can even read one of those lousy stories on a train at night, usually. But this time, it was different. I just didn't feel like it. I just sort of sat and not did anything. All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.
All of a sudden, this lady got on at Trenton and sat down next to me. Practically the whole car was empty, because it was pretty late and all, but she sat down next to me, instead of an empty seat, because she had this big bag with her and I was sitting in the front seat. She stuck the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She had these orchids on, like she'd just been to a big party or something. She was around forty or forty-five, I guess, but she was very good looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that--although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.
Anyway, we were sitting there, and all of a sudden she said to me, "Excuse me, but isn't that a Pencey Prep sticker?" She was looking up at my suitcases, up on the rack.
"Yes, it is," I said. She was right. I did have a goddam Pencey sticker on one of my Gladstones. Very corny, I'll admit.
"Oh, do you go to Pencey?" she said. She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should've carried a goddam telephone around with her.
"Yes, I do," I said.
"Oh, how lovely! Perhaps you know my son, then, Ernest Morrow? He goes to Pencey."
"Yes, I do. He's in my class."
Her son was doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school. He was always going down the corridor, after he'd had a shower, snapping his soggy old wet towel at people's asses. That's exactly the kind of a guy he was.
"Oh, how nice!" the lady said. But not corny. She was just nice and all. "I must tell Ernest we met," she said. "May I ask your name, dear?"
"Rudolf Schmidt," I told her. I didn't feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.
"Do you like Pencey?" she asked me.
"Pencey? It's not too bad. It's not paradise or anything, but it's as good as most schools. Some of the faculty are pretty conscientious."
"Ernest just adores it."
"I know he does," I said. Then I started shooting the old crap around a little bit. "He adapts himself very well to things. He really does. I mean he really knows how to adapt himself."
"Do you think so?" she asked me. She sounded interested as hell.
"Ernest? Sure," I said. Then I watched her take off her gloves. Boy, was she lousy with rocks.
"I just broke a nail, getting out of a cab," she said. She looked up at me and sort of smiled. She had a terrifically nice smile. She really did. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. "Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. "We sometimes feel he's not a terribly good mixer."
"How do you mean?"
"Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his age."
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.
I gave her a good look. She didn't look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of. But you can't always tell--with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is, though, I liked old Morrow's mother. She was all right. "Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her.
She looked all around. "I don't believe this is a smoker, Rudolf," she said. Rudolf. That killed me.
"That's all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us," I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light.
She looked nice, smoking. She inhaled and all, but she didn't wolf the smoke down, the way most women around her age do. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know.
She was looking at me sort of funny. I may be wrong but I believe your nose is bleeding, dear, she said, all of a sudden.
I nodded and took out my handkerchief. "I got hit with a snowball," I said. "One of those very icy ones." I probably would've told her what really happened, but it would've taken too long. I liked her, though. I was beginning to feel sort of sorry I'd told her my name was Rudolf Schmidt. "Old Ernie," I said. "He's one of the most popular boys at Pencey. Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
I nodded. "It really took everybody quite a long time to get to know him. He's a funny guy. A strange guy, in lots of ways--know what I mean? Like when I first met him. When I first met him, I thought he was kind of a snobbish person. That's what I thought. But he isn't. He's just got this very original personality that takes you a little while to get to know him."
Old Mrs. Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, you should've seen her. I had her glued to her seat. You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.
Then I really started chucking the old crap around. "Did he tell you about the elections?" I asked her. "The class elections?"
She shook her head. I had her in a trance, like. I really did.
"Well, a bunch of us wanted old Ernie to be president of the class. I mean he was the unanimous choice. I mean he was the only boy that could really handle the job," I said--boy, was I chucking it. "But this other boy--Harry Fencer--was elected. And the reason he was elected, the simple and obvious reason, was because Ernie wouldn't let us nominate him. Because he's so darn shy and modest and all. He refused. . . Boy, he's really shy. You oughta make him try to get over that." I looked at her. "Didn't he tell you about it?"
"No, he didn't."
I nodded. "That's Ernie. He wouldn't. That's the one fault with him--he's too shy and modest. You really oughta get him to try to relax occasionally."
Right that minute, the conductor came around for old Mrs. Morrow's ticket, and it gave me a chance to quit shooting it. I'm glad I shot it for a while, though. You take a guy like Morrow that's always snapping their towel at people's asses--really trying to hurt somebody with it--they don't just stay a rat while they're a kid. They stay a rat their whole life. But I'll bet, after all the crap I shot, Mrs. Morrow'll keep thinking of him now as this very shy, modest guy that wouldn't let us nominate him for president. She might. You can't tell. Mothers aren't too sharp about that stuff.
"Would you care for a cocktail?" I asked her. I was feeling in the mood for one myself. "We can go in the club car. All right?"
"Dear, are you allowed to order drinks?" she asked me. Not snotty, though. She was too charming and all to be snotty.
"Well, no, not exactly, but I can usually get them on account of my heighth," I said. "And I have quite a bit of gray hair." I turned sideways and showed her my gray hair. It fascinated hell out of her. "C'mon, join me, why don't you?" I said. I'd've enjoyed having her.
"I really don't think I'd better. Thank you so much, though, dear," she said. "Anyway, the club car's most likely closed. It's quite late, you know." She was right. I'd forgotten all about what time it was.
Then she looked at me and asked me what I was afraid she was going to ask me. "Ernest wrote that he'd be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday," she said. "I hope you weren't called home suddenly because of illness in the family." She really looked worried about it. She wasn't just being nosy, you could tell.
"No, everybody's fine at home," I said. "It's me. I have to have this operation."
"Oh! I'm so sorry," she said. She really was, too. I was right away sorry I'd said it, but it was too late.
"It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain."
"Oh, no!" She put her hand up to her mouth and all. "Oh, I'll be all right and everything! It's right near the outside. And it's a very tiny one. They can take it out in about two minutes."
Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.
We didn't talk too much after that. She started reading this Vogue she had with her, and I looked out the window for a while. She got off at Newark. She wished me a lot of luck with the operation and all. She kept calling me Rudolf. Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts. She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was going to South America with my grandmother. Which was really a hot one, because my grandmother hardly ever even goes out of the house, except maybe to go to a goddam matinee or something. But I wouldn't visit that sonuvabitch Morrow for all the dough in the world, even if I was desperate.
9
The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz. I left my bags right outside the booth so that I could watch them, but as soon as I was inside, I couldn't think of anybody to call up. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe goes to bed around nine o'clock--so I couldn't call her up. She wouldn't've cared if I'd woke her up, but the trouble was, she wouldn't've been the one that answered the phone. My parents would be the ones. So that was out. Then I thought of giving Jane Gallagher's mother a buzz, and find out when Jane's vacation started, but I didn't feel like it. Besides, it was pretty late to call up. Then I thought of calling this girl I used to go around with quite frequently, Sally Hayes, because I knew her Christmas vacation had started already--she'd written me this long, phony letter, inviting me over to help her trim the Christmas tree Christmas Eve and all--but I was afraid her mother'd answer the phone. Her mother knew my mother, and I could picture her breaking a goddam leg to get to the phone and tell my mother I was in New York. Besides, I wasn't crazy about talking to old Mrs. Hayes on the phone. She once told Sally I was wild. She said I was wild and that I had no direction in life. Then I thought of calling up this guy that went to the Whooton School when I was there, Carl Luce, but I didn't like him much. So I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so, and got my bags and walked over to that tunnel where the cabs are and got a cab.
I'm so damn absent-minded, I gave the driver my regular address, just out of habit and all--I mean I completely forgot I was going to shack up in a hotel for a couple of days and not go home till vacation started. I didn't think of it till we were halfway through the park. Then I said, "Hey, do you mind turning around when you get a chance? I gave you the wrong address. I want to go back downtown."
The driver was sort of a wise guy. "I can't turn around here, Mac. This here's a one-way. I'll have to go all the way to Ninedieth Street now."
I didn't want to start an argument. "Okay," I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. "Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million.
He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. "What're ya tryna do, bud?" he said. "Kid me?"
"No--I was just interested, that's all."
He didn't say anything more, so I didn't either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, "All right, buddy. Where to?"
"Well, the thing is, I don't want to stay at any hotels on the East Side where I might run into some acquaintances of mine. I'm traveling incognito," I said. I hate saying corny things like "traveling incognito." But when I'm with somebody that's corny, I always act corny too. "Do you happen to know whose band's at the Taft or the New Yorker, by any chance?"
"No idear, Mac."
"Well--take me to the Edmont then," I said. "Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail? On me. I'm loaded."
"Can't do it, Mac. Sorry." He certainly was good company. Terrific personality.
We got to the Edmont Hotel, and I checked in. I'd put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn't want to look like a screwball or something. Which is really ironic. I didn't know then that the goddam hotel was full of perverts and morons. Screwballs all over the place.
They gave me this very crumby room, with nothing to look out of the window at except the other side of the hotel. I didn't care much. I was too depressed to care whether I had a good view or not. The bellboy that showed me to the room was this very old guy around sixty-five. He was even more depressing than the room was. He was one of those bald guys that comb all their hair over from the side to cover up the baldness. I'd rather be bald than do that. Anyway, what a gorgeous job for a guy around sixty-five years old. Carrying people's suitcases and waiting around for a tip. I suppose he wasn't too intelligent or anything, but it was terrible anyway.
After he left, I looked out the window for a while, with my coat on and all. I didn't have anything else to do. You'd be surprised what was going on on the other side of the hotel. They didn't even bother to pull their shades down. I saw one guy, a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking guy with only his shorts on, do something you wouldn't believe me if I told you. First he put his suitcase on the bed. Then he took out all these women's clothes, and put them on. Real women's clothes--silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, brassiere, and one of those corsets with the straps hanging down and all. Then he put on this very tight black evening dress. I swear to God. Then he started walking up and down the room, taking these very small steps, the way a woman does, and smoking a cigarette and looking at himself in the mirror. He was all alone, too. Unless somebody was in the bathroom--I couldn't see that much. Then, in the window almost right over his, I saw a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths at each other. It probably was highballs, not water, but I couldn't see what they had in their glasses. Anyway, first he'd take a swallow and squirt it all over her, then she did it to him--they took turns, for God's sake. You should've seen them. They were in hysterics the whole time, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. I'm not kidding, the hotel was lousy with perverts. I was probably the only normal bastard in the whole place--and that isn't saying much. I damn near sent a telegram to old Stradlater telling him to take the first train to New York. He'd have been the king of the hotel.
The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don't want it to be. For instance, that girl that was getting water squirted all over her face, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that's my big trouble. In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other's face. The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Girls aren't too much help, either, when you start trying not to get too crumby, when you start trying not to spoil anything really good. I knew this one girl, a couple of years ago, that was even crumbier than I was. Boy, was she crumby! We had a lot of fun, though, for a while, in a crumby way. Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it--the same night, as a matter of fact. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phony named Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't.
I started toying with the idea, while I kept standing there, of giving old Jane a buzz--I mean calling her long distance at B.M., where she went, instead of calling up her mother to find out when she was coming home. You weren't supposed to call students up late at night, but I had it all figured out. I was going to tell whoever answered the phone that I was her uncle. I was going to say her aunt had just got killed in a car accident and I had to speak to her immediately. It would've worked, too. The only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood. If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right.
After a while I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I was feeling pretty horny. I have to admit it. Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea. I took out my wallet and started looking for this address a guy I met at a party last summer, that went to Princeton, gave me. Finally I found it. It was all a funny color from my wallet, but you could still read it. It was the address of this girl that wasn't exactly a whore or anything but that didn't mind doing it once in a while, this Princeton guy told me. He brought her to a dance at Princeton once, and they nearly kicked him out for bringing her. She used to be a burlesque stripper or something. Anyway, I went over to the phone and gave her a buzz. Her name was Faith Cavendish, and she lived at the Stanford Arms Hotel on Sixty-fifth and Broadway. A dump, no doubt.
For a while, I didn t think she was home or something. Nobody kept answering. Then, finally, somebody picked up the phone.
"Hello?" I said. I made my voice quite deep so that she wouldn't suspect my age or anything. I have a pretty deep voice anyway.
"Hello," this woman's voice said. None too friendly, either.
"Is this Miss Faith Cavendish?"
"Who's this?" she said. "Who's calling me up at this crazy goddam hour?"
That sort of scared me a little bit. "Well, I know it's quite late," I said, in this very mature voice and all. "I hope you'll forgive me, but I was very anxious to get in touch with you." I said it suave as hell. I really did.
"Who is this?" she said.
"Well, you don't know me, but I'm a friend of Eddie Birdsell's. He suggested that if I were in town sometime, we ought to get together for a cocktail or two."
"Who? You're a friend of who?" Boy, she was a real tigress over the phone. She was damn near yelling at me.
"Edmund Birdsell. Eddie Birdsell," I said. I couldn't remember if his name was Edmund or Edward. I only met him once, at a goddam stupid party.
"I don't know anybody by that name, Jack. And if you think I enjoy bein' woke up in the middle--"
"Eddie Birdsell? From Princeton?" I said.
You could tell she was running the name over in her mind and all.
"Birdsell, Birdsell. . . from Princeton.. . Princeton College?"
"That's right," I said.
"You from Princeton College?"
"Well, approximately."
"Oh. . . How is Eddie?" she said. "This is certainly a peculiar time to call a person up, though. Jesus Christ."
"He's fine. He asked to be remembered to you."
"Well, thank you. Remember me to him," she said. "He's a grand person. What's he doing now?" She was getting friendly as hell, all of a sudden.
"Oh, you know. Same old stuff," I said. How the hell did I know what he was doing? I hardly knew the guy. I didn't even know if he was still at Princeton. "Look," I said. "Would you be interested in meeting me for a cocktail somewhere?"
"By any chance do you have any idea what time it is?" she said. "What's your name, anyhow, may I ask?" She was getting an English accent, all of a sudden. "You sound a little on the young side."
I laughed. "Thank you for the compliment," I said-- suave as hell. "Holden Caulfield's my name." I should've given her a phony name, but I didn't think of it.
"Well, look, Mr. Cawffle. I'm not in the habit of making engagements in the middle of the night. I'm a working gal."
"Tomorrow's Sunday," I told her.
"Well, anyway. I gotta get my beauty sleep. You know how it is."
"I thought we might have just one cocktail together. It isn't too late."
"Well. You're very sweet," she said. "Where ya callin' from? Where ya at now, anyways?"
"Me? I'm in a phone booth."
"Oh," she said. Then there was this very long pause. "Well, I'd like awfully to get together with you sometime, Mr. Cawffle. You sound very attractive. You sound like a very attractive person. But it is late."
"I could come up to your place."
"Well, ordinary, I'd say grand. I mean I'd love to have you drop up for a cocktail, but my roommate happens to be ill. She's been laying here all night without a wink of sleep. She just this minute closed her eyes and all. I mean."
"Oh. That's too bad."
"Where ya stopping at? Perhaps we could get together for cocktails tomorrow."
"I can't make it tomorrow," I said. "Tonight's the only time I can make it." What a dope I was. I shouldn't've said that.
"Oh. Well, I'm awfully sorry."
"I'll say hello to Eddie for you."
"Willya do that? I hope you enjoy your stay in New York. It's a grand place."
"I know it is. Thanks. Good night," I said. Then I hung up.
Boy, I really fouled that up. I should've at least made it for cocktails or something.
10
It was still pretty early. I'm not sure what time it was, but it wasn't too late. The one thing I hate to do is go to bed when I'm not even tired. So I opened my suitcases and took out a clean shirt, and then I went in the bathroom and washed and changed my shirt. What I thought I'd do, I thought I'd go downstairs and see what the hell was going on in the Lavender Room. They had this night club, the Lavender Room, in the hotel.
While I was changing my shirt, I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz, though. I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone. Somebody with sense and all. But I couldn't take a chance on giving her a buzz, because she was only a little kid and she wouldn't have been up, let alone anywhere near the phone. I thought of maybe hanging up if my parents answered, but that wouldn't've worked, either. They'd know it was me. My mother always knows it's me. She's psychic. But I certainly wouldn't have minded shooting the crap with old Phoebe for a while.
You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart. I mean she's had all A's ever since she started school. As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family. My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. I'm the only really dumb one. But you ought to see old Phoebe. She has this sort of red hair, a little bit like Allie's was, that's very short in the summertime. In the summertime, she sticks it behind her ears. She has nice, pretty little ears. In the wintertime, it's pretty long, though. Sometimes my mother braids it and sometimes she doesn't. It's really nice, though. She's only ten. She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate skinny. You'd like her. I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it's a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it's a pretty good movie. D.B. and I took her to see this French movie, The Baker's Wife, with Raimu in it. It killed her. Her favorite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddam movie by heart, because I've taken her to see it about ten times. When old Donat comes up to this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he's running away from the cops and all, Phoebe'll say right out loud in the movie--right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it--"Can you eat the herring?" She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that's really a German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Phoebe beats him to it--she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face. She's all right. You'd like her. The only trouble is, she's a little too affectionate sometimes. She's very emotional, for a child. She really is. Something else she does, she writes books all the time. Only, she doesn't finish them. They're all about some kid named Hazel Weatherfield--only old Phoebe spells it "Hazle." Old Hazle Weatherfield is a girl detective. She's supposed to be an orphan, but her old man keeps showing up. Her old man's always a "tall attractive gentleman about 20 years of age." That kills me. Old Phoebe. I swear to God you'd like her. She was smart even when she was a very tiny little kid. When she was a very tiny little kid, I and Allie used to take her to the park with us, especially on Sundays. Allie had this sailboat he used to like to fool around with on Sundays, and we used to take old Phoebe with us. She'd wear white gloves and walk right between us, like a lady and all. And when Allie and I were having some conversation about things in general, old Phoebe'd be listening. Sometimes you'd forget she was around, because she was such a little kid, but she'd let you know. She'd interrupt you all the time. She'd give Allie or I a push or something, and say, "Who? Who said that? Bobby or the lady?" And we'd tell her who said it, and she'd say, "Oh," and go right on listening and all. She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too. She's ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she still kills everybody--everybody with any sense, anyway.
Anyway, she was somebody you always felt like talking to on the phone. But I was too afraid my parents would answer, and then they'd find out I was in New York and kicked out of Pencey and all. So I just finished putting on my shirt. Then I got all ready and went down in the elevator to the lobby to see what was going on.
Except for a few pimpy-looking guys, and a few whory-looking blondes, the lobby was pretty empty. But you could hear the band playing in the Lavender Room, and so I went in there. It wasn't very crowded, but they gave me a lousy table anyway--way in the back. I should've waved a buck under the head-waiter's nose. In New York, boy, money really talks--I'm not kidding.
The band was putrid. Buddy Singer. Very brassy, but not good brassy--corny brassy. Also, there were very few people around my age in the place. In fact, nobody was around my age. They were mostly old, show-offy-looking guys with their dates. Except at the table right next to me. At the table right next to me, there were these three girls around thirty or so. The whole three of them were pretty ugly, and they all had on the kind of hats that you knew they didn't really live in New York, but one of them, the blonde one, wasn't too bad. She was sort of cute, the blonde one, and I started giving her the old eye a little bit, but just then the waiter came up for my order. I ordered a Scotch and soda, and told him not to mix it--I said it fast as hell, because if you hem and haw, they think you're under twenty-one and won't sell you any intoxicating liquor. I had trouble with him anyway, though. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but do you have some verification of your age? Your driver's license, perhaps?"
I gave him this very cold stare, like he'd insulted the hell out of me, and asked him, "Do I look like I'm under twenty-one?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but we have our--"
"Okay, okay," I said. I figured the hell with it. "Bring me a Coke." He started to go away, but I called him back. "Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?" I asked him. I asked him very nicely and all. "I can't sit in a corny place like this cold sober. Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?"
"I'm very sorry, sir. . ." he said, and beat it on me. I didn't hold it against him, though. They lose their jobs if they get caught selling to a minor. I'm a goddam minor.
I started giving the three witches at the next table the eye again. That is, the blonde one. The other two were strictly from hunger. I didn't do it crudely, though. I just gave all three of them this very cool glance and all. What they did, though, the three of them, when I did it, they started giggling like morons. They probably thought I was too young to give anybody the once-over. That annoyed hell out of me-- you'd've thought I wanted to marry them or something. I should've given them the freeze, after they did that, but the trouble was, I really felt like dancing. I'm very fond of dancing, sometimes, and that was one of the times. So all of a sudden, I sort of leaned over and said, "Would any of you girls care to dance?" I didn't ask them crudely or anything. Very suave, in fact. But God damn it, they thought that was a panic, too. They started giggling some more. I'm not kidding, they were three real morons. "C'mon," I said. "I'll dance with you one at a time. All right? How 'bout it? C'mon!" I really felt like dancing.
Finally, the blonde one got up to dance with me, because you could tell I was really talking to her, and we walked out to the dance floor. The other two grools nearly had hysterics when we did. I certainly must've been very hard up to even bother with any of them.
But it was worth it. The blonde was some dancer. She was one of the best dancers I ever danced with. I'm not kidding, some of these very stupid girls can really knock you out on a dance floor. You take a really smart girl, and half the time she's trying to lead you around the dance floor, or else she's such a lousy dancer, the best thing to do is stay at the table and just get drunk with her.
"You really can dance," I told the blonde one. "You oughta be a pro. I mean it. I danced with a pro once, and you're twice as good as she was. Did you ever hear of Marco and Miranda?"
"What?" she said. She wasn't even listening to me. She was looking all around the place.
"I said did you ever hear of Marco and Miranda?"
"I don't know. No. I don't know."
"Well, they're dancers, she's a dancer. She's not too hot, though. She does everything she's supposed to, but she's not so hot anyway. You know when a girl's really a terrific dancer?"
"Wudga say?" she said. She wasn't listening to me, even. Her mind was wandering all over the place.
"I said do you know when a girl's really a terrific dancer?"
"Uh-uh."
"Well--where I have my hand on your back. If I think there isn't anything underneath my hand--no can, no legs, no feet, no anything--then the girl's really a terrific dancer."
She wasn't listening, though. So I ignored her for a while. We just danced. God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing "Just One of Those Things" and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced--I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor--but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer. I could hardly stop myself from sort of giving her a kiss on the top of her dopey head--you know-- right where the part is, and all. She got sore when I did it.
"Hey! What's the idea?"
"Nothing. No idea. You really can dance," I said. "I have a kid sister that's only in the goddam fourth grade. You're about as good as she is, and she can dance better than anybody living or dead."
"Watch your language, if you don't mind."
What a lady, boy. A queen, for Chrissake.
"Where you girls from?" I asked her.
She didn't answer me, though. She was busy looking around for old Peter Lorre to show up, I guess.
"Where you girls from?" I asked her again.
"What?" she said.
"Where you girls from? Don't answer if you don't feel like it. I don't want you to strain yourself."
"Seattle, Washington," she said. She was doing me a big favor to tell me.
"You're a very good conversationalist," I told her. "You know that?"
"What?"
I let it drop. It was over her head, anyway. "Do you feel like jitterbugging a little bit, if they play a fast one? Not corny jitterbug, not jump or anything--just nice and easy. Everybody'll all sit down when they play a fast one, except the old guys and the fat guys, and we'll have plenty of room. Okay?"
"It's immaterial to me," she said. "Hey--how old are you, anyhow?"
That annoyed me, for some reason. "Oh, Christ. Don't spoil it," I said. "I'm twelve, for Chrissake. I'm big for my age."
"Listen. I toleja about that. I don't like that type language," she said. "If you're gonna use that type language, I can go sit down with my girl friends, you know."
I apologized like a madman, because the band was starting a fast one. She started jitterbugging with me-- but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
They didn't invite me to sit down at their table-- mostly because they were too ignorant--but I sat down anyway. The blonde I'd been dancing with's name was Bernice something--Crabs or Krebs. The two ugly ones' names were Marty and Laverne. I told them my name was Jim Steele, just for the hell of it. Then I tried to get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was practically impossible. You had to twist their arms. You could hardly tell which was the stupidest of the three of them. And the whole three of them kept looking all around the goddam room, like as if they expected a flock of goddam movie stars to come in any minute. They probably thought movie stars always hung out in the Lavender Room when they came to New York, instead of the Stork Club or El Morocco and all. Anyway, it took me about a half hour to find out where they all worked and all in Seattle. They all worked in the same insurance office. I asked them if they liked it, but do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes? I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.
I danced with them all--the whole three of them--one at a time. The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.
"Where?" she asked me--excited as hell. "Where?"
"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"
She practically stopped dancing, and started looking over everybody's heads to see if she could see him. "Oh, shoot!" she said. I'd just about broken her heart-- I really had. I was sorry as hell I'd kidded her. Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.
Here's what was very funny, though. When we got back to the table, old Marty told the other two that Gary Cooper had just gone out. Boy, old Laverne and Bernice nearly committed suicide when they heard that. They got all excited and asked Marty if she'd seen him and all. Old Mart said she'd only caught a glimpse of him. That killed me.
The bar was closing up for the night, so I bought them all two drinks apiece quick before it closed, and I ordered two more Cokes for myself. The goddam table was lousy with glasses. The one ugly one, Laverne, kept kidding me because I was only drinking Cokes. She had a sterling sense of humor. She and old Marty were drinking Tom Collinses--in the middle of December, for God's sake. They didn't know any better. The blonde one, old Bernice, was drinking bourbon and water. She was really putting it away, too. The whole three of them kept looking for movie stars the whole time. They hardly talked--even to each other. Old Marty talked more than the other two. She kept saying these very corny, boring things, like calling the can the "little girls' room," and she thought Buddy Singer's poor old beat-up clarinet player was really terrific when he stood up and took a couple of ice-cold hot licks. She called his clarinet a "licorice stick." Was she corny. The other ugly one, Laverne, thought she was a very witty type. She kept asking me to call up my father and ask him what he was doing tonight. She kept asking me if my father had a date or not. Four times she asked me that--she was certainly witty. Old Bernice, the blonde one, didn't say hardly anything at all. Every time I'd ask her something, she said "What?" That can get on your nerves after a while.
All of a sudden, when they finished their drink, all three of them stood up on me and said they had to get to bed. They said they were going to get up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall. I tried to get them to stick around for a while, but they wouldn't. So we said good-by and all. I told them I'd look them up in Seattle sometime, if I ever got there, but I doubt if I ever will. Look them up, I mean.
With cigarettes and all, the check came to about thirteen bucks. I think they should've at least offered to pay for the drinks they had before I joined them--I wouldn't've let them, naturally, but they should've at least offered. I didn't care much, though. They were so ignorant, and they had those sad, fancy hats on and all. And that business about getting up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall depressed me. If somebody, some girl in an awful-looking hat, for instance, comes all the way to New York--from Seattle, Washington, for God's sake--and ends up getting up early in the morning to see the goddam first show at Radio City Music Hall, it makes me so depressed I can't stand it. I'd've bought the whole three of them a hundred drinks if only they hadn't told me that.
I left the Lavender Room pretty soon after they did. They were closing it up anyway, and the band had quit a long time ago. In the first place, it was one of those places that are very terrible to be in unless you have somebody good to dance with, or unless the waiter lets you buy real drinks instead of just Cokes. There isn't any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out.
11
All of a sudden, on my way out to the lobby, I got old Jane Gallagher on the brain again. I got her on, and I couldn't get her off. I sat down in this vomity-looking chair in the lobby and thought about her and Stradlater sitting in that goddam Ed Banky's car, and though I was pretty damn sure old Stradlater hadn't given her the time--I know old Jane like a book--I still couldn't get her off my brain. I knew her like a book. I really did. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and after I got to know her, the whole summer long we played tennis together almost every morning and golf almost every afternoon. I really got to know her quite intimately. I don't mean it was anything physical or anything--it wasn't--but we saw each other all the time. You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.
The way I met her, this Doberman pinscher she had used to come over and relieve himself on our lawn, and my mother got very irritated about it. She called up Jane's mother and made a big stink about it. My mother can make a very big stink about that kind of stuff. Then what happened, a couple of days later I saw Jane laying on her stomach next to the swimming pool, at the club, and I said hello to her. I knew she lived in the house next to ours, but I'd never conversed with her before or anything. She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day, though. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddam where her dog relieved himself. He could do it in the living room, for all I cared. Anyway, after that, Jane and I got to be friends and all. I played golf with her that same afternoon. She lost eight balls, I remember. Eight. I had a terrible time getting her to at least open her eyes when she took a swing at the ball. I improved her game immensely, though. I'm a very good golfer. If I told you what I go around in, you probably wouldn't believe me. I almost was once in a movie short, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I figured that anybody that hates the movies as much as I do, I'd be a phony if I let them stick me in a movie short.
She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She'd never met Allie or anything, because that was her first summer in Maine--before that, she went to Cape Cod--but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff.
My mother didn't like her too much. I mean my mother always thought Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or something when they didn't say hello. My mother saw them in the village a lot, because Jane used to drive to market with her mother in this LaSalle convertible they had. My mother didn't think Jane was pretty, even. I did, though. I just liked the way she looked, that's all.
I remember this one afternoon. It was the only time old Jane and I ever got close to necking, even. It was a Saturday and it was raining like a bastard out, and I was over at her house, on the porch--they had this big screened-in porch. We were playing checkers. I used to kid her once in a while because she wouldn't take her kings out of the back row. But I didn't kid her much, though. You never wanted to kid Jane too much. I think I really like it best when you can kid the pants off a girl when the opportunity arises, but it's a funny thing. The girls I like best are the ones I never feel much like kidding. Sometimes I think they'd like it if you kidded them--in fact, I know they would--but it's hard to get started, once you've known them a pretty long time and never kidded them. Anyway, I was telling you about that afternoon Jane and I came close to necking. It was raining like hell and we were out on her porch, and all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn't know him too well or anything, but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn't talk to you much unless he wanted something off you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn't answer him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares--boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her--I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over--anywhere--her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears--her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. After a while, she got up and went in and put on this red and white sweater she had, that knocked me out, and we went to a goddam movie. I asked her, on the way, if Mr. Cudahy--that was the booze hound's name--had ever tried to get wise with her. She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure, and I wouldn't've put it past that Cudahy bastard. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what's the matter.
I don't want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn't. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane's. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody's neck, they're around twenty-five or thirty and usually they're doing it to their husband or their little kid--I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl's quite young and all and she does it, it's so pretty it just about kills you.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while I sat in that vomity-looking chair in the lobby. Old Jane. Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky's car, it almost drove me crazy. I knew she wouldn't let him get to first base with her, but it drove me crazy anyway. I don't even like to talk about it, if you want to know the truth.
There was hardly anybody in the lobby any more. Even all the whory-looking blondes weren't around any more, and all of a sudden I felt like getting the hell out of the place. It was too depressing. And I wasn't tired or anything. So I went up to my room and put on my coat. I also took a look out the window to see if all the perverts were still in action, but the lights and all were out now. I went down in the elevator again and got a cab and told the driver to take me down to Ernie's. Ernie's is this night club in Greenwich Village that my brother D.B. used to go to quite frequently before he went out to Hollywood and prostituted himself. He used to take me with him once in a while. Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano. He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something, but he can really play the piano. He's so good he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning his goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot.
12
The cab I had was a real old one that smelled like someone'd just tossed his cookies in it. I always get those vomity kind of cabs if I go anywhere late at night. What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn't see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other's waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn't funny. New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe. But finally, after I was riding a while, the cab driver and I sort of struck up a conversation. His name was Horwitz. He was a much better guy than the other driver I'd had. Anyway, I thought maybe he might know about the ducks.
"Hey, Horwitz," I said. "You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?"
"The what?"
"The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?"
"Where who goes?"
"The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves--go south or something?"
Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. He was a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though. "How the hell should I know?" he said. "How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?"
"Well, don't get sore about it," I said. He was sore about it or something.
"Who's sore? Nobody's sore."
I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. But he started it up again himself. He turned all the way around again, and said, "The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake."
"The fish--that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks," I said.
"What's different about it? Nothin's different about it," Horwitz said. Everything he said, he sounded sore about something. "It's tougher for the fish, the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. Use your head, for Chrissake."
I didn't say anything for about a minute. Then I said, "All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake's a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?"
Old Horwitz turned around again. "What the hellaya mean what do they do?" he yelled at me. "They stay right where they are, for Chrissake."
"They can't just ignore the ice. They can't just ignore it."
"Who's ignoring it? Nobody's ignoring it!" Horwitz said. He got so damn excited and all, I was afraid he was going to drive the cab right into a lamppost or something. "They live right in the goddam ice. It's their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter."
"Yeah? What do they eat, then? I mean if they're frozen solid, they can't swim around looking for food and all."
"Their bodies, for Chrissake--what'sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that's in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake. See what I mean?" He turned way the hell around again to look at me.
"Oh," I said. I let it drop. I was afraid he was going to crack the damn taxi up or something. Besides, he was such a touchy guy, it wasn't any pleasure discussing anything with him. "Would you care to stop off and have a drink with me somewhere?" I said.
He didn't answer me, though. I guess he was still thinking. I asked him again, though. He was a pretty good guy. Quite amusing and all.
"I ain't got no time for no liquor, bud," he said. "How the hell old are you, anyways? Why ain'tcha home in bed?"
"I'm not tired."
When I got out in front of Ernie's and paid the fare, old Horwitz brought up the fish again. He certainly had it on his mind. "Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?"
"No, but--"
"You're goddam right they don't," Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell. He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. Everything you said made him sore.
Even though it was so late, old Ernie's was jampacked. Mostly with prep school jerks and college jerks. Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas vacation than the schools I go to. You could hardly check your coat, it was so crowded. It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. It was supposed to be something holy, for God's sake, when he sat down at the piano. Nobody's that good. About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn't see his fingers while he played--just his big old face. Big deal. I'm not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet. Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony--I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don't even think he knows any more when he's playing right or not. It isn't all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off--they'd foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance. Anyway, it made me feel depressed and lousy again, and I damn near got my coat back and went back to the hotel, but it was too early and I didn't feel much like being all alone.
They finally got me this stinking table, right up against a wall and behind a goddam post, where you couldn't see anything. It was one of those tiny little tables that if the people at the next table don't get up to let you by--and they never do, the bastards--you practically have to climb into your chair. I ordered a Scotch and soda, which is my favorite drink, next to frozen Daiquiris. If you were only around six years old, you could get liquor at Ernie's, the place was so dark and all, and besides, nobody cared how old you were. You could even be a dope fiend and nobody'd care.
I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding. At this other tiny table, right to my left, practically on top of me, there was this funny-looking guy and this funny-looking girl. They were around my age, or maybe just a little older. It was funny. You could see they were being careful as hell not to drink up the minimum too fast. I listened to their conversation for a while, because I didn't have anything else to do. He was telling her about some pro football game he'd seen that afternoon. He gave her every single goddam play in the whole game--I'm not kidding. He was the most boring guy I ever listened to. And you could tell his date wasn't even interested in the goddam game, but she was even funnier-looking than he was, so I guess she had to listen. Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes. Sometimes I can't even look at them, especially if they're with some dopey guy that's telling them all about a goddam football game. On my right, the conversation was even worse, though. On my right there was this very Joe Yale-looking guy, in a gray flannel suit and one of those flitty-looking Tattersall vests. All those Ivy League bastards look alike. My father wants me to go to Yale, or maybe Princeton, but I swear, I wouldn't go to one of those Ivy League colleges, if I was dying, for God's sake. Anyway, this Joe Yale-looking guy had a terrific-looking girl with him. Boy, she was good-looking. But you should've heard the conversation they were having. In the first place, they were both slightly crocked. What he was doing, he was giving her a feel under the table, and at the same time telling her all about some guy in his dorm that had eaten a whole bottle of aspirin and nearly committed suicide. His date kept saying to him, "How horrible . . . Don't, darling. Please, don't. Not here." Imagine giving somebody a feel and telling them about a guy committing suicide at the same time! They killed me.
I certainly began to feel like a prize horse's ass, though, sitting there all by myself. There wasn't anything to do except smoke and drink. What I did do, though, I told the waiter to ask old Ernie if he'd care to join me for a drink. I told him to tell him I was D.B.'s brother. I don't think he ever even gave him my message, though. Those bastards never give your message to anybody.
All of a sudden, this girl came up to me and said, "Holden Caulfield!" Her name was Lillian Simmons. My brother D.B. used to go around with her for a while. She had very big knockers.
"Hi," I said. I tried to get up, naturally, but it was some job getting up, in a place like that. She had some Navy officer with her that looked like he had a poker up his ass.
"How marvelous to see you!" old Lillian Simmons said. Strictly a phony. "How's your big brother?" That's all she really wanted to know.
"He's fine. He's in Hollywood."
"In Hollywood! How marvelous! What's he doing?"
"I don't know. Writing," I said. I didn't feel like discussing it. You could tell she thought it was a big deal, his being in Hollywood. Almost everybody does. Mostly people who've never read any of his stories. It drives me crazy, though.
"How exciting," old Lillian said. Then she introduced me to the Navy guy. His name was Commander Blop or something. He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God, I hate that stuff. "Are you all alone, baby?" old Lillian asked me. She was blocking up the whole goddam traffic in the aisle. You could tell she liked to block up a lot of traffic. This waiter was waiting for her to move out of the way, but she didn't even notice him. It was funny. You could tell the waiter didn't like her much, you could tell even the Navy guy didn't like her much, even though he was dating her. And I didn't like her much. Nobody did. You had to feel sort of sorry for her, in a way. "Don't you have a date, baby?" she asked me. I was standing up now, and she didn't even tell me to sit down. She was the type that keeps you standing up for hours. "Isn't he handsome?" she said to the Navy guy. "Holden, you're getting handsomer by the minute." The Navy guy told her to come on. He told her they were blocking up the whole aisle. "Holden, come join us," old Lillian said. "Bring your drink."
"I was just leaving," I told her. "I have to meet somebody." You could tell she was just trying to get in good with me. So that I'd tell old D.B. about it.
"Well, you little so-and-so. All right for you. Tell your big brother I hate him, when you see him."
Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
After I'd told her I had to meet somebody, I didn't have any goddam choice except to leave. I couldn't even stick around to hear old Ernie play something halfway decent. But I certainly wasn't going to sit down at a table with old Lillian Simmons and that Navy guy and be bored to death. So I left. It made me mad, though, when I was getting my coat. People are always ruining things for you.
13
I walked all the way back to the hotel. Forty-one gorgeous blocks. I didn't do it because I felt like walking or anything. It was more because I didn't feel like getting in and out of another taxicab. Sometimes you get tired of riding in taxicabs the same way you get tired riding in elevators. All of a sudden, you have to walk, no matter how far or how high up. When I was a kid, I used to walk all the way up to our apartment very frequently. Twelve stories.
You wouldn't even have known it had snowed at all. There was hardly any snow on the sidewalks. But it was freezing cold, and I took my red hunting hat out of my pocket and put it on--I didn't give a damn how I looked. I even put the earlaps down. I wished I knew who'd swiped my gloves at Pencey, because my hands were freezing. Not that I'd have done much about it even if I had known. I'm one of these very yellow guys. I try not to show it, but I am. For instance, if I'd found out at Pencey who'd stolen my gloves, I probably would've gone down to the crook's room and said, "Okay. How 'bout handing over those gloves?" Then the crook that had stolen them probably would've said, his voice very innocent and all, "What gloves?" Then what I probably would've done, I'd have gone in his closet and found the gloves somewhere. Hidden in his goddam galoshes or something, for instance. I'd have taken them out and showed them to the guy and said, "I suppose these are your goddam gloves?" Then the crook probably would've given me this very phony, innocent look, and said, "I never saw those gloves before in my life. If they're yours, take 'em. I don't want the goddam things." Then I probably would've just stood there for about five minutes. I'd have the damn gloves right in my hand and all, but I'd feel I ought to sock the guy in the jaw or something--break his goddam jaw. Only, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I'd just stand there, trying to look tough. What I might do, I might say something very cutting and snotty, to rile him up--instead of socking him in the jaw. Anyway if I did say something very cutting and snotty, he'd probably get up and come over to me and say, "Listen, Caulfield. Are you calling me a crook?" Then, instead of saying, "You're goddam right I am, you dirty crooked bastard!" all I probably would've said would be, "All I know is my goddam gloves were in your goddam galoshes." Right away then, the guy would know for sure that I wasn't going to take a sock at him, and he probably would've said, "Listen. Let's get this straight. Are you calling me a thief?" Then I probably would've said, "Nobody's calling anybody a thief. All I know is my gloves were in your goddam galoshes." It could go on like that for hours. Finally, though, I'd leave his room without even taking a sock at him. I'd probably go down to the can and sneak a cigarette and watch myself getting tough in the mirror. Anyway, that's what I thought about the whole way back to the hotel. It's no fun to he yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something--it used to drive my mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. Maybe that's why I'm partly yellow. It's no excuse, though. It really isn't. What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it. I'm just no good at it, though. I'd rather push a guy out the window or chop his head off with an ax than sock him in the jaw. I hate fist fights. I don't mind getting hit so much--although I'm not crazy about it, naturally--but what scares me most in a fist fight is the guy's face. I can't stand looking at the other guy's face, is my trouble. It wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something. It's a funny kind of yellowness, when you come to think of it, but it's yellowness, all right. I'm not kidding myself.
The more I thought about my gloves and my yellowness, the more depressed I got, and I decided, while I was walking and all, to stop off and have a drink somewhere. I'd only had three drinks at Ernie's, and I didn't even finish the last one. One thing I have, it's a terrific capacity. I can drink all night and not even show it, if I'm in the mood. Once, at the Whooton School, this other boy, Raymond Goldfarb, and I bought a pint of Scotch and drank it in the chapel one Saturday night, where nobody'd see us. He got stinking, but I hardly didn't even show it. I just got very cool and nonchalant. I puked before I went to bed, but I didn't really have to--I forced myself.
Anyway, before I got to the hotel, I started to go in this dumpy-looking bar, but two guys came out, drunk as hell, and wanted to know where the subway was. One of them was this very Cuban-looking guy, and he kept breathing his stinking breath in my face while I gave him directions. I ended up not even going in the damn bar. I just went back to the hotel.
The whole lobby was empty. It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. It really did. I wasn't sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead.
Then, all of a sudden, I got in this big mess.
The first thing when I got in the elevator, the elevator guy said to me, "Innarested in having a good time, fella? Or is it too late for you?"
"How do you mean?" I said. I didn't know what he was driving at or anything.
"Innarested in a little tail t'night?"
"Me?" I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it's quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that.
"How old are you, chief?" the elevator guy said.
"Why?" I said. "Twenty-two."
"Uh huh. Well, how 'bout it? Y'innarested? Five bucks a throw. Fifteen bucks the whole night." He looked at his wrist watch. "Till noon. Five bucks a throw, fifteen bucks till noon."
"Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
"Okay what? A throw, or till noon? I gotta know."
"Just a throw."
"Okay, what room ya in?"
I looked at the red thing with my number on it, on my key. "Twelve twenty-two," I said. I was already sort of sorry I'd let the thing start rolling, but it was too late now.
"Okay. I'll send a girl up in about fifteen minutes." He opened the doors and I got out.
"Hey, is she good-looking?" I asked him. "I don't want any old bag."
"No old bag. Don't worry about it, chief."
"Who do I pay?"
"Her," he said. "Let's go, chief." He shut the doors, practically right in my face.
I went to my room and put some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time--or you're afraid they will. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat--some girl, I mean--that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddam car. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though --I don't even remember what any more. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl--a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean--she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.
Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I sort of figured this was my big chance, in a way. I figured if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything. I worry about that stuff sometimes. I read this book once, at the Whooton School, that had this very sophisticated, suave, sexy guy in it. Monsieur Blanchard was his name, I can still remember. It was a lousy book, but this Blanchard guy was pretty good. He had this big château and all on the Riviera, in Europe, and all he did in his spare time was beat women off with a club. He was a real rake and all, but he knocked women out. He said, in this one part, that a woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right. It was a very corny book--I realize that--but I couldn't get that violin stuff out of my mind anyway. In a way, that's why I sort of wanted to get some practice in, in case I ever get married. Caulfield and his Magic Violin, boy. It's corny, I realize, but it isn't too corny. I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassiere off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.
Anyway, I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she'd be good-looking. I didn't care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with. Finally, somebody knocked on the door, and when I went to open it, I had my suitcase right in the way and I fell over it and damn near broke my knee. I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.
When I opened the door, this prostitute was standing there. She had a polo coat on, and no hat. She was sort of a blonde, but you could tell she dyed her hair. She wasn't any old bag, though. "How do you do," I said. Suave as hell, boy.
"You the guy Maurice said?" she asked me. She didn't seem too goddam friendly.
"Is he the elevator boy?"
"Yeah," she said.
"Yes, I am. Come in, won't you?" I said. I was getting more and more nonchalant as it went along. I really was.
She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of chucked it on the bed. She had on a green dress underneath. Then she sort of sat down sideways on the chair that went with the desk in the room and started jiggling her foot up and down. She crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. She was very nervous, for a prostitute. She really was. I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age. I sat down in the big chair, next to her, and offered her a cigarette. "I don't smoke," she said. She had a tiny little wheeny-whiny voice. You could hardly hear her. She never said thank you, either, when you offered her something. She just didn't know any better.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele," I said.
"Ya got a watch on ya?" she said. She didn't care what the hell my name was, naturally. "Hey, how old are you, anyways?"
"Me? Twenty-two."
"Like fun you are."
It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say "Like hell you are" or "Cut the crap" instead of "Like fun you are."
"How old are you?" I asked her.
"Old enough to know better," she said. She was really witty. "Ya got a watch on ya?" she asked me again, and then she stood up and pulled her dress over her head.
I certainly felt peculiar when she did that. I mean she did it so sudden and all. I know you're supposed to feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn't. Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy.
"Ya got a watch on ya, hey?"
"No. No, I don't," I said. Boy, was I feeling peculiar. "What's your name?" I asked her. All she had on was this pink slip. It was really quite embarrassing. It really was.
"Sunny," she said. "Let's go, hey."
"Don't you feel like talking for a while?" I asked her. It was a childish thing to say, but I was feeling so damn peculiar. "Are you in a very big hurry?"
She looked at me like I was a madman. "What the heck ya wanna talk about?" she said.
"I don't know. Nothing special. I just thought perhaps you might care to chat for a while."
She sat down in the chair next to the desk again. She didn't like it, though, you could tell. She started jiggling her foot again--boy, she was a nervous girl.
"Would you care for a cigarette now?" I said. I forgot she didn't smoke.
"I don't smoke. Listen, if you're gonna talk, do it. I got things to do."
I couldn't think of anything to talk about, though. I thought of asking her how she got to be a prostitute and all, but I was scared to ask her. She probably wouldn't've told me anyway.
"You don't come from New York, do you?" I said finally. That's all I could think of.
"Hollywood," she said. Then she got up and went over to where she'd put her dress down, on the bed. "Ya got a hanger? I don't want to get my dress all wrinkly. It's brand-clean."
"Sure," I said right away. I was only too glad to get up and do something. I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell--I don't know why exactly.
I sat down again and tried to keep the old conversation going. She was a lousy conversationalist. "Do you work every night?" I asked her--it sounded sort of awful, after I'd said it.
"Yeah." She was walking all around the room. She picked up the menu off the desk and read it.
"What do you do during the day?"
She sort of shrugged her shoulders. She was pretty skinny. "Sleep. Go to the show." She put down the menu and looked at me. "Let's go, hey. I haven't got all--"
"Look," I said. "I don't feel very much like myself tonight. I've had a rough night. Honest to God. I'll pay you and all, but do you mind very much if we don't do it? Do you mind very much?" The trouble was, I just didn't want to do it. I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth. She was depressing. Her green dress hanging in the closet and all. And besides, I don't think I could ever do it with somebody that sits in a stupid movie all day long. I really don't think I could.
She came over to me, with this funny look on her face, like as if she didn't believe me. "What'sa matter?" she said.
"Nothing's the matter." Boy, was I getting nervous. "The thing is, I had an operation very recently."
"Yeah? Where?"
"On my wuddayacallit--my clavichord."
"Yeah? Where the hell's that?"
"The clavichord?" I said. "Well, actually, it's in the spinal canal. I mean it's quite a ways down in the spinal canal."
"Yeah?" she said. "That's tough." Then she sat down on my goddam lap. "You're cute."
She made me so nervous, I just kept on lying my head off. "I'm still recuperating," I told her.
"You look like a guy in the movies. You know. Whosis. You know who I mean. What the heck's his name?"
"I don't know," I said. She wouldn't get off my goddam lap.
"Sure you know. He was in that pitcher with Mel-vine Douglas? The one that was Mel-vine Douglas's kid brother? That falls off this boat? You know who I mean."
"No, I don't. I go to the movies as seldom as I can."
Then she started getting funny. Crude and all.
"Do you mind cutting it out?" I said. "I'm not in the mood, I just told you. I just had an operation."
She didn't get up from my lap or anything, but she gave me this terrifically dirty look. "Listen," she said. "I was sleepin' when that crazy Maurice woke me up. If you think I'm--"
"I said I'd pay you for coming and all. I really will. I have plenty of dough. It's just that I'm practically just recovering from a very serious--"
"What the heck did you tell that crazy Maurice you wanted a girl for, then? If you just had a goddam operation on your goddam wuddayacallit. Huh?"
"I thought I'd be feeling a lot better than I do. I was a little premature in my calculations. No kidding. I'm sorry. If you'll just get up a second, I'll get my wallet. I mean it."
She was sore as hell, but she got up off my goddam lap so that I could go over and get my wallet off the chiffonier. I took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to her. "Thanks a lot," I told her. "Thanks a million."
"This is a five. It costs ten."
She was getting funny, you could tell. I was afraid something like that would happen--I really was.
"Maurice said five," I told her. "He said fifteen till noon and only five for a throw."
"Ten for a throw."
"He said five. I'm sorry--I really am--but that's all I'm gonna shell out."
She sort of shrugged her shoulders, the way she did before, and then she said, very cold, "Do you mind getting me my frock? Or would it be too much trouble?" She was a pretty spooky kid. Even with that little bitty voice she had, she could sort of scare you a little bit. If she'd been a big old prostitute, with a lot of makeup on her face and all, she wouldn't have been half as spooky.
I went and got her dress for her. She put it on and all, and then she picked up her polo coat off the bed. "So long, crumb-bum," she said.
"So long," I said. I didn't thank her or anything. I'm glad I didn't.
14
After Old Sunny was gone, I sat in the chair for a while and smoked a couple of cigarettes. It was getting daylight outside. Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby Fallon's house. Bobby Fallon used to live quite near us in Maine--this is, years ago. Anyway, what happened was, one day Bobby and I were going over to Lake Sedebego on our bikes. We were going to take our lunches and all, and our BB guns--we were kids and all, and we thought we could shoot something with our BB guns. Anyway, Allie heard us talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn't let him. I told him he was a child. So once in a while, now, when I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house. Hurry up." It wasn't that I didn't use to take him with me when I went somewhere. I did. But that one day, I didn't. He didn't get sore about it--he never got sore about anything-- but I keep thinking about it anyway, when I get very depressed.
Finally, though, I got undressed and got in bed. I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. I used to get in quite a few arguments about it, when I was at Whooton School, with this boy that lived down the corridor, Arthur Childs. Old Childs was a Quaker and all, and he read the Bible all the time. He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn't like the Disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn't blaming Jesus or anything. It wasn't His fault that He didn't have any time. I remember I asked old Childs if he thought Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he committed suicide. Childs said certainly. That's exactly where I disagreed with him. I said I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. I still would, too, if I had a thousand bucks. I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all--and fast, too--but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it. Old Childs said the trouble with me was that I didn't go to church or anything. He was right about that, in a way. I don't. In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheists. If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk.
Anyway, when I was in bed, I couldn't pray worth a damn. Every time I got started, I kept picturing old Sunny calling me a crumb-bum. Finally, I sat up in bed and smoked another cigarette. It tasted lousy. I must've smoked around two packs since I left Pencey.
All of a sudden, while I was laying there smoking, somebody knocked on the door. I kept hoping it wasn't my door they were knocking on, but I knew damn well it was. I don't know how I knew, but I knew. I knew who it was, too. I'm psychic.
"Who's there?" I said. I was pretty scared. I'm very yellow about those things.
They just knocked again, though. Louder.
Finally I got out of bed, with just my pajamas on, and opened the door. I didn't even have to turn the light on in the room, because it was already daylight. Old Sunny and Maurice, the pimpy elevator guy, were standing there.
"What's the matter? Wuddaya want?" I said. Boy, my voice was shaking like hell.
"Nothin' much," old Maurice said. "Just five bucks." He did all the talking for the two of them. Old Sunny just stood there next to him, with her mouth open and all.
"I paid her already. I gave her five bucks. Ask her," I said. Boy, was my voice shaking.
"It's ten bucks, chief. I tole ya that. Ten bucks for a throw, fifteen bucks till noon. I tole ya that."
"You did not tell me that. You said five bucks a throw. You said fifteen bucks till noon, all right, but I distinctly heard you--"
"Open up, chief."
"What for?" I said. God, my old heart was damn near beating me out of the room. I wished I was dressed at least. It's terrible to be just in your pajamas when something like that happens.
"Let's go, chief," old Maurice said. Then he gave me a big shove with his crumby hand. I damn near fell over on my can--he was a huge sonuvabitch. The next thing I knew, he and old Sunny were both in the room. They acted like they owned the damn place. Old Sunny sat down on the window sill. Old Maurice sat down in the big chair and loosened his collar and all--he was wearing this elevator operator's uniform. Boy, was I nervous.
"All right, chief, let's have it. I gotta get back to work."
"I told you about ten times, I don't owe you a cent. I already gave her the five--"
"Cut the crap, now. Let's have it."
"Why should I give her another five bucks?" I said. My voice was cracking all over the place. "You're trying to chisel me."
Old Maurice unbuttoned his whole uniform coat. All he had on underneath was a phony shirt collar, but no shirt or anything. He had a big fat hairy stomach. "Nobody's tryna chisel nobody," he said. "Let's have it, chief."
"No."
When I said that, he got up from his chair and started walking towards me and all. He looked like he was very, very tired or very, very bored. God, was I scared. I sort of had my arms folded, I remember. It wouldn't have been so bad, I don't think, if I hadn't had just my goddam pajamas on.
"Let's have it, chief." He came right up to where I was standing. That's all he could say. "Let's have it, chief." He was a real moron.
"No."
"Chief, you're gonna force me inna roughin' ya up a little bit. I don't wanna do it, but that's the way it looks," he said. "You owe us five bucks."
"I don't owe you five bucks," I said. "If you rough me up, I'll yell like hell. I'll wake up everybody in the hotel. The police and all." My voice was shaking like a bastard.
"Go ahead. Yell your goddam head off. Fine," old Maurice said. "Want your parents to know you spent the night with a whore? High-class kid like you?" He was pretty sharp, in his crumby way. He really was.
"Leave me alone. If you'd said ten, it'd be different. But you distinctly--"
"Are ya gonna let us have it?" He had me right up against the damn door. He was almost standing on top of me, his crumby old hairy stomach and all.
"Leave me alone. Get the hell out of my room," I said. I still had my arms folded and all. God, what a jerk I was.
Then Sunny said something for the first time. "Hey, Maurice. Want me to get his wallet?" she said. "It's right on the wutchamacallit."
"Yeah, get it."
"Leave my wallet alone!"
"I awreddy got it," Sunny said. She waved five bucks at me. "See? All I'm takin' is the five you owe me. I'm no crook."
All of a sudden I started to cry. I'd give anything if I hadn't, but I did. "No, you're no crooks," I said. "You're just stealing five--"
"Shut up," old Maurice said, and gave me a shove.
"Leave him alone, hey," Sunny said. "C'mon, hey. We got the dough he owes us. Let's go. C'mon, hey."
"I'm comin'," old Maurice said. But he didn't.
"I mean it, Maurice, hey. Leave him alone."
"Who's hurtin' anybody?" he said, innocent as hell. Then what he did, he snapped his finger very hard on my pajamas. I won't tell you where he snapped it, but it hurt like hell. I told him he was a goddam dirty moron. "What's that?" he said. He put his hand behind his ear, like a deaf guy. "What's that? What am I?"
I was still sort of crying. I was so damn mad and nervous and all. "You're a dirty moron," I said. "You're a stupid chiseling moron, and in about two years you'll be one of those scraggy guys that come up to you on the street and ask for a dime for coffee. You'll have snot all over your dirty filthy overcoat, and you'll be--"
Then he smacked me. I didn't even try to get out of the way or duck or anything. All I felt was this terrific punch in my stomach.
I wasn't knocked out or anything, though, because I remember looking up from the floor and seeing them both go out the door and shut it. Then I stayed on the floor a fairly long time, sort of the way I did with Stradlater. Only, this time I thought I was dying. I really did. I thought I was drowning or something. The trouble was, I could hardly breathe. When I did finally get up, I had to walk to the bathroom all doubled up and holding onto my stomach and all.
But I'm crazy. I swear to God I am. About halfway to the bathroom, I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts. Old 'Maurice had plugged me. Now I was on the way to the bathroom to get a good shot of bourbon or something to steady my nerves and help me really go into action. I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom, dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a little bit. Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I'd hold onto the banister and all, with this blood trickling out of the side of my mouth a little at a time. What I'd do, I'd walk down a few floors--holding onto my guts, blood leaking all over the place-- and then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice, to leave him alone. But I'd plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft--after I'd wiped off all the finger prints and all. Then I'd crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all.
The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.
I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then I got back in bed. It took me quite a while to get to sleep--I wasn't even tired--but finally I did. What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.
15
I didn't sleep too long, because I think it was only around ten o'clock when I woke up. I felt pretty hungry as soon as I had a cigarette. The last time I'd eaten was those two hamburgers I had with Brossard and Ackley when we went in to Agerstown to the movies. That was a long time ago. It seemed like fifty years ago. The phone was right next to me, and I started to call down and have them send up some breakfast, but I was sort of afraid they might send it up with old Maurice. If you think I was dying to see him again, you're crazy. So I just laid around in bed for a while and smoked another cigarette. I thought of giving old Jane a buzz, to see if she was home yet and all, but I wasn't in the mood.
What I did do, I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz. She went to Mary A. Woodruff, and I knew she was home because I'd had this letter from her a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't too crazy about her, but I'd known her for years. I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not. It took me years to find it out, in old Sally's case. I think I'd have found it out a lot sooner if we hadn't necked so damn much. My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I'm necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn't got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway.
Anyway, I gave her a buzz. First the maid answered. Then her father. Then she got on. "Sally?" I said.
"Yes--who is this?" she said. She was quite a little phony. I'd already told her father who it was.
"Holden Caulfield. How are ya?"
"Holden! I'm fine! How are you?"
"Swell. Listen. How are ya, anyway? I mean how's school?"
"Fine," she said. "I mean--you know."
"Swell. Well, listen. I was wondering if you were busy today. It's Sunday, but there's always one or two matinees going on Sunday. Benefits and that stuff. Would you care to go?"
"I'd love to. Grand."
Grand. If there's one word I hate, it's grand. It's so phony. For a second, I was tempted to tell her to forget about the matinee. But we chewed the fat for a while. That is, she chewed it. You couldn't get a word in edgewise. First she told me about some Harvard guy-- it probably was a freshman, but she didn't say, naturally--that was rushing hell out of her. Calling her up night and day. Night and day--that killed me. Then she told me about some other guy, some West Point cadet, that was cutting his throat over her too. Big deal. I told her to meet me under the clock at the Biltmore at two o'clock, and not to be late, because the show probably started at two-thirty. She was always late. Then I hung up. She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good-looking.
After I made the date with old Sally, I got out of bed and got dressed and packed my bag. I took a look out the window before I left the room, though, to see how all the perverts were doing, but they all had their shades down. They were the heighth of modesty in the morning. Then I went down in the elevator and checked out. I didn't see old Maurice around anywhere. I didn't break my neck looking for him, naturally, the bastard.
I got a cab outside the hotel, but I didn't have the faintest damn idea where I was going. I had no place to go. It was only Sunday, and I couldn't go home till Wednesday--or Tuesday the soonest. And I certainly didn't feel like going to another hotel and getting my brains beat out. So what I did, I told the driver to take me to Grand Central Station. It was right near the Biltmore, where I was meeting Sally later, and I figured what I'd do, I'd check my bags in one of those strong boxes that they give you a key to, then get some breakfast. I was sort of hungry. While I was in the cab, I took out my wallet and sort of counted my money. I don't remember exactly what I had left, but it was no fortune or anything. I'd spent a king's ransom in about two lousy weeks. I really had. I'm a goddam spendthrift at heart. What I don't spend, I lose. Half the time I sort of even forget to pick up my change, at restaurants and night clubs and all. It drives my parents crazy. You can't blame them. My father's quite wealthy, though. I don't know how much he makes--he's never discussed that stuff with me--but I imagine quite a lot. He's a corporation lawyer. Those boys really haul it in. Another reason I know he's quite well off, he's always investing money in shows on Broadway. They always flop, though, and it drives my mother crazy when he does it. She hasn't felt too healthy since my brother Allie died. She's very nervous. That's another reason why I hated like hell for her to know I got the ax again.
After I put my bags in one of those strong boxes at the station, I went into this little sandwich bar and bad breakfast. I had quite a large breakfast, for me--orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. Usually I just drink some orange juice. I'm a very light eater. I really am. That's why I'm so damn skinny. I was supposed to be on this diet where you eat a lot of starches and crap, to gain weight and all, but I didn't ever do it. When I'm out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn't much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk. H. V. Caulfield. Holden Vitamin Caulfield.
While I was eating my eggs, these two nuns with suitcases and all--I guessed they were moving to another convent or something and were waiting for a train--came in and sat down next to me at the counter. They didn't seem to know what the hell to do with their suitcases, so I gave them a hand. They were these very inexpensive-looking suitcases--the ones that aren't genuine leather or anything. It isn't important, I know, but I hate it when somebody has cheap suitcases. It sounds terrible to say it, but I can even get to hate somebody, just looking at them, if they have cheap suitcases with them. Something happened once. For a while when I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed with this boy, Dick Slagle, that had these very inexpensive suitcases. He used to keep them under the bed, instead of on the rack, so that nobody'd see them standing next to mine. It depressed holy hell out of me, and I kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him. Mine came from Mark Cross, and they were genuine cowhide and all that crap, and I guess they cost quite a pretty penny. But it was a funny thing. Here's what happened. What I did, I finally put my suitcases under my bed, instead of on the rack, so that old Slagle wouldn't get a goddam inferiority complex about it. But here's what he did. The day after I put mine under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack. The reason he did it, it took me a while to find out, was because he wanted people to think my bags were his. He really did. He was a very funny guy, that way. He was always saying snotty things about them, my suitcases, for instance. He kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere. Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway. We only roomed together about two months. Then we both asked to be moved. And the funny thing was, I sort of missed him after we moved, because he had a helluva good sense of humor and we had a lot of fun sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if he missed me, too. At first he only used to be kidding when he called my stuff bourgeois, and I didn't give a damn--it was sort of funny, in fact. Then, after a while, you could tell he wasn't kidding any more. The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs--if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine.
Anyway, these two nuns were sitting next to me, and we sort of struck up a conversation. The one right next to me had one of those straw baskets that you see nuns and Salvation Army babes collecting dough with around Christmas time. You see them standing on corners, especially on Fifth Avenue, in front of the big department stores and all. Anyway, the one next to me dropped hers on the floor and I reached down and picked it up for her. I asked her if she was out collecting money for charity and all. She said no. She said she couldn't get it in her suitcase when she was packing it and she was just carrying it. She had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a big nose, and she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren't too attractive, but she had a helluva kind face. "I thought if you were taking up a collection," I told her, "I could make a small contribution. You could keep the money for when you do take up a collection."
"Oh, how very kind of you," she said, and the other one, her friend, looked over at me. The other one was reading a little black book while she drank her coffee. It looked like a Bible, but it was too skinny. It was a Bible-type book, though. All the two of them were eating for breakfast was toast and coffee. That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee.
They let me give them ten bucks as a contribution. They kept asking me if I was sure I could afford it and all. I told them I had quite a bit of money with me, but they didn't seem to believe me. They took it, though, finally. The both of them kept thanking me so much it was embarrassing. I swung the conversation around to general topics and asked them where they were going. They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown. The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government. Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English. Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them. Take old Eustacia Vye, in The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. She wasn't too sexy or anything, but even so you can't help wondering what a nun maybe thinks about when she reads about old Eustacia. I didn't say anything, though, naturally. All I said was English was my best subject.
"Oh, really? Oh, I'm so glad!" the one with the glasses, that taught English, said. "What have you read this year? I'd be very interested to know." She was really nice.
"Well, most of the time we were on the Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf, and old Grendel, and Lord Randal My Son, and all those things. But we had to read outside books for extra credit once in a while. I read The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and Romeo and Juliet and Julius--"
"Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't sound much like a nun.
"Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it was quite moving, on the whole."
"What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?" To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I discussed it with her for a while. "Well, I'm not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet," I said. "I mean I like them, but--I don't know. They get pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed than when Romeo and Juliet did. The think is, I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio gets stabbed by that other man--Juliet's cousin--what's his name?"
"Tybalt."
"That's right. Tybalt," I said--I always forget that guy's name. "It was Romeo's fault. I mean I liked him the best in the play, old Mercutio. I don't know. All those Montagues and Capulets, they're all right--especially Juliet--but Mercutio, he was--it's hard to explain. He was very smart and entertaining and all. The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed-- especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all--and it's somebody else's fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault."
"What school do you go to?" she asked me. She probably wanted to get off the subject of Romeo and Juliet.
I told her Pencey, and she'd heard of it. She said it was a very good school. I let it pass, though. Then the other one, the one that taught history and government, said they'd better be running along. I took their check off them, but they wouldn't let me pay it. The one with the glasses made me give it back to her.
"You've been more than generous," she said. "You're a very sweet boy." She certainly was nice. She reminded me a little bit of old Ernest Morrow's mother, the one I met on the train. When she smiled, mostly. "We've enjoyed talking to you so much," she said.
I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too. I meant it, too. I'd have enjoyed it even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic. Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic. It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics. As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother. But Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name. I knew this one Catholic boy, Louis Shaney, when I was at the Whooton School. He was the first boy I ever met there. He and I were sitting in the first two chairs outside the goddam infirmary, the day school opened, waiting for our physicals, and we sort of struck up this conversation about tennis. He was quite interested in tennis, and so was I. He told me he went to the Nationals at Forest Hills every summer, and I told him I did too, and then we talked about certain hot-shot tennis players for quite a while. He knew quite a lot about tennis, for a kid his age. He really did. Then, after a while, right in the middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, "Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?" The thing was, you could tell by the way he asked me that he was trying to find out if I was a Catholic. He really was. Not that he was prejudiced or anything, but he just wanted to know. He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything--it didn't--but it sure as hell didn't do it any good. That's why I was glad those two nuns didn't ask me if I was a Catholic. It wouldn't have spoiled the conversation if they had, but it would've been different, probably. I'm not saying I blame Catholics. I don't. I'd be the same way, probably, if I was a Catholic. It's just like those suitcases I was telling you about, in a way. All I'm saying is that it's no good for a nice conversation. That's all I'm saying.
When they got up to go, the two nuns, I did something very stupid and embarrassing. I was smoking a cigarette, and when I stood up to say good-by to them, by mistake I blew some smoke in their face. I didn't mean to, but I did it. I apologized like a madman, and they were very polite and nice about it, but it was very embarrassing anyway.
After they left, I started getting sorry that I'd only given them ten bucks for their collection. But the thing was, I'd made that date to go to a matinee with old Sally Hayes, and I needed to keep some dough for the tickets and stuff. I was sorry anyway, though. Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
16
After I had my breakfast, it was only around noon, and I wasn't meeting old Sally till two o'clock, so I started taking this long walk. I couldn't stop thinking about those two nuns. I kept thinking about that beatup old straw basket they went around collecting money with when they weren't teaching school. I kept trying to picture my mother or somebody, or my aunt, or Sally Hayes's crazy mother, standing outside some department store and collecting dough for poor people in a beat-up old straw basket. It was hard to picture. Not so much my mother, but those other two. My aunt's pretty charitable--she does a lot of Red Cross work and all--but she's very well-dressed and all, and when she does anything charitable she's always very well-dressed and has lipstick on and all that crap. I couldn't picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and no lipstick while she was doing it. And old Sally Hayes's mother. Jesus Christ. The only way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed her ass for her when they made a contribution. If they just dropped their dough in her basket, then walked away without saying anything to her, ignoring her and all, she'd quit in about an hour. She'd get bored. She'd hand in her basket and then go someplace swanky for lunch. That's what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.
I started walking over toward Broadway, just for the hell of it, because I hadn't been over there in years. Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open on Sunday. There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe, called "Little Shirley Beans." It was a very hard record to get. It was about a little kid that wouldn't go out of the house because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed to. I heard it at Pencey. A boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn't sell it. It was a very old, terrific record that this colored girl singer, Estelle Fletcher, made about twenty years ago. She sings it very Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn't sound at all mushy. If a white girl was singing it, she'd make it sound cute as hell, but old Estelle Fletcher knew what the hell she was doing, and it was one of the best records I ever heard. I figured I'd buy it in some store that was open on Sunday and then I'd take it up to the park with me. It was Sunday and Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays quite frequently. I knew where she hung out mostly.
It wasn't as cold as it was the day before, but the sun still wasn't out, and it wasn't too nice for walking. But there was one nice thing. This family that you could tell just came out of some church were walking right in front of me--a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old. They looked sort of poor. The father had on one of those pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp. He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more.
Broadway was mobbed and messy. It was Sunday, and only about twelve o'clock, but it was mobbed anyway. Everybody was on their way to the movies--the Paramount or the Astor or the Strand or the Capitol or one of those crazy places. Everybody was all dressed up, because it was Sunday, and that made it worse. But the worst part was that you could tell they all wanted to go to the movies. I couldn't stand looking at them. I can understand somebody going to the movies because there's nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those long, terrible lines, all the way down the block, waiting with this terrific patience for seats and all. Boy, I couldn't get off that goddam Broadway fast enough. I was lucky. The first record store I went into had a copy of "Little Shirley Beans." They charged me five bucks for it, because it was so hard to get, but I didn't care. Boy, it made me so happy all of a sudden. I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her.
When I came out of the record store, I passed this drugstore, and I went in. I figured maybe I'd give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet. So I went in a phone booth and called her up. The only trouble was, her mother answered the phone, so I had to hang up. I didn't feel like getting involved in a long conversation and all with her. I'm not crazy about talking to girls' mothers on the phone anyway. I should've at least asked her if Jane was home yet, though. It wouldn't have killed me. But I didn't feel like it. You really have to be in the mood for that stuff.
I still had to get those damn theater tickets, so I bought a paper and looked up to see what shows were playing. On account of it was Sunday, there were only about three shows playing. So what I did was, I went over and bought two orchestra seats for I Know My Love. It was a benefit performance or something. I didn't much want to see it, but I knew old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would start drooling all over the place when I told her I had tickets for that, because the Lunts were in it and all. She liked shows that are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts and all. I don't. I don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that's fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. You take Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. I saw him in Hamlet. D.B. took Phoebe and I to see it last year. He treated us to lunch first, and then he took us. He'd already seen it, and the way he talked about it at lunch, I was anxious as hell to see it, too. But I didn't enjoy it much. I just don't see what's so marvelous about Sir Laurence Olivier, that's all. He has a terrific voice, and he's a helluva handsome guy, and he's very nice to watch when he's walking or dueling or something, but he wasn't at all the way D.B. said Hamlet was. He was too much like a goddam general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy. The best part in the whole picture was when old Ophelia's brother--the one that gets in the duel with Hamlet at the very end--was going away and his father was giving him a lot of advice. While the father kept giving him a lot of advice, old Ophelia was sort of horsing around with her brother, taking his dagger out of the holster, and teasing him and all while he was trying to look interested in the bull his father was shooting. That was nice. I got a big bang out of that. But you don't see that kind of stuff much. The only thing old Phoebe liked was when Hamlet patted this dog on the head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was. What I'll have to do is, I'll have to read that play. The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute.
After I got the tickets to the Lunts' show, I took a cab up to the park. I should've taken a subway or something, because I was getting slightly low on dough, but I wanted to get off that damn Broadway as fast as I could.
It was lousy in the park. It wasn't too cold, but the sun still wasn't out, and there didn't look like there was anything in the park except dog crap and globs of spit and cigar butts from old men, and the benches all looked like they'd be wet if you sat down on them. It made you depressed, and every once in a while, for no reason, you got goose flesh while you walked. It didn't seem at all like Christmas was coming soon. It didn't seem like anything was coming. But I kept walking over to the Mall anyway, because that's where Phoebe usually goes when she's in the park. She likes to skate near the bandstand. It's funny. That's the same place I used to like to skate when I was a kid.
When I got there, though, I didn't see her around anywhere. There were a few kids around, skating and all, and two boys were playing Flys Up with a soft ball, but no Phoebe. I saw one kid about her age, though, sitting on a bench all by herself, tightening her skate. I thought maybe she might know Phoebe and could tell me where she was or something, so I went over and sat down next to her and asked her, "Do you know Phoebe Caulfield, by any chance?"
"Who?" she said. All she had on was jeans and about twenty sweaters. You could tell her mother made them for her, because they were lumpy as hell.
"Phoebe Caulfield. She lives on Seventy-first Street. She's in the fourth grade, over at--"
"You know Phoebe?"
"Yeah, I'm her brother. You know where she is?"
"She's in Miss Callon's class, isn't she?" the kid said.
"I don't know. Yes, I think she is."
"She's prob'ly in the museum, then. We went last Saturday," the kid said.
"Which museum?" I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. "I don't know," she said. "The museum."
"I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?"
"The one where the Indians."
"Thanks a lot," I said. I got up and started to go, but then I suddenly remembered it was Sunday. "This is Sunday," I told the kid.
She looked up at me. "Oh. Then she isn't."
She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate key in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know what it is. She thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.
Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long, long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps, but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything, children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he'd already caught. Boy, that museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out. I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked.
I passed by this playground and stopped and watched a couple of very tiny kids on a seesaw. One of them was sort of fat, and I put my hand on the skinny kid's end, to sort of even up the weight, but you could tell they didn't want me around, so I let them alone.
Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I wouldn't have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn't appeal to me--and here I'd walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it and all. If Phoebe'd been there, I probably would have, but she wasn't. So all I did, in front of the museum, was get a cab and go down to the Biltmore. I didn't feel much like going. I'd made that damn date with Sally, though.
17
I was way early when I got there, so I just sat down on one of those leather couches right near the clock in the lobby and watched the girls. A lot of schools were home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates to show up. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring--But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. When I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed for about two months with this boy, Harris Mackim. He was very intelligent and all, but he was one of the biggest bores I ever met. He had one of these very raspy voices, and he never stopped talking, practically. He never stopped talking, and what was awful was, he never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place. But he could do one thing. The sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard. He'd be making his bed, or hanging up stuff in the closet--he was always hanging up stuff in the closet--it drove me crazy--and he'd be whistling while he did it, if he wasn't talking in this raspy voice. He could even whistle classical stuff, but most of the time he just whistled jazz. He could take something very jazzy, like "Tin Roof Blues," and whistle it so nice and easy--right while he was hanging stuff up in the closet--that it could kill you. Naturally, I never told him I thought he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, "You're a terrific whistler." But I roomed with him for about two whole months, even though he bored me till I was half crazy, just because he was such a terrific whistler, the best I ever heard. So I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.
Finally, old Sally started coming up the stairs, and I started down to meet her. She looked terrific. She really did. She had on this black coat and sort of a black beret. She hardly ever wore a hat, but that beret looked nice. The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. I'm crazy. I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it.
"Holden!" she said. "It's marvelous to see you! It's been ages." She had one of these very loud, embarrassing voices when you met her somewhere. She got away with it because she was so damn good-looking, but it always gave me a pain in the ass.
"Swell to see you," I said. I meant it, too. "How are ya, anyway?"
"Absolutely marvelous. Am I late?"
I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late--that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody. "We better hurry," I said. "The show starts at two-forty." We started going down the stairs to where the taxis are.
"What are we going to see?" she said.
"I don't know. The Lunts. It's all I could get tickets for."
"The Lunts! Oh, marvelous!" I told you she'd go mad when she heard it was for the Lunts.
We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater. At first she didn't want to, because she had her lipstick on and all, but I was being seductive as hell and she didn't have any alternative. Twice, when the goddam cab stopped short in traffic, I damn near fell off the seat. Those damn drivers never even look where they're going, I swear they don't. Then, just to show you how crazy I am, when we were coming out of this big clinch, I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.
"Oh, darling, I love you too," she said. Then, right in the same damn breath, she said, "Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Crew cuts are getting corny. And your hair's so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The show wasn't as bad as some I've seen. It was on the crappy side, though. It was about five hundred thousand years in the life of this one old couple. It starts out when they're young and all, and the girl's parents don't want her to marry the boy, but she marries him anyway. Then they keep getting older and older. The husband goes to war, and the wife has this brother that's a drunkard. I couldn't get very interested. I mean I didn't care too much when anybody in the family died or anything. They were all just a bunch of actors. The husband and wife were a pretty nice old couple--very witty and all--but I couldn't get too interested in them. For one thing, they kept drinking tea or some goddam thing all through the play. Every time you saw them, some butler was shoving some tea in front of them, or the wife was pouring it for somebody. And everybody kept coming in and going out all the time--you got dizzy watching people sit down and stand up. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple, and they were very good, but I didn't like them much. They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good. When one of them got finished making a speech, the other one said something very fast right after it. It was supposed to be like people really talking and interrupting each other and all. The trouble was, it was too much like people talking and interrupting each other. They acted a little bit the way old Ernie, down in the Village, plays the piano. If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more. But anyway, they were the only ones in the show--the Lunts, I mean--that looked like they had any real brains. I have to admit it.
At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were. Some dopey movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette. I don't know his name, but he always plays the part of a guy in a war movie that gets yellow before it's time to go over the top. He was with some gorgeous blonde, and the two of them were trying to be very blasé and all, like as if he didn't even know people were looking at him. Modest as hell. I got a big bang out of it. Old Sally didn't talk much, except to rave about the Lunts, because she was busy rubbering and being charming. Then all of a sudden, she saw some jerk she knew on the other side of the lobby. Some guy in one of those very dark gray flannel suits and one of those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal. He was standing next to the wall, smoking himself to death and looking bored as hell. Old Sally kept saying, "I know that boy from somewhere." She always knew somebody, any place you took her, or thought she did. She kept saying that till I got bored as hell, and I said to her, "Why don't you go on over and give him a big soul kiss, if you know him? He'll enjoy it." She got sore when I said that. Finally, though, the jerk noticed her and came over and said hello. You should've seen the way they said hello. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other in twenty years. You'd have thought they'd taken baths in the same bathtub or something when they were little kids. Old buddyroos. It was nauseating. The funny part was, they probably met each other just once, at some phony party. Finally, when they were all done slobbering around, old Sally introduced us. His name was George something--I don't even remember--and he went to Andover. Big, big deal. You should've seen him when old Sally asked him how he liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady's foot behind him. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. Angels. For Chrissake. Angels. That killed me. Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life. They both kept thinking of places as fast as they could, then they'd think of somebody that lived there and mention their name. I was all set to puke when it was time to go sit down again. I really was. And then, when the next act was over, they continued their goddam boring conversation. They kept thinking of more places and more names of people that lived there. The worst part was, the jerk had one of those very phony, Ivy League voices, one of those very tired, snobby voices. He sounded just like a girl. He didn't hesitate to horn in on my date, the bastard. I even thought for a minute that he was going to get in the goddam cab with us when the show was over, because he walked about two blocks with us, but he had to meet a bunch of phonies for cocktails, he said. I could see them all sitting around in some bar, with their goddam checkered vests, criticizing shows and books and women in those tired, snobby voices. They kill me, those guys.
I sort of hated old Sally by the time we got in the cab, after listening to that phony Andover bastard for about ten hours. I was all set to take her home and all--I really was--but she said, "I have a marvelous idea!" She was always having a marvelous idea. "Listen," she said. "What time do you have to be home for dinner? I mean are you in a terrible hurry or anything? Do you have to be home any special time?"
"Me? No. No special time," I said. Truer word was never spoken, boy. "Why?"
"Let's go ice-skating at Radio City!"
That's the kind of ideas she always had.
"Ice-skating at Radio City? You mean right now?"
"Just for an hour or so. Don't you want to? If you don't want to--"
"I didn't say I didn't want to," I said. "Sure. If you want to."
"Do you mean it? Don't just say it if you don't mean it. I mean I don't give a darn, one way or the other."
Not much she didn't.
"You can rent those darling little skating skirts," old Sally said. "Jeannette Cultz did it last week."
That's why she was so hot to go. She wanted to see herself in one of those little skirts that just come down over their butt and all.
So we went, and after they gave us our skates, they gave Sally this little blue butt-twitcher of a dress to wear. She really did look damn good in it, though. I save to admit it. And don't think she didn't know it. The kept walking ahead of me, so that I'd see how cute her little ass looked. It did look pretty cute, too. I have to admit it.
The funny part was, though, we were the worst skaters on the whole goddam rink. I mean the worst. And there were some lulus, too. Old Sally's ankles kept bending in till they were practically on the ice. They not only looked stupid as hell, but they probably hurt like hell, too. I know mine did. Mine were killing me. We must've looked gorgeous. And what made it worse, there were at least a couple of hundred rubbernecks that didn't have anything better to do than stand around and watch everybody falling all over themselves.
"Do you want to get a table inside and have a drink or something?" I said to her finally.
"That's the most marvelous idea you've had all day," the said. She was killing herself. It was brutal. I really felt sorry for her.
We took off our goddam skates and went inside this bar where you can get drinks and watch the skaters in just your stocking feet. As soon as we sat down, old Sally took off her gloves, and I gave her a cigarette. She wasn't looking too happy. The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for her--she didn't drink--and a Scotch and soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't bring me one, so I had a Coke, too. Then I sort of started lighting matches. I do that quite a lot when I'm in a certain mood. I sort of let them burn down till I can't hold them any more, then I drop them in the ashtray. It's a nervous habit.
Then all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, old Sally said, "Look. I have to know. Are you or aren't you coming over to help me trim the tree Christmas Eve? I have to know." She was still being snotty on account of her ankles when she was skating.
"I wrote you I would. You've asked me that about twenty times. Sure, I am."
"I mean I have to know," she said. She started looking all around the goddam room.
All of a sudden I quit lighting matches, and sort of leaned nearer to her over the table. I had quite a few topics on my mind. "Hey, Sally," I said.
"What?" she said. She was looking at some girl on the other side of the room.
"Did you ever get fed up?" I said. "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school, and all that stuff?"
"It's a terrific bore."
"I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean."
"Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to--"
"Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always--"
"Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't even shouting.
"Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least--"
"I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one--"
"You know something?" I said. "You're probably the only reason I'm in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically."
"You're sweet," she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject.
"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent--"
"Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school than that."
"I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddam point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape."
"You certainly are."
Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea.
"Look," I said. "Here's my idea. How would you like to get the hell out of here? Here's my idea. I know this guy down in Greenwich Village that we can borrow his car for a couple of weeks. He used to go to the same school I did and he still owes me ten bucks. What we could do is, tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont, and all around there, see. It's beautiful as hell up there, It really is." I was getting excited as hell, the more I thought of it, and I sort of reached over and took old Sally's goddam hand. What a goddam fool I was. "No kidding," I said. "I have about a hundred and eighty bucks in the bank. I can take it out when it opens in the morning, and then I could go down and get this guy's car. No kidding. We'll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till the dough runs out. Then, when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something. I could chop all our own wood in the wintertime and all. Honest to God, we could have a terrific time! Wuddaya say? C'mon! Wuddaya say? Will you do it with me? Please!"
"You can't just do something like that," old Sally said. She sounded sore as hell.
"Why not? Why the hell not?"
"Stop screaming at me, please," she said. Which was crap, because I wasn't even screaming at her.
"Why can'tcha? Why not?"
"Because you can't, that's all. In the first place, we're both practically children. And did you ever stop to think what you'd do if you didn't get a job when your money ran out? We'd starve to death. The whole thing's so fantastic, it isn't even--"
"It isn't fantastic. I'd get a job. Don't worry about that. You don't have to worry about that. What's the matter? Don't you want to go with me? Say so, if you don't."
"It isn't that. It isn't that at all," old Sally said. I was beginning to hate her, in a way. "We'll have oodles of time to do those things--all those things. I mean after you go to college and all, and if we should get married and all. There'll be oodles of marvelous places to go to. You're just--"
"No, there wouldn't be. There wouldn't be oodles of places to go to at all. It'd be entirely different," I said. I was getting depressed as hell again.
"What?" she said. "I can't hear you. One minute you scream at me, and the next you--"
"I said no, there wouldn't be marvelous places to go to after I went to college and all. Open your ears. It'd be entirely different. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to phone up everybody and tell 'em good-by and send 'em postcards from hotels and all. And I'd be working in some office, making a lot of dough, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers, and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupid shorts and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It wouldn't be the same at all. You don't see what I mean at all."
"Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each other's guts by that time. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started it.
"C'mon, let's get outa here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth."
Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that. I know I shouldn't've said it, and I probably wouldn't've ordinarily, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I never say crude things like that to girls. Boy, did she hit the ceiling. I apologized like a madman, but she wouldn't accept my apology. She was even crying. Which scared me a little bit, because I was a little afraid she'd go home and tell her father I called her a pain in the ass. Her father was one of those big silent bastards, and he wasn't too crazy about me anyhow. He once told old Sally I was too goddam noisy.
"No kidding. I'm sorry," I kept telling her.
"You're sorry. You're sorry. That's very funny," she said. She was still sort of crying, and all of a sudden I did feel sort of sorry I'd said it.
"C'mon, I'll take ya home. No kidding."
"I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home, you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my entire life."
The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a sudden I did something I shouldn't have. I laughed. And I have one of these very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
I stuck around for a while, apologizing and trying to get her to excuse me, but she wouldn't. She kept telling me to go away and leave her alone. So finally I did it. I went inside and got my shoes and stuff, and left without her. I shouldn't've, but I was pretty goddam fed up by that time.
If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with her. I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all. I probably wouldn't've taken her even if she'd wanted to go with me. She wouldn't have been anybody to go with. The terrible part, though, is that I meant it when I asked her. That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
18
When I left the skating rink I felt sort of hungry, so I went in this drugstore and had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted, and then I went in a phone booth. I thought maybe I might give old Jane another buzz and see if she was home yet. I mean I had the whole evening free, and I thought I'd give her a buzz and, if she was home yet, take her dancing or something somewhere. I never danced with her or anything the whole time I knew her. I saw her dancing once, though. She looked like a very good dancer. It was at this Fourth of July dance at the club. I didn't know her too well then, and I didn't think I ought to cut in on her date. She was dating this terrible guy, Al Pike, that went to Choate. I didn't know him too well, but he was always hanging around the swimming pool. He wore those white Lastex kind of swimming trunks, and he was always going off the high dive. He did the same lousy old half gainer all day long. It was the only dive he could do, but he thought he was very hot stuff. All muscles and no brains. Anyway, that's who Jane dated that night. I couldn't understand it. I swear I couldn't. After we started going around together, I asked her how come she could date a showoff bastard like Al Pike. Jane said he wasn't a show-off. She said he had an inferiority complex. She acted like she felt sorry for him or something, and she wasn't just putting it on. She meant it. It's a funny thing about girls. Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard--very mean, or very conceited and all--and when you mention it to the girl, she'll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn't keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion. Girls. You never know what they're going to think. I once got this girl Roberta Walsh's roommate a date with a friend of mine. His name was Bob Robinson and he really had an inferiority complex. You could tell he was very ashamed of his parents and all, because they said "he don't" and "she don't" and stuff like that and they weren't very wealthy. But he wasn't a bastard or anything. He was a very nice guy. But this Roberta Walsh's roommate didn't like him at all. She told Roberta he was too conceited--and the reason she thought he was conceited was because he happened to mention to her that he was captain of the debating team. A little thing like that, and she thought he was conceited! The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.
Anyway, I gave old Jane a buzz again, but her phone didn't answer, so I had to hang up. Then I had to look through my address book to see who the hell might be available for the evening. The trouble was, though, my address book only has about three people in it. Jane, and this man, Mr. Antolini, that was my teacher at Elkton Hills, and my father's office number. I keep forgetting to put people's names in. So what I did finally, I gave old Carl Luce a buzz. He graduated from the Whooton School after I left. He was about three years older than I was, and I didn't like him too much, but he was one of these very intellectual guys-- he had the highest I.Q. of any boy at Whooton--and I thought he might want to have dinner with me somewhere and have a slightly intellectual conversation. He was very enlightening sometimes. So I gave him a buzz. He went to Columbia now, but he lived on 65th Street and all, and I knew he'd be home. When I got him on the phone, he said he couldn't make it for dinner but that he'd meet me for a drink at ten o'clock at the Wicker Bar, on 54th. I think he was pretty surprised to hear from me. I once called him a fat-assed phony.
I had quite a bit of time to kill till ten o'clock, so what I did, I went to the movies at Radio City. It was probably the worst thing I could've done, but it was near, and I couldn't think of anything else.
I came in when the goddam stage show was on. The Rockettes were kicking their heads off, the way they do when they're all in line with their arms around each other's waist. The audience applauded like mad, and some guy behind me kept saying to his wife, "You know what that is? That's precision." He killed me. Then, after the Rockettes, a guy came out in a tuxedo and roller skates on, and started skating under a bunch of little tables, and telling jokes while he did it. He was a very good skater and all, but I couldn't enjoy it much because I kept picturing him practicing to be a guy that roller-skates on the stage. It seemed so stupid. I guess I just wasn't in the right mood. Then, after him, they had this Christmas thing they have at Radio City every year. All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them--thousands of them--singing "Come All Ye Faithful!" like mad. Big deal. It's supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they were all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette or something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it--all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy that plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. I've watched that guy since I was about eight years old. My brother Allie and I, if we were with our parents and all, we used to move our seats and go way down so we could watch him. He's the best drummer I ever saw. He only gets a chance to bang them a couple of times during a whole piece, but he never looks bored when he isn't doing it. Then when he does bang them, he does it so nice and sweet, with this nervous expression on his face. One time when we went to Washington with my father, Allie sent him a postcard, but I'll bet he never got it. We weren't too sure how to address it.
After the Christmas thing was over, the goddam picture started. It was so putrid I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was about this English guy, Alec something, that was in the war and loses his memory in the hospital and all. He comes out of the hospital carrying a cane and limping all over the place, all over London, not knowing who the hell he is. He's really a duke, but he doesn't know it. Then he meets this nice, homey, sincere girl getting on a bus. Her goddam hat blows off and he catches it, and then they go upstairs and sit down and start talking about Charles Dickens. He's both their favorite author and all. He's carrying this copy of Oliver Twist and so's she. I could've puked. Anyway, they fell in love right away, on account of they're both so nuts about Charles Dickens and all, and he helps her run her publishing business. She's a publisher, the girl. Only, she's not doing so hot, because her brother's a drunkard and he spends all their dough. He's a very bitter guy, the brother, because he was a doctor in the war and now he can't operate any more because his nerves are shot, so he boozes all the time, but he's pretty witty and all. Anyway, old Alec writes a book, and this girl publishes it, and they both make a hatful of dough on it. They're all set to get married when this other girl, old Marcia, shows up. Marcia was Alec's fiancée before he lost his memory, and she recognizes him when he's in this store autographing books. She tells old Alec he's really a duke and all, but he doesn't believe her and doesn't want to go with her to visit his mother and all. His mother's blind as a bat. But the other girl, the homey one, makes him go. She's very noble and all. So he goes. But he still doesn't get his memory back, even when his great Dane jumps all over him and his mother sticks her fingers all over his face and brings him this teddy bear he used to slobber around with when he was a kid. But then, one day, some kids are playing cricket on the lawn and he gets smacked in the head with a cricket ball. Then right away he gets his goddam memory back and he goes in and kisses his mother on the forehead and all. Then he starts being a regular duke again, and he forgets all about the homey babe that has the publishing business. I'd tell you the rest of the story, but I might puke if I did. It isn't that I'd spoil it for you or anything. There isn't anything to spoil for Chrissake. Anyway, it ends up with Alec and the homey babe getting married, and the brother that's a drunkard gets his nerves back and operates on Alec's mother so she can see again, and then the drunken brother and old Marcia go for each other. It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought it was a male, I suppose, or some goddam thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself.
The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You'd have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn't. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.
After the movie was over, I started walking down to the Wicker Bar, where I was supposed to meet old Carl Luce, and while I walked I sort of thought about war and all. Those war movies always do that to me. I don't think I could stand it if I had to go to war. I really couldn't. It wouldn't be too bad if they'd just take you out and shoot you or something, but you have to stay in the Army so goddam long. That's the whole trouble. My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddam years. He was in the war, too--he landed on D-Day and all--but I really think he hated the Army worse than the war. I was practically a child at the time, but I remember when he used to come home on furlough and all, all he did was lie on his bed, practically. He hardly ever even came in the living room. Later, when he went overseas and was in the war and all, he didn't get wounded or anything and he didn't have to shoot anybody. All he had to do was drive some cowboy general around all day in a command car. He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were. I remember Allie once asked him wasn't it sort of good that he was in the war because he was a writer and it gave him a lot to write about and all. He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then he asked him who was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickinson. Allie said Emily Dickinson. I don't know too much about it myself, because I don't read much poetry, but I do know it'd drive me crazy if I had to be in the Army and be with a bunch of guys like Ackley and Stradlater and old Maurice all the time, marching with them and all. I was in the Boy Scouts once, for about a week, and I couldn't even stand looking at the back of the guy's neck in front of me. They kept telling you to look at the back of the guy's neck in front of you. I swear if there's ever another war, they better just take me out and stick me in front of a firing squad. I wouldn't object. What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That's what I can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don't see how he could like a phony book like that and still like that one by Ring Lardner, or that other one he's so crazy about, The Great Gatsby. D.B. got sore when I said that, and said I was too young and all to appreciate it, but I don't think so. I told him I liked Ring Lardner and The Great Gatsby and all. I did, too. I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
19
In case you don't live in New York, the Wicker Bar is in this sort of swanky hotel, the Seton Hotel. I used to go there quite a lot, but I don't any more. I gradually cut it out. It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window. They used to have these two French babes, Tina and Janine, come out and play the piano and sing about three times every night. One of them played the piano--strictly lousy--and the other one sang, and most of the songs were either pretty dirty or in French. The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the goddam microphone before she sang. She'd say, "And now we like to geeve you our impression of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of a leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet." Then, when she was all done whispering and being cute as hell, she'd sing some dopey song, half in English and half in French, and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy. If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did. The bartender was a louse, too. He was a big snob. He didn't talk to you at all hardly unless you were a big shot or a celebrity or something. If you were a big shot or a celebrity or something, then he was even more nauseating. He'd go up to you and say, with this big charming smile, like he was a helluva swell guy if you knew him, "Well! How's Connecticut?" or "How's Florida?" It was a terrible place, I'm not kidding. I cut out going there entirely, gradually.
It was pretty early when I got there. I sat down at the bar--it was pretty crowded--and had a couple of Scotch and sodas before old Luce even showed up. I stood up when I ordered them so they could see how tall I was and all and not think I was a goddam minor. Then I watched the phonies for a while. Some guy next to me was snowing hell out of the babe he was with. He kept telling her she had aristocratic hands. That killed me. The other end of the bar was full of flits. They weren't too flitty-looking--I mean they didn't have their hair too long or anything--but you could tell they were flits anyway. Finally old Luce showed up.
Old Luce. What a guy. He was supposed to be my Student Adviser when I was at Whooton. The only thing he ever did, though, was give these sex talks and all, late at night when there was a bunch of guys in his room. He knew quite a bit about sex, especially perverts and all. He was always telling us about a lot of creepy guys that go around having affairs with sheep, and guys that go around with girls' pants sewed in the lining of their hats and all. And flits and Lesbians. Old Luce knew who every flit and Lesbian in the United States was. All you had to do was mention somebody--anybody--and old Luce'd tell you if he was a flit or not. Sometimes it was hard to believe, the people he said were flits and Lesbians and all, movie actors and like that. Some of the ones he said were flits were even married, for God's sake. You'd keep saying to him, "You mean Joe Blow's a flit? Joe Blow? That big, tough guy that plays gangsters and cowboys all the time?" Old Luce'd say, "Certainly." He was always saying "Certainly." He said it didn't matter if a guy was married or not. He said half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it. He said you could turn into one practically overnight, if you had all the traits and all. He used to scare the hell out of us. I kept waiting to turn into a flit or something. The funny thing about old Luce, I used to think he was sort of flitty himself, in a way. He was always saying, "Try this for size," and then he'd goose the hell out of you while you were going down the corridor. And whenever he went to the can, he always left the goddam door open and talked to you while you were brushing your teeth or something. That stuff's sort of flitty. It really is. I've known quite a few real flits, at schools and all, and they're always doing stuff like that, and that's why I always had my doubts about old Luce. He was a pretty intelligent guy, though. He really was.
He never said hello or anything when he met you. The first thing he said when he sat down was that he could only stay a couple of minutes. He said he had a date. Then he ordered a dry Martini. He told the bartender to make it very dry, and no olive.
"Hey, I got a flit for you," I told him. "At the end of the bar. Don't look now. I been saving him for ya."
"Very funny," he said. "Same old Caulfield. When are you going to grow up?"
I bored him a lot. I really did. He amused me, though. He was one of those guys that sort of amuse me a lot.
"How's your sex life?" I asked him. He hated you to ask him stuff like that.
"Relax," he said. "Just sit back and relax, for Chrissake."
"I'm relaxed," I said. "How's Columbia? Ya like it?"
"Certainly I like it. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have gone there," he said. He could be pretty boring himself sometimes.
"What're you majoring in?" I asked him. "Perverts?" I was only horsing around.
"What're you trying to be--funny?"
"No. I'm only kidding," I said. "Listen, hey, Luce. You're one of these intellectual guys. I need your advice. I'm in a terrific--"
He let out this big groan on me. "Listen, Caulfield. If you want to sit here and have a quiet, peaceful drink and a quiet, peaceful conver--"
"All right, all right," I said. "Relax." You could tell he didn't feel like discussing anything serious with me. That's the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it. So all I did was, I started discussing topics in general with him. "No kidding, how's your sex life?" I asked him. "You still going around with that same babe you used to at Whooton? The one with the terrffic--"
"Good God, no," he said.
"How come? What happened to her?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. For all I know, since you ask, she's probably the Whore of New Hampshire by this time."
"That isn't nice. If she was decent enough to let you get sexy with her all the time, you at least shouldn't talk about her that way."
"Oh, God!" old Luce said. "Is this going to be a typical Caulfield conversation? I want to know right now."
"No," I said, "but it isn't nice anyway. If she was decent and nice enough to let you--"
"Must we pursue this horrible trend of thought?"
I didn't say anything. I was sort of afraid he'd get up and leave on me if I didn't shut up. So all I did was, I ordered another drink. I felt like getting stinking drunk.
"Who're you going around with now?" I asked him. "You feel like telling me?"
"Nobody you know."
"Yeah, but who? I might know her."
"Girl lives in the Village. Sculptress. If you must know."
"Yeah? No kidding? How old is she?"
"I've never asked her, for God's sake."
"Well, around how old?"
"I should imagine she's in her late thirties," old Luce said.
"In her late thirties? Yeah? You like that?" I asked him. "You like 'em that old?" The reason I was asking was because he really knew quite a bit about sex and all. He was one of the few guys I knew that did. He lost his virginity when he was only fourteen, in Nantucket. He really did.
"I like a mature person, if that's what you mean. Certainly."
"You do? Why? No kidding, they better for sex and all?"
"Listen. Let's get one thing straight. I refuse to answer any typical Caulfield questions tonight. When in hell are you going to grow up?"
I didn't say anything for a while. I let it drop for a while. Then old Luce ordered another Martini and told the bartender to make it a lot dryer.
"Listen. How long you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?"
"Hardly. She just arrived in this country a few months ago."
"She did? Where's she from?"
"She happens to be from Shanghai."
"No kidding! She Chinese, for Chrissake?"
"Obviously."
"No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?"
"Obviously."
"Why? I'd be interested to know--I really would."
"I simply happen to find Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask."
"You do? Wuddaya mean 'philosophy'? Ya mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China? That what you mean?"
"Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this inane conversation?"
"Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?"
"It's too involved to go into, for God's sake," old Luce said. "They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and a spiritual experience. If you think I'm--"
"So do I! So do I regard it as a wuddayacallit--a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really do. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with somebody I don't even--"
"Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice down, let's drop the whole--"
"All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking a little too loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual, and artistic and all. But what I mean is, you can't do it with everybody--every girl you neck with and all--and make it come out that way. Can you?"
"Let's drop it," old Luce said. "Do you mind?"
"All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?"
"Drop it, I said."
I was getting a little too personal. I realize that. But that was one of the annoying things about Luce. When we were at Whooton, he'd make you describe the most personal stuff that happened to you, but if you started asking him questions about himself, he got sore. These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing. They always want you to shut up when they shut up, and go back to your room when they go back to their room. When I was at Whooton old Luce used to hate it--you really could tell he did--when after he was finished giving his sex talk to a bunch of us in his room we stuck around and chewed the fat by ourselves for a while. I mean the other guys and myself. In somebody else's room. Old Luce hated that. He always wanted everybody to go back to their own room and shut up when he was finished being the big shot. The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody'd say something smarter than he had. He really amused me.
"Maybe I'll go to China. My sex life is lousy," I said.
"Naturally. Your mind is immature."
"It is. It really is. I know it," I said. "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy--I mean really sexy--with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks."
"Naturally it does, for God's sake. I told you the last time I saw you what you need."
"You mean to go to a psychoanalyst and all?" I said. That's what he'd told me I ought to do. His father was a psychoanalyst and all.
"It's up to you, for God's sake. It's none of my goddam business what you do with your life."
I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking.
"Supposing I went to your father and had him psychoanalyze me and all," I said. "What would he do to me? I mean what would he do to me?"
"He wouldn't do a goddam thing to you. He'd simply talk to you, and you'd talk to him, for God's sake. For one thing, he'd help you to recognize the patterns of your mind."
"The what?"
"The patterns of your mind. Your mind runs in-- Listen. I'm not giving an elementary course in psychoanalysis. If you're interested, call him up and make an appointment. If you're not, don't. I couldn't care less, frankly."
I put my hand on his shoulder. Boy, he amused me. "You're a real friendly bastard," I told him. "You know that?"
He was looking at his wrist watch. "I have to tear," he said, and stood up. "Nice seeing you." He got the bartender and told him to bring him his check.
"Hey," I said, just before he beat it. "Did your father ever psychoanalyze you?"
"Me? Why do you ask?"
"No reason. Did he, though? Has he?"
"Not exactly. He's helped me to adjust myself to a certain extent, but an extensive analysis hasn't been necessary. Why do you ask?"
"No reason. I was just wondering."
"Well. Take it easy," he said. He was leaving his tip and all and he was starting to go.
"Have just one more drink," I told him. "Please. I'm lonesome as hell. No kidding."
He said he couldn't do it, though. He said he was late now, and then he left.
Old Luce. He was strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly had a good vocabulary. He had the largest vocabulary of any boy at Whooton when I was there. They gave us a test.
20
I kept sitting there getting drunk and waiting for old Tina and Janine to come out and do their stuff, but they weren't there. A flitty-looking guy with wavy hair came out and played the piano, and then this new babe, Valencia, came out and sang. She wasn't any good, but she was better than old Tina and Janine, and at least she sang good songs. The piano was right next to the bar where I was sitting and all, and old Valencia was standing practically right next to me. I sort of gave her the old eye, but she pretended she didn't even see me. I probably wouldn't have done it, but I was getting drunk as hell. When she was finished, she beat it out of the room so fast I didn't even get a chance to invite her to join me for a drink, so I called the headwaiter over. I told him to ask old Valencia if she'd care to join me for a drink. He said he would, but he probably didn't even give her my message. People never give your message to anybody.
Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I could hardly see straight. The one thing I did, though, I was careful as hell not to get boisterous or anything. I didn't want anybody to notice me or anything or ask how old I was. But, boy, I could hardly see straight. When I was really drunk, I started that stupid business with the bullet in my guts again. I was the only guy at the bar with a bullet in their guts. I kept putting my hand under my jacket, on my stomach and all, to keep the blood from dripping all over the place. I didn't want anybody to know I was even wounded. I was concealing the fact that I was a wounded sonuvabitch. Finally what I felt like, I felt like giving old Jane a buzz and see if she was home yet. So I paid my check and all. Then I left the bar and went out where the telephones were. I kept keeping my hand under my jacket to keep the blood from dripping. Boy, was I drunk.
But when I got inside this phone booth, I wasn't much in the mood any more to give old Jane a buzz. I was too drunk, I guess. So what I did, I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz.
I had to dial about twenty numbers before I got the right one. Boy, was I blind.
"Hello," I said when somebody answered the goddam phone. I sort of yelled it, I was so drunk.
"Who is this?" this very cold lady's voice said.
"This is me. Holden Caulfield. Lemme speaka Sally, please."
"Sally's asleep. This is Sally's grandmother. Why are you calling at this hour, Holden? Do you know what time it is?"
"Yeah. Wanna talka Sally. Very important. Put her on."
"Sally's asleep, young man. Call her tomorrow. Good night."
"Wake 'er up! Wake 'er up, hey. Attaboy."
Then there was a different voice. "Holden, this is me." It was old Sally. "What's the big idea?"
"Sally? That you?"
"Yes--stop screaming. Are you drunk?"
"Yeah. Listen. Listen, hey. I'll come over Christmas Eve. Okay? Trimma goddarn tree for ya. Okay? Okay, hey, Sally?"
"Yes. You're drunk. Go to bed now. Where are you? Who's with you?"
"Sally? I'll come over and trimma tree for ya, okay? Okay, hey?"
"Yes. Go to bed now. Where are you? Who's with you?"
"Nobody. Me, myself and I." Boy was I drunk! I was even still holding onto my guts. "They got me. Rocky's mob got me. You know that? Sally, you know that?"
"I can't hear you. Go to bed now. I have to go. Call me tomorrow."
"Hey, Sally! You want me trimma tree for ya? Ya want me to? Huh?"
"Yes. Good night. Go home and go to bed."
She hung up on me.
"G'night. G'night, Sally baby. Sally sweetheart darling," I said. Can you imagine how drunk I was? I hung up too, then. I figured she probably just came home from a date. I pictured her out with the Lunts and all somewhere, and that Andover jerk. All of them swimming around in a goddam pot of tea and saying sophisticated stuff to each other and being charming and phony. I wished to God I hadn't even phoned her. When I'm drunk, I'm a madman.
I stayed in the damn phone booth for quite a while. I kept holding onto the phone, sort of, so I wouldn't pass out. I wasn't feeling too marvelous, to tell you the truth. Finally, though, I came out and went in the men's room, staggering around like a moron, and filled one of the washbowls with cold water. Then I dunked my head in it, right up to the ears. I didn't even bother to dry it or anything. I just let the sonuvabitch drip. Then I walked over to this radiator by the window and sat down on it. It was nice and warm. It felt good because I was shivering like a bastard. It's a funny thing, I always shiver like hell when I'm drunk.
I didn't have anything else to do, so I kept sitting on the radiator and counting these little white squares on the floor. I was getting soaked. About a gallon of water was dripping down my neck, getting all over my collar and tie and all, but I didn't give a damn. I was too drunk to give a damn. Then, pretty soon, the guy that played the piano for old Valencia, this very wavyhaired, flitty-looking guy, came in to comb his golden locks. We sort of struck up a conversation while he was combing it, except that he wasn't too goddam friendly.
"Hey. You gonna see that Valencia babe when you go back in the bar?" I asked him.
"It's highly probable," he said. Witty bastard. All I ever meet is witty bastards.
"Listen. Give her my compliments. Ask her if that goddam waiter gave her my message, willya?"
"Why don't you go home, Mac? How old are you, anyway?"
"Eighty-six. Listen. Give her my compliments. Okay?"
"Why don't you go home, Mac?"
"Not me. Boy, you can play that goddam piano." I told him. I was just flattering him. He played the piano stinking, if you want to know the truth. "You oughta go on the radio," I said. "Handsome chap like you. All those goddam golden locks. Ya need a manager?"
"Go home, Mac, like a good guy. Go home and hit the sack."
"No home to go to. No kidding--you need a manager?"
He didn't answer me. He just went out. He was all through combing his hair and patting it and all, so he left. Like Stradlater. All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.
When I finally got down off the radiator and went out to the hat-check room, I was crying and all. I don't know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome. Then, when I went out to the checkroom, I couldn't find my goddam check. The hat-check girl was very nice about it, though. She gave me my coat anyway. And my "Little Shirley Beans" record--I still had it with me and all. I gave her a buck for being so nice, but she wouldn't take it. She kept telling me to go home and go to bed. I sort of tried to make a date with her for when she got through working, but she wouldn't do it. She said she was old enough to be my mother and all. I showed her my goddam gray hair and told her I was forty-two--I was only horsing around, naturally. She was nice, though. I showed her my goddam red hunting hat, and she liked it. She made me put it on before I went out, because my hair was still pretty wet. She was all right.
I didn't feel too drunk any more when I went outside, but it was getting very cold out again, and my teeth started chattering like hell. I couldn't make them stop. I walked over to Madison Avenue and started to wait around for a bus because I didn't have hardly any money left and I had to start economizing on cabs and all. But I didn't feel like getting on a damn bus. And besides, I didn't even know where I was supposed to go. So what I did, I started walking over to the park. I figured I'd go by that little lake and see what the hell the ducks were doing, see if they were around or not, I still didn't know if they were around or not. It wasn't far over to the park, and I didn't have anyplace else special to go to--I didn't even know where I was going to sleep yet--so I went. I wasn't tired or anything. I just felt blue as hell.
Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke-into about fifty pieces. It was in a big envelope and all, but it broke anyway. I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket. They weren't any good for anything, but I didn't feel like just throwing them away. Then I went in the park. Boy, was it dark.
I've lived in New York all my life, and I know Central Park like the back of my hand, because I used to roller-skate there all the time and ride my bike when I was a kid, but I had the most terrific trouble finding that lagoon that night. I knew right where it was--it was right near Central Park South and all--but I still couldn't find it. I must've been drunker than I thought. I kept walking and walking, and it kept getting darker and darker and spookier and spookier. I didn't see one person the whole time I was in the park. I'm just as glad. I probably would've jumped about a mile if I had. Then, finally, I found it. What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen. But I didn't see any ducks around. I walked all around the whole damn lake--I damn near fell in once, in fact--but I didn't see a single duck. I thought maybe if there were any around, they might be asleep or something near the edge of the water, near the grass and all. That's how I nearly fell in. But I couldn't find any.
Finally I sat down on this bench, where it wasn't so goddam dark. Boy, I was still shivering like a bastard, and the back of my hair, even though I had my hunting hat on, was sort of full of little hunks of ice. That worried me. I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. My grandfather from Detroit, that keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddam bus with him, and my aunts--I have about fifty aunts--and all my lousy cousins. What a mob'd be there. They all came when Allie died, the whole goddam stupid bunch of them. I have this one stupid aunt with halitosis that kept saying how peaceful he looked lying there, D.B. told me. I wasn't there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand. Anyway, I kept worrying that I was getting pneumonia, with all those hunks of ice in my hair, and that I was going to die. I felt sorry as hell for my mother and father. Especially my mother, because she still isn't over my brother Allie yet. I kept picturing her not knowing what to do with all my suits and athletic equipment and all. The only good thing, I knew she wouldn't let old Phoebe come to my goddam funeral because she was only a little kid. That was the only good part. Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I certainly don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice--twice--we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner--everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn't there. You didn't know him. If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean. It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
After a while, just to get my mind off getting pneumonia and all, I took out my dough and tried to count it in the lousy light from the street lamp. All I had was three singles and five quarters and a nickel left--boy, I spent a fortune since I left Pencey. Then what I did, I went down near the lagoon and I sort of skipped the quarters and the nickel across it, where it wasn't frozen. I don't know why I did it, but I did it. I guess I thought it'd take my mind off getting pneumonia and dying. It didn't, though.
I started thinking how old Phoebe would feel if I got pneumonia and died. It was a childish way to think, but I couldn't stop myself. She'd feel pretty bad if something like that happened. She likes me a lot. I mean she's quite fond of me. She really is. Anyway, I couldn't get that off my mind, so finally what I figured I'd do, I figured I'd better sneak home and see her, in case I died and all. I had my door key with me and all, and I figured what I'd do, I'd sneak in the apartment, very quiet and all, and just sort of chew the fat with her for a while. The only thing that worried me was our front door. It creaks like a bastard. It's a pretty old apartment house, and the superintendent's a lazy bastard, and everything creaks and squeaks. I was afraid my parents might hear me sneaking in. But I decided I'd try it anyhow.
So I got the hell out of the park, and went home. I walked all the way. It wasn't too far, and I wasn't tired or even drunk any more. It was just very cold and nobody around anywhere.
21
The best break I had in years, when I got home the regular night elevator boy, Pete, wasn't on the car. Some new guy I'd never seen was on the car, so I figured that if I didn't bump smack into my parents and all I'd be able to say hello to old Phoebe and then beat it and nobody'd even know I'd been around. It was really a terrific break. What made it even better, the new elevator boy was sort of on the stupid side. I told him, in this very casual voice, to take me up to the Dicksteins'. The Dicksteins were these people that had the other apartment on our floor. I'd already taken off my hunting hat, so as not to look suspicious or anything. I went in the elevator like I was in a terrific hurry.
He had the elevator doors all shut and all, and was all set to take me up, and then he turned around and said, "They ain't in. They're at a party on the fourteenth floor."
"That's all right," I said. "I'm supposed to wait for them. I'm their nephew."
He gave me this sort of stupid, suspicious look. "You better wait in the lobby, fella," he said.
"I'd like to--I really would," I said. "But I have a bad leg. I have to hold it in a certain position. I think I'd better sit down in the chair outside their door."
He didn't know what the hell I was talking about, so all he said was "Oh" and took me up. Not bad, boy. It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
I got off at our floor--limping like a bastard--and started walking over toward the Dicksteins' side. Then, when I heard the elevator doors shut, I turned around and went over to our side. I was doing all right. I didn't even feel drunk anymore. Then I took out my door key and opened our door, quiet as hell. Then, very, very carefully and all, I went inside and closed the door. I really should've been a crook.
It was dark as hell in the foyer, naturally, and naturally I couldn't turn on any lights. I had to be careful not to bump into anything and make a racket. I certainly knew I was home, though. Our foyer has a funny smell that doesn't smell like anyplace else. I don't know what the hell it is. It isn't cauliflower and it isn't perfume--I don't know what the hell it is--but you always know you're home. I started to take off my coat and hang it up in the foyer closet, but that closet's full of hangers that rattle like madmen when you open the door, so I left it on. Then I started walking very, very slowly back toward old Phoebe's room. I knew the maid wouldn't hear me because she had only one eardrum. She had this brother that stuck a straw down her ear when she was a kid, she once told me. She was pretty deaf and all. But my parents, especially my mother, she has ears like a goddam bloodhound. So I took it very, very easy when I went past their door. I even held my breath, for God's sake. You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. She's nervous as hell. Half the time she's up all night smoking cigarettes.
Finally, after about an hour, I got to old Phoebe's room. She wasn't there, though. I forgot about that. I forgot she always sleeps in D.B.'s room when he's away in Hollywood or some place. She likes it because it's the biggest room in the house. Also because it has this big old madman desk in it that D.B. bought off some lady alcoholic in Philadelphia, and this big, gigantic bed that's about ten miles wide and ten miles long. I don't know where he bought that bed. Anyway, old Phoebe likes to sleep in D.B.'s room when he's away, and he lets her. You ought to see her doing her homework or something at that crazy desk. It's almost as big as the bed. You can hardly see her when she's doing her homework. That's the kind of stuff she likes, though. She doesn't like her own room because it's too little, she says. She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What's old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing.
Anyway, I went into D.B.'s room quiet as hell, and turned on the lamp on the desk. Old Phoebe didn't even wake up. When the light was on and all, I sort of looked at her for a while. She was laying there asleep, with her face sort of on the side of the pillow. She had her mouth way open. It's funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look all right. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look all right.
I went around the room, very quiet and all, looking at stuff for a while. I felt swell, for a change. I didn't even feel like I was getting pneumonia or anything any more. I just felt good, for a change. Old Phoebe's clothes were on this chair right next to the bed. She's very neat, for a child. I mean she doesn't just throw her stuff around, like some kids. She's no slob. She had the jacket to this tan suit my mother bought her in Canada hung up on the back of the chair. Then her blouse and stuff were on the seat. Her shoes and socks were on the floor, right underneath the chair, right next to each other. I never saw the shoes before. They were new. They were these dark brown loafers, sort of like this pair I have, and they went swell with that suit my mother bought her in Canada. My mother dresses her nice. She really does. My mother has terrific taste in some things. She's no good at buying ice skates or anything like that, but clothes, she's perfect. I mean Phoebe always has some dress on that can kill you. You take most little kids, even if their parents are wealthy and all, they usually have some terrible dress on. I wish you could see old Phoebe in that suit my mother bought her in Canada. I'm not kidding.
I sat down on old D.B.'s desk and looked at the stuff on it. It was mostly Phoebe's stuff, from school and all. Mostly books. The one on top was called Arithmetic Is Fun! I sort of opened the first page and took a look at it. This is what old Phoebe had on it:
PHOEBE WEATHERFIELD CAULFIELD
4B-1
That killed me. Her middle name is Josephine, for God's sake, not Weatherfield. She doesn't like it, though. Every time I see her she's got a new middle name for herself.
The book underneath the arithmetic was a geography, and the book under the geography was a speller. She's very good in spelling. She's very good in all her subjects, but she's best in spelling. Then, under the speller, there were a bunch of notebooks. She has about five thousand notebooks. You never saw a kid with so many notebooks. I opened the one on top and looked at the first page. It had on it:
Bernice meet me at recess I have something
very very important to tell you.
That was all there was on that page. The next one had on it:
Why has south eastern Alaska so many caning factories?
Because theres so much salmon
Why has it valuable forests?
because it has the right climate.
What has our government done to make
life easier for the alaskan eskimos?
look it up for tomorrow!!!
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe W. Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield, Esq.
Please pass to Shirley!!!!
Shirley you said you were sagitarius
but your only taurus bring your skates
when you come over to my house
I sat there on D.B.'s desk and read the whole notebook. It didn't take me long, and I can read that kind of stuff, some kid's notebook, Phoebe's or anybody's, all day and all night long. Kid's notebooks kill me. Then I lit another cigarette--it was my last one. I must've smoked about three cartons that day. Then, finally, I woke her up. I mean I couldn't sit there on that desk for the rest of my life, and besides, I was afraid my parents might barge in on me all of a sudden and I wanted to at least say hello to her before they did. So I woke her up.
She wakes up very easily. I mean you don't have to yell at her or anything. All you have to do, practically, is sit down on the bed and say, "Wake up, Phoeb," and bingo, she's awake.
"Holden!" she said right away. She put her arms around my neck and all. She's very affectionate. I mean she's quite affectionate, for a child. Sometimes she's even too affectionate. I sort of gave her a kiss, and she said, "Whenja get home7' She was glad as hell to see me. You could tell.
"Not so loud. Just now. How are ya anyway?"
"I'm fine. Did you get my letter? I wrote you a five-page--"
"Yeah--not so loud. Thanks."
She wrote me this letter. I didn't get a chance to answer it, though. It was all about this play she was in in school. She told me not to make any dates or anything for Friday so that I could come see it.
"How's the play?" I asked her. "What'd you say the name of it was?"
"'A Christmas Pageant for Americans.' It stinks, but I'm Benedict Arnold. I have practically the biggest part," she said. Boy, was she wide-awake. She gets very excited when she tells you that stuff. "It starts out when I'm dying. This ghost comes in on Christmas Eve and asks me if I'm ashamed and everything. You know. For betraying my country and everything. Are you coming to it?" She was sitting way the hell up in the bed and all. "That's what I wrote you about. Are you?"
"Sure I'm coming. Certainly I'm coming."
"Daddy can't come. He has to fly to California," she said. Boy, was she wide-awake. It only takes her about two seconds to get wide-awake. She was sitting--sort of kneeling--way up in bed, and she was holding my goddam hand. "Listen. Mother said you'd be home Wednesday," she said. "She said Wednesday."
"I got out early. Not so loud. You'll wake everybody up."
"What time is it? They won't be home till very late, Mother said. They went to a party in Norwalk, Connecticut," old Phoebe said. "Guess what I did this afternoon! What movie I saw. Guess!"
"I don't know--Listen. Didn't they say what time they'd--"
"The Doctor," old Phoebe said. "It's a special movie they had at the Lister Foundation. Just this one day they had it--today was the only day. It was all about this doctor in Kentucky and everything that sticks a blanket over this child's face that's a cripple and can't walk. Then they send him to jail and everything. It was excellent."
"Listen a second. Didn't they say what time they'd--"
"He feels sorry for it, the doctor. That's why he sticks this blanket over her face and everything and makes her suffocate. Then they make him go to jail for life imprisonment, but this child that he stuck the blanket over its head comes to visit him all the time and thanks him for what he did. He was a mercy killer. Only, he knows he deserves to go to jail because a doctor isn't supposed to take things away from God. This girl in my class's mother took us. Alice Holmborg, She's my best friend. She's the only girl in the whole--"
"Wait a second, willya?" I said. "I'm asking you a question. Did they say what time they'd be back, or didn't they?"
"No, but not till very late. Daddy took the car and everything so they wouldn't have to worry about trains. We have a radio in it now! Except that Mother said nobody can play it when the car's in traffic."
I began to relax, sort of. I mean I finally quit worrying about whether they'd catch me home or not. I figured the hell with it. If they did, they did.
You should've seen old Phoebe. She had on these blue pajamas with red elephants on the collars. Elephants knock her out.
"So it was a good picture, huh?" I said.
"Swell, except Alice had a cold, and her mother kept asking her all the time if she felt grippy. Right in the middle of the picture. Always in the middle of something important, her mother'd lean all over me and everything and ask Alice if she felt grippy. It got on my nerves."
Then I told her about the record. "Listen, I bought you a record," I told her. "Only I broke it on the way home." I took the pieces out of my coat pocket and showed her. "I was plastered," I said.
"Gimme the pieces," she said. "I'm saving them." She took them right out of my hand and then she put them in the drawer of the night table. She kills me.
"D.B. coming home for Christmas?" I asked her.
"He may and he may not, Mother said. It all depends. He may have to stay in Hollywood and write a picture about Annapolis."
"Annapolis, for God's sake!"
"It's a love story and everything. Guess who's going to be in it! What movie star. Guess!"
"I'm not interested. Annapolis, for God's sake. What's D.B. know about Annapolis, for God's sake? What's that got to do with the kind of stories he writes?" I said. Boy, that stuff drives me crazy. That goddam Hollywood. "What'd you do to your arm?" I asked her. I noticed she had this big hunk of adhesive tape on her elbow. The reason I noticed it, her pajamas didn't have any sleeves.
"This boy, Curtis Weintraub, that's in my class, pushed me while I was going down the stairs in the park," she said. "Wanna see?" She started taking the crazy adhesive tape off her arm.
"Leave it alone. Why'd he push you down the stairs?"
"I don't know. I think he hates me," old Phoebe said. "This other girl and me, Selma Atterbury, put ink and stuff all over his windbreaker."
"That isn't nice. What are you--a child, for God's sake?"
"No, but every time I'm in the park, he follows me everywhere. He's always following me. He gets on my nerves."
"He probably likes you. That's no reason to put ink all--"
"I don't want him to like me," she said. Then she started looking at me funny. "Holden," she said, "how come you're not home Wednesday?"
"What?"
Boy, you have to watch her every minute. If you don't think she's smart, you're mad.
"How come you're not home Wednesday?" she asked me. "You didn't get kicked out or anything, did you?"
"I told you. They let us out early. They let the whole--"
"You did get kicked out! You did!" old Phoebe said. Then she hit me on the leg with her fist. She gets very fisty when she feels like it. "You did! Oh, Holden!" She had her hand on her mouth and all. She gets very emotional, I swear to God.
"Who said I got kicked out? Nobody said I--"
"You did. You did," she said. Then she smacked me again with her fist. If you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. "Daddy'll kill you!" she said. Then she flopped on her stomach on the bed and put the goddam pillow over her head. She does that quite frequently. She's a true madman sometimes.
"Cut it out, now," I said. "Nobody's gonna kill me. Nobody's gonna even--C'mon, Phoeb, take that goddam thing off your head. Nobody's gonna kill me."
She wouldn't take it off, though. You can't make her do something if she doesn't want to. All she kept saying was, "Daddy s gonna kill you." You could hardly understand her with that goddam pillow over her head.
"Nobody's gonna kill me. Use your head. In the first place, I'm going away. What I may do, I may get a job on a ranch or something for a while. I know this guy whose grandfather's got a ranch in Colorado. I may get a job out there," I said. "I'll keep in touch with you and all when I'm gone, if I go. C'mon. Take that off your head. C'mon, hey, Phoeb. Please. Please, willya?'
She wouldn t take it off, though I tried pulling it off, but she's strong as hell. You get tired fighting with her. Boy, if she wants to keep a pillow over her head, she keeps it. "Phoebe, please. C'mon outa there," I kept saying. "C'mon, hey . . . Hey, Weatherfield. C'mon out."
She wouldn't come out, though. You can't even reason with her sometimes. Finally, I got up and went out in the living room and got some cigarettes out of the box on the table and stuck some in my pocket. I was all out.
22
When I came back, she had the pillow off her head all right--I knew she would--but she still wouldn't look at me, even though she was laying on her back and all. When I came around the side of the bed and sat down again, she turned her crazy face the other way. She was ostracizing the hell out of me. Just like the fencing team at Pencey when I left all the goddam foils on the subway.
"How's old Hazel Weatherfield?" I said. "You write any new stories about her? I got that one you sent me right in my suitcase. It's down at the station. It's very good."
"Daddy'll kill you."
Boy, she really gets something on her mind when she gets something on her mind.
"No, he won't. The worst he'll do, he'll give me hell again, and then he'll send me to that goddam military school. That's all he'll do to me. And in the first place, I won't even be around. I'll be away. I'll be--I'll probably be in Colorado on this ranch."
"Don't make me laugh. You can't even ride a horse."
"Who can't? Sure I can. Certainly I can. They can teach you in about two minutes," I said. "Stop picking at that." She was picking at that adhesive tape on her arm. "Who gave you that haircut?" I asked her. I just noticed what a stupid haircut somebody gave her. It was way too short.
"None of your business," she said. She can be very snotty sometimes. She can be quite snotty. "I suppose you failed in every single subject again," she said--very snotty. It was sort of funny, too, in a way. She sounds like a goddam schoolteacher sometimes, and she's only a little child.
"No, I didn't," I said. "I passed English." Then, just for the hell of it, I gave her a pinch on the behind. It was sticking way out in the breeze, the way she was laying on her side. She has hardly any behind. I didn't do it hard, but she tried to hit my hand anyway, but she missed.
Then all of a sudden, she said, "Oh, why did you do it?" She meant why did I get the ax again. It made me sort of sad, the way she said it.
"Oh, God, Phoebe, don't ask me. I'm sick of everybody asking me that," I said. "A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw so many mean guys in your life. For instance, if you were having a bull session in somebody's room, and somebody wanted to come in, nobody'd let them in if they were some dopey, pimply guy. Everybody was always locking their door when somebody wanted to come in. And they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to get in. He kept trying to join, and they wouldn't let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. I don't even feel like talking about it. It was a stinking school. Take my word."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything, but she was listen ing. I could tell by the back of her neck that she was listening. She always listens when you tell her something. And the funny part is she knows, half the time, what the hell you're talking about. She really does.
I kept talking about old Pencey. I sort of felt like it.
"Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too," I said. "There was this one old guy, Mr. Spencer. His wife was always giving you hot chocolate and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But you should've seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room. He was always coming in and sitting down in the back of the room for about a half an hour. He was supposed to be incognito or something. After a while, he'd be sitting back there and then he'd start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny jokes. Old Spencer'd practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something."
"Don't swear so much."
"It would've made you puke, I swear it would," I said. "Then, on Veterans' Day. They have this day, Veterans' Day, that all the jerks that graduated from Pencey around 1776 come back and walk all over the place, with their wives and children and everybody. You should've seen this one old guy that was about fifty. What he did was, he came in our room and knocked on the door and asked us if we'd mind if he used the bathroom. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor--I don't know why the hell he asked us. You know what he said? He said he wanted to see if his initials were still in one of the can doors. What he did, he carved his goddam stupid sad old initials in one of the can doors about ninety years ago, and he wanted to see if they were still there. So my roommate and I walked him down to the bathroom and all, and we had to stand there while he looked for his initials in all the can doors. He kept talking to us the whole time, telling us how when he was at Pencey they were the happiest days of his life, and giving us a lot of advice for the future and all. Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a bad guy--he wasn't. But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody--you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door--that's all you have to do. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been all out of breath. He was all out of breath from just climbing up the stairs, and the whole time he was looking for his initials he kept breathing hard, with his nostrils all funny and sad, while he kept telling Stradlater and I to get all we could out of Pencey. God, Phoebe! I can't explain. I just didn't like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can't explain."
Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn't hear her. She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn't hear her.
"What?" I said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that way."
"You don't like anything that's happening."
It made me even more depressed when she said that.
"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"
"Because you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."
"I do! That's where you're wrong--that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?" I said. Boy, was she depressing me.
"Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."
"One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."
The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate.
"One thing I like a lot you mean?" I asked her.
She didn't answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. "C'mon answer me," I said. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"
"You like a lot."
"All right," I said. But the trouble was, I couldn't concentrate. About all I could think of were those two nuns that went around collecting dough in those beatup old straw baskets. Especially the one with the glasses with those iron rims. And this boy I knew at Elkton Hills. There was this one boy at Elkton Hills, named James Castle, that wouldn't take back something he said about this very conceited boy, Phil Stabile. James Castle called him a very conceited guy, and one of Stabile's lousy friends went and squealed on him to Stabile. So Stabile, with about six other dirty bastards, went down to James Castle's room and went in and locked the goddam door and tried to make him take back what he said, but he wouldn't do it. So they started in on him. I won't even tell you what they did to him--it's too repulsive--but he still wouldn't take it back, old James Castle. And you should've seen him. He was a skinny little weak-looking guy, with wrists about as big as pencils. Finally, what he did, instead of taking back what he said, he jumped out the window. I was in the shower and all, and even I could hear him land outside. But I just thought something fell out the window, a radio or a desk or something, not a boy or anything. Then I heard everybody running through the corridor and down the stairs, so I put on my bathrobe and I ran downstairs too, and there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him. He had on this turtleneck sweater I'd lent him. All they did with the guys that were in the room with him was expel them. They didn't even go to jail.
That was about all I could think of, though. Those two nuns I saw at breakfast and this boy James Castle I knew at Elkton Hills. The funny part is, I hardly even know James Castle, if you want to know the truth. He was one of these very quiet guys. He was in my math class, but he was way over on the other side of the room, and he hardly ever got up to recite or go to the blackboard or anything. Some guys in school hardly ever get up to recite or go to the blackboard. I think the only time I ever even had a conversation with him was that time he asked me if he could borrow this turtleneck sweater I had. I damn near dropped dead when he asked me, I was so surprised and all. I remember I was brushing my teeth, in the can, when he asked me. He said his cousin was coming in to take him for a drive and all. I didn't even know he knew I had a turtleneck sweater. All I knew about him was that his name was always right ahead of me at roll call. Cabel, R., Cabel, W., Castle, Caulfield--I can still remember it. If you want to know the truth, I almost didn't lend him my sweater. Just because I didn't know him too well.
"What?" I said to old Phoebe. She said something to me, but I didn't hear her.
"You can't even think of one thing."
"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."
"Well, do it, then."
"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and--"
"Allie's dead--You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really--"
"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything. When she can't think of anything to say, she doesn't say a goddam word.
"Anyway, I like it now," I said. "I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing--"
"That isn't anything really!"
"It is so something really! Certainly it is! Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it,"
"Stop swearing. All right, name something else. Name something you'd like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something."
"I couldn't be a scientist. I'm no good in science."
"Well, a lawyer--like Daddy and all."
"Lawyers are all right, I guess--but it doesn't appeal to me," I said. "I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't."
I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she's only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it's not too bad.
"Daddy's going to kill you. He's going to kill you," she said.
I wasn't listening, though. I was thinking about something else--something crazy. "You know what I'd like to be?" I said. "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?"
"What? Stop swearing."
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like--"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything for a long time. Then, when she said something, all she said was, "Daddy's going to kill you."
"I don't give a damn if he does," I said. I got up from the bed then, because what I wanted to do, I wanted to phone up this guy that was my English teacher at Elkton Hills, Mr. Antolini. He lived in New York now. He quit Elkton Hills. He took this job teaching English at N.Y.U. "I have to make a phone call," I told Phoebe. "I'll be right back. Don't go to sleep." I didn't want her to go to sleep while I was in the living room. I knew she wouldn't but I said it anyway, just to make sure.
While I was walking toward the door, old Phoebe said, "Holden!" and I turned around.
She was sitting way up in bed. She looked so pretty. "I'm taking belching lessons from this girl, Phyllis Margulies," she said. "Listen."
I listened, and I heard something, but it wasn't much. "Good," I said. Then I went out in the living room and called up this teacher I had, Mr. Antolini.
23
I made it very snappy on the phone because I was afraid my parents would barge in on me right in the middle of it. They didn't, though. Mr. Antolini was very nice. He said I could come right over if I wanted to. I think I probably woke he and his wife up, because it took them a helluva long time to answer the phone. The first thing he asked me was if anything was wrong, and I said no. I said I'd flunked out of Pencey, though. I thought I might as well tell him. He said "Good God," when I said that. He had a good sense of humor and all. He told me to come right over if I felt like it.
He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr. Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing your respect for him. He was the one that finally picked up that boy that jumped out the window I told you about, James Castle. Old Mr. Antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody.
When I got back to D.B.'s room, old Phoebe'd turned the radio on. This dance music was coming out. She'd turned it on low, though, so the maid wouldn't hear it. You should've seen her. She was sitting smack in the middle of the bed, outside the covers, with her legs folded like one of those Yogi guys. She was listening to the music. She kills me.
"C'mon," I said. "You feel like dancing?" I taught her how to dance and all when she was a tiny little kid. She's a very good dancer. I mean I just taught her a few things. She learned it mostly by herself. You can't teach somebody how to really dance.
"You have shoes on," she said.
"I'll take 'em off. C'mon."
She practically jumped off the bed, and then she waited while I took my shoes off, and then I danced with her for a while. She's really damn good. I don't like people that dance with little kids, because most of the time it looks terrible. I mean if you're out at a restaurant somewhere and you see some old guy take his little kid out on the dance floor. Usually they keep yanking the kid's dress up in the back by mistake, and the kid can't dance worth a damn anyway, and it looks terrible, but I don't do it out in public with Phoebe or anything. We just horse around in the house. It's different with her anyway, because she can dance. She can follow anything you do. I mean if you hold her in close as hell so that it doesn't matter that your legs are so much longer. She stays right with you. You can cross over, or do some corny dips, or even jitterbug a little, and she stays right with you. You can even tango, for God's sake.
We danced about four numbers. In between numbers she's funny as hell. She stays right in position. She won't even talk or anything. You both have to stay right in position and wait for the orchestra to start playing again. That kills me. You're not supposed to laugh or anything, either.
Anyway, we danced about four numbers, and then I turned off the radio. Old Phoebe jumped back in bed and got under the covers. "I'm improving, aren't I?" she asked me.
"And how," I said. I sat down next to her on the bed again. I was sort of out of breath. I was smoking so damn much, I had hardly any wind. She wasn't even out of breath.
"Feel my forehead," she said all of a sudden.
"Why?"
"Feel it. Just feel it once."
I felt it. I didn't feel anything, though.
"Does it feel very feverish?" she said.
"No. Is it supposed to?"
"Yes--I'm making it. Feel it again."
I felt it again, and I still didn't feel anything, but I said, "I think it's starting to, now." I didn't want her to get a goddam inferiority complex.
She nodded. "I can make it go up to over the thermoneter."
"Thermometer. Who said so?"
"Alice Holmborg showed me how. You cross your legs and hold your breath and think of something very, very hot. A radiator or something. Then your whole forehead gets so hot you can burn somebody's hand."
That killed me. I pulled my hand away from her forehead, like I was in terrific danger. "Thanks for telling me," I said.
"Oh, I wouldn't've burned your hand. I'd've stopped before it got too--Shhh!" Then, quick as hell, she sat way the hell up in bed.
She scared hell out of me when she did that. "What's the matter?" I said.
"The front door!" she said in this loud whisper. "It's them!"
I quick jumped up and ran over and turned off the light over the desk. Then I jammed out my cigarette on my shoe and put it in my pocket. Then I fanned hell out of the air, to get the smoke out--I shouldn't even have been smoking, for God's sake. Then I grabbed my shoes and got in the closet and shut the door. Boy, my heart was beating like a bastard.
I heard my mother come in the room.
"Phoebe?" she said. "Now, stop that. I saw the light, young lady."
"Hello!" I heard old Phoebe say. "I couldn't sleep. Did you have a good time?"
"Marvelous," my mother said, but you could tell she didn't mean it. She doesn't enjoy herself much when she goes out. "Why are you awake, may I ask? Were you warm enough?"
"I was warm enough, I just couldn't sleep."
"Phoebe, have you been smoking a cigarette in here? Tell me the truth, please, young lady."
"What?" old Phoebe said.
"You heard me."
"I just lit one for one second. I just took one puff. Then I threw it out the window."
"Why, may I ask?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"I don't like that, Phoebe. I don't like that at all," my mother said. "Do you want another blanket?"
"No, thanks. G'night!" old Phoebe said. She was trying to get rid of her, you could tell.
"How was the movie?" my mother said.
"Excellent. Except Alice's mother. She kept leaning over and asking her if she felt grippy during the whole entire movie. We took a taxi home."
"Let me feel your forehead."
"I didn't catch anything. She didn't have anything. It was just her mother."
"Well. Go to sleep now. How was your dinner?"
"Lousy," Phoebe said.
"You heard what your father said about using that word. What was lousy about it? You had a lovely lamb chop. I walked all over Lexington Avenue just to--"
"The lamb chop was all right, but Charlene always breathes on me whenever she puts something down. She breathes all over the food and everything. She breathes on everything."
"Well. Go to sleep. Give Mother a kiss. Did you say your prayers?"
"I said them in the bathroom. G'night!"
"Good night. Go right to sleep now. I have a splitting headache," my mother said. She gets headaches quite frequently. She really does.
"Take a few aspirins," old Phoebe said. "Holden'll be home on Wednesday, won't he?"
"So far as I know. Get under there, now. Way down."
I heard my mother go out and close the door. I waited a couple of minutes. Then I came out of the closet. I bumped smack into old Phoebe when I did it, because it was so dark and she was out of bed and coming to tell me. "I hurt you?" I said. You had to whisper now, because they were both home. "I gotta get a move on," I said. I found the edge of the bed in the dark and sat down on it and started putting on my shoes. I was pretty nervous. I admit it.
"Don't go now," Phoebe whispered. "Wait'll they're asleep!"
"No. Now. Now's the best time," I said. "She'll be in the bathroom and Daddy'll turn on the news or something. Now's the best time." I could hardly tie my shoelaces, I was so damn nervous. Not that they would've killed me or anything if they'd caught me home, but it would've been very unpleasant and all. "Where the hell are ya?" I said to old Phoebe. It was so dark I couldn't see her.
"Here." She was standing right next to me. I didn't even see her.
"I got my damn bags at the station," I said. "Listen. You got any dough, Phoeb? I'm practically broke."
"Just my Christmas dough. For presents and all. I haven't done any shopping at all yet."
"Oh." I didn't want to take her Christmas dough.
"You want some?" she said.
"I don't want to take your Christmas dough."
"I can lend you some," she said. Then I heard her over at D.B.'s desk, opening a million drawers and feeling around with her hand. It was pitch-black, it was so dark in the room. "If you go away, you won't see me in the play," she said. Her voice sounded funny when she said it.
"Yes, I will. I won't go way before that. You think I wanna miss the play?" I said. "What I'll do, I'll probably stay at Mr. Antolini's house till maybe Tuesday night. Then I'll come home. If I get a chance, I'll phone ya."
"Here," old Phoebe said. She was trying to give me the dough, but she couldn't find my hand.
"Where?"
She put the dough in my hand.
"Hey, I don't need all this," I said. "Just give me two bucks, is all. No kidding--Here." I tried to give it back to her, but she wouldn't take it.
"You can take it all. You can pay me back. Bring it to the play."
"How much is it, for God's sake?"
"Eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Sixty-five cents. I spent some."
Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn't help it. I did it so nobody could hear me, but I did it. It scared hell out of old Phoebe when I started doing it, and she came over and tried to make me stop, but once you get started, you can't just stop on a goddam dime. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed when I did it, and she put her old arm around my neck, and I put my arm around her, too, but I still couldn't stop for a long time. I thought I was going to choke to death or something. Boy, I scared hell out of poor old Phoebe. The damn window was open and everything, and I could feel her shivering and all, because all she had on was her pajamas. I tried to make her get back in bed, but she wouldn't go. Finally I stopped. But it certainly took me a long, long time. Then I finished buttoning my coat and all. I told her I'd keep in touch with her. She told me I could sleep with her if I wanted to, but I said no, that I'd better beat it, that Mr. Antolini was waiting for me and all. Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes those kind of crazy hats. She didn't want to take it, but I made her. I'll bet she slept with it on. She really likes those kind of hats. Then I told her again I'd give her a buzz if I got a chance, and then I left.
It was a helluva lot easier getting out of the house than it was getting in, for some reason. For one thing, I didn't give much of a damn any more if they caught me. I really didn't. I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way.
I walked all the way downstairs, instead of taking the elevator. I went down the back stairs. I nearly broke my neck on about ten million garbage pails, but I got out all right. The elevator boy didn't even see me. He probably still thinks I'm up at the Dicksteins'.
24
Mr. and Mrs. Antolini had this very swanky apartment over on Sutton Place, with two steps that you go down to get in the living room, and a bar and all. I'd been there quite a few times, because after I left Elkton Hills Mr. Antoilni came up to our house for dinner quite frequently to find out how I was getting along. He wasn't married then. Then when he got married, I used to play tennis with he and Mrs. Antolini quite frequently, out at the West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, Long Island. Mrs. Antolini, belonged there. She was lousy with dough. She was about sixty years older than Mr. Antolini, but they seemed to get along quite well. For one thing, they were both very intellectual, especially Mr. Antolini except that he was more witty than intellectual when you were with him, sort of like D.B. Mrs. Antolini was mostly serious. She had asthma pretty bad. They both read all D.B.'s stories--Mrs. Antolini, too--and when D.B. went to Hollywood, Mr. Antolini phoned him up and told him not to go. He went anyway, though. Mr. Antolini said that anybody that could write like D.B. had no business going out to Hollywood. That's exactly what I said, practically.
I would have walked down to their house, because I didn't want to spend any of Phoebe's Christmas dough that I didn't have to, but I felt funny when I got outside. Sort of dizzy. So I took a cab. I didn't want to, but I did. I had a helluva time even finding a cab.
Old Mr. Antolini answered the door when I rang the bell--after the elevator boy finally let me up, the bastard. He had on his bathrobe and slippers, and he had a highball in one hand. He was a pretty sophisticated guy, and he was a pretty heavy drinker. "Holden, m'boy!" he said. "My God, he's grown another twenty inches. Fine to see you."
"How are you, Mr. Antolini? How's Mrs. Antolini?"
"We're both just dandy. Let's have that coat." He took my coat off me and hung it up. "I expected to see a day-old infant in your arms. Nowhere to turn. Snowflakes in your eyelashes." He's a very witty guy sometimes. He turned around and yelled out to the kitchen, "Lillian! How's the coffee coming?" Lillian was Mrs. Antolini's first name.
"It's all ready," she yelled back. "Is that Holden? Hello, Holden!"
"Hello, Mrs. Antolini!"
You were always yelling when you were there. That's because the both of them were never in the same room at the same time. It was sort of funny.
"Sit down, Holden," Mr. Antolini said. You could tell he was a little oiled up. The room looked like they'd just had a party. Glasses were all over the place, and dishes with peanuts in them. "Excuse the appearance of the place," he said. "We've been entertaining some Buffalo friends of Mrs. Antolini's . . . Some buffaloes, as a matter of fact."
I laughed, and Mrs. Antolini yelled something in to me from the kitchen, but I couldn't hear her. "What'd she say?" I asked Mr. Antolini.
"She said not to look at her when she comes in. She just arose from the sack. Have a cigarette. Are you smoking now?"
"Thanks," I said. I took a cigarette from the box he offered me. "Just once in a while. I'm a moderate smoker."
"I'll bet you are," he said. He gave me a light from this big lighter off the table. "So. You and Pencey are no longer one," he said. He always said things that way. Sometimes it amused me a lot and sometimes it didn't. He sort of did it a little bit too much. I don't mean he wasn't witty or anything--he was--but sometimes it gets on your nerves when somebody's always saying things like "So you and Pencey are no longer one." D.B. does it too much sometimes, too.
"What was the trouble?" Mr. Antolini asked me. "How'd you do in English? I'll show you the door in short order if you flunked English, you little ace composition writer."
"Oh, I passed English all right. It was mostly literature, though. I only wrote about two compositions the whole term," I said. "I flunked Oral Expression, though. They had this course you had to take, Oral Expression. That I flunked."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." I didn't feel much like going into It. I was still feeling sort of dizzy or something, and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. I really did. But you could tell he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it. "It's this course where each boy in class has to get up in class and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all. And if the boy digresses at all, you're supposed to yell 'Digression!' at him as fast as you can. It just about drove me crazy. I got an F in it."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all."
"You don't care to have somebody stick to the point when he tells you something?"
"Oh, sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don't like them to stick too much to the point. I don't know. I guess I don't like it when somebody sticks to the point all the time. The boys that got the best marks in Oral Expression were the ones that stuck to the point all the time--I admit it. But there was this one boy, Richard Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling 'Digression!' at him. It was terrible, because in the first place, he was a very nervous guy--I mean he was a very nervous guy--and his lips were always shaking whenever it was his time to make a speech, and you could hardly hear him if you were sitting way in the back of the room. When his lips sort of quit shaking a little bit, though, I liked his speeches better than anybody else's. He practically flunked the course, though, too. He got a D plus because they kept yelling 'Digression!' at him all the time. For instance, he made this speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling 'Digression!' at him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, Mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it because he hadn't told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all. What he did was, Richard Kinsella, he'd start telling you all about that stuff--then all of a sudden he'd start telling you about this letter his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he wouldn't let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didn't want anybody to see him with a brace on. It didn't have much to do with the farm--I admit it--but it was nice. It's nice when somebody tells you about their uncle. Especially when they start out telling you about their father's farm and then all of a sudden get more interested in their uncle. I mean it's dirty to keep yelling 'Digression!' at him when he's all nice and excited. I don't know. It's hard to explain." I didn't feel too much like trying, either. For one thing, I had this terrific headache all of a sudden. I wished to God old Mrs. Antolini would come in with the coffee. That's something that annoys hell out of me--I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.
"Holden. . . One short, faintly stuffy, pedagogical question. Don't you think there's a time and place for everything? Don't you think if someone starts out to tell you about his father's farm, he should stick to his guns, then get around to telling you about his uncle's brace? Or, if his uncle's brace is such a provocative subject, shouldn't he have selected it in the first place as his subject--not the farm?"
I didn't feel much like thinking and answering and all. I had a headache and I felt lousy. I even had sort of a stomach-ache, if you want to know the truth.
"Yes--I don't know. I guess he should. I mean I guess he should've picked his uncle as a subject, instead of the farm, if that interested him most. But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice. You just didn't know this teacher, Mr. Vinson. He could drive you crazy sometimes, him and the goddam class. I mean he'd keep telling you to unify and simplify all the time. Some things you just can't do that to. I mean you can't hardly ever simplify and unify something just because somebody wants you to. You didn't know this guy, Mr. Vinson. I mean he was very intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn't have too much brains."
"Coffee, gentlemen, finally," Mrs. Antolini said. She came in carrying this tray with coffee and cakes and stuff on it. "Holden, don't you even peek at me. I'm a mess."
"Hello, Mrs. Antolini," I said. I started to get up and all, but Mr. Antolini got hold of my jacket and pulled me back down. Old Mrs. Antolini's hair was full of those iron curler jobs, and she didn't have any lipstick or anything on. She didn't look too gorgeous. She looked pretty old and all.
"I'll leave this right here. Just dive in, you two," she said. She put the tray down on the cigarette table, pushing all these glasses out of the way. "How's your mother, Holden?"
"She's fine, thanks. I haven't seen her too recently, but the last I--"
"Darling, if Holden needs anything, everything's in the linen closet. The top shelf. I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted," Mrs. Antolini said. She looked it, too. "Can you boys make up the couch by yourselves?"
"We'll take care of everything. You run along to bed," Mr. Antolini said. He gave Mrs. Antolini a kiss and she said good-by to me and went in the bedroom. They were always kissing each other a lot in public.
I had part of a cup of coffee and about half of some cake that was as hard as a rock. All old Mr. Antolini had was another highball, though. He makes them strong, too, you could tell. He may get to be an alcoholic if he doesn't watch his step.
"I had lunch with your dad a couple of weeks ago," he said all of a sudden. "Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
"You're aware, of course, that he's terribly concerned about you."
"I know it. I know he is," I said.
"Apparently before he phoned me he'd just had a long, rather harrowing letter from your latest headmaster, to the effect that you were making absolutely no effort at all. Cutting classes. Coming unprepared to all your classes. In general, being an all-around--"
"I didn't cut any classes. You weren't allowed to cut any. There were a couple of them I didn't attend once in a while, like that Oral Expression I told you about, but I didn't cut any."
I didn't feel at all like discussing it. The coffee made my stomach feel a little better, but I still had this awful headache.
Mr. Antolini lit another cigarette. He smoked like a fiend. Then he said, "Frankly, I don't know what the hell to say to you, Holden."
"I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that."
"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind. . . Are you listening to me?"
"Yes."
You could tell he was trying to concentrate and all.
"It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. "But you're wrong about that hating business. I mean about hating football players and all. You really are. I don't hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while--I admit it--but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them."
Mr. Antolini didn't say anything for a while. He got up and got another hunk of ice and put it in his drink, then he sat down again. You could tell he was thinking. I kept wishing, though, that he'd continue the conversation in the morning, instead of now, but he was hot. People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.
"All right. Listen to me a minute now . . . I may not word this as memorably as I'd like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight. But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. You follow me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
He got up and poured some more booze in his glass. Then he sat down again. He didn't say anything for a long time.
"I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." He gave me a funny look. "If I write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. I still have the paper he gave me.
He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. "Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel. Here's what he--Are you still with me?"
"Yes, sure I am."
"Here's what he said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'"
He leaned over and handed it to me. I read it right when he gave it to me, and then I thanked him and all and put it in my pocket. It was nice of him to go to all that trouble. It really was. The thing was, though, I didn't feel much like concentrating. Boy, I felt so damn tired all of a sudden.
You could tell he wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing. "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."
I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn't too sure what he was talking about. I was pretty sure I knew, but I wasn't too positive at the time. I was too damn tired.
"And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student--whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find, once you get past all the Mr. Vineses and their Oral Comp--"
"Mr. Vinsons," I said. He meant all the Mr. Vinsons, not all the Mr. Vineses. I shouldn't have interrupted him, though.
"All right--the Mr. Vinsons. Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it--to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." He stopped and took a big drink out of his highball. Then he started again. Boy, he was really hot. I was glad I didn't try to stop him or anything. "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And--most important--nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker. Do you follow me at all?"
"Yes, sir."
He didn't say anything again for quite a while. I don't know if you've ever done it, but it's sort of hard to sit around waiting for somebody to say something when they're thinking and all. It really is. I kept trying not to yawn. It wasn't that I was bored or anything--I wasn't--but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.
"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."
Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!
Mr. Antolini just laughed, though. "C'mon," he said, and got up. "We'll fix up the couch for you."
I followed him and he went over to this closet and tried to take down some sheets and blankets and stuff that was on the top shelf, but he couldn't do it with this highball glass in his hand. So he drank it and then put the glass down on the floor and then he took the stuff down. I helped him bring it over to the couch. We both made the bed together. He wasn't too hot at it. He didn't tuck anything in very tight. I didn't care, though. I could've slept standing up I was so tired.
"How're all your women?"
"They're okay." I was being a lousy conversationalist, but I didn't feel like it.
"How's Sally?" He knew old Sally Hayes. I introduced him once.
"She's all right. I had a date with her this afternoon." Boy, it seemed like twenty years ago! "We don't have too much in common any more."
"Helluva pretty girl. What about that other girl? The one you told me about, in Maine?"
"Oh--Jane Gallagher. She's all right. I'm probably gonna give her a buzz tomorrow."
We were all done making up the couch then. "It's all yours," Mr. Antolini said. "I don't know what the hell you're going to do with those legs of yours."
"That's all right. I'm used to short beds," I said. "Thanks a lot, sir. You and Mrs. Antolini really saved my life tonight."
"You know where the bathroom is. If there's anything you want, just holler. I'll be in the kitchen for a while--will the light bother you?"
"No--heck, no. Thanks a lot."
"All right. Good night, handsome."
"G'night, sir. Thanks a lot."
He went out in the kitchen and I went in the bathroom and got undressed and all. I couldn't brush my teeth because I didn't have any toothbrush with me. I didn't have any pajamas either and Mr. Antolini forgot to lend me some. So I just went back in the living room and turned off this little lamp next to the couch, and then I got in bed with just my shorts on. It was way too short for me, the couch, but I really could've slept standing up without batting an eyelash. I laid awake for just a couple of seconds thinking about all that stuff Mr. Antolini'd told me. About finding out the size of your mind and all. He was really a pretty smart guy. But I couldn't keep my goddam eyes open, and I fell asleep.
Then something happened. I don't even like to talk about it.
I woke up all of a sudden. I don't know what time it was or anything, but I woke up. I felt something on my head, some guy's hand. Boy, it really scared hell out of me. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini's hand. What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head. Boy, I'll bet I jumped about a thousand feet.
"What the hellya doing?" I said.
"Nothing! I'm simply sitting here, admiring--"
"What're ya doing, anyway?" I said over again. I didn't know what the hell to say--I mean I was embarrassed as hell.
"How 'bout keeping your voice down? I'm simply sitting here--"
"I have to go, anyway," I said--boy, was I nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around.
"You have to go where?" Mr. Antolini said. He was trying to act very goddam casual and cool and all, but he wasn't any too goddam cool. Take my word.
"I left my bags and all at the station. I think maybe I'd better go down and get them. I have all my stuff in them."
"They'll be there in the morning. Now, go back to bed. I'm going to bed myself. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing's the matter, it's just that all my money and stuff's in one of my bags. I'll be right back. I'll get a cab and be right back," I said. Boy, I was falling all over myself in the dark. "The thing is, it isn't mine, the money. It's my mother's, and I--"
"Don't be ridiculous, Holden. Get back in that bed. I'm going to bed myself. The money will be there safe and sound in the morn--"
"No, no kidding. I gotta get going. I really do." I was damn near all dressed already, except that I couldn't find my tie. I couldn't remember where I'd put my tie. I put on my jacket and all without it. Old Mr. Antolini was sitting now in the big chair a little ways away from me, watching me. It was dark and all and I couldn't see him so hot, but I knew he was watching me, all right. He was still boozing, too. I could see his trusty highball glass in his hand.
"You're a very, very strange boy."
"I know it," I said. I didn't even look around much for my tie. So I went without it. "Good-by, sir," I said, "Thanks a lot. No kidding."
He kept walking right behind me when I went to the front door, and when I rang the elevator bell he stayed in the damn doorway. All he said was that business about my being a "very, very strange boy" again. Strange, my ass. Then he waited in the doorway and all till the goddam elevator came. I never waited so long for an elevator in my whole goddam life. I swear.
I didn't know what the hell to talk about while I was waiting for the elevator, and he kept standing there, so I said, "I'm gonna start reading some good books. I really am." I mean you had to say something. It was very embarrassing.
"You grab your bags and scoot right on back here again. I'll leave the door unlatched."
"Thanks a lot," I said. "G'by!" The elevator was finally there. I got in and went down. Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating, too. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it.
25
When I got outside, it was just getting light out. It was pretty cold, too, but it felt good because I was sweating so much.
I didn't know where the hell to go. I didn't want to go to another hotel and spend all Phoebe's dough. So finally all I did was I walked over to Lexington and took the subway down to Grand Central. My bags were there and all, and I figured I'd sleep in that crazy waiting room where all the benches are. So that's what I did. It wasn't too bad for a while because there weren't many people around and I could stick my feet up. But I don't feel much like discussing it. It wasn't too nice. Don't ever try it. I mean it. It'll depress you.
I only slept till around nine o'clock because a million people started coming in the waiting room and I had to take my feet down. I can't sleep so hot if I have to keep my feet on the floor. So I sat up. I still had that headache. It was even worse. And I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.
I didn't want to, but I started thinking about old Mr. Antolini and I wondered what he'd tell Mrs. Antolini when she saw I hadn't slept there or anything. That part didn't worry me too much, though, because I knew Mr. Antolini was very smart and that he could make up something to tell her. He could tell her I'd gone home or something. That part didn't worry me much. But what did worry me was the part about how I'd woke up and found him patting me on the head and all. I mean I wondered if just maybe I was wrong about thinking be was making a flitty pass at ne. I wondered if maybe he just liked to pat guys on the head when they're asleep. I mean how can you tell about that stuff for sure? You can't. I even started wondering if maybe I should've got my bags and gone back to his house, the way I'd said I would. I mean I started thinking that even if he was a flit he certainly'd been very nice to me. I thought how he hadn't minded it when I'd called him up so late, and how he'd told me to come right over if I felt like it. And how he went to all that trouble giving me that advice about finding out the size of your mind and all, and how he was the only guy that'd even gone near that boy James Castle I told you about when he was dead. I thought about all that stuff. And the more I thought about it, the more depressed I got. I mean I started thinking maybe I should've gone back to his house. Maybe he was only patting my head just for the hell of it. The more I thought about it, though, the more depressed and screwed up about it I got. What made it even worse, my eyes were sore as hell. They felt sore and burny from not getting too much sleep. Besides that, I was getting sort of a cold, and I didn't even have a goddam handkerchief with me. I had some in my suitcase, but I didn't feel like taking it out of that strong box and opening it up right in public and all.
There was this magazine that somebody'd left on the bench next to me, so I started reading it, thinking it'd make me stop thinking about Mr. Antolini and a million other things for at least a little while. But this damn article I started reading made me feel almost worse. It was all about hormones. It described how you should look, your face and eyes and all, if your hormones were in good shape, and I didn't look that way at all. I looked exactly like the guy in the article with lousy hormones. So I started getting worried about my hormones. Then I read this other article about how you can tell if you have cancer or not. It said if you had any sores in your mouth that didn't heal pretty quickly, it was a sign that you probably had cancer. I'd had this sore on the inside of my lip for about two weeks. So figured I was getting cancer. That magazine was some little cheerer upper. I finally quit reading it and went outside for a walk. I figured I'd be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer. I really did. I was even positive I would be. It certainly didn't make me feel too gorgeous. It'sort of looked like it was going to rain, but I went for this walk anyway. For one thing, I figured I ought to get some breakfast. I wasn't at all hungry, but I figured I ought to at least eat something. I mean at least get something with some vitamins in it. So I started walking way over east, where the pretty cheap restaurants are, because I didn't want to spend a lot of dough.
While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck. One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch up! Hold it up, for Chrissake!" It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree. It was sort of funny, though, in an awful way, and I started to sort of laugh. It was about the worst thing I could've done, because the minute I started to laugh I thought I was going to vomit. I really did. I even started to, but it went away. I don't know why. I mean I hadn't eaten anything unsanitary or like that and usually I have quite a strong stomach. Anyway, I got over it, and I figured I'd feel better if I had something to eat. So I went in this very cheap-looking restaurant and had doughnuts and coffee. Only, I didn't eat the doughnuts. I couldn't swallow them too well. The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it's hard as hell to swallow. The waiter was very nice, though. He took them back without charging me. I just drank the coffee. Then I left and started walking over toward Fifth Avenue.
It was Monday and all, and pretty near Christmas, and all the stores were open. So it wasn't too bad walking on Fifth Avenue. It was fairly Christmasy. All those scraggy-looking Santa Clauses were standing on corners ringing those bells, and the Salvation Army girls, the ones that don't wear any lipstick or anything, were tinging bells too. I sort of kept looking around for those two nuns I'd met at breakfast the day before, but I didn't see them. I knew I wouldn't, because they'd told me they'd come to New York to be schoolteachers, but I kept looking for them anyway. Anyway, it was pretty Christmasy all of a sudden. A million little kids were downtown with their mothers, getting on and off buses and coming in and out of stores. I wished old Phoebe was around. She's not little enough any more to go stark staring mad in the toy department, but she enjoys horsing around and looking at the people. The Christmas before last I took her downtown shopping with me. We had a helluva time. I think it was in Bloomingdale's. We went in the shoe department and we pretended she--old Phoebe-- wanted to get a pair of those very high storm shoes, the kind that have about a million holes to lace up. We had the poor salesman guy going crazy. Old Phoebe tried on about twenty pairs, and each time the poor guy had to lace one shoe all the way up. It was a dirty trick, but it killed old Phoebe. We finally bought a pair of moccasins and charged them. The salesman was very nice about it. I think he knew we were horsing around, because old Phoebe always starts giggling.
Anyway, I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard--my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him. Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner. But I kept going and all. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think--I don't remember, to tell you the truth. I know I didn't stop till I was way up in the Sixties, past the zoo and all. Then I sat down on this bench. I could hardly get my breath, and I was still sweating like a bastard. I sat there, I guess, for about an hour. Finally, what I decided I'd do, I decided I'd go away. I decided I'd never go home again and I'd never go away to another school again. I decided I'd just see old Phoebe and sort of say good-by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I'd start hitchhiking my way out West. What I'd do, I figured, I'd go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I'd bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I'd be somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody'd know me and I'd get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves.
I got excited as hell thinking about it. I really did. I knew the part about pretending I was a deaf-mute was crazy, but I liked thinking about it anyway. But I really decided to go out West and all. All I wanted to do first was say good-by to old Phoebe. So all of a sudden, I ran like a madman across the street--I damn near got killed doing it, if you want to know the truth--and went in this stationery store and bought a pad and pencil. I figured I'd write her a note telling her where to meet me so I could say good-by to her and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I'd take the note up to her school and get somebody in the principal's office to give it to her. But I just put the pad and pencil in my pocket and started walking fast as hell up to her school--I was too excited to write the note right in the stationery store. I walked fast because I wanted her to get the note before she went home for lunch, and I didn't have any too much time.
I knew where her school was, naturally, because I went there myself when I was a kid. When I got there, it felt funny. I wasn't sure I'd remember what it was like inside, but I did. It was exactly the same as it was when I went there. They had that same big yard inside, that was always sort of dark, with those cages around the light bulbs so they wouldn't break if they got hit with a ball. They had those same white circles painted all over the floor, for games and stuff. And those same old basketball rings without any nets--just the backboards and the rings.
Nobody was around at all, probably because it wasn't recess period, and it wasn't lunchtime yet. All I saw was one little kid, a colored kid, on his way to the bathroom. He had one of those wooden passes sticking out of his hip pocket, the same way we used to have, to show he had permission and all to go to the bathroom.
I was still sweating, but not so bad any more. I went over to the stairs and sat down on the first step and took out the pad and pencil I'd bought. The stairs had the same smell they used to have when I went there. Like somebody'd just taken a leak on them. School stairs always smell like that. Anyway, I sat there and wrote this note:
DEAR PHOEBE,
I can't wait around till Wednesday any more so I will
probably hitch hike out west this afternoon. Meet me at the
Museum of art near the door at quarter past 12 if you can and I
will give you your Christmas dough back. I didn't spend much.
Love,
HOLDEN
Her school was practically right near the museum, and she had to pass it on her way home for lunch anyway, so I knew she could meet me all right.
Then I started walking up the stairs to the principal's office so I could give the note to somebody that would bring it to her in her classroom. I folded it about ten times so nobody'd open it. You can't trust anybody in a goddam school. But I knew they'd give it to her if I was her brother and all.
While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them--all cockeyed, naturally--what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office.
The principal didn't seem to be around, but some old lady around a hundred years old was sitting at a typewriter. I told her I was Phoebe Caulfield's brother, in 4B-1, and I asked her to please give Phoebe the note. I said it was very important because my mother was sick and wouldn't have lunch ready for Phoebe and that she'd have to meet me and have lunch in a drugstore. She was very nice about it, the old lady. She took the note off me and called some other lady, from the next office, and the other lady went to give it to Phoebe. Then the old lady that was around a hundred years old and I shot the breeze for a while, She was pretty nice, and I told her how I'd gone there to school, too, and my brothers. She asked me where I went to school now, and I told her Pencey, and she said Pencey was a very good school. Even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have had the strength to straighten her out. Besides, if she thought Pencey was a very good school, let her think it. You hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don't like to hear it. Then, after a while, I left. It was funny. She yelled "Good luck!" at me the same way old Spencer did when I left Pencey. God, how I hate it when somebody yells "Good luck!" at me when I'm leaving somewhere. It's depressing.
I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
I looked at the clock in the recess yard, and it was only twenty to twelve, so I had quite a lot of time to kill before I met old Phoebe. But I just walked over to the museum anyway. There wasn't anyplace else to go. I thought maybe I might stop in a phone booth and give old Jane Gallagher a buzz before I started bumming my way west, but I wasn't in the mood. For one thing, I wasn't even sure she was home for vacation yet. So I just went over to the museum, and hung around.
While I was waiting around for Phoebe in the museum, right inside the doors and all, these two little kids came up to me and asked me if I knew where the mummies were. The one little kid, the one that asked me, had his pants open. I told him about it. So he buttoned them up right where he was standing talking to me--he didn't even bother to go behind a post or anything. He killed me. I would've laughed, but I was afraid I'd feel like vomiting again, so I didn't. "Where're the mummies, fella?" the kid said again. "Ya know?"
I horsed around with the two of them a little bit. "The mummies? What're they?" I asked the one kid.
"You know. The mummies--them dead guys. That get buried in them toons and all."
Toons. That killed me. He meant tombs.
"How come you two guys aren't in school?" I said.
"No school t'day," the kid that did all the talking said. He was lying, sure as I'm alive, the little bastard. I didn't have anything to do, though, till old Phoebe showed up, so I helped them find the place where the mummies were. Boy, I used to know exactly where they were, but I hadn't been in that museum in years.
"You two guys so interested in mummies?" I said.
"Yeah."
"Can't your friend talk?" I said.
"He ain't my friend. He's my brudda."
"Can't he talk?" I looked at the one that wasn't doing any talking. "Can't you talk at all?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he said. "I don't feel like it."
Finally we found the place where the mummies were, and we went in.
"You know how the Egyptians buried their dead?" I asked the one kid.
"Naa."
"Well, you should. It's very interesting. They wrapped their faces up in these cloths that were treated with some secret chemical. That way they could be buried in their tombs for thousands of years and their faces wouldn't rot or anything. Nobody knows how to do it except the Egyptians. Even modern science."
To get to where the mummies were, you had to go down this very narrow sort of hall with stones on the side that they'd taken right out of this Pharaoh's tomb and all. It was pretty spooky, and you could tell the two hot-shots I was with weren't enjoying it too much. They stuck close as hell to me, and the one that didn't talk at all practically was holding onto my sleeve. "Let's go," he said to his brother. "I seen 'em awreddy. C'mon, hey." He turned around and beat it.
"He's got a yella streak a mile wide," the other one said. "So long!" He beat it too.
I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another "Fuck you." It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.
After I came out of the place where the mummies were, I had to go to the bathroom. I sort of had diarrhea, if you want to know the truth. I didn't mind the diarrhea part too much, but something else happened. When I was coming out of the can, right before I got to the door, I sort of passed out. I was lucky, though. I mean I could've killed myself when I hit the floor, but all I did was sort of land on my side. it was a funny thing, though. I felt better after I passed out. I really did. My arm sort of hurt, from where I fell, but I didn't feel so damn dizzy any more.
It was about ten after twelve or so then, and so I went back and stood by the door and waited for old Phoebe. I thought how it might be the last time I'd ever see her again. Any of my relatives, I mean. I figured I'd probably see them again, but not for years. I might come home when I was about thirty-five. I figured, in case somebody got sick and wanted to see me before they died, but that would be the only reason I'd leave my cabin and come back. I even started picturing how it would be when I came back. I knew my mother'd get nervous as hell and start to cry and beg me to stay home and not go back to my cabin, but I'd go anyway. I'd be casual as hell. I'd make her calm down, and then I'd go over to the other side of the living room and take out this cigarette case and light a cigarette, cool as all hell. I'd ask them all to visit me sometime if they wanted to, but I wouldn't insist or anything. What I'd do, I'd let old Phoebe come out and visit me in the summertime and on Christmas vacation and Easter vacation. And I'd let D.B. come out and visit me for a while if he wanted a nice, quiet place for his writing, but he couldn't write any movies in my cabin, only stories and books. I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me. If anybody tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay.
All of a sudden I looked at the clock in the checkroom and it was twenty-five of one. I began to get scared that maybe that old lady in the school had told that other lady not to give old Phoebe my message. I began to get scared that maybe she'd told her to burn it or something. It really scared hell out of me. I really wanted to see old Phoebe before I hit the road. I mean I had her Christmas dough and all.
Finally, I saw her. I saw her through the glass part of the door. The reason I saw her, she had my crazy hunting hat on--you could see that hat about ten miles away.
I went out the doors and started down these stone stairs to meet her. The thing I couldn't understand, she had this big suitcase with her. She was just coming across Fifth Avenue, and she was dragging this goddam big suitcase with her. She could hardly drag it. When I got up closer, I saw it was my old suitcase, the one I used to use when I was at Whooton. I couldn't figure out what the hell she was doing with it. "Hi," she said when she got up close. She was all out of breath from that crazy suitcase.
"I thought maybe you weren't coming," I said. "What the hell's in that bag? I don't need anything. I'm just going the way I am. I'm not even taking the bags I got at the station. What the hellya got in there?"
She put the suitcase down. "My clothes," she said. "I'm going with you. Can I? Okay?"
"What?" I said. I almost fell over when she said that. I swear to God I did. I got sort of dizzy and I thought I was going to pass out or something again.
"I took them down the back elevator so Charlene wouldn't see me. It isn't heavy. All I have in it is two dresses and my moccasins and my underwear and socks and some other things. Feel it. It isn't heavy. Feel it once. . . Can't I go with you? Holden? Can't I? Please."
"No. Shut up."
I thought I was going to pass out cold. I mean I didn't mean to tell her to shut up and all, but I thought I was going to pass out again.
"Why can't I? Please, Holden! I won't do anything-- I'll just go with you, that's all! I won't even take my clothes with me if you don't want me to--I'll just take my--"
"You can't take anything. Because you're not going. I'm going alone. So shut up."
"Please, Holden. Please let me go. I'll be very, very, very--You won't even--"
"You're not going. Now, shut up! Gimme that bag," I said. I took the bag off her. I was almost all set to hit her, I thought I was going to smack her for a second. I really did.
She started to cry.
"I thought you were supposed to be in a play at school and all I thought you were supposed to be Benedict Arnold in that play and all," I said. I said it very nasty. "Whuddaya want to do? Not be in the play, for God's sake?" That made her cry even harder. I was glad. All of a sudden I wanted her to cry till her eyes practically dropped out. I almost hated her. I think I hated her most because she wouldn't be in that play any more if she went away with me.
"Come on," I said. I started up the steps to the museum again. I figured what I'd do was, I'd check the crazy suitcase she'd brought in the checkroom, andy then she could get it again at three o'clock, after school. I knew she couldn't take it back to school with her. "Come on, now," I said.
She didn't go up the steps with me, though. She wouldn't come with me. I went up anyway, though, and brought the bag in the checkroom and checked it, and then I came down again. She was still standing there on the sidewalk, but she turned her back on me when I came up to her. She can do that. She can turn her back on you when she feels like it. "I'm not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying, and shut up," I said. The funny part was, she wasn't even crying when I said that. I said it anyway, though, "C'mon, now. I'll walk you back to school. C'mon, now. You'll be late."
She wouldn't answer me or anything. I sort of tried to get hold of her old hand, but she wouldn't let me. She kept turning around on me.
"Didja have your lunch? Ya had your lunch yet?" I asked her.
She wouldn't answer me. All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat--the one I gave her--and practically chucked it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me, but I didn't say anything. I just picked it up and stuck it in my coat pocket.
"Come on, hey. I'll walk you back to school," I said.
"I'm not going back to school."
I didn't know what to say when she said that. I just stood there for a couple of minutes.
"You have to go back to school. You want to be in that play, don't you? You want to be Benedict Arnold, don't you?"
"No."
"Sure you do. Certainly you do. C'mon, now, let's go," I said. "In the first place, I'm not going away anywhere, I told you. I'm going home. I'm going home as soon as you go back to school. First I'm gonna go down to the station and get my bags, and then I'm gonna go straight--"
"I said I'm not going back to school. You can do what you want to do, but I'm not going back to chool," she said. "So shut up." It was the first time she ever told me to shut up. It sounded terrible. God, it sounded terrible. It sounded worse than swearing. She still wouldn't look at me either, and every time I sort of put my hand on her shoulder or something, she wouldn't let me.
"Listen, do you want to go for a walk?" I asked her. "Do you want to take a walk down to the zoo? If I let you not go back to school this afternoon and go for walk, will you cut out this crazy stuff?"
She wouldn't answer me, so I said it over again. "If I let you skip school this afternoon and go for a little walk, will you cut out the crazy stuff? Will you go back to school tomorrow like a good girl?"
"I may and I may not," she said. Then she ran right the hell across the street, without even looking to see if any cars were coming. She's a madman sometimes.
I didn't follow her, though. I knew she'd follow me, so I started walking downtown toward the zoo, on the park side of the street, and she started walking downtown on the other goddam side of the street, She wouldn't look over at me at all, but I could tell she was probably watching me out of the corner of her crazy eye to see where I was going and all. Anyway, we kept walking that way all the way to the zoo. The only thing that bothered me was when a double-decker bus came along because then I couldn't see across the street and I couldn't see where the hell she was. But when we got to the zoo, I yelled over to her, "Phoebe! I'm going in the zoo! C'mon, now!" She wouldn't look at me, but I could tell she heard me, and when I started down the steps to the zoo I turned around and saw she was crossing the street and following me and all.
There weren't too many people in the zoo because it was sort of a lousy day, but there were a few around the sea lions' swimming pool and all. I started to go by but old Phoebe stopped and made out she was watching the sea lions getting fed--a guy was throwing fish at them--so I went back. I figured it was a good chance to catch up with her and all. I went up and sort of stood behind her and sort of put my hands on her shoulders, but she bent her knees and slid out from me--she can certainly be very snotty when she wants to. She kept standing there while the sea lions were getting fed and I stood right behind her. I didn't put my hands on her shoulders again or anything because if I had she really would've beat it on me. Kids are funny. You have to watch what you're doing.
She wouldn't walk right next to me when we left the sea lions, but she didn't walk too far away. She sort of walked on one side of the sidewalk and I walked on the other side. It wasn't too gorgeous, but it was better than having her walk about a mile away from me, like before. We went up and watched the bears, on that little hill, for a while, but there wasn't much to watch. Only one of the bears was out, the polar bear. The other one, the brown one, was in his goddam cave and wouldn't come out. All you could see was his rear end. There was a little kid standing next to me, with a cowboy hat on practically over his ears, and he kept telling his father, "Make him come out, Daddy. Make him come out." I looked at old Phoebe, but she wouldn't laugh. You know kids when they're sore at you. They won't laugh or anything.
After we left the bears, we left the zoo and crossed over this little street in the park, and then we went through one of those little tunnels that always smell from somebody's taking a leak. It was on the way to the carrousel. Old Phoebe still wouldn't talk to me or anything, but she was sort of walking next to me now. I took a hold of the belt at the back of her coat, just for the hell of it, but she wouldn't let me. She said, "Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind." She was still sore at me. But not as sore as she was before. Anyway, we kept getting closer and closer to the carrousel and you could start to hear that nutty music it always plays. It was playing "Oh, Marie!" It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid. That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs.
"I thought the carrousel was closed in the wintertime," old Phoebe said. It was the first time she practically said anything. She probably forgot she was supposed to be sore at me.
"Maybe because it's around Christmas," I said.
She didn't say anything when I said that. She probably remembered she was supposed to be sore at me.
"Do you want to go for a ride on it?" I said. I knew she probably did. When she was a tiny little kid, and Allie and D.B. and I used to go to the park with her, she was mad about the carrousel. You couldn't get her off the goddam thing.
"I'm too big." she said. I thought she wasn't going to answer me, but she did.
"No, you're not. Go on. I'll wait for ya. Go on," I said. We were right there then. There were a few kids riding on it, mostly very little kids, and a few parents were waiting around outside, sitting on the benches and all. What I did was, I went up to the window where they sell the tickets and bought old Phoebe a ticket. Then I gave it to her. She was standing right next to me. "Here," I said. "Wait a second--take the rest of your dough, too." I started giving her the rest of the dough she'd lent me.
"You keep it. Keep it for me," she said. Then she said right afterward--"Please."
That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you. I mean if it's Phoebe or somebody. That depressed the hell out of me. But I put the dough back in my pocket.
"Aren't you gonna ride, too?" she asked me. She was looking at me sort of funny. You could tell she wasn't too sore at me any more.
"Maybe I will the next time. I'll watch ya," I said. "Got your ticket?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then--I'll be on this bench right over here. I'll watch ya." I went over and sat down on this bench, and she went and got on the carrousel. She walked all around it. I mean she walked once all the way around it. Then she sat down on this big, brown, beat-up-looking old horse. Then the carrousel started, and I watched her go around and around. There were only about five or six other kids on the ride, and the song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.
When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said.
"No, I'll just watch ya. I think I'll just watch," I said. I gave her some more of her dough. "Here. Get some more tickets."
She took the dough off me. "I'm not mad at you any more," she said.
"I know. Hurry up--the thing's gonna start again."
Then all of a sudden she gave me a kiss. Then she held her hand out, and said, "It's raining. It's starting to rain."
"I know."
Then what she did--it damn near killed me--she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head.
"Don't you want it?" I said.
"You can wear it a while."
"Okay. Hurry up, though, now. You're gonna miss your ride. You won't get your own horse or anything."
She kept hanging around, though.
"Did you mean it what you said? You really aren't going away anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said. I meant it, too. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards. "Hurry up, now," I said. "The thing's starting."
She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back.
Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to God. All the parents and mothers and everybody went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they wouldn't get soaked to the skin or anything, but I stuck around on the bench for quite a while. I got pretty soaking wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way; but I got soaked anyway. I didn't care, though. I felt so damn happy all of sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there.
26
That's all I'm going to tell about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, and what school I'm supposed to go to next fall, after I get out of here, but I don't feel like it. I really don't. That stuff doesn't interest me too much right now.
A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
D.B. isn't as bad as the rest of them, but he keeps asking me a lot of questions, too. He drove over last Saturday with this English babe that's in this new picture he's writing. She was pretty affected, but very good-looking. Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies' room way the hell down in the other wing D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.0 commentsJuly 14th, 2010
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padraicmyprince commented on Digit's picture
@Foomoomoomoo
Across the centuries, an evil returns to feast upon the City of Angels -and
millions sway beneath their deadly spell.
On Sunset and Hollywood boulevards, unspeakable horrors lurk in the darkness.
They are the undead, nightmares in human form, dark disciples of death who prey
upon the living.
Now nature succumbs to the evil, raging in a fury of sandstorm and tidal wave.
And in the castle of a murdered screen idol, high above the ravaged city, the
Prince of Darkness and his minions prepare a welcome for the last terrified
survivors.
4 Limited Edition ................. .$55.00
Robert R. McCammon is the author of ten novels, including MYSTERY WALK, SWAN
SONG and MINE; and BLUE WORLD, a collection of short fiction. THEY THIRST is a
vampire novel on an epic scale, as the Undead lay claim to the city of Los
Angeles. McCammon's latest novel, BOY'S LIFE, will be published by Pocket Books.
McCammon and his wife Sally live in Birmingham, Alabama, where he writes from
midnight until dawn and tries to keep their Scottish terrier from chewing up his
books.
5
- A Novel By -
ROBERT R. McCAMMON
- Illustrated By -
Wendy and Charles Lang
6 Trade Hardcover Edition ISBN 0-913165-60-3
THEY THIRST Copyright © 1981 by Robert R. McCammon
Illustrations Copyright ® 1991 by Wendy and Charles Lang
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST HARDCOVER EDITION
Dark Harvest / P. O. Box 941 / Arlington Heights, IL / 60006
The Publishers would like to express their gratitude to the following people.
Thank you: Ann Cameron Mikol, Kathy Jo Camacho, Stan and Phyllis Mikol, Dr. Stan
Gurnick PhD, Wayne Sommers, Luis Trevino, Raymond, Teresa and Mark Stadalsky,
Tony Hodes, Tom Pas, Bob Weinberg, Greg Ketter, and Jeane and Paul E. Williams
III.
And, of course, special thanks go to Sally and Rick McCammon, and Wendy and
Charles Lang.
7 FOR SALLY, WHO HELPED ME REACH
8 I'd like to express appreciation to a number of people who helped me in
researching this book and putting it all together: W. B. McDonald, M.D.; James
R. Fletcher, M.D.; Gunnery Sergeant Larry Rocke, USMC; Captain Paul T. Taylor,
USMC; Detective Sergeant William Ludlow; Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally
for keeping the legends alive; and Mike and Elizabeth.
R.M.
9 It was midnight in Topanga I heard the DJ say "There's a full moon rising Join
me in L.A. . . ."
-Warren Zevon
I'd kill for love|
I'd kill for love
As sure as there's a God above
I'd kill for love
-Rory Black
Shadows shifting everywhere; Very thin and very tall, Moving, mingling on the
wall, Till they make one Shadow all
-Augustus Julian Requier
10 11 PROLOGUE
Tonight there were demons in the hearth.
They spun, arched, and spat at the eyes of the boy who sat at the fire's edge,
his legs crossed under him in that unconscious way children have of being
incredibly supple. Chin supported by palms, elbows supported by knees, he sat
in|] silence, watching the flames gather, merge, and break into fragments that
hissed with secrets. He had turned nine only six days ago, but now he felt very
old because _ Papa wasn't home yet and those fire-demons were laughing.
While I'm away, you must be head of the house, Papa had said as he coiled a line
of thick rope around his bear's paw of a hand. You must take care of your mother
and see that all goes well while I and your uncle are gone. Do you understand
that?
Yes, Papa.
And see that you bring in the wood for her when she asks and stack it neatly
along the wall so it can dry. And anything else she asks of you, you'll do, yes?
I will. He could still see his father's fissured, wind-ravaged face towering
over him and feel the rough-as-hearthstones hand on his shoulder. The grip of
that hand had conveyed an unspoken message: This is a serious thing I do, boy.
Make no mistake about that. Watch out for your mother and be careful.
The boy understood, and Papa had nodded with satisfaction.
The next morning he watched through the kitchen window while Uncle Josef hitched
the two old gray-and-white horses to the family's wagon. His parents had drawn
away, standing across the room near the bolted slab of a door. Papa had put on
his woolen cap and the heavy sheepskin coat Mama had made for him as a Christmas
present years before, then slipped the coil of rope around one shoulder. The boy
picked listlessly from a bowl of beef broth and tried to listen, knowing that
they were whispering so that he would not hear. But he also knew that if he did
hear, he really wouldn't know what they were whispering about, anyway. It's not
fair! he told himself as he dipped his fingers into the broth and brought out a
chunk of meat. If I'm to be the head of the house, shouldn't I know the secrets,
too?
Across the room Mama's voice had suddenly surged up out of control. Let the
others do it! Please! But Papa had caught her chin, tilted her face up, and
looked gently into those morning-gray eyes. I have to do this thing, he'd said,
and she looked like she wanted to cry but could not. She'd used up all her tears
the night before, lying in the goosedown bed in the other room. The boy had
heard her all through the night. It was as if the heavy hours were cracking her
heart and no amount of time on the other side of twilight could ever heal it
again. No, no, no,
12
Mama was saying now, over and over again as if that word had some magic that
would prevent Papa from stepping out into the snowy daylight, as if that word
would seal the door, wood to stone, to keep him within and the secrets out.
And when she was silent, Papa had reached up and lifted the double-barreled
shotgun from the gunrack beside the door. He cracked open the breech, loaded
both chambers with shells, and carefully laid the weapon down again. Then he had
held her and kissed her and said I love you. And she had clung to him like a
second skin. That was when Josef had knocked at the door and called out, Emil!
We're ready to leave!
Papa had hugged her a moment longer, then gripped the rifle he had bought in
Budapest, and unlatched the door. He stood on the threshold, and snowflakes flew
in around him. Andre! he had said, and the boy had looked up. You take care of
your mother, and make sure this door stays bolted. Do you understand?
Yes, Papa.
In the doorway, framed against a bleached sky and the purple teeth of the
distant mountain ranges, Papa had turned his gaze upon his wife and had uttered
three softly spoken words. They were indistinct, but the boy caught them, his
heart beating around a dark uneasiness.
Papa had said, "Watch my shadow."
When he stepped out, a whine of November wind filled the place he'd left. Mama
stood at the threshold, snow blowing into her long dark hair, aging her moment
by moment. Her eyes were fixed on the wagon as the two men urged the horses
along the cobbled path that would take them to the others. She stood there for a
long time, face gaunt against the false white purity of the world beyond that
door. When the wagon had lumbered out of sight, she turned away, closed the
door, and bolted it. Then she had lifted her gaze to her son's and had said with
a smile that was more like a grimace, Do your schoolwork now.
It was three days since he had gone. Now demons laughed and danced in the fire,
and some terrible, intangible thing had entered the house to sit in the empty
chair before the hearth, to sit between the boy and the woman at their evening
meals, to follow them around like a gust of black ash blown by an errant wind.
The corners of the two-room house grew cold as the stack of wood slowly
dwindled, and the boy could see a faint wraith of mist whirl from his mother's
nostrils whenever she let out her breath.
"I'll take the axe and get more wood," the boy said, starting to rise from his
chair.
"No!" cried his mother quickly, and glanced up. Their gray eyes met and held for
a few seconds. "What we have will last through the night. It's too dark out now.
You can wait until first light."
"But what we have isn't enough-"
"I said you'll wait until morning!" She looked away almost at once, as if
ashamed. Her knitting needles glinted in the firelight, slowly shaping a sweater
for the boy. As he sat down again, he saw the shotgun in the far corner of the
room. It
13
glowed a dull red in the firelight, like a watchful eye in the gloom. And now
the fire flared, spun, cracked; ashes churned, whirled up the chimney and out.
The boy watched, heat striping his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, while
his mother rocked in the chair behind him, glancing down occasionally at her
son's sharp profile.
In that fire the boy saw pictures coming together, linking into a living mural:
he saw a black wagon drawn by two white horses with funeral plumes, their cold
breath coming out in clouds. In that wagon a simple, small coffin. Men and women
in black, some shivering, some sobbing. Others following the wagon, boots
crunching through a crust of snow. Muttered sounds. Faces layered with secrets.
Hooded, fearful eyes that stared out toward the gray and purple rise of the
Jaeger Mountains. The Griska boy lay in that coffin, and what remained of him
was now being carried by the procession to the cemetery where the lelkesz
waited.
Death. It had always seemed so cold and alien and distant to the boy, something
that belonged not to his world, nor to the world of his mama and papa, but
rather to the world that Grandmother Elsa had lived in when she was sick and
yellow- fleshed. Papa had used the word then-dying. When you're in the room with
her, you must be very quiet because she can't sing to you anymore, and all she
wants to do now is sleep. To the boy death was a time when all songs ceased and
you were happy only when your eyes were closed. Now he stared at that funeral
wagon in his memory until the log collapsed and the tendrils of flame sprang up
in a different place. He remembered hearing whispers among the black-garbed
villagers of Krajeck: A terrible thing. Only eight years old. God has him now.
God? Let us hope and pray that it is indeed God who has Ivon Griska.
The boy remembered. He had watched the coffin being lowered by a rope and pulley
into the dark square in the earth while the lelkesz stood intoning blessings and
waving his crucifix. The casket had been nailed shut and then bound with barbed
wire. Before the first shovelful of dirt was thrown, the lelkesz had crossed
himself and dropped his crucifix into the grave. That was a week ago, before the
Widow Janos had disappeared; before the Sandor family vanished on a snowy Sunday
night, leaving all their possessions behind; before Johann the hermit reported
that he had seen naked figures dancing on the windswept heights of Mount Jaeger
and running with the big timber wolves that stalked that haunted mountain. Soon
after that Johann had vanished along with his dog, Vida. The boy remembered the
strange hardness in his father's face, a flicker of some deep secret within his
eyes. Once he had heard Papa tell Mama, They're on the move again.
In the fireplace, wood shifted and sighed. The boy blinked and drew away. Behind
him his mother's needles were still; her head was cocked toward the door, and
she was listening. The wind roared, bringing ice down from the mountain. The
door would have to be forced open in the morning, and the hard glaze would
shatter like glass.
Papa should be home by now, the boy told himself. It's so cold out tonight, so
cold . . . surely Papa won't be gone much longer. Secrets seemed to be
everywhere.
14
Just yesterday night someone had gone through the Krajeck cemetery and dug up
twelve graves, including Ivon Griska's. The coffins were still missing, but it
was rumored that the lelkesz had found bones and skulls lying in the snow.
Something pounded at the door, a noise like a hammer falling upon an anvil.
Once. And again. The woman jumped in her chair and twisted around.
"Papa!" the boy shouted joyfully. When he stood up, the flame-face was
forgotten. He started toward the door, but his mother caught his shoulder.
"Hush!" she whispered, and together they waited, their shadows filling the far
wall.
More hammering on the door-a heavy, leaden sound. The wind screamed, and it was
like the wail of Ivon Griska's mother when the sealed coffin was lowered into
the frozen dirt.
"Unbolt the door!" Papa said. "Hurry! I'm cold."
"Thank God!" Mama cried out. "Oh, thank God!" She moved quickly to the door,
threw back the bolt, and flung it open. A torrent of snow ripped at her face,
the wind distorting eyes, nose, and mouth. Papa, a huddled shape in his hat and
coat, stepped into the dim firelight, and diamonds of ice sparkled in his
eyebrows and beard. He took Mama into his arms, his massive body almost
engulfing her. The boy leapt forward to embrace his father, grateful that he was
home because being the man of the house was much more difficult than he had
imagined. Papa reached out, ran a hand through the boy's hair, and clapped him
firmly on the shoulder.
"Thank God you're home!" Mama said, clutching onto him. "It's over, isn't it?"
"Yes," he said. "It's over." He turned and closed the door, letting the bolt
fall.
"Here, step over by the fire. God in Heaven, your hands are cold! Take off your
coat before you catch your death!" She took the coat as he shrugged it from his
shoulders, then his hat. Papa stepped toward the fire, palms outward to receive
the heat. Flames glittered briefly in his eyes, like the glitter of rubies. And
as he passed his son, the boy crinkled up his nose. Papa had brought home a
funny smell. A smell of ... what was it? Think hard.
"Your coat is filthy!" Mama said, hanging it on a hook near the door. She
brushed at it with a trembling hand. She felt the tears of relief about to flood
from her, but she didn't want to cry in front of her son.
"It's so cold in the mountains," Papa said softly, standing at the rim of the
firelight. He kicked out with the toe of one scarred boot, and a log shifted,
revealing a finger of flame. "So cold."
The boy watched him, seeing a glaze of ice from Papa's snow-whitened face begin
to melt in droplets. Papa suddenly closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and
shivered. "Ohhhhhhhhm," he breathed, and then his head came around, eyes
opening, looking into his son's face for silent seconds. "What are you staring
at, boy?"
"Nothing." That smell. So funny. What was it?
Papa nodded. "Come over here beside me."
15
The boy took a single step forward and then stopped. He thought of horses and
coffins and sobbing mourners.
"Well? Come over here, I said."
Across the room the woman was standing with one hand still on the coat. There
was a crooked smile on her face, as if she'd been slapped by a hand that had
snaked from the shadows. "Is everything all right?" she asked. In her voice a
note quavered like a pipe organ in the Budapest cathedral.
"Yes," Papa said, reaching out for his son. "Everything is fine now because I'm
home with my loved ones, where I belong."
The boy saw a shadow touch his mother's face, saw it darken in an instant. Her
mouth was half-open, and her eyes were widening pools of bewilderment.
Papa took his son's hand. The man's flesh was hard and welted with rope burns.
And so terribly cold. The man drew his son nearer. The fire undulated like a
serpent uncoiling. "Yes," he whispered, "that's right." His gaze found the
woman. "You've let it get very cold in my house!"
"I'm . . . sorry," she whispered. She began to tremble now, and her eyes were
deep pits of terror._
"Very cold," Papa said. "I can feel ice in my bones. Can't you, Andre?" The boy"
nodded, looking into his father's shadowy firelight-sculpted face and seeing
himself suspended within eyes that were darker than he remembered. Yes, much
darker, like mountain caverns, and rimmed with eruptions of silver. The boy
blinked, dragged his gaze away with an effort that made his neck muscles throb.
He was trembling like Mama. He was beginning to be afraid but didn't know why.
All he knew was that Papa's skin and hair and clothes smelled like the room
where Grandmother Elsa had gone to sleep forever.
"We did a bad thing," Papa murmured. "Me, your uncle Josef, all the men from
Krajeck. We shouldn't have climbed into the mountains . . ."
Mama gasped, but the boy couldn't turn his head to look at her.
". . . because we were wrong. All of us, wrong. It's not what we thought itI was
. . ."
Mama moaned like a trapped animal.
". . . you see?" And Papa smiled, his back to the flames now, his white face
piercing the shadows. His grip tightened on his son's shoulder, and he suddenly
shivered as if a north wind had roared through his soul. Mama was sobbing, and
the boy wanted to turn to her and find out what was wrong, but he couldn't move,
couldn't make his head turn or his eyes blink. Papa smiled and said, "My good
little boy. My good little Andre . . ." And he bent down toward his son.J
But in the next instant the man's head twisted up, his eyes filled with bursts
of silver. "DON'T DO THAT!" he shrieked. And in that instant the boy cried out
and pulled away from his father, and then he saw that Mama had the shotgun
cradled in her shaking arms, and her mouth was wide open and she was screaming,
and even as the boy ran for her, she squeezed both triggers..
The shots whistled high over the boy, striking the man in the face and throat.
16
Papa screamed-a resounding scream of rage-and was flung backward to the floor,
where he lay with his face in shadow and his boots in red embers.
Mama dropped the shotgun, the strangled sobbing in her throat turning to
stutters of mad laughter. The recoil had nearly broken her right arm, and she
had fallen back against the door, her eyes swimming with tears. The boy stopped,
his heart madly hammering. The smell of gunpowder was rank in his nostrils as he
stared at the crazed woman who'd just shot down his father-saw her face
contorting, lips bubbling with spittle, eyes darting from shadow to shadow.
And then a slow, scraping noise from the other side of the room.
The boy spun around to look.
Papa was rising to his feet. Half of his face was gone, leaving his chin and jaw
and nose hanging by white, bloodless strings. The remaining teeth glittered with
light, and the single pulped eye hung on one thick vein across the ruined cavern
where the cheekbone had been. White nerves and torn muscles twitched in the hole
of the throat. The man staggered up, crouched with his huge hands twisted into
claws. When he tried to grin, only one side of the mouth remained to curve
grotesquely upward.
And in that instant both boy and woman saw that he did not bleed.
"Szornyeteg!" Mama screamed, her back pressed against the door. The word ripped
through the boy's mind, tearing away huge chunks that left him as mute and
frozen as a scarecrow in winter. Monster, she'd screamed. Monster.
"Oh, nooooooo," the hideous face whispered. And the thing shambled forward,
claws twitching in hungry expectation. "Not so easily, my precious wife . . ."
She gripped her son's arm, then turned and unbolted the door. He was almost upon
them when a wall of wind and snow screamed into the house; he staggered back a
step, one hand over his eye. The woman wrenched the boy out after her into the
night. Snow clutched at their legs and tried to hold them. "Run!" Mama cried out
over the roar of the wind. "We've got to run!" She tightened her grip on his
wrist until her fingers melded to his bones, and they fought onward through
whiplash strikes of snow.
Somewhere in the night, a woman screamed, her voice high-pitched and terrified.
Then a man's voice, babbling for mercy. The boy looked back over his shoulder as
he ran, back at the huddled houses of Krajeck. He could see nothing through the
storm. But mingled with the hundred voices of the wind, he thought he could hear
a chorus of hideous screams. Somewhere a ragged cacophony of laughter seemed to
build and build until it drowned out the cries for God and mercy. He caught a
glimpse of his house, receding into the distance now. Saw the dim red light
spilling across the threshold like a final dying ember of the fire he'd so
carefully tended. Saw the hulking half-blinded figure stumble out of the doorway
and heard the bellow of rage from that mangled, bloodless throat-"I'LL FIND
YOU!" And then Mama jerked him forward, and he almost tripped, but she pulled
him up, urging him to run. Wind screamed into their faces, and already Mama's
black hair was white with a coating of snow, as if she'd aged in a matter of
minutes,
17
THEY THIRST
or gone mad like some lunatic in an asylum who sees nightmares as grinning,
shadowless realities.
A figure suddenly emerged from the midst of a stand of snow-heavy pines, frail
and thin and as white as lake ice. The hair whipped around in the wind; the rags
of its worm-eaten clothes billowed. The figure stood at the top of a snow mound,
waiting for them, and before Mama saw it, it had stepped into their path,
grinning a little boy's grin and holding out a hand sculpted like ice.
"I'm cold," Ivon Griska whispered, still grinning. "I have to find my way home."
Mama stopped, screamed, thrust out a hand before her. For an instant the boy was
held by Ivon Griska's gaze, and in his mind he heard the echo of a whisper.
Won't you be my playmate, Andre? And he'd almost replied, Yes, oh yes, when Mama
shouted something that was carried away by the wind. She jerked him after her,
and he looked back with chilled regret. Ivon had forgotten about them now and
began walking slowly through the snow toward Krajeck.
After a while, Mama could go no farther. She shuddered and fell into the snow.
She was sick then, and the boy crawled away from the steaming puddle and stared
back through waving pines toward home. His face was seared by the cold, and he
wondered if Papa was going to be all right. Mama had no reason to hurt him like
that. She was a bad woman to hurt his father, who loved them both so dearly.
"Papa!" he called into the distance, hearing only the wind reply in frozen
mockery of a human voice. His eyelashes were heavy with snow. "Papa!" His small,
tired voice cracked. But then Mama struggled to her feet, pulling him up again
even though he tried to fight her and break free of her grip. She shook him
violently, ice tracks lacing her face like white embroidery, and shouted, "He's
dead! Don't you understand that? We've got to run, Andre, and we've got to keep
on running!" And as she said that, the boy knew she was insane. Papa was badly
hurt, yes, because she had shot him, but Papa wasn't dead. Oh, no. He was back
there. Waiting.
And then lights broke the curtain of darkness. Smoke ripped from a chimney. They
glimpsed a snow-weighted roof. They raced toward those lights, stumbling,
half-frozen. The woman muttered to herself, laughing hysterically and urging the
boy on. He fought the fingers of cold that clutched at his throat. Lie down, the
wind whispered across the back of his head. Stop right here and sleep. This
woman has done a bad thing to your papa, and she may hurt you, too. Lie down
right here for a little while and be warm, and in the morning your papa will
come for you. Yes. Sleep, little one, and forget.
A weather-beaten sign creaked wildly back and forth above a heavy door. He saw
the whitened traces of words: THE GOOD SHEPHERD INN. Mama hammered madly at the
door, shaking the boy at the same time to keep him awake. "Let us in, please let
us in!" she shouted, pounding with a numbed fist. The boy stumbled and fell
against her, his head lolling to the side.
When the door burst open, long-armed shadows reached for them. The boy's knees
buckled, and he heard Mama moan as the cold-like the touch of a forbidden,
loving stranger-gently kissed him to sleep.
18 19
1
Friday, October 25I
THE CAULDRON
20 21
A star-specked night, black as the highway asphalt that bubbled like a cauldron
brew beneath the midday sun, now lay thickly over the long dry stretch of Texas
285 between Fort Stockton and Pecos. The darkness, as still and dense as the eye
of a hurricane, was caught between the murderous heat of dusk and dawn. In all
directions the land, stubbled with thornbrush and pipe-organ cactus, was
frying-pan flat. Abandoned hulks of old cars, gnawed down to the bare metal by
the sun and occasional dust storms, afforded shelter for the coiled rattlesnakes
that could still smell the sun's terrible track across the earth.
It was near one of these hulks-rusted and vandalized, windshield long shattered,
engine carried away by some hopeful tinkerer-that a jackrabbit sniffed the
ground for water. Smelling distant, buried coolness, the jackrabbit began to dig
with its forepaws; in another instant it stopped, nose twitching toward the
underside of that car. It tensed, smelling snake. From the darkness came a dozen
tiny rattlings, and the rabbit leapt backward. Nothing followed. The rabbit's
instincts told it that a nest had been dug under there, and the noise of the
young would bring back the hunting mother. Sniffing the ground for the snake's
trail, the jackrabbit moved away from the car and ran nearer to the highway,
crunching grit beneath its paws. It was halfway across the road, moving toward
its own nest and young in the distance, when a sudden vibration in the earth
froze it. Long ears twitching for a sound, the rabbit turned its head toward the
south.
A gleaming white orb was slowly rising along the highway. The rabbit watched it,
transfixed. Sometimes the rabbit would stand atop its dirt-mound burrow and
watch the white thing that floated high overhead; sometimes it was larger than
this one; sometimes it was yellow; sometimes it wasn't there at all; sometimes
there were tendrils across it, and it left in the air the tantalizing scent of
water that never fell. The rabbit was unafraid because it was familiar with that
thing in the sky, but the vibration it now felt rippled the flesh along its
spine. The orb was growing larger, bringing with it a noise like the growl of
thunder. In another instant the rabbit's eyes were blinded by the white orb; its
nerves shot out a danger signal to the brain. The rabbit scurried for safety on
the opposite side of the highway, casting a long scrawl of shadow beyond it.
The jackrabbit was perhaps three feet away from a protective clump of thorn-
brush when the night-black Harley-Davidson 1200cc "chopper," moving at almost
eighty miles an hour, swerved across the road and directly over the rabbit's
spine. It
22
squealed, bones splintering, and the small body began to twitch in the throes of
death. The huge motorcycle, its shocks barely registering a shudder of quick
impact, roared on to the north.
A few moments later a sidewinder began to undulate toward the rabbit's cooling
carcass.
And on the motorcycle, enveloped in a cocoon of wind and thunder, the rider
stared along the cone of white light his single high-intensity beam afforded,
and with a fractional movement he guided the machine to the center of the road.
His black-gloved fist throttled upward; the machine growled like a well-fed
panther and kicked forward until the speedometer's needle hung at just below
ninety. Behind a battered black crash helmet with visor lowered, the rider was
grinning. He wore a sleek, skin-tight, black leather jacket and faded jeans with
leather-patched knees. The jacket was old and scarred, and across the back rose
a red Day-Glo king cobra, its hood fully swollen. The paint was flaking off, as
if the reptile were shedding its skin. The machine thundered on, parting a wall
of silence before it, leaving desert denizens trembling in its wake. A garishly
painted sign-blue music notes floating above a pair of tilted red beer bottles,
the whole thing pocked with rust-edged bullet holes-came up on the right. The
rider glanced quickly at it, reading JUST AHEAD! THE WATERIN' HOLE! and below
that, FILL 'ER up, PARDNER! Yeah, he thought. Time to fill up.
Two minutes later there was the first faint glimmer of blue neon against the
blackness. The rider began to cut his speed; the speedometer's needle fell
quickly to eighty, seventy, sixty. Ahead there was a blue neon sign-THE WAT RIN'
H LE -above the doorway of a low wooden building with a flat, dusty red roof.
Clustered around it like weary wasps around a sun-bleached nest were three cars,
a jeep, and a pickup truck with most of its dull blue paint scoured down to the
muddy red primer. The motorcycle rider turned into a tumbleweed-strewn parking
lot and switched off his engine; immediately the motorcycle's growl was replaced
with Freddy Fender's nasal voice singing about "wasted days and wasted nights."
The rider put down the kickstand and let the black Harley ease back, like a
crouching animal. When he stood up and off the machine, his muscles were as taut
as piano wires; the erection between his legs throbbed with heat.
He popped his chin strap and lifted the helmet off, exposing a vulpine, sharply
chiseled face that was as white as new marble. In that bloodless face the deep
pits of his eyes bore white pupils, faintly veined with red. From a distance
they were as pink as a rabbit's, but up close they became snakelike, glittering
coldly, unblinking, hypnotizing. His hair was yellowish-white and closely
cropped; a blue trace of veins at the temples pulsed an instant behind the
jukebox's beat. He left his helmet strapped around the handlebars and moved
toward the building, his gaze flickering toward the cars: there was a rifle on a
rack in the truck's cab, a "Hook 'Em Horns!" sticker on a car's rear fender, a
pair of green dice dangling from the jeep's rearview mirror.
When he stepped through the screen door into a large room layered with
23
smoky heat, the six men inside-three at a table playing cards, two at a light
bulb- haloed pool table, one behind the bar-instantly looked up and froze. The
albino biker met each gaze in turn and then sat on one of the bar stools, the
red cobra on his back a scream of color in the murky light. After another few
seconds of silence, a pool cue cracked against a ball like a gunshot. "Aw,
shit!" one of the pool players- a broad-shouldered man wearing a red checked
shirt and dusty Levis that had been snagged a hundred times on barbed wire-said
loudly with a thick Texas drawl. "At least that screwed up your shot, didn't it,
Matty?"
"Sure did," Matty agreed. He was about forty, all arms and legs, short red
hair,| and a lined forehead half-covered by a sweat-stained cowboy hat. He was
chewing | slowly on a toothpick, and now he stood where he could consider the
lie of the balls, do some more chewing, and watch that strange-looking white
dude from the !| corner of his eye.
The bartender, a hefty Mexican with tattooed forearms and heavy-lidded_ black
eyes, came down the bar following the swirls of a wet cloth. "Help you?" he
asked the albino and looked up into the man's face; instantly he felt as if his
spine had been tapped with an ice pick. He glanced over toward where Slim
Hawkins, Bobby Hazelton and Ray Cope sat in the third hour of their Friday night
poker game; he saw Bobby did an elbow into Ray's ribs and grin toward the bar.
The albino said quietly, "Beer."
"Sure, coming up." Louis the bartender turned away in relief. The biker looked
bizarre, unclean, freakish. He was hardly a man, probably nineteen or twenty at
the most. Louis picked up a glass mug from a shelf and a bottle of Lone Star
from the stuttering refrigerator unit beneath the bar. From the jukebox, Dolly
Parton began singing about "burning, baby, burning." Louis slid the mug across
to the albino and then quickly moved away, swirling the cloth over the polished
wood of the bar. He felt as if he were sweating in the glare of a midday sun.
Balls cracked together on the green-felt pool table. One of them thunked into a
corner pocket. "There you go, Will," Matty drawled. "That's thirty-five you
oweil . me, ain't it?"
"Yeah, yeah. Damn it. Louis, why don't you turn that fuckin' music box down so a
man can concentrate on his pool playin'!"
Louis shrugged and motioned toward the poker table.
"I like it that loud," Bobby Hazelton said, grinning over kings and tens. He was
a part-time rodeo bronco-buster with a crew cut and a prominent gold tooth.
Three years ago he'd been on his way to a Texas title when a black bastard of a
horse called Twister had thrown him and broken his collarbone in two places.
"Music helps me think. Will, you oughta come on over here and lemme take some of
that heavy money you're carrying around."
"Hell, naw! Matty's doing too good a job at that tonight!" Will put his cue
stick away in the rack, glancing quickly over at the albino and then at Bobby.
"You boys best watch old Bobby," he warned. "Took me for over fifty bucks last
Friday night."
"Just luck," Bobby said. He spread his cards out on the table, and Slim Hawkins
24
said in his gravelly voice, "Sheeyit!" Bobby reached for his chips and gathered
them in.
"Dumb luck my ass," Ray Cope said. He leaned over and spat a chunk of Red Man
tobacco into an empty paper cup. "Jesus, it's hot in here tonight!" He let his
gaze shift past the red cobra on that kid's jacket. Goddamn biker, he thought,
narrowing ice-blue eyes rimmed with wrinkles. Don't know what it is to work for
a livin'. Probably one of those punks who robbed Jeff Hardy's grocery store in
Pecos a few days back. He could see the kid's hands as the albino lifted the
beer mug and drank. Under those gloves, Cope thought, the hands were probably as
white and soft as Mary Ruth Kennon's thighs. His own large hands were chunky and
rough and scarred from ten years of ranch work.
The Dolly Parton song faded. Another record dropped, hissed, and crackled for a
few seconds like hot fat on a griddle. Waylon Jennings started singing about
going to Luckenbach, Texas. Matty called for another Lone Star and a pack of
Marlboros.
The albino downed the rest of his beer and sat staring into the mug for a
moment. He began to smile slightly, as if at a private joke, but the smile was
cold and terrible, and Louis winced when he happened to catch it. The albino
swiveled around on his stool, reared his arm back, and flung the mug straight
into the jukebox. Colored glass and plastic exploded like several over-and-under
shotguns going off at once; Waylon Jennings's voice went into an ear-piercing
falsetto for an instant, then rumbled down to a basso as the turntable went
crazy. Lights flickered; the record droned to a stop. There was utter silence in
the bar, broken only by the sound of pieces of glass clinking to the floor.
Louis had raised his head from where he'd bent down for Matty's beer. He stared
at the ruined jukebox. Madre de Dios! he thought, that thing was three hundred
dollars almost five years ago! Then he looked over at the albino, who was
watching him with a death's head grin plastered across his unholy face. At last
Louis got his tongue working. "You crazy?" Louis screamed. "What the shit you do
that for?"
Chairs scraped back from the poker table. Immediately the place was filled with
the ozone smell of danger and hot tempers.
With eyes like solid chunks of blood-veined ice, the albino said, "I don't like
that shitkicker music."
"You crazy, man?" Louis shrieked, sweat popping out on his face.
Bobby Hazelton, his hands curled into fists, said between clenched teeth, "You
gonna pay for that machine, freak."
"Sure as hell are," Ray Cope echoed.
The albino turned on his stool very slowly and faced the men. His smile froze
everyone but Will Jenks, who stepped back a pace. "Got no money," the albino
said.
"I'll call the sheriff then, you bastardo!" Louis started to move down the bar
toward the pay phone on the wall, but instantly the albino said "No you won't"
in a softly chilling voice. Louis stopped where he was, his heart hammering.
25
"No call to bust that machine," Matty said, and picked up a pool cue from the
rack. "This is a peaceable place."
"Was," Bobby said. "What're you doin' around here anyway, freak? Lookin' to rob
somebody maybe? Have some fun with somebody's wife or daughter when the man's
gone to work? Huh?"
"I'm heading through. Going to L.A." The albino, still smiling faintly, glanced
at each of them in turn-the track of his gaze freezing Ray Cope's veins, making
Will Jenks's temples throb, sending a shudder along Slim Hawkins's spine.
"Thought I'd stop to fill up, like the sign says."
"You're gonna pay," Louis threatened, but his voice sounded weaker. There was a
shotgun under the bar, but to get it he'd have to step nearer to the albino, and
something within him warned him not to.
"Nobody asked you to stop here, cottonhead!" Ray Cope steeled himself and began
to move around the pool table toward the albino. "We don't like you biker freaks
around here!"
"I don't like shitkickers either." This was said calmly, almost offhandedly, as
if the albino had just said he didn't particularly care for the dry tang of the
Lone Star beer, but instantly a surge of electric tension ringed the room. Bobby
Hazelton's eyes bulged with anger, the sweat stains under his arms growing
larger in circumference. The albino slowly began to unzip his jacket.
"What'd you say, freak?" Bobby hissed.
The albino, his stare impassive, whispered, "Shit . . . kickers."
"You sonofabitch!" Bobby shouted, and then leapt toward the biker with fists
swinging. But in the next instant the albino's jacket came open; there was a
terrifying roar, a burst of blue smoke, and a hole where Bobby Hazelton's right
eye had been. Bobby screamed, clawing at his face even as the wadcutter slug
tore away the back of his head and spattered the men behind him with bits of
bone and brain. He pinwheeled across the poker table, crashing down on kings and
jokers and aces, and on the floor the legs of the corpse kept jerking as if
Bobby were still trying to run.
The albino, blue smoke wafting between him and the other men, had withdrawn from
the inside of his jacket a pistol with a long, thin barrel, a squarish black
body, and a grip that resembled a sawed-off length of broom handle. The deadly
muzzle was drooling smoke. The albino stared, his eyes slightly widened, at the
contorted corpse on the floor.
"You killed him!" Slim Hawkins said with incredulous wonder, clawing at the
droplets of Bobby's blood across the front of his gray cowboy shirt with the
pearl- stud buttons. "Jesus God, you killed him . . ." He choked, gagged, and
started to throw up through his hands.
"Godawmighty!" Will said, his mouth hanging open. He had seen a piece like the
one that kid held once before, at a gun and knife show in Houston. It was an old
automatic the Germans had used back in World War II-a broom-handle Mauser, he
thought it was called. Ten slugs to a clip, and the damned thing could fire
faster than a man could blink. "Bastard's got a machine-gun pistol!"
26
"Yeah," the albino said softly, "that's right."
Louis, his heart beating so hard he thought it would explode through his chest,
took a deep breath and dove for the shotgun. He squawked with terror as his feet
slipped out from under him on a wet spot. But even as his hands curled around
cold iron, the albino had whirled around, eyes brimming with bloodlust. Louis
looked up into two bullets that sheared off the top of his head. He crashed
backward into a shelf of beer mugs, his brain exposed to the world; the corpse
uttered a soft, eerie sigh and crumpled into a heap.
"Oh ... God.. ."Will breathed. Bile rose to the top of his throat, and he almost
strangled on it.
"Hold on now, fella . . . just hold on now . . ." Matty was saying over and over
again, like a record that had gotten stuck on the jukebox. His face was now
almost as white as the albino's, and his cowboy hat was splattered with Bobby
Hazelton's blood. He put his hands up as if begging for mercy, which he was
because in that terrible instant the men knew they were going to die.
The albino stepped through a churning curtain of smoke. He was smiling like a
child at Christmas who wanted to see what would spill out when the packages were
ripped open.
"Please," Will said hoarsely, his eyes wide circles of terror. "Please don't. .
. kill us . . ."
"Like I said," the biker replied evenly, "I stopped in to fill up. When you boys
get to hell, you tell the devil Kobra sent you. That's with a K." He grinned and
opened fire. A bloody cowboy hat sailed up toward the ceiling; bodies writhed
and spun and fell like marionettes on crazy strings; a few teeth torn from a
blasted mouth rattled to the floor; fragments of a gray shirt with pearl-stud
buttons floated toward the rear of the room on the breath of a volcano.
Then-but for the soft dripping-silence.
Kobra's ears were ringing. He flipped the Mauser's safety and laid it on the
bar, where it gleamed like a black diamond. For a few minutes he stood
motionless, eyes sated and lazy, examining the specific postures of death each
corpse had taken. He breathed deeply of the bloody smell and felt electric with
life. God, it was good, he thought. So damned good! His erection was gone. He
walked around the bar and drew another bottle of beer from the refrigerator,
downing it in a couple of long swallows and then tossing the bottle toward the
other discarded containers. Maybe I ought to take some with me, he thought. No.
Don't want to weigh myself down. No room anyway. Want to be fast and free. He
returned to his weapon and slipped it into the special leather holster sewn into
the inside of his jacket. Little bitch had cost a lot of money in Salinas, but
she was worth it, he told himself. He loved that weapon; he'd bought her from a
canny old trader who'd sworn she had actually been used by Nazi security units
and wasn't just a gun shop antique. The magazine had jammed a couple of times
but otherwise the weapon was perfectly responsive. She could cut a man down to
bone pretty damned fast. He zipped up his jacket. The pistol burned its imprint
into his side like a passion mark. He breathed the
27
THEY THIRST
smell of blood until his lungs felt swollen with hot, sweet copper. Then he went
to work, first going through the cash register. There was a little over forty
dollars in ones, fives, and tens. The change he didn't care about. He rolled the
corpses over and dug into their pockets, careful not to leave a bootprint in any
of the puddles of thickening blood. In all he came up with about two hundred
dollars. He was about to rise up from the body of the first man he'd shot when
he saw that gold tooth shining like a mother lode in the half-open cave of the
mouth. He knocked the tooth out with the butt of his Mauser, replaced the gun in
its holster, and put the tooth in his pocket.
And now he was ready to go.
Outside, the desert air smelled weak and impure to Kobra as compared with the
rich death smell within the Waterin' Hole. In both directions the highway
vanished into darkness; he saw his shadow, thrown blue across the earth by the
neon sign over his head. Someone would find the shitkickers soon, he told
himself. All hell would break loose. No matter. I'll be on the road to L.A. and
a long way from here by the time the troopers show up. Kobra turned his face
toward the black western sky, his flesh faintly tingling.
The feeling was stronger than it had been in Ciudad Acuna, stronger than in
Sonora, stronger even than in Fort Stockton just a few miles back. Like the
prick of needles and pins, like a quick rush after a snort of coke, or the
delicious, tormenting anticipation when watching a spoon of sugarfine horse
begin to cook. And getting better all the time, slowly increasing as he moved
west. Sometimes now he thought he could smell blood when he faced west, as if
the whole Pacific had turned crimson, and you could wallow in it all you liked
until you got drunk with it and fell down and drowned in it. It was like being
fed the greatest drug in the world drop by drop, and every mile Kobra traveled
he grew more maddeningly eager for the whole kick in his veins.
And there was the dream, too; the recurring thing that had drawn him back into
the States from Mexico. He'd first had it a week before and for three nights in
a row, everything exactly the same and so damned . . . spooky: he sat astride
his chopper in the dream, on a long, curving highway with high palm trees on
each side and a lot of tall buildings. The light was funny-it seemed all reddish
and murky, as if the sun had gotten stuck on the horizon. He wore his black
jacket, his jeans, and his black crash helmet, and behind him rode an army of
outlaw bikers on every kind of chopper and hog a tormented mind could
imagine-firebreathers with chrome shining bright red, metal-flake paint
glittering purple and neon blue and gold, and engines roaring like dragons. But
the army of outlaw bikers who rode in Kobra's wake looked strange and skeletal,
white-fleshed things with shadow-rimmed eyes that did not blink in the miasmic
light. There were hundreds of them, a thousand maybe, their bleached flesh
covered with the remnants of buckskin jackets, tattered jeans with leather knee
patches. Army surplus jackets burned sickly green by the sun; Day-Glo painted
crash helmets, Nazi helmets, cracked and battered skid lids rattled around some
of the grinning skull-like heads. Some of the
26
things wore goggles. They began to chant, eerie braying voices from between
clicking rows of teeth, louder and louder: Kobra, Kobra, KoBRA, KOBRA, KOBRA!
And in the dream Kobra had seen a white sign way up in the hills above the
sprawling city: HOLLYWOOD.
Spooky.
And two nights ago he'd begun to sleepwalk. Twice he'd opened his eyes in the
hot, dry house before dawn and found himself standing-actually goddamned
standing!-outside the pitiful wooden shanty of a house that he'd been hiding in
for the past three weeks since he'd left the country after that little party
near New Orleans almost a month ago. What had awakened him both times was the
weary voice of the thirteen-year-old prostitute he was living with, a frail girl
with black hair that shone like oil and eyes that looked forty years old,
calling from the dark doorway. Senor? Senor? But in the instant before her voice
registered in his blurred brain, he thought he'd heard a voice as distant and
cold as a Canadian wind whispering through his soul. And what it had said was
Follow me. He was facing west when his eyes had opened both nights.
Kobra blinked. A sudden gust of desert wind had blown grit into his face. It was
time to be moving. And when I get where I'm headed, he told himself as he walked
across the lot to his chopper, there's gonna be one hell of a party. He sat
astride the Harley and slipped on his helmet, fastening the chin strap and
lowering the visor like a demonic knight readying for battle. He kickstarted the
engine and wheeled the rumbling machine out of the parking lot, leaving the
silent Waterin' Hole with its last customers behind. His belly felt gorged.
On the highway he accelerated to just below eighty. He was going to have to
follow the worst of the desert roads to avoid the state troopers. Have to be
real careful, he warned himself. But I have to hurry.
Because of one thing he was certain.
He was following Death's keen promise.
TWO
When Andy Palatazin opened his eyes in the cool darkness of his bedroom, he had
a single chilling thought: the Roach is here. He lay perfectly still, his
bearlike body swaddled in blue sheets, and waited for his heartbeat to settle
down. He listened to the quiet nighttime noises: the creaking of a stair down
the hallway, the muffled humming of the refrigerator downstairs, the ticking of
the alarm clock on the little bedside table, assorted cracks and whispers and
rustles. He was reminded of the tales his mother had told him as a child about
the elves who crept out at night, riding on the backs of mice to have a festive
celebration, then disappeared by dawn. Beside him, Jo stirred and drew closer to
him. What woke me? he wondered. I never wake up like this!
He lifted his head a few inches to look at the clock. It took him a minute to
27 I
1
28 29
make out the little luminous numerals-eleven-fifty. No, he told himself, the
Roach is not here. The Roach is out somewhere in Los Angeles doing those things
he likes to do. His stomach crawled with dread and disgust at what the morning
might bring. He eased over on his back, bedsprings sagging and whining like
poorly plucked harp strings. He expected to feel the sharp jab of a spring
cutting into his back or buttocks at any moment. The mattress was thin and worn
from years of supporting his weight, which ranged annually from 210 during the
summer when he played some golf with a few of the other detectives to 230 around
Christmastime when he gorged himself on Jo's beef-and-sour-cream casseroles.
He stared up at the ceiling and heard a car taking the corner down on Romaine
Street. Headlights flickered overhead, then faded away. Very soon now another
day would break, he told himself. October in Los Angeles. Not quite like the
Octobers he'd known as a boy. Those Octobers had been real, full of wild winds
and erratic snowfall, cold gray skies and a dance of hail across the
windowsills. These California Octobers were false, hollow, somehow unsatisfying:
a chill in the morning breeze and again at night, but hot sun at midday unless
the sky was cloudy, which was very seldom indeed. And not to forget the frequent
earth tremors that cracked windows and shook the floors. But it was difficult
for him to believe snow was falling anywhere in the world when he could see
people wearing short-sleeved shirts on the streets of L.A. It was the city of
perpetual summer, the land of golden youth. Sometimes his heart ached for want
of a single flake of snow. Oh, he could see the autumn and winter snowfall on
clear days when the purple rise of the San Gabriel Mountains wasn't obscured by
fog or smog, but somehow the palm trees waving everywhere you looked didn't seem
to fit. It had been over sixty degrees on Christmas Day last year. Palatazin
recalled boyhood Christmases of ten and twenty below zero when the windows were
caked with ice and snow and Papa had to hack the door free with- Abruptly his
mind went blank. He turned his attention to what he thought had wakened him:
Roach. The taplo was out there somewhere, crawling through a city of over eight
million people, waiting to strike. Or perhaps striking even now. It was Friday
night, and the young prostitutes would be lining Sunset and Hollywood
boulevards. Perhaps he'll make a mistake tonight, Palatazin told himself.
Perhaps he'll try to lure one of the policewomen tonight, and then the nightmare
would be over. Four young girls in two weeks, all strangled to death by powerful
hands, according to the coroner's report, then raped. And the notes this hideous
animal left on the corpses! They were rambling hand-scrawled messages that in
one sentence talked about the divine plan of God and then said the prostitutes
-"bad girls," the notes said-were liars and hellish angels who could be led to
peace only through death. Palatazin could recall most of the notes word for
word. He'd been studying them continually since the morning of September 27,
when a surf fisherman in Venice had found the body of Kitt Kimberlin, a
nineteen-year-old divorcee with two kids, beneath a rotting pier.
"God called me in the night," the note had read. "God is here among us right
now, and out of all the people in this city He's called me to do His work!" That
first
30
note, hastily written in blue ink on ordinary drugstore typing paper, had been
unsigned. It had been a Venice police officer named Duccio who'd found that the
young woman's mouth had been crammed full of dead roaches; the story had leaked
to reporters, and it was the Los Angeles Tattler that first printed a front-page
article, by Gayle Clarke of course, with the headline, WHERE WILL THE ROACH
STRIKE NEXT? Several photographs at the death scene by somebody named Jack Kidd
were splashed luridly across the page, and Palatazin knew that the rag had
probably sold a million copies that week. When the next woman, a Chicano barely
sixteen years old, was found under a tarpaulin in an empty lot in Hollywood,
there were the dead roaches again, and the other papers picked up on it.
The third letter was signed, "Roach. Ha ha. I like it." The latest note, found
on the corpse of a blond, blue-eyed runaway from Seattle, was the most
disturbing of the lot: "The Master calls me. He speaks to me by name now, and I
have to answer. He tells me he needs me, and my head stops hurting. He says I'm
doing it wrong, that he'll teach me things I never dreamed of. You won't hear
from me again." It was signed "Roach," and the girl's mouth had been jammed full
of them.
That had been on the tenth of October. Thirteen days now with no trace of him.
Where was he? What was he planning? Waiting, biding his time, laughing as the
LAPD ran to ground every possible lead, rumor, or bar and pool hall story about
somebody knowing somebody who knew a guy who'd been drunkenly bragging about
snuffing out a girl and getting away with it, every pimp's tale of the night
this really weird customer with strange, flaming eyes said he had a few roaches
for Kitt Kimberlin, every after-midnight telephone call from frightened wives
who whispered that they didn't know what was happening to Harry or Tom or Joe
but he was acting very strange and not coming home until almost dawn. Palatazin
could hear the collective, "Yes, ma'am, thank you for calling, we'll check it
out," being spoken by a dozen different police officers across the city right at
this very moment.
Of course every newspaper from the Times to the Tattler was zeroing in on the
Roach murders. The nightly television newscasts always brought him up in some
insinuation or reference. The flesh traffic on Sunset and Hollywood had started
to thin out for a while after midnight, but now it was swinging back to business
as usual. But no one had forgotten: it seemed to be a big joke to some, that the
L.A. police couldn't even find a roach. Those were the words that haunted
Palatazin, that sat on his forehead at night chuckling and lay like a moldering
corpse beside his bed for him to trip over on the way to brush his teeth in the
morning: Find the Roach.
How? The man was crazy, of course. An animal, a fattyu, a maniac. But careful
and cunning, too. And the city was so big, so sprawling, so full of potential
killers. How? It was a question Palatazin wrestled with daily because, as
Detective Captain of Homicide at Parker Center in downtown L.A., he was in
charge of the investigation. He saw the fear, the mistrust in people's face now
as they stood talking in groups on the boulevards, as they pondered the fickle
turnings of life and death in smoky bars. The sheer ugliness of this maniac's
methods surpassed anything the
31
Hillside Strangler had ever done. But if there was anything that riveted the
attention of L.A., it was the horror show.
A sickening thing, Palatazin thought as he stared up at the ceiling, trying to
picture in his mind what the man must look like. Judging from the bruises on the
throats of his victims, his hands would have to be abnormally large and very
strong; probably his forearms and shoulders would be well-developed, too. He
would also probably have very fast reflexes-but from that tiny bit of tissue the
police lab technicians had determined that the Roach was a darkhaired Caucasian,
most likely under forty. He was a very sadistic, sick man who seemed to be
enjoying his newly found publicity. But what had made him go underground? What
had made him decide to stop killing just as quickly as he'd begun? Thirteen
days, Palatazin thought. The trail's getting colder and colder. What is he
doing? Where is he hiding?
And suddenly Palatazin was aware of another noise in the room. The noise, he
instinctively knew, that had awakened him.
It was a slight, soft creaking, as if someone were walking on the floorboards
down at the foot of the bed. Beside him Jo stirred and sighed, locked into
sleep.
Palatazin's blood turned icy. He lifted his head.
At the foot of the bed, over where the window looked down onto Romaine Street
with its old wood-framed houses standing shoulder to shoulder like aged friends,
Palatazin's mother, Nina, sat in her rocking chair, slowly rocking back and
forth. She was small and wrinkled and weary-looking, but her eyes blazed
fiercely in the darkness.
Palatazin's heart thudded in his chest. He sat upright in bed and heard himself
whisper first in the language of his native Hungary, "Anya ... Mama ... my God
..."
His mother's stare was unyielding. She seemed to be trying to speak; he could
see her lips moving, the sunken cheeks quivering with the effort. She lifted a
frail hand and motioned with it, as if she wanted her son to get up and hurry,
lazybones, you'll be late for school.
"What is it?" he whispered, his face gone ashen. "What is it?"
A hand gripped his shoulder. He gasped and looked around, his flesh crawling.
His wife, a small, pretty woman in her early forties with bones like fine china,
was looking up at him through deep blue, blurry eyes. She said thickly, "Is it
time to get up yet?"
"No," he told her. "Go back to sleep."
"What do you want for breakfast?"
He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and she settled back down into her pillow.
Almost instantly her breathing shallowed. He looked back to the window, beads of
cold sweat on his face.
The rocking chair, over in the corner where it always sat, was empty. For a few
seconds he thought it was moving, but as he stared at it he realized that the
chair wasn't rocking at all. It never had been. Another car moved along the
street, casting quick reflections of light that chased the clinging shadows
along the ceiling.
Palatazin watched the chair for a long time, then eased himself back down in
32
the bed. He pulled the sheet up to his neck. The thoughts whirled wildly through
his mind, like remnants of tattered newspaper. It's the pressure, of course,
FIND THE ROACH, but I did see her, I did! Tomorrow more legwork and interviews
and telephone calls. FIND THE ROACH. I saw my mother sitting in that chair. . .
the day starts early so you must get your sleep . . . close your eyes ... I saw
her. . . close your eyes . . . yes, yes I did!
Finally his heavy-lidded eyes did close. Sleep brought on a nightmarish shadowy
shape, pursuing a small boy and a woman across a plain heaped with high
snowdrifts. His last coherent thought before he began to run across the
snowfield in his mind was that his mother had been dead since the first week of
September.
THREE
Mitchell Everett Gideon, forty-four-year-old entrepreneur supreme and newly
elected vice-president of the Los Angeles Millionaires' Club, was lighting up a
dark- leafed, two-dollar Joya de Nicaragua cigar with a gold Dunhill lighter at
about the same time that Andy Palatazin was staring at an empty rocking chair. A
short, fiesty man with a spreading belly and a face that would have been as
innocent as Humpty Dumpty's except for the dark, deep-set eyes and the
thin-lipped, callous mouth, Gideon sat in the gold-carpeted office of his
Spanish pueblo-style mansion in Laurel Canyon staring at a half-dozen invoices
spread across his antique mahogany desk. The invoices covered shipments of the
usual items: a couple of freight-train loads of unfinished oak planking cut into
prespecified lengths and widths, delivered to the factory in the Highland Park
district; crates of varnish and stain; several dozen bolts of silk from Lee Wong
and Company over in Chinatown; bales of cotton ticking; six drums of embalming
fluid. "The robbers!" Gideon muttered, betraying his New York upbringing with a
single flattening of the tongue. "The dirty, rotten robbers! Especially Lee
Wong. Been doin' business with that old chink for almost fifteen years," Gideon
told himself as he bit down on his cigar, "now the old bastid's raised his
prices for the third time in a year! Christ!" And the same with the others, too.
The oak was costing an arm and a leg these days, and just last week Vincenzo at
the Gomez Brothers Lumberyard had called Gideon to tell him what a terrific
sacrifice he was making to sell the material that cheaply. Sacrifice my ass!
Gideon thought, chewing on the cigar. That's another goddamned robber! "Well,
contract renewal time's comin' up in a few months," he told himself. "Then we'll
see who wants my business and who don't!"
He sucked in a mouthful of smoke and spewed it up toward the ceiling, sweeping
aside the invoices with a diamond-ringed hand. "Overhead is killin' me this
year!" he told himself. About the only thing that hadn't skyrocketed in price
was the embalming fluid, and the DeWitt Labs people were making threatening
noises about that, too. How the hell can a man make a decent livin' these days?
Cigar gripped between his teeth, Gideon stood up from his desk to pour himself a
solid
33
shot of Chivas Regal from a decanter taken from across the room. He wore a pair
of crisply pressed tan slacks, a flaming red shirt open at the chest with
several gold chains dangling, a pair of brown Gucci loafers on his feet. The
shirt's pocket was monogrammed-MG in white letters. Gideon took his cigar and
shot of Chivas out through a sliding glass door and onto a long terrace with a
wrought-iron railing. Directly beneath him there was a fifty-foot drop into
shrub- and tree-studded darkness, and off to the left, just faintly visible
through a thick wall of pines, were the lights of another canyon dweller's
house. Before him, like so much gaudy jewelry flung out on a black
velvet-covered table, was a dazzling panorama of multicolored lights-Beverly
Hills and Hollywood and L.A. from right to left as far as he could see. The tiny
headlights of toy cars moved along Hollywood, Sunset, and Santa Monica
boulevards; neon pulsated to private rhythms above discos and bars and rock
clubs on the Strip. The rolling streets of Beverly Hills were dotted with
sparkling white lights, like so many stars fallen to earth and slowly sputtering
to death. Parks and cemeteries were dark squares in the electric tapestry.
Gideon drew on his cigar and watched a Fountain Avenue traffic light the size of
a pinhead turn green. He turned his head at a fraction of an inch and saw a dust
speck of flashing blue veer up a ramp and onto the sweeping line of the
Hollywood Freeway; it sped southward toward L.A.. Millions of people down there,
Gideon thought, right now, they're sleeping, drinking, fighting, talking,
screwing, being screwed, loving, and hating. And sooner or later they're all
going to need what I sell. That thought made him feel a little better. The world
turns and turns, he told himself, and spins off a few more unlucky folks every
day. Auto accidents, suicides, murders, plain old Nature taking her course. I
know what you need, baby, and I'm the man with the plan.
Sometimes he felt like a god up here on Sky Vista Road; sometimes he thought he
could stretch his arms and touch the heavens, take a piece of chalk and write
MITCH GIDEON up on that huge blackboard for all the old bats at the public
school (especially Four-Eyes Grimes, who said he'd never amount to anything but
a hoodlum) to see. Of course, they were all dead by now-and buried. I hope, he
thought, in pine boxes that leaked water on their dead gray heads-but he hoped
that somehow all those people who said he'd wind up in the juvenile home or in
the Tombs knew that now he was on top of the world, now he had a million-dollar
Spanish mansion on Sky Vista Road, now he smoked two-dollar cigars and wore
Gucci shoes, now he drank Chivas Regal from a crystal shot glass and watched the
little people racing around down in the valley. Now he was Mitch Gideon,
Mortuary King of Los Angeles.
A chill breeze came up the canyon, shaking pine branches before it, and swirled
around him, knocking off a dangling inch of cigar ash. The dark brown hair of
his toupee remained glued in place above his long gray sideburns. In that breeze
he thought he could smell the rich aromas of mellow oak, woodstain, varnish,
shellac and clumps of wax caught in old, tattered rags, raw sawdust and chewing
34
tobacco-the aromas of his youth, spent between the juvenile home and his
apprenticeship with Jacob Richwine the Brooklyn coffin maker. Those were the
days . . .
He stabbed his cigar out on the railing until the sparks were gone and then
thumped the butt out into the night. He was about to step back into the warmth
of the house when his head turned to the right and he found himself staring off
into the distance, past the scatter of white lights from Nichols Canyon and
toward the slabs of darkness that were the hills just above the Hollywood Bowl.
He could feel the magnetic pull of the Kronsteen castle as if he were the needle
of a compass; he knew his eyes had locked upon it across two miles of pine
trees, palmettos, rooftops, and naked rock. It was there, like a scab where the
earth had blistered into a peak, at the end of Blackwood Road, where it had
brooded for over forty years. And for the fifth time in as many days, Mitch
Gideon felt the sudden strong urge to leave his house, get in his
chocolate-brown Mercedes, and drive up along that broken, godforsaken road to
that huge Gothic cathedral of stone. He moved along the terrace as far as he
could go and stood with one hand gripped around the cold railing, staring off
into space. Another chill breeze swept across him, raising bumps on his exposed
flesh, and as it whispered past his face, he thought he heard his name called as
if from a vast distance. His eyes seemed so unfocused, as if he were staring
through a huge rain-smeared plate-glass window; the lights from Nichols Canyon
distorted into elongated streaks of white and yellow. He felt a slight throbbing
at his temples, as if an invisible hand were slowly caving in the sides of his
head. And Gideon thought for an instant that he could actually see the looming,
hundred-roomed Kronsteen castle in the far distance with the white candle of the
moon above it, guttering behind clouds of Spanish lace. His fingers gripped
tighter around the railing, and now he was watching a river of plain, unfinished
caskets come floating toward him along the banks of a wide black conveyor belt.
There were other people around him, too, both men and women and even some small
children, but the shadows were thick, cobwebbed things that kept him from seeing
their faces clearly. The conveyor belt rolled the caskets along to a loading
dock where the trucks waited with engines rumbling. Everyone seemed to know each
other, but for some reason no one spoke. Overhead the long banks of fluorescent
lights were burning at less than half power, and people moved toward Gideon like
sleepwalkers, shadowy things without faces. The conveyor belt whirred faster and
faster, bringing more and more caskets to be loaded onto the trucks. Gideon had
a shovel in his hands. As a casket neared him, the worker just in front of him
would lean forward and throw the lid back. Gideon then scooped up a shovelful of
brown, sandy earth from a huge heap behind him and dumped it in; the next worker
did the same, as did the next. Farther down the line the lid was closed again,
and a forklift rumbled forward to hoist it to the trucks. Gideon realized that
the front of his shirt was dirty.
Quite close to his ear someone said, "Mitch!"
He heard something crash to the concrete, and at first he thought it was his
35
shovel. I7/ get behind! Got to hurry! he thought. But then he felt the October
wind on his face and smelled Chanel; Estelle Gideon, a sweater thrown around her
shoulders above a silver-colored gown that did not quite hide the stomach and
hips that years of gourmet dining had given her, stood beside her husband, her
dark brown eyes slightly puffed from sleep. Her face, unfortunately toadlike,
was layered with green and white beauty creams from Elizabeth Arden's on Rodeo
Drive. Gideon blinked and looked down at his feet, where the crystal shot glass
had shattered. "Oh," he said softly, "dropped it."
"What are you doing out here, hon?" his wife asked. "It's cold!"
"I was . . ." He thought for a minute, What was I doing? "I was working," he
remembered. "In the office." He rubbed his eyes and glanced toward where he knew
the Kronsteen castle perched in the darkness. A shiver rippled up his spine, and
he quickly looked away. "I just stepped out for some air. Can't you sleep?"
"I was sleeping," she said, and yawned. "I got hungry for some ice cream. When
are you coming to bed?"
"Just a few minutes. I've been going over some bills. That bloodsucker Wong's on
my ass again." He looked out over the shimmering city and thought, Someone's
dying out there right now. Tell you what I'll do-I'll give you the special rate
for that shaded plot and the silk-lined, oak, conquistador-style casket, and
I'll throw in the Golden Eternity service gratis. He smelled polishing wax,
sweet and sour. He looked down at the hand that had guided the shovel.
"You've made a real mess here," the woman said, making a clucking sound with her
tongue. "How many have you had?"
"Huh? Oh, just one. Watch your feet, babe. Shit, leave it for Natalie in the
morning. She's got to have somethin' to do besides dumpin' out ashtrays and
watchin' her goddamned soap operas!"
Estelle looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "You look funny, Mitch.
Everything okay?"
"Funny? How?"
"Bothered, worried, I don't know. If business was bad, you'd tell me, wouldn't
you?"
"Sure I would." Like hell I would, Gideon thought. The last time he'd tried to
tell her about a business problem she fell asleep on him, still vacantly nodding
her head. No one seemed to be interested in his problems anymore except Karen,
Gideon's twenty-year-old mistress who lived out at Marina Del Rey. She made him
feel like a kid again, but there were many nights spent just talking instead of
fucking. Estelle had her lovers, too; Mitch could always tell when a new one had
leeched onto her because she would always start taking exercise classes at the
Beverly Hills Health Club again. They were always young men with tans-tennis
players, lifeguards, beach bums. He didn't mind because he knew Estelle was
smart enough not to let them get too near her purse. It was a good arrangement:
he had his, she had hers. But in their own way they loved each other, even if
not physically. They were good friends. And a divorce settlement would carve him
too close to the
36
bone because he'd built his business on the strength of her father's old New
York money.
"It's cold out here," Estelle said. "Come on to bed."
"Yeah, yeah, I will." He stood motionless and felt the Kronsteen Castle at his
back, tugging him like a magnet. "It's spooky . . ." he whispered.
"What's spooky? Mitch? You heard something on the radio about another one of
those Roach murders?"
"No, not that. Damn it, what the hell happened to Mitzi? You'd think we would've
heard something by now!"
She shrugged. "Dogs run away."
"Watchdogs aren't supposed to! I paid over three-hundred bucks for that bitch!
You're telling me she ran away after four years?"
"So maybe somebody stole her? I've heard of that before. Dognapping. They like
to get Dobermans."
"Dognapping my ass! Mitzi would've chewed the fuckin' arms off anybody who tried
to throw her into a car! It's just not safe in this fuckin' city anymore!
Burglars breakin' into houses all up and down the canyon, nuts like the Roach
runnin' around; the cops don't know which way to turn!" His eyes darkened. "And
you remember what happened up at the Kronsteen place."
"That was eleven years ago," she reminded him.
"Eleven years or eleven minutes, it still happened, didn't it? Christ, I should
know! I saw the old man's body ... what was left of it." There was a thick
dryness at the back of his throat and a taste similar to the smell of embalming
fluid. He wished he hadn't broken that shot glass, because he badly needed
another sip of Chivas. He resisted the impulse to turn his head and, like a man
transfixed, stared off into the night, toward that huge pile of stone and
concrete two miles away. If there was any other place that had a better view of
L.A. than mine, Mitch thought, then the castle was it. "The cops never found the
maniacs who did it either. Probably never will."
"That's California for you," Estelle said quietly. "The land of nuts and
fruits."
"The land of maniacs and murderers. I don't know, babe, I'm feeling awful damned
strange these days. Spooked or somethin'. Scared." He ran a hand over his
forehead; his fingertips were numb, like in that old game Dead Man's Hand, where
you squeezed a thumb until the blood drained out of it and it became so cold and
alien that it hardly felt human at all. "Somethin' like what happened to old man
Kronsteen could happen to us. It could happen to anybody."
"He was a loony," she said, and shivered. "That was one loony killing another
loony. Let's get in out of this wind."
"Mitzi," Gideon whispered. "What the fuck happened to my dog?"
"You can buy yourself another one." She reached out and took his arm. "Come on,
let's go to bed."
Her hand felt deliciously warm against his. He looked at her, started to open
his mouth to tell her about the strange feelings he was having lately-the weird
37
visions of himself working on a conveyor belt where the caskets just kept coming
one after the other as far as you could see-to tell her about how he thought he
heard his name whispered in the wind when it came roaring through the canyon in
the late hours of the night, to tell her that even during the day at any one of
his six mortuaries scattered across the city he would find himself standing at a
window, looking up into the hills where the horror actor's castle stood silent
and impassive to sun or wind or rain. He wanted to tell her he was more afraid
than he'd ever been in his entire life.
But Estelle's eyes were glazing, the lids already coming down like fleshy
curtains. She smiled sleepily, and the mouth in that whitish-green face said,
"Come on, hon. Beddy-bye time."
"Yeah," he said, and nodded. "Okay." As he stepped into the house and turned to
lock the sliding glass door, he thought, Imagine me, Mitch Gideon the Mortuary
King, ruining good merchandise by throwing in shovelfuls of dirt. Christ, what a
sin! He drew the curtains and followed his wife into the house, the golden
chains around his neck clicking together like the rattle of dry bones.
And the dark shape that had been crouched on the roof just above Mitch Gideon's
terrace took to the air on widespread, gleaming black wings.
FOUR
"Ohhhhhhhhh," Gayle Clarke said, staring up at the apartment ceiling, sweet fire
bubbling in her veins. "That feels sooooooo nice."
"Knew you'd like it," the man who lay at the V of her thighs said softly. He
caressed her stomach with slow swirls for a moment, then leaned forward to
continue what he was doing. His tongue darted and teased; she gripped his
shoulders tight, tighter, fingers digging into the flesh. He finished her off
with an excruciatingly slow figure eight, and she shuddered with pure delight as
the third orgasm of the night rolled like a tidal wave through her body. "Oh
God," she said, "it's . . . it's . . ." And then she couldn't say any more
because the weakness had spread to her tongue, and she felt like a leaf that had
been blown to this bed by the force of a hurricane.
After a moment more Jack Kidd came up beside her and held her in his strong,
lean arms. Gayle nuzzled his chest, drawing closer to him as she always did in
the warmth aftermath of their lovemaking. The dark hairs tickled her nose.
Jack kissed her forehead and then leaned over for the bottle of Chablis in the
plastic cooler beside the bed. The ice was all melted now. He poured wine into a
glass and sipped at it, then licked softly at Gayle's ear until she stirred and
said, 'What do you think you're doing?"
"Wine and earlobes. Great combination."
"I'm sure." She reached up, took the glass, and sipped. "Wow, I'm tired. Thanks
to you."
38
"You're welcome. Always willing to be of service."
"Pun noted, recorded, and rejected." She yawned and stretched until her joints
popped. Her body was lithe and supple, though she was a small woman-only about
five feet tall-who sometimes gave in to overwhelming urges for Oreo cookies and
Mars candy bars. She played a lot of tennis, jogged infrequently, and spent time
listening to Jefferson Starship and reading Franz Kafka when she was alone. She
had turned twenty-two in September, and if she wasn't exactly a California
beauty because of an overly wide mouth and dark brown eyes that always seemed to
hold a hint of anger, she might be called, at the very least, vivacious. Long
chestnut-brown hair, shimmering with auburn highlights, curled around her
shoulders and was cut in bangs at her forehead. "What time is it?" she asked.
"Not midnight, yet," Jack said.
"Yeah, but eight comes awfully early."
They were silent for a long time, their bodies side by side, then Jack said
quietly, "It was important to me that you liked the whale flick. Really."
She lifted her head and ran a finger along his dark beard and mustache. "I do.
The editing's tight, the narration's terrific ... you're not worried about it,
are you?"
"No, but... if I can get national distribution on this one, maybe it will be the
break I've been looking for. Hell, if I could sell it to the networks, I'd be
happy!" He frowned slightly. "No, cancel that. They'd make it look like the
Greenpeace people are fanatics or something. I don't want anybody else screwing
with my film."
"So what's to worry about? Friedman can get some immediate campus bookings,
can't he?"
"Yeah."
"The national angle will take care of itself. Besides, the film's hardly out of
the can. And speaking of film, have you taken care of the assignment that Trace
gave you?"
Jack grunted. "Finishing it up tomorrow. I hope. Got some nice shots of Clifton
Webb's old house today. In the morning I'm heading out to Hollywood Memorial,
and I hope that'll be the end of it."
"I can see Trace's headline for that piece right now." Gayle held up two fingers
as if straightening the type across a front-page layout. "'Does Clifton Webb
Haunt Hollywood Cemetery?' And maybe a teaser line, 'Only the L.A. Tattler
Knows!' Catchy, huh?"
"Like the plague." He was silent for a moment, and Gayle could almost hear the
gears clicking in his head. "You know what I've been thinking of doing next? A
film on the homes of old movie stars. Not the new houses, but the mansions with
history, you know what I mean? Webb's is one; you can feel Old Hollywood oozing
out of those walls. Flynn's is another. Valentine's, Barrymore, and ... oh God,
yes! . . . the Kronsteen castle! That would be a hell of a place for
atmosphere!"
"What's so special about it?"
"Unsolved murder, babe. Old Kronsteen got his head chopped off up there a few
years back, the place has been empty ever since. It's a real medieval castle,
39
walls and towers and everything. High school kids go parking up there now.
Jesus, I could do a whole film on that place alone!"
"Never heard of it," Gayle said.
"Before your time, babe. Mine too, but I drove up there once with a friend and a
couple of chicks from Hollywood High. Many moons ago, that is, so don't get your
feathers ruffled."
"Don't worry."
"Chuck knew the place, I didn't. Seems we went a hell of a long way up Outpost
Drive and turned off onto a narrow road that went right up to the sky.
Blacktree, Blackwood, something like that. Spooky as hell. I did some acid up
there,^ and I swore I could hear that Bald Mountain thing from Fantasia, thought
I saw demons flying around, all kinds of incredible colors. Strange trip."
"I'll bet. Before you start playing young Coppola again, you'd better wrap up
those pictures for Trace. I've got a feeling he doesn't think the Tattler should
arrange its deadlines around your film-making sessions."
"Why does he always give me the shit detail?" Jack frowned. "Last week it was a
stunning photo-piece on vandalism out at the Wax Museum. Somebody carved his
initials on Farrah's tits, knocked Elizabeth Taylor's head off, and played
tic-tac- toe on Yul Brynner's skull. Christ! If I could just get a little bit
ahead, maybe get somebody interested in my films or ... I need a break, that's
all. It'll happen, I know it will."
"I know it will, too, but a little patience wouldn't hurt. So that's all this
junk about Cliff Webb's ghost being seen roaming around the cemetery?"
"Oh, every year a few people say they see somebody who looks like Webb strolling
around Hollywood Memorial. It's nothing new. Last week a watchman thought he saw
him ... or it ... in the cemetery after midnight . . ."
"Of course," Gayle said. "What ghost would be out before the witching hour?"
"Right. Well, Trace gets a wild hair and wants me to do the pictures for Sandy's
story. The hell if I know what the story's going to say; I'm just clicking the
shutter."
"So?"
"So what?"
"So what about the ghost? What happened after that watchman saw it?"
Jack shrugged. "I suppose it did what all ghosts do. It melted away or broke up
into a thousand shimmering lights or ... hell hell hell . .. turned toward the
watchman's flashlight with a cold red glare in its eyes. You don't really
believe in that stuff, do you?"
"No, not at all. Now can we change the subject, please?"
He smiled and licked her arm, sending up a rash of goose bumps. "Gladly, Miss
Clarke ..." He lifted the sheets slightly and began to nibble on her right
breast. The nipple hardened quickly; and Gayle began to breath faster. "Better
than earlobes any old day," Jack managed to say.
Then suddenly from beyond the closed bedroom door came the sound of frenzied
clawing.
40
Jack lifted his head from Gayle's breast and stared at the door for a few
seconds. He said loudly, "Cut it out, Conan!" The clawing went on and with it an
occasional low whining.
"He's jealous," Gayle said. "He wants to come in."
"No, he's been acting crazy for a couple of days now." Jack stood up from the
bed, took his bathrobe from where he'd laid it over a chair, and put it on.
"He's clawing at the front door," Jack told her. "Maybe he's got a girlfriend of
his own. Back in a minute." He crossed the room, opened the door, and passed
through a short hallway decorated with some of his framed photographs. In the
small living room furnished with a brown sofa and a couple of wicker chairs,
Jack found his three-year-old boxer clawing hunks out of the front door. The
dog, large enough to place his paws on his master's chest when he stood on his
powerful back legs, looked as if he were trying to burrow through the wood.
Splinters were flying around the dog's head.
"Hey!" Jack said, and swatted at Conan's rump. "Stop that!"
The dog didn't even look back. The frantic clawing continued.
"Damn it, what's wrong with you?" He reached down to pull Conan away from the
door, and it was then that the dog whirled around, growling very softly, showing
his teeth. Jack froze, his heart skipping a beat. Conan had always been a gentle
dog, and lately Jack had been teaching him to catch a Frisbee out in the
courtyard of the Sandalwood Apartments. Now Jack stared at those teeth and felt
a cold fear roiling in his stomach. The dog's eyes were unblinking, challenging
the man to move.
"It's me," Jack said softly. "Conan? It's me, boy. I'm not going to hurt you."
The dog turned again, claws gouging at the door. The wood looked like a scarred
battlefield.
Quickly Jack reached out and unbolted the door. Conan heard the click and
stepped back, panting. When the door came open, the dog slipped through
noiselessly and ran off across the courtyard toward Lexington Avenue. Jack
stared after him, unable to believe that his pet had actually turned and snarled
at him. Outside, the fronds of palm trees stirred in the wind like lazy fans. At
the base of the trees were multicolored lamps, and it was by the green light of
one of these that Jack saw Conan's running shape, lengthened by its powerful
strides, disappear from sight.
Gayle, now dressed in her tight Jordache jeans and checked blouse, stepped out
of the hallway shadows and said, "Jack? What was that all about?"
"I don't really know. Conan just . . . went wild. He snarled at me. Actually
showed his teeth! He's gotten fiesty before, but he's never acted like this."
She stepped beside him and peered through the door. The rest of the apartment
complex was utterly quiet. "Maybe it's the mating season or something. He'll be
back."
"I don't know. You think I should go looking for him?"
"Not at this time of night." She glanced quickly at her wristwatch and made a
face. "I've got to be getting home, Jack. Ace Tattler reporter has to have her
head on straight in the morning when she goes to see the cops."
41
Jack stared out into the courtyard for another moment, hoping to see Conan
bounding back, and then turned toward her. "Why don't you stay? I'll spring for
breakfast."
"The last time I stayed for breakfast, I ended up burning the eggs. No thanks."
"Well, wait a minute while I get dressed. I'll drive you."
"What, and leave my car here overnight? Mr. Kidd, what would your neighbors
think?"
"Screw 'em." He took Gayle in his arms and closed the door with his foot. "Who
do you have to see tomorrow?"
"My favorite homicide squad captain-Palatazin. I imagine it'll be the same old
'no comment' session." She traced a line in Jack's forehead with a finger; she
could feel his body beginning to respond beneath his thin robe and her own
answering. "I have the feeling he thinks the Tattler's stories are a little on
the sensational side."
"Imagine that." Jack nuzzled her neck and began to lick the base of her throat
in slow circles. "Long live yellow journalism."
She made a noise between a grunt and a sigh and felt the feather of need
tickling at her thighs. It's soooooo chilly outside, she thought. And soooooo
dark. Oh, that feels good. Jack took her hand to lead her back to the bedroom,
and she said softly, "Breakfast at eight?"
FIVE
Leaking blue exhaust fumes, a gray Volkswagen Beetle with a crumpled rear fender
moved along Outpost Drive and up into the stark dun-colored hills above
Hollywood. As the road steepened, the Volkswagen's engine began to rattle with a
faint, evil, metallic chuckling. The headlights, slightly cross-eyed, threw wild
shadows behind wind-stirred pines and granite boulders with edges as sharp as
butcher's knives. Low, rambling, glass and redwood houses on each side of the
road lay in darkness, and only occasionally did a car pass on its way down to
the city. The Volkswagen turned off Outpost Drive onto a narrow road of broken
concrete that curved like a snake's spine and climbed upward at a forty-degree
angle. Forbidding heaps of cracked granite loomed on the right-hand side of the
road; on the left, where the road fell off abruptly into a series of ravines,
stood a few hundred gnarled, dwarfish, dead trees.
Though there was no sign or road marker, the driver had made the correct turn
onto Blackwood Road.
His name was Walter Benefield, and on the seat beside him, head lolling with
every lurch of the car, was a twenty-year-old Chicano girl named Angela Pavion.
Her eyes were half-open, the whites showing, and every once in a while she
whimpered softly. Benefield wondered what she was dreaming about.
Wafting through the car's interior was a thick, almondy, slightly medicinal
odor. Beneath Benefield's seat was a wadded cloth that had turned brown after
being
42
soaked in a solution of chemicals that he'd stolen from work. His eyes, behind
thick black-framed glasses, were watering slightly, though he'd rolled down the
window only seconds after the girl had gone to sleep. At least this had been
better than those first few times, he told himself. The first time the girl had
died because the mixture wasn't diluted enough, and the second time he had to
lean out of the car to throw up, and his head ached all the next day. He was
getting faster with it, though he missed using his hands. They were large,
fleshy clamps that he exercised with stiff- springed handgrips. He often thought
that he could squeeze those grips forever as he lay on his back in bed, staring
at the pictures of posed musclemen with rippling backs and chests and arms taped
to the walls, scissored from the pages of Muscle and Fitness and Strongman
magazines. And across the room the cockroaches scuttled in their wire-mesh
cages, mating and fighting and sleeping. At the last count there'd been over a
hundred, and some immense, cannibalistic bulls that had grown to three inches
long.
He'd picked this girl up on the lower end of Sunset Boulevard thirty minutes
ago. At first she'd been skittish about getting in the car, but he'd flashed a
well-worn fifty dollar bill-kept just for the occasion-and she'd slid in as if
her ass had been greased. She didn't speak or understand English very well, but
that hardly mattered to him. She was pretty in a hard, coarse way; she was also
one of the few desperate women who still walked the streets these days. Too bad
for her. Benefield thought, she should read the papers. He had taken her to a
deserted supermarket parking lot and unzipped his trousers. When the girl had
leaned forward to do what he'd asked, he'd struck, too quickly for her to scream
or evade him. The chemical-soaked rag was out from under the seat and pressed
tightly against the girl's face. Benefield's other hand like a vise at the back
of her neck. It would be so easy, so easy, so easy, he thought. I could just
squeeze a little bit-hardly an effect-and watch her eyes pop out of their
sockets, like Bev's had. But no. That was not what the Master wanted done, was
it?
Her thrashing was over in a few more seconds. He'd put the cloth away,
positioned the girl so she wouldn't slide down onto the floorboard, and then
drove north toward the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, the high crests
that split L.A. in two. He-was breathing hard with exhilaration. The girl had
managed to scratch his right hand, and two lines of blood welled from the flesh.
He was following the Voice of God, the holy will of his Lord and Master, and now
Benefield peered into the darkness beyond the range of the headlights and told
himself, "Hurry. You've got to hurry, he doesn't like to wait." His voice was
small and breathless, as excited as a child's at the prospect of a reward for a
deed well done.
The road had leveled a few degrees but still took the Volks higher. Occasionally
Benefield could see the city below, glittering off toward the horizon, where the
half-dirt, half-broken-concrete road wandered close to a drop-off. He had driven
this way many times before in the last two weeks, but it was a tricky,
treacherous way; the first time, when he'd brought a pretty, red-haired girl who
couldn't have been over sixteen, he'd gotten lost and had driven in circles
until the Voice of God
43
had guided him back to the path.
Now the Voice was speaking to him again, whispering softly in the rush of the
wind, calling his name. Benefield smiled, tears of joy in his eyes. "I'm
coming!" he called out. "I'm coming!" A gust of wind hit the car's side and
rocked it slightly. The girl whimpered once, something in Spanish, and then was
silent.
The car's headlights glinted off a new chain strung across the road from tree to
tree. There was a metal sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY-NO TRESPASSING. Benefield, his
heart pounding, pulled the car to the side of the road, cut the headlights and
waited. The Voice was like a cooling balm on the fever blister of his brain; it
came to him almost every night now as he lay in that gray place between sleep
and wakefulness on the mattress of his efficiency apartment near MacArthur Park.
On those terrible anguished nights when he dreamed of his mother lifting her
head from that man's lap, the throbbing penis as big as a python in her grip,
her mouth opening to shout drunkenly, "YOU GET OUTTA HERE!" the Voice whispered
like a sea breeze around his head, enveloping him, protecting him. But some
nights even the Voice of God couldn't stop the garish unreeling of the nightmare
through his brain: the stranger grinning and saying, "The little bastard wants
to watch, Bev. Come 'ere, Waltie, look what I got!" And the child Walter,
standing transfixed in the doorway as if nailed there by hands and feet, his
head thrashing in agony while the stranger pushed his mother's face down until
her laughter was muffled. He had watched it all, his stomach and groin tied into
one huge knot, and when they were through his mother-Good old Bev never says no,
never says no, never says no- swigged from the bottle of Four Roses that sat on
the floor beside the sofa and, hugging the stranger, said in a thick slur, "Now
you take care of me, honey." Her dress, the one with the white dots on it, had
been pushed up over her large, pale thighs, and she wore no underwear. The child
Walter could not tear his gaze away from the secret place that seemed to wink
like a wicked eye. His hands had dropped to his crotch, and after another moment
the stranger laughed like a snorting bull. "The little bastard's got a hard-on!
Little Waltie's carryin' a load! Come 'ere, Waltie. COME HERE, I SAID!"
His mother had lifted her head and smiled through swollen, glazed eyes.
"Whozzat? Frank? Is it Frank?" His father's name, old Frank. Out the door and
gone so long ago all Waltie could remember of him was how hard he swung his
belt. "Frank?" she said, smiling. "You come home, baby? Come gimme a great big
kiss..."
The stranger's eyes had glittered like dark bits of glass. "Come 'ere, Waltie.
No. Frank. Come 'ere, Frank. It's Frank, baby. It's your man come home." He
laughed softly, his gaze bloodshot and mean. "Drop your drawers, Frank."
"Honey?" his mother had whispered, grinning at him. "I got something needs you
soooooo bad . . ."
"Come give your baby a great big kiss, Frank," the stranger had said quietly.
"Oh, Jesus, this I gotta see!"
When those dreams came, even the Voice of God couldn't calm the fever. And he
was grateful, so grateful, when the Voice told him it was all right for him to
go
44
out into the night in search of another laughing Bev, to take her away from the
dark-grinning strangers and bring her to the holy mountain.
He winced as those bad things danced through his head. His temples were aching,
and he wished he had a Bufferin. Sometimes when the Voice spoke to him he felt
as if a cauldron was being stirred in his brain, a thick mixture of magic that
had changed his life into something with real purpose and meaning-service in the
Master's name. Turning his head to the left, Benefield could look down upon the
shimmering city. He wondered if there were any others down there who were part
of the cauldron brew, who were ingredients in the magic that now rippled through
his soul and his being and set him aflame with sweet, cold fire. Of course, it
was magic-the way of God is righteous, and He shall brighten the City of Night
with magic and kill all the Bevs in that bubbling cauldron brew-because what
else could it be?
A car was coming. Benefield could see the flicker of headlights off in the
distance, coming down the mountain toward him. He got out of his car, went
around to the other side, and opened the passenger door. The dazed girl almost
tumbled out, but Benefield reached down and picked her up in his arms like so
much deadwood. Then he turned to face the approaching car.
It was a long black Lincoln polished so highly the sides and hood shone like
glass. It stopped ten feet from the chain, its headlights centered like greedy
eyes on Benefield and the offering he held in his arms.
He smiled, his eyes filling with tears.
The driver left the limousine and approached him, followed by a young girl that
Benefield immediately recognized. Her long hair was blond and wind-tossed, and
her dress was dirty. Benefield saw that the driver was the Servant of God-an old
man in a brown suit and white shirt, his long white hair flowing in the wind,
his darting, ferret eyes sunken deep in a pale, wrinkled face. He limped as he
walked and was slightly stooped, as if shouldering a backbreaking burden. When
he reached the chain, he said to Benefield in a halting, weary voice, "Hand her
over."
Benefield lifted her up. The blond-haired girl grinned and took her
effortlessly, crooning like a mother to her child.
"Go home," the old man told Benefield. "Your work is done for tonight."
Suddenly the blond girl's eyes flashed. She stared at Benefield's injured hand,
then lifted her gaze to his face. His smile cracked like a mirror. He blinked
and started to lift his hand toward her.
"NO!" the old man said, and held his arm back as if about to strike her. She
flinched and scurried toward the car with her prize. "Go home," he told
Benefield and turned away.
The limousine backed up to a wide spot, made a tight turn, and disappeared up
the mountain.
Benefield longed to follow, but the Voice was whispering softly to him now,
making him feel warm and needed and protected, taking his headache away. He
stood where he was for a moment, the wind whipping and shrilling all around him,
45
then walked back to his car. Driving down the mountain, he turned the radio to a
station playing religious songs and began to sing along, happy and confident
that the Master's will would be done.
46 47
Saturday, October 26
the restless
48 49
The sun came up over the San Gabriel Mountains like a reddish-orange explosion,
turning the sky a steely gray that would slowly strengthen to bright blue as the
morning progressed. Tendrils of yellowish smog hovered low to the ground,
clinging like some huge octopus between the glass and steel skyscrapers,
throbbing concrete-walled factories, and serpentine meanderings of half-a-dozen
freeways already clogged with traffic. Chilly shadows, remnants of the night,
scurried away before the marching sunlight like an army in retreat.
Andy Palatazin stood before the open closet in his bedroom and deliberated over
which tie to choose. He was wearing dark blue slacks, slightly tight around the
midsection, and a light blue shirt with a neatly ironed but fraying collar; he
chose a green tie with little flecks of blue and red in it, then walked out into
the hallway and leaned slightly over the stairway railing. He could hear Joanna
down in the kitchen, and the mouth-watering aroma of frying sausages and
potatoes drifted up to him. He called out, "Jo! Come look at this!"
She came in another moment, her graying hair pulled up into a tight bun. She was
wearing a dark green robe and slippers. "Let's see it," she said.
He held up the tie and raised his eyebrows.
"Iszonyu!" she said. "It's hideous with that shirt. Wear the dark blue tie
today."
"That has a spot on it."
"Then the red-and-blue striped one."
"I don't like that tie."
"Because my brother gave it to you!" she muttered, and shook her head.
"What's wrong with this one?" He held out the green tie and made it wiggle like
a snake.
"Nothing-if you want to look like a clown. Go on, wear it! Look like a clown!
But ... it ... does . . . not . . . go!" She sniffed the air. "The potatoes are
burning! See what you've made me do!" She whirled toward the kitchen and
disappeared.
"Your brother has nothing to do with it!" he called down to her; he could hear
her mumbling but couldn't tell what she was saying, so he shrugged and stepped
back into the bedroom. His gaze fell upon the rocking chair over by the window,
and he stood looking at it for a moment. Then he walked over to it, placed a
thick finger against one of the arms, and pushed. The chair creaked softly as it
moved back and forth. Was that a dream I had last night, he asked himself, or
did I really see a megjelenes, an apparition, sitting here in this chair? No, a
dream, of course! Mama is dead and buried and at peace. Finally. He gave out a
long sigh, looked down at the
50
green tie in his hand, and stepped back to the closet. He hung it back on the
rack and looked at the striped one Jo's brother, a lawyer who lived in
Washington, D.C., had given him on St. Stephen's Day. Never! he thought
stubbornly. He sighted a tie he hadn't worn in several months; it was bright red
with big blue polka dots, and it was buried so deeply on the rack he thought
that Jo must've surely hidden it on purpose. Someday, he thought grimly, she's
going to burn them all up like she's been threatening! As he slipped it on, he
looked up at the top shelf and saw a flat box half hidden under a couple of
battered hats with small, sad feathers glued to their bands. He quickly looked
away and closed the closet door.
In the small, cozy kitchen at the rear of the house, Jo was putting the
breakfast plates on the little table that overlooked her backyard garden when
her husband came in, smelling of Vitalis and Old Spice shaving lotion. She
looked up, started to smile, and winced instead when she saw what was hanging
around his neck. "Eat your sausages," she said. "You might have a hard day at
the circus."
"Gladly. Ah, this looks delicious!" He sat down at the table and started to eat,
taking in huge, sloppy mouthfuls of sausage and potatoes. Jo set a cup of hot
black coffee beside him and took her seat on the other side of the table. "It's
good," he said with food in his mouth. "Very good."
"Slow down," Jo said. "You'll have an attack."
He nodded and kept eating. When he stopped to drink some coffee, she said,
"Andy, you should take a Saturday off once in a while. You should relax, all
this working and worrying isn't good for wu. Why don't you call and tell them
you're staying home today? We can go for^lpice drive to the beach."
"I can't," he said, washing potatoes down his throat. "Maybe next Saturday."
"You said that last week."
"Oh. Well, I meant it, but..." He lifted his gaze to hers. "You know why I have
to go in. Someone might turn up something."
"They'll call you if they do." She watched him, her eyes bright and blue and
alert. She was also worried about the dark hollows that had now appeared beneath
Andy's eyes, about the new lines that had begun to snake across his face. He
didn't sleep so well lately either, and she wondered if even in his dreams he
thought of stalking that awful killer through the dark canyons of the city. She
reached out and touched his rough bear's paw of a hand. "Please," she said
softly. "I'll make a picnic lunch for us today."
"They expect me to be there," he said, and patted her hand. "Next Saturday we'll
have a nice picnic. Okay?"
"No, it's not okay. They're working you to death! You leave early in the morning
and don't come home until late at night. You work Saturdays and most Sundays,
too! How long is it going to go on?"
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and dug his fork into a mound of potatoes.
"Until we find him," he said quietly.
"That may be never. He may be out of the city now, out of the country even. So
why are you the one who has to work like a dog and answer all the questions and
51
be on the front page of all the newspapers? I don't like what some people are
saying about you."
He raised his eyebrows. "What are they saying?"
"You know. That you don't know what you're doing, that you don't really care
about finding that man, that you're not a good policeman even."
"Oh, those things." He nodded and drank down the rest of his coffee.
"You should tell them all to go to the devil!" she said fiercely, her eyes
shining. "What do those people know about how hard you've been working, day and
night like a Trojan! They should give you a medal! You've spilled coffee on your
tie." She leaned forward with her napkin and dabbed at it. "If you keep your
coat buttoned, it won't show."
"All right," Palatazin said. "I'll try to." He pushed his plate away and put a
hand on his expanded stomach. "I've got to go in a few minutes. That Clarke girl
from the Tattler is coming to the office this morning."
Jo made a disgusted face. "What-to write more slime? Why do you even talk to
that woman?"
"I do my job, she does her job. Sometimes she gets carried away, but she's
harmless."
"Harmless? Ha! It's stories like hers that make people so afraid. Describing
what that awful gyilkos did to those poor girls in such terrible detail, and
then making out that you don't have enough sense to find him and stop him! She
makes me sick!" Jo stood up and took his plate over to the sink; she was shaking
inwardly and trying to control it, trying not to let her husband see. Her blood,
the Hungarian gypsy blood of a hundred generations, was singing with anger.
"People know what that newspaper is," Palatazin said, licking a forefinger and
rubbing the coffee stain. Defeated, he let the tie drop. "They don't believe
those stories."
Jo grunted but did not turn from the sink. A new mental picture was forming in
her brain, something that had gradually grown there over the past few weeks:
Andy, armed with a gun, moving through the dark corridors of some unknown
building, seeking the Roach all alone; and then huge grasping hands reaching for
him from behind, clamping around his throat, and squeezing until the eyeballs
popped out and the face turned purplish blue. She shook her head to rid herself
of the nagging thought and said softly, "God have mercy!"
"What?"
"Nothing," she said. "I'm thinking out loud." She turned back to him and saw
that his face was not purplish blue, nor were his eyeballs popping out. His
face, on the contrary, reminded her of that dog in the Hush Puppies ads, all
jowls and sad eyes under bushy, gray-flecked brows. She said, "You're not going
to do anything dangerous today, are you?"
"Of course not." He thought, Am I? How can I know? This was a question she asked
him every morning and an answer he gave in kind. He wondered how many wives of
policemen asked that question, how many cops replied as he had, and how
52
many ended up dead from the burglar's or the rapist's or the junkie's gun. Far
too many, he was sure. He wondered how George Greene had answered that question
on a July sixth morning over twelve years ago. Greene had been Palatazin's first
partner, and on that terrible day he was shot four times in the face while
Palatazin watched it all through the window of a pizza parlor, buying a
twelve-inch mushroom and black olive to carry back across the street to the car.
They'd been staking out a suspect in the robbery-murder of a black heroin
dealer, and much later, after the shooting was all over and Palatazin had
vomited the last stink of gunpowder from his nostrils, he realized that the man
must've figured out he was being watched and panicked, shoving his stolen .45
right through the passenger window into George's face. Palatazin had chased him
over five blocks, and finally, on a tenement stairway, the man had turned to
make his stand. Palatazin had blasted him away with a pizza-smeared trigger
finger.
His mother had cried for a long time when he'd told her that he thought he'd
felt a bullet hiss past his head. She'd said she was going to the commissioner
to have him given safer duty, but of course that didn't happen. The next day
she'd forgotten everything he'd told her, and she was talking about how
beautiful the summer flowers must be along the streets of Budapest.
Now Palatazin found himself staring at the hand that had held the gun that July
6. Anya, he thought: the Magyar word for mother. I saw my mother's ghost last
night. He looked up into Jo's eyes. "I had a strange dream last night," he said,
and smiled slightly. "I thought I saw Mama sitting in her rocking chair in our
bedroom. I haven't dreamed about her for a long time. That's strange, isn't it?"
"What happened?"
"Nothing. She . . . motioned with her hand. Pointed, I think. I'm not sure."
"Pointed? At what?"
He shrugged, "Who knows? I can't read dreams." He stood up from the table and
looked at his wristwatch; it was time to go. "I have an idea," he said, putting
his arms around his wife's waist. "I'll come home early and take you to The
Budapest for dinner. Would you like that?"
"I'd like for you to stay home today, that's what I'd like." She thrust out her
lower lip for a moment and then reached up to brush the half-halo of gray hair
at the crest of his head. "But The Budapest would be nice, I think."
"Good. And music! Fine ciganyzene! Yes?"
She smiled. "Yes."
"We have a date then." He patted her rear affectionately and then pinched it.
She made a mock clucking noise with her tongue and followed him out to the
living room, where from a closet he took his dark blue coat and a black hat that
had seen its day years before. She held his coat for him while he strapped on a
black leather shoulder-holster, all the time staring distastefully at the .38
Police Special it held. Struggling into the coat and crowning himself with the
ragged-looking hat, he was ready to go. "Have a good day," he said on the front
porch steps, and kissed her cheek.
53
"Be careful!" Jo called to him as he walked to the old white Ford Falcon at the
curb. "I love you!"
He raised a hand and slid into the car. In another moment it was rattling away
down Romaine Street. A brown mongrel darted out from a hedge to chase it until
it was out of sight.
Jo closed the door and locked it. The Roach! she thought, and felt like spitting
because even the sound of that terrible word made her sick. She moved back into
the kitchen, intent on washing the dishes, sweeping and mopping the floor, then
doing some weeding in the garden. But she was bothered by something beyond the
Roach, and it took her a few minutes to find it lurking within herself. Andy's
dream about his mother. Her gypsy instincts were keen and curious. Why was Andy
thinking about her, dreaming about her again? Of course, the old woman had been
insane, and of course it was better now that she was dead and not wasting away
day by day as she had been in that bed in the Golden Garden Home for the aged.
"I don't read dreams," Andy had said. But perhaps, Jo thought, I should ask
someone who does? It might be an omen of the future.
She turned on the hot water tap and for the moment closed the mental cupboard on
the age-old art of dream reading.
TWO
Jack Kidd's black Chevrolet van, a darkroom on wheels airbrushed with sword-
wielding barbarians and half-naked damsels a la Frank Frazetta, stopped at the
gates of Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. The gates were wide open, and Jack could
see a light burning in the watchman's station, though it was now almost
eight-thirty and the sun was glaringly bright across the rolling green cemetery
lawn. Jack, a Canon hanging around his neck, hit the horn a couple of times, but
no watchman came out to greet them. On the seat beside him Gayle yawned and
said, "No one's home. Let's drive on through."
"I need to talk to this guy first." He pounded the horn again. "Maybe he's
curled up somewhere, sleeping off whatever makes him see old Clifton roaming
around out here, huh?" He gave her a quick smile and opened his door, stepping
out onto the pavement. "Back in a minute," he said, and walked across to the
little white concrete watchman's station with the red-tiled roof. He could look
through the window that faced the cemetery gates and see the whole interior at a
glance. A lamp was burning on a blotter-topped desk, the chair pulled back
slightly as if someone had just stood up. Atop the desk there was an open Sports
Illustrated, a half-full coffee cup, and an ashtray littered with cigarette
butts.
Jack tried the door. It opened easily. He stepped inside, checked a small
bathroom, and found it empty, the walked back out to his van. "He's not there,"
he said, climbing up to his seat and starting the engine. "That's a hell of a
note! The guy knew I was coming out this morning. How am I supposed to find old
Clifton's grave?"
54
"Listen, can you wrap this up in a hurry and get me over to Parker's Center?"
She tapped the crystal of her wristwatch impatiently.
"Okay, but first I'm going to drive through and try to find the guy. It'll just
take a few minutes. Three shots of a headstone, that's all I need." He drove
into the cemetery, passing beneath towering Washingtonia palms. Marble
gravestones, mausoleums, and angelic statues were scattered on each side of the
winding main road, all surrounded by huge oak trees, palms, and decorative
clumps of palmetto; the bright green grass sparkled with early morning dew, and
a thin sheen of haze clung low to the ground. Gayle could see the stout white
buildings of Paramount Studios over on the far side of the cemetery, so close
that any strung-out, bleary- eyed, hopeless kid who'd just flunked a screen test
co^ild just stumble on over and fall into a grave. It was odd, she thought, that
most of the major studios in Hollywood overlooked a cemetery.
Which reminded her of a rumor she'd heard around the Tattler offices a few days
before. "You know what some people believe about Walt Disney?" she said,
glancing over at Jack. "That his ashes aren't really in Forest Lawn, that his
body's being preserved in liquid nitrogen so he might be revived someday. Trace
wants to do a story on it."
"That figures."
"It is a little strange, though. Disney's plaque is the only marker in the whole
cemetery that doesn't have any dates on it."
"What have you been doing-your cemetery-history homework?"
"No, but that story beats this bullshit about Clifton Webb, doesn't it?" She
looked over at Jack in time to see his eyes widen. "Christ!" he said, and hit
the brakes so hard the van's tires burned rubber. "What is that?" He stared
directly ahead.
Gayle looked and drew in her breath with a shudder.
Lying in the road was a skeleton wearing a long pastel-green dress. Clumps of
brownish hair still clung to the shattered skull; both legs and an arm were
broken off like thin white pieces of gnarled driftwood. The remaining hand
clawed toward the sky. On both sides of the road, scattered across neatly
trimmed grass and decorative clumps of sharp-tipped palmetto, were the fragments
of more skeletons. Skulls and arms and legs, spines and hipbones littered the
cemetery. A boneyard, Gayle thought suddenly, a pulse pounding at her temples.
She could not tear her gaze away from the obscene and casual lay of those
skeletons. There were whole skeletons dressed in grave suits and dresses, lying
atop each other as if they'd been dancing at the stroke of midnight and had
collapsed with the brutal coming of dawn. There were also worse things-new
corpses that weren't quite all bone yet, covered with black flies. Gayle could
see that dozens of headstones had been thrown over and the graves dug up, mounds
of dirt standing over ragged, empty holes.
"JeeeeSUS!" Jack said, catching a bit of the breeze that carried with it the
green smell of rot. "Somebody's torn the hell out of this place!" He popped the
lens cap
55
off his Canon and climbed down from the van.
"Jack!" Gayle called after him. She felt cold and clammy, like an old wet rag.
There was something lying in the shadow of a tree, perhaps ten feet to her
right, that she couldn't bear to look at. She thought she heard the high buzzing
of interested flies. "Where the hell are you going?"
Jack was already snapping pictures. "Trace is going to want some shots of this!"
he said; his voice sounded electric with excitement, but his face had gone as
pale as paste and his finger was trembling on the shutter. "How many graves
would you say are open? Twenty? Thirty?" She didn't answer. The shutter clicked,
clicked, clicked. Since he'd signed on with the Tattler, a little more than two
years ago, he'd taken pictures of freeway wrecks, suicides, gunshot victims,
once even a whole family of Chicanos who'd been fried to black crisps in a
gas-leak explosion. Trace had printed the pictures because he was true to the
Tattler's motto: We print it as we see it. Jack had gotten used to those things
because he was a professional and he needed the money for his documentary film
work. The Tattler was one of the last of the "bucket of blood" tabloids, and
sometimes what Jack was required to photograph was pretty damned grisly indeed,
but he'd learned to grit his teeth and shoot on muscle reflex. "If it's part of
the human condition," Trace always said, "there's a place for it in the
Tattler." But this was different, Jack thought as he took a couple of pictures
of the green-clad skeleton lady, what had been done here was just pure, plain
old evil. No, check that. It was Evil, about as damned black as you could get. A
shiver went through him. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
When Gayle came up beside him and touched his arm, he jumped so violently that
he took a picture of clouds. "What happened?" she said. "What ... did this?"
"Vandals. Maybe bikers or a devil cult or something. Tore the hell out of the
place, whoever they were. I've seen cemetery vandalism before-you know,
headstones kicked over and that sort of shit-but never anything like this!
Christ, look at that!" He made a wide detour around a couple of broken skeletons
and reached a massive, ornately carved stone vault. Its entire top had been torn
off. He peered in and saw nothing but a little dust and some scraps of dark
cloth down there at the bottom. A mossy odor, as if from an empty well, came
floating up to him. Whose vault was this? he wondered. Whoever it had been was
just a handful of gray dust now. He stepped back to take a picture, almost
tripping over a grinning skeleton in a dark suit at his feet.
A few yards away, Gayle stood staring down into an open grave. In ornate script
the headstone read, MARY CONKLIN. Scattered in the dirt at the grave's bottom
were yellow bones held together by cobwebs of wispy lace. "Jack," Gayle said
quietly, "I don't think this is just vandalism."
"Huh? What did you say?"
She looked over at him, only vaguely aware of birds singing in the high treetops
around her, oblivious to mortal concerns. "The coffins," she said. "Where are
they?"
Jack paused, lowering his camera. He stared at the heavy concrete plate that had
been shifted-how many hundreds of pounds did that thing weigh?-from the
56 m
ROBERT R. McCAMMON
vault where Old Dusty lay. No coffin in there either. "Coffins?" he said, a
trickle of sweat like ice water running down his side.
"There aren't any. I think . . . these remains were dumped out, the coffins
stolen."
"That's crazy," he replied softly.
"Then look in these empty graves, damn it!" Gayle was almost shouting now,
nausea roiling in her stomach. "Find me a coffin in any one of them! Go on,
look!"
Jack didn't have to. He gazed across the green, sundappled landscape; the place
looked like an ancient battlefield, all the soldiers left to rot where they'd
fallen, left for the vultures and the scavenger dogs. No coffins? He let the
Canon dangle down around his neck; it felt heavy with the evidence of some
hideous, awful Evil. No coffins? "I think . . . we'd better call the cops," he
heard himself say and, backing away from that violated tomb, he stepped on a
disembodied skull that cracked with a noise like a tortured shriek.
THREE
"Do you mind?" Palatazin asked the young blond girl with the glittery eyeshadow
who sat on the other side of his desk. He held up what had once been a perfectly
white meerschaum pipe, now a scarred lump of coal.
"Huh? Oh no, man, that's okay." She spoke with a reedy Midwestern accent.
He nodded, struck a match, and touched the bowl with the flame. The pipe had
been a gift from Jo on their first wedding anniversary, almost ten years ago. It
was carved in the likeness of a Magyar prince, one of the wild horsemen-warriors
who'd swept bloodily down into Hungary in the ninth century. Most of the nose
and one eyebrow were chipped away, and now the face more closely resembled a
Nigerian prizefighter. He made sure he blew the smoke away from the girl. "All
right, Miss Hulsett," he said, and glanced quickly down at the notepad before
him; he'd had to clear away an armload of newspaper clippings and yellow folders
to make room for it. "This friend of yours was walking to work Tuesday evening
on Hollywood Boulevard, and a car pulled to the curb. Then what?"
"There was a guy in the car. A strange-looking dude," she said. The girl smiled
nervously at him, fidgeting with a small purple suede purse that she'd
positioned in her lap. Her fingernails were chewed down to the quick. Across the
office in a chair near the door, Detective Sullivan Reece, as chunky as a
fireplug and dark as the ebony Magyar pipe,'sat with his arms crossed and
watched the girl, occasionally glancing over at Palatazin.
"How old did this man appear to be, Miss Hulsett?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Not as old as you. She said she couldn't really
tell because, you know, the lights are so bright and weird on the boulevard at
night. You can't tell anything about people until they're right up in your
face."
He nodded. "Black, white, Chicano?"
57
"White. He was wearing real thick glasses, and they made his eyes look huge and
funny. He was ... my friend Sheila said ... a chunky guy, not real tall or
anything, but just. . . thick-looking. He had black or dark brown hair, cut
almost to a stubble. He looked like he needed a shave, too."
"What was he wearing?" Reece asked, his voice powerful and gravelly. When he was
a kid at Duke Ellington High School, he'd carried the bass line in the choir and
made the auditorium floor vibrate.
"Uh ... a blue windbreaker. Light-colored pants."
"Any monograms on the windbreaker? Company emblem?"
"No, I don't think so." She looked back at Palatazin and shivered inwardly.
Being so close to cops unnerved her; Lynn and Patty had told her she was a fool
to go walking into Parker Center, to offer information to the cops because,
after all, what had they ever done for her except bust her twice on soliciting
charges? But she thought that maybe, if they ever busted her again, this
sad-looking cop in charge might remember her and make things easy. The muffled
noise of ringing telephones and clattering typewriters outside the office was
beginning to grate on her nerves because she'd had to force herself to stay
straight-no coke, no hash, no pills-when she came to see the heat. Now she was
so nervous she could hardly stand it.
"All right, Amy," Palatazin said softly, sensing her uneasiness. She was
beginning to look like a deer who'd caught a whiff of gunmetal. "What about the
car? What kind was it?"
"A Volkswagen bug. Gray or greenish gray, I think."
He wrote both colors on his pad. "What happened next to ... uh ... your friend?"
"This guy opened the door and leaned out and said 'Are you selling?'" She
shrugged nervously. "You know."
"He was trying to proposition your friend?"
"Yeah. And he flashed a fifty, too. Then he said something that sounded like
'Wally's got something for you . . .'"
"Wally?" Reece leaned forward slightly in his chair, his high-cheekboned face
glowing like burnished mahogany in the sunlight that streamed through the open
blinds behind Palatazin. "You're sure that was the name?"
"No, not sure. Listen, all this happened to my friend Sheila. How am I supposed
to know anything for sure, man?"
Palatazin wrote WALLY? And below that, WALTER? "And then?" he said.
"He said, 'You won't have to do much. Just get in and we'll talk.'" She paused,
staring at the buildings of L.A. through the window behind him. "She almost
went. A fifty is a fifty, right?"
"Right," Palatazin said. He looked into her troubled eyes and thought, Child,
how do you survive out there? If she was over sixteen years old, he'd dance the
csardas for the entire homicide squad. "Go on, please."
"She almost went, but when she started to get into the car, she smelled some
58
thing . . . funny. It smelled like medicine, like the stuff... uh ... Sheila's
dad used to wash his hands with. He's a doctor."
Palatazin wrote DOCTOR? and followed it with HOSPITAL STAFF?
"So then Sheila got spooked, and she got out of the car and walked away. When
she looked back, the dude was driving off. That's all."
"When did your friend start thinking this dude might be the Roach?" Reece asked.
"I've been keeping up with the papers. Everybody has, I mean. Everybody on the
boulevard talks about it'all the time, so I thought you cops should know."
"If this happened on Tuesday, why did you wait so long before reporting it?"
She shrugged and bit a thumbnail. "I was scared. Sheila was scared. The more I
thought about it being him, the more scared I got."
"Did your friend happen to see the license plate number?" Palatazin asked, pen
poised. "Anything else about the car that stood out?"
She shook her head. "No, it happened too fast." She looked up into the placid
gray eyes of this heavyset cop who reminded her so much of the juvenile officer
back in Holt, Idaho. Except this cop had a funny accent, he was almost bald, and
he had a coffee stain on his loud red tie with the blue dots. "It couldn't have
really been him, do you think?"^
Palatazin leaned back in his swivel chair, tendrils of blue smoke wafting around
him. This young prostitualt was like any one of dozens who'd been interviewed in
the past few weeks: jaded and frightened, with enough street sense to stay alive
but not enough to break out of The Life. They all seemed to carry the same
expression in their eyes-a sharp glimmer of contempt that masked a sad weariness
somewhere deep and close to the soul. Over the last weeks he'd had to hold back
in his impulse to shake some of these street survivors and shout, "Don't you
know what's waiting for you out there? The murderer, the rapist, the sadist . .
. and worse. Things you never dared think about for fear that they would drive
you mad; things that lurk in the shadows of humanity, that wait on the nightmare
fringe for their chance to strike. Things of the basest evil that must spread
evil and consume evil in order to survive . . ."
Enough, he told himself. He was knotted inside and realized he was stepping too
close to the edge. "Yes," he told Amy. "It might have been."
"Oh Christ," she said, the blood draining out of her face until she looked like
a Kewpie doll, all paint and no insides. "I mean, I... I've had some dates with
weird dudes before, but nobody's ever tried to . . ." She touched her throat,
seeing in her mind's eye the way that creepy dude had grinned when she'd slid
into his car.
"Amy," Palatazin said quietly, dropping the pretense, "we have an artist here
who can put together a composite picture of the man who tried to pick you up.
Now, I'm not saying that this man was the Roach, only that there's a
possibility. I'd like for you to go with Detective Reece and give a description
to our artist. Anything you can remember-his hair, eyes, nose, mouth. All
right?" He rose to his feet, and Reece stood behind the girl. "Also I want you
to think about that car.
59
I want you to see it in your mind and remember as much as you can about it.
Especially think about the license plate. You may have seen it and gotten a
number inside your head without realizing it. Thank you for coming in to talk to
us, Amy. Sully, will you take her up to see Mack?"
"Sure. Come on with me, Miss Hulsett." He opened the office door for her, and
the noises of the homicide-robbery squad room tumbled in-shrill telephones, a
couple of typewriters being beaten mercilessly, file cabinets being opened and
closed, the monotone chattering of a Telex machine. The girl stopped on the
threshold and turned back to Palatazin. "Something else I do remember," she
said. "His hands. They were . . . really large, you know? I could see them where
they were gripped around the steering wheel."
"Was he wearing any rings?"
"I ,. . no, I don't think so."
"All right, fine. Sully, as soon as you get that composite bring it down to me,
will you?" Sully nodded and led her off across the wide linoleum-floored room
jammed with file cabinets and desks. Palatazin, the heartbeat of hope pounding
at his temples, worked his way through the maze of desks to where Detective
Brasher sat waiting for an informant's return call. Brasher, a young man with
sandy-brown hair and deep-set green eyes that were already becoming hard, had
met his match in this morning's Times crossword puzzle. He shoved it aside
quickly when he saw the captain moving toward him.
"Brasher," Palatazin said, "you don't look too busy. I need some files
collected. Anyone we've been talking to in connection with the Roach killings
who owns a Volkswagen, also anyone who goes by the name 'Wally' or 'Walter' or
uses that nickname or alias. I want you to go through the rape and assault
files, looking for the same thing. Follow those back about three months."
"Yes, sir." He scribbled down the information on a notepad and rose from his
desk. "I was waiting for a call from a pimp I've been talking to."
"Have Hayden answer your phone." Palatazin motioned to the man at the nearest
desk. "I need those files as soon as you can get them." He turned away from
Brasher in time to see Gayle Clarke come striding into the squad room; he felt a
quick surge of anger and irritation. She was over an hour late, and right now he
didn't feel like putting up with her inane questions. On the couple of occasions
he'd refused to see her and had sent her down to Press Relations, the Tattler
had then run cheap-shot editorials about how Captain Andrew Palatazin was
dragging his feet on the Roach investigation. He wouldn't have minded at any
other time, but right now all the city papers were pressuring the mayor, who in
turn pressured the police commissioner, who jumped with both feet on Chief
Garnette, who came to Palatazin chewing a toothpick and demanding to know why
this thing wasn't cracked yet. Palatazin could only chew Turns and hulk around
the squad room like an injured, dangerous bear; he knew his men were working as
hard as they could, but the politicians in high places were getting nervous. So
there had been a firm directive from the commissioner: Cooperate with the press.
60
It's not enough to be a policeman, Palatazin thought sourly as he moved toward
Gayle Clarke. Now you have to be social worker, psychologist, politician, and
mind reader all rolled up into one! "You're late," he told her tersely. "What do
you want?"
"Sorry," she said, but her expression didn't show it. "I was held up for a
while. Can we talk in your office?"
"Where else? But please make this fast. I have work to do." He ushered her in,
closed the door, and sat down at his desk. The name "Wally" buzzed in his brain
like a hornet. "I'll tell you what I told the Times and the Ledger this morning:
we're still without a prime suspect, but we do have several people under
surveillance. And no, I'm not aware of any similarities between the Roach and
Jack the Ripper. We've boosted the number of decoys on the streets, but I wish
you'd keep that off the record. Will you?"
"Should I?" She raised an eyebrow, taking a Flair pen out of her purse.
"Miss Clarke," Palatazin said quietly, shoving aside his pipe and folding his
hands together atop his desk. Take it easy, he told himself. Don't let her bait
you, she's good at that. "In the past few weeks you and I have had the
misfortune of having to work in close proximity. I know you don't like me, and I
couldn't care less. I have nothing but the lowest regard for your newspaper." He
turned and rummaged through a stack of papers; when he found last week's
Tattler, he pushed it across the desk toward her. The front-pa^e headline in
bloodred type screamed, WHERE IS THE ROACH? WHO WILL BE NEXT TO DIE? Her thin
smile wavered a fraction but held.
"You'll recall that I told you two weeks ago I was putting decoy policewomen on
the streets to act as prostitutes. I told every newspaper in this city the same
thing and asked all of them to keep that information off the record. You'll
recall I asked you to do the same. Why was it then that on opening your paper to
read your story my eye was caught by a headline that read, 'Policewomen May Trap
the Roach?' He hasn't struck since that information was made public. Although
I'm not assuming that he is sick enough to be a reader of your paper, I am
assuming that he has found out about the decoys and has decided to go into
hiding. It may be months before he surfaces again, and by then his trail may be
very cold indeed."
"I tried to keep that out of the story," Gayle said. "My managing editor said it
was news and should go in."
"Oh. Then perhaps your managing editor should have my job since he knows so much
about police procedure?" He rummaged again, found another Tattler, and pushed it
toward Gayle like a piece of rotten meat. The headline blared MASS- MURDER
RAMPAGE. There was a picture in gory detail of Charlene McKay being picked up by
the men from the morgue. Other headlines tried to scream each other out: HAVE
UFOs LANDED NEAR L.A.? NEVER GROW OLD-THE AMAZING SEAWEED DIET; HOW TO MARRY A
ROCK STAR. Palatazin snorted with disgust. "Do people actually subscribe to this
thing?"
"Three hundred thousand by last year's figures," she told him coolly. "I would
tell you I was sorry about that decoy thing getting in, but I don't think it
would do any good."
61
"You're right, because I have the feeling that if we were to do it all over
again, nothing would change. Don't you realize how much harm these wild stories
about the Roach do? They frighten people; they make people suspicious of each
other, afraid to even go out at night. And they don't help our investigation
very much either." He picked up his pipe and clamped it between his teeth,
almost biting through the stem. "I thought I could trust in your
professionalism. I see I was wrong."
"Damn it!" she said suddenly and so forcefully Palatazin thought she was going
to leap over the desk at him. She leaned forward, her eyes fierce with anger.
"The stories I wrote are good! Damned good! I can't help what the headlines say,
and I can't tell my managing editor what's right or wrong to print! Okay, I know
the Tattler's milking this thing for all it's worth, but so is every other paper
in town! The bottom line is cash, captain, selling papers, and anybody who says
differently is either a liar or a fool. But if you read my stories, you'll see
I'm a damned good writer, and I've told people the truth as I see it!"
Palatazin was silent for a moment. He lit his pipe and regarded her through a
haze of smoke. "Why do you waste your time with the Tattler?" he asked her
finally. "It's beneath you. Couldn't you work somewhere else?"
"I'm making a name for myself," she said, the redness slowly subsiding from her
face. "It's a living. Most women two years out of the UCLA School of Journalism
are sitting on their asses doing rewrites, or editing somebody else's copy, or
going down to the corner for coffee and ham sandwiches for the real reporters.
Working for the Tattler may not be a dream job, but at least I'm gathering a
following who buy papers to read my copy."
"Some following. The kind of people who like to stare at traffic accidents."
"Their money's as good as anyone else's. Better than most. And don't downgrade
them, captain; they're the great American middle class. The people who pay your
salary, by the way."
Palatazin nodded thoughtfully. Gayle's dark brown eyes still held a hint of
anger, glittering like deep pools of water disturbed by the casual throw of a
stone. "Well," he said, "I'd better get to work and earn that salary. Just what
is it you wanted to see me about?"
"Never mind. You answered my questions already. I was going to ask you why you
thought Roach had gone into hiding." She capped her Flair and dropped it back
into her purse. "You might be interested to know that he won't be the lead story
next week."
"I'm relieved."
She stood up from her chair and slung the purse over her shoulder. "Okay," she
said. "Off the record. Are you any closer to catching him than you were last
week?"
"Off the record? No. But we may have some new leads."
"Such as?"
"Too premature yet. We'll have to wait and see."
She smiled thinly. "Don't trust me anymore, do you?"
62
"Partly that. Also partly that we're working on some information that came off
the street today, and you of all people should know how reliable that can be."
He stood up and went with her toward the door.
She stopped with her hand on the knob. "I ... I didn't mean to lose my cool. But
I got involved in something that was pretty hairy today. Something weird. You
must think I'm pushing pretty hard, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"That's because I don't want to stay on the Tattler all my life. I have to be
there when you get him, captain, because riding this story to the ground is the
only way I'm ever going to move up. Okay, I'm ambitious and opportunistic as
hell, but I'm a realist, too. Something as big as this comes along for a
journalist only once in a blue moon. I'm going to see that I take advantage of
it."
"We may never find him."
"Can I quote you on that?"
His eyes widened slightly; he couldn't tell if she was kidding or not because
her expression was serious, her gaze sharp and piercing. "I don't think so," he
said, and opened the door for her. "I'm sure we'll be talking again. By the way,
what knocked Roach off the front page? Something about a little old lady who
found Howard Hughes's will in her attic?"
"No." A chill passed through her; she could still smell the rot of those corpses
in the cemetery as if her clothes were full of it. "Grave robbers over at
Hollywood Memorial. That's why I was late; I had to call the story in and talk
to the Hollywood cops."
"Grave robbers?" Palatazin said softly.
"Yeah. Or rather coffin robbers. Whoever it was ripped about twenty caskets out
of the ground and left . . . everything else lying around."
Palatazin took the pipe out of his mouth and stood staring at her, a dull pulse
beating at the base of his neck. "What?" he said in a strange, hoarse voice that
sounded more like the croak of a frog.
"Yeah. It's weird." She started out the door, but suddenly Palatazin's hand was
gripping her arm just short of painfully. She looked at him and blinked. His
face had gone waxen, his lips moving but making no sound.
"What do you mean?" he said with an effort. "What are you talking about? When
did this happen?"
"Sometime during the night, I guess. Hey, listen . . . you're . . . you're
hurting."
He looked down at his hand and instantly released her. "I'm sorry. Hollywood
Memorial? Who was first on the scene?"
"I was. And a photographer from the Tattler-Jack Kidd. Why are you so
interested? Vandalism isn't your detail, is it?"
"No, but. .." He looked wan and confused, as if he might suddenly collapse on
the floor in a limp heap. The set of his eyes with their glazed intensity
frightened Gayle so much she felt a quick shiver ripple up her spine. "Are you
all right?" she asked him tentatively, and for a moment he didn't reply.
63
"Yes," he said finally, nodding. "Yes, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'd like for you to
go now, Miss Clarke, I have work to do." He held the door open, and she stepped
out into the squad room. She turned toward him, intending to ask him to keep her
in mind if and when they did get a solid lead on Roach. The door closed in her
face. She thought, Shit! What's his problem? Maybe what I've been hearing is
true. Maybe the pressure is starting to crack him wide open. If so, that would
make for a juicy human interest story. She turned away and left the squad room.
And behind that closed door, Palatazin was gripping his telephone with a
white-knuckled hand. The police operator answered. "This is Palatazin," he said.
"Get me Lieutenant Kirkland, Hollywood Division." His voice was urgent and full
of terror.
FOUR
The sun reached its zenith and instantly began to fall, deepening the shadows
that clung like a precious autumn chill to the eastern facades of the massive
stone and glass buildings at the center of Los Angeles. In the slow decay of
hours and light, the sun shone red on the smooth lakes of MacArthur Park; clear,
golden beams wafted through the windows of shops and boutiques on Rodeo Drive in
Beverly Hills; dust stirred lazily in the air among the cramped, boxy tenement
buildings of East L.A., and clothes strung on lines from window to window caught
bits of flying grit; the Pacific surf that rolled up to the edge of the Venice
Beach boardwalk, where the kids darted and spun on roller skates like human
tops, slowly turned orange, then red deepening toward purple; lights began to
glimmer like hot jewels along Sunset and Hollywood boulevards; the San Gabriel
Mountains were jumbled piles of light and darkness, the western face of stone
glowing red, the eastern exposures almost black.
And above the whole metropolis with its eight million separate lives and
destinies sat the Kronsteen castle on a throne of rock. It was a huge, sprawling
edifice of black weather-beaten stone with high turrets, arched Gothic roofs,
broken gargoyles leering from towers or contemplating the patchwork of humanity
in the valley below. Many of the windows had been shattered and replaced with
boards, but some of the windows at the higher elevations had survived vandalism,
and those that were of stained glass glowed red and blue and purple in the
strong, hard light of the setting sun. A chill gathered in the darkening air and
began to grow vicious. The wind hissed and whispered around stone battlements
like a human voice through broken teeth.
And many in the city below thought for just a cold, eerie instant that they
heard their names called from behind the falling curtain of night.
64 p*"
FIVE
Rico Esteban's brain was scorched with hot neon. Around him there was the
thunder of engines, the crisp notes of electric music rippling through the air.
He thought he should say something to the dark-haired girl who sat pressed
against the other side of the car, but he could think of only one thing and
saying it wouldn't be right-Holy Shit. Beyond that crude summation of his
feelings, his brain buzzed with overloaded circuits.
He thought, Prenado? Did she say she was pregnant? Only a few minutes before,
he'd pulled his fire-engine-red Chevy lowrider in front of Merida Santos's
apartment building on Dos Terros Street in the dark tenement barrio of East Los
Angeles. Almost immediately she'd come running out of the hallway, where a
single dim light bulb exposed a shaky set of stairs and walls layered with
spray-painted graffiti, and slid into his car. As he kissed her, he'd thought
that something was wrong; her eyes looked funny, they were a little sad, and
there were the beginnings of dark circles underneath them. He'd started the
Chevy, filling Dos Terros Street with a rumble that shook windowpanes and
brought a couple of shouted complaints from the old folks, and then had
screeched off toward Whittier Boulevard. Merida, her long black hair cascading
in waves around her shoulders, sat away from him and stared at her hands. She
was wearing a blue dress and the silver crucifix on a chain that Rico had bought
for her birthday the week before.
"Hey," he'd said, and leaned over to tilt her face up with a forefinger beneath
her chin. "What's wrong? You been crying? That crazy perra been beating on you?"
"No," she'd replied, her soft voice trembling slightly. She was still more
little girl than woman. At sixteen her flesh was smooth and tawny, her body as
tight and lean as a colt's. Usually her eyes sparkled with shy, laughing
innocence, but tonight something was different, and Rico couldn't figure it out.
If her crazy old mother hadn't been beating on her again, then what was wrong?
"Did Luis run away from home again?" he asked her. She shook her head. He leaned
back, cushioned in the cup of his red bucket seat, and brushed a lock of thick
black hair off his forehead. "That Luis better watch out," he said quietly,
swerving around a couple of drunks who were dancing together in the middle of
the street. He hit the horn, and one of them shot him the finger. "The kid's too
young to be running with the Homicides. I told him once, I told him a hundred
times not to get mixed up with those ladrones. They're going to get him in
trouble. Where you want to eat tonight?"
"It don't matter," Merida said. Rico shrugged and turned onto the boulevard,
where a gaudy carnival of neon pulsated over porno movie houses, bars, discos,
and liquor stores. Though it was just past six-thirty, the lowriders were
already jostling for position, chugging like streamlined locomotives. They were
painted every color of the rainbow from electric blue to Day-Glo orange and
outfitted with zebra- striped tops or leopard-skin upholstery or radio antennae
that seemed as tall as
65
towers. The mass of cars moved at a crawl, bouncing and swaying like wild
bucking horses along the boulevard, which was lined with hordes of Chicano
teenagers looking for fun on a Saturday night. Music from transistor and car
radios blared at each other, the tumultuous frenzy of rock and disco overpowered
only by the thundering bass lines that prowled out through the open doors of the
bars. The air, sweet and hot with exhaust, cheap perfume, and marijuana,
crackled with tinny voices. Rico reached over and turned his own radio up loud,
his brown face split by a grin. The growl of KALA's Tiger Eddie became a
hypnotic chant-". . . gonna TEAR this town tonight, gonna lay it to WASTE,
'cause we're the BEST, beatin' all the REST on a SAT-UR-DAY night! Mighty KALA,
comin' at you with The Wolves annnnddddd 'Born to Be Bad'!"
Merida had turned the radio off. The Wolves wailed on anyway from a dozen other
sets of speakers. "Rico," she'd said, and now she was looking him straight in
the eyes, and her lower lip trembled. "I found out I'm pregnant."
He thought, Holy Shit! Pregnant? Did she say pregnant? He'd almost said "Who did
it?" but stopped himself cold. He knew she'd been sleeping only with him for the
past three months, even after he'd gotten his apartment down on the low, poor
end of Sunset Boulevard. She was a decent, good, loyal woman. Woman? he thought.
Barely sixteen. A girl, yes, but a woman in many ways, too. Rico was too stunned
to speak. The waves of lowriders before him seemed to undulate, an ocean of
metal. He'd used rubbers most every time and thought he'd been careful, but now
. . . What am I going to do? he asked himself. Your big macho prick has gotten
this woman in trouble, and now what do you do?
"You sure?" he said finally. "I mean . . . how do you know?"
"I ... didn't have my time. I went to the clinic, and the doctor told me."
"Couldn't he be wrong?" He was trying to think-When did I not use protection?
When we were drinking wine that night, or when we were in a hurry . . .?
"No," she said, the finality in her voice starting a dull throbbing in the pit
of his stomach.
"Does your mama know? She'll kill me. She hates my guts anyway. She said if I
saw you again she was going to shoot me or call the cops . . ."
"She don' know," Merida said softly. "Nobody else knows." She made a little
choking sound like a rabbit being strangled.
"Don't cry!" he said too loudly and too sharply, and then realized that she was
already crying, her head bent and the tears rolling down her cheeks in large
drops. He felt protective of her, more like a big brother than a lover. Do I
love Merida? he asked himself; the question, so simply stated, baffled him. He
wasn't sure he knew what love would feel like. Did it feel like good sex? Or was
it like knowing somebody was there to talk easy to you? Or did it feel awesome
and silent, like sitting in church?
"Please," Rico said as he stopped at a traffic light with a row of other
lowriders. Feet punched accelerators, challenging him, but he paid no attention.
"Don't cry, okay?" She stopped after another moment but didn't look at him, then
fumbled in
66 tm
ROBERT R. McCAMMON
her purse for a tissue to blow her nose. Sixteen! Rico thought. She's just
turned sixteen! And here he was like all the rest of the strutting, Saturday
night boulevard crowd, dressed in his tight chinos and pale blue shirt, gold
chains and a tiny coke ; spoon dangling from his neck like a macho stud, going
to take his woman to get ' something to eat, hit a disco or two, and then return
her to his bed for a quick sex session. Only now there was a very big
difference-he had gotten Merida pregnant, filled up a child with a child, and
now he felt weighed down with age and the serious concerns he'd never dreamed
about even in his worst nightmares. He imagined that if he could see his
face-lean and high-cheekboned and handsome in ' a dark, dangerous way because of
a nose that had been broken twice and set badly both times-he would be able to
see faint lines around his eyes and crinkling in his forehead. In that instant
he wanted to be a little boy again, playing with red plastic cars on a cold
wooden floor while his mother and father talked about Mr. Cabrillo running off
with Mr. Hernandez's wife as his big sister sat spinning the dial of her new
transistor radio back and forth. He wanted to be a child forever, without
worries or weights around his neck. But his mother and father had been dead for
almost six years now, killed in a fire that had started from a spark from bad
electrical i wiring; the fire had roared through the tenement building like a
volcanic whirlwind, and three floors had collapsed before the first of the fire
engines arrived. Rico had been running with a street gang called the Cripplers
then, and was huddled under a stairway, drinking red wine with three buddies,
when he'd heard the fire engines > screaming; it was a noise that even now
sometimes awakened him and made him > break out in a cold sweat. His sister
Deanne was a model up in San Francisco now, or so she said in her infrequent
letters. She always wrote that she was about to do a shooting for some magazine
or other, or that she'd met a man who was going to get her into commercials.
Once she'd written that she was going to be the June Playmate, but of course the
girl in that month's Playboy was blond and blue-eyed and worlds away from the
barrio. He hadn't seen his sister in two years, and the last letter had been
over six months before.
The traffic light flickered to green. Around him the lowriders screeched off,
leaving thick trails of rubber. He realized he was gripping Merida's hand very
tightly.
"Everything's going to be okay," he told her. "You'll see." And then she quickly
slid across the seat to him, as close as a second skin, and if love felt
anything like pity, then yes, Rico loved her. "Listen, you want a hamburger or
something? I can stop there." He motioned toward a Fat Jim's burger stand, a
huge, livid, neon hamburger floating in the sky. She shook her head. "Okay.
We'll eat later." He took his pack of Winstons off the dashboard and lit a
cigarette. A black and white prowl car went gliding by in the opposite
direction, the eyes of the cop at the wheel meeting Rico's for one glacial,
heartstopping instant. Rico was carrying a few grams of coke and some nickel
bags of fine Colombian Red in a box that rested in a cavity cut beneath the
rubber padding of the trunk. That was his business now, supplying
coke to the kids who hun^around the rock clubs on Sunset Strip. Though he was |
i
67
just a nickel-and-dimer, he was making enough money to keep himself in good
threads. And his supplier, a bald guy who wore Pierre Cardin business suits and
called himself Gypsy John, said he had the nerve and ambition to be big in the
trade someday. Not as big as Gypsy John, of course, but big enough. Rico let his
gaze coolly slither away from the cop's and jockeyed into position behind a
Thunderbird painted in tiger stripes. Someone called him from the curb, and he
glanced over to see Felix Ortega and Benny Gracion standing with two
fine-looking foxes in front of the Go-Go Disco. Rico raised his hand and
shouted, "How's it going ', amigos?" but did not stop because they were walking
reminders of his time with the Cripplers.
And finally Merida asked the question Rico had dreaded. "What are we going to
do?" Eyes shining, she watched him carefully for any sign of betrayal.
He shrugged, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. "What do you wanna do?"
"It's your baby."
"It's yours too!" he said loudly, anger filling his face with blood-why hadn't
she been on the pill or something?-and then the flush of shame spreading hotly
across his cheeks. "Oh, Jesus," he said hoarsely. "I don't know what I'm
supposed to do!"
"You love me, don't you? You said you did. If you hadn't said that, I wouldn't
have let you do it to me. You been the first and the only."
He nodded grimly, remembering the first time he'd taken her. It had been in the
backseat of his car in a drive-in out near Southgate. He'd felt proud after it
was over because she was his first virgin, and he knew you weren't really a man
until you'd broken in a virgin. He remembered what Felix Ortega had told him
once in the abandoned warehouse the Cripplers used as headquarters-"Fuck a
virgin, man, and she'll love you forever."
Oh, Christ! he thought. Forever? With just one chick? I got a business to think
of. I could be buying myself silk shirts pretty soon, and alligator shoes, or a
fine black Porsche. I could get one of those penthouse apartments like the movie
stars have. I could really be somebody in this town, I could be bigger than
Gypsy John evenl But now he saw his path, and it wound straight back to the
black, bitter heart of the barrio. In ten years he would be working in some
garage and coming home at five to a two-room apartment where Merida and two or
three kids waited, snotty noses and all; his hands would be black with engine
grime, and his gut would be spreading from all the beer with the boys on
Saturday nights. Merida would be haggard, the kids underfoot all the time and
the close confines of the tenement making her nervous and jumpy, different from
the beautiful girl she was now. They would argue about his future-why he
couldn't find a better-paying job and why he had no more ambition-and life would
start to close in around his throat, choking him to death. NO/ he told himself.
I CAN'T DO THAT/ He reached down and turned the radio up loud so he couldn't
hear himself think.
"Merida," he said, "I want you to be sure. I mean ... I want you to be for
certain that. . . you know . . . the kid's mine . . ." He was groping, looking
for something to put between himself and the decision that had to be made.
Instantly he felt like a
68
traitor, a coward to the very pit of his soul. But he knew the truth-he didn't
love her enough to change his life for her.
She turned her face away from him and very slowly straightened her spine so that
she was sitting totally upright and not slumped as she had been a moment before.
She moved away from him, her hands clenched in her lap.
So, Rico told himself. Now she understands. Oh, Christ, this is shitty, man!
You're treating her like common pussy, some Crippler groupie, or the neon-daubed
hustlers who call out their rates from each side of the boulevard.
And then Merida, a sob bursting from her throat, jumped from the Chevy before
Rico knew what was happening. She ran down the street in the opposite direction,
lowriders swerving around her, drivers cursing or calling out rude invitations.
"Merida!" Rico shouted. He twisted the wheel, ran up onto the curb, then jerked
the keys out of the ignition. Then he was out and running along Whittier, trying
to find her among the hundreds of glaring white headlights that stared
impassively back at him. "MERIDA!" he called, braving a green Ford whose driver
invited him to stick his head up his ass. He ran on through the traffic, being
cursed in a variety of languages and inflections, but he didn't care. Merida was
too young, too innocent, to be alone on a Saturday night on this neon hell of a
boulevard. She didn't know the potential dangers, she was too trusting. After
all, he thought bitterly, she trusted me, and I'm the worst kind of rapist-I
took her soul. Half-blinded by charging headlights, he continued on, leaping
aside as a burly red-bearded biker swept past him on a blue chopper. Something
shimmered on the pavement, and Rico bent to pick it up. It was Merida's silver
crucifix, his birthday present to her. The clasp was broken where she'd ripped
it off her neck; the necklace was still warm from her body heat.
"Merida!" he shouted, staring into a blaze of lights. "I'm sorry!"
But the night had swallowed her up, she was gone, and he knew that even if she
did hear him calling over the tumultuous noise, she wouldn't turn back. No, she
had too much pride for that, and in comparison to her, Rico felt slimy, covered
with contagious sores.
He saw the blue light of that prowl car approaching, sliding through the
lowriders. He was pierced by cold panic as he thought of his merchandise sitting
in the Chevy's trunk, an easy score for the cops if they decided to see what he
was carrying. Whirling around, he ran for the sidewalk, shoving people aside in
his race with the prowl car. Pimps in peacock suits and their hot-pants-clad
hustlers slipped into doorways as the cops drove past. The blue light was going
around and around, filling the air with electric resentment, but the cops
weren't riding their siren. Rico slid behind the Chevy's wheel, jammed the key
into the ignition, and backed off the curb, then spun the wheel sharply and
merged with the slow westbound traffic. About a block ahead he saw that two
lowriders had slammed together in the middle of the boulevard, and a couple of
guys were scuffling, urged on by a tight ring of onlookers. As Rico swerved past
them, he heard the heart-stopping shrill of the police siren and, looking«into
his rearview mirror, he saw the prowl car stop to
69
break up the fight. He punched his accelerator and slid smoothly around the
slower cars. No cops giving me hassles tonight, he told himself. Shit, I've had
hassles enough!
And then he remembered Merida, alone on the boulevard. He couldn't leave her for
the mass of predators who were all looking for fresh meat. He found a clear
spot, made a fast U-turn, and drove back past the prowl car, past where Merida
had leapt out into the street. Figures that had vanished into dark alleys and
doorways were now reemerging to hawk their wares. The sidewalks were crowded
with hungry humanity, and in that jostling crush one skinny, pregnant Chicano
girl would hardly matter. Rico was frightened for her; he held the silver chain
and crucifix clenched in one hand, and though he was not a particularly
religious man, he wished she'd kept it on for good luck. He thought, I'll find
her. If it takes me all night, I'll find her.
His Chevy moved on into the night, borne along and finally lost in the sea of
metal.
SIX
Palatazin was standing at the locked iron gates of Hollywood Memorial Cemetery
as Merida Santos was leaping from the red Chevy on Whittier Boulevard. His hands
had closed around the bars, and he stood staring in as a chill evening breeze
clattered palm leaves overhead. It was almost seven o'clock, and he realized
that he'd told Jo on the telephone that he would pick her up at six-thirty for
their dinner at The Budapest. He decided to tell her that something had come up
at the office, to keep this cemetery thing to himself. Because what if he was
wrong? That would make him as crazy as Lieutenant Kirkland had thought he was.
Stake out a cemetery? Kirkland had asked incredulously over the telephone. What
for?
"Because," he'd said, "I asked you to. That should be enough."
"I'm sorry, captain," Kirkland had replied, "but I'll have to have more than
that. Saturday night in Hollywood can be pretty damned rough, as you well know.
Now, what exactly does this have to do with the vandalism?"
"It's . . . it's very important that you do as I ask." Palatazin knew he was
sounding crazy and that his voice was high and nervous and that Lieutenant
Kirkland was probably grinning at one of his detectives, making a circular
motion at his temple with his forefinger. "Please, lieutenant. No questions, not
just yet. I'm only asking for a man or two out there tonight."
"Captain, Hollywood Memorial has their own watchman."
"But what happened to the watchman who was out there last night? Has anyone
found him? No, I don't think so."
"Sorry." Kirkland had let ar hint of irritation creep into his voice. "Why don't
you send some of your own men if you want the cemetery watched so badly?"
"All my men are working day and night on finding the Roach. I can't ask any of
them to . . ."
70
"Same here, sir. I can't. It's not justified." Kirkland had laughed softly. "I
don't think those stiffs are going to be causing any trouble out there tonight,
sir. I have to go, captain, if there's nothing else."
"No. Nothing else."
"Nice talking with you, captain. Sorry I couldn't help you out. Good hunting to
you. Hope you nail that guy pretty soon."
"Yes. Good-bye, lieutenant." And Palatazin had heard Kirkland hang up his phone.
Now, for the second time today, he stood at the gates of the cemetery. This
afternoon he'd watched the officers from the Hollywood Division walking around
out there, stepping over skeletons; then the insurance and mortuary people had
come in, followed by the dump trucks and work crews. Now the place looked serene
again with the grassy knolls whitened by moonlight, the new mounds of dirt the
only reminder that something terrible had happened there last night.
"Can I help you?" someone said from the darkness on the other side of the gate.
A flashlight was flicked on, the beam directed into Palatazin's face. Palatazin
reached for his wallet and showed his badge. "Oh. Sorry." The flashlight beam
dropped, and a watchman in a dark gray uniform materialized from the night. He
was a tall, white-haired man with friendly blue eyes. He wore a Hollywood
Memorial badge on his shirt. "I'm Kelsen," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"Nothing, thank you. I just came to ... look."
"To look? You should come back on Monday and take the tour-they show you all the
celebrity graves." Kelsen smiled, but when Palatazin didn't respond, the smile
faded. "Looking for anything in particular?"
"No. I was here earlier this afternoon when the officers were investigating."
"Oh, so that's it. Damnedest thing I ever heard tell of. I didn't exactly see
any of it, but I heard about it when they called me in. I don't usually work on
Saturday nights. My wife pitched a fit."
"I imagine she did," Palatazin said quietly. "The man who worked last night. I
understand his name was Zachary?"
"Yeah, old Zack." Kelsen leaned against the gate; behind him light streamed
through the window of the watchman's station. "He usually has the weekend shift.
Now he turns up missing, so they call me in." He shrugged and smiled again. "I
don't care, I need the money. Listen, you people don't think Zack had anything
to do with what happened here last night, do you?"
"I don't know. I don't work in the Hollywood Division."
"Oh." Kelsen frowned and swung his light up toward Palatazin again. "So why are
you interested? I mean, it's damned strange and all, but I thought the cops
wrapped it up today. Vandalism, right? Some cult kids who maybe needed coffins
for ... whatever it is they do. I heard the same thing happened over at Hope
Hill Cemetery last week; somebody clipped the lock on the gates, tore up a few
graves, and made off with five or six coffins. Hope Hill's a small cemetery, you
know, and they can't afford a watchnffen, so nobody knows what happened. Just
crazy kids, I
71
guess. It's a crazy world, right?"
"Yes. Crazy."
"Listen, do you want to come in or something? Take a look around? I've got an
extra flashlight."
Palatazin shook his head. "No need for that. I wouldn't find anything." He
stared at Kelsen, his eyes going dark and cold. "Mr! Kelsen," he said, "is there
a lock on the door of your little house there?"
"Yeah, there's a lock. Why?"
"Because I'm going to suggest that you do something, and I want you to listen to
me very carefully." Palatazin's hands curled tighter around the bars. "If I
tried to explain to you why I want you to do this, you wouldn't understand. So
just listen, please."
"Okay," the watchman said, but he stepped back a pace from the man at the gate,
whose gaze had gone so hard and chilling.
"If anyone else comes to this gate tonight-man, woman, or child-you should lock
your door and draw the blinds. If you hear this gate opening, you should turn up
your radio very loud so you can't hear. And you should not come out to look. Let
whoever it may be do as he or she pleases. But do not-do not-come out to try to
stop them."
"That's . . . that's my job," Kelsen said softly, a crooked grin frozen on his
face. "What is this, a joke? Candid Camera? What's going on?"
"I'm deadly serious, Mr. Kelsen. Are you a religious man?"
This guy's not a cop! Kelsen thought. He's a freakin' nut! "I'm a Catholic," he
said. "Listen, what's your name?"
"If and when someone comes to this gate tonight," Palatazin continued, ignoring
the question, "you should pray. Pray very loudly, don't pay any attention to
anything they say to you." He squinted when the watchman's light hit his face.
"Perhaps if you pray hard enough, they'll leave you in peace."
"I think you should go, mister," Kelsen said. "Get out of here before I call a
real cop!" His face was contorted, and his once friendly eyes turned mean. "Go
on, buddy, get out!" He started for the telephone on his desk. "I'm calling the
cops right now!"
"All right," Palatazin said, "all right, I'm going." Kelsen stopped and looked
back; the flashlight in his hand was shaking. "But remember what I've told you.
Please. Pray, and keep praying."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'll pray for you, you crazy freak!" Kelsen disappeared into
his station and slammed the door behind him. Palatazin turned, walked quickly to
his car and drove away; he was trembling, his stomach churning slowly. Hope Hill
Cemetery, did the man say? This has happened before? Oh my God, he thought,
trying to keep down a rising wave of nausea. Please, no. Don't let it happen
again! Not here! Not in Los Angeles!
He hoped he was crazy; he hoped the pressure of the Roach killings was beginning
to get to him, that he was seeing grinning shadows where nothing
72
existed but the warped antics of-what had Kelsen said?-kids who belonged to some
crazy cult? A hundred cults, a thousand of them, would be easier to deal with
than what he was beginning to fear had ripped those coffins out of the ground.
He had been sleeping in his bed less than six blocks away when it had happened,
and perhaps when he'd awakened from the dream about his mother, the things were
here at work.
Too late, Palatazin realized he'd turned off Santa Monica Boulevard and driven
right past Romaine Street, heading south on Western. He touched the brakes for
only an instant and then drove on because he knew where he was going.
The gray-bricked building on First Street was empty now-it had been condemned
years ago-and the broken edges of glass gleamed in the windows. It looked
desolate and forlorn, as if it had been abandoned for a very long time; the
walls were smeared with old graffiti-he could see one faded white declaration
that read Seniors Fine in '59. Somewhere in that graffiti would still be two
painful statements scrawled by the hand of a vicious child-Palatazin Sucks 'em
and Old Lady P, Is Gonna Burn In Hell For Crazy People.
He lifted his gaze to the top floor windows. All broken now, all dark and empty;
but for an instant he thought he saw his mother up there, much younger of
course, her hair almost fully gray but her eyes not nearly as haunted and wild
as he remembered them at the end. She was peering out onto First Street,
watching the corner where little Andre, now in the sixth grade, would cross
carrying his green Army backpack filled with notebooks and pencils, math texts
and history homework. When he reached that corner, he always looked up, and his
mother would always wave from the window. Three times a week a woman named Mrs.
Gibbs would come by to help him with his English; he was still having
difficulties, though most of the teachers at his elementary school spoke
Hungarian. Up in that small dark apartment, the extremes of temperature had been
almost unbearable; at the height of summer the place was an oven even with all
the windows open, and when a cold winter wind blew down from the mountains and
shook the ancient window frames, Andre could see the faint wraithlike plume of
his mother's breath. Every night, no matter what the season, she peered
fearfully down onto the street, checked and rechecked the three dead-bolt locks
on the door, and paced the floor muttering and crying until the downstairs
neighbors slammed the ceiling with a broom and shouted, "Go to sleep, you witch
woman!"
Andre was never liked or even tolerated by the other children in the
neighborhood, a hodgepodge of Jewish, Hungarian, and Polish families, because
their parents were afraid of his mother, because they discussed the "witch
woman" over their dinner tables and told the children they'd better stay away
from her son, he might be crazy in the head, too. His friends were those
awkward, shy, or backward children who do not quite fit in with the others, who
can find no place to exist except on the outer rim and consequently play alone
most of the time. On some occasions when he grew nervous, Andre the witch
woman's son lapsed into speaking Hungarian with a thick accent. Then he would be
chased home from school by a
73
pack of children who threw stones and laughed whenever he tripped and fell.
It was very hard for him, because home was no refuge. It was a prison where his
mother scrawled crucifixes on the walls and windows and doors with red.Crayola
crayons, where she shrieked out in the night from the images that seared her
brain, where she sometimes lay in her bed for days at a time, curled up like a
fetus, staring blankly at a wall. It became progressively worse and worse, and
even Uncle Milo, his mother's brother who had immigrated to America in the late
thirties and owned a successful men's clothing store, began to stop in and ask
her if she would like to go someplace where she wouldn't have to worry about
anything anymore, where there were people to take care of her and keep her
happy. No.' she'd screamed during one terrible argument that kept Uncle Milo
away for weeks. No.' I won't leave my son alone!
What would I find up there if I went in? Palatazin asked himself, staring up at
the front room. A few newspapers all cut in pieces, lying in a thick sediment of
dust? Perhaps an old dress or two hanging in a closet? Things best forgotten?
Some of the crucifixes might still be scrawled on the walls, close to the nail
holes where the religious pictures had hung in their gaudy gilded frames.
Palatazin, grownup Andre, looked up to the windows where he thought he saw the
pale, ghostly face of a woman waiting for her son to come home. He didn't like
to think about those last months; putting her in Golden Garden and leaving her
there to die had torn him to pieces, but what else could he have done? She
couldn't take care of herself anymore; she had to be fed like a baby, and very
often she spat up her food like a baby or soiled the awful rubber, diaperlike
thing she wore. She was wasting away to nothing, alternately praying and crying.
Her eyes had become the largest thing about her. As she sat in her favorite
rocking chair day after day and stared down upon Romaine Street, her eyes became
luminous, as large as pale white moons. So he'd sent her away where the doctors
and nurses could take care of her. She'd died of a stroke in a small room with
forest-green walls and a window that looked out on a golf course. She'd been
dead for two hours before a nurse came in to check on her at six o'clock in the
morning.
Palatazin remembered her last words to him, the very night before she died,
"Andre, Andre," she'd said softly, reaching up her frail white hand to grip his
arm. "What time is it? Is it day or night?"
"Night, Mama," he replied. "It's almost eight o'clock."
"Night comes too fast. Always too fast. Is the door locked?"
"Yes." It wasn't, of course, but when he told her that it was, he could see that
it comforted her.
"Good. My good Andre, you must never forget to ... to lock the door. Oh, I'm so
sleepy. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I heard that black cat scratching on the
front door this morning, so I shooed it away. They should keep that cat in their
apartment."
"Yes, Mama." A black cat had belonged to their nextdoor neighbors in the First
Street apartment building; after all these years it must surely be dust.
74
And then his mother's eyes had clouded over, and for a long time she'd stared at
her son without speaking. "Andre, I'm afraid," she'd said finally, her voice
cracking like old yellowed paper. The tears glimmered in her eyes, and Palatazin
had carefully wiped them away with a handkerchief when they started to roll down
her cheeks. She'd gripped his hand tightly, her flesh as dry as leather. "One of
them ... one of them followed me when I came back from the market. I heard him
walking behind me, and when I... turned I saw his grinning face. I saw his eyes,
Andre, his terrible burning eyes! He wanted me to ... to take his hand and go
with him . . . because of what I did to your papa . . ."
"Shhhhhh," Palatazin had said, wiping tiny beads of perspiration off her
forehead. "You're wrong, Mama. There was no one. You were only imagining it." He
remembered the night she was recalling; she'd dropped a sack of groceries and
run home, screaming. It had been the last night she'd ever left the apartment.
"They can't hurt us now, Mama. We're too far away for them to ever find us
again."
"NO!" she'd said, her eyes widening. Her face was as pale as a china plate, her
fingernails digging half-moons into his hand. "DON'T YOU EVER BELIEVE THAT! If
you don't watch for them always... ALWAYS!... they can come for you and find
you. They're always there, Andre . . . you just can't see them . . ."
"Why don't you try to sleep now, Mama? I'll sit here with you until I have to
leave, all right?"
"Leave?" she'd said, suddenly panicked. "Leave? Where are you going?"
"Home. I have to go home. Jo's waiting for me."
"Jo?" She'd looked at him suspiciously. "Who's that?"
"My wife, Mama. You know who Jo is, she came with me to see you last night."
"Oh, stop that! You're just a little boy! Even in California they don't let
little boys get married! Did you get that milk I asked you to bring on the way
back from school?"
He'd nodded and tried to smile. "I brought it."
"That's good." And then she'd settled back and closed her eyes. After another
moment her grip on his hand had loosened enough for him to pull away. He'd sat
and gazed at her for a long time; she looked so different, but still there was
something there of the woman he'd known a long time ago, the one who'd sat in
the little stone house in Krajeck, knitting a sweater for her son. When he'd
stood up very quietly to leave, his mother's eyes had opened again, and this
time they burned through his soul. "I won't leave you, Andre," she'd whispered.
"I won't leave my son alone." And then she was asleep again, just that quickly,
her mouth half-open, and the breath rustling in and out of her lungs. There was
an odor in the room like lilacs on the edge of decay.
Palatazin had slipped out of the room, and a doctor named Vacarella had called
him just after six the next morning.
My God! Palatazin thought suddenly and looked at his wristwatch. Jo is waiting
at home! He started the car, glanced up once more at the top-floor window-now
'empty, the broken pane catching a little leftover light from someone else's
house-
75
and drove toward Romaine Street. When he stopped at a traffic light two blocks
away, he thought he heard dogs howling very far away in a strange close harmony.
But when the light changed and he drove on, he didn't hear them anymore-or
perhaps he was afraid to listen. Thoughts of Hollywood Memorial loomed up too
quickly for him to cut them off. His hands began to sweat on the steering wheel.
They can't hurt us now, he thought. We're too far away. Too far away. Too far
away.
And from the depths of his memory, his mother's voice answering, Don't you ever
believe that . . .
SEVEN
Merida Santos had run a long way from the noisy tumult of Whittier Boulevard,
and her legs were beginning to ache. She stopped and leaned against a half-
demolished brick wall to rub her calves. Her lungs were burning, too, her eyes
felt gummy with tears, and her nose was running. Damn Rico/ she thought. I hate
him, HATE HIM, HATE HIM! She thought of what she should do to him: Tell Luis
he'd beaten her up and raped her, so the Homicides would go after him and cut
him to pieces; tell her mother he'd gotten her drunk and had his way with her,
so she'd call the cops on him; call the police herself and tell them she knew
somebody who was selling cocaine to kids on the Strip and ask them if they would
like to know his name.
But in the next instant her plans of vengeance broke apart in a single sob. She
couldn't do any of those things. She couldn't bear to see him hurt; she would
rather die than think of him being beaten up by the Homicides or put in jail.
From a bitter spark of her anger and hurt, the hot flame of love-and of need,
both physical and emotional-leapt up, its crazy brightness making new tears
stream down her cheeks. She started trembling and couldn't stop. A hole had
opened up somewhere in the pit of her stomach, and she felt she was in danger of
being swallowed into it, turned inside out, and then all the world would see the
tiny fetus just beginning to take form within her. She hoped that the baby would
be a boy with the same coffee-and-cream eyes that Rico had.
But now what was to be done? Tell Mama? She shivered at the thought. Her mother
hadn't acted right since Papa died last year; she was suspicious of every move
Merida made-doubly suspicious of what Luis did, and that just made Luis stay
away from home more-and lately had begun awakening Merida in the middle of the
night to question her about the kids she was running around with, about what
they did. Smoke that filthy weed? Get drunk on wine? Luis had told Mama that
Merida had been seeing Rico and that Rico was a big man in the coke trade up on
Sunset Boulevard. Luis, only twelve, was running with the Homicides almost every
night now, and the barrio toughs hated Rico because he'd once been where they
were and had made it out. Merida's mother had gone into a screaming fit,
76
threatening to lock Merida in a closet or turn her over to the social worker
lady if she kept seeing "that Esteban mugre." Now what would happen if she told
her mother she was carrying his baby in her belly?
Or she could go to see Father Silvera first, and perhaps he could help her talk
to her mother. Yes. That was the thing to do.
Merida wiped her swollen eyes and looked around to get her bearings. She really
hadn't noticed where she was running. The narrow street stretched out before
her, lined with brown brick buildings that were gutted and desolate, bombed and
burned out by the hands of the arsonist or feuding street gangs. Mounds of
rubble glittered with bits of broken glass; layers of yellow mist hung over
empty lots where a rat as big as a gopher occasionally scurried from shadow to
shadow. Some of the buildings looked as if they'd been split right down the
middle by a huge axe, the tiny rooms and hallways exposed as were the metal
twistings of pipes, the toilets, and the tubs. And everywhere was the wild
spray-painted scrawl: Zorro 78; L.A. Homicides (and beneath that in a different
color, Suck); Raphael High Conquistadors Best; Gomez was here; Anita does 69.
There were also drawings of crude sexuality interspersed. On the side of a
wrecked apartment building, staring impassively down at Merida, was a huge face,
drawn in red with blood dripping from both corners of the mouth.
Merida shivered; it was getting colder, wind twisting savagely through the maze
of wreckage as it sought a way out. And now she realized that she'd run too far.
She had no idea where she was. She could turn around and see lights in the sky
from Whittier Boulevard, but in this silent place the boulevard seemed a hundred
miles away. She began to walk hurriedly, new tears wetting her eyes; she crossed
the street and moved along another that became narrower still and was rank with
the odor of old charred brick. Of course her street, her apartment building,
couldn't be too far away; it would have to be only a few streets over. Mama
would be waiting, wanting to know where she'd been.
She was wondering what she was going to say about her swollen eyes when she
heard the footsteps behind her. She caught her breath and whirled around;
something dark scurried for the shadows like a rat, but whatever it was was big
enough to be a man. Merida narrowed her eyes, squinting to get a better look,
and she stood very still for what seemed like hours. Then she started walking
again, faster, her heart hammering in her chest. A young, pretty girl like you
can get raped out there, she remembered her mother saying. Raped or much, much
worse. She walked faster, and at the next desolate corner she turned again
toward the distant lights of Whittier. She looked back and saw two figures this
time, both leaping for the cover of open doorways. Merida almost screamed, but
forced down the sound. She thought she'd seen a face as white as gossamer and
within it a pair of eyes that shone in the dark like a lowrider's headlights.
Footsteps clattered somewhere close to her, echoing between the brick walls like
muffled explosions.
Merida began to run, the breath bursting from her lungs in a high whine. When
she dared to look overlier shoulder, she saw five or maybe seven figures,
77
running silently like a pack of wolves; they were gaining on her, and the one in
the lead had a face like a grinning death's head. She tripped over debris in the
street, cried out, and almost went down. Then she was running as fast as she
could, her mother's warning echoing in her head-Raped or much, much worse. She
looked back again and screamed in cold panic. They were almost upon her; one of
them reached out to grip her hair.
And from the darkness of the street, three more of the things emerged before
her, waiting for her. She recognized one of them-Paco Milan, one of Luis's
friends from the Homicides, except now Paco's face was as pale as the belly of a
dead fish, and his fiery gaze crackled through Merida's skull. She thought she
heard him^ speak, though his mouth didn't seem to open, "No more running,
sister," he £', whispered, the sound like a wind through dead trees. "No more
place to go." He '|« held his arms out for her and grinned. 1!
A clawlike hand gripped Merida around the neck and jerked her head back(| ward.
Another clamped her mouth shut, freezing fingers digging into her flesh. fo The
figures danced around her as she was dragged toward a doorway.
And in a crumbling hulk of brick, she learned that there was something worse
than rape. Much, much worse.
EIGHT
It was almost midnight, and the party was just getting started. The hospitality
bowls that had been brimming with Quaaludes and amphetamines, Black Beauties,
Bennies, and uppers of a hundred different sizes and colors were now almost*
empty; the silver trays that had been crisscrossed with white lines of fine,
pure j cocaine were now only dusted with the traces of it, and the ceramic vases
that had I' held dozens of red-striped McDonald's drinking straws now contained
only a few. But the house was still filled with people of all ages and in all
manner of dress from ,| Bill Blass suits to Yves Saint Laurent disco dresses to
denim cutoffs and T-shirts advertising Adidas or Nike running shoes. The huge
sunken living room to which most of the party had gravitated was heavy with
several layers of sweet, thick pot smoke; the beige, deep-pile carpeting had
started catching cigarettes when the ashtrays had overflowed, and now the
dime-sized burns looked like a natural pattern. Someone was hammering at the
grand piano over by a plate glass window that looked out over the blue-lit
swimming pool; someone else was playing a guitar and singing, all this plus the
cacophonous noises of a hundred people battling the thunder of Bob Dylan's voice
from a pair of thousand-dollar Bose speakers. The house throbbed with base
guitar and snare drum backbeat; the picture windows shivered every few seconds.
Somebody in a cowboy hat was trying to climb on top of the grand piano urged on
by a stunning blonde wearing a tight black dress. A few women had stripped off
their blouses, proud of what they had, and moved through the crowd pursued by
young men with bulging crotches. Older men in suits,
78
confident of the power in their bulging wallets, were content to wait. Dylan's
voice became a shriek when the stereo's needle dug a trench across it; he was
replaced by the Cars.
Damn it, Wes Richer thought. I like Dylan. Why'd somebody want to go and do that
to my record? He smiled and took a drag off the fat joint that was slowly
burning down between his fingers. Doesn't matter, he reassured himself. I can
buy another one tomorrow. He looked around the room through glazed blue eyes.
Stellar. One fucking whale of a stellar party. Tonight he felt he had the answer
to a question that had plagued him for most of his twenty-five years. The simple
question was addressed to God: Whose side are You on, anyway? As he regarded the
glowing eye of his joint, he knew he had the answer right in his back pocket,
just arrived in a Cosmic Fortune Cookie: Your side, Wes. God is on your side.
But He hadn't always been, Wes thought. Damn straight. He fashioned an image of
God in his mind-an elderly, slightly doddering being in a white London Fog
overcoat with a gold muffler to chase away the chill of the high altitude. God
would look suspiciously like Wes Richer in his "old man in the park" bit,
and-yeah, give the bit a kick-God might talk a little like a tired Jewish
vacuum-cleaner salesman: "Wesley, I got a lot to do, I can't get around to
everybody! Who do you think I am, Santa Claus? There's this guy over in New
Jersey wants to get away with a little cheating on the taxes; a lady in Chicago
keeps after Me to send her lost dog home, but the mutt got run over by a bus; a
pimply kid in Des Moines wants to pass a history test or he's completely
vermisched; this fella in Palm Springs wants Me to keep his wife from finding
out he's got three women on the side . . . everybody wants something, Wes! And
that's just right down there in the US of A! What am I, Dear Abby? And you, Wes!
You keep wanting to know whose side I'm on, and why your last pilot went down
the tubes, and why you can't win anymore at the blackjack tables! Gevult, what a
mess down there! I slap My own hands! Okay, okay, so maybe if I help you out,
you'll quit bugging Me so I can get on to bigger things? Okay, boom, there you
go! Happy now? So enjoy it already!"
God had come through for him today; this afternoon he'd won over two thousand
bucks betting on Alabama over USE, and the premiere of his new show, "Sheer
Luck" looked good in its seven-thirty spot on ABC. At least everybody here had
laughed in the right places and applauded when it was over. And then the party
had really started.
The Cars were thundering away now, and from his chair Wes could see some people
swimming bare-assed down at the pool. He laughed out loud, his bright Midwestern
face crinkling with mirth; he was a medium-sized man with a curly thatch of
reddish-brown hair and thick eyebrows that also seemed curly, set high over
light blue eyes that, when not totally bloodshot from drugs, seemed more like a
kid's eyes. He had a healthy, friendly, innocent look-a "safe look" one of the
ABC executives had dubbed it. It was a look that drew teenie-boppers and at the
same time assured Mom and Dad that he was really an okay guy, probably a class
cutup but nothing to worry about, kike the assessment from another ABC brain-"an
ail-American comedian."
79
Someone jostled his elbow, spilling ashes onto the dirty carpet. Wes looked up
and smiled but couldn't tell who was standing there. He thought for an instant
that it was his father because the man had a mane of silver hair, but of course
it couldn't be his father-he was back home in Nebraska, fast asleep at this
hour. "There you are, Wes!" the man said. "I've been hunting all over this place
for you! I missed the show, but I heard you were really great in it." A hand
found Wes's and squeezed it. "The show's got stellar written all over it, boy.
Good to see you again."
"Who are you?" Wes asked, still smiling and thinking about those fools in the
pool who were freezing their nuts off because no one had turned on the heat.
The man's head was split in half by teeth. "Good to see you again, Wes. Great,.
party!" And then he was gone, swallowed up into the crowd that swirled around
the «* chair where Wes sat smoking. r
I don't know that guy, do I? he wondered. Jesus! Where did all these people come
from? He looked around but didn't seem to recognize any of them. Who were they?
What the hell. They were all friends, or friends of friends. Or somebody's
fucking friends! In another moment a couple of young women were standing over
him, one in a violet dress, her breasts spilling over the top. Still smiling
easily, he stared at those breasts, while the two girls chattered on about how
good "Sheer Luck" had been and how they'd never ever been to a party anywhere
near this fine, not even at Hef s place. Who the hell were these girls? One of
them-he wasn't sure which- put a hand on his knee and slipped a little white
card into the pocket of his blue Ralph Lauren cowboy shirt. He knew it would
have her name and phone number on it in elegant black script; everybody carried
those around these days, it was essential to the wardrobe.
He caught a glimpse of her Ultra-Brite smile before the party closed in around
him again. A group called 1994 hammered away on the stereo now, Karen Lawrence's
lead vocals making the windows shake. Christ, what a set of pipes! Wes thought
languidly. He stared down at the joint and said to himself, "You've hit, Wes.
You've come back. God ... is ... on ... your . . . side."
"Wes?" someone said, gripping his shoulder. He looked up and saw his manager,
Jimmy Kline, standing over him; Jimmy's broad face looked beatific, his dark
eyes shining like little black buttons behind his wire-frame glasses. There were
two older men with Jimmy-Wes recognized one of them as Harv Chappell, an exec at
Arista Records. Wes tried to stand up, but Jimmy pushed him back down. "Stay
right there, my man," Jimmy said in his thick Brooklyn accent. "You know Harv
Chappell, don't you? And Max Beckworth? They liked the show, Wes.
Every-fuckin'-body liked the show!"
"It was great, Wes," Harv said, smiling.
"Fantastic. Three seasons at least," Max said, smiling.
Wes nodded. "Hope so. You men need a drink, something to get mellow on?"
"We're going to be talking record contract with Arista on Monday," Jimmy said,
his eyes getting brighter and brighter. The Hawaiian print shirt he was wearing,
a wild mixture of purples and oranges, seemed to glow in the dim living room
light.
80 McCAMMON
"How's that grab you?"
"Great, just great."
"Of course"-Jimmy turned to smile at the Arista execs, "we'll be negotiating
with Warner's and A&M, too. You know Mike Steele over at A&M, don't you, Max?
He's talking six figures on a single record deal with options."
Max shrugged. "Comedy records are risky," he said, glancing around the room to
take stock of who was there. "Only Steve Martin and Robin Williams turn a profit
these days, sometimes Richard Pryor if his material appeals to the kids. It's
just too easy to take a bath with comedy these days."
"Baths? Who's talking about taking fucking baths? I'm talking about mass appeal,
man, everybody from Farmer Jones to the punk crowd. Wes covers all the bases."
"We'll see, Jimmy. Let's wait for the ratings on 'Sheer Luck,' shall we?"
"Yeah, yeah. Uh . . . Wes, where's Solange?"
"I don't know," Wes said. "She was here a few minutes ago."
"The hospitality bowls are going dry. I'm going to get Joey to fill 'em up,
okay?"
Wes smiled and nodded. "Sure. Anything you want to do. 'Sheer Luck' was pretty
good, wasn't it?"
"Good? It was terrific! It'll be leading the schedule in three weeks!"
Wes reached up and caught Jimmy's arm as he and the Arista men started to move
away. "Don't bullshit me," Wes said quietly. "It was good, wasn't it?"
"Stellar," Jimmy said; he flashed a quick smile and was gone.
God is on my side, Wes thought, relaxing again. And then: Solange? Where the
hell is she? He rose unsteadily from the chair, and immediately a path cleared
before him. Hands clapped him on the back, faces mouthed words he couldn't hear.
He wandered around looking for Solange, the last of his joint crumbling in ashes
to the floor.
A moment later he found her, sitting with a group of people on the long dark
brown sofa near the center of the room. She was drinking white wine from a
crystal goblet, her long brown fingers curved delicately around the stem. On a
low table in front of her, three candles burned in brass holders, the golden
light setting amber fire to her skin, glittering in the black pools of her
slightly almond-shaped eyes. A backgammon board and a huge vase of dried flowers
had been cleared away to make room for a Ouija board; Solange was staring at the
white planchette as she drank her wine, her gaze at once vacant and intense. A
few people sat around her, smoking pot and drinking wine, looking from Solange's
beautiful, sculpted, Oriental-African face to the board. "Come on, Solange," Wes
heard one of the men say. "Do it for us. Call up ... oh ... call up Marilyn
Monroe or somebody."
Solange smiled faintly. "You want party games. You don't want to be serious,"
she said in a voice as cool as the October wind.
"We'll be serious," the guy said, but he was smiling too widely. "Promise. Come
on, call up ... Sharon Tate . . ."
"Oh, Christ, no!" a girl with Ipng shimmering waves of blond hair said, her eyes
81
terror-stricken; Wes recognized her from the current NEC hit "Skate Fever."
"How about Oswald?" somebody else said, blowing on a stick of jasmine incense
just to make the sparks fly. "That fucker'll talk to anybody."
"Clifton Webb." The NEC starlet slid over closer to the Ouija board but seemed
afraid to touch it. "I hear he's prowling around again."
"No." Solange looked into a candle, her cat eyes narrowing. The candle flame
flickered very gently. "I don't think I want to do this tonight. Not here, not
with everyone standing around." The light glittered off the hundred or so tiny
brass beads strung in the tight braids of her ebony hair. "The spirits won't
answer if the mood isn't right."
"What's wrong with the mood?" the guy who wanted to talk to Oswald asked; he
waved the incense stick around, his glazed eyes hypnotized. "Seems fine to me.
Do it, Solange. Call somebody up for us."
"The spirits don't like to be laughed at." She sipped at the wine but did not
move her gaze from the candle's flame. From where he stood, Wes could see the
flame undulating very slowly, and a sudden chill skittered down his spine. It
was the same kind of chill he'd felt when he'd first looked into Solange's eyes
in the Presidential Suite of the Las Vegas Hilton almost a year ago. i
"I've got it, luv," the thin young man sitting on Solange's left said. He was*
Martin Blue, the British whiz kid who'd produced Wes's first comedy album for
Warner's over three years ago. Blue smiled like a fox. "Conjure up ... oh, what
was his name? . . . Kronsteen. Orion Kronsteen."
The NBC starlet-Missy something, Wes thought her name was-laughed nervously.
There was a moment of silence while the party swirled around the group^ at the
table; Wes thought they looked afraid, all except Solange, who wasn't smiling
'?' anymore. J
Time to save her ass, he thought, and stepped forward into the candlelight.;'
"What is this?" he said, his voice somewhat slurred. "Ghost stories? It's not
Hal~loween yet, kiddies."
"Hi there, Wes," Martin Blue said. "We're trying to get your woman here to
conjure us up . . ."
"I don't conjure," Solange said softly.
"Yeah, I heard all this bullshit." Wes plopped himself down on the sofa and
stretched. "You want to talk to Kronsteen so bad, Martin, why don't you hike on
up to that little fortress he built and give out a yell? He'll probably come
floating out with his head in his hand."
"Oh, don't!" Missy said, and squirmed in her seat. "Wasn't he that old actor who
. . .?"
"Horror flick actor," Wes corrected her. "Made about a hundred of 'em. Enough to
get rich on, at least. They still play some of them on 'Creature Features.'"
"What happened to him?" she asked, looking at Martin and Solange, then back to
Wes.
"Kronsteen married a European heiress he met on location. It turned out she
82
had cancer, leukemia, something like that; after she died, he went a little nuts
and used the rest of their money to bring that castle over from Europe. About
ten or eleven years ago, somebody stripped old Kronsteen naked up there,
tortured him with cigarettes and a hot poker, and hung his corpse up from a
chandelier when they were through. Oh, yeah, whoever did it cut Kronsteen's head
off with a rusty hacksaw and took it with 'em when they left. One of the legends
of Hollywood, my dear, guaranteed to send you out shopping for an electrified
fence or a couple of guard dogs."
Missy shivered, and the guy next to her, the incense waver, took her hand.
"So you see?" Wes continued, his eyes scanning the group, "there are a lot of
Roaches in this town, a lot of homicidal nuts, and some of them would just love
to go running around up here in Bel Air with a machete or an icepick. Sooner or
later all us celebs have to wall ourselves in."
"You're kidding me. That's not true about Kronsteen . . . about his head."
"God's truth, luv," Martin said with a pleasant smile. He turned back to
Solange, who was passing a finger back and forth through the flame. "Let's hear
from Orion, luv. If you can do it. If you're really a medium."
"Knock it off," Wes said. "This is a party, not a goddamned seance."
"Oh, but seances can be so much fun. And so informative. Maybe Orion can tell us
who the Roach is. A ghost can see everything, can't he?" He glanced at his gold
Rolex. "Two minutes until midnight. The witching hour, eh?"
"Martin," Wes said sourly, "you've got your head up your ass." But when he
looked at Solange, she was staring intensely, right through him.
"There is no need to call those who are already here," Solange whispered.
"Huh? What'd she say?" Martin leaned forward, but for a minute or so Solange
didn't speak. Finally she whispered softly, "You're a fool, Martin. You want to
play games with something beyond your understanding. The spirits see and know
everything, and they are always here-in the shadow of a candle, at the center of
its flame, stirring like smoke through the air. They are always trying to break
through, to speak to those of us on this plane. Though most often we would not
like what they have to say." She turned the full force of her gaze on Martin
Blue.
"Well," he said, but his voice had climbed a pitch. "What are we waiting for?
Let's find out who the Roach is, shall we? Or at least what happened to Mr.
Kronsteen's head."
Solange glanced at Wes through heavy-lidded eyes. "Very well," she said softly.
"Wes, will you sit beside me and help me guide the planchette?"
"How about letting me?" Martin asked quickly. "I've heard tales of your being
able to do this sort of thing, but ... I'd like to be sure it isn't faked. No
offense of course, luv."
"Of course. None taken. Then slide over here so you'll be touching me, thigh to
thigh. Now place your fingertips on the planchette opposite mine. That's too
heavily, you have to let your fingers just graze the top of it. Ah. Better." She
closed her eyes and smiled slightly. "I den feel the electricity already."
83
"I don't feel a fucking thing," Martin announced to the others.
"Solange," Wes said, "you don't have to prove . . ."
"I think I do. You're pressing again, Martin. Let your fingers relax."
Wes looked around; for the first time he realized that a lot of people had
gathered around them and were watching with interest. The thunderous sound of
the stereo had quieted to a dull rumble; the grand piano was silent.
"It's too loud in here. I can't concentrate," Solange said. A mumble rippled
through the audience, and the stereo went off. Wes could hear drunken laughter
from the pool. He leaned back on the sofa, watching Solange's brown face turn
dreamy; Martin was smiling, mugging at people who stood around him.
"I don't think I like . . ." Missy began nervously. But Solange whispered,pi
"Quiet!" From somewhere in the distance Wes thought he could hear the shrill
'**' pipings of wind through the Bel Air streets, over the manicured lawns and
brick ^ walls and wrought-iron gates, around the sharp angles of the
million-dollar mansions. Solange's eyes had narrowed into slits; they rolled
back until Wes could see ^ the whites, and her mouth slowly opened. Missy gasped
suddenly, and the gasp was ""* repeated through the room. Wes felt his heartbeat
quickening and wished he had another joint. "My mind is open," Solange said in
an odd, faraway tone just above a whisper. "The pathway is open. Use us as your
voice. My mind is open. The pathway is open. Use us as your voice . . ."
"Shall I intone anything?" Martin said. He laughed, but no one paid any
attention.
". . . pathway is open. Use us as your voice. My mind is . . ."
Martin's eyes were getting larger, and if Wes hadn't been so tense, he might
have laughed at the sight. "Jesus!" Martin said. "How long does this go ...
SHIT!" He jumped and pulled his fingers back from the planchette.
". . . us as your-Martin, don't break the contact!-voice. My mind is open . .
.".
He touched the planchette again but gingerly, his hands trembling. "I thought I
felt it ... CHRIST! IT MOVED!" But this time he kept his fingers on it, and asi
*. the planchette moved a tentative inch or so, another murmur went through the
onlookers. Wes leaned forward, his heart pounding. The planchette stalled, then
began to move again smoothly now across the board. "We've made a contact,"
Solange whispered, her eyes still closed. "Let it flow, Martin, you're trying to
slow it down."
The planchette began to make long, slow circles. "Who are you?" Solange asked.
The planchette slid quickly over to YES. She repeated the question, and it lay
still for a moment, then dropped toward the lines of black letters imprinted on
the board. "Read the letters off to me," Solange said.
Wes slid across the sofa so he could see the board better. "B," he read. "O . .
. B . .." The planchette dipped and swirled as if riding on a waxed surface.
"Another B ... Y ..." The planchette stopped. "Bobby."
"Bobby will act as our guide, then," Solange whispered. "The contact is
strengthening now. It's becoming very strong . . ."
84
"My fucking fingers are burning . . ." Martin croaked.
"What did you do in life?" Solange asked.
The planchette started to spell again, faster than before. Wes read, "M ... E
... S ... S ... A ... G ... E ..." That word was repeated twice more, faster
each time.
And then another word took shape. "E," Wes said "V ... I... evil. It's spelling
evil"
"Is that your message?" Solange's voice was a quiet murmur in the silent room.
"What does it mean?"
The planchette spun in a mad circle, dropped back to the letters. E, V, I, L, E,
V, I, L.
"Are there others with you?"
YES.
"Who?"
S, A, M, E, L, I, K, E, M, E.
"Christ!" Missy breathed, and reached for her wineglass. She spilled some on her
designer jeans before it reached her mouth.
"Who's the Roach?" Martin blurted out. "What's his name?"
The planchette was still. Solange repeated the two questions slowly, and almost
immediately the planchette haltingly spelled out-E, V, I, L, U, S, I, N, G, H,
I, M.
"Using him?" Wes said. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"There is one among us who would reach Orion Kronsteen," Solange went on in a
whisper. "Is he with you?"
Immediately, YES.
"Then let him come forward."
There was a long pause. The planchette seemed to be dead. And then suddenly it
almost leapt off the board. Martin said, "SHIT!" as the thing spun from side to
side, from YES to NO to MAYBE and back again, three or four times. "Unfocused
energy," Solange said calmly. "Quiet, quiet. Do you have a message?"
"This is even better than the 'Crosswits,'" Wes said under his breath; Martin
glanced at him and giggled nervously.
But then the planchette dropped to the bottom of the board so quickly it seemed
only a blur. It began to race along the lines of letters. Wes leaned forward.
"E, V," he read. "EVIL. EVIL. It's repeating the same thing over and over
again."
"Is this Kronsteen?" Solange asked.
YES. YES. YES. Then, EVIL. EVIL. Again and again.
"Quiet, quiet. What's evil? Can you tell us?"
The planchette vibrated, seemed to spin in midair. Then it moved again,
gathering speed until it had spelled out a new word so quickly Wes barely had
time to read it. "T, H, E, Y." The planchette stopped, and Wes looked up at
Solange. "THEY. Fine message from the spirit world, huh?"
Solange opened her eyes and said quietly, "It's moving again." Wes looked back
to the board. The planchette moved to the T again, then to other letters, faster
and faster. "THIRST," Solange said? The planchette had begun spelling out THEY
85
again. "THEY THIRST is the message. It's repeating the words now . . ."
Wes said uneasily, "What's it supposed to mean?"
"Do you have more to tell . . .?" Solange began, and suddenly the planchette
stopped. She narrowed her eyes, and for an instant Wes saw something there that
seemed a mix of bewilderment and fear. "Bobby?" Solange asked. "Who's there? Who
wants to speak?"
And slowly, with terrifying purpose, the planchette spelled out a new word.
"FOOLS," Wes said. "Now what in the name of God is that s"
Solange gave out a piercing scream. The planchette darted from beneath her
fingers and came up off the Ouija board, its sharp triangular point flying like
a*, missile at Wes's right eye. He was able to throw up a hand in time; the
planchette jj struck his palm and bounced off, then fell to the carpet like the
dead piece of plastic \\ it was. Someone else in the room screamed, the scream
was echoed from two or |j three more throats. Solange leapt to her feet. "Wes!
Are you all right?" I
"Sure," he said nervously. "Sure. I'm fine." He stood up on shaky legs andj
stared down at the thing that had almost gouged out his eye. "Little bastard
tried to ' get me, didn't it?" He laughed and looked around, but no one else
even smiled. "
"I think ... I'm going to be ... sick," Missy said, her pretty face having taken
on;< a yellowish cast. She stumbled toward the bathroom, and her boyfriend
followed. ';'
"It . . . moved!" Martin was saying, shaking his head back and forth. "It really
did move!"
"That's enough." Solange took Wes's hand and massaged his palm. "You wanted
party games, and that's what you got."
"Yeah." Martin looked around for a drink. "Party games."
Soon the life drained back into the party, but it wasn't the same. Already
people were leaving. A cold wind seemed to be trapped within the living room,
trying to batter its way out through the walls. The stereo came thundering back,
Alicia Bridges begging for some body heat. But nothing was the same as it had
been.'
"I'm okay, baby," Wes said, and kissed Solange on the cheek; her skin tasted of
pepper and honey. She was looking into his eyes, her high brow furrowed, and he
could feel her shaking. "Martin," he said finally, "you sure know how to fuck up
a good party. Now why don't you get your ass out of here?" Wes felt like
stomping on the planchette, breaking it into a hundred pieces of cold plastic.
But he didn't; he didn't because for just an instant it looked like the white
head of a cobra there on the floor, and no way-no way!-was he ever going to
touch that sonofabitch again.
Solange bent down, touched it tentatively, then picked it up and returned it to
the Ouija board.
The music stopped, the guests left, and very soon the party was over.
86 87
Sunday, October 27
the nightwalkers
i I
.1
H"l
88 89
The last of the big green trucks had hauled away Saturday's litter, and now the
gently rolling knolls overlooking the green swan pool near Disneyland's Sleeping
Beauty Castle gleamed with bright droplets of dew. White rocket boosters aimed
toward cold stars from their pads in Tomorrowland; the Skylift was still; the
Mark Twain Riverboat lay at the dock, dark water as smooth as a mirror beneath
its hull;\\ on flower-festooned Main Street gas lampposts burned low, casting
just enough jj golden light for an occasional security guard in his electric
cart to see by. It was just W4 before three o'clock in the morning, and the huge
Disneyland complex lay silent. t
Except for the muffled noise of footsteps at the center of Fantasyland. A thin£
shape moved through the darkness, pausing for a moment alongside the docked j[
Peter Pan Pirate ship, then moving away toward the high white concrete Matter- *
horn Mountain. It was a dark-haired young man wearing a black velvet suit, black
* Gucci loafers, and a light blue Beach Boys T-shirt. Though his sharply
chiseled, ( fine-boned face was unlined, there were subtle swirls of yellowish
white in his hair, * particularly at the temples and running along the neat side
part. The whites of his eyes were the color of old yellow dust, veined with red.
He was very thin and slight, standing several inches under six feet; he looked
like a seventeen-year-old boy made up to play Henry Higgins in a high school
production of My Fair Lady except that the pupils of his eyes were as green as
Pacific Ocean shallows and slitted like a cat's. A network of blue veins
throbbed slowly at his temples as he regarded the strange wonders of
Fantasyland.
He crossed the path and stood staring at the dark octopuslike ride, the arms of
. which were connected to grinning Dumbo elephants. He thought it looked sad and
unnatural in its stillness, all the magic drained out of it.
He made a quick circle in the air with the index finger of his left hand, and
the pupils of his eyes narrowed in concentration.
An engine began to whine. Sparkling white lights stuttered once and then
flickered brightly. The machine began to turn, the grinning Dumbos bouncing
gently up and down in the air. He smiled, entranced, wishing that someday he
could meet the one who had built this magnificent place; he thought that if he
owned this place, he would never grow tired of playing here, not in the whole
eternity of existence that lay before him. But after a few minutes of watching
the machine turn, his attention wandered. The white bulbs dimmed and went out;
the Dumbos slowed and finally stopped. There was silence again.
He walked along the path toward the Matterhorn, peering up at it, thinking of
home. The false mountain looked cold, coated with thick snow, and there were
concrete icicles clinging to some of the ledges. They made him yearn for the
blizzards of his youth, for the wild, screaming winds that drove the snow along
90
craggy passes where no humans dared to walk. It was too hot here in this land
called California, too full of the sun; but he had vowed to walk where his
teacher called, and there would be no turning back. He closed his eyes; a quick
whirlwind of icy air shrilled around him, refreshing him before it died.
He had come out here from the city to be alone, to think about Falco. The man
had aged. It was time to come to a decision because Falco was now unsteady and
tired; and worst of all the spark of remorse Falco had carried within him for
almost fifty years had now burst into the gnawing flame of despair. Falco is
like all the others, he thought as he moved reluctantly away from the
Matterhorn. As he grows old, he grows soft and seeks an escape, and now in his
bed he wonders whether praying will save him. If he prays, the boy decided, 7
shall kill him. Like the others. The boy didn't want to think about that; his
head had already been stung once this night by the name of God spoken in a
whisper from the mouth of a fool.
His skin suddenly tingled as he neared a cluster of trees on the far side of the
Matterhorn. There were a couple of brightly painted benches beneath those trees,
and in the darkness the boy could see the Headmaster sitting on one of them,
waiting for him. He stopped and stood perfectly still; he realized with sudden
shame that his brain had been too clouded to sense the presence of his Lord, his
King, his strong and willful teacher.
"Conrad," the thing on the bench said in a soft, velvety voice. "One comes
seeking from the south. You have called him, and he answers."
The boy closed his eyes for a second, concentrating: he distantly heard the roar
of an engine, smelled oil and hot pavement. "The snake man," he said, opening
his eyes when he was sure.
"Yes. Your lieutenant. He has come a very long way, following your command. Soon
it will be time to act."
The boy nodded. "Our circle grows now." His eyes were bright green and luminous
with eagerness. "We're stronger every night."
The thing on the bench smiled faintly and crossed one leg over the other; it
folded a pair of hands with black talons on one knee. "I've spent much time with
you, Conrad. I've taught you the arts of the ages, and now you stand poised to
use your knowledge in my name. The world can be yours, Conrad. You can stride
across it like Alexander."
Conrad nodded and repeated the wonderful name, "Alexander."
"Alexander had a marvelous thirst, too," the thing whispered. "Your name will be
written in the history books of a new world. Our world."
"Yes. Yes." His gaze clouded, the problem of Falco streaked through his brain.
"Falco is old now, much aged since we talked last. He knows too many of my
secrets, and he grows weak."
"Then find another to aid you. Kill Falco. There's one near you now who has
broken his ties with humanity, hasn't he?" In the darkness the thing's eyes,
like white-hot circles, bored into the boy's face.
"Yes," Conrad said. "He brwgs the offerings of flesh."
91
"And in so doing, betrays his race for the sake of the new world yet to be. You
are his king, Conrad; make him your slave." The thing regarded him in silence
for a moment, a grin splitting its face. "Tread surely, Conrad. Use what I've
taught you in my name. Carve your legend in the annals of the new race. But be
wary-there are those in this city who know your kind, and you must strike soon."
"Soon. I swear it."
"In my name," the thing prompted.
"In your name," Conrad replied.
"So be it. Faithful servant, student, and right hand, I leave you to your task."
The thing, still smiling, seemed to melt away into the darkness until all that
was left was the mouth, like the grin of the Cheshire cat; then it, too,
vanished.jJJ*
The boy shivered with delight. Touched by the Headmaster! Of all of his kindM
who walked the earth or hid in mountain caves or stalked in city sewers, he
alone "*$ had been touched by the Headmaster! He concentrated on the snake man
now, the one the Headmaster had told him long ago would be perfectly suited to
the task I i ahead. He turned inward to search and saw the snake man on his
motorcycle, reaching the distant limits of the great sprawling city. He thought,
COME TO ME, ""* and then visualized the black castle-so much like his own far
away-perched on its cliff above Los Angeles. He was putting together a picture
of the mountain road in his head when suddenly headlights blazed behind him.
Conrad whirled, hissing. A man driving an electric cart shouted, "Hey!
What'reH", you doin' here, kid?"
The security guard suddenly stomped on the cart's brakes and screamed in»
terror. The kid wasn't there anymore; he had changed into something large and
horrifying that lifted into the sky with a leathery rustle of black wings. The
cart skidded along the path and left tire marks on the newly cut grass. The
man's urine j^' quickly drenched the inside of his trouser legs. He gripped the
wheel and stared . / straight ahead, his teeth chattering. When he finally got
out of the cart and looked around, there was nothing there at all, nothing. The
place was silent and dead, just I || like any other early Sunday morning at
Disneyland. Suddenly his nerve broke like a frayed line; he jumped back into the
cart and drove as if he'd had an early glimpse of something from hell.
TWO
Kobra could barely see straight; his head felt like a blacksmith's anvil being
beaten with a hammer. Somewhere at the center of his brain pulsed the red-hot,
fading echo of the voice that had roared through him a couple of miles back-
COME TO ME. He'd heard it distinctly, shatteringly. It was like standing right
in front of the booming speakers at the Stones show at Altamont. He had been
flying northward on the Santa Ana Freeway, keeping his speed just under sixty,
when the voice had hit him. He'd opened his mouth and shouted in surprise, and
the black
9i
T 92
chopper had veered across two lanes before he could get a handle on the bastard.
Now, roaring across the dark network of streets in Buena Park with Disneyland
just behind him, he knew he was going to have to pull off soon for some coffee,
whiskey, speed, or whatever he could find to quiet the thunder between his
temples. There seemed to be something burned on his eyelids, too, because when
he blinked he thought he saw a picture outlined in electric blue against the
darkness-some kind of big fucking cathedral, a place with towers and
stained-glass windows and doors that looked like nine-foot slabs of redwood.
He thought he had to be flying on nervous energy because he'd been on the road
for ten hours straight with just a barbecue sandwich and a couple of ampules of
amyl nitrite to keep him going. But he didn't care now whether he was
hallucinating or not; below and around him there were scattered fireflies of
lights, an occasional blinking neon sign or amber traffic signal. Ahead there
was a dull yellow glow in the sky that meant the end of his journey. Or maybe,
he told himself, it was really just starting. Going to see what Fate, that
phantom on a golden Harley chopper whose face can look in all four directions at
once, has in store for old Kobra. Going to race that grinning sonofabitch to the
finish line.
The steady blink of red neon off to the right of the freeway caught his eye:
MILLIE'S-FINE FOOD-STEAKS-BREAKFAST SERVED 24 HOURS. Get me some eggs and
coffee, he thought as he took the next exit, get my fuckin' head to stop
ringing. Maybe pick up a little traveling cash, too.
Millie's was a square little box of white-painted brick with cactuses growing
underneath the windows. The air in the parking lot smelled greasy from a
thousand steaks, bowls of chili, and plates of eggs passed over a chipped
Formica counter. But there were two old Harley-Davidsons parked in the lot up
close to the building's side, and Kobra took a minute to inspect them before he
went in. They both bore California plates, and one of them had a red swastika
painted on the gas tank.
Inside there was a line of stools along a low white counter and a couple of rows
of booths in the back. Behind the counter and old man with a face like a piece
of crumpled sandpaper was cooking two hamburgers. He looked up, eyes glittering
with disdain, as Kobra stepped through the door and unsnapped his black helmet.
Kobra took a seat on one of the stools at the end of the counter, where he could
whirl toward the door suddenly if he had to.
There were two guys at the back, sitting across from each other in a booth. They
were both wearing biker jackets-one of faded brown leather and the other a
tattered olive-green Army surplus thing. Kobra stared at them for a few seconds
as the old man came walking along the counter, stopping once to hawk and spit
into a Mason jar. The bikers in the back looked like total opposites, an outlaw
Mutt and Jeff-one husky and broad-shouldered with wild, curly red hair and a
beard that reached almost all the way down to where his beer belly displayed a
FUCK YOU T-shirt; the other cadaverous and totally bald, wearing a gold earring
in his right earlobe. The bikers stared back at Kobra. The air simmered between
them.
"What'd you want, buddy?* the old man said. As Kobra turned slowly to face
93 THIRST
him, the old man's eyes widened slightly, as if he'd recognized the presence of
walking death.
"You Millie?" Kobra asked quietly, reaching for a greasy menu.
"That's my wife." He tried to laugh, but it came out in a croak. "Everybody asks
that."
"Uh-huh. Well, Millie, how about some ham and eggs and a cup of black coffee?
Make 'em sunny-side up."
The old man nodded and moved away quickly. He took the burgers back to Mutt and
Jeff, then scraped charred bits of beef off the grill with a spatula and broke a
couple of eggs onto it. Kobra watched him work, then took a glazed doughnut outs
from under a clear plastic cover on the counter and ate it greedily; the
doughnut * crunched between his teeth and tasted like plaster. And while he was
chewing, he I thought about the voice he'd heard, the single powerful command
that had almost « split his head in two. He could still see that blue-glowing
cathedral, as if it had been j seared into the back of his brain. What the fuck
was that? he wondered. Road fever? j Or the voice of Fate calling to him from
the west? Was it the same voice he'd heard whispering through the still, humid
Mexican night? Through the heavy air that hung around the bar on that Texas
desert highway? Something was here for him in , L.A.; he felt certain of it, at
least as certain as anything he'd ever seen or felt or known in the twenty years
of a life that had thrown him in with biker gangs, dope dealers, and murderers
from California to Florida. Or maybe, he reasoned, it wasn't Fate calling at
all. Maybe-and he smiled thinking about this-it's Death calling. Plugging in the
phone line that led to Kobra's brain, dialing his number with a finger of bone,
whispering for him, "Got something for you to do out her in California, Kobra.
Got something big for you, something I can't trust anybody else with. Want you
to pack your chopper and come on out, maybe throw me a little scrape along the
way. I'll be expecting you."
Yeah, maybe so. But fuck, what's the difference between Fate and Death anyway?
They both take you to the same hole in the ground.\\"}'<]
The old man slid Kobra's coffee across the counter, his hand trembling. Kobra
looked up into his face with the stare of Medusa and froze him. "Hey, old man,"
Kobra said, "I'm looking for a place, might be around here, might not. It's real
big, could be a church or something. Got towers and stained-glass windows, and
... I don't know . . . seems like it's on a cliff maybe. Anyplace around here
look like that?"
"Presbyterian church three blocks west got stained-glass windows," he said. "Got
a steeple. I don't know." He shrugged, his eyes suddenly zigzagging to the left.
Kobra, still smiling, began to unzip his jacket because he felt those two
bastards coming up behind him. He slipped his hand in and got hold of the grip,
eagerness rushing through him like sweet, fiery cocaine.
"What'd you say, man?" a voice behind him asked.
Kobra turned. It was the redheaded one who had spoken; there were pieces of
bread and hamburger in his beard. His eyes were deep-set and black and fixed
94
somewhere on Kobra's forehead. The bald biker-an older guy, maybe in his forties
or so-stood beside his friend, a rod of flesh beside a cannonball. The bald
dude's gaze was vacant, as if speed had burned out his brain.
"I don't recall saying anything to you," Kobra said.
"Hey now," Millie's husband said, "let's don't have no trouble. I run a-"
"Shut your fuckin' face." The bald dude spoke hoarsely, like somebody had tried
to slash his throat but gotten only a hunk of vocal cords.
"I asked you a question, whitey. Let's hear it."
Kobra almost squeezed the Mauser's trigger then, having gotten the gun twisted
in its holster, but he paused with a quarter of an ounce of pressure left to go.
"I'll tell you what you're going to hear, you big piece of shit. You're going to
hear a couple of Mauser slugs sizzle your face off-DON'T MOVE!-'cause that's
what I got my finger on right now. Want to test me?"
"Please . . ." the old man whimpered.
The bearded dude stared at Kobra for a few seconds and then smiled, showing a
mouthful of broken teeth. The smile widened until it seemed about to crack his
face. "Hot shit!" he growled through an explosion of laughter. "I knew it was
you when you walked in! Hell, I ain't never seen anybody looked like you before,
so I knew it had to be! Kobra, right?"
"That's my handle." He kept his finger on the trigger.
"What's wrong? You don't recognize me? Well, I guess not. I growed this beard
and belly a couple of years ago after that little la-de-dah between the Angels
and the Headhunters up in Frisco. I'm Viking, man! Don't you remember?"
"Viking?" The name rang a faraway note in his head, but he connected it with a
Hell's Angel who was slim and wiry and carried a pair of pliers around to yank
out teeth with. Still, it seemed that Viking had been red-haired and could put
away a couple of six-packs of Bud before you could crack your third. Of course
he remembered the showdown between Angel and Headhunter troops because then he
was eighteen and ready to burn his name into Angel history. He'd sent two
Headhunters to hell with a Luger and kicked the nuts off another one in that
empty lot in the middle of the night with the chains and the knives swinging.
"Viking?" Kobra said again and realized that he'd been ready to waste a brother.
He took his finger off the trigger. "Christ! Viking? Man, you carrying a horse
inside there?"
"Old brew kinda caught up with me," he said, affectionately patting his stomach,
"hey, I want you to meet my ridin' buddy, Dicko Hansen. Dicko, this albino
sonofabitch here can catch bullets between his teeth and fire 'em out his ass!"
He laughed long and loud; Kobra and Dicko shook hands, grasping each other's
thumbs palm-to-palm and squeezing so hard the knuckles cracked. "Jesus Jumpin'
Christ!" Viking said. "Where you been keeping yourself?"
Kobra shrugged. "Around. Been doing some traveling."
"I heard a few months ago you were ridin' with the Lucifer Legion, got yourself
wasted in a little fracas down New Awleens way."
"Nope. It was me did the wasting. That's why I've been in Mexico for a while,"
95
The old man behind the counter was now as pale as Kobra. He slinked away
trembling and hoped they'd forget about him.
"Bring this man's food back to the booth," Viking called after him, making him
flinch. "Come on, bro, we got a lot to catch up on."
Kobra ate his ham and eggs, listening to Viking talk; Dicko sat beside Kobra
because Viking took up most of one side of the booth. "Me and Dicko ride with
the Death Machine now," he was saying between swigs of beer. "I had to change
the way I look, see, 'cause the cops were after my ass. A lot of brothers split
from the Angels, formed their own clubs or joined up in other states. Shit! The
Angels ain't like they used to be, Kobra. They're respec-table, can you dig it?
They wear fuckin',n suits and take up donations for fuckin' orphans! Makes you
sick to your stomach to > see them old boys kissin' cop ass! I don't know." He
tilted his bottle and drank it dry, I jjj smacking his lips noisily at the end.
"Those old days, they were good, weren't they? ^ Hundreds of Angels out on a
run, takin' up the whole highway, and nobody darin' to pass us! And God, did the
booze and brew and high times flooooow! Those Angel bashes up in Frisco would
keep your hair curled for weeks, man. Aw, shit." *« He uncapped another bottle
and started in on it. "Well, times change, don't they? It ain't like it used to
be. People too interested in boogie and hard cash to think about how it feels to
ride at the front of the pack, to feel that good, raw wind across your face at
ninety miles an hour. And territory? Nobody cares about territory. Bunch of
Chicano and nigger punks fight over some dry chunks of cee-ment up in L.A., but
nobody carves out land like we used to." He pulled at the beer again, and
droplets of foam glittered in his beard. "Nobody gives a shit about nothin'.
Except the Death (§ Machine, o' course. Now there's a good bunch of brothers.
Old Dicko and me just i- got back from a San Diego run. You shoulda been there
and seen the looks on these fucker's faces when thirty Death Machiners come
runnin' right through their jr campground, scatterin' picnic baskets and tables
all to hell and back. Yeah, it was (J alllllright. Wasn't it, Dicko?"
«o» '*T j
bure was.,jj
"So what about you, Kobra? What's the story?"
"Nothing much to tell," Kobra said. "I hooked up with the Nightriders up in
Washington for a while, started getting road fever, and moved on. I guess I've
ridden with nine or ten clubs since I left the Angels."
Viking leaned closer, his eyes glimmering with low beer lights. "Hey," he
whispered conspiratorially. "Who'd you waste in New Awleens? What was the
action?"
"Couple of Dixie Demons trashed a buddy of mine. I killed 'em as a favor."
"How'd you do it? Fast or slow?"
Kobra smiled. "The first one I shot in the kneecaps. Then the elbows. And I
tossed him into the mighty Mississippi. Fucker flopped around like a frog for a
while before he went under. The second one I caught in a gas station toilet. I
made him lick the Johns clean and then . . . pow! . . . right through the old
beanbag. Bled like a swamp." His gaze clouded slightly. "Too bad he was working
with the cops,
96
about to turn state's evidence on some Demon dirt. All kinds of pigs were
hunting me from FBI on down. That's the luck of the draw, right?"
"Right." Viking leaned back and let out a satisfied belch.
Kobra drank his coffee and felt it roiling around in his stomach. He could feel
Dicko's stare on him, like a leech clinging to the side of his face. "Viking,"
Kobra said after another moment, "is there any action going on in L.A. I might
be interested in? Anything big? You know, maybe some down-and-dirty, or somebody
in bad need of an out-of-town shooter?"
Viking looked at Dicko and then shook his head. "Don't hear anything. Well, the
Knights and the Satan Stompers are having a little war over in La Habra, but
it'll blow over in a few days. Why?"
"A feeling I've got. Like something's about to break."
Dicko's ferret eyes gleamed. "What kind of feeling? Sorta weird, like you can
feel power hummin' inside you?"
"Yeah. Sort of like that. Only it's getting stronger all the time, and a little
while ago I thought I heard . . . you guys know of a place something like
this-real big, maybe on a cliff, and it's got high towers and stained-glass
windows, could be a church?"
Dicko looked startled. "Uh ... on a cliff? Way up over L.A.? Jesus! A castle,
maybe?"
Kobra nodded.
Viking barked out a laugh. "A fuckin' castle? Sure, old Dicko knows it! You
talkin' about the Kronsteen place? That's where Dicko and a bunch of freaks
stoned out of their gourds on LSD and mesc had a party about . . ."
"Eleven years," Dicko said quietly. "It was eleven years ago we did that."
"Did what?" Kobra asked. "What're you talking about?"
"You want to go up there?" Dicko's gaze was dead again. "Why?"
Kobra said, "Maybe it's not the place I want to go. I don't know. But I'd like
to see it. How far is it from here?"
"It's way up in the Hollywood Hills. But we could make it before sunrise if you
want to see it. I hear somebody's moved in up there."
"Who?" Kobra asked. How do you like that, he said to himself. A castle, not a
church.
Dicko shrugged. "Some foreign fucker. There was a piece in the paper about a
month ago. I saved it."
"Okay. What the hell, I got nothing better to do. Let's burn on up to this joint
and take a look at it." Kobra was suddenly eager to get under way. Is my trip
over? he wondered. Or has it just started? His blood seemed to be boiling in his
veins.
"Let's git gone!" Viking said, and shoved his bulk away from the booth.
97
Out of the dead blue darkness, three moons rose in the hills above the Hollywood
Bowl. Kobra rode on Dicko's left flank, following the twistings of the road with
an almost extrasensory knowledge. They had made good time from Millie's, even
though Viking-riding on Dicko's right, his bike wheezing like an old, used-up
horse-had to stop and take a beer piss every few miles. Now they were climbing
at an incredible angle, their engines cracking the silence with pops and growls.
Dicko,
made a quick turn onto a narrower road lined with hundreds of dead trees.
They***
I'^C
continued to climb, the wind swirling like whirlpools around them.!*j,
And then they came to a chain across the road with a sign on it, PRIVATE^
PROPERTY-NO TRESPASSING. fY
"Well see about that," Kobra said; he got off his chopper and moved toward a
tree on the left side of the road. The chain had been wrapped around the trunk
and secured with the kind of padlock you couldn't even shoot through. Kobra
touched the chain and pulled at it. It was tighter than a cock ring, and there
was no way to go around it either-the left side of the road pitched off into
empty space, while the right was blocked by a boulder as big as a house. "Gonna
have to walk the rest of the way," Kobra said, and started to step over the
chain. He heard a sudden faint click, and the chain slithered to the road.
"Alllllright!" Viking said, revving his engine. "How'd you do that?"
"I... I don't know." He backed away a pace and bent to look at the open prongs
of the lock. They were polished and new. "Rusty lock," he said, and rose to his
feet. What's waiting for me up there, Fate or Death? He went back to his bike
and stepped on, his knees beginning to shake a little but damned if he was going
to show it.
"You sure you want to go up there?" Dicko asked him; in this faint light there
were deep blue hollows beneath his eyes, and his mouth was twisted like a grayi
j worm. t
"Yeah. Why shouldn't I?"
"Roads tricky as hell higher up. I ain't been here in a long time. I hope I
don't take us right over the edge and down to L.A."
"You want to turn back, Dicko?" Viking asked with a soft laugh, his eyes
mocking.
"No," Dicko said quickly. "I'm able. But . . . you know ... I think about that
night a lot. It was a freak named Joey Tagg did the cutting."
"That's not what I hear," Viking said, but then he kept quiet. Dicko roared on
across the chain, and Kobra followed closely. Higher up they had to swerve
around slabs of rock that had fallen from ledges just above their heads. The
road turned at an eighty-degree angle as they neared the top, and through a cut
in the trees Kobra could see the whole glittering valley below from Topanga
Canyon to Alhambra.
And then there it was, perched at the top like a stone vulture. The thing was
4
98
enormous, much larger than Kobra had envisioned. He felt doused with ice water.
This was the place, no doubt about it. Black towers jutting into the sky, high
pointed roofs like dunce caps, the soft glimmer of a blue window sixty feet off
the ground. The whole place was surrounded by a ten-foot-high stone wall with
coils of barbed wire strung along the top. The huge wooden slab of a gate hung
wide open, and Kobra could see along a weed-infested driveway that led across a
barren courtyard to a series of stone steps. At the top of the steps was a front
door as big as a drawbridge. Should have a moat with fucking crocodiles, Kobra
thought. "Who built this bastard?" he asked Dicko.
Dicko cut his engine, and the others did the same. In the silence they could
hear the wind rippling through the foliage below them; the wind touched Kobra's
face like cold fingers exploring his features. "Crazy old movie star name of
Kronsteen," Dicko replied softly, getting off his bike and letting it rest on
its kickstand. "He brought this thing over from Europe piece by piece. You ever
seen any of his flicks?"
Kobra shook his head.
"Monster flicks," Dicko went on, his gaze following the sharp angles of towers
and parapets. "They drove the old dude crazy, I guess. You see all those dead
trees we passed? Kronsteen hired a bunch of guys to spray them with black paint,
just covered 'em with the shit, like something from a horror flick set."
"How long's it been here?" Kobra asked, stepping off his chopper.
"A long time. I think he built it back in the forties. But it's old. It must've
been in Europe for hundreds of years."
"But old Kronsteen wasn't near as rich as you dudes thought he was, huh?" Viking
asked, grinning; he belched and muttered.
Dicko didn't answer for a long time. Then he said, "Hardly had a stick of
furniture in there. Wasn't no gold statues, wasn't no chests full of money.
Wasn't nothing but a lot of empty rooms." He turned to Kobra. "You've seen it.
Let's go."
Kobra had taken a few steps along the driveway, gravel crunching under his feet.
"Wait a minute." What's here? he wondered. What called me?
"Come on, bro," Viking said. "Let's git ... HEY! YOU SEE THAT?" He pointed, and
Kobra looked up to the right.
In one of the tower windows a candle was flickering, the light made orange by
the stained glass. From the corner of his eye, Kobra saw another candle begin to
burn off to the left behind another window. And now there were more candles
glittering, from almost every window in the place. The tiny flames glowed green,
blue, and white behind colored glass, candles burning like lanterns to welcome
the hunter home.
The front door silently opened. Kobra felt a surge of joy and fear course
through him, like a charge between opposite poles. His legs moved slowly, as if
he were crawling across flypaper. "Where are you going?" Viking called behind
him. "Kobra? What you doin', man?"
"It wants me," he heard himself say, and looked back at Viking and Dicko
99
standing at the far end of the driveway. "Come on," Kobra said, a wild grin
rippling across his face. "Come on with me. It wants us all."
Neither of them moved.
The castle loomed above Kobra, dwarfing him. Through the huge open doorway he
could smell the guts of the place-dry, cold, maybe as old as time itself. At the
threshold he paused to look back at his friends, and a voice like a cool wind
wafted through his brain-COME TO ME. As he stepped into the darkness, he heard
Viking shout from a world away, "KOBRA!"
9 I*
*««
He stood in a womb of darkness, a place without ceiling or walls or floor. There
was a distant noise like water dripping onto concrete, or muffled footsteps.
When he started walking again, feeling his way, his boots clattered like a toss
of bones*£" across the floor of rough stone. Echoes converged and passed each
other like '"I riptides with Kobra at the center. His eyes were getting used to
the blackness now, *»* and he could see smooth stone walls around him, a
geometric pattern of rough- Q' hewn rafters perhaps twenty feet overhead. An old
rusted metal chandelier hung Q - crookedly from that ceiling, still holding two
light bulbs that looked like teardrops. ««^ From the depths of the place, a
candle flame flickered, far away; Kobra followed its light, his fingertips
grazing the wall. He was in a long, high corridor that seemed to £go on forever,
like the trick done with mirrors in the carnival funhouses. Half of him cowered
in fear like a mongrel dog; the other half lurched with drunken glee, and it was
this half that kept his legs moving. I'm in a haunted house at the New M'(
Orleans fairgrounds, he told himself; I'm walking through the Madman's Maze.
Going to feel cobwebs in my hair in a minute, going to see a dummy dressed up in
an ,,,i ape mask. ';
He reached the candle. It sat in a gleaming brass holder on a long table of
dark, shining wood. He couldn't see beyond the range of the light, but he had a
feeling|J the room was as large as a cavern, maybe with stone stairs that wound
around and fy around and out of sight. He could hear the wind whistling through
broken windows "' very high above him. 1 'll
Off to his left he saw another candle, moving in midair, carried by a ghost. But
then he saw the quick flicker of pale light on the face of a girl. She had a
long sweep of ebony hair, sensual pouting lips, a face as beautiful as the moon.
There was another candle now, on his other side. This one was held by a young
man in a Kiss T-shirt. He had a lean, sharp-boned face and predatory eyes. Then
a third candle, behind Kobra. A tall, smiling girl, her red hair cascading in
disarray around her shoulders. Then the others: Kobra saw a couple of Chicano
girls, a black dude wearing a headband, a middle-aged man and woman who looked
at him lovingly, as if he might be their long lost son. Candles burned in a
silent circle around him.
And then a hand as cold and hard as a chunk of ice touched Kobra's shoulder. He
whirled, ready to go for his Mauser. But the hand moved in a white streak and
caught his wrist, not hurting him by only holding him where he was. In the
golden candlelight Kobra could see the face of someone who looked at once very
young and very old.
100 McCAMMON
There were no lines on the white face, but the eyes seemed ancient and wise,
ablaze with powerful secrets. Where the hand touched him, Kobra tingled with
electricity; the feeling slowly spread until he thought he must be plugged in to
the same socket that supplied power to the universe. He felt like he was going
to explode with fear and exhilaration, that he should kneel down there on that
cold stone floor and kiss the wintry hand of Death.
Death smiled-a boyish smile-through an old man's eyes. "Welcome," he said.
For a long time Viking and Dicko waited outside, but Kobra didn't come back. The
first tentative rays of gray light were creeping across the eastern horizon.
After they had called him a few times, unsuccessfully, Viking unsheathed a
hooked hunting blade from a leather holder at his side. "Somethin's happened to
Kobra," he said to Dicko. "I'm gonna find out what. You comin'?"
Dicko paused, then reached to the small of his back and took out the .45 from
its black holster. "Yeah," he replied. "I'm in."
They moved into the castle and were swallowed up by darkness.
The sun gradually strengthened its hold on the horizon, chasing shadows in its
path. Sometime before dawn the door swung closed, and a bolt was thrown.
FOUR
Sunday morning dawned bright and warm. Bells chimed from a hundred church
steeples across L.A. The God of Light was worshipped in as many different ways,
from formal services to the simple act of prayer on Malibu Beach by the Pacific
Ocean Church. Incense cones were burned by the Holy Order of the Sun, Catholic
masses were being said. Buddhists bowed before their altars. The city seemed
quiet, at rest, the planet spinning in an ordered universe.
From his Laurel Canyon terrace Mitch Gideon watched a flock of birds moving
gracefully across the sky as if in slow-motion. He stood in a warm splash of
sunlight, smoking a cigar and thinking about the dream of coffins on a conveyor
belt. He'd had it again last night and had sat up in bed so violently Estelle
almost had a heart attack. That dream had been peculiar at first, something to
laugh about. Now it was terrifying, the details gradually becoming clearer and
clearer. Last night he'd been able to see the faces of some of his co-workers.
They'd looked like grinning dead men, and the cold whiteness of their flesh had
been so real, so close, that Gideon had just fought his way out of the dream as
if up from the bottom of a deep, green pond. He was playing golf this afternoon
in a foursome at the Wilshire Country Club, and he hoped hacking at a Slazenger
would take his mind off a dream that was really turning shitty.
101
Andy and Jo Palatazin sat in their usual places at the Hungarian Reformed Church
on Melrose Avenue, just a few blocks from their house. She gripped his hand and
squeezed it, sensing his preoccupation. He smiled and pretended to be paying
attention, but his mind was seesawing back and forth between two dark concerns:
the Roach, whose presence in the city now seemed as intangible as a ghost's; and
whatever had ripped through the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. The artist's
composite of the man who had tried to lure Amy Hulsett had been printed up by
the dozens for detectives and uniformed officers to use in their conversations
with street people. Of course, the man might not have been the Roach after all,
just a guy out to buy a good time, but it was an angle that had to be pursued.
All^
that Brasher's hard work had turned up was one suspect who owned a dark blue»**^
i1*1^ Volkswagen, and the man was almost the total physical opposite of the
youngLi,
prostitute's description. Palatazin had put an officer on surveillance to be
certain.<$
The second concern made him more uneasy. He'd driven past HollywoodI Memorial on
the way to church; everything had looked okay, and Palatazin had , caught a
quick glimpse of the watchman, Kelsen, unlocking the front gates for the Sunday
morning visitors. Had it been only mindless vandalism after all? He was hoping
it was. The other answer-the one that lurked deep in the back of his mind-might
drive him mad.
And in a huge circular bed in his Bel Air home, Wes Richer stirred, reaching
across to touch Solange's cool brown flesh. His fingers gripped the edge of the
sheet where she should have been lying. He opened his eyes and winced; the
light«r was buffered by thick beige curtains, but it was still bright enough to
make his L optic nerves sputter like severed live wires. He turned over on his
back, his palms pressed against his eyes, and waited for the first wave of the
crashing headache to pass. "Solange?" he called out, the sound of his voice
making his eardrums throb. j"{"] There was no answer, and finally Wes sat up on
the edge of the bed. "Solange," he called again irritably. Damn! Where is she?
he thought. His sinuses were clogged with the mingled odors of marijuana and
jasmine incense with a cold dash of cocaine in there for good measure. How was
the show? he wondered suddenly. Was I good? "Sheer Luck" strikes again.
Alimentary, Dr. Batson. Wes stood up and struggled into his Fruit of the Looms.
When he walked into the living room and looked around, he swore loudly. He saw
the ruined wall-to-wall carpet, a mahogany coffee table scarred like a K-Mart
reject, a shattered piece of Inca pottery that he'd been too high to notice the
night before, the empty hospitality bowls that had been brimming at least five
times last night, the silver cocaine trays snorted clean, the bits of glass that
glittered in the carpet between all the stains and crushed butts, the heel
marks-heel marks, for Chrissake?-atop the grand piano, the . . . oh, to hell
with it! he thought. The wreckage was consummate.
102
And sitting there in the middle of it was Solange, wearing her long white robe
cut low to show the soft dark swelling of her breasts. She was sitting on the
sofa, her arms crossed tightly as if she were chilly. She was staring at the
Ouija board.
"Morning," Wes said, and plopped himself down in a chair. An instant later he
stood up to remove the filled ashtray he'd sat down on. There was a ring of
ashes on his ass. "Christ!" he said softly, surveying the damage. "If the guys
at the Domino Club could only see me now. As they say." He saw she was not
paying attention; her eyes were fixed on a spot at the center of the board. "I
didn't feel you get out of bed. What time were you up?"
She blinked and glanced up at him as if just now aware that he'd walked into the
room. "Wes," she said. "I... I've been up for a long time. I couldn't sleep
after the sun rose." She looked at him for a long time and then smiled
appreciatively. "You look like someone hit you with a nganga."
"A nuhwhat? What's that?"
"An evil spell. A big one." Solange frowned slightly and turned back to the
board. She picked up the planchette and examined the bottom of it with a
fingertip.
"Better watch out for that bastard," Wes said. "It might bite you. I'm going to
kick Martin Blue's ass the next time I see him. He could've put my eye out!"
She replaced the planchette. "What are you saying, Wes? That Martin was in
control of what happened here last night?"
"Sure he was! I saw his hands! He skidded that thing right off the board!" When
Solange didn't reply, he walked over to the picture window and looked down at
the swimming pool. A bright yellow-and-green striped lawn chair was floating in
it; there were some Coors cans at the deep end. "All right," he said finally. "I
know that silence. What are you thinking?"
"Martin didn't do it," she said. "He had no control over it, and neither did I.
Something very violent and very strong was here . . ."
"Oh, come on! Listen, I can take that mumbo stuff when we're at a party, but
when we're alone, I wish you'd forget the spirit world!"
"You don't believe?" she asked coolly.
"Nope."
"Do you pray to God?"
He turned from the window to face her. "Yes, but that's different."
"Is it? Think back. You were playing high-stakes poker in a room at the Las
Vegas Hilton nine months ago. You were playing against some very influential and
wealthy men."
"I remember."
"Do you remember the final hand? You closed your eyes for a second before you
picked up that last card. To which spirit were you praying?"
"To ... I was wishing for an ace from Lady Luck. That's not a spirit."
She smiled faintly, her nostrils flaring. "I say it is. All deities are spirits,
and all beliefs can become deities. Oh, yes, Wes, you believe." She regarded the
board again. "You saw. You spelled out the words."
103
"What words? It was gibberish!"
"It was a message," Solange said quietly. She shivered and lifted her gaze to
him. "The spirits are troubled, Wes. There's a great, terrible nganga in the
air. If you had Bantu blood in your veins, you could feel its vibrations, or
smell it like the reek of old vinegar. The spirits know every mystery; they see
the future and try to protect us from harm, if we will only listen to what they
say." Wes smiled slightly, and Solange's eyes snapped with anger. "I've never
felt a power before like the thing that was here last night! It simply silenced
the beneficent voices; it brushed their spirits away with as much effort as it
takes to flick a fly away! That was the thing that spelled out the final
message, the thing that took the planchette into its, power and . . ." <^n
"Stop it," Wes said abruptly.Q
Solange's face tightened. She stared at him for a few seconds with what Wes**Vj(
sometimes referred to as her "molten ink" eyes, and then she rose gracefully. "I
I didn't mean to upset you . . ."
"I'm not upset!"
". . . but I wanted you to know the truth . . ."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!"j
". . . about what happened last night. I have told you the truth."
"And the truth shall set us free." His grin spread. "Seems like I've heard that
before."
"Wes!" Tension was stretched tight in her voice now. "You can stand on your
stage and make your little jokes for other people; you can contort your face and
voice and make the people think you live for their laughter, but don't think for
an instant that you can put on your disguise in front of me! Sometime the jokes
will have to end; the laughter will die. And you'll have to face the world on
its ownp terms without falsehood." £!;'
"What world are we talking about, dear? The spirit domain, I assume?"
Solange had already turned away. She crossed the living room, her white gown'j :
swirling behind her, and disappeared into the far hallway. He heard the faint
sound of a door closing. Her problem is, she can't take a joke, he thought.
He rose to his feet and went through the living room and the short connecting
hallway to the kitchen, where copper cooking utensils hung from an overhead rack
and African woodcuts decorated the walls. He found a carton of orange juice in
the refrigerator and took a variety of plastic bottles from the vitamin
cupboard. As he downed his breakfast, he was aware that his pulse was kicking
hard. He'd been thinking of that planchette coming for his face like a runaway
Nike missile, and he knew that there was no damned way Martin Blue could've done
it. The bastard had been scared witless. So what, then? Spirits, like Solange
said? No, that was bullshit! When Solange got started, she could really lay it
on thick, stuff with crazy names like Santeria, brujeria, nkisi, makuto. Once
he'd peeked inside the ornately carved wooden box she kept under the bed. There
was a strange collection of peacock feathers, seashells, black and red candles,
corn husks, white coral, and some kind of
104
weird iron nails wrapped up with string inside. Wes tolerated her beliefs, but
he had drawn the line several months ago when she'd wanted to put a twig tied
with a red ribbon behind every door in the house.
He'd never known her last name; the man who'd lost her to him in the Vegas poker
game hadn't known it either. She told Wes she was born in Chicago, the daughter
of a woman who'd been a classical actress in Japan and an African man who was a
practicing santero, a good magician. She was born, she said, on the seventh day
of the seventh month at exactly seven o'clock in the evening. On the day before
her birth, her father had dreamed of her sitting on an ivory throne with seven
stars moving about her head like a glittering tiara. Which seemed to be a damned
good omen, the way Solange had explained it. It was supposed to mean that she
had inherited her father's powers of white magic, that she was to be considered
a living talisman. Solange didn't talk about the things she'd learned from her
father in her formative years, but Wes figured she must've been pretty
important. Solange recalled that people always came to their door, wanting to
touch her, or ask her about problems they were having with love or money.
When she was ten years old, walking home from school with the snow falling
softly, a car had pulled up to the curb, and two black men had stuffed a rag
into her mouth and thrown her onto the backseat. She was blindfolded-she could
vividly recall the coarseness of the cloth against her face-and the car traveled
all night. They went fast, over all kinds of roads. When the blindfold was taken
off, she was at a big house with snow-filled woods all around. For several days
she was locked in a beautifully furnished bedroom with windows that looked down
on an ice-glazed lake and fed by a black man in a white suit who brought her
food on a silver tray. On the third day she was taken to a glass room full of
jungle vines and blooming red flowers, where a large-bellied black man who wore
a gray-striped suit and smoked a cigar waited. He was very nice to her, very
friendly, and offered her a lace handkerchief to wipe her eyes when he told her
that she wouldn't be going home again because this was her home now. His name
was Fontaine, and he said there were some things Solange was going to have to do
for him. She was going to have to give him good fortune and protect him from
evil. Or something might happen to her mother and father.
It was only gradually, she'd told Wes, that she learned he was a bad man, a
gangster who controlled most of the Harlem rackets. His power was slipping, and
he'd heard about her through some of his people in South Chicago. In a period of
four years, during which Solange did very little but read the lines in his hand
and touch photographs of different men to feel their weaknesses, Fontaine never
came to her bedroom, never laid a hand on her. He left her alone, first because
he was beginning to fear her all too accurate predictions of the future and the
incantations that caused his enemies to suddenly wither from health to sickness;
also, his brain was steadily being gnawed away by syphilis. Many nights she
could hear Fontaine roaming the long hallways of the mansion, howling like an
animal in mad rage. In the end it was the syphilis, not his enemies, that crept
up on him with a deadly
105
hand, and none of Solange's incantations or poultices could halt its advance.
Fontaine was locked away behind a massive oak door, and soon after that a couple
of well-dressed white men came to the house, paid Fontaine's business manager a
great deal of money, and took Solange with them to the west.
Her new owner was an elderly Mafia capo who wanted her around for good luck;
he'd heard of what she'd been doing for Fontaine and knew that Fontaine's
business had shown an eighty-percent increase while she'd been with him. He
never touched her either, but a couple of his hired men did come to her room one
night. They said if she ever dared to tell what they did, they'd cut her throat.
That went on for a long time, until Solange fashioned corn husk dolls of them
and setv .
them on fire. They died when their Lincoln Continental slammed into the rear of
a^l
ii«tij«B
Sunoco gas truck on the San Diego Freeway.Lj,
And so it went on, year after year, a succession of powerful and greedy men.<|i1
Another Mafia lieutenant, then a motion picture studio head, then a director,
thenfyj
a record company executive who was robbing his partners blind. She was with
himpr
when she met Wes, who was doing a show in Vegas. It wasn't much money, but
at-«««
least it would take him through the bad period after his second series had
been-*
canceled. He was looking for private action, too, so he'd gotten himself
invited/' '
to this poker game at the Las Vegas Hilton with a group of big money
players,».J5 Solange's record exec among them. During the long, grueling game
Solange had sat
behind the man; Wes remembered she had had a bruise on her cheek. Anyway, the{*.
] guy's luck had started turning bad and went downhill; after he'd lost the
first thirty
thousand or so, he'd taken Solange into a back room and whaled the shit out of
her,u t.
then brought her in again and shoved her back in her chair. Her eyes were
swollenJ
and red; the record exec was really starting to sweat. After another three hours
the* A
*'
game had pared down to just the two of them: there was a stack of red chips inj
front of Wes and a look of animal fear on the record exec's face. But he'd
wanted to / play on, and so it continued until he had no more chips, nor money,
nor keys to his * robin's-egg-blue Cadillac. Wes was willing to leave it there.
"SIT DOWN!" the man j '| had screamed. "I TELL YOU WHEN TO LEAVE!"
"You're through, Morry," one of the onlookers said wearily. "Give it up." "SHUT
UP! Deal the cards . . . COME ON!"
"You're cleaned out," Wes said. "The game's over."
"No, it's not!" He'd turned and gripped Solange's arm with a crushing hand. "I'm
putting her up as security!"
"What! Forget it!"
"You think I'm kidding, Richer? Listen, punk, this bitch is worth her fucking
weight in gold! She can suck your cock right out of the roots; she'll fuck your
eyeballs out with tricks you never even heard of!"
"Now listen, I don't think . . ."
"Come on, you lousy little punk! What do you have to lose? You're floating in my
cash!"
It was the second use of that word that got to Wes. He paused for a moment
106
and looked at the beautiful battered woman behind him. He wondered how many
times she'd had to endure this man. Then he said, "I'll accept her as security
on five hundred dollars." Solange had responded with a slight nod.
And ten minutes later it was all over as Wes sat facing a beautiful royal flush.
The record exec had jumped to his feet and grabbed Solange's face, squeezing her
jaw so hard she whimpered. "Back off, you sonofabitch!" Wes had said quietly.
"You're marking up my merchandise."
Then the guy had really turned ugly, making all kinds of threats about how Wes
would never have a series again because he had connections with all three
networks, and as for recording, forget it! Someone gave the poor bastard a drink
and ushered him out of the room. For a long time Wes sat looking at Solange
across the poker table, not knowing what the hell to say or do. She broke the
silence: "I think he chipped my tooth."
"You want to find a dentist?"
"No. It's all right. I've seen you on television before. You're the comedian,"
she went on. "I remember now, I saw your face on the cover of TV Stars."
He nodded. "Yeah, I made that cover and a lot more. There was an article on me
in Rolling Stone, too. I've got a couple of comedy albums out." He stopped,
feeling foolish for tooting his horn in front of a woman whose right eye was
swollen and blue and whose left one was an odd shade of yellow. Still she was
beautiful: it was an exotic, cool beauty that had made Wes's pulse gallop ever
since she'd walked in.
"You're working here now?"
"That's right. But my agent's hot on a deal for a new series next season, and I
may do a bit in the next Mel Brooks flick." He cleared his throat nervously.
"How long have you been ... his mistress?"
"Almost a year. He's a very unkind man."
"Yeah, well, I guess I cleaned him out, didn't I?" He stared at the wad of bills
and the big-money lOUs that sat in front of him. "Christ. There's a lot of dough
here."
"It's late," Solange said. "Why don't we go to your room now?"
"Huh? Oh. Listen, you don't have to . . ."
"Yes I do. You own me now."
"Own you? Abe Lincoln freed the slaves in case you . . ."
"I've always belonged to someone," she said, and Wes thought he heard fear in
her voice. "I made his luck go bad. I can make yours good."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
She stood up and reached out her hand for him. He took it. "Your room," she
said.
That had been almost a year ago. Wes put the orange juice back into the
refrigerator. He knew he should be getting dressed because Jimmy might be coming
over this afternoon to talk over some figures on that Mel Brooks movie, a spoof
on trendy department stores called Quattlebaum's. When he walked into the living
107
room, Wes paused over the Ouija board for a moment, wondering how he could get
away with throwing the thing in the garbage. He didn't believe in those spirit
tales that Solange liked to tell, but one thing had bothered him ever since he'd
brought her back to Hollywood with him. Less than a week after he'd made the
down payment on this house, he'd seen Solange at the pool in the middle of the
night, slowly twisting the arms and legs of a GI Joe doll. Then she'd dropped it
into the water and held it under for several minutes. Two days later her old
record exec was found drowned in his own kidney-shaped pool. Variety ran a short
squib on his death; the doctor who'd examined the body said the guy's muscles
were all cramped up into knots.s
I'll throw you out later, you bastard, Wes mentally told the Ouija board, and< '
then he went back to his bedroom to put on some clothes. f^jfj'
FIVE|
I1 » IT-I «
Palatazin was in the den, watching the Steelers crawl all-over the 49ers at
two»--- o'clock when the telephone rang. Jo got up to answer it. "Come on, get
him!" j Palatazin said to the television screen as Terry Bradshaw evaded not one
but two stumbling linesmen and cocked his arm back like a piston to pass. "Don't
let that . guy score again! Oh, for . . .!" He slapped his thigh as the pass was
completed for thirty-four yards.
". . . Yes, I'll get him," Jo said from the kitchen. "Andy?"
"Okay." He hauled himself out of his La-Z-Boy and took the receiver from Jo.
"Yes?"
"Lieutenant Reece, captain. We've got somebody in here who's seen the guy on
that artist's composite."
"I need more than that. Maybe he just liked hookers."
"I've got more. The young lady in here says he told her he was going to takej
"\\\\'< her to a motel but stopped instead in a vacant lot on Yucca Street. She
got scared and took off, but he chased her in his car. The car was a grayish
Volks, and she remembers part of the license plate."
"Keep her there. I'll be down in fifteen minutes." He felt Jo's disapproving
stare as he replaced the receiver. "I have to go," he told her as he started for
the front door.
"I heard. Will you at least be home for supper?"
"I don't know." He shrugged on his coat and kissed her cheek. "I'll call."
"You won't be home," she said. "And you won't call."
But by then he was already out the door and gone.
108 SIX
As Palatazin was hanging up his telephone, Rico Esteban was climbing a long
series of stairs in an East L.A. tenement, where sunlight took on a muddy pallor
as it streamed hotly along the hallways through dirty windows. The steps creaked
underfoot, and in some places there was no railing; Rico could look down four
floors to the cracked yellow tiles in the entrance hall. Garbage had spilled
from cans on the stairway landings, a sheen of smelly liquids making the stairs
as slick as if they were carved from ice. Rico still wore the same clothes he'd
been dressed in the night before, only now the back of his shirt was damp with
sweat. His eyes, now somewhat sunken due to lack of sleep, were veined with red.
Around him the building swelled with clashing noise-a toilet chugging as water
strangled a clogged pipe; a man and a woman both shouting in Spanish, trying to
outcurse each other; a baby howling to be fed and a mother's desperate
"Quiete!"; someone coughing violently, the cough finally falling to a rattle of
phlegm; transistor radios and televisions battling for dominance with the
thump-thump of disco, a Spanish news broadcast, or the gunshots from a cowboy or
detective movie.
Along the fifth floor hallway the heat was sickeningly oppressive. Rico's shirt
was glued to his chest and back like a second skin by the time he'd stopped
before the door he sought. He paused, his heart racing. He was afraid of the
woman who lived in that apartment; she was crazy, there was no telling what she
might do to him. Once old lady Santos had sworn to get a gun and blow his balls
off if he ever got her daughter into trouble. So now he hesitated, unsure
whether to knock or just retrace his steps out of this sweltering pigsty. What
if Merida had gotten back last night and told everything to her mother? he
wondered. Then there would be hell to pay. But what if Merida hadn't come home
at all? What if something had happened to her on the jungle strip of Whittier
Boulevard? The uncertainty filled him with a dull sense of dread. That Roach due
was still on the loose, wasn't he? And there were plenty more dudes a whole lot
meaner than Roach, too. Or, on the other side of the coin, Rico could find
Merida inside with tear-streaked cheeks and an enraged madwoman with a Saturday
Night Special aimed at his groin. Madre de Dios!
But he couldn't leave without knowing; he couldn't stand it for a minute longer.
He reached out, balled his fist, and knocked on the door. Almost immediately
another door down the hallway opened, and an elderly Chicano man stared out
suspiciously.
"Who's there?" The words spoken in strident Spanish made Rico jump.
"Uh . . . it's me, Mrs. Santos. Rico Esteban."
There was a long, uneasy silence. Shit! he thought, suddenly overcome by panic.
She's gone for her gun! He was going to run when she said from behind the door.
"Eh? What do you want, you little bastard?"
"I'd like to talk to Merida. Please."
109
"She ain't home."
A knot of tension burst like shrapnel in his stomach. He could sense Mrs. Santos
behind the thin layer of scarred wood with her ear pressed to the door. "Do you
know where she is?" he asked.
Then the door came open, and Rico took a startled step backward. The woman
peered out through a crack, her black snake eyes staring at him disdainfully
from a leathery, deeply creased face. "What do you want to know for?"
"I have to find her. It's important." He couldn't see her hands and thought she
might have a damned gun behind her.
Mrs. Santos regarded him in simmering silence for a moment. "I know she's been
sneakin' around behind my back, thinkin' she's gettin' away with somethin'! I
know she's been seem' you, filth! I figgered when she didn't come home last
night she was with you."
"I ... picked her up in front last night," he said with an effort. "On Whittier
she . . . she jumped out of my car, Mrs. Santos, and I tried to find her all
night, I went everywhere I could think of, I only got about two hours sleep in
the back of my car, and I don't know where else to-"
"WHAT?" she screeched, her eyes going wide and wild. "My Merida's been out on
the boulevard all night? You bastard, you let my Merida stay out there all
night? I'm callin' the cops on you right now, you don't get outta here!" Her
eyes blazing with black heat, she started to slam the door in his face. But
instantly he braced it with a hand. She looked at him open-mouthed, fear
beginning to glimmer deep in her gaze.
"You're not listening to me!" he said, almost shouting. "If Merida didn't get
home last night, I don't know where she is! She could be in trouble!" She's
already in plenty of trouble, he thought grimly. "Where else could she have
gone?"
Mrs. Santos was frozen, and he knew what she was thinking-Merida was a good
girl, loyal to her mother, she'd never stayed away from home all night before,
and she wouldn't run away either.
"I'm afraid for her," Rico said softly.
Her voice began in a whisper and started to rise. "I told you to leave her
alone, didn't I? I warned my Merida about what was out there! You're trouble and
you always been trouble, even when you was a smart-assed punk runnin' with the
Cripplers! Now only God knows what badness you're doin'!"
"Look, I didn't come here to fight. I don't care what you think about me. I just
want to make sure Merida's okay . . ."
"Why? 'Cause you tryin' to talk her into walkin' the streets for you? Everythin'
you touch turns filthy! You touched my Merida, and God saw it, and because He
knows you're filthy evil He ... wait a minute! You just wait a minute!" She spun
away from the door, and Rico started in after her, his face flaming with anger.
She crossed the cramped, dirty apartment and opened a drawer next to the sink
and hot plate. "You just wait a minute, you filth!" she shrilled, and then she
turned upon him with a butcher knife clamped in her hand. "I'll kill you for
what you done to my baby!"
110
"Please!" he said, backpedaling for the door. "I only want to find-" "This is
what you going' to find!" she shouted, and came toward him with the knife aimed
for a killing blow.
"You crazy old . .. fuck!" Rico yelled back at her; he wheeled through the door
and was able to slam it shut before she could get to him. Then he was running
headlong down the hallway, hearing the dry, amused chuckle of the old Chicano
man. Rico got to the stairway and started down; behind him the building seemed
filled with Mrs. Santos's screams and threats. Her screech of a voice-just like
an old harpy's, Rico thought-drowned out transistor radios, squalling babies,
and marital cursing bouts. But then it began to grow faint, and Rico knew with a
surge of relief that she wasn't following him from the fifth floor. Still he hit
the entrance hallway at a run. When he got outside, sweat was rolling off his
face. A couple of small kids were trying to pry off his wheel covers, and he
sent them running with a kick and an oath. They stopped in the middle of the
street to give him the finger, and then they were gone.
He was about to go around to the driver's side when a cool, childish voice said,
"Hey, Rico! You shoulda let those punks alone, man!"
Rico turned. Merida's twelve-year-old brother, Luis, was sitting in shadow on
the steps of the tenement building next door. There were two other kids with
him, neither older than eleven, but already their eyes seemed hard and haunted.
They were playing cards, and Luis was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. "Yeah?"
Rico said, walking back to the curb. "Why?"
"They need the bread they coulda sold those shoes for on the street. Two cards."
He picked up the two cards dealt to him and snorted with disgust. "Their old
man's got a fifty-dollar-a-day habit, gettin' worse all the time. You think just
'cause you move up to the Strip everythin' changed around here, man?"
The words, spoken so calmly from the mouth of a child, stung him. "What do you
know about anything?" Rico said. "You're just a kid yourself."
"I know a lot of things." He looked up from the game. "Like my sister was with
you last night, and she never came home. My old lady's been pacin' the floor all
day. She says she's thinkin' about puttin' out a contract on you with the
Homicides."
"Who's going to cut my throat? You, Luis? For how much? Five bucks? Yeah, you're
even beginning to think like a Homicide, aren't you? Man, you keep hangin'
around those dudes you're going to wind up either gut-stabbed or in the
slammer."
Luis dealt the next hand and smiled like a fox. "Too bad we all can't be big
like you, Rico. Man, you so big you outgrown the barrio. You're a giant now up
on Sunset Strip, ain't you?" He made a farting sound with his lips, and the
other kids laughed. "Maven could tear your ass up with one hand! Why don't you
get off this street? You don't belong here no more!"
"Maven? He's still prez of the Homicides?"
"That's right. Dealer takes one. Alllllright, amigos!" he disregarded Rico until
the hand was over, and the next cards were dealt. "What're you doin' comin'
outta rny buildin', man? You let my old lady see you, she'll come after your
ass."
111
"I already saw your mother," Rico said. "She's ready for la casa de locos. I'm
trying to find Merida, Luis. I don't know where the hell your sister could be!"
Luis looked at him sharply. "What do you mean, man? She was with you all night!"
"No, she wasn't. That's what I was trying to tell your mother. Merida jumped out
of my car on Whittier and ran off. I looked for her almost all night. Now, where
else could she be?"
"You left her alone?" Luis said incredulously. "Out on the boulevard all by
herself?" The cards dropped from his hand, a couple of grinning kings and a
joker. "Man, you livin' so far away from here now you don' know what's going'
on? The Vipers are tryin' to move into Homicide territory! Three blocks from
here it's a goddamn battle zone! The Vipers are hittin' on every Homicide they
can find. Last week they got Hotshot Zasa, Paco Milan and Juan Morales!"
Rico's heartbeat quickened. "Killed them?"
"Nobody knows. They just vanished ... poof!... and Maven figures the Vipers
ambushed 'em and dragged the bodies away somewhere. On Friday Maven's girl Anita
was missin', and yesterday Paulo LeGran's little brother, Benny."
"Jesus!" Rico said, fear crackling through his brain. "You think maybe . . .
thef Vipers got Merida?" ,*
"They woulda known she was my sister." Luis rose to his feet, his gaze
smoldering; his face was that of a battle-hungry man, but his chest-bare behind
a cheap( leather vest-was that of a child's, his skinny ribs jutting. He ran the
back of a hand across his mouth. "Yeah, they could've got her. They could've
been waitin' for her in an alley and jumped her. Sonsofbitches could've raped
her right there and dragged her off somewhere." "„
Rico's stomach throbbed; he thought he was going to have to lean over andj
vomit. I
"They could've already killed her," Luis said quietly, and turned the full force
of his gaze onto Rico. "If she's dead, then you helped kill her! You put her
right in Viper hands, bastardo!"
"We don't know what happened to her!" Rico said. "We can call the cops and let
them-"
"NO COPS!" Luis shouted. He was trembling, trying to fight back tears. "This is
business for the Homicides, for my brothers. Come on," he said to the other
boys, and instantly they stood up from the steps. "We got to go find Maven and
tell him!" They started off along the street, swaggering like little roosters.
But suddenly Luis turned and pointed a finger at Rico. "You better hope my
sister's okay!" he shouted, and then his voice cracked. "You just better hope
and pray, man!" Luis turned away from him, and the trio of boys vanished along
the street.
Rico watched them move out of sight. A surge of vomit came up from his stomach,
and he stood in the mouth of an alley with his head bent, but he couldn't throw
up. Dead?' he thought. Merida dead? Killed by the vipers, a bunch of war- happy
punks who were just kids when Rico was running with the cripplers? A rain
112
of slop came splattering into the alley from a window high overhead, and as Rico
jumped away, he heard thin, vicious laughter. Dazed and prickled with cold
sweat, he made his way to his car and quickly drove away from the hellish
barrio.
SEVEN
"That there's the dude." The black prostitute with heavy-lidded, sensual eyes
and orange-streaked hair slid the printed composite portrait across the
interrogation- room desk to Lieutenant Reece. "I'd know him anywhere. Tried to
run my ass down on Yucca Street. Tried to kill me. Oh yeah, that's him." She
inhaled deeply on a cigarillo and blew the smoke from the corner of her mouth.
"Did he mention a name to you, Miss Connors? Anything like Wally or Walt or
Walter?"
"No. He didn't say a word except to ask my ... uh ... price. Now look here." She
glanced nervously at the slowly turning reel of the tape recorder on the end of
the desk. "You aren't going to try to trick old Lizz now, are you? I don't like
my voice going into that box, you know?" She looked over her shoulder to where
Officer Waycross and Captain Palatazin sat watching. "You promised me," she said
to Waycross. "You didn't drag me down here to trap me on a soliciting charge,
now did you?"
"No one's trying to trap you," Palatazin said quietly. "We're not interested in
what you do for a living. We're interested in the man who picked you up
Wednesday night. One of the problems we've faced during this thing is that you
ladies usually don't like to talk to us."
"Well who's to blame for that? John Law comes down hard on the sisters. We gots
to make a buck, too, you know." She returned her languid gaze to Reece. "There's
plenty of worse ways to get by."
"I guess there are," Reece agreed. "But you're sure about these numbers? Two and
seven?"
"Yeah. The last number might have been a three ... or maybe a five. I don't
know." Reece nodded and looked over the report sheet he'd filled in as the girl
talked. "What about the letters? You think the first one was 'T.' What about the
second one?"
She shrugged. "I didn't have no time to stand there and read the man's plate,
you know. I was tryin' to save my ass." She blew out another plume of smoke
toward the offending tape recorder. "I figure I did pretty good to remember
anything at all."
"Dave," Palatazin said to Waycross, "why don't you take the report and get
started on the license trace right away? Ask McCullough and Price to give you a
hand as soon as they're free."
"Yes, sir." Waycross took the report from Reece and left the room.
113
"Can I go now?" the girl asked. "I've told you all I can remember."
"In a minute," Palatazin replied, leaning forward in his chair. "You said-if I
can use your exact word-that you were 'jumpy' with this man. Why was that?"
"I usually don't care who I date," she said, "but this dude gave me the creeps.
He seemed okay at first, kinda quiet and all. I figured a quick date at the Casa
Loma Motel, and then I'd be on my way with fifty bucks. Easy cash because I
don't do any specialties, you know?" She raised her eyebrows and waited until
Palatazin had nodded. "But his eyes were real funny, and he kept cocking his
head to the side like he was having a nerve spell or something. But later on I
thought about it, and it seemed he was . . . like . . . listening, you know?"
"Listening? Was the radio on?"J>«
"No. It was like he was listening to something I couldn't hear, and once I saw
him smile this weird, peculiar little smile. Anyway, he turns off Hollywood
about two blocks before we get to the Casa Loma, and I ask him where does he
think he's going, but he don't answer. Just kinda nods. Weird. So then he pulls
into this lot where a Seven-Eleven used to be, and he cuts the engine. I figure
he wants me to do him right there because he's grinning like a goon. He ... uh
... starts to unzip his pants. I was getting kinda jumpy then, but I figured
what the hell? So I ... uh> . . . started to lean over and I see his hand drop
down off the seat real fast. That's * when I got a whiff of stuff, like alcohol
but a lot stronger. I didn't know what it was, but old Lizz sure didn't want
none of it. I jumped out of that bug and started runnin', and then I hear his
engine start, and I say, 'Oh God, that creep's comin' after me!' It was then
that I thought about the Roach. But you know, nobody's t been trashed by the
bastard in a long time, so most of my friends and me figure the guy got his
kicks and crawled back under a rock. I made it to the corner, and the '/. Volks
peeled right on past me, made the next right, and was gone. I walked to a pay j
phone and called my man, Tyrone. He came and picked me up." ',
"This substance you smelled," Palatazin said. "You said it had the odor'of;'
alcohol? Could it have been turpentine? Something like that?"
"Can't really say." She crushed out her cigarillo in an ashtray. "But it was a
sharp smell. I was so close to whatever was under that seat that my eyes started
to burn. Whatever it was, it was wicked shit." Reece smiled in spite of himself,
then cleared his throat and looked away when Palatazin glanced at him.
"All right, Miss Connors. I think that's enough." Palatazin rose from his chair
and switched off the tape recorder. "You're not planning on taking a trip any
time soon, are you? In case we need you for a positive ID?"
"Nope. My stompin' ground's right here in L.A."
"Good. Thank you for coming in. And if I were you, I'd suggest to my friends
that they keep their dates platonic until we have the Roach in a jail cell."
"Sho' nuff." She gathered up her handbag, gave a little twitch of her tail to
Reece and went out the door and into the squad room. Palatazin sat down again,
took his pipe from beside the chair, and lit it. "What do you think?" he asked
Reece. "Does that sound like our man?"
114
"Hard to tell. If this is the same guy who tried to pick up Amy Hulsett, he's
not showing the same modus operandi as Roach. There's been no attempt at either
rape or strangulation."
"If this is our man, why would he change his pattern? I don't know, something's
strange. That's twice we've heard about a strong odor in this man's car. What
could it be?"
"Any one of a number of things from spilled gasoline to cleaning fluid."
Palatazin sat for a moment, smoking his pipe in silence. Reece was reminded of a
new TV show he'd seen last night, "Sheer Luck," about some nutty private
detective who thought he was the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes and ran around
L.A., trying to solve mysteries with his psychiatrist, Dr. Batson. It had been
pretty funny. "The M.E. went over those four corpses as thoroughly as possible,
didn't he? Would he have found swelling or inflammation in the mucous membranes
of the nose, or possibly in the eyes?"
"Sure."
"But he didn't, did he? That is to say, no unnatural inflammation other than
what would come as a result of the strangling. Right?"
Reece nodded. "What are you getting at?"
"Suppose the Roach has changed his M.O. Perhaps he didn't like the way those
girls clawed at him as they were dying. Perhaps he wanted to keep them from
struggling so much. How could he do that?"
"Bop 'em over the head with a hammer, I guess."
"Granted. But suppose he misses with the first whack and the girl starts
screaming? Now remember, Miss Connors said that he was reaching for something
under the seat and that the strong odor was coming from under there. What does
that suggest?"
"Oh," Reece said, "a drug, maybe. Something like . . . ether?"
"That or a similar substance. But in any case it would have to be strong enough
to knock out an adult with just a few whiffs. Then the Roach could rape her,
strangle her, do whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted."
"What's that stuff they used to use in the mad scientist flicks? You know, they
always waved a bottle or a rag under a cat's nose, and then the thing keeled
over? Chloroform."
"Possibly. But as far as I know, chloroform can't be purchased over the counter.
Maybe it's still used in hospitals. But it would have to be strong, maybe even a
concentrated liquid or powder. And where would our man get it?" He blew a long
tendril of blue smoke toward the ceiling and watched it swirl in front of the
air- conditioning duct. "Something you said a minute ago." He narrowed his eyes.
"What about gasoline?"
"Whiffing gas might make somebody upchuck all over the place, but I think it
would take a while for gasoline fumes to knock you out."
"Right, and we're talking about something that could act in less than a minute."
He shrugged. "I don't know. Will you do me a favor? Since you're going to be
115
working this evening, why don't you call some hospitals and pharmacists and get
the names of whatever might do the job? I think we'll be looking for a substance
that's available over the counter, but it wouldn't hurt to check hospital
inventories of ether-related drugs." He rose from his chair and moved toward the
door. "What Miss Connors smelled was probably szeszes."
"Huh? What's that?"
"Hungarian white lightning." He smiled wanly and then picked up the composite
picture from the table. His smile faded as he looked into that chunky
squirrelish face. The eyes, so vacant and detached behind those thick glasses,
were what bothered him the most. Where are you? he asked silently. If you're
still striking, why haven't we found any more corpses? Palatazin was well aware
of an unfortunate fact: It was the corpse, or in this case the trail of them,
that eventually pointed to the murderer, in the fragment of cloth clutched in a
death grip, in the tissue and hair beneath the fingernails, in a telltale
matchbook or printed napkin found in a handbag or pocket. Any homicide squad was
practically powerless to stop a murder; all they could do was clean up and piece
together the ugly jigsaw puzzles of passion. And without fresh corpses, great
fragments of the puzzle were missing.
Palatazin pushed the picture back toward Reece. "It's time we released this to
the papers. Will you get it down to Press Relations for me?"
"Yes sir, I'll take care of it."
Palatazin left the interrogation room and walked back across the squad room-
very quiet today, only a few detectives working-to his office. He glanced at his
wristwatch-five-twenty. The sun was beginning to slide down across the sky,
leaving cold gray shadows in its track. It was time to get home to Jo, to try to
get himself ready mentally for the next day's work. Tomorrow morning there was
going to be a meeting with the chief of detectives and the commissioner, and the
caseload of non-Roach-related homicides was getting heavier day by day: a
Chicano man found bludgeoned to death in a downtown alley; a pretty teenage girl
found stuffed into the trunk of a stolen car with her throat slashed from ear to
ear; a middle-aged woman shot on the sidewalk by someone in a passing car; a
three-year-old child battered beyond recognition and stuffed into the bottom of
a garbage can. Palatazin was a reluctant witness to a daily sideshow of horrors.
Some days, of course, were worse than others; on the worst of them, usually at
the height of the summer, his nightmares were vivid with the heat-swollen
corpses of men, women, and children, all of them holding out their arms to him
and begging like lepers for a cure. And the means of murder in this city were
terrifying infinite: baseball bat, pistol, broken bottle, poisons from a dozen
different countries, knives of all description and purpose, coat hangers,
clothesline cord, barbed wire, and even in one instance a brass ball fired from
a slingshot. The motives for murder were just as complex: vengeance, money,
freedom, hatred, and love. The City of Angels? Palatazin knew differently.
When he was fourteen years old, his uncle Milo had gotten him an afternoon job
sweeping up at his neighborhood police precinct station. He'd been fascinated
116
with the cops-and-robbers shows he'd seen on the television in the window of the
Abrahms Brothers appliance store a block from the apartment, and he was thrilled
to imagine himself as part of that world with its blue-uniformed policemen,
sleek cars, and crackling, urgent radios. The officers liked his interest, and
they went out of their way to explain the details of their jobs to him. For
several years he was the willing recipient of every chase and shoot-'em-up story
the cops could dish out, and those ran into the hundreds. Only it was years
later, when he himself wore one of those crisp blue uniforms, that he realized
the world was not quite as black and white as the TV shows had depicted. He'd
been walking his beat along Fountain Avenue when a fat, red-faced man in a white
apron had started shouting about a robbery in his grocery store. Palatazin had
seen the suspect-a thin black man in a long, tattered coat-running in the
opposite direction with hands clamped around a couple of loaves of bread and a
Polish sausage. He'd given pursuit-he'd been much thinner in those days and fast
on his feet-and had caught up with the guy easily, grabbing his flagging coat
from behind and yanking him to the ground. The food had scattered into the
street and was smashed into pulp by the next passing car. Palatazin had wrenched
the arms back, snapped cuffs on the wrists, and turned the man over.
It wasn't a man; it was a woman, terribly thin, her stomach swelling in the
sixth month of pregnancy. "Please," she'd begun sobbing, "please don't make me
go to jail again. Please don't make me . . ." Palatazin was stunned and ashamed;
the red- faced man, who had as much beef in his belly as on his racks, came up
and started shouting about "this whore, this filthy whore" who had come in and
stolen right off his shelves in broad daylight and what were the cops going to
do about it? Palatazin couldn't answer; the cuff key in his hand burned like a
white-hot flame. But before he could say or do anything, a police car came
cruising up to the curb, and the shouting man turned his attention to the
arriving officers. As they put the woman into the car, her sobbing had stopped,
and her eyes looked like the empty windows of a long-abandoned building. One of
the officers clapped Palatazin on the shoulder and said, "Good job, this broad's
been hitting stores all up and down Fountain for the past two weeks." As the car
pulled away, Palatazin stared at the paste of bread and sausage in the street.
The red-faced man was bragging to a group of onlookers about how nobody could
rob him and get away with it, "Nobody!"
Now a world away from Fountain Avenue, Palatazin felt a wave of regret pass over
him. He took his coat from the back of a chair and wearily shrugged into it. Why
hadn't things worked out as he'd planned so many years before? His dream had
been to take his wife and son up to a little town north of San Francisco where
the climate was cooler and head a small police station where the most serious
crime was kids stealing from a pumpkin patch. He wouldn't even need a car, and
he would know and be liked by everyone in town. Jo could open that florist shop
she was always thinking about, and his son would be quarterback on the high
school football team. He buttoned his coat and let the dreams drift away like so
much shimmering dust. After the second stillbirth Jo's doctor had told her it
would be
117 dangerous for her, both physically and emotionally, to try again. He
suggested
adoption and left it at that. And Palatazin had been caught, as everyone is, in
the \\huge whirlpool of events that takes you down once, twice, a third and final
time.
He knew he would probably remain in this city until he died, though sometimes
'late at night he thought he could close his eyes and see that little town, full
of white
picket fences and clean streets and chimneys that puffed white plumes of cherry-
'wood smoke in the long winters. Time to go home, he thought. And something
rustled very softly behind him. Palatazin, startled, whirled toward the door.
f His mother was standing there as substantial as any flesh he'd ever seen. She|
was wearing the pale blue gown she'd wore the night she died, her skin wrinkled
1 and white over frail, sharply jutting bones. Her eyes were fixed upon his
face, „„,!
'Mj
terribly intense. One arm was thrust out, as skinny as a pole, the finger
pointing ,toward the window.
*„,
*Palatazin, the blood drained out of his face by the shock, took a step backward
and collided with the sharp edge of his desk. His pipe rack toppled over, as did
the ' framed photograph of Jo. File folders drifted to the floor.
f
(His mother opened her mouth, showing almost toothless gums, and seemed to be
trying to say something. Her finger was trembling, her face contorted with
effort.
1And then Palatazin saw the outline of the door through her, saw the gleaming <
' doorknob as if in a haze of grayish smoke. Her figure rippled like gossamer
caught j in a high wind. And was gone.
|The breath exploded from Palatazin's lungs. He was trembling uncontrollably, >
his hands gripping at the desk behind him. For a long time he stared at the spot
on ^ the floor where his mother had stood, and when he finally waved a shaking
hand ^ over that spot, the air felt a few degrees cooler than the rest of the
room. >\\; He opened the door and thrust his head out so violently that Officer
Zeitvogel, I « who was at the nearest desk, promptly spilled a cup of hot coffee
into his lap. ? <'*" Zeitvogel cursed and stood up, drawing the attention of the
other officers to
*Palatazin's pale, wide-eyed face. Instantly Palatazin retreated into his office
but left the door open; he felt sick and light-headed, as if he'd just snapped
out of a brain-
yjfburning fever. He stood staring dumbly at the folders on the floor, then bent
and started picking them up.
'."Captain?" It was Zeitvogel at the door, mopping his pants legs with a couple
*of paper towels. "You okay, sir?"
"I'm fine," he said, but kept his head away from the man so he wouldn't betray
the fear that was still making one corner of his mouth twitch.
,Zeitvogel looked down at his lap, Christ! he thought. Wonder if I can make the
> department foot the cleaning bill? Fat chancel "For a minute there you looked
like ' you'd seen a ghost, sir."
"Did I?" Palatazin rose and dumped the folders onto his desk. He righted Jo's
117
*THEY THIRST
i
118
picture and the spilled row of pipes. Fishing for the keys in his pocket, he
stepped out of his office quickly and locked the door. "Don't you have work to
do?" he said tersely, and then he was moving past Zeitvogel and out of the squad
room, his shoes clicking on the tiled floor.
Weird, Zeitvogel thought. He shrugged at the other men, swabbed at the worst of
the stain, and sat down at his desk again. Before he returned to work, he
wondered whether what he'd been reading in some of the papers and hearing
whispered around the building was true, that the captain was being squeezed over
this Roach thing, and the pressure was starting to crack him. He continued
typing his report on a young man found shot to death in bed that morning and
thought, Better him than me.
EIGHT
Night had filled up the barrio like black rainwater in a bomb crater, and what
stirred in its depths was unnameable. Chill, tortured winds gnawed at the
corners of silently crumbling buildings; in the narrow alleys rats scuttled in
search of food, their eyes catching red pinpoints of light. And three Chicano
boys clad in tight black leather vests and black headbands crouched behind a
spill of dusty bricks and watched a dilapidated, graffiti-smeared building less
than a hundred yards away. In the distance the tenement buildings seemed to be
standing at odd angles, like crooked rows of gray tombstones.
"Ain't nothin' moved in there for over an hour, Maven," the boy on the left, as
thin and dark as whipcord, whispered huskily. "Ain't nobody in there."
"I say they are." The one in the corner was the largest of the three, his biceps
and forearms bulging with muscles. On the left bicep there was a tattoo of an
eagle clawing at a snake and beneath it the name MAVEN. Jet black hair spilled
over his headband, and his eyes-set in a square, large-jawed face-were tight
slits of animal cunning. "Oh yeah," he whispered, "the enemigo is in there and
tonight they gonna pay."
"They musta moved their headquarters," the thin one said. "The scouts musta been
wrong."
"They're hidin'," Maven said, "because they're scared shitless of what we're
gonna do to them." He gazed up at the surrounding rooftops; a few more Homicides
were up there, keeping watch on the Viper headquarters. But Maven couldn't see
them; they were hidden too well. He looked back to the building and shifted
because the .45 in his waistband was beginning to cut into his stomach. The
other two, Chico Mapazan and Johnny Pascal, were equally armed: Chico carried a
nine- inch blade and a pair of nail-studded brass knuckles; Johnny clutched a
baseball bat with four-inch nails driven through it. "Who wouldn't be scared
shitless," Maven said softly, "knowing the Homicides were huntin' for 'em?"
"Gonna clean those fuckers out," Johnny whispered, fingers clenching and
119
unclenching around the bat. "Gonna make 'em pay!"
"I get the first shot," Maven told him. "I get my revenge for what they done to
Anita. Bastards probably raped her dead and dragged her body off to the garbage
dump." A muscle in his jaw flexed. "They want to play rough, we'll show 'em what
rough means."
"When do we go?" Chico asked, his gaze flaring with impatient fire.
"When I say go. Right now we wait."
In about fifteen minutes the building's front door opened. Maven tensed like a
strip of barbed wire. Two boys-one in an Army surplus jacket and the other
barechested, came out and sat on the front steps. They seemed to be talking,
and% in a swirl of wind Maven could hear their raucous laughter. "Bastards," he
breathed. „£»« "Gonna make you pay." They sat there for a long time, then they
both rose at the same moment and disappeared back into the building. mt^
Almost immediately a small figure came scrambling across the lot, ducking low
and keeping close to the thicker patches of shadow. It was Luis Santos. He hit
the ground and crouched next to Chico. "Everybody's ready, Maven," he said.
"Zorro's got some troops around at the back door."
"Good. He carryin' his momma?"
"Yeah." Zorro's momma was a sawed-off shotgun, stolen from a gun shop less than
a month ago but already put to good use.
"He may need it when those bastards run out the back door." Maven took a breath
and then said, "Okay. We go." He lifted his head, put two fingers in his**'
mouth, and let out a couple of short whistles. "You going' with me, little
soldier," he t- said to Luis. "Make 'em pay for trashin' your sister, man." He
handed Luis a carved ebony switchblade that could pass for a butcher knife.
Maven whistled again, long ^. and low, ending in an ascending note. Instantly
shadows filled the lot and began to j' move. Maven and the others got up quickly
and began to run through the darkness, ' crouched low and ready to dive for
cover. ';,
Nothing moved, no one fired a shot, as they approached the building.j .<
"Gonna catch 'em sleepin'," Maven whispered. "Gonna wipe 'em out." He: reached
the building first with Luis right behind him. Maven took one of his two black
market grenades from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it through the nearest
window. Then he dove against the building's side, flattening himself, and saw
Luis do the same.
When the grenade exploded with a hollow whuuumpl, blazing white fragments of
metal came whining through the window like hornets. In the next instant Maven
was charging up the steps, followed by a horde of Homicides. He kicked in the
door and ran through, firing .45 slugs in a red-hot arc. Luis clicked open the
blade, feeling its power thrum up his wrist. He felt like the Ice Cream Soldier
to Maven's Sergeant Rock; his blood was boiling, but his brain was crystal
clear. He leapt through the open doorway, followed by Johnny and Chico and the
rest of the Homicide troops. Inside, Maven was crouched on the floor in a blue
haze of gun- smoke. He could see the holes in the hallway wall where his bullets
had punched.
120
But the entrance hall and the dim corridor leading back through the building
were empty. He heard nothing but the clatter of Homicide boots and the fierce
breathing of his soldiers.
"Ain't nobody here!" Chico wailed.
"SHUT UP!" Maven shouted, and rose to his feet, his finger twitching on the
trigger. "They got to be here! Where are you, fuckers?" He saw the outlines of
more open doorways farther back along the corridor. "Bastards are scared
shitless!" he shouted. "Come on out! We're gonna have a little party!" He fired
into the corridor and heard a rain of plaster. "Chico, you and Salvatore and
about six more go on up them stairs and check out the second floor. Don't let
'em jump you. GO ON, WHAT'RE YOU WAITIN' FOR? Everybody else stick to me!" He
started along the corridor, crouching like a panther, peering into one empty
room after another. "Hey man," somebody said behind him, "I don't like this . .
."
"Shut your mouth and follow me!" Maven said, but now there was uncertainty in
his voice, and a couple of his men faltered. But Luis stuck close beside his
Sergeant Rock. At the rear of the corridor, there was a padlocked door. Maven
snarled a curse and stepped into the nearest room; he fired twice into a closed
closet and then wrenched it open, expecting a couple of bleeding bodies to
tumble out. But there was nothing but a clothes hanger dangling from a rod. Luis
bumped into him, and Maven said, "Get back, kid!" He could hear the noise of
boots overhead-his troops checking out the upper floor.
And then he looked up.
They were clinging to the rafters like bats.
Maven shrieked and lifted his gun as the bodies began to fall. His shot went
wild as something landed on his back and grabbed his hair. He fell to the floor,
hearing a hiss very close to his ear. And now all over the building, there were
shrieks, cries to God, angered curses, the noise of falling bodies, and gunfire
exploding into wood and plaster. A heavy form hit Luis's shoulders and drove him
down, slamming his head against the floor. In a red-misted daze he heard Maven
babble for mercy and then scream piteously, like a woman. A shotgun blast
knocked the rear door off its hinges, and now Zorro's troops were streaming in.
Dark figures lunged through the corridor to meet them, and a dozen separate
battles raged in the darkness. Gunfire cracked, etching quick, hot veins in the
air. Luis, his head pounding, tried to drag himself up off the floor and caught
a kick in the ribs; he doubled up, tears blinding him, his fingers searching for
the ebony blade. Someone else began to scream, and the scream was echoed all
through the building. A body hit Luis and crashed to the floor. Luis heard a
moaning sound followed by a strange and terrible . .. sucking. His brain flared,
I don't want to die like this! I don't want to die like . . .
An icy hand gripped his shoulder and turned him over like he was made of straw.
A figure crouched next to him, eyes burning, pinning him to the floor. And then
Luis saw that it was Hotshot Zasa, the Homicide lieutenant who'd supposedly been
trashed by the Vipers. Relief coursed through him, and he said, "Hotshot?"
121 rm
THEY THIRST
He wasn't going to die after all, wasn't going to die, wasn't . . .
Hotshot grinned.
The four fangs in his mouth-two protruding from the upper gums and two from the
bottom-were yellow and dripping with fluids. The lower fangs curved inward
slightly, like fishhooks; the upper ones were slanted toward each other, making
a hideously efficient V. Hotshot's face glowed white, like the moon; his
fingers, skinny and clawlike, dug deep into Luis's flesh to keep him from
twisting away.
And now Hotshot was bending forward, the eyes in that terrible face starting to
roll up into the head with greedy expectation.
Luis screamed a single word, the word that had carved itself into his brain as
if from a red-hot switchblade-"Vampiro!"
Above him Hotshot cackled and bent forward to his feast. The lower fangsnt
pierced flesh and hooked. Hotshot twisted his head a fraction to home in better
on r- the flaming river of life that flowed just beneath Luis's chin. Luis's
hands came up to push Hotshot's head away, but they moved too late with too
little strength. When the V of Hotshot's fangs came down, blood spurted across
his face. He blinked, shifted his position again, and as if from a great
distance Luis heard his blood being sucked, the sound like someone sucking
Coca-Cola through a straw or sniffing fine cocaine from a golden spoon. Luis's
hands fluttered, one finger digging into the corner of Hotshot's eye. Instantly
he heard a voice in his brain, something dreamy and soft-Lie still, little
brother. Lie very still. Luis's hands fell to the floor like dead birds.
He was beginning to feel cold, really cold, but where Hotshot's lips were
pressed against his flesh, an inferno raged. He lay very still while the arctic
cold crept through his veins, inch by merciless inch. Winds were rising in his
head, deafening him with their shriek. And by the time his jugular vein
collapsed, as flat as a gutted worm, Luis was fast asleep.
Gradually the hideous sucking noises that echoed through the many rooms were
quiet. But in a few minutes they were replaced by another noise-the sound of
bodies being dragged across the floors.
NINE
Roach-much younger, but with an agonized madness already fermenting in his
brain-pushed open the door.
In the small bedroom, with its mustard-yellow wallpaper and acrid smells of
tobacco smoke and sweat, another stranger was astride his mother, riding her
roughly with flesh-smacking thrusts. The man's buttocks and thighs tensed and
untensed like the action of a mindless machine. Bev's hands gripped his
shoulders, and the man's broad back was gridded with scratches. The bed
trembled, springs squealing beneath their combined weight.
122
There was an empty whiskey bottle at the foot of the bed. Roach moved into the
room, bent, and picked it up. He could see Bev's face-blank, drunken, bloated.
She seemed to be looking right at him, her eyes lascivious and brimming with
invitation. His groin was throbbing that hateful bass drum beat of desire. He
lifted the bottle by the neck and stepped forward, already choosing the spot he
would strike. As the bottle came down, he heard Bev scream, "NO!" And then it
had crashed down not upon the stranger's darkhaired skull but across his right
shoulder because he'd twisted with the scream. The bottle broke across a
shoulder blade, jagged edges digging into the flesh. The man shrieked, "Goddamn
it, you crazy little bas-" and then struck out with the back of his hand,
hitting the boy across the nose and dropping him to the floor. Roach, blood
stringing from his nostrils, scrabbled to his feet and, whining like an animal,
rushed forward. The bottle was forgotten now, he was going to kill this man with
his hands. The stranger twisted off Bev and drove a solid blow to the boy's chin
that lifted him off his feet and then down again like a heap of laundry. "You
stay away from me!" the stranger shouted, bending quickly to retrieve the broken
bottle. "You stay away or I swear to God I'll kill you!"
Roach started forward again, his beady black eyes as dead as marbles, but then
Bev shifted in the bed, and he stopped. Her thighs were exposed, and between
them her sex glistened like a gateway to all the pleasures he'd ever imagined in
his tortured dreams. He turned toward her, the stranger forgotten now, and
approached the bed on trembling legs. Bev's face flushed red. She closed her
thighs and pulled the sheet up to her neck. Her son stood at the foot of the bed
transfixed, his hand moving in slow circles at his crotch.
"My God," the stranger whispered, droplets of blood tapping to the floor. "My
God . . . how long . . . has this been going on . . .?"
"It's not what you think, Ralph!" she said, avoiding her son's languid gaze.
"Please . . .!"
"You . . . and him?" The stranger's eyes moved back and forth between them.
"Your own son?"
"Not long, Ralph ... I swear to God, not long!"
He saw it all then. "You . . . you like it, don't you? Jesus! You like it with
your own son?"
And suddenly it all came bursting out of her before she could stop it, the anger
and fear and black guilt that was her legacy to her son. "YES, I LIKE IT!" she
shrieked. "I like it when he touches me! Don't you dare look at me like that...
get out of here! GO ON! GET OUT!"
The man was already struggling into his pants. He grabbed his shirt from the
back of a chair and shrugged it on over his injured shoulder.
Bev was screaming now, a high, drunken scream. "I'm glad we do it! He's more of
a man at thirteen than you'll ever be . . .!"
"Sure, sure," he said, working his shoes on. "You're both nuts, aren't you?
Christ, I knew he was off his rocker, but you, too?"
123
"GET OUT!"
The man paused at the doorway, fumbling with his wallet, and flung a few bills
at her. They spun like dead leaves at the boy's feet. "Maybe they'll give you
the same room at the nut house," he said, and whirled out. A door opened and
closed, and then there was silence but for Bev's harsh breathing. She stared at
her son, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. "It don't matter," she said
softly. "Not a bit. We've got each other, don't we? We'll always have each
other. They don't understand how bad it is to be alone, do they, Waltie? Nothing
matters. Come on. Hurry."
And he did.s „
The bedroom and Bev and the mustard-colored walls rippled like a pond into««*
which a stone has been tossed. The ripples strengthened, moved faster and
faster, Q^ and suddenly the whole scene vanished as if it had been sucked to the
dark depths ^y1 of a whirlpool. fy
Roach rubbed his eyes and sat up in bed in his dark apartment. It was still
very^ dark outside, and somewhere jukebox music was playing. He could hear the
black »^j cockroaches scrabbling in their glass tanks. He stood up and went to
the window, „**., looking down on Coronado Street. Dreaming about his mother
made him nervous; ,«h « sweat had come up on his face. It made him angry, though
he couldn't exactly „,*[; figure why. Perhaps it was because he knew now how
much of a liar she was; she «,, had left him after all, and because she had,
they had sent him off to a place-the f^, Crazyhouse-where people laughed and
shrieked all the time, where he had to take '*" pills and drink a lot of water.
Something within him needed but hated that need. A When he found his mother, as
the Master had promised him he would someday, he * wouldn't have to fear going
back to the Crazyhouse again. Everything would be ]J'
all right.r;;
He walked across the room to the table on which sat the little tanks filled
withL*, roaches. Their backs glistened like black armor in the darkness. He
picked up a matchbook, struck a match, and held it to one of the tanks; the
roaches scrambled i away. When the flame died down to a red pinpoint, he could
hear them scurrying |'back over each other again.
Walter Benefield was dead now. His name was Roach, and it was a name he liked.
Ever since he'd gotten the job at Aladdin Exterminators four months before, he'd
been studying them in their death agonies when he sprayed Dursban or Diazanon in
cracks between floors and walls. Sometimes the roaches would flood out in a
strange kind of dance, flopping and running and falling as the chemical began to
drown them. Often there would be large black roaches, the bulls of the nest,
that would start to recover and scurry away; they were the ones he would catch
by hand and drop into a plastic bag to bring home for his experiments. He was
awed by their strength, by their sheer tenacity; very few things could kill a
massive three-inch bull. The Diazanon might make them crazy for a little while,
but without a good second spray they would recover. Even stomping on them
couldn't do it; they played dead for a few seconds and then zipped away with
their
124
guts hanging out, like relentless tanks. They were so fast, natural survivors
that had remained virtually the same for millions of years. Over the months he'd
burned them, tried to drown them in the toilet, tried to suffocate them, cooked
them in a pot of boiling water, and performed a dozen other experiments in
death. Very few things worked. It had just been luck that he'd had a bag of them
in his car the night he'd picked up that first girl. After she was dead, he
wondered whether the roaches would suffocate inside her mouth, and so he went to
work. They had, finally, and he'd been very pleased with himself. Doubly pleased
when he realized the papers were calling him Roach. It was an honor to him, and
so he continued doing it just for fun because the papers and the police seemed
to expect it.
Now when he saw himself in a mirror, it seemed he was beginning to look like
them. His shoulders were broad and slightly stooped, his hands and forearms as
muscular and large as steel clamps; he had the heavy, dark-browned forehead and
small black eyes that missed nothing. Once his hair had been black and curly,
but when he started working for Aladdin, he cut it very short, right against a
large, bulbous skull. Very small ears and jutting, bony elbows completed the
image he had of himself-that he was undergoing an evolutionary change, crossing
the line between man and insect, becoming stronger and smarter and almost
invincible, just like them.
He untaped a corner of the waxed paper that covered the top of one of the tanks
and reached down inside, grasping a roach between his thumb and forefinger. It
got away, and it took him a few more seconds to get another one. Then he pressed
the corner back so none of them could escape and, holding the squirming roach
inside his balled left hand, he turned on the lights. The overhead fixture, an
opaque umbrella of dirty glass, lit the room with a harsh glare that threw the
man's huge shadow out around him. He went to the stove, turned on the gas flame,
and dangled the roach over it. The insect scrabbled frantically at his fingers.
He had the power of life and death over it, just as he did over those girls who
were friends of Bev and who laughed at him when they thought he wasn't looking.
Oh, he knew how they laughed; he was much smarter than he let on. Some of them
he'd seen with Bev before, when he was just a kid and she used to walk the
street. They were her friends, and they were hiding her from him.
It used to be he could fix them with his hands and stop them from laughing; but
the Master had said that was a waste. The Master wanted them for himself, so
he'd told Roach that he should take poisons from where he worked-liquids and
powders-and use them on those girls to make them sleep for a while. Roach had
taken some of them-Sevin dust, V-1, Dursban, Diazanon and a few others-from the
stockroom at work late on Saturday night; he knew very little about them except
that Mr. Lathrup had warned him to wear his mask when he used them. So he did
just that when he mixed the chemicals in bottles on his stove. Then he tore up
an old towel and soaked the rags in the solution for a long time, pouring what
was left-an oily brown liquid-into an orange juice bottle which he stored under
his sink. The first time he used it was the next Tuesday night, and the Master
was
125 r*>
THEY THIRST
very angry at him because the girl was dead when they reached Blackwood Road.
After that he cut the mixture twice with water, and it worked just fine.
The roach caught fire. He watched it sizzle and then dropped it into the sink,
where it writhed and ran around in circles. He turned on the water, and the
roach spun down the drain, still kicking.
He looked up suddenly, his eyes glowing. He thought he'd heard a faint whisper
coming in through a crack in the window, filling the room. He stepped to the
window and put his palms against the glass, staring out into the darkness. He
listened, his head cocked to one side. The Master was going to need another one
tomorrow night. Now he wanted Roach to sleep, to forget all the bad things, to
think only of tomorrow and the new kingdom that was to be.#*
Roach pressed his forehead against the glass for a few minutes and then wentjit
to turn out the lights. When he was in bed again, he picked up his handgrips
from «t the floor beside him and began to squeeze them. Squeeze . . . hold . . .
release, J1'1 squeeze ... hold ... release: he would do that two hundred times
before he went to 'J1. sleep, and in the darkness the springs sounded like the
rubbing together of hungry I;, mandibles. »„,
126 r
127
V
„*
Monday, October 28
THE GRAVEDIGGER
<n,.» /
i,.
r
C
128 129
It was twelve minutes before three in the morning. Noel Alcavar had his feet
propped up on his desk, and beside him a transistor radio blared Latin disco
loud enough to wake the dead. No, not quite, Alcavar mused as he slid his gray
cap forward over his eyes. At least the stiffs out there weren't sitting up in
their graves yet, he thought. If they did, I'd kick 'em in their asses and send
'em back to hell. Ai-yi-yi, what a job this was! He closed his eyes and moved
one foot to the disco|" beat, trying to forget that there were about fifty
stiffs lying out in the darkness under huge gnarled trees filled with the green
drip of Spanish moss. j-
For the last five nights, Alcavar had been covering for his brother Freddie, who
held the dubious title of Head Watchman for the Rarnona Heights Cemetery in the
Highland Park district, dubious because Freddie Alcavar was the only real
full-time watchman, and he held rank over one skinny Chicano kid who was,„,
_i|i
mentally retarded but smart enough to play sick most of the time. And now
Freddie»
had been hit by a virus that kept him in the bed between dashes to the toilet,
and
the doctor had told him to stay home and rest. So Noel was helping out, playingr
loud disco so he could imagine that he was boogying with the foxes at the Disco
2000 on North Broadway. Freddie had told him he was supposed to take his
flash-j"."
light, leave the green-painted shelter, and stroll through the cemetery every
half-'"
hour or so. Noel had done it twice since he'd gotten here at ten, and that had
been"J.
enough to leave him with a lingering case of the chills. In every whisper of
wind he
thought he heard the icy tinkle of ghostly laughter, and every mound of grass
seemed to be pressing upward, about to split open for a skeletal hand covered
with
mold. This ain't a job for a young man, Noel had told himself as he hurried back
to
the shelter and turned the latch on the door. Bet old Freddie's fakin'. Bet he's
at
home laughin' his ass off right this minute!
If he hadn't felt sorry for Freddie because of the way his ex-wife had treated
him during the divorce, Noel would never have volunteered for this graveyard
shift. But as it was, he was going to be stuck with it until Freddie was back on
his feet, which might be another day or two. Noel shivered when he thought about
that and turned the radio a bit louder.
He was about to close his eyes again and drift into the spin of Disco 2000
dancers when he saw the two headlights right up against the front gate about
thirty yards away. Noel straightened up in his chair and peered out the window.
Now who the hell is that? he wondered. High school kids parkin, maybe? Doin'a
little drinkin' or dope-smokin'? No, they wouldn't have their lights shining
like that. He stood up, moving to the window. In the dim backwash of the lights,
he could see that it was a large vehicle, some kind of truck with markings on
it. The thing was just sitting
130
there, and now Noel could see a couple of shadowy figures moving alongside the
gate. One of them stopped and looked in through the bars. What is this? he asked
himself and quailed at the thought-Trouble? No way! He remembered what Freddie
had said just before he made a flying leap into the bathroom, "Is easy job,
Noel. No trouble, nobody bothers you. You jus' make your rounds and look like
you know what you're doing. Everything is okay. No trouble."
Now both figures were standing at the gate, peering through the bars; the
headlights made their shadows thin and gigantic on the cemetery drive. They
seemed to be waiting, taking their time. But suddenly one of them rattled the
gate, and Noel felt his stomach roil.
He took his flashlight from atop the desk, and went outside, the single thought,
no trouble, no trouble, repeating over and over like an incantation against
harm. He neared the gate, the headlights blinding him, put a hand over his eyes,
and switched on his own light. The large vehicle was a U-Haul truck, and the two
figures were kids younger than he, maybe in their late teens. One was a black
dude wearing a headband, the other was white with shoulder-length brown hair; he
was wearing a T-shirt that bore a cartoon, a Big Daddy Roth beach bum smoking a
bomber joint over the message King Kahuna Wants You! Noel moved uneasily toward
them and saw that they were both smiling. But their smiles hardly made him feel
better because their eyes were as cold as those of a dead fish. Noel stopped and
shone his light in their faces. "Cemetery's closed," he said stupidly.
"Yeah, amigo," the white one said. "We see that." He reached over, pulled at the
gate's padlock, and grinned. "You got the key to this?"
"No." The key was in his breast pocket, but he didn't want these two to know.
Somehow he didn't feel safe, not even with the gate between them.
"Yes you do," the black dude said very quietly, his gaze boring into Noel's
skull. "You got the key, don't you? Got it right . . . right in your pocket.
Yeah."
"No, I don't. I don't ... uh ... have ... a key ..."
"Open the gate." The black dude coiled his fingers around the bars. "Come on ...
Noel? Open the gate, Noel."
Noel shook his head. My name? How does . . . he . . . know . . . my name? He
thought he could hear the blood rushing through his head; he felt dizzy, weak,
confused. What would be the harm in opening the gate, anyway? he asked himself,
and a smaller voice shouted, You're not supposed to do that, no trouble, no
trouble ...
"Noel, we don't have much time, man. Step on over here . . ."
His right foot moved. He blinked, his brain full of disco thunder.
". . . Let us in, okay?"
For an instant he thought he was strutting on the Disco 2000 dance floor with
the foxiest chick there-Dianna Valeric maybe-and the mirrored ball at the
ceiling reflected a thousand different colors, all as electric-bright as
exploding novas. The music stopped with a quiet click!
"That's good, man," the black dude said as he stepped through the opening gate.
He gripped Noel's wrist with freezing fingers and took the key. "Who gets him?"
he asked the white boy.
131
"The new girl's thirsty," he replied, and they led Noel around the rear of the
truck, unlocked the door, and lifted him up. Noel's face was frozen with a
crazy, crooked grin, his heart about to beat its way through his chest. He
thought it was quitting time, six A.M., and he was on the way home. Made it
through another night, he told himself. Wasn't so bad.
"For the girl only," someone said.
The doors slammed shut behind him.
There were five or six people in the darkness, and one of them-a slender wraith
of a thing-took his hand. He felt like he'd stepped into a meat locker. Then
there were arms around him, enfolding him closer toward the heart of the chill.
Hev stumbled over something-a pickaxe-and then a freezing mouth kissed his lips,
*;* darting tongue forcing its way in; the mouth kissed his cheek, his chin, his
throat. I*
And became hideous."'',
In the darkness someone sighed and whimpered.{"
*,
The truck's engine rumbled to life, and it moved through the opened gate into
the Ramona Heights Cemetery while the boy in the Kahuna T-shirt stood watch on
the quiet street. Deep within the cemetery it stopped. The rear doors were
opened again, and now the figures came out-five of them because the girl was,f
filled and lazy-carrying shovels and pickaxes. They scattered out beneath the
trees and set to work on the graves, digging like well-oiled machines without
pause. When the first coffin was struck two others stopped their work to help;
they dug it free in less than a minute and heaved it out of the ragged hole.
Inside there was a skeleton in a black suit and yellowed shirt. The casket was
quickly turned over to dump out the bones, then shoved into the rear of the
U-Haul. There was a faint clang! as another coffin was struck. This one was
small, cradling the brittle bones of a child. The bones were spilled to the
ground and cracked underfoot like twigs as the coffin was loaded into the truck.
At the end of an hour almost thirty coffins were stacked in the rear of the
U-Haul. Mounds of dirt and scattered bones littered the cemetery, and the
clothes and faces of the exhumers were filthy. But still they worked on, until
finally the black with the headband straightened up from the empty hole below
him and said quietly, "Enough."
They returned their tools to the truck. The figures climbed in and the doors
were locked. The truck backed up across the bone-littered grass and turned
toward the gate, where the lookout was picked up. Then, gathering speed, the
truck pulled out of the cemetery and turned right along Aragon Avenue toward the
commercial district of L.A.
t
TWO
Gayle Clarke, squinting in the bright early-morning sunlight, pulled her red
Mustang into a public parking lot off Pico Boulevard and walked half a block to
a
132
small gray building that had been, in previous incarnations, a karate school, a
health club, a Zen Buddhist temple, and a Japanese grocery specializing in
varieties of kelp. Now the legend painted across the plateglass window in bold
blue scrolled letters said THE LOS ANGELES TATTLER. WE PRINT IT AS WE HEAR IT.
WE PRINT IT AS WE SEE IT. There was what looked like a prim virgin in a tacky
long dress beneath the words holding a flaming torch. The ethics of corn, Gayle
told herself as she went through the front door.
Inside, six desks were scattered across the room in various stages of disarray;
there were stacks of old copies of the Tattler and other newspapers and
magazines on the floor, a battery of dented file cabinets bought at a warehouse
fire sale, a bookcase crammed full of decaying dictionaries and reference books
either copped from the library or bought at flea markets. Across one wall was an
airbrushed mural left from the kelp store days-spouting whales, sea otters
playing happily in the kelp beds, the sun shining on a beach full of perfect,
healthy bodies. She hated that mural because every time she went on a binge of
Twinkies and Oreos, she had to come in on Monday morning and look at those
disgustingly healthy figures. Holly Fortunate, wearing her usual skintight black
dress, looked up from the reception desk which was about ten feet away from the
closed door with the plaque that read, Harry Tracy, Editor. She smiled. "Hi,
Gayle. Have a goooood weekend?"
"Same as usual," Gayle said tonelessly, ready for the next line in the ritual.
"I had me a kinky weekend," Holly breathed. She was wearing glittery eye shadow,
and her breasts heaved like black melons. "Kay-ink-key! I was just telling Max .
. ."
"Hi, Max," Gayle said to the studious-looking young man at the nearest desk. He
looked up from his typewriter and smiled, the braces on his teeth showing. Then
he went back to work without a word, and Gayle sat down at her own desk in the
back beneath the precariously leaning bookcase. She hung her purse over the back
of her chair and began straightening a morass of papers and magazines so she
could have a clear shot at her typewriter, an old gray Royal with a mind of its
own, usually malevolent.
"I met this guy at a party down at Marina Del Rey," Holly was saying. "And you
know what? He was a director. He did a movie a year ago called Free 'n Easy . .
."
"Sounds like porno," Gayle said.
"Oh, no! It was about a couple who meet in a nudist camp!"
"That's what I said," Gayle replied. "Porno." She crossed the room and poured
herself a cup of coffee. She could hear Trace muttering through the tissue-thin
wall.
"Anyway, it had a limited release, but he said he was working on another one,
and he'd like for me to . . ."
Gayle tuned her out and nodded whenever she felt she should. In the meantime
Bonita Carlin, a thin girl with crimped red hair who favored punk outfits and
covered what she called "the world of rock 'n roollll," came in carrying an
armload of Rolling Stones, and immediately Holly began at the beginning with
"Hi, 'Nita. Have a goooood weekend?"
133
"Shitty," Bonita said.
Gayle sipped her coffee and checked the assignment board. Beneath each name
printed with a Flair pen on pieces of colored cardboard were index cards with
the details of their stories for the week. She glanced over each one in turn to
get an idea for what next week's Tattler was featuring: "Biology professor at
UCLA-Dr. Peter Willingham-says eating eggs can cause sterility. Call 555-4949
ext. 7"; "Rod Stewart-Do married blonds have more fun?"; "Could Kim Novak cop
this year's Oscar for Best Supporting? Her agent wants to talk"; "CHiPs may be
Dips-motorist group charges Highway Patrol with reckless driving. Call Mrs.
Jordan, 555-7008."
Oh God, Gayle thought as she came to her own name. There were four words%
scribbled on her card, "See me. HOT! Trace." **J|>
She drank down half of her coffee before she knocked at his door. "In!" theI,,
voice behind the door said. 'nt 'i
Trace was on the phone; he waved at her to close the door and sit in a chairf'|
next to his desk. A fresh copy of this week's Tattler lay open before him.
"Okay, * , Warren, okay!" he was saying. "So I ruffled some big money birds with
the story. So „,",' what? I mean, if the Tattler can't print the truth, who
can?" He paused, his high <*,.. forehead wrinkled; he was in his early forties,
a hippie who'd never quite outgrown * the life-style. He was almost bald except
for the wild tufts of graying hair that stuck „';',' out from the sides of his
head, and his thick-lensed glasses had slipped down on his »,,, severely hooked
nose. As he listened, he unscrewed a bottle of vitamin C and {.): popped down a
couple of orange pills, then offered some to Gayle, who shook her head. r
"Fine," he said. "Warren, I don't give a shit! Those guys have built a condo
that's going to go sliding into the Pacific the next time the San Andreas fault
even/ thinks about moving! What are they going to do, sue the earth?" He
listened again, his face beginning to redden. "It's structurally unsound, the
engineering reports prove it! And I don't care if some people are moving out of
their condos. Jesus, they should move out before the next quake hits! And
everybody-all the national psychics-are predicting The Big One within five
years! So let 'em get out while they can! Listen, Warren, I've got to go, I've
got a paper to put out." He paused, his lips working, but no sound coming out.
"What do you mean by that remark? My people can write rings around the Talking
Leaf!" He slammed down the receiver so hard his desk trembled. "Wait a minute,
Gayle," he said, and began to breathe rhythmically. "Negative air floating
around here. That was my silent partner, not so silent today." He shrugged and
pushed the paper across to her. "Seen this yet? The front page is a grabber!"
She turned the paper around and opened it. There was one of Jack's photos of the
skeletons at Hollywood Memorial; the picture took up the entire page and was
bordered with red spot color. Above it, also in red, the headline screamed, WHO
IS THE GRAVEDIGGER? Beneath that in much smaller print, "See Gayle Clarke's
shocking story, page three."
"The . . . Gravedigger?" Gayle said quietly, a knot of tension growing in her
133
i ' i
134
stomach. "Trace. What's this . . . this Gravedigger bullshit?"
"It's not bullshit," Trace said, looking genuinely hurt. "I thought the buildup
would please you. Listen, the Gravedigger's going to knock Roach out of every
paper in this town!"
"The Gravedigger," Gayle repeated, not believing what she was seeing. She felt
like crawling into one of those ragged holes in Jack's photo. "Trace, I don't
think the story merits a push like this. Okay, I admit it's a weird item. I
don't think anything like it has ever happened before, at least not in L.A., but
what's the bogeyman angle? I didn't imply anything like this in my piece."
"Roach is old news. The guy's gone underground. He's all used up. You know what
sells papers, Gayle? Evil. That's right. People pick up a magazine or a tabloid
or even the Times looking for evil, for something to blame for all the misery in
their lives. And most of all they want a villain, a Nixon or a Dracula or a
Hillside Strangler. The Roach has disappeared, so we've simply given the people
what they want-another villain. And we can build this thing, Gayle, God can we
ever! The Gravedigger, creeping through cemeteries in the dead of night, digging
up coffins and scattering the bones . . ."
"Please," Gayle said, and shivered. "I was there, remember?" She felt sick to
her stomach, as if she'd had another whiff of the reek of rot in the hot, lazy
sunshine. "The cops say it must've either been a death cult or kids on drugs,
and that's what my story says, too. So how can we say anything that may be
untrue?"
"Ah. You don't read your own copy, do you? Look at page three."
A surge of panic rushed through her. She opened the paper and saw a red-
bordered box right in the middle of her story surrounded by more of Jack's
gruesome photos. The headline of the story read, "Did The Gravedigger Visit
Resurrection Cemetery?" "What is this?" Gayle said, her voice trembling between
horror and fury.
"You think I don't have contacts, too? I got interested in this thing and made a
few phone calls over the weekend. The same thing that happened in Hollywood
Memorial happened at Hope Hill and at Resurrection. Missing caskets and
everything." He shrugged. "Friend of mine on the force owes me a favor, so I
collected. I went over to the printer's Saturday night and typed the story right
there."
Gayle quickly read through the article. It was written terribly but got its
message across: Resurrection Cemetery had been vandalized in exactly the same
manner a little more than a week ago. "So you see?" Trace said, lifting one
eyebrow. "The Gravedigger makes the Roach look like an amateur, at least in the
chills department."
"Christ." Gayle put the paper back down on his desk and looked at him in numb
astonishment. "What's going on?"
"You're going to tell me. I want you to forget about old Roachie and concentrate
on the Gravedigger. Maybe he struck somewhere else before he ripped through
Resurrection, maybe he's done another job since Hollywood Memorial. I want as
much as you can get, and I want it complete by Thursday afternoon. Can you
handle it?"
135
"Trace, it can't be just one guy! Nobody could rip up a cemetery like that
alone!"
"Maybe he's strong. Maybe he drives around in a custom-built bulldozer, who
knows? Anyway, narrowing the angle to one weirdo sells more papers. Evil, babe,
evil!" He caught the flicker of hesitation across her face. "Now what's wrong?"
"I'm so into the Roach thing, I... Trace, I don't think I should leave it just
yet. I think it's way too early to write him off. Why not let Sandy take care of
this?"
"Look," he insisted. "Nobody's seen the Gravedigger, and anyway you're about
three times the writer Sandy is. Now go. Get started!"
Gayle reluctantly stood up. She said, "I'd like to stay with-"»s
"The Gravedigger. Out!">>
It1 M *
She moved toward the door, unable to believe this wild turn of events. HerL,,,,
head was throbbing, her stomach roiled, she felt sick to her very soul. This is
bullshit! she told herself. The Roach is really important. Doubly important when
you think about my career. But this is ... bullshit!
"Wait a minute," Trace said as she turned to go. "Have you seen Kidd? I need him
to get some shots of Miss California Redwoods this afternoon."
"No, not lately. We went to a Joan Baez concert Saturday night, but I didn't see
him all day yesterday. He may have gone out to see the Greenpeace people."
Trace grunted. "That guy's spreading himself a little thin, isn't he? Listen,
will you try his number for me when you get a minute? I really need him to come
in early and set up the shot."
She nodded, still in a daze, and left his office. Outside, Holly Fortunato was
telling the sportswriter, Bill Hale, about the wide variety of whips her
director friend kept in his closet. Gayle sat down at her desk, shuffled papers,
and tried to think how she could get out of the story Trace wanted. Still, three
cemeteries vandalized-no, not just vandalized, ripped to shreds-in less than two
weeks. Possibly more. Who could she call to find out? She jotted down the names
of several police force antivandalism squad members she knew. She thought Davis
Tortirici was the captain of that squad, but she wasn't quite sure.
But there was something else bugging her that hadn't surfaced until Trace had
pointed it out-where was Jack? He'd said he was going to splurge and take her to
dinner at the Mandarin on Sunday night, but he'd never called. She'd spent her
evening drinking white wine and reading a nasty little book called Bethany's
Sin, which she'd tossed away in boredom after the fourth chapter. She wanted to
be with Jack, really needed to be with him, and she'd dialed his number three or
four times during the course of the night. Each time the phone had rung at least
ten times before she'd put the receiver down.
So where was he?
What am I? she asked herself. A mother hen? But then her hand was reaching out,
and she was gripping the telephone beside her. She dialed Jack's apartment again
and let it ring.
No answer.
136
There were a dozen different places Jack could be; she'd gotten used to the fact
that the only consistent thing about Jack Kidd was his inconsistency. That was
due to his chart, he'd told her proudly, double Gemini.
She hung up the phone and wasted a few minutes making herself another cup of
coffee, then wandered over to where Kenny Morrow was pounding out his health
hints column. This week his column opened up with a letter from a Sacramento
reader who thought the government was controlling his sex desires through the
rays from his color TV. She was looking over Kenny's shoulder when her telephone
rang, and she hurried back to answer it, thinking Jack might be calling in.
"Gayle?" the man on the other end said. "This is Tom Chapman from the Times.
Remember? We met at Palatazin's last press conference?"
"Oh, sure." She faintly recalled the guy-stout and balding, wearing a brown
checked coat. "How are you, Tom?"
"Fine. Better since I ... uh ... picked up your paper and saw your piece on that
cemetery business. I got quite a kick out of that. Who came up with the
'Gravedigger' angle?"
"My editor."
"T^hat was great. Really sell some papers that way-"
"Can I help you, Tom?" she interrupted because the sarcasm in his voice was
beginning to irritate the shit out of her.
"Huh? Oh, listen, don't get sore. I was just kidding. No, I thought I'd call to
help you. Us journalists have to stick together, right?" He paused for a few
seconds. Gayle was silent, her anger simmering at a low boil. "Our story's
already out on the streets, so I thought I'd pass the information along to you.
We just ran a few graphs on page eleven, but maybe you can-"
"Tom . . ."
"Okay, okay. Somebody dug up Ramona Heights Cemetery over in Highland Park last
night. Stole about twenty or twenty-five coffins, left the stiffs scattered to
hell and back. The watchman, guy by the name of ... hold on, I'm looking in the
paper . . . Alcavar, is now on the missing persons list. The Highland Park cops
are checking out some tread marks they found in the grass. It seems the
Gravedigger drives around in a large truck. Now don't say I never gave you
anything."
Gayle had started scribbling on a notepad. What the hell is going on? she
wondered. For the first time a spark of real curiosity crackled inside. "Do you
have Alcavar's first name and address?"
"Noel. Got his brother's address from the cops-he's the regular watchman- 909
Costa Mesa Avenue in Highland Park. What are you thinking, that Alcavar loaded
up those coffins himself? Why?"
"I'm not thinking anything. I'm just looking for a starting point. Thanks for
calling, Tom. Incidentally, this doesn't mean I'm finished with the Roach."
"Yeah, I hear you've been sneaking in to see Palatazin when the rest of us had
our backs turned. Well, any way you can get it, I guess. Uh . . . listen, Gayle,
you remember I told you about the situation with my wife? I've moved out of the
137
house, sort of a free bird now. How about having dinner with me tonight? I've
got a Playboy Club key, and you can take a look at my new apartment and tell me
what it needs . . ."
"Tonight? Uh . . . no, Tom, afraid I can't . . ."
"Tomorrow night then?"
"My editor's calling me, Tom. I'll talk to you later. And thanks a bunch for the
informaton. Bye-bye." She hung up the phone and read over her scribbled notes.
Ramona Heights? That made four cemeteries vandalized in less than two weeks?
What kind of freaks would do something like that? Death cultists, satanists,
what? The term Gravedigger, repellent only a few minutes before, now chilled
her. She^ put her notepad and a couple of Bic pens in her purse and hurriedly
left the office, i(*J1 bound for the Ramona Heights Cemetery. 1L (
THREE
Police Commissioner McBride sat at the far end of the conference room's polished
oak table reading Palatazin's progress report on the Roach investigation. Every
few minutes he grunted, and when he did, Chief of Detectives Garnette glanced
across the table at Palatazin with a look that said it all-You'd better hope
he's in a gracious mood, Andy, because there is nothing concrete in that report.
Palatazin was well aware of the fact. He'd come in before seven that morning to
finish typing the report and felt ashamed when he'd taken it to Garnette for a
first reading. There was nothing in it but speculation, vague theories, and
leads that went nowhere. He'd included the information from Amy Hulsett and
Lizz/ Connors toward the end, and detailed the work Sully Reece and his team
were j doing to track down the gray Volkswagen, but even that looked woefully
ineffectual I on paper.
McBride glanced quickly up at Palatazin and turned a page. From where Palatazin
was sitting, McBride was bracketed by an American flag and the California state
flag, and golden sunlight seeped through the Venetian blinds at his back. There
were dark circles beneath Palatazin's eyes, and as he lit his pipe for the
fourth time during the conference, his hand was trembling slightly. His night
had been terrible, his dreams filled with shambling horrors coming for him out a
snowstorm, creeping nearer and nearer out of the windswept pines that circled
him. He had seen their burning eyes, their mouths slashed like grinning sickles,
and in those mouths the terrible, unholy teeth. And just when they were about to
claim him, his mother had appeared, floating over the snow, and gripped his
hand. Run, she'd whispered. Run, Andre! But he had left Jo waiting in a cabin,
and he had to get back to her, but that meant running the gauntlet of the
grinning terrors. I wont leave you, his mother had said, and at that instant the
things had snapped at Palatazin's throat.
He had awakened cold with sweat, and this morning over breakfast Jo had
'*
138
wanted to know what he'd been dreaming about. Palatazin told her the Roach; he
wasn't ready to tell the truth yet.
At the end of the table, McBride closed the report and pushed it aside. Over the
rim of his coffee cup, he looked from Garnette to Palatazin, his eyes stunned
for an instant by the bright green striped tie Palatazin wore with a light brown
coat. He put the cup down and said, "This isn't enough. In fact, it's little
more than nothing. The Times is applying some pressure for a public progress
statement. If I used this report as .my basis, they'd be printing thin air. So
what's the problem?" His icy blue eyes flared. "We have the best police force in
this entire country! Why can't we find one man? Captain, you've had over two
weeks to work on this thing with the entire force from helicopters to beat cops
at your disposal. Why haven't you turned up anything more concrete than this?"
"Sir," Palatazin said, "I think we're making some progress. The artist's
composite was printed on the front page of the Times this morning, and it'll be
carried by the afternoon newspapers as well. We'll get it to the television
stations in time for the afternoon and evening newscasts. Also there's the
matter of the Volkswagen . . ."
"Slim, Palatazin," the commissioner said. "Awfully damned slim."
"I agree, sir, but it's more of a lead than we had before. The women-the street
prostitutes-are wary of being seen talking to the police officers. They're
frightened of the Roach, but they don't trust us either. And that's how we're
going to find the man, sir, through them. My men are working on finding a
Volkswagen with a two, a seven, and a T' in the license number . . ."
"I suspect there may be several hundred," McBride said.
"Yes, sir, there will be. Possibly a thousand or more. But you have to agree it
is a lead that merits investigation."
"I want names, captain, names and addresses. I want suspects in for
interrogation. I want surveillances. I want that man caught."
"We all do, commissioner," Garnette said quietly. "And you know Captain
Palatazin has been interrogating suspects daily and carrying out some
surveillances as well. It's just that . . . well, sir, the Roach seems to have
gone underground. Maybe he's left the city. Catching a hit-and-run killer like
this, a psychotic without motive, is the toughest job there is . . ."
"Spare me, please," McBride answered. "I don't want to hear any confessions." He
returned his gaze to Palatazin, who was trying unsuccessfully to light his pipe
again. "You're telling me that this Volkswagen license plate is the only real
lead you've got, is that it?"
"Yes, sir, I'm afraid so."
McBride sighed loudly and folded his hands in front of him. "I don't want this
thing to turn into another Hillside Strangler case, captain. I want this man-or
men-caught quickly so we don't get our asses kicked by the public and the press.
Not to mention the fact that as long as this bastard remains unidentified,
someday we're going to stumble over another hooker's corpse. I want him canned,
do you
139
understand me? And I want him canned fast!" He took the report and slid it down
the table to Palatazin. "If you can't find him, captain, I'll put someone in
charge who can. All right? Now both of you get back to work."
As they waited for the elevator in the hallway outside the conference room,
Garnette said, "Well, Andy, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be."
"It wasn't? I was fooled then." His pipe had gone stone cold, so he shoved it in
his pocket.
Garnette looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "You look tired, Andy. Worn
out. Everything okay at home?"
"At home? Yes. Why?"
"You got a problem, you can tell me about it. I don't mind."„!>«
"No, there's no problem. Except the Roach."Q'
"Uh-huh." Garnette was silent for a moment, watching the numbers advancenrY
"'" In
above the elevator door. "You know, something like this could strain even
thef*>.- strongest ox of a guy. It's a hell of a responsibility. I'll tell you,
Andy, you look like '* you haven't slept for two days. You . . . hell, you
didn't even shave this morning, J™ did you?" 2
Palatazin ran a hand across his chin and felt stubble. He couldn't remember if*
. he'd shaved or not. No, he decided, he probably hadn't. j*'"
"I understand that your men are also beginning to see changes in you." The
elevator arrived, and they stepped in. It began to descend. "That's not good.
Itf".^ weakens your leadership position." "
Palatazin smiled grimly. "I think I know who you've been talking to. Officer"I*.
Brasher, possibly? He's a lazy bum. And Zeitvogel? Who else?" '*' '
Garnette shrugged. "Talk gets around. You haven't been yourself for the past*,^
few days . . ." ""
"And so people have started pointing their fingers, have they? Well. It didn'tr
, take as long as I thought." " V,
"Please, Andy, don't get me wrong. I'm talking as an old friend now, okay? Just,
., what were you getting at when you called Kirkland at Hollywood Division and i
requested a stakeout on a cemetery, for God's sake?"
"Oh," Palatazin said softly. "I see."
The elevator opened on a wide corridor floored with green linoleum. They stepped
out and walked toward the homicide squad room, beyond two frosted-glass doors.
"Well?" Garnette said. "What about it?"
Palatazin turned to face him. His eyes were dark holes in his pale face. "It has
to do with the vandalism over there . . ."
"I thought as much. But that's not your problem or your detail. Let the anti-
vandalism squad over in Hollywood mop it up. You stick to homicide."
"Let me finish," Palatazin said, and in his voice there was a tremble that made
Garnette think, Andy's about to crack. "You have to know that where I was born,
in Hungary, people think differently about . . . many things than they do in
this country. I'm an American now, but I still think like a Hungarian. I still
believe in the
140
things that Hungarians believe. Call them superstitions or old wives' tales or
whatever, but I accept them as the truth."
Garnette's eyes narrowed. "I don't understand."
"We have different beliefs about . . . life and death, about things that you
would consider material for movies or bad paperback books. We think that not all
is explicable by the law of God because the devil has laws of his own."
"You talking about spirits? Ghosts? You mean you wanted Hollywood Division to
stake out some ghosts?" Garnette almost laughed but didn't because the other
man's face was so deadly serious. "Come on, is this a joke? What have you got,
Halloween fever?"
"No, I'm not talking about spirits," Palatazin said. "And it is not a joke
either. Fever, perhaps, but my fever is called fear, and it's beginning to burn
me up inside."
"Andy . . ." Garnette said quietly. "You can't really be serious ... are you?"
"I have work to do now. Thank you for listening." And before Garnette could stop
him, Palatazin had gone through the doors into the squad room. Garnette stood in
the corridor for a moment, scratching his head. What was wrong with that crazy
old Hungarian? he thought. Now he's going to have us running around after spooks
in cemeteries? Jesus! A darker thought stirred sluggishly in his brain. Is the
pressure making Andy unfit for duty? God, he thought. I hope I don't have to ...
do anything drastic.
And then he turned away from the doors and made his way to his own office
farther down the corridor.
FOUR
The intercom on Paige LaSanda's desk crackled to life, "Miss LaSanda, there's a
Phillip Falco here to see you."
Paige, a stunning ash-blond woman in her early forties, looked up from a report
on a piece of industrial property she was interested in purchasing on Slauson
Avenue and pressed the Speak button. "He doesn't have an appointment, does he,
Carol?"
There were a few seconds of silence. Then, "No, ma'am. But he says it concerns
money owed to you."
"Mr. Falco can make his payments to you, dear." She returned to the report. The
property looked promising; it was underdeveloped and could support a larger
factory than the one now on it, but the asking price might be a bit too . . .
"Miss LaSanda?" the intercom voice said. "Mr. Falco wants to see you
personally."
"When and who is my next appointment?"
"Eleven-thirty. Mr. Doheny from the Crocker Bank."
Paige glanced at her diamond-studded Tiffany wristwatch. Five after eleven. "All
right," she said, "send Mr. Falco in."
141
After another moment the door opened, and Carol ushered Falco-a gaunt man with
long white hair and deep-set eyes-into the office. For a few seconds Falco stood
at the center of the huge room, seemingly awed by its sumptuous furnishings,
though he'd been to this office twice before. Behind her glass-topped mahogany
desk Paige said, "Please sit down, Mr. Falco," and motioned toward a brown
leather chair.
Falco nodded and took his seat. In his rumpled brown pinstripe suit, he looked
like little more than a cadaver, his flesh pale to the shade of gray, his wrists
jutting from the coat sleeves. On a table beside him a burst of bright red roses
made him look duller still. His eyes were never at rest; they moved across
Paige's desk, acrosss her face, the broad picture window that looked out over
Wilshire Boulevard, to his «*"""
I!1 "uM
own hands in his lap, back to her desk, and then to her face again.1,,4W
'* <IH»«
»*»
Paige held up a carved Dunhill cigarette case of lustrous black wood, and
Falco"ii;;^ took three cigarettes without apology, putting two in the breast
pocket of his coat jj'"Y' and lighting the third from the lighter flame Paige
offered. "Thank you," he said |*y' softly, and leaned back in his chair, smoke
dribbling from his nostrils. "These are European cigarettes, are they not?"
"Balkan tobacco," Paige said.
"One can tell immediately. American brands are so dry and tasteless. These
remind me so much of a brand sold in Budapest . . ."
"Mr. Falco, I presume you've brought me a check today?"I.,),.
"What? Oh, of course. The check." He rummaged in an inside coat pocket and
brought out a sealed and folded envelope. This he slid across the desk to
Paige,<^ who instantly used a twenty-four-carat-gold letter opener on it. The
check was written against a Swiss bank account and signed by a smooth, graceful
hand- ^1' Conrad Vulkan.
"That's fine," she said, eyeing the amount with mental glee. "How long should.».
this take to clear?" " ;;[..
"A week at most," he answered. "Prince Vulkan plans to transfer a largei -h
amount to a local bank shortly. Do you have any suggestions?" T
"I suppose the Crocker Bank's the most convenient. One of their vice- presidents
is coming in at eleven-thirty. You might speak to him about it."
"There's something else in the envelope, Miss LaSanda," Falco said.
"Oh?" She opened it wider and turned it upside down. A small white card fell
out; it was engraved with the words Requesting The Pleasure Of Your Company
-Prince Conrad Vulkan. "What's this?"
"As it says. I've been instructed to invite you to dine with Prince Vulkan at
eight o'clock tomorrow evening if that's convenient for you."
"Where?"
"Why, the castle, of course."
"The castle? Then I take it you've somehow convinced the power company to repair
the lines running up there? That's more than I could ever do."
"No." Falco smiled slightly, but it was a smile of the mouth; the eyes remained
142
vacant and faintly troubled. "We have no power yet."
"What's your prince going to do then, have something catered? I'm afraid I'm
going to have to say-"
"Prince Vulkan is very interested in meeting you," Falco said softly. "He
assumed the reverse would be true as well."
Paige regarded the man for a moment-sad-looking guy, she thought, doesn't he
ever see the sun?-and then lit a cigarette of her own, placing it in a long
black holder with a gold band. "I'll be honest with you, Mr. Falco," she said
finally. "When you came to me in September, wanting to rent these pieces of
property, telling me you represented Hungarian royalty, I was highly skeptical.
Before the deal was signed, I made a few transatlantic telephone calls. I could
find no one in the present Hungarian government who knew anything about a Prince
Vulkan. So I was ready to pull out, until you made your first payment in cash. I
may not trust very many people, but I do trust the dollar, Mr. Falco. My last
husband left me with that philosophy. Yes, I am interested in meeting your
Prince Vulkan ... if indeed he is a prince."
"He is. Most definitely."
"Of a country that doesn't even recognize his existence? I don't think I'd be
out of line if I asked where he gets his funds from, do you?"
"Family money," Falco said. "He's currently involved in selling some pieces from
his very old and valuable art collection."
"I see." Paige ran a fingernail over the raised lettering on the invitation. She
recalled what a Hungarian official had told her during the last of her overseas
calls, "Miss LaSanda, we have found a Conrad Vulkan mentioned in a fragment of
Magyar history dated around 1342, but that would hardly be the gentleman you're
seeking. This Prince Vulkan was the last of a long line of pretenders to the
throne of the northern provinces. His carriage went off a mountain road when he
was just seventeen, and it was assumed that wolves ate his body. As for someone
passing himself off as Hungarian royalty, that's a different story indeed. We
would hate for the name of our government to be involved in any . . . shall we
say, unsavory practices?"
"For a man of royal tastes," Paige said to Falco, "this Prince Vulkan doesn't
seem to care very much about his living conditions, does he?"
"The castle suits him perfectly," Falco replied, crushing out his cigarette in
an onyx ashtray at his side. "He lives now approximately the same way he lived
in Hungary. He needs no luxuries, no conveniences of a modern world. He's never
used a telephone and never plans to. For light there are always candles, aren't
there?"
"And he used the fireplaces for heat?"
"That's right."
"Well, I've sold and rented both houses and commercial property to all kinds of
people, but I'll have to say that your Prince Vulkan is quite a unique
individual." She drew on her cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling. "I
bought that old
143
place for a song. At the time the Hilton people were thinking about converting
it into a hotel, but the plans fell through for one reason or another . . ."
"The castle is built on unstable rock," Falco said quietly. "Prince Vulkan has
told me he can feel the walls vibrate from time to time."
"Oh, really?" Paige's cheeks reddened a bit; of course, she'd already known that
fact from the Hilton surveyors. "Well, it's stood for over forty years, and I'm
confident it'll stand for another forty. At least." She cleared her throat and
felt the old man's stare fixed to her. "But Prince Vulkan isn't involved in
local commerce is he?"
"No."
"X,
"Then why did you want those warehouses? Of course, it's none of my business. As
long as he pays the rent, I don't care what he stores in there, but. . ."J^>
Falco nodded. "I understand your curiosity, and so does Prince Vulkan. I
would![ti*'j£' therefore suggest that you accept this invitation. All will be
explained." mrf
"I've never met a prince before," Paige said thoughtfully. "A couple of sheikhsf
\\r and some rock stars, yes, but not a prince. Or an ex-prince either for that
matter. ,|"1S< How old is he?" I,;,;!;!
"Old enough to be wise, young enough to have ambitions.",11-HJ
"Interesting. Eight o'clock?" She picked up the card again and looked at it,* ^
then looked at the signature on the check. "I have a previous engagement for
J^jl tomorrow night, but I suppose I could break it this once. Well, what the
hell? I've ,,,,^11 never had dinner in a drafty old castle before. Tell him I'd
be honored to have J'J dinner with him." '""")
"Very good." Falco rose to his feet and moved unsteadily toward the door. He^
put his hand on the knob and paused, standing still for a few seconds.
"Anything else?" Paige asked.^;
Falco's spine seemed to stiffen. Very slowly he turned to face her, and now
hisr"^' eyes had retreated so far back in his creased, weary face that they
seemed no more «* ««than small black circles somewhere at the brain. "I've
spoken for Prince Vulkan/' he ;;;'' said in a soft, tired voice. "Now I'll speak
for myself, and God help me. Turn down ,:^f the invitation, Miss LaSanda. Keep
your previous engagement. Do not come up that mountain to the castle."
"What?" Paige smiled uncertainly. "I've said I'll come. There's no need to twist
the knife of suspense . . ."
"I mean what I say." He paused, staring straight at her so intensely Paige felt
a chill run up her spine. "Now, what reply shall I take to the prince?"
"Uh . . . I'll come. I guess."
Falco nodded. "I'll tell him. Good day, Miss LaSanda."
"Good ... uh ... good day."
And then Falco had slipped through the door and was gone.
"Now, what in the name of Christ was that all about?" she asked herself. She
held up the check-I hope this bastard's good, she thought grimly-and looked at
the signature, trying to envision the man through it. The lines were thin and
elegant, and under the name there was a looped, intricate flourish that reminded
144
her of the signatures on old faded, yellowed documents. Probably used a quill on
this, too, she thought, no Bics or Mark Cross for the prince. He would, of
course, be dark, very tall, and as thin as a drawn rapier, he would be in his
late forties or early fifties, and he probably had a list of ex-wives as long as
Wilshire Boulevard. That's probably why he came to the States-to get out of
alimony payments. She wondered what to wear-her sensible gray business outfit?
Her sleek and sexy black dress? She decided to run over to Bonwit Teller during
her lunch hour and check out the display windows.
The intercom crackled. "Mr. Doheny is here, Miss LaSanda." "Thank you, Carol.
Send him right in." She folded the check and, smiling dreamily, tucked it away
in a drawer.
FIVE
A bloodred Chrysler Imperial with a foxtail tied to the radio antenna pulled
smoothly to the curb of Machado Street in East L.A., three blocks from the
Santos's apartment building on Dos Terros. From the car a young black man
wearing sunglasses and a pale blue suit emerged, at first glancing warily up and
down the street and then swaggering toward an unpainted wooden bench a few feet
away. He sat down to wait because he had just finished a deal up on Whittier and
he was early.
Across the street, lines of multicolored clothing hung between the dark, brick
buildings. Occasionally someone passed by a window-a woman in a print dress, a
man in a stained undershirt, a child with thin shoulders-and stopped to stare
out vacantly at the rest of the world. From other open windows the black man
could hear the blast of boombox stereos, the rattle of pots and pans, the long
wail of a child, voices raised in feverish anger. Sometimes jammed in between
the tenements were ramshackle houses with sagging front porches, hulks of cars,
or remnants of washing machines in rock-strewn front yards. It was just after
noon, and the sun was merciless, beating down like a hammer on the dry flat
streets; it seemed that everything trembled at the point of ignition, ready to
flare into fire with each tick of the clock. The black man turned his head,
beads of sweat glittering on his cheeks, and stared across at a clapboard bar
decorated with white-painted music notes. It was, not surprisingly, called El
Musica Casino. At the corner of Machado there was a flat-roofed grocery store,
its windows plastered with Spanish signs. A slat-ribbed dog sniffed around
garbage cans, stopped to stare balefully at the black man, then scurried away
down an alley.
It was a neighborhood ripe for the dreams that Cicero sold.
When he looked to his left again, he saw a man and woman approaching, holding
hands like frightened children. The man, a walking skeleton with deep blue
hollows beneath his eyes, wore faded brown trousers and a shirt with a green and
brown floral pattern; the woman would have been quite attractive but for the
145
acne scars on her cheeks and a feral look in her eyes. Her hair was dirty, and
it hung limply around her shoulders, and she wore a bright blue shift that
barely covered her swelling belly. Their combined ages would hardly have added
up to much more than forty, but their faces carried ancient, desperate
expressions.
Cicero watched them coming, his teeth flaring white. He hooked a thumb back
toward that alley, and the two figures hurriedly entered it. Cicero looked up
and down the street again. Everything was cool, he thought. The cops never
prowled around here. He got to his feet and took his sweet time in going back to
the alley where they waited.
"Gimme," Cicero said when he reached the man.
He gave Cicero a coffee-stained envelope, his hand trembling. Beside him the
woman shivered; her teeth were chattering. Cicero tore open the envelope and
counted the money very slowly, relishing the cold waves of need that washed in
off the two bodies. Then he grunted, said "Lookin' good," and withdrew a small
packet of white powder from an inside coat pocket. He dangled the packet before
the man's face and saw him bare his teeth like an animal. "Sweet dreams," Cicero
whispered. The man grabbed it with a soft moan and raced off along the alley
with the woman shouting at his heels. Cicero watched them vanish around a corner
and put the money in his pocket. Stupid shits, he thought. Fool didn't even wait
to check the horse. Junk's cut so much they'll barely get a buzz, and before
nightfall they'll be needin' again. Well, they know where to find old Cicero . .
.
He laughed to himself, patted his pocket, and walked back along the alley toward
the street.
At the mouth of the alley, a hulking figure stepped into his path. Cicero said
"Wha-?" and that was all because in the next instant a hand had slammed into his
shoulder, sending him flying back into the alley. Cicero collided with a brick
wall and went down to his knees, all the breath squashed out of him. A hand with
scarred knuckled grasped Cicero's collar and wrenched him up until he was
standing on the toes of his gray alligator-skin boots. His sunglasses dangled
from one ear, and his first coherent thought was Cop.
The man who held him pinned against the wall was over six-four with wide
shoulders that looked as solid as concrete. He was a Chicano, possibly in his
mid- forties, dark complexion with fierce black eyes under thich gray-flecked
brows. He wore a mustache, also flecked with gray, and there were swirls of gray
at the temples in a head of hair so black it seemed to hold shimmers of blue.
His eyes were narrowed into fierce slits above a craggy nose, and there was the
faint pinkish line of a scar running through his left eyebrow and up into the
hairline. This man had a deadly look, and he was crowding Cicero too close for
him to reach the ten-inch blade in his back pocket.
Not a cop, Cicero thought. This fucker wants to rob my ass, maybe kill me, tool
And then Cicero's gaze dropped to the man's throat. And the white collar he was
wearing. A priest!
Cicero almost laughed as relief surged through his body in waves. But when he
146
began to smile, the priest slammed him back against the wall so hard his teeth
clicked. "Come on, man," Cicero said. "How's about backin' off, huh?"
The priest stared at him coldly, keeping that hand clenched on Cicero's shirt.
"What kind of filth was in that packet?" he rumbled. "Heroin? Answer me before I
break your neck, culebra!"
Cicero snorted. "You ain't gonna break no neck, Mr. Priest. That's against your
religion."
With a sharp twist of his shoulder, the man flung Cicero to the ground. "Hey!"
Cicero squawked. "You crazy or somethin'?"
"How long have you been dealing heroin to Miguel and his wife?"
"I don't know no damned Miguel."
"Who else have you been selling to?"
Cicero started to get up, but the priest moved forward with fists clenched, so
Cicero stayed where he was. "Sellin'? I ain't sellin' nothin'!"
"All right, suppose we let the police decide that, si?"
Cicero's hand began the long creep back to his pocket. "Look, old white collar,
you don't want to mess with me, understand? I don't want to hear no talk 'bout
cops. Now you're gonna step aside and let me go on my way."
"Get up," the priest said.
Cicero rose slowly, and by the time he'd straightened, he had the blade hidden
in the hand that dangled loosely behind him. "I said you're gonna let me pass!"
he said hoarsely. "Do what I tell you!"
"I've been looking for you for a long time, ever since I knew Miguel and his
wife were hooked on that trash. And you've been selling to Victor DiPietro and
Bernardo Palamer, haven't you?"
"I don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about." Cicero grinned widely, and
then the tongue of steel lapped at hot sunlight. "Move out of my way, man!"
The priest looked at the blade but didn't move. "Put that down or I'll make you
eat it."
"I ain't never stuck no white collar before, but I will if you pushes me! And by
God you're pushin' me right now! Ain't nobody pushes Cicero Clinton,
understand?"
Bastardo," the priest said quietly. "I'll stick that knife up your ass and send
you running home to your momma."
"Huh?" Cicero said, stunned for a second by the priest's language. That second
of hesitation spelled his doom for, right in the middle of it, the priest's fist
came flying out of thin air and crashed against the side of Cicero's head. As
Cicero staggered back, he flailed out with the knife, but his wrist was suddenly
caught in a crushing vise; he shrieked in pain and dropped the blade. Then
another fist filled his vision, bloodily knocking a few teeth into his mouth.
Cicero started to go down, but then the priest grabbed him by the scruff of the
neck and was dragging him along the alley. On Machado Street, in full view of a
number of people who had watched the whole thing from their windows, the priest
picked up Cicero and
147
jammed him down into a garbage can.
"You ever come back to my streets," the priest said, "I'll have to get rough
with you. Comprende?"
"Yeth," Cicero croaked, spitting out blood and bits of enamel. When he tried to
struggled out of the can, black waves crashed over him and sent him spinning
down to the bottom of the sea.
"Hey! Father Silvera!" someone called out, and the priest turned. A small boy in
blue jeans and scuffed white sneakers was running toward him. When the boy was
near enough to see the arms and legs sticking out of the garbage can, he stopped
and stared, openmouthed.""%,,
_iipiW
"Hello, Leon," Father Silvera said. He rubbed the skinned knuckles of his
rightJ>" ,«hand. "Why aren't you in school today?"
"Uh ... I don't know." He stepped back as one of Cicero's arms twitched. "I"* *
didn't do my homework." ul
"That's not an excuse." Silvera looked at him sternly. "Your father let you
stay\\','! home from school?"
f w,,.
Leon shook his head. "I have to take care of my sister. Papa didn't come home
last night."
"He didn't come home? Where did he go?"
"Out." The boy shrugged. "He said for me to stay home with Juanita, and he""'
was going to play cards. That was last night." ,„
"He didn't go to work today?";
Leon shook his head again, and Silvera's shoulders sagged forward slightly;5,
he'd helped Sandor La Paz get that job at the garage, he'd even vouched for the
good-for-nothing bastardo. Now Sandor had probably lost a week's wages in a card
J game with the neighborhood hustlers, and he was drinking himself into a stupor
in | a bar. "Are you and Juanita okay?" - (
"Si, Father. We're doing good."
"Did you eat anything for breakfast?"I
The boy shrugged. "Taco chips. But I gave Juanita a glass of milk."
"Your papa left some money for you?"
"A little bit in a drawer." His face clouded over slightly. "He's gonna come
back home, isn't he?"
"Of course he will. He's probably home right now. You'd better get back there
yourself and keep and eye on Juanita. She's too young to be left alone. Hurry
now. I'll be by later this afternoon."
Leon beamed and started to turn away, then suddenly he heard a soft moan that
didn't come from the man in the garbage can. When Leon looked back, he saw
Father Silvera wiping sweat off his forehead with the palm of a trembling hand.
"Father?" he asked. "You all right?"
"Yes. Hurry on now. I'll see you later. Go!"
The boy scurried on away. He felt better now that Father Silvera was going to
come by to see him. If the padre said things were going to be all right, then
they
148
would be. And Papa would be home, too, just like he said. Truly, he was a
miracle man.
Silvera was aware of the people watching him from their windows. Not now! he
told himself. Please don't let it happen now! When he let his hand hang by his
side, it jumped and twitched with erratic spasms. He felt a boil of anger at the
pit of his stomach, and suddenly he kicked over the garbage can, spilling Cicero
out over the curb into the gutter. Cicero stirred and began to stagger to his
feet. "Remember," Silvera said. "Don't come back around here. I'll be looking
for you."
Cicero struggled behind the wheel of the Imperial and started the engine. Then
he spat blood toward Silvera and shouted, "I'll get you, cocksucka!" Then the
car roared away from the curb, leaving a blue haze of exhaust and scorched
rubber.
Silvera thrust his hands in his pockets and began to walk away from those
watchful eyes. He'd made it around the corner when the bile came up volcanically
from his stomach; he leaned over and threw up against a wall, and as he was
heaving, he could feel both hands jittering in his pockets as if pulled by
unseen strings. He took them out, leaned his back against the graffitied wall,
and watched the fingers jerk, the veins twitching under the flesh. They seemed
to belong to someone else because he had no control over them anymore, and he
never knew when the spasms would start or stop. The spasms hadn't yet begun
their slow creep up his forearms, as the kind doctor at County General had told
him they would. But it was just a matter of time. The death dance of the
muscles, once begun, was irreversible.
After a moment more he walked on, past more sunburned apartment buildings and
more low, dusty houses jammed in between brick walls. The barrio seemed to go on
forever, one narrow garbage-strewn street after another. The place smelled of
rotting, stifled souls to Silvera, the reek of corpses that had died at the dead
ends in the huge, tangled maze of life. There is so much to do, he told himself
as he walked. So much to do and so little time. He was going to have to find
Miguel and Linda and get them off that hellish junk, but it would be hard. Once
hooked, it was easier to drift in that limbo of heroin-induced dreams than to
face the stark reality of life. Silvera knew; he had the needle track on the
insides of both his elbows to show for two years of life on the edge of
bestiality. So much to do and so little time. God help me, he thought. Please
give me strength. And time. Please.
At the end of the block, he could see the bell tower of his church pressed close
between tenement buildings. The tower was painted white, and through the open
shutters the large brass bell caught a shard of golden sunlight. Silvera had
found that beautiful bell in the abandoned mission of a town called Borja, near
the Mexican border. The town had been almost deserted, and it exuded a strange
aura of old evil. One of the remaining residents had told Silvera that several
years before a man who'd called himself Baal had come to the town and since then
Borja had been tainted. Silvera had brought that bell back from the desert in a
pickup truck over a hundred miles of winding, sun-scorched road. He'd rigged a
hoist and with the help of a few neighborhood men had lifted the bell to the
tower. He'd worked
149
I 1
iTHEY THIRST
on it many weeks, polishing away the last of the corrosion, and now it
sang-joyful and clear to beckon all to Sunday Mass or announce Saturday
weddings, solemnly mournful tolling for a funeral procession-as a symbol of the
Church of Our Sainted Mary. Not very long ago a crack had appeared at the very
top of the bell and now was gradually snaking its way down to the rim. The
bell's destiny was clear, and yet it had so much more work to do. Silvera smiled
when he thought of what Leon and several of the other children called it-Mary's
Voice.
Father Silvera reached his church and climbed a few rickety wooden steps to the
front door. He was feeling better now; he'd stopped sweating, and his hands
weren't trembling nearly as much as they had been. It had been the strain of»j(
throwing that heroin dealer around that had done it. He knew better than to do
*iiii^""t"
Hf1 ""''^ '
things like that, but he was still a bullishly strong man, and in this case his
temper'I,. 4*.
had gotten the best of him."<i'',J(»
Inside, the church was almost claustrophobic with the wooden pews packedtf"|*J
closely together, and a wine-red runner spread along the narrow aisle from
frontjpn
door to altar. Atop the altar stood a heavy brass crucifix, brightly polished,
on an. "I««<(
ornate base. Behind that altar with its chipped ceramic statue of Mary cradling
the««*"'
Christ child in her arms was a large oval stained-glass window that split the
lightI*" '
into a kaleidoscope of white, azure, violet, umber, and emerald green. In
the,"£''*
window's center was a representation of Jesus carrying a staff and behind him
a,«»-
green knoll dotted with sheep. On sunny days His eyes were circles of kind,
warmI',,)'.
brown light; on cloudy days His gaze turned stormy, the light stern and grayish.
It^*f"
intrigued Silvera to watch those changes and reminded him that even Jesus
Christ*"*Y. has His bad days.
«<iii*J|f -
Silvera walked through the church to his living quarters, his steps
sounding4?,*.. hollow on the wooden floor. It was a single room, painted white,
with a thin- i"* mattressed bed, a chest of drawers, a reading lamp, and a sink
in the corner. There > , was a shelf of hard-cover books, most of them more
political and sociological than ,!''.theologic: Future Shock by Alvin Tofler,
The Politics of Evil by James N. Virga, Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler.
On another, lower shelf was a toaster *'' and a hot plate, neither of which
worked particularly well. The walls were decorated with crayon drawings given to
him by some of the younger children in his parish- sailboats skimming a green
ocean, stick figures waving from windows, rainbow- colored kites among the
clouds. There was a ceramic crucifix hanging near the door, a bright travel
poster that said See Mexico's Wonders, and a framed painting of a fishing
village featuring nets drying in the sun. It reminded him of the village he'd
been born in, Puerto Grande on the Gulf of Mexico. Another door led into a tiny
bathroom with a noisy toilet and a stuttering shower.
He crossed the room, drew water from the sink into a drinking cup, and gingerly
tasted it. Not so bad today, he thought. He drank it down gratefully, spilling
only a few drops on his shirt because his hand wasn't trembling quite so much.
And then he listened; he thought he'd heard the front door open and close. Yes,
there was the noise of footsteps now. He put the cup aside and hurried out.
150
There was a young man standing at the altar, staring up at the stained-glass
window. He wore a pale blue shirt and faded, tight-fitting denims. His eyes were
dark and haunted, very tired-looking. Silvera stopped and looked at the young
man, hardly recognizing him. "Rico?" he said quietly. "Is that Rico Esteban?"
"Yes, Father," Rico said. "It's me."
"Good God, how you've grown!" The priest stepped forward and shook Rico's hand
in a firm, dry grasp. "The last time I saw you was.. . well, I hate to think how
many years have passed! But you're a man now, aren't you?"
Rico smiled and shrugged. He thought, Father, if you only knew . . .
"So I've heard you've moved out of the barrio. You're living on Sunset
Boulevard?"
"I've got an apartment on the Strip."
"I'm glad to hear that. Where are you working?"
"For myself," Rico said, and when Silvera's gaze sharpened, he added. "Doing
this and that. I'm trying to start my own messenger service."
Silvera nodded. Of course, he knew that Rico was probably selling drugs or
pimping, possibly both. Rico's hands were too smooth, and he'd never had the
education for a desk job, though as a child playing around this very church Rico
had shown a healthy curiosity about life that Silvera hoped would blossom into a
quest for real knowledge. A stab of sorrow and pity caught Silvera in the heart.
The waste, he thought, the terrible waste.
"I'm making out okay," Rico said. He'd sensed what was going on in the priest's
head, behind those black, fathomless eyes.
Silvera motioned toward the front pew. "Please, sit down." Rico did, and Silvera
sat beside him. "You look fine," he said, which was a lie because Rico looked as
drained as an empty bottle and much thinner than he ought to be. He wondered
what Rico was selling. Cocaine? Amphetamines? Angel dust? Surely not heroin.
Rico was too smart to get involved with junk, and he probably recalled how the
addicts had screamed from their windows when they'd injected themselves with a
hit cut with baby powder or sugar. "It's been too long," Silvera said.
"A long time since I've been inside here, yeah." Rico looked around the church,
his gaze coming to rest on the window. "I'd almost forgotten what it looked like
in here. What surprises me is that your window hasn't been broken yet."
"It's been tried. I've been having some trouble with the Homicides."
"They're a bunch of punks. You should call the cops on them."
"No. It's neighborhood business and nothing that I can't take care of. Your
attitude about the police seems to have changed since your were running with the
Cripplers."
"You're wrong, Father. I still think the cops are good-for-nothing pigs, but you
can't handle the Homicides by yourself. They'll cut your throat as fast as
anybody else's. Maybe faster."
Silvera nodded thoughtfully, searching the younger man's eyes. A terrible
bitterness seemed to be churning there, the look of a dog long deprived of food.
151
And there was something else, too, something that lay much deeper and closer to
Rico's soul. Silvera saw just a quick flash of it, like dark, glimmering
quicksilver, and recognized it as fear-an emotion he'd seen in his own mirror
eyes a great deal recently. "You come to see me for a reason, Rico. Can I help
you?"
"I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no." He shrugged, looked at the stained-glass
window, and seemed to have a hard time saying it. "Father, has Merida Santos
come to see you in the last couple of days?"
"Merida? No."
"Oh, Jesus," Rico said softly. "I thought she might've . . . you know, come here
to talk to you. I've . . . I've made her pregnant, and now she's gone. Even her
crazy**.„mother doesn't know where she is, and I can't sleep at night not
knowing what's J!" ,,«* happened to her-" l|""^3 |
"Slow down," the priest said, and gripped Rico's shoulder. "Take it easy and
tell"'^''jp ' me everything from the beginning." \\.\\*
Rico took a deep breath. "I picked her up at her building on Saturday
night..."[flQ
When Rico was finished, his hands were clasped tightly in his lap. "I called
the' """J cops this morning and talked to the missing persons guy. He said not
to worry """""" about it, that a lot of people disappeared for a couple of days
at a time and then £i>t/ came back home. He said it's called running away from
home, so I knew then that """fjj he wasn't taking me too seriously, you know? He
said that if her mother wasn't ""Xn concerned, I shouldn't be either.
Good-for-nothin' pig! I don't know what to do, ';„!*% Father! I think . . .
maybe something bad's happened to her!" ,^-f1'
Silvera's eyes were black and brooding. In this neighborhood, he knew, any of
a5,,,I" dozen terrible things could've happened to Merida Santos-kidnapping,
rape, »*$* murder. ... He refused to think about that. "Merida's a good girl. I
can't imagine *;'j! her running away from home. Still, if you say she's
pregnant, she may be afraid to |** face her mother." . f /
ti ^
"Who wouldn't be? She tried to chop me up with a butcher knife."" '"J "That was
yesterday afternoon?" '' * Rico nodded. "Then maybe Merida's come home since
then? Maybe she just stayed away
from home overnight because she was afraid to tell her mother she was pregnant?"
"Maybe. I thought about calling the missing persons cops again and saying I
was Merida's father or uncle, but you know what that bastardo told me? He said
they were too busy to hunt down every little girl who decided to run away from
the
barrio. Busy doin' what? Ain't that a load of shit?" He stopped abruptly. "Oh.
Sorry,
Father."
"That's all right. I agree. It is a load of shit. But why don't we go see Mrs.
Santos
together? Maybe Merida's come home by now, or Mrs. Santos might talk to me
more freely than she would you." Silvera rose to his feet.
"I love her, Father," Rico said as he stood up. "I want you to know that."
"That may be, Rico. But I don't think you love her enough, do you?"
Rico felt speared with guilt. Silvera's eyes were like hard bits of black glass,
151
if«H
152
reflecting the secrets of Rico's soul back at him. He was shamed to silence.
"All right," Silvera said, and clapped Rico softly on the shoulder. "Let's go."
SIX
"Here's what we got," Sully Reece said as he laid a thick sheaf of white blue-
lined computer printout paper amid the general disarray on Palatazin's desk.
"The people down in Vehicle I.D. are going crazy, but they're sending their
computers back through the whole list of plate numbers again just in case it
missed any the first time, which Taylor says is highly unlikely. As you can see,
there are quite a few people in L.A. who drive a gray, white, or light blue
Volks bearing a two, a seven, and a 'T' in some numerical combination."
"My God," Palatazin said as he unfolded the list. "I never knew there were so
many Volkswagens in the whole state!"
"That's every combination the computers could come up with."
Palatazin bit down on his pipe. "Of course, he could be driving with a stolen
license plate."
"Don't even think it, please. If that's the case, then you can just about triple
the number of plates listed on that printout. And if that chick was wrong about
even one digit, then the whole thing's screwed."
"Well, let's hope she wasn't." He glanced down the list, which contained a few
hundred names and addresses. "These are grouped by area?"
"Yes, sir. Taylor thought the computers were going to blow up, but he programmed
them to give us our information on the basis of twenty major areas. The first
twenty-five or so addresses, for instance, are located in a grid from Fairfax
Avenue to Alvarado Street."
"Fine. That makes it a little easier for the officers." Palatazin counted down
twenty-eight names and tore them off the list. "Split whoever's available up
into teams, Sully, and hand out as many of those names as you can. You and I
will be taking these."
"Yes, sir. Oh, have you seen this?" He held up the morning edition of the Times.
There on the front page in a black-bordered box under a headline that read "Do
You Know This Man?" was the composite of the face they were seeking. "That
should do some good."
Palatazin took the paper and laid it out on his desk. "I hope so. It's flashed
through my mind that this man might be an insurance agent from Glendale-a wife,
two children, and a cat-who likes a bit of action on the side. If that's the
case, then we're back at square one." He looked up suddenly, as if he'd heard
something, and stared intensely past Reece into the corner.
"Captain?" Reece asked after a few seconds. He glanced over his shoulder-
nothing there, of course. But nevertheless he felt a chill ripple between his
shoulder blades, as if he sensed someone standing right behind him.
153 pw
THEY THIRST
Palatazin blinked and looked away, forcing himself to stare down at the list of
names and addresses. Garvin, Kelly, Vaughan ... he thought he'd seen something
begin to stir in that corner . . . Mehta, Salvatore, Ho ... where the apparition
of his mother had stood yesterday afternoon . . . Emiliana, Lopez, Carlyle . . .
but before he could focus on it, the faint movement like the sluggish motion of
ripples through muddy water had ceased. He glanced quickly up at Reece. "What...
uh ... about that other thing I asked you to look into?"
"Not much luck there. There's nothing you can buy over the counter that would
cause the effect we're looking for. One of the pharmacists I talked to said
airplane glue might smell like that and make you pretty drunk if you were to
inhale)% a concentrated dose of it, but it wouldn't put you under right off. The
same with (I" , some of the ant and roach sprays on the market. Even hair
spray." 'I - i*
"No, I don't think that's what we want. Maybe our friend knows a druggistHlt 4,
who's making him something special?" He dared to glance into that corner again.
'I '|^( Nothing there, nothing at all. «""I"")
"Possibly. Another guy told me there used to be a salve you could buy that had'
""*«'{ a chloroform base. A couple of good whiffs and you were on your ass. But
it's not ***"J sold anymore." fj"" *]}
Palatazin frowned. "We could be ... what's the saying? Singing in the
dark."<"**""j
"Whistling in the dark," Reece corrected him. He took the rest of the
printout«"<;;.! and went to the door. "I'll get these distributed. You eating
lunch today?" U«
"From home." He motioned toward a paper sack half buried in file folders on[„,.
his desk. j""'').
"Well, it's about that time. Bon appetit!"^
"Thank you." Palatazin looked down the rest of his list. He was certain many
of^' these addresses would no longer be accurate. Some of these people would be
L,»impossible to find, some would probably have sold their cars. Regardless, the
task /- jr"' had to be done, he had nothing else to go on. He put the list aside
for the moment, ,"'" reaching for his lunch and the Times Sully had left. Jo had
made a ham salad ^ sandwich for him today; there was a dill pickle, a nice red
apple, and a can of V-8 juice. He knew his stomach would be roaring an hour
after he finished eating, but he'd promised Jo he'd try to stick to his diet for
a while. Last week he'd found himself slipping, sending out for chocolate-cream
doughnuts in the middle of the afternoon.
He looked again to the corner-nothing there, of course ... if there ever had
been. He turned and opened his blinds, then began to eat his sandwich while he
paged through the paper. It took him about fifteen minutes to reach page eleven,
and when he did, the headline "Vandals Hit Highland Park Cemetery" jumped out at
him. He read through the story twice, his heart beginning to beat like a
blacksmith's hammer. Then he rummaged through a drawer for a pair of scissors
and carefully cut out the article. In the middle of scissoring he remembered his
mother holding a pair of scissors, too, going through the Times and the
Herald-Examiner and the National Enquirer, the Tattler and the Star and Fate
magazine and a dozen
154
others, searching for articles she would clip and put away in a little metal box
that now sat on the top shelf of his bedroom closet. He had brought it back to
the house from Golden Garden after his mother had died. He read the story over
once more, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. His temples ached with
dull thunder; his stomach turned over when he glanced at his half-eaten lunch.
Because now he knew that they were here. Hiding in a city of over eight million,
half the globe and many worlds away from Krajeck, Hungary. Lurking in the
darkness, walking the streets and boulevards of Los Angeles in human shape,
ripping through the city's cemeteries in search of-My God, he thought, a shiver
almost splitting him in two. What is to be done?
Who would believe before it was too late? Because one of their greatest
strengths, the strength that had kept them existing in a world that had come
from ox cart to Cadillac and from slingshot to laser beam, was lack of belief in
their existence. "Rational" thought was their shield of invisibility, because
they stalked the land of nightmare fears.
What is to be done? Palatazin asked himself, panic bubbling like a cauldron's
brew in the pit of his stomach.
There was a knock at his door, and Lieutenant Reece looked in. "Captain? The
teams are organized. We're ready to move."
"Huh? Oh, yes. Of course." He stood up, shrugged into his coat, and took the
list of addresses from his desk.
"Captain, are you all right?" Reece asked.
Palatazin nodded brusquely. "I'm fine." What is to be done? When he looked up
into the other man's face, he saw that Recce's eyes looked concerned. Now he
thinks I'm cracking, too, Palatazin thought, and then he heard the dark answer
in his brain, Well? Aren't you? Reece turned away, and Palatazin followed him
out.
SEVEN
The building cast a deep shadow along Dos Terros Street. In front of it, half up
the curb, was a rust-eaten old Ford standing on two flat shoes and two cement
blocks. Overhead lines of clothes, stirred by a dusty breeze, hung from windows.
As Father Silvera stepped out of Rico Esteban's car, he saw a shirt break loose
from one of these clotheslines and flutter to the earth, arms waving in eerie
futility.
On the front steps a thin brown mongrel dog was sleeping, head resting on its
paws. Rico stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the building. Several of the
windows were open, but no faces peered down from them. "Mrs. Santos lives on the
fifth floor, doesn't she?" Silvera asked as he went up the steps. "Right. Fifth
floor, Apartment D. Hey . . ." Silvera, halfway up the steps, turned toward him.
"What is it?" Rico stared at the building. "I ... don't know. Something's
funny." "Come on." Silvera took another step, and the dog's head instantly rose.
Its
155
eyes flared like bits of burning topaz. Rico said, "Father . . ." The dog stood
up, turned to face the men, and bared its teeth with a low, throaty growl.
Silvera froze.
"Kick that damned mutt," Rico said, coming up to stand beside the priest. When
Silvera didn't move, he kicked out toward the dog's side, but the mongrel simply
dodged him, then stood its ground, the growl deeper and full of menace. "Get out
of here!" he said. "Get away!"
"Whose dog is this?" Silvera asked. Rico shrugged. When the priest moved forward
again, the dog crouched down in front of the door, ready to leap. "Whoever he
belongs to, he doesn't want us to go inside, does he? I think I'd rather try
another door than risk having my leg chewed off."
"Ah, you shit!" Rico muttered to the dog, and spat at it. The dog didn't move.
Silvera was already at the alley beside the building, and Rico gave up after
another moment to follow him.
They found a locked door that led down into the basement. Silvera was about to
go around to the rear when Rico kicked at the basement door, splitting the
rotten wood. The door sagged on its hinges. Silvera gave him a grave stare, but
Rico shrugged and said, "Here's our way in, Father." He stepped into the musty,
low- ceilinged basement.
It was almost totally dark inside, but in the murky light from the open doorway
Silvera saw vague shapes-a tattered sofa lying on its side like a gutted hog, a
couple of chair frames without cushions or backs, the shell of a television set,
mounds of papers, and what looked like some rolled-up rugs and shower curtains.
Cigarette butts and beer cans littered the floor. Rico and Silvera climbed a
rickety wooden stairway to another door, opened it, and found themselves in the
building's"*""", ' entrance hall. They could still see the dog crouched on the
steps, but the closed door stood between them. Now the dog seemed to be sleeping
again. I *
They left the first floor and began climbing up, their shoes making the frail(,
' stairs whine. They had passed the second floor landing when Rico realized what
' i; was making the flesh on the back of his neck crawl-the place was as silent
as <: a tomb.
"It's quiet in here," the priest said at almost the same instant. His voice
echoed along the corridor. "How many people live in this building?"
"I don't know. Maybe fifty or sixty. Christ, just yesterday there was so much
noise in here you couldn't think straight! Babies cryin', radios, people
fighting . . ." He looked at the stairs that lay ahead. "Christ, where is
everybody?"
In the third floor corridor Silvera knocked at a door that had "Diego" scrawled
across it in green spray paint. The unlocked door creaked open a few inches, and
Silvera peered inside. "Diego?" Silvera called out. "You home, man?" A table had
been thrown over, and on the wooden floor flies crawled over the food that
spilled from plates and glasses. Silvera felt his heart pound.
"Wait a minute," he said to Rico, stepping into the apartment. Newspapers had
been jammed in around the windowsills and stretched over the glass; the sunlight
155
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L'*
„ '*
,!*< 'll(
,.Hi
,i
156
was cut to a hazy murk. There was an unmade bed and a door leading to a
bathroom. Silvera peered in and found himself staring at the shower curtain rod.
It was bent, and several of the hooks lay scattered on the floor. The curtain
itself was gone. When Silvera turned, Rico was standing right behind him.
"The apartment across the hall's open, too," Rico said. "There's nobody inside."
Silvera stepped past Rico and looked at the overturned table. "Diego was here,
last night at least. That looks like what he must've been eating for dinner." He
glanced at the newspaper-covered windows. "This place is already dark enough.
Why did he try to cut the light?" He went out into the corridor and tried a few
more doors; all of them were unlocked, the apartments empty but showing signs of
recent life-cigarettes and cigars in ashtrays, dishes in sinks or on the tables,
clothes hanging in closets. A few doors had been broken open, the wood
splintered around the locks. Several of them had scratches imbedded deep in the
wood, as if made by an animal's claws.
"Anybody here?" Rico shouted at the stairway. His voice rolled on through the
building and was unanswered. He stared at the priest, his face paled by fear.
"We go up," Silvera said, and started climbing the stairs again. The fourth
floor hallway was as quiet as all the others. Rico could see doors standing
open, and in the dim light he could make out the same deep scratches that they
had seen downstairs.
Just above the fourth floor landing, Silvera stopped, his eyes wide, staring at
the walls. New graffiti covered the old-HOTSHOT WAS HERE. VIPERS ARE KINGS. ZEKE
SUX (HA HA). ALL FOR THE MASTER, BURN BABY BURN. Silvera reached out and touched
the brown letters. "My God," he heard himself say, his voice hollow, as if he
were speaking from the bottom of a well. "That's blood!" He continued upward,
his senses coiled like a culebra de cascabel. For now his nerves were vibrating
with the presence of something he'd felt a thousand times before-in a jail cell
where two heroin addicts cut each other to pieces with razor blades; in a
suffocatingly hot room where a drunken father had just beaten his three-year-old
son to death with a baseball bat; in the smoldering, corpse-strewn ruins of a
tenement razed by the arsonist's match; in the greedy eyes of Cicero, the dealer
of demonic dreams. That presence was Evil, and now Silvera felt it as he never
had before, so strong it was a tangible thing that clung to the walls, holding
the odor of blood and brimstone. His heart was pumping hard, and before he
reached the fifth floor he could feel the twitching-fibrillations, the doctors
called them-begin deep in his hands.
The fifth floor corridor stretched out before them. Rico looked in through one
of the open doors. The place was a wreck, and bits of a shattered mirror
glittered on the floor like dusty diamonds. Silvera moved on ahead of him toward
the Santos apartment and was about to push open the door-scratches, he thought,
there are scratches in this wood-when something crashed violently behind a
closed door on the opposite side of the hallway.
"What the shit was that?" Rico said, twisting around.
157
Silvera crossed the hall and put his hand on the doorknob. He paused for a
moment, listening. From the apartment he could hear a muffled thump, thump that
was unlike anything he could identify. Then there was silence. "Who's there?"
Silvera called out. But there was no answer. He started to push the door open.
"Father!" Rico said. "Don't . . .!"
But then Silvera started across the threshold, and something dark came flying
into his face from the ceiling. He cried out, feeling a claw graze his cheek,
and threw his hands up before his face. The thing tangled in his hair, then
whirled off over his head like a swooping gray leaf. Silvera spun around to
watch it hit the corridor ceiling with that muffled thumping noise; it flew over
Rico's head and disappeared into shadows at the far end of the hallway."''**"
Silvera was shaken, but he felt like exploding with nervous laughter. A pigeon,
he thought. I was frightened by a single pigeon. He looked back into the
apartment and immediately saw the broken window where the thing must've flown
in, on the floor a broken bottle and knick-knacks spilled from a shelf that the
pigeon had probably collided with. He went into the apartment, his hands shaking
badly now-he wondered how he was going to keep Rico from seeing-and checked the
bathroom. A mirror had been smashed, and Silvera stared at himself through a
series of concentric cracks. Again he noted that the shower curtain was gone.
The"H'-* rod itself had been ripped out of the wall.
Across the hallway Rico was slowly pushing open the door to Mrs. Santos'sif.,)1.
apartment. He stood at the threshold and called out her name, but of course
there ['^ ) was no answer, and neither had he been expecting one. It was just
that he wanted *'""| to hear a voice in this place, something human in this
silent vault. He stepped into the apartment, his heartbeat racing. A sheen of
sweat clung to his face. He walked across the room and looked into the small,
darkened bedroom. It was sweltering, j! * the air hanging in heavy layers. Rico
saw that the sheets had been torn off the bed. *» He felt the hair rise on the
back of his neck suddenly and didn't know why. Quickly *;,', he left the bedroom
and went back out to the hall. '
Father Silvera had stepped into another room farther along the corridor. In'''
this apartment he found an empty cradle with several spots of blood on the
infant's pillow. When he stepped into the bedroom, he immediately froze. On the
wall over the bare bed, written in blood, was ALL FOR THE MASTER. Newspapers
were jammed over the single window, reducing the light to a pale, smoky haze.
Silvera ripped them away. The light immediately strengthened, and he opened the
window for some fresh air.
And then something moved in the room-a bare whisper of a movement that made
Silvera twist around from the window. But no one was there. The bedroom was
empty. He listened, ignoring the increased muscle fibrillations that ran through
his hands, making his fingers twitch like claws. Again that noise, somewhere
close. A sliding cloth-on-cloth sound. He stared at the mattress. No sheets.
Where are they? he wondered. Did these people leave their homes and belongings,
taking with them only sheets and cheap plastic shower curtains?
158 159
dead trees. The legs pushed frantically, and in another moment the two figures
had squirmed back underneath the bed. They gave a couple of convulsive twitches
and lay still.
Rico's face had gone almost as white as Joe Vega's. He turned and stumbled over
his own feet trying to get out to the corridor. Silvera came out, walking
unsteadily. "Let's get out of here, Father! Let's call the cops!" Rico pleaded.
"Did you look for Mrs. Santos?"
"Yeah. There's nothing in there. . . ."
"Were the sheets on the bed?"
Rico went cold. "Sheets? No. But Christ, Father, don't go back in there!"
Silvera stepped into the apartment. He forced himself to look under the bed, but
there was nothing there. He crossed the room to a closet, gripped the knob, and
opened it. At the bottom there was a pile of old newspapers and clothes. Silvera
stared at it for a few seconds, then probed it with his foot.
Something moved, shifting uneasily.
He slammed the door shut and hurried out to where Rico, his face a shade between
white and green, waited. "All right," Silvera said. "Now we go for the police."
EIGHT
Palatazin and Reece came out of an apartment building on Malabar Street in Boyle
Heights trailed by an elderly black man with a gnarled walking stick. The man's
name was Herbert Vaughan, he was a retired L.A. police officer, and he owned a
light gray 72 Volkswagen Beetle with license plate 205 AVT.
"You know Captain Dexter?" he asked Palatazin when they'd reached the dark blue
car with the municipal tag parked in front of the building.
"Will Dexter? Yes sir, I did know him, but he retired about six years ago."
"Oh, Captain Dexter retired? He was a fine man, a real fine man. He could find
this Roach fella for you if you got him out of retirement." The man's eyes
snapped from Reece to Palatazin.
"I'm sure he could, Mr. Vaughan. He did a good job on the Chinatown killings
back in 71."
"Uh-huh. Sure did. And I'll tell you what, Will Dexter could catch the
Gravedigger, too. Could find that fella fast as you could say 'Jack Robinson.'"
"The Gravedigger?" Reece said. "Who's that, Mr. Vaughan?"
"Don't you boys keep up with anything anymore?" He cracked his stick impatiently
down on the sidewalk. "It was in the Tattler this morning! The Gravedigger! That
fella who's been going' through cemeteries and makin' off with the caskets! Ha!
That kind of shit didn't go on when I was on the force, I'm here to tell you!"
"The Tattler?" Palatazin said softly. "This morning?"
"Son, have you got wax in your ears? That's what I said. What kind of accent
have you got? Italian?"
160
"Hungarian. Thank you for talking with us, Mr. Vaughan." Palatazin went around
the car and slid in under the steering wheel. Reece climbed in, but Mr. Vaughan
shuffled forward and gripped the door handle before Reece could close it. "You
get Cap Dexter out of retirement, you hear? He'll find the Roach for you, and
he'll put that Gravedigger in the nut house, where he belongs!"
"Thank you, Mr. Vaughan," Reece said, and gently closed the door. As they drove
away Palatazin glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the old man leaning on his
cane, watching them drive out of sight.
"Who's next?" Reece asked.
Palatazin checked his list. "A. Mehta, 4517-D, Arizona Avenue in East L.A.
That's a white Volks with the plate 253 BTA. I hope the other men are having
better luck than we are." He waited for a light to change and then turned right
on Whittier Boulevard. He'd gone almost a block when an ambulance screamed up
from behind. Immediately he swerved to the curb; the ambulance, white and orange
lights flashing, careened through traffic and on out of sight.
"Gravedigger," Reece said quietly, and smiled. "Christ! This city's full of
nuts, isn't it? If it's not Roach, it's the Gravedigger, and if not him, it'll
always be someone else tomorrow."
"Remind me to find a Tattler on the way in. I'd like to read that story."
"I didn't think you were a fan of that rag."
"I'm not. But Mr. Vaughan's right-we have to keep up with things, don't we?" In
the distance he heard the shriek of another siren. He could look down the side
streets off Whittier Boulevard and see a smoky haze hanging in the afternoon
sunlight between buildings that looked like bombed-out hulks. He didn't often
come into the poor black and Spanish sections of Boyle Heights, East L.A., and
Belvedere Gardens. There were detectives, though, who'd been trained especially
in dealing with the barrio population, and in many instances riot situations had
been defused by a detective or a beat officer who'd been accepted into the
barrio's fold. All others were estranos, strangers not to be trusted.
Reece glanced over at Palatazin, then back to the street. "Any particular reason
you wanted to hit the street yourself on this one, captain? You could just as
easily have handled it from the office."
"No, I wanted to get out of there for a while. I'm getting fat and lazy sitting
around telling other people what to do. That's the trouble with promotions,
Sully. You're rewarded for what you do best by being shoved upstairs to let
younger men do the legwork. Of course, if what you do best is the legwork, then
. . . well..." He shrugged. What he did not say was that he was becoming fearful
of his own office, of the shadows and shapes he was beginning to think he saw
within those four walls.
At the next intersection a third ambulance shrieked across, heading south.
"Wonder what's going on?" Reece said.
Their radio, which had been humming with codes and locations all across the
city, suddenly came to urgent life. The dispatcher's voice sounded loud in the
161
closed vehicle-"All cars vicinity of Caliente and Dos Terros streets, East Los
Angeles, see the senior officer at 1212 Dos Terros." The message was repeated,
and then voices from various cars confirming.
"That sounds hot," Reece said. He motioned toward the next street sign.
"Caliente's coming up."
Palatazin's heartbeat quickened. A black and white roared past them, siren
wailing, and turned left on Caliente with a screech of tires. "Let's see what's
going on," Palatazin said. He swerved through traffic and raced after the prowl
car as Reece hit the siren and clamped the flashing Magneto light to the car's
top.
For a few minutes they wound through an area of narrow, potholed streets and
„crumbling tenements, until they came to a street that was already being
cordoned'""^ off by a couple of uniformed officers. The prowl car was permitted
to sweep on «* through. Palatazin applied the brakes and showed them his badge.
IL *L
"What's happening?" he asked one of the cops.'' j"*^
"No one's certain yet, captain," the officer said. "They're bringing a lot of ,
|'~j corpses out of that building over there, but. . . well, you'll have to see
for yourself, <' < "*l sir."»«"*"'"'
"Who's senior officer?"U" "J;
"Sergeant Teal. I believe he's inside."*">'*'
Palatazin nodded and drove through. People were clustered around the
stairs*«";;,f of a tenement in the middle of the block, and the police were
trying to push them |i,,i'^' back behind sawhorse cordons. Four prowl cars were
parked at different angles in ].,,,v' the street with their lights spinning, and
there were two ambulances parked close j '^,, to the stairs. Palatazin whipped
the car to the opposite curb and jumped out. ^ J<»Reece followed him across the
street, and when they reached the stairway, they ,/^C
ii******
saw two white-uniformed ambulance attendants bringing down a stretcher with
a'»,» woman's body on it. The white sheet pulled up to her chin matched the
color of ** /) her flesh. From where he stood Palatazin caught a brief glimpse
of those eyes ,">> staring through the closed lids. A shiver of horror went
through the crowd of '/' onlookers. The body began writhing in the sheet, the
face contorting hideously, but no sound came from its mouth. The body was loaded
into one of the waiting ambulances.
"I thought these were supposed to be corpses," Reece said, watching the
ambulance wheel away. "God, what was wrong with that woman's eyes?"
Palatazin was already moving up the stairs. He flashed his badge at the officer
at the door. "Where's Sergeant Teal?"
"Third floor, captain."
He started to ascend the stairway, but suddenly his attention was caught by a
small yellow form shoved in a corner of the entrance hall. It was a dead dog.
The teeth were bared; there was a bullet hole in the skull. Palatazin climbed
the stairs, stepping aside as another stretcher was brought down, the pallid
"corpse" twitching beneath the sheet. The hair rose on the back of his neck as
he sensed the cold waves radiated by this thing. The dead eyes grazed his own.
He turned away from
162
it, bile raging in his stomach, and continued upward.
In a third-floor apartment Palatazin found Sergeant Teal-a large, curly-haired
man with the physique of an ex-UCLA linebacker. He was talking to two Chicanes
-an older man wearing a starched priest's collar and a boy whose eyes looked
dazed and sick. Palatazin approached Teal and showed his badge. "Sergeant Teal?
What's the situation here?"
The other man motioned Palatazin away from the two Chicanos. Palatazin's shoes
crunched over bits of glass. He looked down to see the remnants of a broken
mirror. Yes, he thought, suddenly calm and resolute. Yes. They've been here.
"Those two over there, Father Ramon Silvera and Rico Esteban, found the first
bodies. So far we've pulled thirty-nine of them out of closets and from under
beds. They were all rolled up in shower curtains, rugs, and sheets. Thirty-nine
of them." Teal's clear blue eyes were full of sick confusion. He lowered his
voice. "You're going to think this is crazy, captain, but . . ."
"Go on."
"Well, I don't know whether to classify these bodies as corpses or not. Oh sure,
they move a little bit, but it all seems to be muscle reflex, like some trick of
rigor mortis. The hell of it is ... the bodies don't have heartbeats or pulse
rates. I mean . . . technically they're dead, aren't they?"
Palatazin closed his eyes for a few seconds, his hand coming up to his forehead.
"Sir?" Teal said. "They are dead, aren't they?"
"Any wounds on the bodies?"
"I've just looked closely at a couple of them. I saw some cuts and bruises.
That's about it."
"No," Palatazin said quietly. Another stretcher passed the door. "That's not
all."
"Sir?"
"Nothing. I'm thinking out loud. Where are the bodies being taken?"
"Uh . . ." He looked down at a notepad in his hand. "Mercy Hospital in Monterey
Park. That's the nearest, and they've got the facilities to handle this mess."
He paused for a few seconds, watching Palatazin's face. "What's wrong with these
people, captain? Could it be ... like ... a disease or something?"
"If you think that, Teal, keep it to yourself. We don't want the neighborhood
panicking worse than it probably has already. Did Mercy send a doctor over?"
"Yes sir. Dr. Delgado. She's upstairs right now."
"Okay, fine. Will you give me a few minutes alone with these two?" He motioned
toward the priest and the boy across the room. Teal nodded and went out, closing
the door behind him. Palatazin kicked at the shards of glass, glanced quickly
around the apartment, and then returned his gaze to the priest, who seemed to be
in better shape than the boy. Except for one thing-his hands were trembling,
clenching and unclenching. A nervous reaction? Palatazin wondered. Or something
else? He introduced himself to the two men. "Sergeant Teal tells me you two
found the first bodies. What time was that?"
"About one-thirty," the priest said. "We've told all this to the other
officers."
163
"Yes, yes, I know." Palatazin waved a hand at him to quiet his objections. He
walked past them and peered into the dim bedroom, noting the newspapers covering
the windows. There was another shattered mirror in the bathroom. He came back
out. "What do you think happened here, Father?" he asked the priest.
Silvera narrowed his eyes; the slight quaver in the policeman's voice put him on
edge. "I have no idea. Rico and I came looking for Mrs. Santos, who lives...
lived on the fifth floor. We found the building just as it is now."
"I want to get out of here," Rico said quietly. "I can't stand being in this
place anymore."
*
n*
"A little longer, okay?" Palatazin said. He looked back to Silvera. "You saw the
bodies. Tell me. Are they dead or alive?"";*'"", "Dead," Rico said. «',!-
Silvera took a while longer in answering. "I don't know," he said finally. "No
r,?L heartbeat, no pulse . . . and yet they move . . ." '"""|* "Sergeant Teal
tells me thirty-nine bodies have been found. How many people O lived in this
building?" i'-< "Sixty or seventy, at least." »««'»^ "But not all of the
apartments were occupied?" / "Jt Silvera shook his head. *l''#' "All right.
Thank you." Palatazin turned and started for the door, but Silvera's „„.,"«*
voice stopped him. "What's happened to these people, officer? What kind of thing
L,^ did this to them?" JjS' He almost answered, almost said the terrible word,
but fear gripped his throat «J |J(. and squeezed it. He left the room without
another word and stood outside, „,,..
ilJliW" ,jf
clutching at the stairway railing like a man on a heaving ship in a world that
had ^vx; suddenly tilted crazily on its axis and begun to spin backward in time.
He was only j '^t* dimly aware of someone-no, two people-coming along the
corridor toward him. *,., /] When he looked up, he saw that it was Teal and a
middle-aged Chicano woman \\ with haggard circles under her eyes. "Captain?" Teal
said. "This is Dr. Delgado."
The woman extended her hand, and Palatazin shook it. Another body wasli'*'"*
carried past them through the corridor, and Palatazin cringed at the sight of
those staring eyes. "Captain, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't know what
in the name of God we have here," Dr. Delgado said in a soft, weary voice.
"These are not corpses technically, yet there are no outward signs of life; no
rigor mortis is setting in, and no fluids are collecting in the intestines or
extremities. I pricked the finger of one of them, and do you know what came out?
Absolutely nothing. The body was drained dry. I don't know about the others, but
that body was totally bloodless. And yet when the ambulance attendants were
strapping it to a stretcher, the body-what should've been a corpse-moved."
"Jesus!" Teal said, his eyes icy blue circles.
"As I say, I don't know what we have. I may not want to know, but that's my
profession. One of my colleagues at Mercy, Dr. Steiner, is on his way over right
now. Possibly he can help . . ."
164
"Nothing can help," Palatazin said suddenly, and realized it was all about to
pour out, all of it like bile flowing up from the secret pit of terror, and he
was going to be unable to stop it. He clenched his teeth, his eyes widening, but
the torrent of words forced them apart. "It's too late, nothing can help. We've
got to ... got to leave all of them inside here and burn this building to the
ground right now before the sun goes down! Then we've got to scatter . . .
scatter the ashes and pour holy water on the ruins!" He looked from Teal to
Delgado and back again-they were too shocked to speak. The priest and the boy
were standing in the doorway of that room, watching him, as was a uniformed
officer farther along the corridor who stood staring at Palatazin in amazement.
"What are you all looking at?" Palatazin shrieked, and felt something give way,
like timbers exposed too long to vicious weather. "You've seen the bodies!
You've seen what they can do! They can sweep through a whole building in less
than one night! What will they do soon to whole streets? Neighborhoods?" He
trembled, and a voice within him roared "STOP," but he couldn't stop, he had no
power now over the words tumbling from his mouth. Cold beads of sweat had popped
up on his face, and the only sound in the entire building was his voice. "We can
burn this building to the ground and kill some of them, because when these . . .
when these wake up they're going to be thirsty, too!" He looked at Dr. Delgado,
the raging fear in his eyes completely exposed. "You can't take them to Mercy
Hospital! You can't let them get out into the streets!"
Someone gripped his shoulder. He spun around, panting.
Sully, his expression grave, said quietly, "Captain, come on with me. Let's get
some fresh air, okay?"
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" He jerked free and shoved Sully away. His gaze fell upon the
priest. "You! You of all people should realize the evil that's creeping up on
this city! God in heaven, can't you feel it in here? Tell them not to let these
things wake up tonight!"
Silvera glanced quickly at Teal and then back to the police captain. He felt he
was on the verge of madness himself, split between a shudder and a scream. Of
course he felt the evil; it was everywhere in this place, like viscous mist, but
what was this man saying?
"Father," Palatazin said, and in his voice there was now something of a
terrified nine-year-old boy. "Please don't let the vampir loose on the streets!
Tell them we have to burn the bodies!"
Vampir? Silvera thought. The word struck him in the chest like a sledgehammer
blow, Vampire?
And then Palatazin was suddenly drained, like a bottle whose contents had just
spilled all over the floor. He blinked, looked around, and then staggered back
against the railing. Sully and Teal both rushed forward to prevent him from
falling. Palatazin's face was ashen, the sweat glittering on his cheeks and
forehead. As Sully was helping him down the stairs, Palatazin lifted his head
and looked back at Dr. Delgado. "Don't take them to the hospital," he said in a
hoarse whisper. "Burn
165
them. Burn them." His head slumped forward.
"Come on, captain, take it easy," Sully said. "Watch that step now. That's
right, real easy."
"Can I go now?" Rico asked Teal.
"Yeah, sure. But I may be talking to you again."
Rico nodded and hurried away without looking back. On the stairs he gave a wide
berth to that big crazy cop, then moved past the dog the cops had had to kill
because the damned thing wouldn't let them into the doorway.
"What are you going to do with them?" Silvera asked Dr. Delgado when the boy had
gone. He was visibly pale and shaken, his hands twitching out of control, the
fibrillations in his wrists now as well.:>*'
Mi'
"They're going to Mercy, of course. Probably an isolation ward until we can
...",, „,
She dropped her gaze to his sides and stared. "How long have you . . .?" she
asked/ *£
softly.'|*j "It started about three months ago," he replied. "It's getting worse
all the time." J»] "You've seen a doctor?" Z* "I'm seeing Dr. Doran at County
General." ,.(,J The full impact of that took a moment to sink in. Dr. Delgado
said, "Doran? s
Isn't he a specialist in muscular atrophy?";;;*'!'." "That's right." He held up
his hands and smiled grimly. "Very nice, si? They tell „„««
me it's what Lou Gehrig had."i'J>,J "Gehrig's disease?" she said softly. She
knew immediately what that meant-
this broad-shouldered, healthy-looking man would be dead in two to five years.
"I'm
sorry."
"Dr. Doran's sentiments exactly. Now I'll leave you to your work." He
moved'^i;^;*
past her, went down the stairs, and was gone.'*,.
*'il (' \\
NINE
Afternoon grayed into evening, and slowly the night approached from the east.
Winds stirred lazily across the Mojave Desert and chilled as they swirled across
the mountains into L.A. A slight tremor broke a few windows on Rodeo Drive, and
made burglar alarms scream. After nightfall dogs began to howl in the
hills-their music eerie and compelling, and pleasing to twice as many as had
listened the night before.
And in the sky, caught only briefly by shopping center spotlights or the bright
glow from Sunset Boulevard billboards advertising new albums by the Stones,
Cheap Trick, and Rory Black, the bats that had come from their mountain caves
spun like a whirlwind of dark leaves.
165
. «<" **'
,«
166
Gayle Clarke turned off Lexington Avenue into the parking lot of the Sandalwood
Apartments, and immediately saw Jack Kidd's airbrushed van in its usual place.
So, she thought, where have you been hiding? I sure could've used some pictures
at Ramona Heights today! She pulled up beside the van and left her car, walking
across the courtyard with its green-spotlighted palm trees. Though the lot was
almost full, she noticed now that the apartments were dark. She reached Jack's
door and saw that his apartment was also dark. Maybe he's gone out of town with
friends? she wondered. Where would he go? With the Greenpeace people maybe?
Promoting his film somewhere? If that was the case, Trace was going to hit the
roof. Gayle found the key to Jack's door on her key chain and was about to slip
it into the lock when she realized that the door was already cracked open about
two inches. Now that, she thought, is strange. Jack doesn't trust people enough
to leave his apartment door open. She pushed it wider and called out, "Jack? You
home?" When there was no answer, she frowned, stepped into the dark room, and
felt along the wall until she found the light switch.
The living room coffee table was overturned, and on the floor was a candle in a
puddle of wax, a broken Bong pipe, and a couple of books on Ansel Adams and
David Hume Kennedy. "Jack?" Gayle called out again, and then moved through the
hallway toward his bedroom. The door was closed, and Gayle paused a few seconds,
wondering what to do. The silence was thick and ominous; it reminded her of the
silence at Ramona Heights Cemetery in the wake of what had been done the night
before. She'd remembered the faces of the policemen out there; they'd been
prepared to list it as just another case of vandalism, but when they'd seen
those bones scattered in the warm morning sunlight, their faces had turned
alternately pale and greenish, and Gayle had overheard several of them
speculating that a satanic cult must be planning something really big, or some
maniac like Manson was on the loose and doing this for kicks.
Good material for her story.
She opened the bedroom door and reached around for the light switch.
Something grabbed her hand and yanked at it; pain exploded across her knuckles
and up her wrist. She screamed and wrenched her hand back. It was covered with
blood.
And through the half-opened door came a crouching figure that stared at her with
cold, hungry eyes. It was Jack's dog, and when it snarled Gayle could see her
blood flecking the animal's teeth. She stepped away from the thing, backing into
the wall. Two of Jack's framed photographs clattered to the floor.
Conan advanced, stalking her as he would a rabbit. The dog was hunched low to
the floor, its back legs ready for the leap that would send his teeth directly
at her throat. Gayle took her handbag from around her shoulder and-slowly, very
slowly
167
-coiled the strap around her uninjured wrist. She hoped that when the dog did
leap, she could strike it in the face; although she didn't carry much makeup,
she did have a book in there, as well as a wallet bulging with photos and credit
cards. Clout, she thought suddenly. I'm carrying clout. She looked quickly to
her side along the hallway to the living room and wondered whether she could
beat the dog to the door. No way, she decided. He'd be on my back before I'd
taken three steps. Christ! She looked back and saw that Conan had crept closer.
Now the dog's growling was low and guttural, brimming with rage.
M*
"Conan?" Gayle whispered, her voice shaking. "It's Gayle, boy. Stay back. Stay
back." She raised her arm carefully to position the handbag for a blow.
The dog started to leap, then stopped less than a foot away from her. Its eyes"
(<(i had gone dull, and it was tilting its head like he was listening to one of
those high- *«J pitched whistles you get in pet shops. Without hesitation Conan
leapt pass Gayle, tj ran along the hallway, and squeezed out through the front
door. ||«,
Relief flooded her. God, she thought. That damned dog was going to tear out<p my
throat! She let her arm fall to her side and looked at the wound on her other
""I hand. Conan had taken all the skin from her knuckles, and there were
punctures and scratches on two fingers. Blood was still welling up, but at least
the mutt hadn't I} pierced any of the large veins. Christ, what was wrong with
that damned dog? Jack '" "'i
should have the bastard shot!' "I
i I
She turned toward the living room and had taken two unsteady steps when>, }';;J
she heard a noise-a muffled, unpleasant sliding sound. She stopped,
listening.„„,.>
The noise again-it was coming from the darkened bedroom. She reached around,,j *
|>"
her heart hammering, and hit the light switch.i B *$*
The first thing she noticed was that there were no sheets on the mattress.«m';;P
Otherwise the bedroom looked as it usually did-slightly rumpled. She paused atip
„-'**
Jlj. ih
the doorway and then stepped in. What was that sound? she wondered. And where^ f
) was it coming from? She stopped next to the bed and listened. Silence. You're
,' ""JJ imagining things, she told herself. Her hand throbbed. Fucking dog ought
to have his ass kicked!
And then something cold gripped her ankle.
She looked down, her mouth opening in dumb bewilderment.
A white clawlike hand held her ankle like a freezing vise; it had snaked out
from beneath the bed. And then there was that sliding sound again, slow and
labored. Gayle saw the fingers move. It was only then that she found her voice
and screamed, instantly thinking Scream, fool! What good will it do? She kicked
out, kicked again, and got her ankle free, then staggered backward while a shape
wrapped in the white sheets writhed its way out with some difficulty. The free
hand began to rip at the cloth, to work it loose from the thing that lay within.
Run! a voice screamed in Gayle's head. Run! But she couldn't run. Her legs were
made of rubber, and her mind had no control over them. She watched in horror as
the hand began to wrench the cloth away from the head.
In another moment she could see dark, tousled hair, a mustache and a beard
168
against a face so pallid it was almost transparent. The other hand worked its
way free, and now both hands were ripping the cloth away. "Jack!" Gayle said
when she found her voice. She stepped nearer, but when that head swiveled around
and she saw those dead, glittering eyes, she stopped, a knot of panic filling
her throat. "Jack?" she whispered hoarsely, and thought, It's a trick! He's
trying on his Halloween makeup for me! That dirty sonofabitch!
Jack-or the thing that had been Jack Kidd-shrugged off the rest of the sheets
like a discarded snake skin and started to rise to his feet. His eyes were
blazing, and suddenly a black tongue darted out and licked the lips. "Gayle ..."
Jack whispered, a sound like the quiet hissing of wind across newly fallen snow.
It was the sound of that voice that snapped Gayle's nerve. She'd never heard
anything like it before. She was filled with cold, consuming dread. Jack stepped
forward, a quick grin flickering across his mouth.
Gayle turned for the door and ran. She could sense rather than hear him behind
her; he seemed to be leaping for her through the air instead of running. She
could feel his grinning face right behind her, radiating cold the way a radiator
puts out heat. As she screamed and scrambled through the front door, she felt
his hand grip her blouse. It tore, but Gayle kept running across the courtyard
toward the parking lot. She was aware of shadow shapes lurking in the corners,
of grinning faces daubed green by the spotlights. When Gayle dared to look back
over her shoulder, she saw Jack's face only inches away, floating like a
green-lit moon. She stumbled and fell to the grass. Jack crouched over her,
gripping her hair and forcing her head back.
"NO!" she screamed. "PLEASE NO!"
"Darling . . ." he said, his face coming toward her relentlessly. "My darling .
. ." She heard the cold, wet sound of his lips parting.
Something dark whirled into Gayle's line of vision. She heard Jack grunt, and
then his weight lifted off her. Replaced by that of another figure, a larger man
with a heavy, jowled face that was as pallid and terrifying as Jack's; he leaned
over Gayle and grinned, and within that grin Gayle saw the glitter of fangs that
almost drove her over the brink into madness. She could smell a grave-rot about
him. She screamed and twisted, trying to fight him of as those fangs moved
closer to her throat. Before they could snap shut, Jack's arm gripped the man's
throat, and he was hauled off Gayle. As she rolled away and got to her feet, she
could see them fighting in the grass, their fangs snapping at each other like
enraged animals.
They're fighting over me, she thought numbly. Both of them want to . . . want to
... what sort of thing has Jack become?
She didn't wait to see who won. She turned and ran, losing a shoe. Something
rustled in the bushes to her right, and off to the side she saw another figure-a
woman in a glittery disco dress-steadily bearing down on her. Gayle reached her
car, locked the doors, and started the engine. The woman, her hair dark and wild
around a face that was fish-belly white, started clawing at the windshield,
hammering at it with her fists. Gayle slammed the car into reverse and crashed
into Jack's
169 T"f]
.,»'»" I
,. IN'1" '""'
Jo was sitting up in bed, a copy of The Thorn Birds in her lap, watching herJI-.
husband unknot his tie and wearily get out of his shirt. She knew there was
trouble ,,»J -he'd come home from the office just after three this afternoon,
something he'd ,1 <h never done in the eleven years of their marriage. He'd
picked listlessly at his dinner, ™'*# sat with a black cloud on his shoulder,
and didn't even watch Monday Night Football. During the course of the evening
he'd hardly spoken to her, and though <,<,, J she was accustomed to his troubled
silences when he was working on a difficult """'"') case, she could tell this
was something bad; several times she caught him staring off into space as if
dazed, or running a trembling hand across his forehead.
, «I"'
And now it was almost nine-thirty and a long time before morning. She knew him
well enough to know he'd have more nightmares if he didn't talk to her about
this terrible thing. Sometimes he confided in her things she didn't like to
hear-1 " /^
jit' if
finding a murdered infant or another of those Roach victims-but she steeled^ ;'„
herself because she was his wife, that was his job and that was how the world ,,
«;* turned. 'if."*
"So," she said finally, putting aside her book. "Do you want to talk about it
now?"
He placed his shirt on a hanger in the closet, then returned his tie to the tie
rack.
"I'm waiting, Andy. It can't be that bad. Can it?"
He drew a long breath and turned toward her, and when she saw his eyes, she
thought, Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it can be that bad. When he spoke, his voice was
tired, but somewhere within it, Jo could hear a nervous tremble that set her own
nerves on edge. "I should have told you long before this," he said softly. "I
should have trusted you first, before all others. But I was scared. I am scared.
I didn't know until today that what I was thinking was right. I'd hoped I was
wrong, that I was seeing shadows where there were none, or cracking because of
the pressure. But now I know I'm right, and soon not even God Himself will be
able to save this city."
169
HEY THIRST
van as she accelerated. Then she was roaring across the parking lot, the horror
in her disco dress running after her. She made the turn onto Lexington with a
screech of tires and looked in her rearview mirror only after she was four
blocks away. A surge of tears blinded her, and her lungs were heaving so fast
she thought she wouldn't ever be able to catch her breath. She jerked the car to
the curb, hearing horns blowing angrily, and sat with her face in her hands.
In another moment something tapped softly at her window, and Gayle cried out
when she looked up into the face of a figure standing by her car. "What do you
want?" she shrieked, cowering. "What do you want?"
"I want to see your license, miss," the policeman said. "You almost caused a
three-car pileup back there!";""*"
bll
T
1
ELEVEN"\\"
lit
170
"Andy, what are you talking about . . .?"
He came over and sat on the bed beside her, taking both her hands in his. "I
want you to leave in the morning. I want you to get away as far as you can go.
When you've found a place, call me, and I'll join you as soon as I can . . ."
"Andy!" she said, shocked. "Why?"
"Because they're going to be in the streets soon, going from house to house all
across this city. And some night-possibly not tomorrow or the night after, but
some night-they're going to come to our house." His voice cracked, and Jo
squeezed his hand.
"What is it?" she pleaded. "Please tell me what's wrong!"
"All right. Yes, I have to tell you ..." And then it all came out, from the
incident at Hollywood Memorial to the living corpses found in East L.A. As he
spoke, his voice became more and more frantic, more consumed with fear. Jo
gripped his hands until she could feel the bones grinding. He finished by
telling her of his outburst in the Dos Terros tenement, and how Sully Reece had
driven him back to Parker Center in silence, glancing over at him once or twice
as if he were one of those crazed transients who sleep on the grass under
Beethoven's striding statue in Pershing Square.
He smiled grimly at her through haunted eyes. "My days on the force are
numbered. I know that. I'm crazy, yes? Insane, just as they said my mother was.
But my mother knew. For years I believed she shot my father because she was
insane, but now I know differently. It took a great deal of courage for her to
pull those shotgun triggers, but she knew that just because the thing looked
like my father didn't mean it was truly him. She was trying to save our lives,
and because I didn't understand that I ... I hated her for ... a very long
time." Tears sprang to his eyes and quickly he wiped them away. "Now I see them
coming again. I see them conquering this city just as they conquered Krajeck.
And when they've finished here . . ." New terror choked him. "My God, Jo!
They'll number in the millions! No power on earth will be able to stop them . .
.!"
"Andy," Jo said quietly, "when I was a little girl, my parents told me stories
about the vampir. But those were legends, old tales that had been passed down
from generation to generation. We live in a modern age now and-" she stopped,
seeing the fury in his eyes.
"You don't believe either? Jo, can't you see? They don't want us to believe
because if we recognize them in our midst, we can guard ourselves against them.
We can hang garlic on the windows and nail crucifixes to the doors! They want us
to laugh, to say 'that can never be!' When we close our eyes, we help them hide,
and we help them come one step closer to our front door!"
"You can't be certain," she reasoned.
"I am certain. I saw those bodies today. They'll be awakening soon, and the only
thing I can do is rant and rave like a maniac. Oh, I can take a can of gasoline
and a torch and try to burn them before they escape into the streets, but then
what would happen? I'll be locked away, and tomorrow there will be twice as many
vampir as there are today."
171 "Have you told anyone else?"
"No. Who could I talk to? Who would believe? I see in your eyes that you don't
believe either. You've always thought my mother was insane, that she shot my
father in a fit of madness, and that whenever she rambled on about the vampir,
they were the imaginings of a fevered brain. But it's the truth! I know that
now. I see it clearly!"
The bedside telephone rang suddenly. Palatazin reached over and picked it up.
"Hello?"
«I t
Ml
irf
"Captain Palatazin? This is Lieutenant Martin. Detective Zeitvogel and Farris
just called in with a positive ID on that plate you were tracing. It's 285 Zero
Tango Hotel, and it belongs to a guy named Walter Benefield, residence
Number7Seven- *"'""" teen Mecca Apartments, 6th and Coronado near MacArthur
Park."I
"They're at the scene now?" His heart was beating so wildly he could hardly*L
hear himself talk.'n*'"
I i*1
"Yes sir. Shall I send a backup unit?"., "I "No, not yet. I'm going over myself.
Thanks for calling, Johnny." He hung up ' '-* and rose from the bed, taking
another shirt from the closet and hurriedly putting „„< " it on. nM 1) "What is
it?" Jo said tensely. "Where do you have to go?" '\\:;> "Across town," he said,
reaching up on the closet shelf for his shoulder-holster. ,,,-«* He strapped it
on, then shrugged into his brown tweed coat. Jo was putting on her '',,J robe,
and she followed him downstairs. "' "tlj "Is it something about the Roach?" she
asked. "You will be careful, won't you? I ' | ^ You're not as young as you used
to be, Andy. You let the younger men take the ' (i,^ risks. Are you listening to
me?" '^'f>, '!*£"Yes," he said. "Of course." But he wasn't really listening-he
was thinking that ; ' x. he could hear a distant voice speaking urgently in his
brain . . . fl fy "Be careful," Jo said, buttoning his coat for him. "Remember .
. ." ' !'"'"'') . . . and the voice was telling him that after tonight things
would never be the , > "t" same in his life again because tonight he would take
a step that would change the ** fate of a million people.
". . . let the younger men take the risks. Do you hear?" He nodded, kissed her,
and walked out of the house into the still, cool night. At the car he turned
back and said to her, "Remember to lock the door." Then he slid behind the
wheel, aware of the weight of the .38 beneath his left arm. He started the
engine and drove away into the darkness.
1THEY THIRST
172 173
,?
.«*
DARK PRINCE4
ti<iJ
ii iik JM'* i*1
I'll I*
.,,..1
"3
I-------:^
Tuesday, October 299
„;/ ,,- > n*i „.„/;''
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174 175
»
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At twenty minutes after midnight Palatazin was sitting in his car at the curb of
Coronado Street, two blocks from MacArthur Park. The sign MECCA ROOMS- DAY,
WEEK, OR MONTH blinked in glaring blue neon in the middle of the block; the
building itself was made of yellow brick with ornamental blue tiles that might
have looked decorative twenty or more years ago. Now the whole thing il'* looked
cheap and tawdry; many of the tiles were cracked and blistered with spray-1
„»painted slogans in Spanish scrawled across the side of the building that faced
a ;*(a narrow service alley. Every so often a drunk would stagger out of the
Club Feliz next door and barely make it into that alley before throwing up.
Coronado Street ,"""! caught some of the neon glitter from 6th Street and
Wilshire Boulevard but was in „'.«* itself essentially dark, its old buildings
that dated from the twenties clustered , »«"«'' together like a flock of black
crows. *"Jl
A '
Across the street a match flared inside a parked white Chevrolet. Palatazin
;;*!''' could see Farris's profile as he lit his cigarette. Karris was a big,
bulky man whose' favorite sport was professional wrestling; he had black,
beetlelike eyes that could freeze a suspect a block away. Around Parker Center
he was called The Wheel only half-jokingly because when he rolled over somebody,
they didn't get up for a very long time. Palatazin could see the dark outline of
Zeitvogel watching him instead of the Mecca, but he brushed off the notion as
paranoia. JJ«:'! ;
When Palatazin had reached the scene from his house, Zeitvogel had briefed'
]„him on the situation: At around nine o'clock he and Farris had come to the
Mecca T , to check the sixteenth name on their list. No one had answered
Benefield's door, .. ;,r but they'd run into the building's manager downstairs.
He'd taken one look at the ,, composite picture and positively identified it as
being the man who rented Apart- ' '" ment 17. So Zeitvogel then ran the name
Walter Benefield through the Vehicle ID computers and gotten the tag number back
on a 73 gray Volkswagen Beetle. Then he'd called in to tell the nightwatch
officer, Lieutenant Martin.
An hour before midnight, the manager, Mr. Pietro, fumbled with his keys in the
narrow, dimly-lit corridor and finally slipped one into the door of No. 17. "I
wouldn't do this if I couldn't tell it was important," he said to the three
policemen standing around him. "I mean, I know you cops wo'uldn't want to invade
anybody's private property without good reason, huh?"
"We have good reason," Palatazin told him. "And we're not invading, Mr. Pietro.
We're simply going to look around for a minute or two."
"Oh, sure, sure." The lock clicked open. Pietro switched on the lights, and the
men stepped inside. The room was claustrophobic, and instantly Palatazin was
aware of a bitter aroma that might have been burnt almonds. Clothes were piled
on
176 p
ROBERT R. McCAMMON
a chair and scattered on the floor, and the bed was unmade. Palatazin saw the
pictures of weightlifters taped up around the headboard. He had started toward
that corner of the room when he sensed a scurrying motion from a battered old
card table. He stopped and stared at three glass tanks filled with huge black
roaches tumbling and crawling over each other; he drew his breath in sharply.
"Look at that," he told the others.
"Jeez!" Mr. Pietro said incredulously. "What's he doing with all those . . .
things in here? Listen, I run a clean place . . ."
"Yeah," Karris said, and peered into one of the tanks. "Ugly little suckers,
aren't they?"
Palatazin stepped away from the table and gazed at the pictures on the wall,
then back at Pietro, who looked thoroughly revolted. "Where does Benefield work,
Mr. Pietro?"
"Out in West L.A. He works for one of those bug-spray companies. An
exterminator."
"Do you know the name of the company?"
"Nope. Sorry." He glanced at the roaches again and shivered. "Jeez, do you think
Benefield's bringin' his work home with him or somethin'?"
"I doubt it." Palatazin looked over to where Karris was going through a chest of
drawers. "Take it easy with that, Karris, we don't want to tear the man's
furniture apart. Mr. Pietro, what time is Benefield usually at home?"
"All hours, in and out." Pietro shrugged. "Some nights he comes in, stays a
little while, and then leaves again. I've gotten to where I can recognize all
the tenants' footsteps now, you see. My ears are real good. Anyway, he don't
keep no regular hours."
"What sort of person is he? Do you talk with him very much?"
"No, he keeps to himself. Seems okay, though." Pietro grinned, showing a gold
tooth. "He pays his rent on time, which is more than you can say for a lot of
them. No, Benefield don't talk too much. Oh, one time when I couldn't sleep and
was listenin' to my radio, Benefield knocks on the door-I guess it was about two
in the morning, couple of weeks ago-and he seemed to want to talk, so I let him
in. He was real excited about somethin', said ... I don't know, it was crazy . .
. that he'd been out looking for his old lady, and he thought he'd seen her. Two
o'clock in the mornin'," Pietro abruptly shrugged and turned to watch Zeitvogel
rummaging under the bed.
"Old lady? Do you mean his girlfriend?"
"No. His mom. His old lady."
Zeitvogel said, "Here's something," and pulled out a box of magazines from under
the bed. It was an odd mixture of comic books, muscle magazines, and porno.
Zeitvogel held up a couple of publications devoted to bondage, and Palatazin
frowned with distaste. Lying on the bed were a pair of black handgrips used for
strengthening hand and wrist muscles. Palatazin picked up one of them and tried
to squeeze it, finding the resistance quite powerful. He made the connection
177
between them and the crushing hands that had killed four young women and laid
the grip back down where it had been. He checked the bathroom, finding a tub
with a couple of inches of standing water in it. In the medicine cabinet there
were bottles of Bufferin, Excedrin, Tylenol. It seemed that Benefield was
plagued with headaches.
"Captain," Zeitvogel said, offering him a yellowing Kodak snapshot as he came
out of the bathroom. The picture showed a blond, slightly rotund woman sitting
with her arm around a young boy on a sofa. The boy wore thick glasses and had a
crew cut, and he was smiling vacantly into the camera; the woman's legs were
crossed, one fleshy thigh over the other, a crooked grin on her face.
Palatazin||)M, studied the photograph for a moment, catching what he thought was
a strange, ,<* glassy look in the woman's eyes, as if she'd been drinking too
much. "Have you ever * "3 seen Benefield's mother, Mr. Pietro?" he asked. 7$
"Nope. Never."V*
.nil,
Farris was probing around the stove and sink. He bent down, opened a cup-" J
board, and brought out a bottle half-filled brownish liquid. He unscrewed the
cap """j and sniffed it, and in the next instant dark motes were spinning in
front of his eyes. '" h He jerked his head away and said, "Shit! What's this
stuff?" He quickly capped it (tj and coughed violently a couple of times, having
the sensation of oil clinging to his '" " J lungs. His nostrils seemed to be on
fire. Palatazin took the bottle from him and \\'\\ sniffed around the cap. "Mr.
Pietro, do you know what this is?" <_ ('iv
"Looks like old piss to me.",,.""^
Farris caught his breath and looked under the sink again, bringing out a fewi'"
dry rags. "Don't know what that is, captain, but it's wicked. The smell of it
down ,. *$* here'll knock you out." Nl1" ,!>
"Zeitvogel," Palatazin said quietly, "go down to your car and call in on our*
'"*" friend, will you? Let's see if he's got a rap sheet." . i"" |',)
Zeitvogel was back in fifteen minutes. "Bingo, captain," he said. "Benefield's
," '"^ got a long record of assaults, a couple of molestation charges, a Peeping
Tom, and'f | an attempted rape. He spent eight years in and out of mental wards
and did a stretch at Rathmore Hospital."
Palatazin nodded, staring at the cages full of scrabbling roaches. He put the
bottle back where it had been and closed the cupboard. He wanted to shout, "YES,
WE'VE GOT HIM!" but he knew that wasn't the case. There was a long way to go yet
in proving that Benefield had anything to do with the four murders. "We'll wait
for him to come home," Palatazin said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Mr.
Pietro, we're going to be outside in our cars. I think the best thing for you to
do is simply stay in your room. All right? If you hear Benefield come in, don't
leave your room to be friendly."
"You going to arrest him? What's he done?"
"We just want to ask him a few questions. Thank you for showing us his room, Mr.
Pietro. We'll take care of the rest."
And now Palatazin sat in his car, waiting. Several times he thought he saw a
178
Volkswagen approaching down Coronado, but it never was. The bitter, almondy odor
of that liquid in the bottle stayed with him. In a rag, pressed up tightly
against the nostrils, that stuff would probably act like a kind of chloroform;
it was evidently some substance or mix of solutions that Benefield used at work.
If he was the Roach-and those roaches in the tanks indicated more than anything
that he was-he had found a darker kind of work. But if he was the Roach, why had
he changed his M.O.? He hoped that if Benefield was given enough rope, he might
hang himself with it, or at least trip himself up.
The minutes crept into hours. Soon there were no more cars moving along
Coronado, and the only movement at all was the quick flicker of a match as
Farris lit another cigarette. I can wait, Palatazin said mentally. You'll have
to come home sometimes. And when you do, Mr. Benefield, I'll be right here . . .
TWO
Wes Richer woke up in the darkness, his head buzzing with Chablis and his
stomach full of Scandia's Danish sole. At once he knew that Solange wasn't lying
beside him, and when he looked up, he could see her figure outlined in
moonlight, naked and chocolate brown, holding a curtain aside as she looked out
of the window onto Charing Cross Road.
He watched her sleepily, the events of the night happily jumbling together in
his head-the calls and congratulations from the ABC brass over "Sheer Luck"; a
call from his father in Winter Hill, North Dakota, telling him how proud his
mother would have been if only she were alive; Jimmy Kline calling to tell him
that Arista was biting on the record contract hook and that the "Tonight" show
people were inquiring to see if Wes might guest-host after the first of
November; a congratulatory call from Cher, whom Wes had met at a party for Gene
Simmons; and then the dinner that evening with Jimmy, Mel Brooks, and Brooks's
screenwriter, Al Kaplan. The part was being rewritten for him with a couple of
added scenes to spotlight some of that "goyem klutz," as Brooks called it, that
he showed in "Sheer Luck." At the end of the evening, Brooks had squeezed his
cheek and said, "I love that face!" Which meant for Wes, as far as Quattlebaum's
was concerned, money in the bank.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and said huskily, "Solange? What is it?"
She didn't move from the window. Her head was cocked to one side, a black
statue, listening. Wes let his gaze roam appreciatively down her back, along the
smooth curving spine, to the firm roundness of the buttocks and the swelling of
her upper thighs. He'd been between those thighs less than an hour before; the
sheets were still bunched at the bottom of the bed, the room filled with the
peppery scent of desire. He could feel himself responding again, and he sat up,
supporting his head on one arm. "Solange?" he said. "Come back to bed."
When she turned toward him, he saw her eyes-they were hollow pits in her
179
fine skull. "I heard a scream, Wes," she whispered. "From across the street."
"A scream? You were probably dreaming."
"No," she said, her voice like velvet and steel. "I wasn't dreaming. I heard a
scream. Who lives across the street?"
Wes struggled up out of bed and stood beside her, peering out into the night and
feeling pretty stupid about going along with her even this far. "Uh ... I think
Dick Clark lives over there ... no, wait a minute. It's Dick Marx. He produced
the Sea Wolf remake with Richard Gere last year. I think." He couldn't really
see the house, just the tops of trees and a chimney perched over a high brick
wall. "I don't hear anything," he said after another moment.
"I think we should call the police.""""',
iif
:f
"The police? Why? Listen, Dick Marx has a reputation for ... you know ... a4
little S&M thrills? Maybe he just got carried away with the latest girlfriend.
Calling "I the cops would be a faux pas, right?" /^
"I don't agree. What I heard was not a scream of pleasure. Will you call
the«"""I police or shall I?" <
"Okay, okay. Christ, when you get something on your mind, you hang on to it«'*
until hell freezes, don't you?" He stepped over to the phone beside the bed and
*"} dialed 911. When the operator answered, he said simply, "Somebody screamed
in "'< Bel Air," then he gave the address, and hung up. "There," he said to
Solange. "Did I ,,',, do my duty?" ,'v*
"Come here, Wes," Solange said. "Hurry!"S1
He did. She gripped his arm. "I saw someone crawl over the wall. Look! Did you
see that?".„
"I don't see a thing."/">
"Someone's in our yard, Wes!" she said, her voice rising and she gripped his',,
arm tighter. "Call back. Tell the police to hurry!" p j
"Oh, shit! I'm not calling them again!" He leaned closer to the glass and tried
to> make out a figure moving, but it was pitch black; the arms of trees waved in
the . '\\ wind. "There's nobody outside. Come on back to bed . . ." :''
He was about to turn away from the window when he heard it. At first he thought
it was the high wailing of wind, but then the sound became higher and stronger,
the wail of a human voice-a little girl's voice-that ended in a cascade of
silvery laughter like water bubbling in a fountain. "I seeeeeeee youuuuuuuu,"
the voice said. "There at the winnnnnndowwwwwww," More childlike laughter, and
now Wes thought he could see a figure standing down there on the neatly
manicured lawn beside a thin pine tree. He was almost sure he saw a white gown
being whipped by the wind, a long mane of reddish-blond hair, a grinning
moonface staring up at him. But he heard the voice again, and it seemed to be
coming from a different place entirely. "Come outside!" it called sweetly.
"Won't you come out and be my playmate?"
Wes narrowed his eyes. He was only marginally aware that Solange's fingernails
were digging into his arm. Something moved beside that pine tree, and now Wes
180
was sure he could see a little girl down there. She was barefoot and carrying
what looked like a Raggedy Arm doll. "Mister!" she called out. "Please come
outside and play with me!"
There was something in her voice that made Wes want to go to that little girl.
That voice was so sweet, so compelling, so innocent. It rang in his head like
Christmas bells in the church at Winter Hill, and suddenly there were six inches
of new snow on the ground, and he was ten-year-old Wesley Richer, stuck in his
room with a head cold the day after Christmas while all the other kids were
playing in the snow with their new sleds. He could see the bundled figures of
the big kids way out on the frozen, milky surface of Massey Pond; they picked on
him because he was sickly and skinny, but he'd memorized a lot of jokes from a
couple of books at the library, and now even Brad Orr was beginning to laugh at
them and call him Funnyman. From his window he could see them skating around the
pond, turning slow circles and figure eights like people from those Currier and
Ives pictures Mom liked. And the sleds had already left a hundred runner trails
on Frosty Slope; ice glittered there in the weak gray sunlight like the dust of
crushed diamonds, and a distant figure raised a mittened hand to wave at him.
There was a pretty girl he didn't know standing underneath his window. "Come
outside!" she called, grinning up at him. "Let's play!"
"Can't!" he called back. "Mom says no. I gotta cold!"
"I can make you all better!" the little girl said. "Come on! You can jump right
through the window!"
Wes smiled. "Aww, you're foolin'!" She was barefoot in the snow, and maybe she
was so pale because she was really cold.
"No, I'm not! Your friends are waiting for you." She gestured vaguely in the
direction of Massey Pond. "I can take you to them."
"Oh . . ." He was tired of staying in the house, he wanted to get out and run in
the cold wind with the snow crunching underfoot, and maybe he wouldn't even need
any shoes either. Sure would be nice to do a bellyflop down the Slope. "Okay,"
he said excitedly. "Okay! I'll come out!"
The girl nodded. "Hurry!" she said.
And suddenly a strange thing happened. There was a pretty chocolate-colored lady
standing beside him, gripping his arm. She leaned forward and blew on the
window, instantly fogging it. Then she drew a cross in the fogged part with her
forefinger and mumbled something: "Nsambi kuna ezulu, nsambi kuna ntoto!"
Wesley Richer said, "Huh?"
The little girl beneath the window screamed piercingly, her face contorting into
a gray mask of horror. Instantly it all changed-Massey Pond and Frosty Slope and
all the distant figures skating and sledding whirled out of Wes's brain like
cobwebs caught in a high wind. The little girl staggered backward, gnashing her
teeth. Solange shouted "GET AWAY!" and fogged the window again, drawing another
cross and repeating the incantation again, but this time in English, "God is in
heaven, God is in earth!"
181
The little girl hissed and spat, her back arching like a cat's. Then she ran
across the lawn toward the wall. When she reached it, she turned and screamed,
"I'll get you for that! I'll make you pay for hurting me!" And then she
scrambled over the wall, her bare legs the last thing to disappear.
Wes's knees sagged. Solange caught him and helped him back to the bed. "What is
it?" he said. "What happened?" He looked up at her through glazed eyes. "Gonna
go skate," he said. "Snow fell last night."
She put the sheet over him and smoothed it down. She was shaking so hard her
teeth were chattering. "No, no," she said softly. "You had a dream, that's all."
"A dream?" He looked at her and blinked. "Dick Marx lives across the street,
that's who.";;"!i
"Go to sleep," Solange told him, and in another moment his eyes closed. She* *
stood over him until his breathing was even and deep, and then she returned to
the *Lj window. The pine trees moved fitfully, as if the dull terror that
gripped at her soul ' j "'„, gripped the soul of nature as well. She wasn't
certain what the thing had been, but j "J she knew from its violent reaction to
the cross and the name of God-a powerful """ji talisman in all languages-that it
was something terribly evil. She recalled with a »"" shudder the messages from
the spirit world as spoken through the Ouija board. "/ Evil. They thirst. Evil.
They thirst. She drew a chair up before the window and sat ,;"'< down to
meditate. She did not move again before daylight. !»"!
'i'J
"-:)
»"
M
THREE>
.. f
"You want another cup of coffee, Miss Clarke?"«:«<<!
Gayle looked up. She was huddled on a bench in the main corridor of the
Hollywood police precinct building where she'd been brought hours before, after,
she'd crumbled in hysterics in front of the officer who'd stopped her for
reckless ; driving. She thought she might have fallen asleep for a few minutes
or passed out because she hadn't heard the patient desk sergeant named Branson
come up behind her. She didn't want to sleep; she was afraid of it because she
knew she'd see Jack coming for her in her nightmares, those burning eyes set in
a bleached skull, the fangs in his mouth making him look like some strange
hybrid between man and dog. She shook her head, refusing the coffee, and hugged
her knees to her chin. Her hand had been cleaned and bandaged, but the fingers
still throbbed, and she wondered if she would have to get rabies shots.
"Uh ... Miss Clarke, I don't think you have to stick around here anymore," the
desk sergeant said. "I mean, I appreciate the company and all, but you can't
stay here all night."
"Why not?"
"Well, why should you? You've got a place to live, don't you? I mean, it's quiet
in here right now, but later on we're going to have hookers, hustlers, pimps,
junkies, all kinds of lowlife stumbling in here. You don't want to be around all
that, now, do you?"
J8J
182
"I don't want to go home," she said weakly. "Not yet."
"Yeah, well . . ." He shrugged and sat down on the bench beside her, making a
big deal out of checking a scuff mark on his shoe. "It's safe for you to go
home," he said finally without looking at her. "Nothing's going to get you."
"You don't believe me either, do you? That first dumb clod didn't believe me,
neither did your lieutenant, and you don't either."
He smiled faintly. "What's to believe or not believe? You told us what you saw,
and it was checked out. The officers found a lot of empty apartments and a
couple of dogs running around . . ."
"But you'll admit it was goddamned strange that all those apartments were
unlocked at eleven o'clock at night, won't you? That's not common in Hollywood,
is it?"
"Who knows what's common or uncommon in Hollywood?" Branson said quietly. "The
rules change every day. But this stuff about your boyfriend being some kind of
... what did you say he was? Vampire or werewolf?"
She was silent.
"Vampire, didn't you say? Well, couldn't he have been wearing a Halloween mask
maybe?"
"It was no mask. You people have overlooked the most important point-what
happened to all those people in that apartment complex? Did they all step off
into the Twilight Zone or something? Where are they?"
"That I wouldn't know anything about," Branson said, getting to his feet. "But
I'd suggest you go on home now, huh?" He moved back toward his desk, feeling her
stare boring into the back of his neck. Of course, he hadn't told her that
Lieutenant Wylie was over at the Sandalwood Apartments right now with a team of
officers, going over every room with vacuum cleaners and roping the place off
from the street. Branson could tell that Wylie was more than a little worried.
When Wylie's left eyebrow started to tick, that was a sure sign something was
cooking. This Clarke woman had answered all the questions she could, and she'd
put some questions of her own to the officers, who of course couldn't come up
with any decent answers. Wylie had told him emphatically to get rid of her since
she was a real thorn in the ass. Branson sat behind his desk, shuffled papers,
and stared at the telephone, wishing it would ring with a good old-fashioned
robbery or mugging. This vampire shit was for the birds. No, he decided, make
that for the bats.
FOUR
Awaken, the voice whispered. Mitch Gideon heard it quite clearly. But he didn't
have to open his eyes because they were already open; his head simply seemed to
jerk backward, and his vision cleared as if he'd been looking through frosted
glass. It took him a moment to fully realize where he was. When he did, the
shock of it almost staggered him.
183
He was standing in the entrance foyer of the Gideon Funeral Home Number Four on
Beverly Boulevard near CBS Television City. Behind him the heavy chrome-and-oak
doors stood wide open to the street; a cold breeze was rushing in around him. He
heard a noise like the tinkling of Chinese wind chimes and looked to his side-he
was holding his key ring with the key that unlocked the front doors still
grasped between his thumb and forefinger. He was wearing brown bedroom slippers
and his brown velour robe with the initials "MG" on the breast pocket over his
usual white silk pajamas. I'm in my pajamas? he asked himself incredulously.
What the fuck's going on here? Am I dreaming, hypnotized, or what?
Overhead a huge chandelier with electric candles lit up the entrance foyer with
a rich golden glow. He didn't remember flicking the wall switch. Damn!
he.»thought, I don't remember anything since I got into bed beside Estelle at. .
. what * «*| time had that been? He looked at his wrist but knew his watch was
sitting on the Lj chest of drawers in the master bedroom where he put it every
night before going to || ^ sleep. He felt like shouting the two questions aloud:
What am I doing here? And «J how the hell did I get down from Laurel Canyon to
Beverly Boulevard in my sleep *""jj for Christ's sake?
Gideon turned and walked back out of the building into the parking lot.
There'"}'
" "" " " "" ""?)
4 "*
sat his Lincoln Continental in the space marked "Mr. Gideon Only." But there
was* ""*
another vehicle in the parking lot as well-a large U-Haul truck. He stepped
closer to it but didn't see anyone sitting in the cab. And when he looked back
at they^1 Tudor-style funeral home, he saw a light burning in a window on the
upper floor. ,,x' My office, he realized. Have I been up there working? How did
I get out of the house? J;,/* By sleepwalking? Didn't Estelle hear me leave? He
seemed to remember being _ #f behind the wheel of his car, the hot splash of
headlights and traffic signals on his hhi^»face, but he'd thought that was only
a dream. He was grateful that tonight he „, ,a*»wasn't dreaming of that conveyor
belt full of coffins where the workmen were „f"'') beginning to grin at him as
if he were one of their own. His brain felt feverish and I' >') violated, as if
someone or something had peeled back to the top of his head and ' "jj" gone to
work in there, fitting him with a windup key that could be turned to send : "
him spinning madly in any chosen direction.
He whirled around and stared into the dark distance. It was that goddamned
house, he thought suddenly, that castle where some maniac had sawed Orion
Kronsteen's head off. The place was preying on his mind, intruding into his
thoughts both day and night, making him crazy. He thought he could see the
castle even now outlined against the darkness in bloodred neon. Crazy, he
thought, I'm going fuckin' crazy!
And from the corner of his eye, he saw the light go off in his office. Gideon
stared at the black window, his heart beating rapidly. Chill bumps had risen on
his arms and legs beneath the silk pajamas. My God, he thought. Oh, my God . . .
did I unlock the doors for someone else? He walked back across the parking lot
to the building's threshold. The only sound in the entire funeral home seemed to
be the ticking of a large grandfather clock at the far end of the central
corridor where a
184
wide marble staircase with black cherrywood banisters curved gracefully up to
the second floor. Gideon moved along that corridor until he could make out the
hands on the clock-two-ten. He'd closed his eyes in his own bedroom at just
after twelve o'clock.
From somewhere upstairs there came a muffled, soft thump. Gideon knew what that
sound was from years of hearing it-the noise of a coffin lid closing, probably
in the first of the three display rooms. He came to the end of the corridor, the
grandfather clock ticking madly in his head. And he started up the long
stairway, hand clenching the bannister. There was another corridor on the second
floor and several rooms on either side; at the corridor's end a shorter stairway
led up to the third floor and the administrative offices. Gideon's searching
hand found the wall switch, and instantly the corridor was lit by a dozen
wall-mounted electric candles. On the first of the polished oak doors there was
a golden plaque that said Blue Room, and underneath that in white plastic
letters pressed against a black velvet background, Mr. William R. Tedford.
Gideon opened the door and pressed another wall switch. A sapphire-colored
chandelier blazed to life. Everything in the room was blue-walls, ceiling,
carpet, sofa, and chairs. Blue flowers peeked from azure vases; a six-foot
statue of a blue angel with unfolding wings stood in a corner; the guest book,
powder blue, sat atop an indigo pedestal. But the room's main fixture, supported
on a royal blue dais, was a closed ebony coffin containing the remains of a
certain Mr. Tedford.
From farther along the hallway came the quiet sound of a door closing. "Who's
there?" Gideon said, his voice sounding weak and defenseless in the thick
silence. He stood where he was for a moment, listening, and then moved forward
past the Gold Room, past the Green Room, past the Amber Room. He peered
cautiously into the Red Room, switching on a chandelier that lit up the place
like the center of an inferno. He could almost smell the sulphur and smoke. But
then he saw that the coffin's lid was propped open and, as he neared it, he
realized with a start of alarm that the corpse-an elderly woman in a pale pink
gown-was smoking a cigarette.
Or rather, a burning cigarette had been forced between the dead lips. It was
almost out now because, of course, she wasn't inhaling. A few ashes lay on her
cheek, gray against artificial peach. Someone's playing a joke, Gideon thought
angrily as he plucked out the cigarette and tossed it aside. It's not very
funny. Not very funny at all!
He was answered by a single peal of laughter from one of the other display
rooms. He went back out to the corridor, trembling, wanting to run but knowing
he couldn't hide. "Where are you?" he shouted. "What do you want with me?" There
were two more rooms farther along the hall-the Violet Room and the White Room.
Gideon looked from door to door, his legs refusing to move. "What do you want?"
he shouted again. "I'm going to call the police if you don't get out of here!"
Dead silence.
Gideon threw open the door to the Violet Room. It crashed against the wall,
185
knocking down a gilt-framed picture of purple flowers in a dark green and lilac
field. He approached the coffin and looked in, recoiling instantly. The corpse-a
shrunken old man with sharply protruding cheekbones-had been painted to look
like a clown. There were red spots of lipstick covering his cheeks and the bulb
of his nose, the lips had been painted bright red and the sewn-shut eyelids as
well. Gideon slammed down the coffin's lid and backed away into the corridor,
where he turned to face the White Room's door.
ni* i'
He stepped inside, holding his breath in this place of glacial, heavenly
whiteness. In this room, the most expensive and ornate of all the display rooms,
even the coffin was white with trim. There was a white grand piano with
gold-plated keys replacing the black ones, and a long black-and-white checked
sofa. Two tall, golden candelabra stood on either side of the coffin dais, each
holding six electric candles* .* that now guttered with golden light. But there
was no one in here, no one at all. "C Gideon, bloated with relief, turned toward
the door. /^ And then the ice-white coffin began to open. , 1 He whirled around,
a long whine beginning in his throat. The coffin's lid rose, >< pushed by a bare
arm. When it was fully open, the corpse sat up. It was a young ,. '" Chicano boy
with shining black hair, wearing a white T-shirt and dirty jeans. *"j| ;j Gideon
could see that he'd been lying on top of the other corpse in the coffin, a
"'!"£blue-haired society matron who'd kicked off in her sleep, and now the boy
started , - <* \\ to climb out of the coffin, his dark eyes transfixing Gideon.
He reached out, felt the ' <„><* , silk lining of the coffin, and grinned. "Real
nice, man," he said softly. "You know ('/ how to make 'em real good, don't you?"
I ,„Gideon couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Couldn't think. ill(t "Just trying it
on for size, Mr. Gideon," the boy said, his gaze flicking to the ". '^«corner.
''„»,»And the black-haired girl who'd been standing there reached for Mitch
Gideon's /'\\ throat. " ,„\\
' ?'
i* , Vm
FIVE
"Ah," Prince Conrad Vulkan said softly, pressing his white fingers to his
temple. He opened his green cat eyes and looked across the room at Phillip
Falco. "There. Mitch Gideon is ours. We can begin mass production tomorrow
night."- '
"Sir, if you'll allow me," Falco began quietly, "you took a great risk in
bringing him down from his home like that . . ."
"Risk? What risk?" Vulkan's eyes moved, green marbles in a pallid face, toward
his servant. "If the police had stopped him, he simply would have awakened from
his trance. That's all. We need the coffins; we need his factory. And what
military leader in all of history has been a stranger to risks?" He sat
motionless for a moment, then rose to his feet and moved across the
stone-floored room to the huge fireplace. It was large enough to hold more than
a cord of wood, but now only six or seven
*.
186
logs blazed in there, and the yellow-orange glow splashed across the vampire's
face. There were crates scattered about the room, some of them open, with old
rare books spilling out. Beautiful paintings, many of them cracked and faded but
obviously the work of masters, hung on the walls along with delicate fragments
of rotted tapestries. At the center of the room there was a large blue-and-red
Oriental carpet and a long, polished table on which sat a silver candelabra and
eight guttering black candles. Before Vulkan's black velvet chair were maps of
L.A., Torrence, Glendale, Pasadena, Compton, and most of Orange and Los Angeles
counties. Vulkan stared into the fire, his eyes glittering. Soon the servant who
called himself Roach would be bringing him his food for the night, and the
prospect of drinking hot blood made him eager and impatient. He had missed his
feeding last night because he felt it unwise to use that human again so quickly.
He'd been reading the newspapers Falco brought to him, and he knew that it would
be foolish to do something that would call needless attention to his servant.
"Roach will be here soon," he said, watching a log burst into flame. He pondered
what had to be done tonight; fast or slow, that was the question.
"Master," Falco said, stepping closer. "That man is dangerous. He takes chances.
He's going to cause you harm . . ."
"Why should you care?" the prince asked softly.
Falco paused for a moment, watching the slight figure dappled red and black by
the flames. "I only mean to say, Master, that the police are bound to catch him
sooner or later. I know you've chosen him because you found his mind most . . .
receptive, but the time is coming for you to dispose of him. I could bring them
for you. Why not let me?"
Vulkan turned toward the other man, smiling slightly. "Let you? Let you,
Phillip? Time has used you all up. There's nothing left of you. You're old and
weak, and the women would get away from you too easily. No Roach is young,
strong, and . . . new." Vulkan regarded him in silence for a moment, then shook
his head. "No, Phillip. If anyone causes me harm, it will be you. Won't it?"
"Me?" A cold flame of terror flared in Falco's soul. "I don't understand what
you're-"
"Oh, yes, you do. It's time to stop the charade. Do you think just because I
sleep during the day I know nothing of what transpires? You sadly misjudge me,
Phillip." Vulkan's voice had dropped to a soft, gentle whisper. "How
unfortunate. The Headmaster visits me as I sleep, Phillip. He sees everything,
even what hides in your heart and mind. That is how I know you've been thinking
of betraying me . . ."
"No!" Falco said, his eyes widening. "No! I swear it isn't true!"
"Oh, but it is. Ever since we left Hungary, you've grown more and more . . . how
shall I put it? ... penitent? Now you sink to your knees and pray to a god who
will have nothing to do with you. You pray, and you repent-for what good it does
you. And you have been thinking of going to the police."
"NO!"
187
"The Headmaster told me, Phillip. And he never lies. Never." Vulkan turned his
back on Falco and watched the fire burn. "I've given you a good life," he said
after another moment. "Why did you want to hurt me?"
Falco trembled, his mind reeling. He put his hands to his face and drew in a
tortured breath. Above him in the high rafters of the room, he could hear the
wind moaning like a chorus of doomed souls. "It's . . . it's not right!" he
blurted out, a strangled sob breaking from his throat. "It's perverted, unholy .
. .!"
"You can do better than that."
"I ... I remember in Budapest, when I was a young art dealer and . . . the old
man came to see me . . ."
"Kovak," Vulkan whispered. "A loyal and true servant."*'*
". . . with that priceless Byzantine woodcarving, so beautiful it stunned
me.4»»,»And I remember he said there were more pieces of art like that one,
hundreds more *C in a monastery atop Mount Jaeger. He said his ... his Master
had heard of the V""^ auction I'd arranged for the Koppe estate, and perhaps I
could arrange an auction ,„, "| for Prince Vulkan as well." Falco's eyes grew
cold. "Vulkan. The first time I ever J*«heard your name I felt . . .
contaminated." *"
"And of course, when you saw my collection ... or, I should say, the
collection"1j my father began . . . you ceased to care what sort of creature I
was. Even after I'd <*,'** killed Kovak, you helped the others throw his body
from the cliff. Do you remember ,„. J that as well?" JV'J
Falco shuddered.' */
"Look around you, Phillip," Vulkan whispered softly. "Look at the beauty you<
"i, ,„sacrificed your soul to be near." ^
Falco blinked and looked at the walls where the medieval tapestries and the«';|V
ancient works of Byzantine art hung. There were more modern works as well- '"'^,
pieces by Lorrain, Ingres, Delacroix, Nolde, Degas, Lorenzo De Credi, and the ""
,A Hungarian artists Laszlo Paal, Jozsef Borsos, and Simon Hollosy. In the dim
firelight , ; „^ magnificent black horses galloped on their canvas fields; a
peasant celebration, ,( "£,. done in earth tones, swirled across a village
square; a bright red Nolde demon :«*"*' giggled while a poet struggled with his
verses; wind moved, cold and silent, across a gold and purple autumnal scene,
sending a gaggle of black crows flying from an amber field; Degas ballerinas
wearing pink masks pirouetted on a shadowy stage; the somber face of a Hungarian
nobleman in black stared out from his canvas, a golden coronet around his head
the only hint of light or color. The paintings filled the room, their subjects
bright and dark, colors muted and sparkling. The beauty, Falco thought; oh, the
terrible beauty . . .
Prince Vulkan took a step toward him, but his face remained in shadow. "It comes
to an end, Phillip. The one who calls himself Roach is bringing me food tonight.
He'll be staying here with me. In your place."
Falco's mouth opened. He whispered, "Please," then whirled away from the prince,
racing across the huge room toward the slab of a door on the other side. Before
he reached it, Vulkan raised a finger and formed a triangle in the air; Falco
Wk
188
found himself grasping for a doorknob that was no longer there. Now a rough
stone wall stood before him. "Illusion!" Falco shrieked. "There's a door here! I
know there is!" His fingers scrabbled over the stone frantically, and then he
began beating at it with his fists.
Vulkan giggled-the giggle of a spoiled young boy-and called out in a high
singsong, "Phillip can't get out, can't get out, can't get out . . . can you?"
"God help me!" Falco shrieked, his voice cracking. "God help-"
"STOP THAT!" Vulkan shouted, clapping his hands to his ears. His face had
sharpened, the mouth half-open to show the vicious fangs. "I'll tear you to
pieces for that!"
Falco whirled around, his back to the cold stone, and watched in horror as the
prince approached. "Master!" he whispered hoarsely and began to sink to his
knees. "Master, please, I'm begging you! I'm begging you! Don't kill me, don't
kill me ... make me like you! You said you would someday! Do it now! Make me
like you!"
Vulkan stood over him, smiling slightly. "No, Phillip, you've aged too much to
be of any further use to me. And you know too many of my secrets, too many of my
plans . . ."
"Don't kill me!" the old man on the floor whimpered, tears streaming down his
cheeks.
"The world belongs to the young," Vulkan said. "The old have no place in it. I
give the gift of everlasting youth, and soon this world will be mine. Think of
Alexander, Phillip. During his campaigns on Tyre and Babylon, he left behind the
stragglers and invalids who would hold back his march. You are now worth as much
to me as a straggler was to Alexander . . ."
Falco hid his face in his hands. "God save my sinning soul, I have sinned,
Father, and I-"
"YOU FOOL!" VulKan shouted, and gripped his palms around Falco's temples. The
fingers tensed; Falco's eyes widened in shock. There was a soft cracking sound
and a fine thread of blood spread from the crown of Falco's head to the bridge
of his nose. Vulkan's eyes blazed green, the pupils darkening.
Then Falco screamed, the scream echoing eerily against the walls as it was drawn
up with the wind toward the high ceiling. Drops of blood were being squeezed
from Falco's forehead, streaming down to the tip of the nose, spattering onto
his shirt. The cracking noise grew louder, and Falco began babbling in terror.
Vulkan's wrists suddenly twisted. Most of Falco's face and the top of his skull
' caved in, blood exploding from the ruined nose and the crack that zigzagged
from his forehead to the back of his head. The body began kicking frantically,
eyes filling up with blood. Vulkan applied more pressure, and the head became a
morass of flesh, bone, and brains. Vulkan loosened his grip, and the corpse gave
out a soft sigh as it crumpled into a formless heap. Blood had spattered across
the vampire's face, and now he took a thick drop of it on the end of a finger
and licked it off. Then he waved that finger in a triangle opposite the first
one, and the door reap- > peared like a photograph coming up on blank paper. The
figures that had been fe
189
pressed against it on the other side, listening and laughing softly, scurried
away into the corridor's darkness when Vulkan opened the door. He called
sharply, "Kobra!" and one of them stopped and came back along the corridor.
"Master?" Kobra said softly. The flesh of his face was tight and masklike,
veined with blue at the temples. His eyes were as red as a rat's, his white hair
matted and dirty. He stepped into the room, following Vulkan, and stared down at
the bloody figure on the floor.
"Drink," Vulkan said, motioning vaguely toward the corpse.
Kobra's eyes blazed in anticipation. He gasped and went down on his knees,
fastening his fangs in the throat and drinking greedily as his chest heaved up
and
hi '««" down.,„«
The prince walked across the room and sat back down in his chair, watching4 «»;;
Kobra feast. Every so often Vulkan giggled. Kobra was young and inexperienced
"Lj and didn't yet know the rich difference between living and dead food. These
young t „» ones were so easy to please and so eager to learn. Soon, though-very
soon-he and » """I the others would learn some of the secrets that Vulkan had
kept for almost eight ""I hundred years-how to summon dogs and rats, bats and
flies in thick, noxious clouds; how to peer into the mind of a human and read
the secret thoughts waiting *"]» to be tapped. How to tell from a single drop of
blood how old a human was, or what «'" jl his diet had consisted of-the tastes a
hundred thousand complex variations of -'A sweet and sour, coppery and salty,
tart or flat, poor or fine like wine aged in old A^ Belgian kegs. How to drain
the blood from a living human to the dregs and in so „„./ doing transform that
person into a brother or sister of the night. So many things to ^ * learn. ,,,«»
Vulkan leaned back in his chair. Kobra glanced up, wasting the blood that
dripped from his pale lips, and then returned to his work. This one is
dedicated. He"t ,,*> actually loves me, thought the prince. What to do with
Falco's carcass? His gaze |i 'I moved toward the huge fireplace. The logs had
caught now, and the blaze filled the room with dancing orange specters. He
wondered if the dogs in the castle's lower regions would like their meat roasted
tonight.
And so he sat and waited for the Roach.
SIX
Startled, Palatazin raised his head and glanced at his watch. He'd fallen asleep
for a few minutes. Three-twenty. Coronado Street seemed deserted. Even the Club
Feliz had closed its doors and cut the lights. The two shapes in the parked car
across the street weren't moving, and Palatazin wondered if they were sleeping,
too. Should've brought some coffee, he told himself irritably. Then another
thought -what if this Benefield isn't the one we're looking for? The killings
have stopped. Perhaps he's gone for good. Or have they stopped? Is the Roach
just lying low?
A car's headlights winked from the far end of Coronado Street. Palatazin sat
*.
J89
' !''«
190
upright, his heart starting to beat a little faster. The car approached very
slowly, and in another minute Palatazin saw that it was a light-colored
Volkswagen Beetle. His throat went dry. The car pulled up to the curb perhaps
thirty yards away, and Palatazin ducked down in his seat. The headlights went
out. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps sounded on concrete.
When he lifted himself up, he caught a quick glimpse of the man disappearing
into the Mecca. That's him, Palatazin thought. That's the man! After a moment or
so Zeitvogel came across the street and peered into Palatazin's car. "Do we go
up after him now, captain?"
"No. Let's wait awhile and see what he does. If he comes back out, we'll follow
him, and if he stays in, we'll have plenty of time to make the arrest."
"This is him, isn't it? The Roach, I mean?"
"We'll see. You stay alert."
Zeitvogel nodded and dashed back to his car.
Palatazin stared fixedly at the building's front door. When it opened again and
Benefield stepped out onto the sidewalk, Palatazin felt his heart kick as if it
had been given a charge of electricity. The man was carrying a small paper
bag-what could that be? he wondered. One of those rags soaked in that noxious
brew? Then maybe he was going to strike tonight? Benefield reached his car,
looked up and down the street-Palatazin ducked his head so fast his neck
cracked-and then got in. The Volkswagen's engine fired, the headlights came on,
and the car pulled away from the curb. It moved slowly past Palatazin to the end
of Coronado, then turned right on 6th.
Palatazin quickly started his engine, make a tight U-turn, and followed. He saw
Zeitvogel's lights, about fifty yards behind in his rearview mirror. The gray
Volkswagen turned on Western Avenue, and Palatazin realized the man was driving
right up into Hollywood. His pulse was pounding, the palms of his hands sweaty
against the steering wheel. He kept as far back as possible, driving with his
lights out so Benefield wouldn't notice his tail. In a few minutes the
Volkswagen turned onto Hollywood Boulevard, which was still ablaze with neon
from the bars, discos, massage parlors, and porno bookstores. There was still a
good deal of traffic on the boulevard, too, so Palatazin had to turn his lights
on and speed up. He hung back a few car lengths behind the Volkswagen. From the
sidewalks young girls in tight denims or slit skirts, T-shirts or halters called
out invitations to the drivers, waving at them and holding up fingers to
indicate their price. Most of the girls, hopeful starlets from every state in
the country, were very pretty; perhaps they'd modeled once or twice or done bit
parts or even starred in a skin flick or two, but now for a variety of reasons
their luck had just turned bad. They were the throwaways, the tissues some
agent, director, or disco smooth-talker had sneezed into and then tossed out
with the trash. All of them potential victims.
Up ahead under a huge red "X" that proclaimed a porno triple-bill, the
Volkswagen swerved. The car plowed through traffic toward the curb.
191
His head was filled with the Master's voice, so he knew he had to hurry. He'd
driven past several girls who'd tempted him, but tonight he was looking for one
who was just right. There were so many to choose from-all colors, all sizes, the
greatest candy store in the world. He had an erection already, but he wouldn't
have an orgasm until he clamped the chemical-soaked cloth against her mouth and
nostrils.
And then he saw her, standing beneath the red "X" of the Hollywood Adult Cinema.
She had long waves of blond hair, lips pouting sensually in a face that,, looked
more like a little girl's than a woman's. She was wearing a shocking pink
»«»dress and pink stockings, and best of all, she wasn't nearly as thin as the
others. Lj There was something about her eyes and her mouth that reminded him of
Bev. Of ; '""',, course, all the girls did in one way or another, but this one
... yes, this one was Bev! i """I It really was! He thought he'd found her so
many times, that she'd been sorry for -""j, leaving him and had come back, but
always he realized that it wasn't her, that he'd * been tricked again. And so he
had to kill the nasty, evil bitches. They were helping '""* Bev hide; they were
laughing at him behind his back-with their ugly, painted lips. !'<
But this was her-he was sure of it. Oh, the Master would be so glad he'd ;!,
found Bev! ' '-*
Tears brimmed in his eyes as he pulled up to the curb and motioned the girl
over. She looked around for something better and then shrugged as she stepped
over to the Volkswagen, peering in at the man with her heavy-lidded, dark eyes.
"I won't go for less than seventy-five," she said disinterestedly, in a thin
voice. She had wanted to sing backup for somebody like Bob Seger, but it was
really hard getting a gig in this town.
"Fifty," Roach said. He started digging for his wallet.
"You talking a quickie or what?" the girl asked.
"Yeah. A quickie."
"You want some lip service?" He looked like a creep, but fifty bucks would buy
her those new shoes she'd been wanting over at The Broadway. There was a funny
smell in the car, too. Alcohol? Aftershave lotion? She'd just gotten a whiff of
it, and now it was gone. Well what the hell? She slid into the car. "My name's
Vicki," she said, and gave his thigh a quick squeeze.
He smiled and pulled back into the flow of traffic. "I know what your name is.
You can't fool me."
"Huh?" Kim muttered. Some nut. God, she thought, maybe he's the Roach. The idea
chilled her, but then she pushed it aside. Everything about this guy was little
except his hands; his cock was probably as big as a shrimp. That made her giggle
a little bit.
"What are you laughing at?" he said sharply.
"Oooooh," Kim said in a little girl voice, "don't bite baby's head off,
sweetheart.
x
191
i"'"
<r
:'!>
192
Why don't you turn in that alley, sugar, and let baby give you what you need?"
"Okay," he said. "Yeah. Fine." He turned off the boulevard but drove right
through the alley onto Franklin Avenue.
"Hey! Where are you taking me?"
"You'll see," he told her, cutting across Franklin and driving north toward
Yucca Street. "You just sit quiet, you'll see."
"Stop the car!" Kim said suddenly. "I want to get out!"
"No, you don't. You'll run away. I've looked for you for a long time, Bev, and
I'm not going to let you go again . . ."
Dull terror hit the girl. Her breath quickened. "Let me out," she whispered, and
whirled to open the door, but one of the man's hands flashed out and caught her
by the back of the neck. "DON'T DO THAT!" he shouted. "THIS ISN'T THE WAY IT'S
SUPPOSED TO BE!" He turned onto Palmero Street and followed it to a dead end
where a couple of dark apartment buildings stood. There was a mound of dirt and
rubble piled at the center of a weed-infested lot, Kim was struggling,
scratching at him now. "STOP THAT!" and when his grip relaxed, she turned and
dug her nails into his cheek, then lunged for the door again. He caught her hair
and throat and pulled her back.
And then he realized the truth, as he realized it every time, every single time-
this wasn't Bev. This was somebody who'd tried to fool him, somebody who was
laughing at him. This was someone who was wicked and who could be saved only by
the Master's touch.
"You're not Bev!" Roach said. "You're not, you're not, you're . . ." He reached
down beneath the seat for the cloth and brought it quickly up into Kirn's face.
She gave a muffled scream and fought harder, but he wrenched her head back and
pressed the wet cloth firmly against her nostrils.
And then he was caught in a blaze of headlights.
EIGHT
Palatazin and Zeitvogel had hit their lights at about the same time, and
Zeitvogel shouted, "Police! Hold it!"
Benefield twisted around frantically. In the next instant he threw open the
passenger door and kicked the blonde out. She staggered to her knees and then
pitched forward, unconscious. The Volkswagen's engine roared as the car plunged
forward, then turned in a wild circle on the vacant lot and came screaming back
along Palmero Street toward the makeshift roadblock formed by Palatazin and
Zeitvogel's cars. The Volkswagen tried to turn aside at the last instant, but
Zeitvogel accelerated and slammed into Benefield's side. The Roach scrambled
out, his eyes enormous circles of fear behind his glasses. He started to run for
the darkness as Palatazin leapt from his car and drew his .38. "STOP OR I'LL
SHOOT!" he shouted. Benefield kept running. Palatazin fired into the air, and
immediately
193
Benefield fell to the ground in a trembling heap. Holding his gun at arm's
length, Palatazin approached the man. "Hold it!" he said tersely. "Don't move,
not even a finger!" Behind him he could hear the chatter of Zeitvogel's radio,
and Farris came running up beside him like a bull.
When he reached Benefield, Palatazin saw that the man had contorted himself like
a fetus and was sucking his thumb. Farris hauled him to his feet, snapped
handcuffs on his wrists, and read him his rights. Benefield's eyes were glazed
and empty, and he kept staring up into the hills.
Palatazin walked back to the empty lot and bent down beside the girl. Her
breathing was ragged, but otherwise she seemed to be okay. On the ground near^
her was a piece of cloth that smelled so strongly of the liquid substance they
had >' found in Benefield's apartment that tears came to his eyes. Sirens were
coming l] "»"J , nearer. In another moment two prowl cars came roaring along
Palmero Street, »«j followed by an ambulance. One of the attendants broke open a
plastic ampule | y under the girl's nose, and she began coughing; she sat up in
another moment, ("| rivulets of black mascara streaming down her face with her
tears. """|
The night was filled with flashing lights and the metallic crackle of police
radios. Farris was frisking Benefield at the side of a prowl car, and Palatazin
put his|7 gun away and came over to them. " '"ll
_11
The man was babbling like a lunatic,"... calling me, I hear him calling me, he's
'«| ' not going to let you do this, he's going to protect me, he will he will .
. ." '*;!
"Sure he will," Farris said. "Now get in that car and shut your face.",^
But Benefield turned his full gaze onto Palatazin. "He won't let you put me\\ *
away! He knows what you're doing! He sees everything, all the wickedness in the
l{<>* whole world!" He looked up into the night past Palatazin's shoulder.
"Master!" he "«'C called out, and began to sob. "Master, help me! My life is
yours! My . . ." „i«p*
"Get in!" Farris said, shoving Benefield into the backseat.. ji Jl
The cold slowly crept over Palatazin. Had the man said Master? Did he mean. %
God or ... something else? He looked through the window at Benefield, who had
'"" his face in his hands, as if ashamed. The prowl car backed along Palmero,
turned, and then disappeared into the night, leaving Palatazin staring into the
darkness. Slowly he turned and gazed up at the Hollywood Hills, a cold wind
suddenly rushing past him like something huge and invisible. From far away he
thought he could hear a dog howling forlornly.
"Captain? You going back to Parker Center?"
Palatazin looked over his shoulder at Zeitvogel. "No. Let them put Benefield on
ice for a while, and I swear if anybody calls the press in on this thing before
morning, I'll have him walking a beat on Selma Avenue!" He ran a hand across his
forehead. "I'm going home to get some sleep."
Zeitvogel nodded, started to walk away, and then stopped. "Do you think we've
got the Roach?" he asked quietly.
"Your guess is as good as mine."
"I hope we do. If not, we sure busted our asses for nothing. See you at the
194 McCAMMON
office." Zeitvogel raised his hand in good-bye and walked away toward his now-
battered car.
"See you," Palatazin said. He gazed back into the darkness, feeling as though he
were being watched by a presence that was slowly gathering strength. Where was
it hiding? What was its strategy? When was it going to strike? Could Benefield
supply any of the answers to those questions? Palatazin paused a moment longer,
feeling the hairs standing up at the back of his neck. Then he walked to his
Ford and drove away.
NINE
Mother of Mercy Hospital was an old ten-story chunk of brick and glass in
Monterey Park about five minutes away from the San Bernardino Freeway. At five
minutes after four A.M. the parking lot was quiet, and most of the building's
windows were dark. The last real trouble in the Emergency Room had ended an hour
ago, when the police had brought in eight or nine members of the Homicides and
the Vipers who'd started swinging knives at each other at the Matador Drive-in.
Three of them were cut pretty badly and needed whole blood transfusions, but the
rest were patched up with bandages and Mercurochrome and hauled off in a police
van. It had been an easy night-a couple of traffic accident victims, one gunshot
wound, a child who'd mistaken a jar of ant poison for honey, assorted broken
bones and sprains, nothing really out of the ordinary. But tonight the emergency
room staff wanted to stay busy so they wouldn't have time to think about the
gossip they'd been hearing all night from assorted nurses and orderlies about
those fifty- seven people lying in the isolation ward on the tenth floor. Nurse
Lomax said that not one of them had a drop of blood in their bodies. Paco, an
orderly on the ninth floor, had said he'd seen some of those bodies twist and
writhe like mad things, yet they had neither heartbeat nor pulse. Hernando
Valdez, an aged janitor and a renowned voice of wisdom in the hospital, said
their skin was like marble, and you could see the trails of collapsed veins
beneath it. He said they were maldito, cursed things, and it would be best not
to be around when they awakened from trjeir evil sleep. Nurse Espositio said
everything about them was dead except their brains- when electrode contacts were
placed on their scalps, jagged spokes were displayed on the
electroencephalograms.
The emergency room staff agreed-whatever was going on, it was muy misterioso.
So none of them spoke when Dr. Miriam Delgado, her eyes still puffy from a brief
and uneasy sleep, came through the emergency room entrance and stepped into the
elevator without acknowledging any of them. The lighted numerals at the top of
the door advanced to 10.
Dr. Delgado had received a telephone call about twenty minutes earlier from Mrs.
Browning, head nurse on the isolation ward. The woman sounded extremely
195
puzzled. "Dr. Delgado, there's a change in several of the patients. We're
getting increased EEG readings." Delgado was thankful to return to the hospital;
in her sleep she'd dreamed of those terrible eyes staring at her through
transparent, milky lids like the eyes of sleeping reptiles. They seemed to be
surrounding her, spinning in a mad circle like the baleful lamps of some
out-of-control carnival ride. When she awakened, she was shaking and could not
seem to stop.
HIM'* ,„. »
The elevator doors slid open on the tenth floor. Dr. Delgado stepped out and
walked along the gjeen-walled corridor toward the nurse's station. Her brain was
still buzzing from her dream as well as from all the heated conferences she'd
been involved in yesterday with everyone from Dr. Steiner to Dr. Ramez, the head
of the hospital. The theories had flown hot and fast; diagnoses were formulated
and then just as quickly discarded. The press had been nosing around, but the
hospital's* -;J public relations man had been able to keep them at bay, for the
time being at least. .!U Which was a relief to Dr. Delgado, for she needed time
to find out just what they ij % were dealing with here. A virus? A contaminant
in the water pipes? Some element f ""'*J, in the building's paint? In the air?
One of the nurses had found precisely spaced "*'| puncture wounds on three of
the victims, but not all in the same place. Two of «" them were wounded in the
throat, a third at the crook of the elbow. The others "I
'i
were bruised and some had ragged cuts on their faces or at the backs of their
necks",'"''ij just beneath the hairline. The nurse had offered a valid
speculation-snakebite. I,!: But so far none of the victims had reacted to any
antivenom serum. ; v^,
Dr. Delgado reached the station, halfway between the elevator and the white(()y'
door with the sign that said ISOLATION-NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT WHITE |,|H«BADGE.
The first thing she saw were case files scattered across the floor. A blue
(i|1,;i«coffee cup had fallen from the desk and cracked into several pieces. On
the desk "!'$H itself there were coffee-stained papers, and a pencil holder had
spilled over. Damn „,,«** it! she thought angrily, staring at the mess. What's
going on here? How could these /'^j night nurses be so incredibly sloppy? She
tapped the little bell on the desk and ;".< ''Jj waited, but no one came along
the hallway to answer it. ,< " /"
"Ridiculous!" she said aloud, and walked on past the station through the white;"
*!""* door. The isolation ward consisted of a series of large rooms cut by a
central corridor; there were large plate-glass windows through which Dr. Delgado
could see the mystery disease victims lying side by side, hooked up to IV tubes
and blood bags and as many electroencephalographs as Dr. Delgado's staff had
been able to beg, borrow, or steal. She watched the green spikes jump and
realized with a surge of excitement that most of them were showing almost double
the amount of brainwave activity as they had when she'd left the hospital last
night. Were they finally reacting to the IVs and the blood transfusions? Was it
possible they were beginning to come out of their odd comalike state? She walked
to the door marked ISOLATION I and took a green surgical mask in a cellophane
packet from a stainless steel tray. She tied the mask in place and then walked
through into the ward.
The room hummed with electric circuitry and the chittering of the EEG monitors.
Dr. Delgado stopped at each bed to watch the spikes gathering strength,
*
196
though she was still unable to find pulses when she felt for them. Those eyes,
like the forming eyes of embryos, seemed to be staring right at her through the
closed lids.
And at the far side of the ward, she saw that five of the beds were empty.
She hurried over to them, her heartbeat racing, and saw the tangled mess of torn
tubes and wires that had been ripped out of arms and scalps. A few blood bags,
totally dry, lay scattered on the floor.
"Madre de Dios!" she whispered, and was startled by the sound of her own voice.
"What's going on here?"
She was answered by the rising noise of the EEGs, their thunderous chattering
like a din of crickets, swelling to a hideous crescendo. She whirled around,
somehow imagining she'd seen a furtive movement out of the corner of her eye.
But the bodies in their white-sheeted beds lay motionless, the
electroencephalograph noise now like the eager communication between them. It
was maddeningly loud, as if the bodies were shouting at one another. She clapped
her hands to her ears and hurried for the door.
She had almost reached it when one of the bodies-a middle-aged Chicano man with
a pendulous belly and rattlesnake eyes-sat up in his bed, ripping the electrode
contacts from his scalp and the IV tube from his arm. He grabbed for her,
yanking her backward by her coattail as she screamed in dazed horror. Across the
room another body stirred and sat up. Then another, stretching as if waking up
from a long siesta. A woman with gray-streaked hair plucked her blood bag from
its hanger and bit greedily into it, spraying blood in a thick arc. As the thing
pulled Dr. Delgado toward the bed, she saw the pale-lipped mouth open, and in
that dark cavern were gleaming fangs wet with hideous fluids. She almost fainted
in shock, but she knew that if she did she'd never wake up again. She wrenched
free, ripping one arm of her coat loose, and ran for the door. The things came
after her, leaping out of their beds, their white hospital shifts flying around
them.
Dr. Delgado reached the door and felt a clawlike hand grasp at her shoulder. She
screamed and struggled away, feeling her flesh tear. Spinning around, she
slammed the door behind her, but one of them crashed through the plate-glass
window in a silver shower of fragments. Another followed that one through, and
they stalked her as she whirled and ran along the corridor. Before she could
reach the white door, another of them-a young girl with blood splattered across
the front of her shift-came through the doorway, blocking her path. The girl
grinned and came shambling forward, her eyes as black as evil itself. There was
a closed door to Dr. Delgado's left, bearing the word Storeroom. She burst into
the dark room and braced her body against the door as one of the vampires-yes,
she thought, vampires!-struck it from the other side, trying to break through. A
fist hammered against it; the door began to bulge inward. The doctor whined in
terror, keeping her shoulder pressed against the wood but knowing it would be
only a moment or so before they got it. She reached out, feeling for the wall
switch; the lights came on, and the first thing she saw was Mrs. Browning's
open-eyed corpse-
197
or was it truly a corpse?-lying at her feet, its face a shade somewhere between
white and yellow. On the wall above Mrs. Browning's head was a square of metal
with a handle on it. Dr. Delgado's heart pounded. It was the laundry chute, a
metal tube leading down to the basement. She'd opened that chute a hundred times
before, and now she prayed that it was wide enough for her. It would have to be.
The door was struck by a tremendous blow. She was knocked backward, her shoulder
blazing with pain, and then the things swarmed in. She only had time to scratch
at the eyes of one of them^ then she threw open the chute and tried to squeeze
her shoulders in. "Please God!" she heard herself scream, echoed by the tube's
metal walls. "Please . . .!"
nM^
But cold hands gripped her ankles and calves and prevented her from getting,„t
down the chute. She kicked and flailed, still screaming, but as they pulled her
back,«^
she realized with maddening certainty that she could not escape.t^
The vampires fell upon her, clawing and fighting among themselves over who| ^
would draw the first draught of blood. When they were finished with her, they
cast< ''*}
her aside like an empty bottle and scurried off for more. There were many
rooms""| between them and the street, and many patients in Mercy Hospital who
would
never again awaken as humans.'""$
"' llV1
J
.;:;»
TEN'.>»
uf1'
Daybreak, cold blue shadows running from the sun.j,,,«
Gayle Clarke tossed uneasily in the bed of her studio apartment on Sunset(l|i;«*
Strip. Two sleeping pills and a long swig of Smirnoff vodka would keep her
knocked'!;;C,
out until after noon, but they couldn't entirely erase the hellish memory of a
Jack„,.«"*
Kidd who looked like leering Death, chasing after her across that apartment
court-ji ""')l
yard.'.'-'J
In her Laurel Canyon bedroom darkened by heavy drapes, Estelle Gideon sat up
suddenly and said, "Mitch?" There was no answer.
Father Ramon Silvera drew cold, rusty water into the sink of his room in East
L.A., cupped his hands beneath the spigot, and splashed a few drops in his face.
Murky sunlight streamed in through a single window that faced an alley wall of
gray bricks. Silvera walked to that window and opened it, inhaling a lungful of
air tainted with dust and smog. Down toward the mouth of the alley, he could see
the words scrawled in black spray paint in the spiky capital letters favored by
the street gangs: FOLLOW THE MASTER. Silvera stared in silence, recalling the
bloody
^
197
i1"*
;.'«
198
graffiti on the walls of the Dos Terros apartment building. He remembered the
expression on that policeman's face, the abject terror in his eyes, and the
chilling urgency of his voice. "Don't let them out on the streets" the man had
said. "Burn them while you can." Silvera abruptly closed the window and locked
it. tf/hat was happening in this city? The feeling he had now-and had had ever
since he's stepped into that tenement-was one of dread, impending doom, Evil
rapidly gaining strength like a cancer running unchecked through a human body.
He felt afraid-not of dying because that was a certainty and he had learned long
ago to accept the will of God-but of being helpless in a situation where God
might call on him to act.
Evil was on the march, an advancing army of the night; Silvera was more positive
of that now than he had ever been in his life. And who could stand in its path?
With these thoughts weighing heavily upon him, he dressed and went out to face
the new day.
Wes Richer lifted his head and saw Solange sitting naked before the window,
staring out onto Charing Cross Road. He said huskily, "Solange?" She didn't
answer. "Solange? What is it?" She didn't move, didn't even acknowledge him.
Christ! he thought, drawing the sheets around him. She can really be weird
sometimes! As he closed his eyes again, he recalled the dream he'd had: A little
girl standing in the snow beneath his window, beckoning him to come out and
play. It had been a good dream, one in which he'd been tempted to step through
the window as if it were Alice's looking glass, into a childhood world where he
could skate and slide and be a kid forever, and not worry about things like tax
shelters and house payments and ... grown-up stuff. He returned to sleep, hoping
he'd find that little girl again. This time he'd go out.
ELEVEN
"I want you to look at some pictures, Benefield," Sully Reece said, taking four
black and white prints from a manila envelope. "Examine these very carefully and
tell me if you recognize any of them." He dealt them out one at a time onto the
table in front of Walter Benefield, then arranged them in a neat row. Reece
could see the corpses reflected in the man's thick glasses. Benefield looked at
each one in turn, his expression not varying a fraction. He was still wearing
the vapid half-smile he'd had on his face since he was brought into the
interrogation room. "Well?" Reece asked, sitting down beside the man. "What
about it?"
Benefield said, "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know why I'm looking at these
pictures." "You don't? Well, I'll tell you then. These are on-scene photographs
of young
199
women who were strangled to death and then sexually abused, Benefield. Four
women in a period of two weeks. If you look very carefully, you can see the
bruises on that one's neck. See? Right there at the edge of the shadow. I wonder
if your fingers would make marks like that. Do you think they would?"
"Lieutenant," the gray-haired man in the dark slacks and light blue sport coat
said from his chair in the corner; he was a public defender named Murphy, and
there was nothing he relished less than having to play watchdog as the cops
grilled a suspect.
"I'm talking to Mr. Benefield," Reece barked. "I'm asking him a question. We're
not in court now. This is my ballpark, right?"
"You don't have to answer any leading questions like that, Mr. Benefield,"f
Murphy said emphatically. . .."*,
"Okay." Benefield smiled. "I won't.""C,
Across the room Zeitvogel muttered, "Bullshit!" and then he remembered
the((»cassette tape recorder turning on the table several feet away from
Benefield. "'J
"We could do that, you know," Reece said. "We could see if your fingers fit "|
those marks."
"Stop picking on me," Benefield whined, his smile finally breaking a bit."*JI
"When can I go home?" ' jj
"Picking on you? Man, I haven't even begun! You've been arrested for',1
assaulting a young woman named Vicki Harris, Benefield. She's about the same age
I „, ;* as those other women in the pictures. She even looks a lot like that
one, doesn't "y*
she?"',, »
tit
"I guess she does, yeah.",,„«»
"Where were you taking her? What were you going to do to her?"
He shrugged. "I was ... I was going to park right there at the end of Palmero
Street. She's a bad girl, you know that. I was going to ... pay her to . .
."(/)i
"Were these bad girls?" Reece motioned to the photographs.''„, *"J|
Benefield stared at them for a few seconds and then smiled again. "If you say>
they were." ' ''"*'
"Do you think this is funny? Do you think what you were about to do to Vicki
Harris was funny? How often do you cruise Hollywood Boulevard?"
"Once in a while."
"Looking for bad girls?"
Benefield glanced over at the attorney and shifted uneasily in his seat. "Yeah,
I guess so."
"Have you ever heard of the Roach, Benefield?"
He shook his head.
"It's been in all the newspapers. Don't you read the papers?"
«xt >'
No.
"But you know how to read, don't you? And you know how to write?" "Yeah." Reece
nodded and reached for a smaller manil^ envelope at the edge of the
200
table. He opened it and took out photostats of the Roach letters, placing them
over the pictures in front of Benefield. "Have you ever seen those before?"
"No, sir."
"That surprises me. You remember how you wrote you name for us, once with the
right hand and once with the left? Well, handwriting doesn't lie even when you
try to distort it. You know what a graphologist is, Benefield? Two of them say
you wrote these letters with your left hand."
"They're lying," he said quietly.
"Are they? They're experts on handwriting, Benefield. The judge isn't going to
think they're lying. Neither is the jury."
"Leave me alone!" Benefield whined. "I never saw those letters before!"
"We talked to Mr. Pietro at your apartment house," Reece continued. "He told us
that sometimes he hears you come in late at night and then you leave again.
Where do you go?"
"Just . . . out. Places."
"What places? Hollywood Boulevard? Where else?"
"Just around. I like to drive."
"What about your mother? Do you go see her?"
Benefield's head snapped up. "My . . . mother? You leave her out of this, you
black bastard!" He was almost screaming.
Reece smiled and nodded. He leaned back in his chair, watching Benefield's eyes.
"We've got the evidence, Benefield. We've got witnesses who've seen you cruising
Hollywood. We know everything we need to know. Why don't you tell us about those
four young women?"
"No ... no ..." He shook his head, his face reddening.
"Four women." Recce's gaze sharpened. "Strangled and raped, thrown away like
garbage. And that thing with the roaches, that was real cute. Whoever did that
is a very sick man, wouldn't you agree?"
"Leave me . . . leave me . . . alone . . ."
"Whoever did that was warped and belongs in a hospital. I've seen your record,
Benefield. I know about Rathmore . . ."
Benefield's face went scarlet, his eyes bulging. He grabbed for Reece, snarling
like an animal, and Zeitvogel was up in an instant reaching for him. Benefield
got one hand clamped on Recce's throat. The three men struggled for a few
seconds, then Zeitvogel got the man's arms pinned behind him and snapped cuffs
on his wrists. "You ... filth!" Benefield shrieked. "You dirty nigger filth! I'm
not going back there! You're not gonna send me back!"
Reece stood up, his knees shaking. His throat felt bruised and contaminated. "I
am going out for a cup of coffee," he breathed. "When I get back, you'd better
be ready to talk to me, or I'll make it damn hard on you. Understand?" He stared
at Benefield for a few seconds, then glanced over at Murphy. The attorney was
sitting bolt upright, his eyes slightly glazed. Reece turned and stalked out of
the interrogation room.
201
Palatazin was waiting outside, patiently going through the contents of another
file. When he looked up, Reece could see the deep blue circles under his eyes.
"How is he?" Palatazin asked.
Reece shrugged and rubbed his throat. "He's pretty worked up. I tried the line
about his mother that you suggested and got a real rise out of him. How'd you
know?"
"There's something strange going on. According to this"-Palatazin waved the
folder-"Beverly Teresa Benefield died in a fall down a tenement stairway in
1964. She was carrying a suitcase with her, evidently about to abandon her
fifteen-year- old son, Walter. It was the middle of the night, the neighbors
heard some shouting, but the coroner ruled the death accidental. Anyway,
Benefield made a reference to""', his mother to Mr. Pietro not long ago. I
figured we could probe that to good effect. ,«<j Also . . ." He took his notepad
from his shirt pocket. "He used a cloth soaked in a !„,.»» combination of
chemical bug-spray on Miss Harris. The lab says breathing it like i(, that in
the close confines of a car would be just short of lethal. And an interesting "|
point-they think Benefield had built up a resistance to the fumes, just like
real .^'l roaches do. But now my question is-why go to the trouble of keeping
them alive? If he is our man, why did he change his M.O.?" ""*]|
"Because he's a nut," Reece said.-""I
"Possibly, but even nuts stick to some kind of pattern. Well, I suppose it's my$
turn now. Let me borrow your cigarettes and matches." >«™
Reece reached in his shirt pocket and handed him a pack of Kents and ay'
lighter. "Good luck," he said as Palatazin entered the interrogation room. :„ ,.
Benefield was sitting with his chin slumped forward on his chest. Palatazin sat'
|W down beside him, pushing away the letters and photographs. He closed the
M.E.'s ,'JiV* file on the death of Beverly Benefield and laid it on the table.
"Would you like a x»< cigarette, Walter?" he asked. /\\
Benefield nodded. Palatazin lit it for him and put it into his mouth. "When
can';.,."V I go home?" Benefield asked. !«
"Not just yet, Walter. First there are some things we have to talk about."<""""
Benefield's eyes narrowed. "I know you. You're the cop who shot at me."
"I fired a warning shot, yes. I was trying to protect you from the others. They
might've killed you."
"Oh."
"Take the cuffs off," Palatazin told Zeitvogel. The detective started to
protest, then he shrugged, took the cuff key from his pocket, came over, and
unsnapped them. Benefield drew deeply on his cigarette and watched Zeitvogel
carefully as the man took his seat again. "Are you comfortable now?" Palatazin
asked.
"I'm okay, I guess."
"Good. I know Lieutenant Reece can be a bit too hard sometimes. Pretty
overbearing. My name's Andy. Is it all right if I call you Walter?"
"I don't mind. Listen, I told that nigger a thing or two. He won't be bothering
me anymore."
202
"I hope not. I imagine he came in here and talked about the Roach, didn't he?"
"Yeah. I told him I didn't know what he was talkin' about."
Palatazin nodded. "And why should you? The Roach is gone. Nobody cares about him
anymore. The vice squad should probably thank him. How do you feel about
prostitutes, Walter?"
He was silent for a moment, staring at the burning end of the cigarette. "They
stick together," he said softly. "All of them do."
"Uh-huh."
"They laugh at you behind your back. They try to fool you."
"But they didn't fool Roach, did they?"
"Nope."
Palatazin was beginning to sweat under the stark fluorescent overheads; he
loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. "You work for Aladdin Exterminators,
right? Do you like that job?"
Benefield smoked his cigarette and thought about it for a minute. "Yeah," he
said finally. "I do."
"I'll bet you're a good worker. What do you use, one of those metal spray cans?"
"A B&G sprayer, yeah. Shoots the Diaz right into the cracks."
"Tell me about Beverly," Palatazin said softly.
"Bev . . . erly?" Benefield's eyes glazed over immediately, and his mouth
dropped open. He stared right through Palatazin as the cigarette burned down
between his fingers.
"That's right. Your mother. Where is she?"
"She's . . ." His brow furrowed in concentration. "She's not here."
"She's dead, isn't she?"
"Huh?" Shock stitched Benefield's face. "No! You're wrong! She's hiding, they're
helping her hide so I can't find her! Sometimes they can even make themselves
look like her to fool me. Oh, they know all the tricks!" His voice dripped with
bitterness now, and his eyes were hard and cold.
"She's dead," Palatazin persisted. "And after she died, you were sent to
Rathmore State Hospital."
"NO!" His eyes flamed, and for an instant Palatazin thought the man was going to
leap at him. "Rathmore?" he whispered, and rubbed his forehead. "No. Bev went
away, and because she left me, they sent me to ... that place. It's not a
hospital. Hospitals cure sick people. That place was a ... a Crazyhouse. When I
find Bev, things will be like they were before. I won't have to think about the
Crazy- house anymore, and my head won't hurt. But first . . . first I'm going to
have to punish her for leaving me . . ." He crushed out the cigarete and dropped
it on the floor. "She's somewhere in the city," he said. "The Master told me
so."
Palatazin's heart began to pound. "The . . . Master?" he murmured softly. "Who's
the Master, Walt?"
"Ohhhhh, no. You'd like me to tell you, wouldn't you? You'd like to know, but
you can't."
203
"Who's the Master? Are you talking about God?"
"God?" Something about that word seemed to trouble Benefield. He blinked and ran
his hand across his forehead. "He talks to me at night," he whispered. "He tells
me what to do . . ."
"Where is he?"
"Can't tell. Cant."
"He's here in L.A.?"
"He's everywhere," Benefield said. "He sees and hears everything. He knows where
I am; he knows where you are. If he wants you, he'll call you in the night, and
you'll have to go to him. You'll have to." He looked up into Palatazin's face,
his,, black eyes strangely magnified by the glasses. "He's going to be mad at me
for not ,„ t going to him last night. He's going to be mad at you, too." »";'
"What's his name, Walt?"'y
"Name? He ... doesn't have a name. Before he saved me, I was . . . paying '",/
them back for fooling me, but the Master said I was ... I was wasting. He said
he| could use them and that I would be helping him win the great battle." "'|j
"What battle?""''
Benefield looked at him and blinked. "For Los Angeles. He wants the city."f
A cold terror spread through Palatazin. "Where is the Master, Walt? If I
wanted'' II to find him, where would I go? He's hiding in the Hollywood Hills,
isn't he?" "',.%
"Can't tell," Benefield said.>;'!
"Where? A house? A cave . . .?"x"
Murphy, across the room, cleared his throat. Palatazin glanced up and saw j,^,
'"" Zeitvogel staring oddly at him. Let them think I'm insane? he thought, f
don't care! (l,;Jii(* He returned his attention to Benefield. "I want to find
the Master," he said urgently. "-| ;C "I have to. Please help me.">"'*
"Oh, no. He has to want you first. He has to call you, then you'll know how
to/"' ,/ find him." ,'.< ,)>
Palatazin forced himself to calm down. His face seemed to be burning up with'""
fever, his guts filled with arctic cold. "Are you the Roach, Walt?"
Benefield froze. Slowly his face contorted into a sneer. "You're just like that
nigger, aren't you? Pretending to be my friend, and laughing at me all the time.
You want to send me back, don't you? Back to that place! I won't let you do
that. He won't let you!"
"WHERE IS HE?" Palatazin shouted suddenly, and lunged for Benefield's collar. He
slammed the man's face down on the table, then jerked his head up again. The man
snarled and grabbed for Palatazin's throat, blood stringing from his nostrils.
"WHERE IS HE!" Palatazin shrieked again, all control gone now, nothing but
animal rage and fear left. Benefield grinned, and then Murphy and Zeitvogel were
pulling him away./
"No," Zeitvogel ordered, his gaze fixed on Palatazin. "Don't do that, captain."
"LET ME ALONE!" Palatazin fought free of them and stood up, breathing harshly.
"Just leave me alone!" He started for Benefield again, but Zeitvogel blocked
204
his way. "You don't understand," Palatazin said. "I've got to make him tell!
I've got to!"
Zeitvogel shook his head. Benefield grinned and wiped his bloody nose.
"Get him out of here before I throw up," Palatazin demanded abruptly, and
brushed past Zeitvogel out of the interrogation room.
In his office he lit his pipe and tried to calm down. He couldn't get his
thoughts organized. Of course Benefield was the Roach, and of course he knew
where the Master was hiding. But how could he make him talk, how could he break
the hold that evil force had on him? And then an even more terrible thought
gripped him- how many were there now in this city who had heard the Master's
voice? How many now walked at night, hungering for blood? A thousand? Five
thousand? Ten thousand? It would happen insidiously, slowly, as it had happened
in Krajeck so very long ago, until at the end the city would be at the mercy of
the Master and his brood. He had to tell someone now, anyone who would listen.
The newspapers perhaps? Chief Garnette? Maybe the National Guard could be called
out, and the things found, burned or staked before they grew stronger. Perhaps
the city could be evacuated and firebombs dropped from helicopters . . .
But no. They wouldn't believe. He felt a chill of dark madness cover him. Who
would believe? Who? He remembered the doctor in that building on Dos Terros
Street, Dr. Delgado. The bodies had been taken to Mercy Hospital. Perhaps she
could be made to believe. Yes! He reached for the telephone, but it rang before
he could pick up the receiver.
"Captain Palatazin," he said.
"Andy? It's Garnette. Would you come down and see me right away?"
"Yes, sir. I will. But first I have to make a-"
"Andy," the voice was sterner, cast a tone lower, "I'd like to see you right
now." The phone clicked and went dead. Palatazin put it back on its cradle and
then got up, moving as sluggishly as a zombie. He felt weary, drained, about to
split apart at the seams. He walked along the hallway to the Chief of
Detectives' office. When he rapped on the door, he heard Garnette say, "Come in,
Andy."
He stepped into the office. "How are you feeling, Andy?" Garnette asked,
motioning to the chair in front of his desk. "I understand you were busy last
night."
"Yes, sir," he said, and smiled wanly. "Quite a few of us were."
"I talked to Lieutenant Reece and Detective Farris. I'd say you did one hell of
a good job. Now tell me about this Benefield character."
"Well, I believe he's the Roach, though we haven't got all the evidence we need
to make an arrest stick, and I don't think we're going to be getting a
confession from the man."
"But you're holding him on an assault charge?"
"Assault, reckless driving, resisting arrest-whatever we could come up with."
Garnette nodded. "Okay. But you think it's too early to tell the papers?"
"I think so."
"In your best estimation, that man you're holding did kill those four girls and
205
wrote the letters signed by Roach?"
"Yes, sir. Possibly more than four girls. He changed his M.O. in the past two
weeks and began using a chemical-soaked cloth to knock his victims out first.
We're 1 still questioning him about his procedure."^
"I see." Garnette was silent for a moment, his hands folded on the desk. When he
looked back at Palatazin, his expression was tough and direct. "You've worked
long and hard to crack this thing, Andy. No one in the department appreciates
that J as much as I do."
"Thank you, but I'm afraid we have a long way to go yet before we can consider
it closed."
"No matter. You're a good cop, Andy. You've been a good cop and a credit to this
department ever since you joined us." He smiled slightly, his eyes warming up,,/
with memories. "You remember those old days? When you were a detective first- '
"' grade and I was trying to make sergeant? We were scruffy bastards then,
weren't '"/'' we? Out on the streets throwing our weight around, flashing our
shields whenever '";;;"# we could, making a lot of noise about every goddamned
thing. We had chips on our ,/ shoulders as big as redwood logs, didn't we? Those
were the days. You remember , »J[ that time we cornered the sniper on the fourth
floor of the Alexandria Hotel? " j| About fifty cops out in the hall shaking in
their shoes, everybody afraid to breathe because the bastard had an elephant gun
in there? And you just walked right up to ,„/,„, the door and knocked on it! I
almost dropped my teeth when that guy opened it ' | and came out with his hands
over his head! Shit! You remember that?" "4
i/"
"I remember," Palatazin said quietly.;";,"." 'j
"That took guts. And how about the time we were looking for the Chinatown
Strangler? We were on rooftop stakeout with binoculars and a girl in one of theI
'"" windows started doing a striptease? That crazy broad had the biggest set of
oompahs ^^ I've ever seen. She could've made it in the movies. Things were
better then, ;;,;,/'* weren't they? We didn't have computers or sociologists or
psychics trying to do our '"",,* jobs for us. We got out in the streets and
worked our asses off, and we didn't have to - f ^ worry about a mountain of
files and paperwork. Well, that's progress for you, right? ' J Seems like you
and I have gotten a little grayer and slower over the years. The ^ pressure is
so much tougher now. You have to contend with so many conflicting factors. It's
not cut-and-dried anymore. The psychiatrists and the ACLU people see to that.
Sometimes I just want to chuck this whole mess and take the wife down to
Acapulco or somewhere clean. Haven't you ever felt that way?"
"Of course I have," Palatazin said. "Everyone does."
"Uh-huh." Garnette nodded, placing his fingertips together and staring at the
other man for a few silent seconds. "Okay, fine. I'm going to give you a chance
to take a little vacation, Andy. Two weeks with pay. How about that?"
"A ... vacation? Well, that's very nice, but I've got to finish this thing
first."
"No, you don't," Garnette said sternly.
"What?"
Garnette cleared his throat. "Lieutenant Reece is going to take over for you for
206
the next two weeks, Andy. I want you to take off."
"I ... I'm afraid I don't understand."
"You're tired, Andy. You're overworked and worn out. You deserve some time off,
but I know you-if it were up to you, hell would freeze over before you left your
desk. So take advantage of this. You and Jo go somewhere nice for two weeks . .
."
"What is this?" Palatazin demanded, his cheeks reddening. He knew exactly what
it was, but he wanted to hear Garnette say it. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"I ... the department's giving you some time off-"
"Damn it!" Palatazin blurted out, getting to his feet. A pulse was pounding at
his temple, and he quavered with confusion and anger. "The department's canning
me, is that right?"
"No, for Christ's sake! Two weeks, Andy! That's not forever!"
"What is it? Who have you been talking to? Who's been saying I'm crazy this
time?" It dawned on him then-it had probably been that outburst at the Dos
Terros tenement. Who had told Garnette? Sergeant Teal? One of the officers who'd
been working the scene? Surely it hadn't been Sully Reece? "Do you think I'm
crazy, Paul?"
"I think ... you deserve a rest. It's long overdue. You just go home and let
your men finish this up."
"NO!" Palatazin shouted. "I WONT DO IT! There are some things I have to find out
from the suspect. Some very important things! I can't ... I can't leave it now!"
"You're going to have to." Garnette forced himself to look away. He stared down
at his hands. "You'll report back to work two weeks from today."
"I won't-"
"Is that understood?" Garnette said very quietly, and lifted his gaze.
Palatazin started to protest again, but he knew it was no use. He placed his
palms on the desk and leaned forward, his eyes glimmering. "I'm not crazy," he
whispered hoarsely. "I'm not! I don't care what you've heard. There's a good
reason for everything I've done or said, and by God if you don't start listening
to me, there's . . . there's going to be great evil in this city. There's going
to be evil beyond your wildest nightmares!"
"Andy," Garnette stated firmly, "go home."
Palatazin straightened up, wiping his forehead with a trembling hand. "Go home?"
he whispered softly. "Home? I can't ... I ... there's so much to be done." His
eyes were wild and bloodshot, and he knew that he must truly look insane. "Shall
I ... leave my badge and gun with you?" he asked after another moment.
"I don't think that's necessary. This is a vacation, not a suspension. Now, take
it easy, Andy. And for God's sake don't worry about the Roach or anything else."
Palatazin nodded and moved dazedly toward the door. "Yes," he said. "All right."
He heard himself speaking as if he were inside a tunnel. He felt the cold
doorknob touch his hand, and he twisted it.
207 TTWELVE
nn A
It was just after two o'clock when Jo heard the front door open and close. She/
came down the stairs hurriedly and found Andy in the kitchen, holding a paper j
bag. "What are you doing home so early?" she asked. "You scared me to death!"
"""j
,.">
He glanced at her quickly, then looked away. "I won't be going back to work
for"' a while," he said quietly. ""'/
"What do you mean? What happened, Andy? Tell me!"
He began to take items out of the bag. There was a smaller bag inside with H.
'»' 'I Shaffer and Son, Fine Jewelry printed on it. "I've been given a two-week
vacation," „ ;'v he said, and smiled grimly. She watched him open the bag and
take out two identical white boxes. "Two weeks," he whispered. "Los Angeles
might not even exist in i, *m two weeks." He gave her one of the boxes. "Put
this around your neck. I want youM ,/* to wear this all the time; don't take it
off-not in the shower, not when you sleep." 'II""II'»
She opened it with a trembling hand. It was a small gold-plated crucifix on a/*
long chain. "It's beautiful," she said, "but ..." _ .i',}
"Put it on right now," he said. He opened his box, took out the other crucifix,
} and clasped it around his neck. "I want you to get used to wearing it," he
told her, ,! "" "so you won't forget it. I don't know how powerful its influence
will be because it "' hasn't been blessed by a priest or sanctified with holy
water, but it's better than nothing. Go on, put it on now." He went behind her
to help her clasp it.
She watched him, dumbfounded, as he stepped back to the counter and reached into
the bag again. Oh, my God, she thought suddenly as she looked into his face. He
looked just like his mother did just before she went into the rest home. His
eyes held that same fanatical, crazed gleam; his jaw was set with an unyielding
determination. "Andy," she whispered as he took several heads of garlic from the
bag and laid them on the counter.
"We'll slice these and smear all the windowsills with them," he said. "Then
we'll chop some into pieces and spread them on the front lawn. Mama said it
would help keep the vampir away because their sense of smell is so strong and
the odor reminds them of death." He turned toward her and saw her face as pale
as chalk. "Oh, I see. You think I'm crazy, too, like everyone else, don't you?"
207
HEY THIRST
"Send me a postcard from Vegas," Garnette said as Palatazin stepped through the
door. The captain's shoulders were slumped forward and he carried himself as if
he'd just taken a hard blow to the stomach. Garnette started to say, "I'm
sorry," but then the door closed. God.' Garnette thought, I hope two weeks makes
a difference! If not. . . well, let that take care of itself. But anybody who
wanted to burn bodies found in an East L.A. tenement-who demanded that they be
cremated-was obviously in need of a long rest.
Poor guy, Garnette mused, and then forced himself to concentrate on other
matters.
208
"I think . . . Andy, you're not in Hungary now! This is a different place, a
different time-"
"There's no difference!" he objected sharply. "The vampir doesn't care what
place he attacks so long as there's an abundance of food! And time to his kind
means nothing! I tell you the vampir is here in this city! And someone has got
to find the Master, the king vampir, before it's too late!"
"You don't mean . . . Andy, what's come over you?"
"The truth," he said quietly. "Jo, I want you to leave. I want you to take the
car and drive as far away from here as you can. Go east across the mountains.
Will you do that-for me?"
She took a step toward him and clutched his arm. "We'll both go," she said.
"We'll make a real vacation out of these two weeks! We'll pack and leave in the
morning, all right? We can drive down to San Diego or-"
"No. It has to be far from this city because when they start spreading out,
there will be no stopping them. I want the mountains between you and L.A., and I
want you to leave now."
"I can't go without you," she told him, tears of despair welling in her eyes. "I
won't, damn it! No matter what you say!"
He took her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. "When they come, Jo-and
they will come, it's only a matter of time-I won't be able to save you. I
probably won't be able to save myself. But I have to stay here, I have to try to
... do something! Running doesn't do any good. They just advance, and sooner or
later all of humanity will be pushed together in a tiny pocket, and the vampir
will come and then . . . that will be the end, don't you see? The vampir will
eventually destroy themselves, but only after all of humanity is bled dry.
Someone has got to at least try to stop them!"
"You? Of all the people in the world, why you?"
"Because," he said quietly, fixing her with his gaze, "I'm here. And I know
their ways. Who else is there?"
"Let the police do it!"
"The police? Ah, yes. I know firsthand how efficient the police can be. No, it
has to be me. Alone, if that's the will of God. Now go upstairs and pack your
things." He turned back to the paper bag.
Jo did not move. "I won't leave," she protested. "You can't make me."
"You're a fool," he said.
"I love you."
Palatazin looked at her and grunted. "Twice a fool then. Haven't you understood
a word I've said?"
"I understand my place is with you. I'm not leaving."
He stared at her for a silent moment, and she could feel the heat of his gaze.
She returned it stubbornly. "All right," he said finally,- "if you're going to
stay until morning, you can help me prepare for them. Cut the garlic into
pieces." As she moved to get a knife, he reached into the bag and brought out a
can of black spray
209
The last bell had rung at Fairfax High School. The classrooms and halls were,/
emptying rapidly. Toyotas and Triumphs squealed out of the parking lot onto ,i
|(l Fairfax Avenue and left trails of rubber aimed toward the nearest
McDonald's. "|!
i,/
/
"""I»/„
THEY THIRST
paint. She didn't want to ask him what he was going to do with it.
He walked to the front of the house, shaking the spray paint, and opened the
door. On the wood he sprayed a large black crucifix and beneath it the Hungarian
word OVAJODIK.
Beware.
Tommy Chandler, one of the few eleven-year-old freshmen who had ever'«»y walked
the not-so-hallowed halls of Fairfax High, carefully dialed the combination of
his Yale lock, pulled it open, then opened his locker. Inside there were the
usual American history, algebra, and Latin textbooks, a pack of Bic pens, and a
few Nifty notebooks. Taped to the inside of the locker was a picture of Orion
Kronsteen in his Jack the Ripper makeup from London Screams, clipped
reverentially from an old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. There was a
picture of Raquel Welch in a bikini, too, but that took a lower place of honor.
Tommy took out his history > | and algebra books and the corresponding
notebooks. Mr. Kitchens would probably >'> jj throw a sneak history quiz at the
class first thing in the morning, and Tommy wanted to do some advance reading in
algebra because what they were covering jl( "" now was just plain booooring.
Across the locker room Jim Baines and Mark Sutro :ll;/* were discussing the
physical attributes of Melinda Kennimer, head majorette for " '' '* the Fairfax
High Marching Band and an untouchable but deliciously stacked <"' " senior. .
|(i' J
"I saw her in the hall today, fifth period," Mark was saying as he gathered up
a' ,J biology text and a geometry notebook. "God, I almost creamed my jeans! She
smiled at me. Actually smiled for God's sake! She's got a smile like Farrah
Fawcett."
"Better than Farrah Fawcett," Jim said. "More like Go Derek. God, what a bod! I
hear she's going with Stan Perry, the lucky asshole! Last week at the pep rally
when she flashed those thighs and the drum corps was putting down a jungle beat,
I thought I was going to shoot to the moon. It's unnatural for a girl to look so
good. I'll bet she's got a mean streak in her."
"Who cares? I like 'em mean. Have you got a date for Homecoming?"
"Not yet. I'm going to ask Ronni McKay."
"Ha!" Mark slammed his locker door and spun the lock. "Too late! Johnny Jackson
already asked her, and she said yes."
"What? Keerist! I had my lines all ready for her! Damn! Who are you asking,
Selma Verone?"
Mark made a sickened face. "Are you kidding? Old Pizza Cheeks Verone? I'd rather
go stag." He nudged Jim in the ribs with an elbow and motioned toward
210
Tommy. "Bet Selma would go with Chandler if he'd ask her."
Here it comes. Tommy thought. Hurry and get it over with.
"Hey, Chandler!" Mark called to him across the aisle. "Why don't you ask Selma
Verone to go to Homecoming with you? You like monsters so much, she'd be perfect
for you!"
"I doubt it," Tommy mumbled. He heard the locker room door open and close, but
he was concentrating on what the next jibe would probably be, so he didn't
notice who came in. Tommy closed his locker, spun the dial, and turned right
into a slab of beef wearing an Aerosmith T-shirt. A hand shot out, catching
Tommy on the collarbone, and shoved him back against the lockers. He hit his
head on metal, and his ears rang like a fire drill alarm. His eyeglasses dangled
from one ear, but he didn't need to see to know who it was. He heard the raucous
laughter like the snorting of pigs. Jim Baines and Mark Sutro were as quiet as
the dead.
"You're in my way, fuckface!" the slab of beef growled.
Tommy adjusted his glasses. There were three boys standing before him, Jules
"Bull" Thatcher with his usual entourage of Buddy Carnes and Ross Weir.
Thatcher's faces was broad and ugly, as cratered and hostile as the surface of
the moon. He had shoulder-length brown hair, a scar through one thick eyebrow,
and black ferret eyes that radiated hatred. He towered over Tommy. Bull had been
a pretty fair running back on the freshman football team until Coach Maxwell had
caught him selling 'ludes in the parking lot about two weeks before. He
should've been a junior, but the sixth and eighth grades had been beyond his
capacity. Now he mostly cheated to squeak by. His eyes gleamed with bloodlust as
he stared at Tommy. His face was slashed by a cruel, thin-lipped mouth, and
Tommy could well believe the stories he'd heard about Bull's love of pure
violence. It was his misfortune to have been assigned the locker right next to
Bull.
"I said you're in my way . . . fuckface!" Bull said grimly, his hands on his
hips.
"Uh . . . sorry," Tommy said, rubbing his collarbone. "I was just leaving."
"He was 'just leavin','" Ross Weir mimicked Tommy's high, childish voice. "He
sounds like a fairy. You a fairy, punk?"
"Don't you guys know?" Buddy Carnes said. "This here's the little brain. He's in
my algebra class, gets A's on every goddamn test and fucks up the curve for
everybody else. He's the reason I'm flunkin' my ass off!"
"Oh yeah?" Bull said quietly. "A brain, huh?"
"Looks like a fairy to me," Weir said, and cackled.
Baines and Sutro tried to slip past the Unholy Three, but suddenly Bull's head
turned, and Tommy saw his eyes gleam like Gort the robot's power blast from The
Day the Earth Stood Still. "Where do you think you're going'?" Bull said
ominously.
"Nowhere . . ." Mark stammered. "We're just . . . nowhere . . ."
"Better not be!" Bull said, and turned his attention back to Tommy.
Ah, yes, Tommy thought. He needs an audience for his performance. Over Bull's
massive shoulders his cohorts' faces looked like the half-human animals from The
Island of Lost Souls. Tommy could feel his heart thumping against his thin rib
211
cage. The "flight or fight" instinct was pumping adrenaline through his body-his
head said fight, but his feet said flight.
Bull stepped closer and shoved Tommy against the lockers again. "You think
you're smart, don't you? Don't you?"
"Not particularly, no."
"You callin' Bull a liar?" Ross Weir snarled.
U/i-o/i, Tommy thought. Caught by the deadly triangle! His face flushed with a
mixture of anger and fear. Bull reached out and plucked off Tommy's glasses.
"Hey, don't!" Tommy said. "Those are expensive!"
"Oh yeah? You want 'em back? Come take 'em!"
"You're about three guys bigger than me."( ,«'
"He's a chickenshit fairy, too," Weir said.*.«;!
Bull narrowed his eyes into fierce slits. "I've seen you in here before, kid.
You„, ,,»j! got the locker next to mine, don't you? I'm going to give you some
advice. I find ' / you in here tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to smear your
little fairy ass up and '|| down Fairfax Avenue, you got that?" «'I
"Just give me back my . . ." Tommy began, but in the next instant a massive hand
had grabbed his collar and was choking him."'*/
"Maybe you didn't hear me," Bull said evenly. "I don't want to see you in here"
| again. Understand?" He shook Tommy like a dog shakes a bone. "UnderSTAND?" ,.
;'* i
"Yeah," Tommy said, tears beginning to swim in his eyes. He felt more rage „„; *
than fear, but he knew if he swung a blow, Bull would probably snap his arms out
of their sockets. "Yeah, I understand."*
Bull laughed, blowing fetid breath in Tommy's face. He flung Tommy back" (1'»
and sneered at Baines and Sutro. "You want some of it, too?" he growled. Their
';;;"/£,
heads shook in unison."„„,. '*'
)' . "Huh?" Bull glowered at him and then smiled. "Sure, kid." He held them out
''I, )
and dropped them to the floor as Tommy reached for them. "Sorry," Bull said.
"I'll '" get 'em." He placed his boot on a lens and ground down on it. The crack
sounded as loud as a gunshot. Buddy Carnes howled with laughter. "There you go,
kid," Bull said, bending to pick up the glasses and then handing them to Tommy.
"Put 'em on and let's see how they look."
Tommy was looking through one clear lens and one crisscrossed with cracks. The
damaged side kept slipping off his ear, and he had to hold it in place.
"Looks real good," Bull said. His face contorted viciously. "Now get out of
here, fuckface! And you don't come back, you got it?"/
Tommy slipped past Bull and started for the door. He was almost there, thinking
he was really going to make it, when Ross Weir stuck a leg in his path and
pushed him. He went down in a tangle of arms and legs, his books falling
everywhere. Laughter exploded as he gathered up his books again and hurried out
of the locker room, leaving Jim Baines and Mark Sutro to their own unfortunate
fates. Tommy walked across the empty parking lot and turned south on Fairfax,
heading
212
toward Hancock Park. His knees were trembling, and within him there was a great
urge to turn around and shout, "BULL THATCHER SUCKS!" as loud as he could. But
what good would that do? He'd only end up with a busted head and a mouthful of
loose teeth. Soon he'd left Fairfax High behind and was out of shouting range.
He wished he had muscles like Hercules; he wished he could deliver a flying kick
like Bruce Lee. Then the Bull Thatchers of the world-and there were so many of
them-would think twice before they bothered him. Ah! The perfect fate for Bull
Thatcher. He imagined the boy running through the fog-shrouded streets of old
London, fear glistening in his eyes beneath the whale oil lamps as he heard the
approaching footsteps. Orion Kronsteen's Ripper was afoot in the darkness, his
three-foot sickle seeking new victims to behead. The Ripper's eyes would look
like black holes behind a mask of gray cloth, and as those eyes made out the
running figure of Bull Thatcher, the thin mouth would twitch into a cunning
smile. There's nowhere to run, boy! The Ripper would call out. There's nowhere
to hide! Come, let Mary Death take a taste of your blood!
Of course, he'd catch Bull Thatcher, and then . . . hell, hell, hellI
Tommy caught the smell of oranges and cloves in the breeze. It was the
deceptively fruity smell which had lured thousands of prehistoric saber-toothed
tigers, giant ground sloths, and mastodons into the clinging trap of Hancock
Park, Tommy liked to roam around over there on Saturdays when his dad was
working at the Achilles Electronics plant in Pasadena and his mom was out making
telephone calls for whatever volunteer group she'd hooked up with this month.
Last month it had been the Society to Aid Cambodian Orphans. Now it was the Save
the African Elephant bunch. While his mother crusaded, Tommy would sit beneath a
tree in the park and watch the roller skaters or read H.P. Lovecraft. He was
accustomed to being alone.
He turned onto Lindenhurst Avenue, across from the park, and walked along a
street lined with Spanish stucco houses that seemed to stretch on out of sight,
hundreds of houses that looked similar except for the different colors of paint
and different cars in the driveways. But, Tommy had noticed, there was even a
pattern to the cars. Most of them were imports or economy cars, including his
dad's Pacer and his mother's Toyota Celica. There were a few Porsches and
Mercedes Benzes sitting around, too, but most of these were inconspicuously
driven and usually covered over with protective canvas. It was a firmly
middle-class neighborhood, complete with Boy Scout troop meetings and backyard
barbecues on weekend evenings. It was quite similar to the neighborhood Tommy
and his parents had lived in when his dad was working at the Achilles plant in
Scottsdale, Arizona; and about the same as the one in San Antonio, Texas; and
almost identical to the old neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. Actually they'd
lived in a small town just outside Denver, and that place had been Tommy's
favorite-streets lined with elm trees and white picket fences, chimney smoke
stirring in a crisp northerly breeze, people wearing sweaters and raking leaves
into orderly piles. That had been a really neat place. California was different.
Everybody was wacky, everybody had ulterior
213
motives. It wasn't the moving that bothered Tommy so much because he knew his
father was being promoted gradually through the Achilles corporation. It was
changing schools so much and leaving behind whatever few friends he'd managed to
make. In his experience real friends were few and far between. But there was one
definite advantage to L.A., though. So many monster flicks were shown on the
tube! Almost every weekend on "Creature Features" or "Horror Hotel," he got to
see an Orion Kronsteen, Vincent Price, or-very rarely-a Todd Slaughter flick. At
the end of the summer, he'd helped his dad attach a gizmo to the TV antenna that
pulled in a couple of Mexican stations, and down there they really made creepy
horror movies. So all in all, it wasn't too bad.
1ii*
His heart suddenly gave a kick. A silver Vega was parked in the driveway of the
house across the street from his. Her silver Vega. Her name was Sandy Vernon,
the>»«, daughter of Pete and Dianne Vernon, and she was a sophomore at UCLA.
Tommy ,„.. had fallen in love with her while watching her mow the lawn on a
Sunday after- :|(|1 noon, clad in tight denim cutoffs and a dark blue halter.
She was tanned and blond and . . . stacked! She made Melinda Kennimer, Farrah
Fawcett, Go Derek and Raquel Welch look like Selma Verone. He'd melted into a
little puddle, like the goo the comes out of a chocolate-covered cherry, when
he'd seen the tight muscles of """'* her thighs and buttocks as she shoved a
sputtering red Toro mower back and forth i"""i across the lawn. He would have
offered to help, but then he would've been deprived J '| of watching that
heavenly body. So he'd sat on the front steps, leafing through an ,, jl Eerie
magazine and not making a bit of sense out of the stories.
And when she'd finished, she'd cut the mower and then turned toward him,'"* that
mane of blond hair flowing like hair does in shampoo commercials. Even from
m|(,,,>'*across the street Tommy had seen that her eyes were a bluish violet.
"Hi there," ;!! ;!'» she'd said, and smiled. i,,„/*'
"That's a pretty neat lawnmower you've got there," was the only thing he
could/'' () manage to say. ,)f
She'd smiled wider as if she could read the thoughts-STUPID! ASSHOLE! STUPID!
ASSHOLE.'-that were battering against the walls of Tommy's brain. "Thanks. It's
my dad's. What they need to invent is one that does all the work by itself."
"Uh . .. yeah. I think somebody's come up with a robot mower. It runs along a
wire you put down in the grass. My name's Tommy Chandler."
"I'm Sandy Vernon. Your folks just moved in?"
"Since July."
"That's nice. What grade are you in?"
"Uh . . . I'll be a freshman at Fairfax High. In September. You sure did a good
job on that lawn." STUPID! ASSHOLE! STUPID!
"Thanks, I'll be seeing you, Tommy." And she'd pushed the mower away, her cute
little behind moving as if on ball bearings.
Tommy's body, in the bewildering throes of change, was never quite the same
after that Sunday afternoon meeting. Once he woke up in the middle of the night,
214
looked down at his pajama bottoms, and almost passed out thinking he had some
hideous kind of VD. But that was impossible since he'd never had the opportunity
to dabble in the mysteries of the opposite sex, and he decided that it was one
more of nature's tricks to make sure he was ready for manhood.
Now, as he stood in front of his house and looked across Lindenhurst at the
silver Vega that meant she was home, he saw a collie sitting on the steps in
front of the Vernons' door. Whose dog is that? he wondered. Maybe the Vernons
bought it in the last couple of days? It was a large, beautiful dog, and right
now it seemed to be sleeping. Tommy strolled out into the street and said, "Hi,
boy! Hi there, fella!"
The dog didn't move.
What's wrong with it? he wondered. Is it sick? He crossed the street and stood
on the sidewalk. "Hi, fella!" He clapped one hand against his leg, but the
collie didn't react. When Tommy placed one foot on the Vernons' lawn, the dog's
head came up, the eyes staring blankly at him. "Hi, boy!" Tommy said. "Whose dog
are you, huh? Are you Sandy's dog?" Dogs have all the luck! he thought. He took
another step closer, and the collie bared its teeth, growling very softly.
Tommy froze. The collie slowly rose to its feet but didn't move from in front of
the door. A drop of saliva fell from its lower lip and spattered onto the
walkway. Tommy backed away, very carefully, and the collie immediately curled up
again. On the other side of the street, Tommy stopped and stared across, knowing
that Bull Thatcher was going to growl like that when he stepped into that locker
room again tomorrow afternoon. It was either that or carry all his books around
all day. He wondered if a kid could buy a can of Mace. Funny the way that dog
acted, he thought. I always heard that collies were friendly. Well, after all, I
guess I was invading his territory or something.
And then he remembered that "The Invaders" was on television in fifteen minutes,
so he dug the key out of his pocket and hurried inside so he wouldn't miss the
first part, where the saucer comes down.
FOURTEEN
Darkness, Twenty minutes before eight o'clock.
Paige LaSanda cursed as her pale blue Mercedes crashed over yet another pothole
on serpentine Blackwood Road. God! she thought. Why did I ever tell that Falco
character Yd come up this mountain in practically the middle of the night? Why
didn't I make him send a car to pick me up and take me back home? If that Prince
whatever-his-name-is can afford to rent that castle, then by God he could afford
to send a limo to pick me up! She could hear the wind whining through the dead
trees out there, so she turned on her radio and searched for music. She came
across the tail end of a newscast from KMET. ". . . registered 3.4 on the
open-ended Richter scale, but San Diego residents did suffer some broken windows
in a series of aftershocks . . ." Another earthquake, she thought. Christ! If
it's not forest fires or
215
mudslides, it's earthquakes! She turned the dial and found a song she liked, the
new Rory Black single."... I'm not the kind of guy who gets a second chance with
pretty girls like you . . ."
She was wondering what this Prince what's-his-name would look like when she
realized that there was something out there in the dark, running alongside her
car.
A couple of dogs, caught in the backwash of the headlights, were running on
either side like royal escorts.
She shivered, wondering what dogs were doing way up here, and accelerated to
leave them behind. In another few minutes she turned a corner, and there was the
massive hulk of the Kronsteen castle. There were candles in some of the
I ^
windows, shining with different colors. She had to admit that if the place was
not, /
quite attractive, then at least it was mysteriously appealing.;;!
She drove through the open gate, parked her car in the driveway, and
walked,,,,-j!
i $
up the stone stairs to the front door. She was wearing a sleek black dress and a
silver„/ necklace with diamond stars clustered around a gleaming half-moon, and
she knew j' she looked stunning. She was going to knock the prince's socks-or
whatever they '"'"'I called them in Hungary-off tonight. She knocked on the
front door and waited. """'
It opened almost immediately, and standing there was a young Chicano girl in"*r
a long white gown. <'"""| "Hi," Paige said. "I'm Miss LaSanda, and Prince Vulkan
expects me." „; | The girl nodded and motioned for her to enter. , ;; v She
stepped across the threshold. The door was closed behind her. She followed the
servant girl-her makeup is atrocious, Paige thought-under a chandelier /«studded
with gleaming candles. Paige glanced up at it, realizing that it was where ,„/*
the cops had found Orion Kronsteen's headless body. It was as cold as a
refrigerator !iV,'" inside the place, and above her head Paige could hear the
whine and moan of |,„„. * conflicting winds across the high ceilings. They moved
down a long hallway lit by ^ ,) more candles, then up a curved, stone stairway
that had no banister. On the second ,} floor the servant girl motioned Paige
through a rough-hewn door into a huge room with two roaring fireplaces on either
side of a highly polished, gleaming black dining table. More candles guttered
from a chandelier overhead and the two silver candelabra set equidistantly on
the table. There was only one place setting, at the head of the table, with a
silver dish and gleaming silverware. A crystal decanter half-filled with red
wine and a single goblet were set beside the dish, both catching golden light
from the fireplaces. "Where's Prince Vulkan?" Paige asked the servant girl as
she sat down.
The girl poured a glass of wine for Paige but didn't answer. Then, without a
word, she moved like a wraith to the door and vanished.
What's this guy going to do? Paige wondered. Make a grand entrance or something?
She sipped the wine and asked herself what the hell she was doing there; then
she looked up, startled. She thought she'd seen a face way down at the other
side of the room, floating in the shadows that had gathered at the limits of the
firelight. Now it was gone, but she was left with the distinct impression of
white
216
flesh, white hair, and . . . red eyes. Now there was nothing there at all. She
looked away quickly and thought she heard footsteps echoing off stone in the
distance, not walking but. . . scurrying. Voices seemed to be whispering all
around her, and she was almost certain she heard a cold chuckle.
Maybe, she thought, just maybe I ought to call this whole thing off. Maybe I
ought to get my little ass out of here right now because there's something
definitely screwy about this whole thing.
She drank down another swallow of the wine and started to rise from her chair.
And that was when the hand came down very gently on her shoulder.
Paige gasped and turned her head. She was staring into a pair of green cat eyes
set in a pallid, high-cheekboned face.
"Miss LaSanda," he said, and slightly bowed his head. "I'm Prince Vulkan."
"Prince . . . Vulkan?" she said in a whisper.
"That's right. I'm sorry you had to wait. There were some things I had to take
care of before I could come." He walked around from behind her and stood beside
the table, staring down at her with a piercing, intense gaze.
"You? You're the prince?" She almost laughed, but the shock was too great. All
her Omar Sharif fantasies were shredded like so much rotten tapestry. She looked
at him wide-eyed, thinking that his flesh might well have been sculpted from
white marble. "You're . . . you're just a boy!" she finally managed to say.
He smiled slightly, his eyes sparkling with firelight. "Am I?"
"I was expecting someone older ... in his forties at least!"
"Were you?" He nodded. "Forty years old? I'm sorry I disappoint you."
Paige saw the yellow streaks in his hair and stared at them. What sort of kid
was this anyway? His face looked like a seventeen-year-old's, but there was
something in his voice, his manner, his eyes that seemed much, much older. "Is
Mr. Falco your guardian?" she asked.
"Falco is... was ... in my employ. I saw fit to terminate his services last
night."
"Oh. But what about your parents? Surely you didn't come all the way from
Hungary without somebody!"
"I'm not a child, Miss LaSanda," he said, his lower lip curling. "I'm not! I can
take care of myself!"
"Well, sure. I just thought, you know . . ."
Vulkan leaned over the table toward her, and she found herself inwardly
cringing. "You're disappointed, aren't you? You wanted me to be older. You
wanted me to be handsome and wealthy, didn't you?"
"No, not at all. I'm just. . . surprised." She tore her gaze away from his with
an effort that made her neck muscles thrum like bad guitar chords. She was
afraid to look at him again, but when she looked into his eyes, she felt there
was a cauldron bubbling at the center of her brain. "Listen, Your Royalty or
Your Highness or whatever, I think this has all been a big mistake. I really
shouldn't be here. It's late, and I have some work to do at home, so . . ." She
started to rise.
217
"You'll stay where your are," he whispered.
Instantly her back was rigid against the chair, her hands gripped tightly around
the arms of her chair. She felt as if a seat belt had suddenly been drawn tight
around her stomach. She gasped for breath.
"There," he said. "I don't want to hear anything else about your leaving. I've
got too much on my mind tonight to worry about you, Miss LaSanda, so please sit
quite still. For some time, I've been planning to entertain you, and I don't
want you spoiling the evening. Drink your wine."
She shook her head and gasped, "No . . ."
"Drink it," he said, his eyes boring through her skull.
[i ii"
.f1.1.
Her hand went out, obediently grasped the crystal goblet, and tilted it to her
lips, then returned the glass to the table. Her eyes were shining with fear, and
a pulse ticked at her right temple. The prince picked up the glass, swirled the
wine dregs around for a silent moment, then sniffed it and slid it back to her.
He smiled. "You're a very attractive woman, Miss LaSanda. Very attractive
indeed. I'm sure"IJ you have many suitors. Don't you?" When she didn't reply, he
leaned forward and i| touched her throbbing pulse with a cold finger. Then he
brought the finger back and passed it under his nose a couple of times. "Very
attractive," he whispered. '/J'
"Please," she said, her jaw muscles aching with the effort, "let me go home.
I'"' | I don't ... I don't care who you are. Just ... let me ... go ..." ',„' |
"That would spoil everything. You want to stay here with me. Don't you?" His\\
eyes widened slightly.
Her head nodded involuntarily, like a marionette's."" 1 "Good." He regarded her
for a moment in silence, then walked across the room ,„„*
18ii' i'**to
one of the fireplaces, where he made a gesture of warming his hands. "I'm
cold,"ir; "" he said softly. "I've been cold now for several nights, and I can't
stand it any longer. „" But you wouldn't understand that, would you? When you're
cold, you simply turn r J up the heat. You don't know pain, Miss LaSanda, that
pain that roars through the ,)
- body like a blizzard." He looked over his shoulder at her. "I'm glad you're
here, *
* tonight. I needed somebody to be with me, to talk to. Sometimes I get lonely
for people . . ."
The woman's mouth worked, but no sound came out. Two tears trickled down her
cheeks, leaving twin mascara trails.
Vulkan stared into the fire. "It was only a matter of time before you found out.
My checks are worthless. My bank account in Switzerland has been closed for a I
long time. I didn't know how much you knew about me. So it was much simpler, I
you see, to bring you here. To me." I"I don't ... I don't know . . . anything .
. . about you . . ." she whispered.
"Ah, but there are things you might have found out." He turned back to her,
rubbing his palms together. "You might have called the police. You might have
hurt me before it had even started." "Started? What . . .?"
"Everything!" he exclaimed, making a sweeping gesture with his arms. "The
future!"
218
Paige heard the door open. Vulkan glanced up. "Here's your meal," he said. "It's
a true Hungarian beef gyulash. I had it made just for you." A girl in a white
gown brought in a silver bowl brimming with a thick-looking broth in which bits
of potatoes, beef, and carrots floated. She set it down in the plate before
Paige and left the room. Paige stared at it but didn't move. I want you to eat
it," Vulkan said quietly.
Paige's arms were still pinned to the chair, and tears were dripping from the
point of her chin. "Eat your meal," Vulkan said as if he were speaking to a
small child. Her right hand whipped out, grasped a large spoon, dipped it into
the bowl and brought it to her lips. Her mouth jerked open. The spoon returned
to the bowl. Then again. "Swallow it or you'll choke," he warned her. "That's a
good girl." He stood over her and watched. "There are so many things I want to
know about this land called California," he said eagerly. "You can help me. You
can tell me everything. Like . . . who are these?" He touched the T-shirt he
wore, printed with a picture of the Beach Boys. "Are they religious figures,
like the movie stars? I have to know about the music I've heard playing. What
instruments are those? Lutes? Harps? The world changes so fast. The years pass
like days to me, the days like minutes. It becomes more crowded and complex.
Every time I leave my refuge, I find myself in a different world . . ." He
squinted suddenly, hearing something (MASTER!!) but he tried to force it away.
Waves of need crashed through him as he stood in the hot presence of Paige
LaSanda. But there it was again (MASTER HELP ME!), urgent and compelling. He
touched his forehead, eyes rolling back, and tried to focus on where that
thought had come from. And then . . .
... he could see the detectives in that large rectangular building with all the
windows, bringing his servant Roach into a room where they were going to ask him
questions. Roach sat at a table, and one of the detectives-a black man-switched
on a cassette tape recorder. "All right, Benefield," the black man said. "We're
going to ask you a few more questions."
"Questions? (MASTER HELP ME!) When can I go home?"
"Remember the photographs I showed you this afternoon?" the black man said. "The
four bad girls?"
"I remember them," Roach said.
"Good." The detective opened a folder and looked through some papers. Then he
shivered and glanced up at a larger man who sat across the room. "Does it feel
cold in here to you, Karris?"
"Yeah, kind of," the one called Farris said. "A little chilly."
"Chilly, my ass! Feels like a north wind blew in!" He shivered again and then
returned to the folder. "What were you going to do to Vicki Harris after you
knocked her out with that stuff, Benefield?"
"Nothing."
219
"Really? Let me read you something from your rap sheet. Do you remember a young
woman named Gilly Langford from August of 76?"
"No. (MASTER HELP ME!)"
"That's odd, because she knew you when she picked you out of a lineup in an
attempted rape case. She said you tried to strangle her, and she had the bruises
on her throat to prove it. Then there was a little girl, Janis Chessler, eight
years old. November 1977. Do you remember her?"
Roach closed his eyes tightly, clenching his hands into fists. (SAVE ME MASTER!
THEY'RE GOING TO TRY TO MAKE ME TELL!)
"Do you remember Dr. Carl Friedman, Benefield?" the black man asked. "He was the
State Mental Health Board psychologist assigned to your case after your
molestation sentence was suspended. We've been in contact with him. Shall I tell
you what he says about you?"
"Lies," Roach said. "Everybody lies about me."
"He says you're what's called a paranoid-schizophrenic," the black man said., J!
"That things get mixed up in your head sometimes and you lose track of past
"'"'|| events. He says you complain of severe headaches and you have abrupt mood
'"'", changes. Dr. Friedman says you show hostility to women. Are those lies,
Benefield?" ''/,',
"Vp<; "''"I
ics . . .| "I'll ask you again. What were you going to do to Vicki Harris?" J |
Roach trembled and whispered, "He . . . doesn't want me to tell . . ." ;, \\ "He?
Who are you talking about?"
"The Master." There were beads of sweat on his face. "He says I'm not sup-'""
posed to-" !/"
x,/ i^m
,t
f' iff ,j
ill1 ,|«Ui
'''/">
r ,,«/
Prince Vulkan broke mental contact with Roach and looked over at PaigeJ LaSanda.
Her spoon was scraping the bottom of the silver bowl; her chin dripped with beef
gyulash, and it had splattered down onto her dress. The woman's eyes '" were
glazed, brimming with tears and totally insane.
"That's enough," Vulkan barked. Immediately Paige's hand opened, and the spoon
clattered to the floor. He turned his gaze away from her, looking inward again.
He wasn't certain how strong Roach's will was and how long the man could bear
this sort of questioning. The night before, Vulkan had made the castle tremble
with his screams of rage when he'd realized Roach had been caught. The man was
bringing his offering-and Vulkan's food-up the mountain. But Roach was a loyal
servant and could be put to future use, so now he had to be saved from the den
of the enemy. Vulkan put a hand to his left temple and looked deep into the
night, concentrating on what he wanted done. His dark essence, like a formless
shadow, left his body and traveled upward, squeezing through a chink in the wall
and moving outward; it was something the Headmaster had taught him to do. All of
the city gleamed underneath. In just a moment he could see the bats spinning in
the
220
black sky like a mad whirlwind, hundreds of them flying from their caves in the
San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, gathering directly above Parker Center
in downtown Los Angeles. They churned there, a squeaking cyclone of wings,
awaiting his next command. When the sky was filled with them, he watched in his
mind . . .
.. . the bats dropping lower, still spinning in a huge circle, hovering like a
black noose around the gray-green building. They began to split formation and
fly into the walls and windows. Those that didn't smash themselves to death flew
a distance away and then came back to strike again ...
Vulkan shifted focus, linked with Roach again and saw
. . . the black detective looked up suddenly from the folder. He glanced at
Farris, his brow creasing. "What was that? Did you hear something?"
"Wait a minute," Farris said, listening.
Roach's eyes were full of tears. He smiled as he heard something shatter glass
outside beyond the door. "The Master!" he shouted joyously. "It's the Master
come to take me home!"
"Shut up!" the black man said, rising from his chair. More glass broke, and now
there were people shouting in the corridor. "What the hell's going on out
there?" He opened the door and stood on the threshold, transfixed by what he
saw. Windows exploded like gunshots. A dozen bats flew over his head into the
room, and Roach laughed as Farris ducked away from them.
The black detective suddenly shivered and took a step backward.
"Reece?" Farris shouted.
The one called Reece staggered back, a ragged cry torn from his throat. He
whirled around, his face covered with bats. A storm of them swept into the room,
darting into Farris's hair, catching onto his shirt. Roach clapped and shouted,
"YES! YES!" None of the bats touched him; they attacked the other two men,
covering their bodies like a crawling tide. The walls were covered with bats,
and they spun around the room like bits of black paper caught in a high wind . .
.
"Roach," Vulkan said softly, speaking through his mind. "Come to me."
221
"YES!" the man shrieked. He leapt up from the table and ran past the black man's
body, which \\vas twisting on the floor in agony. He ran into a larger room where
there were other men trying to fight off the creatures, but the bats numbered in
the thousands now and were still coming in through the broken windows. Roach
passed a man whose head and back were swarming with furry bodies; another man
ripped blindly at his shirt, his eyes reduced to bleeding holes. The bats parted
to let Roach through and closed in his wake. He ran into the corridor, which was
also filled with bats, and on to the elevator. A few bats tangled in his hair,
but they felt the Master's presence on him and flew away. When the elevator
came, he stepped in, escorted by two dozen or more swirling protectively around
him, chittering and squealing. On the first floor he ran toward the main doors,
where a uniformed officer shouted and drew his gun. A phalanx of bats whirled
away from Roach and shredded the policeman's face.
Roach burst through the doors and ran into the night along a wide avenue
bordered by huge buildings. "Thank you, Master!" he shouted. "Thank you, thank .
. ."
ll|]
Prince Vulkan brought himself back and opened his eyes; the pupils were„ |
tightly slitted and seemed to be glowing with green fire. He thought Kobra and
in', another moment Kobra stepped through a door at the far side of the room.
"Roach
is coming to join us," Vulkan said. "Take a few of the others and go down to
help"*
him. Hurry.", «
Kobra left to find Viking and Dicko and any other members of the DeathV*
Machine who'd already awakened. It would be good to ride his Harley again, to
feel„„ *"
t'tai
the cold wind in his face, to see the stars burning savagely in the night. He'd
beenJl right-this was the greatest drug there was. )|
When Kobra was gone, Vulkan turned his attention back to the madwoman in'*" the
chair. He approached her, saw her eyes moving feebly toward him, her mouth
opening in a soundless "no." He took her hand and felt the blessed heat flowing
like volcanic currents beneath the flesh. As he kissed the back of her hand, he
could smell the sweet, delicious blood millimeters away from his fangs. He
kissed along her arm, pushing the sleeve back, licking with a black forked
tongue.
Paige Lasanda shuddered, her eyes rolling back to white. "Boogeyman, Mama," she
said in a little girl's voice. "Boogeyman . . . boogeyman . . ."
When he reached the pulse at the crook of her elbow, the coldness within him
turned unendurable. His head snapped forward, his fangs piercing the flesh. A
bubbling fountain filled his mouth, and he drank with great, thirsty heaves.
In a few minutes Paige whimpered, her face chalky yellow, and then she was
silent.
222 223
Wednesday, October 30
'in
i
THE"'': HEADMASTER'S GIFT
I IN
'} )
224 225
' liti
Rico Esteban, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a silver jacket and head
bowed in thought, was walking home along Sunset Boulevard. Around him the
boulevard swirled with nightlife-the sidewalks were crowded with rockers in
sleek black jackets, their hair cut rooster-style and dyed in a variety of
outrageous colors; transvestites hung around the entrances of the El Lay Club
and the Disco 2001, hoping to be escorted in by some unaware stud; teenage girls
in jeans so tight they numbed the ass stood in groups on the corners, talking
among themselves about shoes and records when they weren't trying to flag down
the driver of a passing Jaguar or Porsche; furtive older men stopped to ask them
what time it was or how to find a good disco, and when the laughter hit, they
hunched down and scurried off into the shadows; pimps in long Cadillacs cruised
up and down the Strip, diamond rings flashing on their hands, their eyes alert
for action or trouble. Music' crashed around Rico like throbbing electric
thunder from a dozen rock clubs; the *" * H lightning was blue and white and
green neon, pulsating like silent fury. jjj
He'd made some good sales tonight-a couple of grams of coke in front of the|
Whiskey a Go Go, some Columbian Red inside Disco 2001. Now there were a couple
of ounces of Red left in the lining of his jacket, and he knew he could've sold
that, too, if he'd stayed around the disco any longer. But he'd gotten a creepy
«* feeling in there just as the Jets were singing "Body Heat" and the strobe
lights had >»started flashing so fast everybody looked like windup dolls gone
berserk. The walls |!" had started closing in around him, reminding him too much
of the feeling he'd had »' in that building on Dos Terros Street. As he'd rushed
out, shoving through a knot )t of people who stood around a couple writhing on
the floor, urging them on, a girl "*j} with bleached blond hair and glitter on
her cheeks had gripped his hand and "" whispered, "Come home with me, baby."
He'd seen something horrible moving ''"" behind her vacant gaze, and her hand
was as cold as death. Suddenly the girl on the floor whimpered-Rico heard it
quite clearly, though no one else seemed to-and when he looked down, he thought
he saw the boy astride her, his lips pressed against her throat. Rico jerked
free and ran.
He walked on, keeping his head down to avoid eye contact. Things were going
crazy. Everything was falling to pieces. He almost bumped into a skinny kid with
a crew cut. When he looked up, Rico saw that the kid wore a T-shirt with WHO IS
THE GRAVEDIGGER? scrawled across it in red crayon. The kid cursed and stumbled
on, his eyes aflame with uppers. Rico hurried away, the gold chains around his
neck merrily tinkling against each other. In another moment he felt himself
being watched and looked up again. On the corner there were two teenage girls,
one in a wrinkled violet dress and the other in a pink satin jacket and dirty
jeans. They stared at him with hunger in their eyes, their childlike faces
vulpine
226
and as pale as the ashes of a long-dead fire. Rico shuddered and found he could
not look away. The girl in the violet dress smiled and motioned for him to come
over. He had almost reached them when a blue Porsche with two guys inside
swerved to the curb. One of the guys said, "Want a ride, baby?" and the girls
climbed in without hesitation. The car roared away, and Rico felt cold beads of
sweat trickling down into his eyebrows. He went on, walking much faster now.
It seemed to him that the endless party had gone on much too long, and now it
was out of control. Something unspeakable had invited itself in because here the
door was always open and everyone was too stoned or crazed to guard the
entrance. Rico shivered; someone had just walked past him who gave off cold like
an icebox. He was afraid to see who it was. He kept moving, the blare of music
from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party almost blasting him out into the street. Someone
else bumped into him-an older man in a white shirt. Rico felt those waves of
cold gnawing at him again. Lifting his gaze high enough to see brown spots on
the front of the man's shirt, he suddenly pushed a couple of kids out of his way
and was running, hearing a long shriek behind him that turned into a chilling
howl of laughter.
He thought he could hear the noise of boots striking the concrete, chasing after
him. He seemed to be at the center of a din of screams and laughter rising like
a dark wave, crashing over the music. A girl's hand clutched at his sleeve. He
cried out and pulled away, almost tripping in his haste to escape. It was only
two blocks later that he dared to slow his pace and look over his shoulder.
There was no one following him, no one at all. Just figures moving along the
sidewalks and back and forth across the boulevard, bathed in cold neon.
What's wrong with me? he thought. I'm cracking up or something! He walked
another block, then turned into a doorway centered between the Temple of the
All-Seeing Eye and the Rubens Nude-Fingerpaint a Real Live Nude!-Art Studio. He
climbed a narrow, dimly lit stairway and stood in the hall. His was the third
door on the right; he'd been lucky to find an apartment with a view of Sunset
Boulevard. He switched on the lights and locked the door behind him. It was a
one-room with a kitchenette and cracks in the ceiling that sometimes leaked
brown drops of water. There was a long mirror on the wall beside the door, and
now Rico peered into his face to see if he looked crazy. His eyes were a little
bloodshot from the smoke at Disco 2001, but otherwise he looked okay. He walked
across the room, his weight making the loose floorboards squeal, and looked out
a small window onto Sunset. A few figures were running along the sidewalk; one
of them, a woman, tripped and fell. A man stopped and helped her to her feet,
then they all ran out of Rico's field of vision. In another few seconds a pack
of grinning teenagers passed, running in the same direction. A car's tires
screeched far in the distance. Somewhere a siren wailed like the voice of a
woman, rapidly fading.
Someone knocked at Rico's door.
He whirled around, his heart racing with fear. For a long time he stood where he
was, staring across the room at that door. In another moment the knob rattled.
"Go away!" he shouted, and instantly thought, Oh, God! Now they know I'm here!
227
The knocking was repeated. Then a voice in an urgent whisper-"Rico! Open the
door! It's me!"
"Who . . .? Merida?"
"It's me, Rico! Hurry! Open the door!"
He let out his breath, almost overcome by dizziness. God in heaven! Merida! He
stepped to the door, unlocked it, and threw it open. Instantly she stepped
forward into his arms, burying her face in his shoulder. "Merida!" he said.
"Where have you been? I've been . . . I've been crazy looking for you!"
"Don't say anything, please," she whispered. "Just hold me. Tight. Tighter."
He squeezed her against himself, feeling her cold lips against his cheek. Tears
threatened to spill from his eyes, and he realized then how very much he did
love her. She was shivering, and her flesh was so ... so cold . . . Something
dark stirred; in the pit of his belly. "You're freezing!" he said. "Where have
you been? God, I'm .*
i<
so glad to see you!"y "Don't talk," she said, burrowing closer. "Just love me .
. . make me warm ..." || "And it was then that Rico turned his gaze toward the
mirror. '''jjj| He was embracing an empty dress, wrinkled where it might have
been pulled by the movements of a human body. But he knew, and the knowledge
almost made '";,! him scream, that what he was embracing was no longer human ...
I She lifted her head, her dark eyes swirling with tendrils of red and silver. f
"Make me warm, my darling," she whispered. "Make me warm." Her mouth opened. "
The fangs slid out like a rattlesnake's. ^
"NOOOOOOO!" he screamed, pushing her away and taking a step backward. He tripped
and crashed down against the wall, cracking his head on the edge of a,»!
junkshop table. Through a red mist of pain, he saw her approach as silently as a
,! ;* puff of smoke. "Ricooooo," she whispered, her eyes yearning. "I've come
back to «.i you. I've come back . . ." ""'J "Get away!" he gasped, trying to
scrabble to his feet. They wouldn't work; his "tj brain spun between poles of
frost and fire. »' ". . . for you," Merida said. "Now we can be together forever
. . ." """* "NO! NO!" His voice cracked, his eyes about to pop out of their
sockets. Deep inside himself he heard the first faint chucklings of mad
laughter.
"Yes," the vampire whispered. "Forever and forever and forever." She reached
toward Rico, her eyes glimmering like Sunset Strip neon. He screamed and thrust
out his arms to protect himself, to give himself a few more seconds of life.
Merida grasped his right arm, grinned, and sank her fangs into a vein at his
wrist.
He was shot through with pain, and now he could hear her sucking the life out of
him. He tried to strike at her with his other hand, but she grabbed that wrist
and held it with extraordinary strength. Her fangs plunged deep, not missing a
drop. Her eyes began to roll back in her head with pleasure, and Rico began
tumbling down into a dark place that was so terribly cold, so ... terribly ...
terribly ... cold ... When she was finished, she let his arm drop to the floor.
She crouched down on.all fours and licked up the few red spots of blood that she
had missed. Then she
228
crawled over to Rico and cradled his head against her bosom, gently rocking his
cold body back and forth. "Now," she said. "Now we'll be together for always.
We'll always be young . . . and we'll always be in love. Sleep, my precious.
Sleep." She held him awhile longer, then she went to the unmade sofa bed and
pulled off the sheets. She laid the sheets down on the floor, dragged him into
the middle, and wrapped him up. Now, she thought as she finished the task, you
can sleep undisturbed until the Master bids you to awaken. She knew he'd be
filled with hunger when he got up and might not be able to hunt for himself, so
she would come back to help him. Her love knew no bounds. She dragged Rico's
shrouded form into the closet, piled a couple of cardboard boxes around him, and
closed the door. Now the sun, that hated bringer of pain, couldn't get to him.
The Master would be pleased with her work.
She left the room and raced along Sunset Boulevard to help the others in the
hunt. She was getting quite good at following the blood scent.
TWO
"Arista wants you, Wes," Jimmy Kline was saying as he drove along Sunset,
disregarding the kids who were stalking the sidewalks in what seemed to him
record numbers for this hour. "They'll kill to get you after the Brooks deal is
hammered down. And that is when our price goes up. Waaayyyyy up. Hell, they
can't afford not to grab you up while you're hot!"
Wes sat in the back seat of Jimmy's custom-built white Cadillac, his arm around
Solange. The evening had been too much for her, and now her head was nestled on
his shoulder. "That Chuck guy was pretty funny, wasn't he?" he said. "What was
his last name?"
"Crisp or Kripes or something like that. I'll tell you how I'm going to play
Arista, Wes. Long and cold. I'll give 'em the old baleful stare when they quote
facts and figures to me. Ha! I'll have 'em climbing the walls ready to sign
anything. 'Sheer Luck' is going to be a hit for ABC, and the record companies
are going to come crawling to us on their fucking knees! You want to hear a tape
or something?"
"No," Wes responded quietly. "I'm fine."
"Okay. Hey! How'd you like to do a couple of Vegas dates? We could write our own
ticket!"
"I don't know. I've got bad memories of Vegas. Maybe I should just keep a low
profile for a while and see what develops."
"Low profile?" Jimmy said as if Wes had uttered the ultimate profanity. "Did I
hear you right, man? Low profile? The only people keeping low profiles in this
town are the has-beens! We've got to strike while the iron's hot. You know that
as well as I do. Christ!" He suddenly twisted the wheel to the right, swerving
to avoid a group of spaced-out kids who'd run out into the street right in front
of the Caddy. "You fucking jerks!" Jimmy shouted, giving them the finger as he
drove past. They
229
scattered, grinning and jeering. "Bunch of freaks!" Jimmy said, his face
flushed. "Christ! We almost killed us about four punks back there. What an item
for Rona's column, right?"
"Yeah, right," Wes said nervously. He glanced back and saw the kids leaping out
again in front of a Spitfire convertible. The car screeched to a halt, and the
kids moved forward. Then he turned away and didn't look anymore because suddenly
he was filled with dread.
"Where do all these freaks live?" Jimmy said, glancing around at the people
hanging out in front of stores and bars. "What do they do, just come out at
night or something?"
Solange suddenly sat up as if she'd never been sleeping at all. "What's happen-
\\ ing?" she said, her tone of voice alert.
"Nothing. Jimmy's driving us home. Go back to sleep.",j
"No." She looked around. "Aren't we there yet?"'',
Wes smiled. "We just left the Improv about fifteen minutes ago. I suppose you jl
don't remember the three glasses of Chablis you put away?" He looked into the'I
rearview mirror at Jimmy's eyes. "What'd you say that guy's name was again?
Chuck >' what?" ' ;!!ii
"Kreskin. No, that's not it."'j
"He's a good comedian. His material's really sharp. The audience liked him,'I
too." *
"I guess they did. Of course, everybody knows you could get up there on your ' &
worst night and blow him or anyone else right off the stage. Cream rises to the
top,W) Wes. That's why he's working the Improv and you've got an ABC contract."
,«,
"Footsteps," Wes said quietly., £
"What?"
"Footsteps," he repeated. "Footsteps in the dark, coming up behind you. You"^
can run your ass off, run until your heart's about to burst, and then when you
slow ^ down, you think you won't hear them, but there they are right behind
you."
"Solange, what's our crazy golden boy talking about?"
"Sometimes I wonder," Wes mused, "what would've happened to me if I hadn't
stepped up on that stage for the first time. It was right there in the Comedy
Store on a Monday night-amateur night-and I was just off the bus from Winter
Hill and scared shitless. I was supposed to meet an old frat buddy at the
Greyhound station, but the bastard didn't show up, so I started walking, lugging
suitcases. Jesus! I must've dragged those things twenty blocks. I didn't even
know where I was going. Anyway, I saw this poster tacked up-Monday Night's
Potluck at The Comedy Store. The Stage Is Yours! I found myself a motel room and
started practicing in front of the mirror. Which had a big crack in it-I'll
always remember that-and I was afraid it was going to be bad luck. But I figured
somebody else broke it, so it was somebody else's bad luck. Right?"
"Definitely," Jimmy said.
Wes smiled at the flood of memories. It all seemed so very long ago, but then,
229
n«'
»H
230
time in L.A. was deceptive. When you're riding high and surrounded with friends,
time speeds up, turning the months and weeks into days and hours. But when
you're down and all alone, every minute stretches into a poisonous eternity. "I
never saw a stage as big as that one was," he said. "I never again saw one as
big either. There was a long line of people waiting to go on in front of me.
Some of them were really good; the others just slunk off stage when they were
finished beating their dead horses. God, what a night that was! The guy in front
of me was a short order cook named Benny ... uh ... Kramer, I think his last
name was. He did sound effects-ray guns, flying saucers, machine guns, and bombs
with a half-assed running commentary. He was a nice guy but as stiff as a board
up there. El Stiffo. After they carried him out, somebody pushed me from behind,
and I went stumbling out into the lights. Christ, they were ... so bright." His
voice had steadily become lower, his eyes glazed with remembrances. Jimmy
glanced at him every once in a while in the rearview mirror. They were driving
through Beverly Hills now, heading toward Bel Air. "So bright," he said. "They
burned into you like lasers; they made the sweat pop out of your pores. I could
just barely see the people sitting up close to the stage, but I was aware of the
whole staring . . . mass of them out there. I could see light glinting off
glasses and ashtrays, and it seemed like the whole place was full of
noise-people coughing like they'd swallowed their dinners whole, talking back
and forth across the room like I wasn't even there at all, hollering for a
waitress. It was then that I knew I was a looooong way from fraternity parties
and podunk clubs. This was the big time, and it was going to be tough." He
paused, staring out the window.
"Were you good?" Solange asked, holding his hand.
"I was shitty," he admitted, and smiled. "My timing was off, I blew most of the
punch lines, and I stood like I had a poker up my ass. About two minutes into
the act, the crowd started calling for my blood. It was Gong Show reject all the
way. I forgot the rest of my jokes and went nuts, started blabbering on about
growing up in Winter Hill and how funny my folks and friends had always thought
I was. That drove the last nails into my coffin. I think I must've crawled off
that stage on my hands and knees because I sure don't remember walking off. And
that was my big debut in Hollywood." He squeezed her hand. "But I got myself a
job selling shirts at The Broadway, and I went back the next Monday night. And
the next, and the next. I found out that if you wanted God on your side, you had
to work like a demon, and I did. I threw out all the jokes that had worked at
the frat parties and started from scratch. After a couple of months of that,
they wouldn't let me do amateur nights anymore. People were asking for me. I
started doing shows on New Comedians Night. Sometimes I bombed, sometimes I won
them over. But I always worked my ass off. And then one night this guy came
backstage and asked me if I was interested in writing some material for the
Carson show. Rags to riches." He pondered that for a moment and then added, "To
rags to riches."
"Rags? Shit!" Jimmy said. "In your worst year, after 'Just You 'n Me' went
under, you were clearing a hundred thou!"
231
"Which went just about as fast as it came in," Wes reminded him. "You forget how
far a hundred thousand goes in this town these days."
"Tis true," Jimmy said. "Regrettably true."
Solange shivered and drew closer to him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Are you
cold?"
"I'll turn up the heat," Jimmy reached for the climate control.
"I'm all right," she said. "I'm only tired."
He looked at her closely. "You've been acting strange all day," he said softly.
"You coming down with a cold or something?"
She shook her head. "I only want to get to sleep."
Wes saw there was something more to it than that, but he knew from experience
that when Solange wanted to keep something to herself, nobody on God's earth
could get it out of her. He remembered yesterday morning. It had taken him^
almost ten minutes to snap her out of the trance she'd fallen into. She'd been
'',,„ sleeping with her eyes open. |l
"So just think about a couple of Vegas dates, will you, Wes?" Jimmy said.
Theyjjjn were driving along a curving boulevard lined with tall palm trees, and
they hadn't '' seen another car for five minutes. "Jilt1
"Vegas?" Wes repeated. "I don't know . . ."'""J
"Las Vegas?" Solange gripped his hand tighter. "Could you get a job there?"''I ;
"Babe, when 'Sheer Luck' starts rolling in the Neilsens, old Wes could get a
job'* in Fairbanks!" '*
"That would be nice, Wes," she said, looking at him hopefully. "A week or two,„,
in Las Vegas maybe? Or a month? Why not?" ,w
"I'm not ready for that right now. I want to take it easy."'/*
"Easy, smeasy," Jimmy muttered.»
"Why not do it?" Solange continued. "It might be good to ... to get away from"J
Los Angeles for a while. You could relax in-" >l
"Get away from Los Angeles?" Wes said. He'd caught the emphatic tone in her'"«*
voice, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "Why? What's so important to you about
''*' going to Vegas?"
"It's not important to me. I just thought you might enjoy the change."
"I wouldn't. You know what I think about working in Vegas. It's an armpit town
as far as progressive comedy goes. Those people just want somebody to ease them
down after losing their shirts . . ."
"HOLY CHRIST!" Jimmy suddenly shouted.
Wes twisted his head around. He heard the high squeal of brakes and saw a gray
car hurtle into the intersection on a collision course with the Caddy. Jimmy
wrenched the wheel and slammed on the brakes, but Wes saw that the gray car, a
Maserati, was coming too fast. He saw a face behind the wheel-eyes widened in
horror, mouth opened in a soundless scream. He grabbed Solange, then the two
cars hit in a jarring whump of rending metal. Glass shattered very close to
Wes's ear; the interior of the Cadillac seemed to be filled with angry hornets.
Solange
232 McCAMMON
screamed. Wes's head rocked forward and hit the back of Jimmy's seat, then he
was thrown against the door with rib-cracking force. For an instant the Cadillac
seemed in danger of going over on its side; the Maserati seemed to keep on
coming, its gray torpedo of a nose plowing into the Caddy's side. Then the
Cadillac righted itself, slammed against a palm tree, and was still.
The ticking of hot engines sounded like a bomb about to go off. "Are you okay?"
Wes said to Solange. "ARE YOU OKAY?" She nodded, her eyes glazed, a blue bruise
coming up over her right cheekbone. "You crazy or something?" he shouted at the
Maserati's driver, but all he could see was a shattered windshield. The
sonofabitch must've been doing eighty! he thought. Must've been doing ninety
fucking miles an hour when he came into the intersection! The entire right side
of the Cadillac was folded in, all sharp angles of leather and metal. The front
of the Maserati had been crushed like an accordion, the hood almost ripped from
its hinges.
"Jimmy," Solange whispered thickly.
Wes looked, his heart pounding. There was blood on the steering wheel where
Jimmy's forehead had cracked half of it away. Jimmy was wedged under the wheel,
his left arm almost turned backward. His face was a sick purplish color, and
blood was streaming down one side of his mouth. He made a soft moaning noise,
his lungs sounding wet and clogged. "Jimmy!" Wes shouted, and started to lean
over the seat. Jimmy's eyes opened. "Oh, shit," he said softly. "Looks like
somebody plowed our asses, didn't they? Christ, my chest hurts!"
"Don't move. Don't move. I'll find a phone somewhere and call an ambulance.
Don't move." He had to shove against the door several times to get it open
because it was jammed up against that palm tree. He squeezed out, his ribs laced
with pain. He fell to the grass and puked like a hurt dog. Solange helped him to
his feet. His head was throbbing terribly; it felt like a balloon expanding.
"Got to find a phone," he told her. "Jimmy's hurt bad." He looked up and down
the boulevard for a pay phone, but they were right in the center of Beverly
Hills and pay phones were as hard to find as Skid Row winos here. Across the
street there was a large white stucco house with a wall around it. A light shone
in an upper window, and a head popped out. "Hey!" Wes shouted. "Somebody help
us! Call an ambulance, there's a guy hurt down here!" The person in the window
paused a few seconds, then withdrew into the room. "The car may blow up!" Wes
yelled suddenly to Solange. "We've got to get him out!"
"No, leave him where he is," she said. "Don't move him. Your head's bleeding."
"Huh? Shit!" He felt up at his hairline and looked at the red smear on his
fingertips. He staggered, but Solange's firm grip on his arm kept him from
falling. "I'm okay," he insisted. "How about you?" She nodded, and he walked
around the crumpled Caddy to the remains of the Maserati. Oil and water were
bubbling out of the engine block, hissing where they kissed hot metal. Wes
couldn't see anyone inside the car. He stepped forward through a puddle of water
and peered through the smashed window on the driver's side.
233
A mask of blood was suddenly thrust before his face. Before he could step back,
a hand clamped his arm. The Maserati's driver was a man with silvery gray hair,
now clotted with blood. His face was twisted with agony, the lips trying to
squeeze out words. "Uhhhhhhh . . . they're coming!" he said in a frantic whine.
"They took Denise, and now they're coming for me, they're not going to let any
of us ... uhhhhhhh . . . any of us get . . . get . . . get away . . .!"
"What's he saying?" Solange asked.
"I don't know. He's drunk or crazy," Wes said. He could hear a siren,
approaching fast. An ambulance. Thank God, that guy in the house must've called.
He started to pull away from the man, but the fingers dug deeper into his arm.
"NO!" the man cried out. "No! Don't leave me! Please . . . please don't leave
me!"'f,
"You'll be okay," Wes said. "There's an ambulance coming."
"Don't leave me . . . don't . . . don't. . ." His voice died to a faint moan,
and he / ^ slithered back down into the seat, his fingers dangling over the edge
of the door. | *Wes stepped away from the Maserati and peered into the Caddy
where Jimmy j lay crumpled against the wheel. "You're gonna be okay, Jimmy!
Help's coming. You ;|, just hang on, buddy!" |!i
"Right . . . hang on . . ." Jimmy whispered.'J|i
An ambulance, orange lights flashing, came roaring around the curve and ''I"
screeched to a stop on the other side of the Maserati. The two uniformed atten-'
.
1 'dants, one a Chicano and the other a lanky red-haired guy, got out and
approached '*
the accident, walking quickly.J "Jimmy's hurt bad!" Wes told them. "He's all
crushed up in the front seat!" lm "Yes, sir," the Chicano said softly. But then
the other guy was pulling the )(|( Maserati's door open and reaching for the
injured driver. The gray-haired man >* opened his eyes and babbled in terror. „
( "Hey," Wes said, "what's . . . going . . . on . . .?" _ y i The gray-haired
man screamed. In the rippling orange light Wes could see the 1 glittering fangs
slide out from the jaws of the ambulance attendant. Solange made !J, a soft
sound of horror and gripped his arm. Wes could hear the chatter from the /»«
ambulance's radio-". . . got a two-car collision, corner of Wilshire and
Detroit, two people involved ... hit-and-run, corner of Pickford and Orange,
man's down on the scene ... car hit a telephone pole, Olympic and Catalina, two
victims pinned inside . . . the hunting's fine . . ." The voice carried a cold
hiss.
Solange pulled at him. "Run!" she insisted. "We've got to run!" The Chicano
glared at her greedily and wrenched open the Caddy's front door. Then he reached
in for Jimmy and began to pull his body out from underneath the wheel. Jimmy
screamed in agony.
; i"Are you crazy?" Wes shouted. "You're killing him, you bastard!" He started
I '. forward to tear the maniac away from Jimmy, but instantly Solange grabbed
his
{ J,arm to hold him back. "No," she said, and he stopped to look at her as if
she were
Icrazy, too. Her face was a grim-lipped mask, an African goddess with strange
lights
i(iglimmering in her eyes. He could hear another siren approaching. The
gray-haired
234
man was on the ground now, his legs twitching as the attendant bent down over
him. "Jimmy!" Wes cried. "Jim ... my ..." And then the Chicano was leaning over
Jimmy. Wes saw orange light glimmer off the fangs as they sank into Jimmy's
throat. As he drank with thirsty heaves, the Chicane's black eyes sought out Wes
and Solange.
And then, as if something had collapsed at the center of his rational soul, Wes
realized what kind of things they were. Solange shouted, "WES!" and pulled at
him as the second ambulance rounded the curb, orange lights flashing. As they
ran, Wes looked back to see Jimmy's body spread out on the concrete. It shivered
as if it had been plugged into a high-voltage charge; then he couldn't look back
again for fear of being caught by that thing's hot, Gorgon-like stare. In the
next instant the second ambulance roared up onto the sidewalk behind them,
headlights blazing.
Wes and Solange ran along a high wrought-iron fence; beyond it was a sloping
lawn and a dark Tudor-style mansion framed with palm trees. The driveway, closed
off from the street by a locked gate, lay just a few yards ahead. Wes could see
that the bars had been forced apart as if with a crowbar. There might just be
room enough for them to squeeze through-If they could get to that house and a
telephone . . .! But the ambulance was gaining on them, swerving around the high
Washingtonia palms, clumps of grass flying up behind the tires. They reached the
gate, and Wes shoved Solange through the bars. She tripped and fell on the other
side, but he squeezed through and pulled her up, then both of them ran toward
that house. The ambulance crashed into the gate behind them, knocking it open
and smashing both headlights with a noise like a shotgun blast. Wes saw that
some of the mansion's windows were broken out; it looked dead and desolate, and
he realized with a surge of panic that they could already be inside. He looked
back and saw the driver's pallid, grinning face streaked with the orange light.
The ambulance was again almost on them. Wes wrenched Solange to the side as it
roared past and up the hill, cutting them off from the house. It skidded up on
the lawn, turning in a tight circle, and slammed into a palm tree.
They ran on, cutting across the lawn and past the house. Just on the other side
of the hill's crest was a white, concrete structure that looked like a storage
shed. A stone walkway led down through a landscaped flower bed, and below that
was a swimming pool with a canopied bathhouse. Wes couldn't hear the ambulance
anymore, but he knew they'd be coming soon. He tried the shed's door. It was
locked, so he kicked it open. He stood among sacks of concrete mix and potting
soil, various tools, a few large ceramic pots, and several cans of paint. Even
before he heard Solange shout, he heard the ambulance roaring across the lawn.
He lifted one of the paint cans and pried its lid loose.
"Stay here!" he yelled at Solange, and ran down into the flower beds where the
vampires could see him. The ambulance came for him, its grillwork grinning like
the mouth of a hungry ogre. He saw the flicker of recognition across the
driver's face. Before the ambulance could slow down, Wes heaved the paint can at
the windshield, then dodged to one side with Solange's scream ringing in his
ears.
235
The glass shattered, bright blue swimming pool paint covering the interior of
the ambulance and blinding the things inside. It swerved, roared on past Wes
through the flowers, and pitched over a small brick wall that, separated them
from the pool area. The ambulance nosed into the deep end of the pool with a
huge splash. Hot metal hissed. The orange light grew weaker, casting rippled
reflections.
Wes didn't wait to see if the things could get out. He ran back up to Solange,
and at the crest of the hill they could both see the streaks of orange flashing
out in the street. Wes froze.
"The house," Solange said.
It was the only choice they had. They got in through a pair of shattered French
doors at the rear of the house, which opened onto a large sitting room \\, where
furniture, cabinets, and bookshelves had been overturned as if in a mad fury.
Wes fumbled through the debris, trying to find a telephone in the dark. Solange
picked up a lamp and stood at the doors; her eyes were wide and shining with
fear '', but her hand was steady, with the lamp's metal base poised as a weapon.
In another «) moment she thought she sensed movement outside. Wes did, too; he
froze where ,;' he was, crouched on the floor with dirt all over his clothes and
face.<'''
Solange listened, her heart beating hard. They were there, she was sure of it.
i| And now she heard the wet squeaking of shoes just beyond the doors. They
would I." be coming through any second now. Her grip tightened on the lamp,
though she ™ was well aware she couldn't fight them hand-to-hand.i
And then in the distance, there were two gunshots. It might have been from Ji
the house next door or from across the street. The shots were followed by a
i»i
woman's scream and a man's rising, madly babbling voice. Another siren began to
shriek. She heard the slapping squeak of the shoes running away from the doors,
quickly fading. "They're gone," she said after she'd caught her breath again. "I
think they found something better . . ."
Wes shoved aside an overturned coffee table and found lying underneath if an old
black antique that Ma Bell herself must've used about a hundred years ago. j
When he picked it up, his heart sank-it had been ripped from its terminal. "Damn
,,.„, it!" he breathed. "We've got to call the cops!"
"There's no use in that," Solange said quietly. "The police won't be able to
help. If they did come, they'd only . . . find those things waiting for them . .
."
"What about Jimmy?" It was all he could do to keep himself from shouting. His
strained voice echoed through the room, many ghosts speaking at once. "What in
God's name are they?" He knew the answer to that already, and there was no need
for her to utter the awful word. "It can't be!" he said. They're not real . . .
not real. . .!" He steadied himself against an old sofa with red velvet cushions
that had white music notes and lettering stitched on them, The Sweetheart of
Sigma Chi and Charleston, Charleston. "Somebody must live here," he said. "They
must be upstairs." He was afraid to shout, though, for fear those things outside
might hear him.
"I think you're wrong," Solange said. Wes stared up at her. "Look around. I
235
Htll
'"'It
236
think the things have come here and gone."
He forced himself to look. The mangled burglar bars were bad enough; a large
gilt-framed mirror was smashed all to pieces and now hung crookedly over a cold
fireplace. Antique lamps lay in fragments on the floor. A couple of bookcases
had been overturned, scattering old volumes and little ceramic figurines.
Solange bent and picked up one of the figures-it was the remnants of a ballet
dancer, both legs and one of the arms broken off. The tiny painted face smiled
up at her.
"There's got to be a working phone somewhere in this goddamned tomb!" Wes said,
and moved through a pair of sliding oak doors into a carpeted corridor that led
to the front door. There were more smashed mirrors and framed poster of old
movies-One Night in Madrid, The Prince and the Showgirl, Hollywood's Heaven.
Through the front windows he saw the orange flicker and thought he saw figures
moving out on the lawn.
Solange was beside him. "An elevator," she said, and Wes turned. Next to a
stairway with thick, ornately carved banisters, there was a mire-mesh elevator
shaft.
"Yeah. Fine. So what?" he said irritably. He glanced back toward the front door,
a shiver rippling through him. "Where did those things come from? What in God's
name made them like that?"
Solange said, "We're not safe yet. We've got to find a place to hide in case
they come after us again." She started for the stairway, and he was about to
follow when a cold hand snaked out of the darkness and gripped his wrist.
THREE
Roach was down on the cold stone floor, whimpering like a dog at Prince Vulkan's
feet. Vulkan, sitting in his chair at the long, waxed table covered with maps
and diagrams, paid the human little attention. He stared into the fire, his face
caught between light and shadow. The room still smelled of Falco's charred body;
the dogs in the lower basement had gone wild over the cooked meat. Dust to dust,
Vulkan thought, and ashes to ashes. Over on the other side of the table, Kobra
sat, his boots propped up before him, and watched Roach through narrowed,
red-lit eyes; he held Falco's femur in his left hand like a hideous scepter.
Since after midnight couriers from Vulkan's lieutenants had been coming up the
mountain to report on the shifting concentrations of activity-troops were now
rampaging through Hollywood and Beverly Hills and a great part of southern L.A.,
including an area called Watts, which had already fallen. There had been several
skirmishes with police officers who'd never known what they were chasing until
it was too late. The control tower at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport had
been overtaken, and some of the less-disciplined ones had amused themselves by
crashing a few private planes. A military school in Westwood Village had been
taken, and along with it sixty-eight young boys who had been asleep in their
beds when the attack came; they would make fine soldiers tomorrow night. But for
the most part the
237 )i
'THEY THIRST
Iaction had been hit-and-run, which was how Prince Vulkan preferred it right
now.
i'Individual houses broken into, the sleeping men and women and children quickly
drunk dry and shrouded away from the sunlight to sleep awhile longer; cars
flagged
down on the avenues and boulevards, their drivers taken by surprise; apartment
Icomplexes taken silently, one cubicle after the next. Prince Vulkan had been in
|L.A. a little over a month now, and by his conservative estimate there were
over six
'hundred thousand of his kind spread across the city. Moreover, the number
doubled
every night. His fangs had sired the beginnings of a new race.
|.He touched Roach's shoulder; the man looked up at him, his face as joyous and
dumb as a devoted puppy's. "You're safe now," Vulkan said quietly. "You j
recognized your weakness down there, and you were wise to call for-"
"I could've killed all those fucking cops," Kobra interrupted. "I could've done
it easy, the Death Machine and me, killed them all . . ."
"I didn't speak to you," the prince said coldly. "I didn't ask you to speak. Did
I?" "You don't need him." Kobra's gaze burned with a sullen glare. "You said I
was | going to sit at your right hand. You said that's why you called me from
Mexico, because I was special-"I "I didn't speak to you!" Vulkan snapped. |
Kobra stared back at him for only a second or so, then dropped his gaze and
<»flung the bone into the fireplace. "I need both of you," Vulkan declared,
"equally." . i1 "Why do you need one of them?" Kobra said, and this time he
looked away I immediately because Vulkan's green eyes had flared like blasts of
napalm. J
"Because," the prince said, "we'll need a human to go before us when we've
finished here. I'll need him to arrange passage, to care for the crates, to
secure a proper dwelling just as my last servant did. And sometimes I forget how
humans ' ,„think, I forget what their needs are, what motivates them. Having one
of them here * is essential. Look on Roach as a ... a mascot."\\ Kobra stared
down at his knuckles. *
III
"You are at my right hand, Kobra. You're inexperienced yet? but before we'rej*
through you'll lead my army to victory . . ." .,„»
Kobra looked up again, his eyes shining like headlights.
"Yes!" Vulkan said. "I called you from Mexico because I could feel your
presence, and the Headmaster helped me find you. Even as one of them you knew
how to use Death. You were a true brother, even as a human." He placed his
fingertips together and looked from Kobra to Roach. "To each their special
place. Think back to Alexander . . ."
"Who?" Kobra asked.
Vulkan looked shocked. "Alexander! The boy king, the greatest warrior this world
has ever seen! Don't you read? Don't you know anything about military strategy?"
His lips curled in answer to his own question. "No, I suppose not. You'll have
to be taught, won't you? Alexander the Great carried a full contingent on his
campaigns-archers, infantry, carpenters, cooks, scholars, prophets, even women
to serve the needs of his men. He left nothing to chance, and each man knew his
> ?
238
proper role. Am I less than Alexander? Would I not follow his example? As I say,
to each their special purpose."
Kobra shrugged. He didn't know what the Master was talking about exactly, but if
the Master said it was important, then it was. The Master closed his eyes now,
leaving Roach to fawn at his feet. Kobra didn't like that one. One the way up
the mountain, the human had sat behind him on his Harley, grasping him with hot
hands. If Kobra hadn't already fed tonight, he might've borne him down to the
ground and . . . but not. The Master wouldn't like him even thinking like that;
he wouldn't like it at all. But he still couldn't see what good that one was
going to be. He would be slow and stupid, a lapdog trying to keep up with
wolves. Already Kobra was delirious with the sense of power that coursed through
him. Right after he fed, he felt invincible, tuned like a perfect chopper flying
along the hot currents on the highway, able to concentrate on the glittering
plain of the city and pick up bits of a hundred thousand conversations going on
all at once, like overlapping radio stations that faded in and out when the
antenna moved. It must have been easy for the Master to find him just by
concentrating on the feeling Kobra had in his brain, the dark attitude under the
trapdoor of his soul. Every time he fed, the power was going to grow stronger;
he was going to learn more, see more, know all the secrets in human hearts and
minds. It would take time, yes, but he was going to be twenty forever, and time
coupled with ageless youth was the great gift the Master had bestowed on him.
"Leave me," Vulkan said. He opened his eyes and stared at Kobra. "Take Roach to
his quarters. See that no harm comes to him."
Kobra stood up. "Come on," he said to Roach. He motioned with his hand, and the
man scurried after him. "No one is to touch him, Kobra," Vulkan ordered. "Do you
understand that? He is to have free run of the castle, and the one who touches
his flesh or blood will answer to me."
Kobra bowed his head slightly and ushered Roach through the door. It closed
behind them with a hollow noise that echoed up toward the vaulted ceiling.
Prince Vulkan turned his head and stared into the fire. He thought he'd felt a
cold breath stirring across the back of his neck, and his senses snapped on,
vivid and aware. Paige LaSanda's blood, thrummed in his veins; it had made him
sleepy for a while, but now he sat straight-backed, the pupils of his cat eyes
slowly widening. The red embers in that fire reminded him of the ironsmith's
forge in his father's castle, a long time ago. He remembered watching the
ironsmith-a huge bear of a man with gray hair on his arms and
shoulders-hammering out the raw blades that the swordsmith would painstakingly
fashion into rapiers that glimmered like blue lightning. And he recalled those
afternoon drills in a dusty hall with the sunlight streaming in through high,
arched windows. Forward and back, forward and back, parry, thrust, attack. His
father had been proud of his progress and proclaimed him an even better
swordsman than his own father, Simon Vulkan the Strong. Now his father had been
dust for many hundreds of years; now the castle of his birth was so many broken
stones on a mountain ridge; now the pieces of the
239
/
i
>
>carriage that had crashed over a serpentine road on that wild, windswept night
lay in a Budapest museum along with other odd memorabilia of the Vulkan brood.
That night-September 29, 1342-had forever changed him and forever kept him the
same. He remembered the scene vividly, could recall it down to the finest detail
, simply by closing his eyes. His father, Jon the Hawk, sitting across from him
in the i swaying gold-and-ebony coach, his father's wife, Sonya, beside her
husband, pressed I close to him because the storm made her fearful. Sonya the
Barren, she was called in the village mead halls, though never loudly enough for
any of the Hawk's merce- ' naries to overhear. Conrad knew she wasn't his
mother. The Hawk was regaled by the minstrels for his prowess in bed as well as
on the battlefield. Sonya bore him no ', grudge because the Hawk was aging now
and had needed a son. »The land was a wild, crazy quilt of powers, men building
mountain fortresses > and calling themselves kings and hiring mercenaries to
take the next man's land. ' The Vulkan province had spread in all directions as
far as a horseman could ride in
a day, encompassing a great deal of what is now the northern part of Hungary. It
| £was a varied landscape of harsh rock citadels, sudden deep valleys of dense,
unex- < k plored woodland, grassy plains, and lakes that caught mirror images of
the sky. The ' i. land was beautiful, though unforgiving, but never at peace;
there were very few ji< 7 nights when the torches of some ragged army or another
didn't burn along the m
t_ jjlli
(_strategic mountain passes. The Germanic tribes were always on the march, and
if I
.the Hawk was not battling them in the wild northern forests, he was faced with
the |
\\crawl of the Huns or the mercenary army of some jealous neighbor. )i
^As the Hawk grew older and slower, assassination attempts became bolder.
*Three nights before that fateful coach trip, returning from the new
fortifications
7IHI
>the Hawk had built on the eastern frontier where groups of barbarians had been
,„
*yseen gathering in the mountains for a raid, one of his most trusted advisors
had
*been caught rimming a wine goblet with poison. The man's arms and legs were .,,
ftorn from their sockets, his mutilated torso thrown to the castle dogs. Such
was the "J
ifate of all traitors. J1
*mil
4Conrad Vulkan had been weaned on warfare, drilled in classical military ,,H ?
strategy by such warriors as Jozsef Agna and Ernst the One-Eyed, taught to
ponder
*the scope of his world by the philosopher Bran Lazlo, tutored in the myriad
ways of
*man at the knee of his father. He was destined for greatness, the Hawk had
always . said. Conrad's mind had been steadily honed like the blade of a newly
fired rapier. 4, Even now, sitting in a high-backed chair worlds away from
strife-torn Hungary, he i recalled a favorite lesson his father had taught him:
Attack like the wind. Seem to be
*in all places at once. And never be there when the enemy turns to grasp at you.
Before the coach incident there was only one moment of foreboding in Conrad's
life. It happened during the celebration of his tenth birthday in the castle's
great hall. One of the guests had brought, as a gift, a gypsy woman who read
fortunes in the palm of the hand. In the ruddy light of hearth and torch, she
had grasped his wrist and bent over to see, her toothless gums masticating raw
tobacco. Instantly she'd recoiled and asked him-through a translator because she
spoke
I)i
240
only a crude Germanic gypsy language-if he'd had those few hairs at the center
of his palm since he was born. He'd nodded, and she'd begun clucking like a
frightened hen. She'd dropped his hand and said something else, which when
translated conveyed that she saw a great and terrible change ahead for him. His
line of life had hardly begun when it seemed to disappear under the flesh and
manifested itself in a thin blue thread that curved around the base of the thumb
and circled the wrist once, twice, three times, and again. She refused to read
anything more and had been sent on her way with a loaf of black bread.
But it was that night in September that remained most prominent in his
memory-that night of terror and magic. The coach was moving through the Keyding
Pass escorted by four soldiers when the driver suddenly slowed. One of the
soldiers had sighted huge rocks, fallen from the slab of stone overhead to block
the road. Suddenly, as the horses pawed the earth wildly and the driver tried to
calm them, figures leapt from the rocks and trees, attacking the mounted
soldiers. The horses screamed and reared. They took off with the coach racing,
and suddenly a filthy, grinning death's head of a face peered in at a side
window. The horses broke their harnesses; the coach shuddered and pitched off
the road, crashing over and over down a rocky incline into the cold arms of a
mountain stream.
Conrad had opened his eyes inside the coach to see dark, ragged figures
scurrying outside, breaking in through the shattered wood. His father and Sonya
lay before him like broken dolls, and he knew at once that they were dead. He'd
tried to fight off the things as they came swarming in, but one of his arms
wouldn't work, and a hulking form covered with filth and lice grabbed him up
like a piece of kindling and carried him off into the night. Others chased
after, and he was flung aside several times as the things fought, rolling over
and over on the ground, hammering at each other, hissing and snarling with
demonic fury. Finally, a long way from the Keyding Pass, he was carried into a
cavern that smelled of Death and vermin. The thing that held him threw him to
the floor, and it was then that he saw the vampir's face and recognized it for
what it was. The thing looked more like an animal than a man, with long dirty
black hair and a scraggly black beard. Its eyes glowed with bursts of red and
silver, its fangs dripped saliva, and its fingernails were hooked like claws.
The vampir had approached, whining in its eagerness to feed, and had clasped on
to the boy like a leech.
And the following night Conrad Vulkan had awakened as one of the Undead.
For a while he'd lived as the rest of them did-in a series of deep, winding
caverns cut through the mountains, feeding independently on whatever he could
find, usually rats, boars, or an occasional human who'd taken the wrong road. He
fought like an animal to defend his sleeping and eating spaces, losing both of
them many times and always digging out new ones in the cavern's clay floors.
Eventually he realized that several of them always followed him to the stream
where he washed the lice and roaches out of his clothes. They watched him
curiously and eventually began to do the same thing. Many of them babbled in
strange tongues he'd never heard before, and most of them couldn't communicate
at all. After a
241
while he began to speak with several of them through a crude sign language and
organized them into hunting parties. And then came the great realization of his
new existence. He was, after all, a prince. Why could he not be a king to his
new subjects? He organized the group into foodgatherers, scouts, and
firetenders, and he began teaching them a common language. It was a slow
process, but after a long while they began to trust each other, to see
themselves as brothers and sisters of the night. They expanded their hunting
range, raiding the nearby villages for children who would add the gifts of youth
and speed to the collective. In those days ' Conrad knew very little of what he
was or the powers he could control; he simply craved survival and recognized
blood as Life.
And finally he was ready to return to the castle of his birth. His scouts
reported that it was in Germanic hands now. So this was to be a mission of
warfare as well as a mission of survival. Vulkan contemplated the problem of
taking the castle. He knew its interior as well as he knew the palm of his star-
crossed hand, but its high sheer walls would stop even an army of the Undead.
And while he contemplated, he watched a rat scurrying back and forth from its
nest , ,; down in the guts of the cavern where the rock was riddled with cracks
and holes.
He began to stretch his power, to test its limits. He stared at the scuttling
rat j, I I and, concentrating fiercely, made it freeze in mid-step. He made it
turn, made it
I run backward, made it spin like a child's top. Then he let it go deeper into
the I , * cavern, following it with his mind, and made it return to him day
after day. Then I >he did the same to two rats. Three. Four. A dozen rats,
spinning in circles before jji him while the other vampir looked on in
amazement. He laughed and clapped his hands because now it was becoming
effortless. He could feel his will build upon itself, like the dark stones of
his father's castle piled one on top of another. Soon a ,„hundred rats danced
for him, chittering and squeaking in mindless ecstasy. When he could bring three
hundred rats out of the cavern's bowels and control them with H j. a mere squint
of his mind, he sent his army out into the mountains. " 'f ^ The rats found it a
simple task to squeeze through the holes and cracks in the j'j ,'| walls of
Castle Vulkan. It took less than a week for the plague to follow. Prince „„
Vulkan could stand on a hillock, hidden by the forest, and see the dark plumes
of
< |smoke rising from within the castle keep-bodies were being burned by the
dozens.
The death wagon rattled in and out of the castle every night with its cargo of
icorpses. He could hear the screams and moans of the dying, and the death song
brought a smile to his face. On a cold, snowy February night, while the doors
were
unbarred to let the deathwagon out, he led his vampir army into the castle. They
met no resistance.
Prince Vulkan opened his eyes. Again he'd felt a cold breath stirring at the
back of his neck.
A bow sobbed across violin strings. The music echoed like a wail through the
>chamber.
'^Vulkan turned his head and saw the Headmaster standing before the fire, I
holding a bone-white violin beneath its chin; a gnarled claw gripped the bow
with
4 '
i **
242
cunning delicacy. The Headmaster's eyes burned low, as deceptively cool as the
last embers of the fire. The music went on for a few minutes more and ended with
a low growl that sent vibrations shivering through the prince.
"My pupil, my favorite," the Headmaster said. "Your army grows. How many?"
"More than six hundred thousand," Vulkan replied.
"Ah, good. Very good. But we must have more, Conrad. And quickly. You recall our
agreement: In return for my services you must hand this city over to me on
All-Hallow's Eve. That time approaches quickly, Conrad. I expect eight million
in my service as my due by tomorrow midnight."
"We double in strength every night. How can I give you that many?"
The Headmaster's teeth flashed. "An orgy of hunger, Conrad. A celebration of
power unlike any the world has ever seen. Let them gorge and throw up and gorge
again, like a vast Roman orgy. Let them run wild and take as many victims as
they can. I've observed how you saw fit to deal with the problem of your servant
Roach. That may have been less than wise, Conrad. You forget the power of the
media, and you also forget that special element that blinds the human race to
your existence, their dogged determination-no, let's call it hope-that your kind
doesn't exist. The element of surprise and confusion may soon be gone. We have
to act now, in accord." The Headmaster's eyes closed for a few seconds. When
they reopened, they were as bright as blast furnaces, and the prince could
hardly stand to look at them for fear of dwindling to a cinder.
"I hunger for souls, Conrad. I hunger . . ." The headmaster held the white
violin in its hands and very slowly crumpled it into a ball as if it were paper.
The claws clapped shut. Vulkan stared, seeing something begin to glow
yellow-orange between the Headmaster's hands. The Headmaster opened its hands as
slowly as it had crushed the violin. Something was taking shape between them,
glowing golden. When the brightness dimmed, the prince saw it was a gold urn
about two feet high, filled to the top with coarse sand. "I give you this gift,"
the Headmaster said softly, and held the urn out to Vulkan. It radiated heat.
"Take up a handful of sand."
The prince hesitated only a second, then scooped up some sand. It burned in his
palm.
"Drop it back in," the Headmaster said. Vulkan did so, and the Headmaster leaned
forward, blowing softly on the falling column of sand. It began to writhe,
slowly at first, but rapidly gaining speed. The column stood upright, about six
inches high like a small cyclone. Vulkan thought he could hear the distant
shrieking of wind.
The Headmaster stepped past Prince Vulkan and set the urn at the center of the
table. "Our powers are united. No one is to disturb this in any way, Conrad. Do
you understand?"
He nodded.
"Good. The sun's graying the sky to the east; soon you'll sleep. Rest well and
easy. When you awaken, you'll see that my gift has brought you the ability to
move
243
at will with your entire army throughout the whole of this city. And the humans
will be powerless to run, powerless to escape in their cars or planes or boats.
So sleep well, Conrad, there'll be much work for you when you awaken." The
Headmaster stared at the urn again, grinned, and then began to fade away. The
last thing to disappear was the terrible fanged grin. Then it, too, was gone.
Prince Vulkan looked at the golden urn. The sand was twisting with more force
now, a corkscrew of power. The cry of distant wind sounded like the droning of
an insect, greedy and voracious.
The fire was almost cold now. Outside the hateful sun would be climbing the
eastern peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains. It was time to rest, to plan, to
prepare for the next night.
And oh, he thought, oh, what a night that will be!
FOUR
Palatazin awakened to the sound of something creaking. At least he thought he
was awake because he could see the ceiling and feel Jo pressed against him. He'd
<, been dreaming of a shadowy forest where hands seemed to snake out of the
underbrush to grasp at him. The trees bent over from both sides, making the
pathway I ahead look like a narrow tunnel walled with thorns and brush. Pallid
faces grinned, I floating in the foliage like balloons from a satanic carnival.
Jo was with him, and Jn they were running headlong through the tunnel when
something hulking and monstrous stepped into their path, reaching out to welcome
them with hooked claws.
And now he knew he was awake, and something was creaking softly in his ""
bedroom.^
Another earth tremor, he thought, and he reached out for the lamp switch. The f
creaking stopped immediately. Palatazin later regretted not switching on the
light, but instead he turned his head and peered into the darkness.
His mother was sitting in her rocking chair again, watching him; her face bore a
stern, grim expression that reminded him of the times when she got so angry if
he dared creep back iftto bed for a few extra moments of sleep before getting
dressed for school. Sleepyhead! she'd chide, wrenching all the covers off the
bed. And then, clapping her hands with the noise of righteous thunder: Get up!
Get up! Get up! He didn't realize until later how she'd equated sleeping with
death.
Palatazin stared at the figure in the chair. Her eyes were frightened but
determined, too. They were the eyes of the woman who'd fired a shotgun at the
unholy thing that wore her husband's flesh like a suit of clothes. She rose from
the chair, and Palatazin could see the window-with its spray-painted cross at
the center- through her form. She motioned to him. Get up, sleepyhead! He was
frozen with "I wonder for a few seconds, but then he carefully rolled out of bed
so as not to disturb Jo. She murmured something in her sleep, stirred slightly,
and then was quiet.
243
>*!
244 McCAMMON
His mother motioned him closer. He took a step forward; he could see the deep
lines around her mouth and eyes as if they were superimposed on the wall. Then
she turned and pointed past his shoulder. He looked and saw she was pointing
toward the closet door. He glanced between her face and the closet, not knowing
what she meant. Her face was clouded with despair, her mouth working but no
sound coming out. Then, abruptly, she stepped past him-he felt a breath of air,
and for a second he smelled the childhood aromas of cookies baking, the breeze
through a stand of pines, a coat Papa had bought her in Budapest-and then she
walked right into the closet through the closed door.
Like smoke that has whirled through an open window, she was gone.
Palatazin found himself unable to move for a moment. He realized he'd been
holding his breath, and now he let it all out. He turned, switched on the
bedside lamp and went to the closet.
"Andy! What is it?" Jo was sitting up in bed, her face as white as the sheets
that were bunched around her.
"It's all right," he said, and heard his voice shake. "It's nothing." But no, he
knew it was something. His mother had been trying to speak to him through the
barrier between life and death, and he knew the message was of vital importance.
He gripped the doorknob, turned it, and pulled open the closet door.
He didn't know what he'd expected to find-his mother's spirit standing in there,
perhaps, staring at him through the clothes? The closet all torn up as if a
violent storm had whipped through the walls?
But there was nothing. The clothes were undisturbed. On the top shelf cardboard
boxes were stacked up just as they always had been.
"What is it?" Jo asked. "What are you looking for?"
"I ... don't know," he told her. What's in here? What is it that's important
enough to disturb my mother's rest?
"It's getting light outside," Jo said. "Can't you sleep?"
"No." He pushed the clothes back and forth for a moment, even felt the wall
behind them. What am I looking for? A secret passage in my own house? He reached
up to the shelf and moved a couple of the boxes around. Jo's skeins of wool and
knitting materials were in one, some old shoes he'd even forgotten he'd had in
another. There were some sweaters packed in mothballs. He was putting the boxes
back when he saw the glint of rusted metal in the far corner behind a box he
used to store his gun and holster.
The metal box his mother had saved all her newspaper clippings in. The box that
had been at her bedside when she'd died.
Palatazin lifted it down from the shelf. "Andy . . ." Jo began to protest, but
she was instantly quiet when she saw how tight his face had become and how his
eyes had begun to shine with what looked like to her a maniacal fascination. She
watched in silence as he sat on the bed, opened the old metal box, and began to
look through the clippings, some of them so yellowed they were barely legible.
She could see some of the headlines-Prominent College Prof Says Vampires Do
Exist;
245 i!
THEY THIRST
What Strange Force Turned Lizbethville Into A Ghost Town?; Fourth Cow Found
Killed By Vandals; Line McRae, Powhatan Civic Leader, Still On Missing Persons
List; Bats Plague Midwestern Town For Third Day. Most of them were cut from the
National Enquirer, Midnight, The Star, and Fate magazine, but there were dozens
clipped from the pages of the Times, the Herald-Examiner, a host of smaller L.A.
papers, and whatever out-of-state papers Andy's mother could get her hands on.
At one time her room in this house had been filled with old magazines and
newspapers, and there were boxes stacked tall with them down in the basement.
The silverfish had started coming in droves, and Jo had demanded that the papers
go immediately. Andy had hauled them away but only to make room for the next
batch his mother had begun saving. Jo had gone half-crazy trying to keep the
place clean, always vacuuming and dusting and picking up scraps of newspapers.
It had been the worst just before she'd gone into Golden Gardens.
Palatazin turned the box upside down, dumping all the clippings out in a thick
pile.
"What are you doing?" Jo gasped. "You'll get the sheets dirty!"
He paid no attention to her. He began reading the clippings one by one. The
first was ragged and yellow and bore the headline: Crate Filled With Dirt Found
In NYC Hotel Room. The story from the New York Times was only two paragraphs
long but went on to say that police had found the imprint of a human body on top
of the dirt and speculated that it had served as some kind of strange makeshiftI
casket. The next item was also from the Times and was headed Rash of Disap- |i
pearances Continues-ConEd Exec Latest Missing.
Palatazin picked up the next yellowed item, a small squib with the headline Bats
In NYC Subways? A workman inspecting a section of track had seen some,„ thing
large and black down there, clinging to a wall like a bat with enfolded wings.
When the man had shined his flashlight, the thing had screeched and come ,<
swooping toward him, but he'd run like hell to the nearest platform. One of fhe
f man's quotes intrigued Palatazin-"Mr. Luftek told police, 'If it was a bat, it
was >' one the size of a man! It'll be a cold day in hell before I go back down
in that tunnel!'" ,„ Palatazin went through the next few stories, all about
disappearances and prowlers in the New York City area, and found one that
chilled his blood-Historic Cemetery Vandalized. It was dated August 24, 1948,
and the cemetery was located near Martha's Furnace, Pennsylvania. There were
more clippings of people missing, animals found drained of blood, most of them
in the Pittsburg area. Another cemetery was vandalized near Canton, Ohio. The
town of Paulinwood, Indiana, had to be evacuated because of a siege of rats and
flies. A banker and his family were missing from their home in Mt. Carmel,
Illinois, and his neighbors were frightened because they'd heard insane laughter
in the middle of the night. In May of 1950 the townspeople of Dean's Field,
Illinois, vanished overnight; food was still on the table in farmhouse kitchens,
sheets were turned down in beds that would never be slept in again, lights were
on, and doors unlocked; the only sign of "foul play" were several shattered
mirrors. The next few clippings concerned similar events in Missouri.
246
"My God," Palatazin said softly. "They've been moving westward all this time."
"What?" Jo's brow was furrowed deeply. She rose from the bed and put on her
robe. "Do you want some coffee?"
He looked up at her, blinking heavy-lidded eyes. "My mother knew. All these
years she knew they were slowly moving west. My God! She knew and had to keep
silent because no one would believe . . ." He quickly turned through the rest of
the clippings his mother had saved just before she died. The last one was an
Enquirer article about a man in Caborca, Mexico, who'd murdered three women with
a hatchet and drank their blood because, he told the police, he'd felt possessed
by a vampiro.
"I'll make coffee," Jo said. "Do you want yours the usual way? Black with sugar
and nails?"
"Yeah, fine," he said. She grunted, rolled her eyes and went out the bedroom
door. He went back to his reading. There was an item from the L.A. Times with
the headline No Bats In Reno? Don't Gamble On It! The pilot of a Delta jet,
circling for a landing at Reno International, had suddenly picked up a huge mass
on his radar, closing in fast. The control tower had advised him to drop a
couple of hundred feet, and as the pilot started down, the jet was engulfed by a
cloud of bats heading westward. Luckily none were sucked into the jet intakes,
and the pilot was able to bring his plane in. "Must've been hundreds of the
things," the pilot said when he got his feet firmly on the ground.
Do the bats precede the vampires, Palatazin wondered, or do they follow? In
either case, their presence had meant something to his mother in the days just
before her death. He picked up the next item and saw with some amazement that it
was a Rona Barrett column dated September 3. He read, "... a major Hollywood
studio is searching for a successor to the late JOHN WAYNE in a planned remake
of the Duke's classic Red River. Mentioned most often are Dallas big daddy JIM
DAVIS and new face CLAY SANDERS. Watch for CLAY in the new Paramount film The
Long Haul... for the fans who asked, JANE DUNNE is alive and well and living in
Beverly Hills. She'll be interviewed by this reporter on an upcoming ABC special
. . . more royalty's moving to Hollywood. It's all very hush-hush, but rumor has
it that a European prince, no less, will soon be remodeling the Hollywood Hills
castle that once belonged to horror-film star ORLON KRONSTEEN . . . wedding
bells may soon be tolling for JOHN TRAVOLTA. The lucky girl's name is still a
secret, but this reporter hears the church bells ringing on Christmas Day . . ."
His eyes snapped back to the reference to Orion Kronsteen. He'd worked briefly
on that case about ten or eleven years ago. He'd never seen the decapitated
corpse, but he'd seen the expressions of a couple of the officers who had. Their
faces were pale, and their lips drawn up into grim gray lines. That case had
never been solved, he recalled. But what bothered him about those lines of type
were the two words European prince. Those were the words, he was certain, that
had caught his mother's attention. If this prince were the vampire king he
sought, the castle would be a perfect refuge, hidden away in the hills and
probably high enough to be a
247 '«
THEY THIRST
strategic observation point as well. And now he recalled how the Roach had
stared up into those hills and begged his master for help.
His blood went cold.
Yes, he told himself. This is what my mother wanted me to find.
And now another question racked him-was this the same European prince and/or
vampire king who had conquered the village of Krajeck on a stormy winter night
so long ago? Was this the same creature who had taken his father?
He put the clippings back in the box and snapped the lid down. Rising from the
bed, he stepped to the window and looked down on Romaine Street. The earth was
still layered with blue shadows. The sky was a dull slate gray, but he could see
the faint pink light coming up in the east. There was a bitter coppery taste in
his mouth-the taste of utter dread at what had to be done. His fingers clamped
on the windowsill; the black-painted crucifix was centered in his vision and
seemed to be burned across his face. Terror writhed in his stomach. "I can't do
it alone," he heard himself whisper. "Not that. I can't."
But then who will?
"I can't." He shook his head, his lower lip trembling. He would have to go to
that crumbling old castle and find the vampire king to drive an ash stake
through the thing's heart and sever the head from the body, then do the same to
as many others as he could find. He would have to set the bodies on fire or drag
them out to let the sun bake them into dust. God help him if he was caught up
there when the sun went down.
He remembered his father's face, streaked with orange light from the hearth.
Those gleaming, terrible eyes. Remembered the shotgun blasts and the hideous
thing-not Papa anymore-that rose from the floor, its face ripped away and the
long, glistening fangs exposed.
"I can't," he said to his reflection in the glass.
Then who will?
He didn't hear Jo call him from downstairs, finally yelling in exasperation,
"You don't want coffee? You won't get coffee!"
Oh, God, why me? And then he answered the question himself. Because you know
them. Because you ran from them once, never knowing they were following, day
after day, year after year, all across the United States. And now they are here,
and there is nowhere else to run. If you don't do it, what will happen to this
city? To the millions of people, all of them unaware? Los Angeles would
eventually fall, just as Krajeck had fallen, and a tidal wave of vampires would
move eastward across America, possibly to link up with other isolated pockets of
vampires that awaited their coming. The entire world would lie before them,
before their ravenous thirst.
In the window's glass his face looked thirty years older. His remaining hair
seemed to have gone white all at once, like a man who has had a nightmare of
grinning Death slowly stalking closer.
There was much to be done, and it had to be finished before dusk. But he knew he
couldn't do it alone, and he was going to have to have protection. The
248
taste of fear in his mouth was acrid.
Across the street and one house down, he saw a German shepherd settling itself
on a front porch. He hadn't realized that the Zemkes had bought a watchdog. Good
luck to you, he mentally told the sleeping family in that house. You'// need
every bit of it and more.
He turned away from the window and began to dress hurriedly.
FIVE
"Blackberry brandy," the old woman in the wheelchair offered as she poured from
a crystal decanter into three tulip-shaped glasses. There had been four in the
set, but the fourth now lay in shards on the hardwood floor. "One hundred
proof," she promised, winking at Wes. "Knock the fear of Satan right out of you.
Here."
Wes handed one glass to Solange and sipped from the other one. His mouth
instantly flamed, and he could feel the liquor spiraling down into his stomach,
where it seethed for a moment like lava. He drank down the rest of it, squeezed
the tears from his eyes, and held the glass out again. "More," he said.
Jane Dunne smiled, the lines across her heart-shaped face deepening, but there
was a center of cold fear in her brown eyes that refused to thaw. "Sure you can
handle it, kiddo?" He nodded, and she poured again.
Solange stood on the other side of the wrecked room and drew aside a heavy
wine-red curtain to look out onto the lawn. The first trace of new light hovered
in the sky. "The sun's coming up," she said softly. "It'll be daylight soon."
"Thank God," Wes breathed. "Any of them still out there?"
"No. At least I can't see any."
He came over beside her and peered out. The boulevard was deserted, the houses
dark. Nothing moved. "I think they've gone. They can't stand light, can they?"
"I wouldn't be so sure about that, kiddo," Jane said, turning her wheelchair
around to face them. She drank down her third glass of brandy. "I wouldn't be so
sure of anything in this screwed-up world anymore."
Wes stepped away from the window and eased himself into an overstuffed antique
chair with one broken arm. A single candle burned on a coffee table beside him.
Over near the door a grandfather clock had been thrown over on its side; the
hands, frozen behind shattered glass, had stopped at ten minutes after one. Wes
put his glass aside and wiped a cold sheen of sweat from his forehead. "We've
got to find Jimmy," he said suddenly, looking up at Solange. She stared at him
without speaking for a few seconds, then turned back to the window. "We've got
to get the cops," he insisted. "We've got to get somebody!"
"When the sun rises," Solange said. "Not before."
"So you put two of the bastards in the swimming pool, did you?" The old woman
let out a high-pitched cackle of glee. "Hot damn! I was about to drain the
249
thing, too! Hope they weren't wearing their Mae Wests. . ." She laughed again
and then stared into her glass. Her smile quickly faded, leaving her eyes dark
and hopeless. She muttered softly and reached for the rapidly emptying decanter.
"The thing I can't understand," Wes said quietly, "is why they didn't... uh ...
get you after they'd broken into the house."
"Because I live right, that's why. Plenty of Johnny Walker Red and blackberry
brandy-that'll keep you young forever." She patted the useless sticks that lay
beneath a blanket on her lap, then looked back up at Wes. "I saw their faces,"
she said. "Two of them, both just kids. The girl had a safety pin through her
ear. Rock and rollers, I guess. I took one look at them and thought, This is it,
Janie. You've gone through four marriages, a string of box-office bombs, one
hell of a smashup on the Pacific Coast Highway, and here's the finale-a couple
of dope-heads who are going to kill you in the middle of the night.' I thought
they'd come to steal my tons of paste jewelry." She drank from her glass.
"Then the boy came toward me, and he ... it... opened its mouth. I could ... see
. . . those teeth. Fangs, just like in the Dracula movies, except there were a
couple on the lower jaw, too, and they just slid out like a rattlesnake's does
when it's about to strike. God!" She shivered and said nothing more for a moment
or so.
"Then he stopped right beside my bed. He seemed to be ... sniffing the air. I
think I saw myself reflected in his eyes, and I ... I realized how close Death
stood to me. Then they were gone, just like that. I didn't even see them leave.
Of course, they'd screwed up the lights and the phones, and I had to wheel
around in the dark not knowing whether I'd run into one of them or not. When I
was downstairs, I heard all the shouting and commotion, so I hid in here. I
thought you two were ... you know . . . like they were until I heard you
talking." She swirled the brandy around her glass and drank it down. "I think
what saved me is that I... smelled old. I'll be seventy-five in May and with
busted gams to boot. I think they wanted younger blood."
"They got my friend," Wes said, glancing at Solange and then quickly away.
"Christ, how many of the things are there? And where did they come from?"
"Hell, kiddo," Jane said. "Straight out of old Satan's black bag of tricks. I
thought I'd seen everything this world had to offer up, but I see now I was way
wrong."
Solange had gone cold. If there were vampires stalking the streets of Bel Air
and Beverly Hills, too, and if there were so many that they could organize
themselves to hunt humans at the scenes of traffic accidents, then there must
be-and she shivered to think of the possibility-hundreds of them. Outside the
light was slowly growing brighter, but there were still huge pools of shadow
lying in wait like treacherous oil slicks. Or tar babies. She recalled the
stories her father used to tell her-Lemme go, Br'er Rabbit, lemme go! Somehow
her life had slipped away from that bright childhood, and now she walked on the
dark side of the moon.
". . . seen you on the tube," Jane was saying to Wes. "That show you've got.
You're pretty good."
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He nodded, his shoulders slumped forward. "Thanks," he said, his mind sheered
away from the image of Jimmy screaming in agony, being pulled from that crumpled
car by a grinning vampire.
"Yeah, pretty good." She smiled, her eyes beginning to glaze over now. "Not
great, mind you. Jack Benny was great. But you'll do. PBS ran a special on me
last month, showed clips from some of my hits. You catch it?"
Wes shook his head.
"Too bad. You know what they called me? America's Girl Friend. I was wearing
sweaters before Lana Turner was even a gleam in her daddy's eye. I had good
boobs, too. Oh, Jesus." She looked over at Solange, where the gray light was
slipping in around the curtains. "Those were the days. High noon, that's what I
called it." She returned her gaze to Wes, who was sitting slumped over with his*
face in his hands. High noon. "High noon. You better enjoy it while you can,
kiddo. When that sun starts going down, it can get mighty cold."
"There's a police car!" Solange said, and Wes's head jerked up. He hurried to
the window and looked out. The prowl car was slowing, probably to investigate
the smashed cars on the curve of the boulevard. Wes ran out of the room,
unlocked the front door, and ran onto the lawn, waving his arms. "Hey! Stop!
Hey!"
The car slid to the curb. Two officers got out, one of them dropping his hand to
his holster as Wes came running down the driveway, shouting like a maniac. As
Wes neared the car, he abruptly froze. In the dingy light he'd thought he might
have seen the glitter of fangs. Oh God, he thought, not the cops, too!
They came around the car, and Wes took a few steps backward.
"He's scared shitless," one said to the other. Then to Wes, "What the hell's
been going on here, buddy?"
Solange stood in the doorway, watching as Wes began talking to the officers,
motioning with his hands. How defenseless he looks, she thought. How small . . .
Jane wheeled up behind her. "What now, kiddo?"
"I don't know." Solange looked at the old woman over her shoulder. "There are
more of them. Many more. I think that soon they'll be all over this city."
"Does he think the cops are going to believe him?" she asked. "Do you really
think anybody's going to believe any of us?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen two of them. I may be
a little on the senile side, but I sure as hell ain't crazy. Not yet, at least.
But I will be if I stick around here." She turned the chair and started to wheel
toward the elevator.
"Where are you going?" Solange asked her.
"To pack. Next stop, LAX. Like I say, I may be old, but I'm not crazy. Not by a
long shot." She reached the elevator and closed the cage behind her.
"Good luck," Solange called after her, but the elevator had already started to
rise. Solange left the house and began to walk down the driveway to Wes and the
two policemen. A sudden cold breeze came to her, hitting her diagonally and
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rolling over like a great invisible wave. Something sharp speckled her cheek.
She brushed it away with her fingers, then looked down at the bits of grit
clinging to | her skin.
Sand.
She walked down to where they were standing, the two officers staring
incredulously at Wes. A great feeling of dread had suddenly leeched onto her
back and seemed to be weighing her down with every step. The sun was coming up
out of a red slash across the sky, but the sky itself seemed wicked-a patchwork
of clouds that looked as thick as slate-gray bricks veined with purple. They
were scudding fast, being driven westward over the sea. As Solange watched, she
saw a cloud split apart by a cross-current of winds; its interior glowed red
with reflected sunlight, like hot coals stirred by a demonic breath. When she
reached Wes, she grasped his hand tightly, afraid to let go.
SIX
The telephone was ringing, and the floor trembled. Gayle Clarke, her eyes
shadowed by sleeplessness, came out of her kitchen with a cup of Morning Thunder
tea and stared down at the little black bastard on the shivering telephone
table. She was wearing a dirty pair of jeans-which she'd slept in-and a ragged
workshirt she'd had since she was a high school sophomore. Her face was swollen,
her entire body sluggish from the dangerous mixture of Valiums, liquor, tea, and
coffee that she'd been putting away since that night at the Sandalwood
Apartments. She'd been walking around in a daze since she'd left the police
station-kicked out, rather, by a very irate lieutenant-and had even started
taking 'ludes again. Now she kept all her curtains and blinds drawn, the door
securely bolted with a chair next to it, ready to be used as a barricade. This
is what cracking up feels like, she" told herself. The sudden floor-jarring
earth tremor was over now, but it had only heightened her sense of being out of
control. If Jack's hideous face hadn't sent her over the edge immediately, the
recurrent nightmares of him chasing her across the apartment courtyard
eventually would. She'd lost track of time. The kitchen clock said it was ten
twenty-five, but with the windows shrouded she had no idea whether it was night
or day. The ringing telephone told her it was morning, and it would be Trace on
the other end, wanting to know where she was for the second day in a row and why
she wasn't working on the fucking Gravedigger story.
"Shut up," she said to the phone. "Just shut up and leave me alone."
The phone kept shrilling, like the nagging voices of her parents-Gayle, why
don't you dress better? Gayle, why aren't you making more money? Gayle, you
should be thinking about marriage. Gayle, Gayle, Gayle . . .
"SHUT UP!" she said, and lifted the receiver to slam it down again. There. That
fixes you, you bastard! She walked over to a window, pulled aside the curtains
and looked out. The sunlight was weak, hidden behind a strange violet pallor,
but
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strong enough to sting her eyes. Earthquake weather for sure, she thought. She
dropped the curtains back and decided she was going to have to go outside today;
she'd be okay in the daytime, the things couldn't move around when it was light.
Or could they? A 'lude, she told herself. That's what I need.
She was heading for the medicine cabinet when the phone started ringing again.
"DAMN IT!" she shouted, looking for something to throw at the thing. Okay, she
thought. Calm down. Calm down. She was afraid of that phone. Last night-or was
it last night? she couldn't remember exactly when-she'd picked up that receiver,
said "Hello?" and had been treated to a long silence that was finally broken by
a voice speaking a single word, "Gayle?" She slammed it down and screamed
because it had sounded too much like Jack's voice, calling to find out if she
was home so he could come pay her a nice, friendly visit, fangs and all.
Calm down.
If it was Trace, she knew he'd keep calling until she answered. She'd tell him
she was sick, that she couldn't leave her apartment. She picked it up and said
in a trembling voice, "Yes?"
There were a few seconds of silence. Gayle could hear her heart pounding. Then a
familiar voice said, "Miss Clarke? I'd like to see you . . ."
"Who is this?"
"Andy Palatazin. Captain Palatazin, from Parker Center."
"What is it? What do you want?" Calm down. You sound fucking frantic.
He paused and then went on. "I need your help. It's very important that I see
you as soon as possible."
"My help? Why? How did you find me?"
"I called the Tattler. A man there gave me your number. I need your help because
... I'd rather not talk about this over the phone."
"I'd rather you did."
He sighed heavily. "Yes. All right. I'd like to tell you a story, and I'm hoping
you'll believe it enough to write about it in your newspaper . . ."
"Why? I thought you called the Tattler a rag." She sipped her tea and waited for
him to speak again.
"I can tell you who the Gravedigger is, Miss Clarke," Palatazin said. "I can
tell you why those graves are being torn up. I can tell you all that and much,
much
more."
"Yeah? Well, I'm retired. I'm thinking about driving up to San Francisco for a
while-"
"LISTEN TO ME!" he said so furiously Gayle jumped. She was tempted to hang up on
him, but there was a pleading note in his voice that held her attention. "Yours
is the only paper in this city that would even consider printing the story I'm
going to tell you! And by printing it, you could save lives, Miss Clarke.
Possibly millions of lives! I thought you told me you were a journalist. You
said you were a good one, and I believed you. Was I wrong?"
"Maybe you were."
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"Perhaps. But were you?"
She gripped the receiver. Her knuckles were white. She wanted to tell him to go
to hell; she wanted to tell him to go over to the Sandalwood Apartments and help
the other stumble-bum cops look for about twenty-five tenants who'd vanished
overnight. Instead, she heard herself ask, "What kind of story is it?"
"One that you'll have to have courage to write. I think you have it, Miss
Clarke. That's why I called you."
"Cut the bullshit," she said irritably. "Where are you? Parker Center?"
"No, I'm ... at home." He gave her the address. "When can you be here?"
"I don't know. I ... whenever I get there, I guess."
"All right. That'll have to do. I'll be here all afternoon."
"Good-bye." As she was hanging up, she heard him say "Thank you." And his voice
was so full of relief and real gratitude that she was momentarily stunned. The
line went dead, and she slowly put the receiver down.
She drank the rest of her tea and went into the bathroom. Her face in the mirror
looked awful. She opened the medicine cabinet and took out a small yellow
bottle. There were three Quaaludes rattling around at the bottom. She shook one
out into her hand and lifted it to her mouth; her hand was shaking, and she had
to grasp her wrist to hold it steady. Is this what cracking up feels like? Who
said that? She looked down at the pill. No, she told herself. If I'm going to
get back to work, I've got to stay straight. She looked at the pill longingly
for a while, then dropped it back into the bottle.
She turned on the cold water tap in the shower, undressed, stepped in before she
could reconsider, and stuck her head beneath the torrent.
SEVEN
At twelve noon Bob Lampley stood next to the Hell's Hole Hilton and watched the
sky. On top of the Hilton, enclosed by a chain-link fence, a great radar cup
turned smoothly on its tower. In the space of a half-minute, a metal
wind-direction indicator twirled, first due west, then west-northwest, due
north, back to northwest, then slowly returned to due west, where it hung
steady. The winds swirled around Lampley as hot as the breath of a blast
furnace. Every so often he felt the sting of sand on his face or hands, and his
scalp itched. Thermals were coming up from the Mojave Desert, the strongest
winds bringing sand with them. That's odd as hell, Lampley thought. That's one
for the record books, I guess.
The Hell's Hole Hilton was a wood-framed weather station 5,012 feet up on Old
Baldy about twenty-five miles from the heart of L.A. and sixty miles from what
Lampley considered the fiercest place God ever created-the hot, sand-choked
throat of the Devil's Playground at the center of the Mojave Desert. He'd tried
to hike across that monstrous place a few years ago with some friends who were
as crazy as he was. They'd wound up scorched to the bone, babbling with sun
fever,
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packed into a Jeep racing toward a case of cold Coors in Ludlow.
But the weird thing about this new weather picture was that the sand was being
blown such a long way. The weather station at Twenty-nine Palms had reported
some strong winds this morning centered between the Cady and Providence Mountain
ranges in the Playground, but any loose sand should've been caught miles back by
the peaks that stood between the San Bernardino National Forest and the desert.
If the winds were strong enough and high enough to carry the sand over those
mountains, then by all the rules of weather forcasting they should lose strength
dramatically the farther they got from the center of strongest activity and dump
the sand at the lip of the forest. That wasn't happening, and this new change in
the rules was beginning to bother him. The hot winds were melting snowcaps for
miles in all directions, the wind-direction indicator seemed to point due west
most of the time when it wasn't spinning around crazily to show the progress of
a sudden corkscrew, and Lampley was getting sand in his face 5,000 feet up.
Won't do, he thought. Nope. Won't do at all.
Directly overhead the sun shone weakly through chinks in cirrus clouds as thick
and gray as an iguana's hide. Those clouds were racing, tumbling over each other
in what seemed to Lampley like frantic haste away from the storm center. And
there it was-he'd finally allowed the thought that had been lurking at the back
of his brain to come forward-a hideous pupil allowed to sit in the front row.
Storm center. What storm? he asked himself. Some high desert winds in the
Playground sure as hell don't constitute a storm, Lampley. You're thinking in
terms of tornado or a dust-devil, and neither of those can be right. There's a
pretty slim chance of a tornado, and if this is a dust-devil forming, it's got
to be the biggest bastard of a dust-devil that ever spun out of a whirlwind.
Okay, he thought. How about a plain old sandstorm? They happen all the time,
kicked out of the Mojave Desert by two or more pressure ridges that meet and
don't like each other, stomping around trying to get out of one another's way.
The Mojave, like all the world's deserts, crept. It already covered roughly
25,000 square miles of southern California and still wanted more. Every few
years it lapped up to the back doors of some nearby town, as slowly and
innocently as a golden dog who wouldn't bite you, not for anything in the world.
But then when the forty-five- and fifty-mile-an-hour winds came screaming out of
that furnace-always quite unexpectedly -the golden dog turned into a ravenous
beast who slithered over sandbag barricades and brick walls to leave its
shifting spoor.
Can't be a sandstorm, Lampley told himself. There's supposed to be a high
pressure ridge sitting astride California and six other states in a slow
eastward sweep, supposed to be clear skies with moderate westerly winds until
Monday. And no storm that Lampley had ever heard of or read about in his six
years with the National Weather Service had ever shot tendrils of sand so high.
It was as if the Mojave had decided it was better to leap than to creep.
Lampley watched the sky for a moment more and then walked up a slight
255
grade to the Hilton. The place was weather-beaten outside and looked as old as
the surrounding mountains, but inside it was quite comfortable with a woven
red-and- brown Indian rug on the floor, a couple of castoff but good chairs
around a wood- burning heater, which was not needed now since the temperature up
here had risen to the low sixties. There was a desk and a bookcase with
dog-eared paperbacks set before a window that afforded a westerly view of the
Mount Baldy winter sports area and Silverwood Lake. On the other side of the
window was a battery of electronic gauges, and a radar screen that now showed
the soupy green clumps of the cloud masses moving overhead. A black telephone
sat on the desk next to a photograph of Lampley's wife, Bonnie, and their
two-year-old son, Chad. On the wall over a teletype machine, there was a red
phone hooked up directly to National Weather in L.A.
Lampley sat down at his desk and dialed Twenty-nine Palms Weather on the black
phone. In the distance he could see a ranger tower that looked like a spindly
War of the Worlds Martian machine. "Hal?" he said when the phone was picked up
about forty-five miles away. "This is Bob up at the Hilton. What are you showing
down there?"
Hal's voice was weakened not only by the distance but also by the strange
weather. "Still got some high winds on the Play . . . crackle squeal. . . Bob.
Wait a sec. Let me check the figures. Okay. West and southwesterly . . .
squealllll. . . from thirty to forty miles per hour, gusting to forty-five. Air
pressure's dropped from . . . crackle-crackle ... in the last ninety minutes.
What do you have up there?"
"Cloud city," Lampley said. "Pressure's still hanging steady, though. I'm
picking up some kind of electrical interference on this end, so you'll have to
speak louder."
"What?" Hal said. "I didn't ... all of that . . ."
"Talk louder!" he said. "I don't understand what's going on. Did a pressure drop
creep in on us or what?"
"Not from Canada it didn't. Funny. Vegas weather . .. clear and sunny, high in
the mid-eighties . . ."
"So whatever's happening is right over the Mojave?"
"Sorry . . . didn't hear . . ."
"I guess we've got a bad connection. Listen, I'll call you back around two. If
those winds build anymore, give me a call."
"Sure thing. Talk . . . later . . ."
Lampley hung up and looked at the red phone on the wall. He'd feel like a fool
calling L.A. National about some desert winds, no matter how hard they were
gusting. So it was an infant sandstorm, so what? LAX Weather would keep the
planes out of trouble, and the mountains would take the brunt of the winds.
Sooner or later the storm would spin itself out.
But what if it doesn't? What if this bastard gets so big and wild it whirls all
the way across the mountains and into L.A.?
Impossible, he reassured himself. Los Angeles might get a little grit, but they
needed the winds to blow off their smog cover anyway. Nothing to worry about.
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He stared at that phone for a few seconds more, looked out the window at the
lizard-hide sky, and returned to the Mike Shayne mystery he'd been reading
before he'd heard the grate of sand against glass.
EIGHT
Gayle Clarke pulled her Mustang up to the curb on Romaine Street and stared at
the house with the black crucifix painted on the front door. There was a word
written underneath it in a foreign language. Some of the windows were painted
with crosses, too-the house looked like some kind of weird church. She glanced
at the mailbox: Palatazin. Reluctantly she got out of her car and walked up the
porch steps to the door. The black paint was new; she could see where it had
dripped. She knocked on the door and waited.
It was almost one o'clock. It had taken her two hours to get out of her
apartment, then she'd driven over to Pancho's and forced herself to eat two
tacos before driving up through Hollywood. She wore clean denims and a light
blue blouse; her face was scrubbed and, if not exactly infused with a pink glow,
much healthier- looking than it had been this morning. There was still a glassy,
shocked look in her eyes that wouldn't go away. Behind her, wind swirled through
the trees and hedges along Romaine, making a noise like barely restrained
laughter.
The door opened, and Palatazin looked out at her. He nodded and without a word
stepped back to allow her in. He was wearing gray slacks and a white pullover
shirt that showed his belly in its full splendor; he looked oddly vulnerable,
just another human being when not seen from the other side of a captain's desk
at Parker Center. His eyes were dark and troubled, and when they locked with
hers, she felt the skin at the back of her neck prickle.
He closed the door, locked it, and motioned toward the sofa. "Please sit down.
Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Maybe a Coke?"
She could still taste the tacos, and now her stomach was doing flipflops. "Uh
... a Coke would be fine."
"All right. Just make yourself comfortable." He disappeared toward the rear of
the house, and she sat looking around, her purse in her lap. It seemed to be a
cozy house, much warmer than she would have thought. It smelled vaguely of
onions and potatoes; probably some kind of foreign dish he favored, she guessed.
There was a rusted metal box on the coffee table in front of her.
"So you're Gayle Clarke," someone said, and Gayle looked up into the icy eyes of
a gray-haired woman who stood gazing at her from across the room. She was pretty
with high, sharp cheekbones, but now the flesh was stretched tight to give her
face a hard, masklike appearance. "You're the one who wrote such awful things
about my husband."
"I didn't write anything-"
"Are you denying your trashy paper said he ought to be fired?" Her eyes flared.
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"Maybe it did, but I don't write editorials."
"Oh. Of course you don't," Jo said with a bitter edge."Do you realize the strain
you've put on my Andy? You and all the rest of the filthy papers in this city?"
She came forward a few steps, and Gayle tensed. "Well, you got what you wanted.
You can be happy now." Her lower lip was trembling, and now tears of anger were
beginning to dance in her eyes. "Why did you want to hurt him?" she said
quietly. "He never did anything to you . . ."
"What's this?" Palatazin said, coming into the room with Gayle's drink. He
looked at Jo in bewilderment, then at Gayle. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," Gayle said. "Your wife and I were just getting . . . acquainted."
He handed her the glass and picked up the morning Times from where it lay in a
chair. "Have you seen this, Miss Clarke?"
"No." She took it from him and looked at the front page. The headline was about
the Mideast situation, the talks breaking down again. But another story just
above the fold caught her eye. The headlines said "Bats Kept Coming," Says
Shaken Officer. There was a shorter kicker line above it, Six Die At Parker
Center. "What's this?" she said, looking up at Palatazin.
"Read it." He sat down in the chair and folded his hands before him. "Those men
who were killed were my friends." His eyes seemed almost black. "When you're
finished with that, I'd like you to look through the clippings in that box on
the table."
Gayle read the article, feeling Jo Palatazin's gaze burning into her skull.
"This says a suspect in the Roach killings got away. Is that right?"
«\\7 "
Yes.
"A suspect? Or the Roach himself?"
"It was him," Palatazin said quietly.
"My God!" She looked up sharply. "What is this all about? What's with the
crosses scrawled on your doors and windows?"
"In time," he said. "There's someone else coming to join us. He should be here
soon."
"Who?"
"A priest from East L.A. named Silvera."
"A priest? What's this going to be, a confession?"
Jo said coldly, "I think you're the one who has sins to confess . . ."
"Please," Palatazin said, and touched his wife's arm. "She's a guest in this
house, and she was very kind to come."
Gayle opened the metal box. When she saw what the clippings were about, she felt
as if she'd been kicked in the head. She looked through them for a few minutes,
her hands beginning to tremble.
There was a knock at the door. Palatazin answered it, and Father Silvera stood
there staring darkly at the crucifix painted on the front window. "Come in,
Father," Palatazin said. When Silvera entered the house, he instantly caught the
same odor Gayle had smelled. He recognized it as the aroma of garlic. Palatazin
introduced Jo
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and Gayle, and Silvera sat down on the sofa.
"Thank you for coming, Father," Palatazin said. "I appreciate your driving all
this distance. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"
"Yes, please. Cream and sugar."
"I'll get it," Jo said; she glared once more at Gayle before leaving the room.
"Did you bring what I asked, Father?" Palatazin asked quietly, leaning forward
in his chair.
Silvera nodded and reached into his coat. He brought out something wrapped in
white cloth and handed it to Palatazin. "Just as you asked," he said. "Now I'd
like to know what you need it for, and why you called me since there are maybe
thirty Catholic churches within a five-mile radius of this house."
Palatazin was stripping away the white cloth. Inside was a small corked bottle
holding about two ounces of clear liquid. "I called you," he said, "because I
thought you would understand the . . . gravity of the situation. You were in
that tenement building in East L.A. You saw the bodies being carried out. I
hoped you'd-"
"I see," the priest said. "So that's what this is all about-your belief in
vampires. That's why you've painted crosses on your doors and windows. That's
why you felt you needed a vial of holy water. Mr. Palatazin, I don't wish to
seem . . . condescending, but I'm afraid vampires should be the least of this
city's concerns. I still don't know what was wrong with those people, but I'm
sure it's strictly a medical question and not one of vampirism." He glanced at
the girl beside him, who was going through some clippings from a metal box. Her
eyes were glazed and she didn't even seem to realize he was sitting there. Did I
break my gasoline budget for the week for this? he asked himself.
"I suppose you've called Mercy Hospital to check on those people?"
"Yes, I have."
"Then let me tell you what you found out. Absolutely nothing. I called Mercy
this morning, and I was shuffled around from doctor to doctor until a press
relations man told me no information was being given out about these cases. Is
that what you were told?"
"Roughly," Silvera said. "But what does that prove?"
"This is not a matter of proof!" Palatazin said, his face flushing with sudden
anger. "This is a matter of knowing! I know, Father! I've spent my entire life
in their shadow, and now that shadow has fallen over this city!"
Silvera nodded and rose to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get back to
my parish."
"No! Wait, please. You can't stand there and tell me you didn't feel the
presence of evil in that tenement! You're shutting your mind to it, Father! You
don't want to believe because you know that if you do, you'll realize how nearly
hopeless this situation is and that perhaps you're not strong enough to face
it!"
Silvera looked at him sharply. "There are many evils in this world, Mr.
Palatazin. The heroin pusher, the childbeater, the homicidal maniac, the killer
. . . as you well know. I think we both have enough work to do without . . .
inventing
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more evils." A chill suddenly rippled through him as he remembered the blood-
written graffiti on the tenement walls and the strange, almost transparent
eyelids of those stricken people. Can you really-logically-explain those? he
asked himself.
Gayle was fixedly staring at Palatazin. She looked up at the priest. "Father,"
she said, "he's . . . he's right."
"What?"
"I've seen them. He's right. They do exist, and they're here in L.A." She told
them about the Sandalwood Apartments, the figure squirming beneath the bed, the
dark things in the courtyard, and her own narrow escape. When she had almost
finished, her voice cracked like a thin pane of glass. "I was afraid," she said.
"I was . . . scared to death, so I locked myself in my apartment, and I didn't
want to come out. I think I knew it would just be a matter of time before they
found me . . ." She looked up. Jo was standing behind her husband, holding a cup
of coffee on a tray. Gayle's eyes were wide and fearful. "They are here," Gayle
told the priest.
Silvera's mouth had tightened; he seemed to have aged ten years in the last few
minutes. He glanced over his shoulder through the window at his car. Wind
stirred the trees across the street. How easy it would be to leave this house,
get in the car, and drive back to East L.A., pretend he'd never heard any of
this, pretend he hadn't walked into that tenement with its living corpses jammed
under beds and in closets. Pretend this evil did not exist. Easy? No. He felt
himself poised on the point of an irrevocable decision. Slowly he looked back
into Palatazin's face.
"Sit down," the policeman said. "Please."
Silvera took the coffee from Jo and drank most of it down in one swallow,
wishing it were laced with whiskey. Jo pulled a chair up close beside her
husband and sat down, as did the priest.
"How could you be so sure?" Silvera asked. "How did you know?"
"Because my . . . father is one of them," Palatazin said with an effort. "No,
not my father. What used to be my father. I was born in a village called Krajeck
in northern Hungary. There the people recognize and fear the vampir. They don't
fully understand how the vampir comes to be, or why God allows such an evil to
walk the face of the earth, but they know enough to mark their houses with
crucifixes and garlic. They know that Satan gives power and unholy life to the
vampir, just as God gives life to all the good things of this world. The vampir
can never be satisfied. They will forever be thirsty, not only for human blood
but also for land. Possessions. Power. They want to rule the earth, and I'm
afraid that if this city falls, they will be well on their way to amassing an
army large enough to take it. I'm not talking about three or four or fifty or
even a thousand vampires, Father. I'm talking about millions of them. If Los
Angeles falls to them, they will have increased their army by more than eight
million. And no country on earth can withstand a force like that. You ask me how
I can be so sure? I was given the ... opportunity to see them work. I know their
signs, their track. I see them on the move everywhere now, and very soon they'll
attack in earnest, going from house to house, street to street, all across L.A.
Krajeck fell to them when I was a child, and I've seen the
260
same things happening here that prefaced that terrible night." He looked at
Gayle. "That wave of vandalism in some of the cemeteries, for instance. The
vampir needed native soil. They must sleep secure from all sunlight when the
transformation from corpse to living dead is complete-"
"Just a minute," Silvera interrupted. "What do you mean by 'transformation'?"
"The creatures we saw in that barrio tenement were neither corpses nor vampir"
Palatazin said. "They'd been bitten and drained and protected from the light as
much as possible, though in that transitory stage I don't think the sun is as
painful to them as it is later. When the last of their humanity dies within
them, they awaken. Some sooner than others, I think. And they awaken thirsty.
When they drink their first blood . . . then they're complete." He glanced over
at Gayle j again, then back to the priest. "Somewhere in this city, somewhere
close to their Master, they must be hiding by the hundreds. It would have to be
somewhere secure from both sunlight and intruders. I think it's probably in an
abandoned building . . . possibly a warehouse or factory. Someone would have to
lock them ' away at dawn and return to let them out at dusk . . ."
"A human?" Gayle asked.
"Yes. I don't know what part Roach-Walter Benefield-plays in this, but he could
be the human pawn used by the vampir king."
"The king?" Silvera's eyes narrowed. "You mentioned something about a master. Is
that the same thing?"
Palatazin nodded. "The vampires see their master-their king or maker or whatever
you choose to call it-as a kind of savior figure. He commands their respect and
loyalty, and they will do whatever he says."
"All right." Silvera shrugged. "Supposing I believe all this about vampires and
caskets and kings. How can you be so certain they're being commanded by anyone?
Couldn't they exist without a leader?"
"This is simply my opinion," Palatazin said, "but I think they need a strong
guiding hand, an intelligence to lead the collective body. If the vampire king
is destroyed and there's no one able to take his place, the resulting confusion
might cause them to fight among themselves or to make mistakes. They might stray
too far from their hiding places, for instance, and the sun might catch them out
in the open. I don't know. But I want you to think about this: If the vampires
feed just once every night-creating others of their kind by totally draining
them and instilling that terrible hunger-then they're doubling in number every
twenty-four hours. Some of them may feed three or four times in a single night.
Again, I don't know. I'm speaking from things I've read and from the legends of
my homeland. But of one thing I am certain-if we hope to stop them, we must
destroy the king."
There was a long moment of silence in which they could hear the wind hooting
around the house. Gayle peered uneasily out the window at the scudding gray
clouds.
"Destroy," Silvera whispered. His throat felt dry, and he couldn't think beyond
the memory of that graffiti in the alleyway just outside his window-Follow The
Master. "How?"
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"I'm not sure," Palatazin said grimly. "I can only suggest the methods used in
Hungary, stakes and decapitation. The stake must pierce the heart, and
decapitation both rids the vampire of his hypnotic gaze and . . . prevents
regeneration."
"Regeneration?" Gayle asked sharply. "I thought they were like . . . ghosts or
something."
"No. Unfortunately, they're very solid. They can be wounded, but if they haven't
fed for a while, they won't bleed because evidently the blood is absorbed
quickly into the tissues except for a reservoir within the heart. When they've
just fed, their victim's blood would seem to circulate through the veins, and in
that case they'll bleed until their regeneration ability heals the wound. I
don't know whether they all have that power or not. I remember ... in Krajeck,
when my father touched me after he'd come back from Mount Jaeger. He was so ...
terribly cold. I think human blood warms them, keeps them supple and young in a
way we can't understand. Whatever it is, it's the devil's work. Hungarian
tradition suggests that they fear fire as well, and their eyes may be their
weakest point. Blinding them would make them momentarily helpless, though
whatever other senses they might have I dare not imagine."
"You talk about them as if they're another race altogether," Silvera said.
"They are. Their powers are superior to ours. They can move faster, and they're
stronger as well. They can live forever as long as they can feed on human
blood." He looked from Silvera to Gayle and back again. "God made mankind," he
said. "And Satan made the vampir."
Silvera leaned back. He was working the knuckles of his hands, aware of the
spreading numbness.
"Please believe me," Palatazin said. "I know they're here."
"It's all so ... strange. I mean, people have learned to scoff at such things.
Anyone in this day and age who says he believes in vampires is, forgive me,
considered insane . . ."
"The world may change, Father. But you and I both know that Evil remains
constant. I think that for many years the vampir have worked quietly in this
country, taking a village here, a town there. All very quietly. Now they want
much more, and they feel strong enough to reveal their existence to the world,
knowing it will soon be too late for us to fight back."
"Fight back," the priest repeated, his brow furrowing. "How do we? If you're
right-and I'm not ready to say you are-what do we do?"
"We find the vampire king," Palatazin said. "And we do it quickly."
"Jesus!" Gayle whispered.
Palatazin's gaze darkened. "I think I know where their master may be hiding.
There's a castle up in the Hollywood Hills somewhere that once belonged to a
horror-film actor named Kronsteen. He had the thing brought over from Hungary,
and I imagine the vampire king would find it to his liking."
"Orion Kronsteen?" Gayle said. "I remember reading about his murder, back in the
early seventies, wasn't it? My boyfriend Jack-" She stopped herself, her face
262
going pale. "A ... guy I used to go with was ... a documentary filmmaker. He
wanted to do a film on the homes of old movie stars, and I think he mentioned
something about that castle. It's supposed to stand on top of a cliff, isn't it?
I think Jack . . . my friend said he drove up there a few years ago. He may have
spent the night, knowing him . . ." She smiled painfully, her eyes clouding
over. Which surprised her, because up until that moment she'd never really
admitted to herself that she cared anything for him. Her smile began to slip.
Too late now, kid, she told herself. No amount of caring would change him back
from what he became.
"Kronsteen's castle," Palatazin said. "That's where I have to go, though God
knows I don't want to. If there was any other way ... but there's not. So now I
have to ask you the question, Father. Will you go with me?"
Silvera tensed. An avalanche of thoughts began to tumble through his brain,
gathering force and speed. I'm not ready to believe this but-Madre de Dios-what
if it's true? I've got to tell the people in my parish, I've got to help them
get to safety. How can I make them understand? Stakes, caskets, vampires hiding
in a castle? Surely this is some kind of wild nightmare! Help him. You should do
as he asks. No, my parish comes first, I'm dying. I need time, so much time.
What should I do? I don't want to die. Oh, God, I don't want to ...
"I would like to go today," Palatazin said, "while there's still light. If you
choose not to go, then I have another thing to ask of you. But in any event,
I'll understand your decision."
Silvera realized the palms of his hands were cold with sweat. What if this man
is right? he asked himself. I've never been afraid of anything, never! No, he
heard the calm voice echo at the back of his brain. No. You're afraid of dying
before your time. You're afraid of that cold, dark place where God is going to
send you because you've done nothing for Him in this world but chase some dope
pushers and squeeze a few hands because that was expected of you. You weren't
called to the priesthood; you drifted into it after everything else in your life
went bad. So what is it going to be? I... I'm going to have to say no," he said,
trying to keep his hands from shaking. "I have the people of my parish to think
of. If you're right, I'll have to find some way to ... protect them. I'm sorry."
Palatazin looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded. "All right." He
stood up, opened the closet door, and brought out a cardboard box filled with
short wooden stakes. "I bought these this morning," Palatazin said. "Ash stakes,
two feet long. There are two dozen. I also bought a good strong hammer. I don't
know if I'll ever get to use them, but... I'd like you to say some words for me.
Just... whatever you can. Will you do that?"
"Yes. Of course." Silvera stared at the cardboard box. Then he said, "I'll pray
for you." Palatazin nodded, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes.
Silvera bent his head and began to pray out loud, asking God to guide
Palatazin's steps and to shield him from danger. But as he was praying, he was
writhing inside. He felt as if his soul were shrinking, and very soon there
would be nothing left at all. He suddenly thought of himself years ago, a punk
kid in the drunk tank at the police
263
THEY THIRST
station in Puerto Grande, a cramped place with obscene drawings on the walls and
puddles of urine on the floor. He and two friends had been thrown in there,
stinking drunk on tequila, after a fight with some sailors at the Navegar Club
down on the docks. The sailors went to the hospital.
But there'd been another man in with them, an old man in tattered, dirty clothes
with scabs all over his face. He had moaned for most of the night, twisting and
turning in his bunk as if fighting off something that was coming down from the
ceiling to smother him. Toward morning Silvera, a brash teenager with needle
marks on his arms and a hunger for violence, realized the old man was dying.
He'd sat on the floor, one of his eyes black and swollen and several teeth
loose, watching that old man fight death. It was a brave struggle but a hideous
mismatch. Silvera had found himself wondering where that man had been, what he
had seen of the world, who he'd loved, and what he'd done.
Across the cell Silvera's friends slept, snoring like young bulls. He'd crept
closer to that bunk, listening to the old man's hoarse mutterings as if they
were radio transmissions from another world. ". . . he knows he should pay me
that money, all of it like I asked . . . what am I gonna do? . . . sure, sure,
amigo, you and me gonna tear this port apart . . . now, that Giselle is a fine
piece of ass, take your money and give you the best... the best... ohhhhh shit,
that stuffll fuck your head up ... said I was gonna kill that bastard .. .
dolphins. I love to watch them dolphins when they come flying up from the water
. . . anchor's fucked up, won't hold a rowboat . . . WATCH THAT CABLE, DAMN IT!
... one more drink, amigo, that's all I'm asking . . ."
Just before dawn the old man had opened his eyes and turned his head to look at
the boy sitting beside him. He'd stared at Silvera for a long time with the
whiskey-swollen slits he had for eyes. He coughed several times violently, and
Silvera saw the flecks of blood on his lips. The old man had reached out and
gripped his hand with a leathery, four-fingered paw.
"Padre," the old man had whispered. "Help me . . . make it easy for me . . .
please . . ."
"I ... ain't a priest," he'd said. The grip had tightened.
"Padre . . . I'm a sinner ... I don't want to die!" A tear squeezed from one eye
and trickled down through the dark folds of his face. "Help me . . ."
"How? I can't ... do anything."
"Yes, you can. You can. Say something for me . . . some words . . ."
The man's grip was about to crush Silvera's hand. His eyes glistened, but the
spark of life within was rapidly dying. "Please," the old man whispered. Me pray
to God? the boy had asked himself. Shit, that's a laugh! Me on my knees like a
peon, simpering and crying? But the old guy was almost dead, he was drying up
right there, so maybe he should at least try. But how to do it? What to say?
"Uh, God," he said softly, "this man . . . uh, what's your name?"
"Gulf Star," he whispered, ". . . sailed on the Gulf Star . . ."
"Uh, yeah. God, this man sailed on the Gulf Star and I ... guess he's a pretty
264
good man." His knuckles cracked under the pressure of the man's grasp. "I don't
know anything about him, but he's . . . uh, sick and he wanted me to say some
words for him. I don't know if I'm doing this right or not, or if You're able to
hear me. This man is really in bad shape, God, and I think he's going to ...
awwww, this is a lousy place for any man to be. A lousy place to die, God. Shit,
what am I doing talking to myself!"
"Go on . . ." the man insisted. "Please, padre."
"I told you I ain't no fuckin' priest!" he said sharply, but he knew the man
hadn't heard. He was smiling, muttering some kind of prayer over and over again.
"Okay," Silvera went on, looking at the ceiling. "If this man's got to die in
this place, make it easy for him, God. I mean, don't let him suffer or anything
like that, all right? Just ... lay him down easy." He looked down at the old
man. "That's all. I don't know anything else to say."
The old man was silent.
From across the cell his friend Chico lifted his head. "Hey, Ramon? Who you
talkin' to, man?"
Father Silvera finished his prayer for Palatazin and then crossed himself. "I
hope you're wrong," he told the cop. "But if you're not, God go with you."
"And with you," Palatazin said quietly. He got up, opened the door for the
priest, and watched as Silvera walked to his Rambler. Silvera did not look back,
and Palatazin noticed that he was trembling. He heard the rush of wind along the
street and saw Silvera's coat flutter. The sky looked strange, pregnant with
storm clouds. He'd never seen the sky over L.A. like that before.
Silvera was almost knocked down by the wind. He felt sharp grit strike his face
and, as he climbed into his car, he noticed the residue of sand along the bottom
of his windshield. He turned the key in the ignition and drove away, speared by
shame.
Palatazin closed the door. "I have to go, Miss Clarke," he said, turning to
Gayle. "Will you write the story for me?"
"Yes," she said as she got to her feet. "But I'd like to go with you."
"Why?" he asked her. "If Father Silvera wouldn't go, why should you?"
"Let's say a ... combination of professional and personal interests and leave it
at that."
"No," Jo said suddenly. "If anyone is going to go with you, it must be me."
"You're staying here," he told her. He glanced at his wristwatch. "It's almost
four. We'll have to hurry, Miss Clarke. Did your friend ever tell you how he got
up to Kronsteen's castle?"
"Not exactly, but I remember something about Outpost Drive."
"We could lose more than an hour trying to find the way," Palatazin said grimly.
"If we're there when the sun goes down-"
Jo said, "You didn't hear me, did you? I said I was going. Whatever happens to
you happens to me-"
"Don't be foolish, Jo!"
265
"Foolish? I'm not staying in this house by myself! If you want to argue about it
and waste more time, then that suits me fine, too." She stared at him, her eyes
defiant and sure.
He met her gaze, then reached for her hand. "Gypsies!" he said with mock
disgust. "You had to come from a family of them! All right. We'll have to hurry.
But I warn both of you-this is not for the weak-hearted. Or the weak-stomached.
When 1 ask for your help, you'll have to give it. There'll be no time for
squeamishness. Understood?"
"Understood," Jo agreed.
"All right then." He leaned over and hefted the cardboard box full of stakes.
"Let's go."
NINE
The Hell's Hole Hilton was trembling. Boards squealed as the wind, which had
risen to almost forty miles an hour in the last thirty minutes, swept across the
mountains from the east. The glass rattled in the window frame, and Bob Lampley
could see handfuls of sand hitting it like buckshot. The eastern sky was veined
with gold and gray, the clouds swirling together and breaking apart like
fast-moving armies. Lampley felt his heart hammering. The wind-speed indicator
was still climbing, passing forty now and rising to forty-two. The Hilton seemed
to lurch suddenly on its rock and concrete base. Jesus/ Lampley thought, his
brain buzzing. This whole place is going to give if the winds keep building!
He'd made his last call to National less than an hour before. L.A. was getting
twenty-five and thirty-five-an-hour winds all the way from the San Fernando
Valley south to Long Beach, and blowing sand had even been reported in Beverly
Hills. The National Weather forecasters were going crazy trying to figure out
what had kicked up this storm. It had started right in the middle of the Mojave
and seemed to be moving in a direct line toward Los Angeles.
The black telephone rang. Lampley picked it up, trying to make out the tinny
voice on the other end over the cracklings of electrical interference. Hal from
Twenty-nine Palms was saying something about radar.
"What is it?" Lampley shouted. "I can't hear you, Hal!" The message was
repeated, but Lampley could grasp only fragments ". . . wind speed is up to ...
emergency procedure . . . watch your radar!" Wood cracked, the sound loud in
Lampley's ear. Hal's voice was frantic, and it scared the shit out of Lampley.
Radar? he thought. What the hell's he talking about? He glanced quickly at the
sky and saw the undulating golden tendrils of sand whipping through the higher
pines. He saw a tree branch crack and go tumbling away. The sand was beginning
to build like a snowfall, covering every crevice of bare rock. "Hal!" he yelled.
"What's your wind speed down there?"
The answer was a high, shrieking garble that was cut off in mid-sentence. The
266
phone shrilled and crackled like mad laughter. Lines down, Lampley figured.
That's it, sure. Lines down between here and Twentynine Palms. The Hilton
lurched again, and now he seemed to be able to taste sand as it found its way
through the chinks between the boards. Better get my little ass out of here
before this whole damned place caves in! He checked his wind-speed indicator
again. Forty-eight. The pressure gauge was going crazy, too. It would fall fast
and rise, again and again. Right now it was taking a long, terrible tumble. He
went quickly to the red phone and plucked it off the wall. He could hear the
tones clicking like a combination lock. Then a familiar voice garbled slightly
by static said, "National Weather, L.A."
"Eddie? This is Bob Lampley at . . ." And then he couldn't find his voice
because he'd glanced down at the radar screen.
It was showing something that he just couldn't believe, as intensely as he
examined it. The screen indicated a huge mass coming up from the east, bigger
than anything Lampley had ever seen before. It seemed to be ... rolling.
"What's that?" he said, his voice choked with fear. "What's that?"
"Bob? What . . . you . . . showing?" Static crackled and squealed.
Lampley dropped the phone and leaned over the radar screen. Whatever it was, it
stretched for miles. His eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. His panic was
complete when he saw the barometer hit rock bottom and hang there. The wind had
stopped. He could hear the Hilton resettling, like broken bones meshing again.
He stepped to the window and looked out.
Very high up the clouds were still racing. The light had turned a murky gold,
the color of piss after an all-night drunk. Around the Hilton the trees were so
still they could've been painted against the stone. A vacuum, he thought, it's
as still as a vacuum out there. He glanced back at the mass on the radar screen
and froze with the realization that something huge was sweeping in to fill that
vacuum.
Lampley looked back out the window.
"Oh ... my God . . ." he whimpered.
He could see it now, filling up the whole eastern horizon, churning and rolling
and thrashing but still terribly silent. It was the Lucifer of sandstorms, a
troubled monster of nature. Lampley couldn't see the ends of it at the north and
south, but the radar indicated it was at least thirty miles thick. Lampley, his
brain clutching at the edge of rational thought, estimated its speed at between
forty and fifty miles an hour. It seemed as large as the Mojave itself, now
screaming toward him on tortured winds with the mingled colors of white, gray,
and yellow.
He stood transfixed as the thing rolled forward. In another moment he could hear
a faint, terrible hissing.
The sound of bark and leaves being stripped from trees. In the wake of that
storm, he knew, the earth would be skeletal.
Sand spattered against the window, streaming down to the sill with little
rattlesnake hisses. Off to the right he saw the ranger tower consumed, as if
into the maw of a grinning yellow beast. He backed away from the window, bumped
into the desk and knocked the pictures of his wife and child onto the floor. He
caught a
267
glimpse of the barometer; its needle was quickly rising. Then he was gripping
the red phone again, placing the receiver to his ear. The line squealed with
scrambled circuits.
Lampley looked back over his shoulder and saw with growing horror the storm
about to descend upon the Hilton. There was no time to waste. He ran out the
door into a hot and dry atmosphere-the breathable air thinned to a gasp-and out
the fence toward his green International Scout. Sand ground beneath his boots
and spun past him in dust-devil spirals twice as tall as himself. There was a
light sheen of sand on the Scout, covering his windshield. He was six feet away
from the door when he heard a thunderous freight-train roar and felt the first
stinging lash of heavy sand. It whipped into his eyes, blinding him, and as he
opened his mouth to cry out in pain, the sand was sucked into his lungs. He felt
the hot weight of the storm pressing close, closer, closer. As he groped wildly
for the door's handle, a furnace-blast of wind hit him, slamming him to his
back. A yellow shadow fell upon him, and as he screamed with the agony of sand
flailing the skin off his body, a torrent of sand filled his mouth and eyes and
nostrils, choking him to death in less than a minute. The Hilton, all its white
paint scraped off to bare wood, sagged and caved in under the next barrage of
winds. Lampley's Scout was reduced to scarred metal.
The storm churned on toward Los Angeles, leaving the mountains little more than
sand-heaped piles of bare rock. Like the vampires it was meant to shield, the
storm was ravenous.
TEN
Outside his house on Charing Cross Road, Wes Richer was throwing suitcases into
the trunk of his silver-blue Mercedes. He was aware of the building winds arid
the occasional sting of sand on his cheek, but time was his primary concern. He
and Solange had to catch a Delta jet to Las Vegas at four-fifty.
They'd spent most of the day in police stations or being shuttled back and forth
between them. Jane Dunne had cursed like a sailor when she was informed by the
police that she couldn't leave L.A. yet, then asked if she would be so kind as
to stop fighting the cops who were attempting to lift her out of the wheelchair
and into their prowl car? Wes and Solange had seen her briefly at midmorning,
being wheeled along a corridor at the Beverly Hills police station, loudly
demanding a drink. Wes figured her brain was so scorched she wasn't even
frightened of what might happen to her if she found herself face-to-face with
vampires again.
Wes and Solange had been taken into separate rooms at the Beverly Hills station
and were patiently questioned by a couple of solid cops who tried to make them
realize the difference between real vampires-ha-ha-and kids who might belong to
some kind of weird vampire cult. Wes's interrogator was a chunky officer named
Riccarda, who chained-smoked Salems and kept saying, "Fangs? You're
268 R. McCAMMON
trying to tell me you really saw fangs, Wes? Well, you're a comic, right?" But
Wes thought the cop believed him because he seemed to be just going through the
motions and his eyes did look scared. Wes had seen a few people walking around
the corridor in pajamas, robes, and slippers; they seemed shell-shocked, their
eyes unfocused and blank. When Wes started asking one of them some questions,
Riccarda came over and guided him away. There were a few reporters running
around, too, and one of them got a picture of Wes before the film was yanked out
of his camera. The rest of the newsmen were herded into a room, and that was the
last Wes saw of them.
Then Wes and Solange were put in a van with some more people and shuttled over
to Parker Center, where they were slipped in through a rear entrance. In the
elevator a young girl from Beverly Hills suddenly began babbling about a Camaro
that her mother had bought her and how she and her mother were going to fly down
to Acapulco. But as she talked, her face grew paler and her voice higher until
she was almost shrieking about how her mother had come home last night with her
new boyfriend, Dave, and how Dave had said he wanted to kiss her good night.
Then she'd seen the fangs, and her mother's face had been fish-belly white, the
dark eyes gleaming. She had run out of the house and just kept on running. When
the elevator doors opened, two cops took the girl away into a room where Wes
could still hear her screaming.
Wes and Solange were left in a room together, and finally another cop came in to
ask them basically the same questions they'd been asked in Beverly Hills. At the
end of an hour, the cop, who looked like he could take on three or four Marines
with no sweat, stood up from his chair and leaned over toward Wes. "You saw what
were members of a vampire cult, didn't you, Mr. Richer?" he said quietly, but
his voice was not very steady, and the lines in his forehead had deepened into
trenches.
"We both know what we saw," Wes told him. "What's with this cult bullshit?"
"You saw kids who were dressed up as vampires, didn't you?" the cop said. "Like
I said, a cult. That's what you saw. Isn't it?"
"Shit," Wes muttered. "Okay, okay. A cult, for Christ's sake! Now can we get out
of here?"
The cop didn't reply for a while, but then he said simply, "I'll have an officer
drive you home." And that was it.
Cult my ass, Wes thought as he slammed down the trunk. I know what I saw, and by
God I'm getting us out of this town right now! What's taking Solange so long to
get ready for Christ's sake? He was exhausted, but there would be time to grab
some sleep on the plane. He was afraid of the nightmares he knew he was going to
have for a long time to come-the way that vampiric ambulance attendant had
grinned, those fangs glistening, and Jimmy's agonized scream piercing the night.
He couldn't think of those things without feeling a little insane. He looked at
his Rolex. It was almost four-fifteen.
"Damn it, Solange!" he said, and started walking back to the house. She stepped
out the front door then, wearing a long white coat with a hood. She locked the
269
THEY THIRST
door, glanced up at the sky, and hurried to the car. "What's the problem?" he
asked her as she slipped into the passenger seat. "We're going to miss the
plane."
"No, we won't," she said. "Where's all this sand coming from?"
"Who knows?" He slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and backed down the
driveway. He drove up to Sunset and turned west to pick up the San Diego
Freeway. Occasional blasts of wind rocked the car, and Wes had to use the
windshield wipers several times to clear away the sand.
"I was making something for you," Solange said after they'd left Bel Air. She
reached into a pocket and brought out a little ball of something wrapped in
tissue paper and tied with a rubber band. Wes caught the sharp odor of garlic.
"What is it?" he asked, taking it in the palm of his hand and sniffing it.
"A resguardo. A good-luck talisman to keep away evil. It hasn't been dipped into
holy water or blessed at seven churches so it won't be as powerful as it should
be. You must keep it in a pocket, always."
Wes glanced at her, then looked back at the thing again. A few days ago he
would've laughed at something like this. Now things were different, the spirits
and amulets and Solange's spells didn't seem so far-fetched. In fact, he felt
relieved to have her with him. "What's in it?"
"Garlic. Yerbabuena, perejil, and a touch of camphor." She squinted as more sand
hit the windshield in front of her face. "I had to make it quickly so I don't
know how long its positive influences will last. Don't lose it."
He nodded and slipped it into his jacket. "How about yours?" he asked her, and
when she remained silent, he said, "You did make one for yourself, didn't you?"
"No. There wasn't time."
"Keep this one then." He started to dig it out, but she stopped him with a
slight grip on his wrist. "No," she said, "That one won't work for me. It has a
few strands of your hair in it. Watch where you're going."
Wes looked back to the boulevard and swerved away from the center line as" a
Porsche swept past, horn blaring. He reached the freeway ramp and turned up onto
it, heading south toward the airport. The sky was a strange, dark gold color
with grayish-gold clouds racing from the east. Wes couldn't even tell where the
sun was, and most of the cars on the freeway had already switched on their
headlights. He heard a Bugs Bunny voice within him say, Uhhhhh, ya wanna know
what's up, doc? Doooomsday!
He increased his speed, whipping around slower cars. Wind hit the Mercedes and
pushed it several feet to the right. He had to fight the wheel for a minute to
steady the car. As they passed over West L.A. they could see spirals of sand
dancing ahead and sheets of it being blown across the freeway. Solange's heart
was pounding. She sensed something dark at workman unexpected hand that had
tipped the balance of power in favor of the vampires. Not much time left, she
thought suddenly.
He put a hand on her thigh. "We're going to be fine," he told her. "We'll get
ourselves a room at the Sands and lay out in the sun for about a week."
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"What's going to happen to these people?" she asked quietly. "The ones who can't
get out?"
He pretended not to hear her. "I've got some friends at the Sands. Maybe I can
work up a show two or three nights a week. Yeah, that would be great. Just a
nice light show to keep the gamblers happy. I wouldn't even have to work very
hard . .."
"Wes," Solange repeated. "What is going to happen to these people?"
He didn't answer for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "I just know I want us
to get far away from here . . ."
"How will we know if anyplace is ever far enough away?"
He didn't answer, couldn't answer. He pressed his foot farther down on the
accelerator.
Wes took the ramp that swung traffic off toward LAX and almost immediately found
himself in a jam of cars, vans, cabs, and buses. With horns blowing, the traffic
slowly inched forward toward the main terminal. Wes hammered the steering wheel
in his impatience as Solange watched the residue of sand slowly growing at the
bottom of the windshield. Up ahead there were a couple of cops in orange
slickers trying to direct traffic and at the same time keep their balance
against the wind. As Wes neared them, he thought he heard one of the cops shout
something like "All flights grounded," but he couldn't be sure. He rolled down
his window and instantly caught grit in his eyes. He rolled the window back up
to a slit and shouted frantically to the nearest cop. "Hey! Aren't the planes
flying?"
"You kidding, man?" The officer kept his hand up in front of his face to shield
his eyes and nose. "They can't even get off the ground in this!"
"Shit!" Wes muttered, and started looking for a way to get out of the airport
lane. He pounded the horn and slid in front of a bus, trying to edge out before
he was caught in the vortex of traffic that swirled in a circle in front of the
terminal. He hit the horn again as a black limo squeezed past, scraping paint
off his side of the car; he caught a glimpse of a man in the rear seat, whose
eyes were wide with terror. Wes swerved in front of a cab, hearing the wail of
brakes and the responding discordant chorus and blaring horns. Then the Mercedes
was climbing up and over a concrete median strip, almost slamming into a mad
pack of cars racing back from the airport. Wes heard one of the cops shout
something at him, but he sank his foot to the floor, heading north again back
toward the San Diego Freeway.
"Where are you going?" Solange said. "Maybe we should just wait at the airport
for the weather to clear."
"And when might that be? Damn it, where'd this storm come from?" He switched on
the windshield wipers to clear away the sand; the glass was pocked and scratched
in long arcs. He could see tiny glints of bare metal showing through the paint
on the hood. "A sandstorm? Christ!" He took the freeway ramp at fifty, tires
screeching. Another blast of wind hit the car, almost wrenching the wheel loose
from Wes's grip. The sky had turned amber.
Oh, God, he thought, night's coming fast! "We're driving to Vegas," he said,
trying to picture the serpentine twistings of the L.A. freeway system in his
mind:
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Veer off onto the Santa Monica Freeway, curve north through the downtown
district to the San Bernardino Freeway across East L.A. and Monterey Park,
Interstate 15 out past Ontario. He'd drive to Vegas as if they were being chased
by all the demons of hell. Even Vegas might not be far enough away. Maybe they
should just keep driving east and never look back.
Solange turned on the radio and searched for a station that wasn't drowned out
by static. At the far end of the dial, she caught the faint sound of a
newscaster's voice. "Today the President announced . . . gas rationing . . .
members of Congress ... denied ... Los Angeles businessman ... found guilty ...
the tremors were felt as far as Sacramento . . . and registered four on the
open-ended . . . the National Weather Service advises . . ."
"Turn that up," Wes said.
Solange did, but the crackle of static was overpowering. "... traveler's
warnings extend as far north as Lancaster-Palmdale an<$ to the south as...
Weather Services advises all drivers . . ." Static squealed and chuckled, then
the station was gone.
The Mercedes was rocketing through downtown L.A. Solange saw that the tops of
several of the taller buildings-the Union Bank, the twin black Bank of America
monoliths, the silver cylinders of the Bonaventure Hotel, the looming Arco
Plaza-were shrouded in a shimmering golden mist. Sand was being blown in sheets
back and forth ahead of them across the freeway; wind roared past the car. When
she looked at Wes, she saw a slight sheen of sweat clinging to his face. He
glanced at her and smiled grimly. "We'll be fine," he said, "as soon as we make
it to Interstate 15 and start heading through the mountains. They'll cut this
wind down to a . . ."
His eyes riveted on something in the road, and he slammed on the brakes. There
were three cars locked together in the middle of the freeway. He felt the
Mercedes begin to slip to the left and realized with a start of terror that the
sand had covered the highway like ice. He quickly turned into the skid. The
tangle of wrecked cars loomed up ahead, one of them with a red taillight still
blinking. As the Mercedes swept past them, still skidding, Wes heard the loud
grinding of metal, and the car pitched sideways, but then they were in the
clear, and the car snapped itself steady. He increased the wiper speed, but now
he could barely see where he was going. On the right side of the freeway, a car
had smacked into the guardrail, and Solange thought she saw a body hanging out
of the driver's door. But then they passed, and she didn't look back.
Not much time left, she thought. And went cold.
They crossed the sand-glutted ditch of the Los Angeles River and began to pass
over the crowded houses and buildings of Boyle Heights. Wes switched on the
air-conditioner because the temperature had risen sharply in the last five
minutes. The air was stifling, and it was hard to draw a breath without tasting
grit. They passed an overturned car that was burning fiercely, the flames fanned
by the sweeping wind.
And then a dark brown cloud that seemed to shake the earth with its fury filled
272
the sky, rolling forward like the dust kicked up from the heels of an advancing
army. It engulfed the Mercedes, completely blinding them and smothering the
windshield with sand. The wipers died under its weight. Wes cried out and
steered the car to the right, his heart hammering. A pair of headlights came
flying from his rearview mirror, and then a car spun around and around in front
of them and disappeared into the dense curtain of sand.
"I can't see, I can't see!" Wes shouted. "We're going to have to pull off and
stop, but Jesus Christ, I don't even know where I am!" He tried to graze the
right guardrail, but he couldn't even find it. The engine coughed and stuttered.
"Oh, Jesus," Wes whispered. "Don't go out on me now! Don't!" Coughed again. He
stared at the lurching rpms on his dash gauge. "Got enough sand in the engine to
choke a fucking camel!" he said. He pumped the accelerator as the Mercedes gave
a last gasp and went dead. It rolled perhaps ten yards and then stopped. Wes
squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked. "No!" he said. "NO!"
With the end of the air-conditioner, the air had instantly become as stale as
the inside of a desert tomb. Wes turned on the ignition but the air that came
through the vents was searing-it seemed to be sucking oxygen out instead of
letting it in. Wes wiped his face with the back of his hand and stared at the
shining beads of sweat. "So," he said quietly. "Here we sit."
They were silent for a long while, listening to the taunts of the storm and the
dry rasp of sand on metal.
"What time is it?" Solange finally asked.
He was afraid to look at his watch. "Almost five," he said. "Maybe later."
"It's going to be dark soon . . ."
"I KNOW THAT!" Wes said sharply, and was instantly ashamed. Solange looked
quickly away from him out the window, but she couldn't see anything because the
currents of sand were too thick. Wes switched on his emergency blinkers and
prayed to God that any car coming up behind them would see the lights in time.
The soft click click click sounded like a sepulchral metronome, ticking away the
few breaths of air they had left. Wes could see Solange's profile-delicate,
stoic, said, "I'm sorry," he said softly.
She nodded but didn't look at him.
Hardy to Laurel: This is another fine mess you've got us into! Wes felt a grim
smile spread across his face, but it faded quickly. The car was still shuddering
under riptides of wind, and now the windshield was almost completely covered.
Wes could taste sand every time he inhaled; it gritted between his teeth. "We
can't just sit here and . . ." He let his voice trail off. "We can't. But,
Jesus! How long would we last out there?"
"Not very long," Solange said quietly.
"Yeah." He glanced at her and then away. "I guess those sheikhs who bought
houses up in Beverly Hills feel right at home in this, huh? They can just open
up their two-camel garages and hit the trail. If they can find the trail. Hmmm.
I could do some material on that-a nice five- or six-minute bit about Arabs
buying up Beverly Hills. I can see the signs on Rodeo Drive-Chez Saudi, serving
camel272
273
burgers around the clock. If you can't eat 'em, we'll sew you a nice coat... oh,
shit." He'd suddenly gone very pale; he'd felt the presence of Death every time
he took a shallow breath and sucked more grit into his lungs. He gripped the
door handle and barely managed to stop himself before flinging it open. Uh-uh,
he told himself, No way. I sure as hell don't want to die, but I'd rather go
slow than fast any old day. He forced himself to release his grip and sit back.
"I haven't been very good to you, have I?"
She said nothing.
"I'm a taker," he said, "just like all the rest of them. Shark, barracuda,
piranha ... all those predatory-fish metaphors apply. I think I just wear a
slightly better mask than most of them. Mine doesn't slip often because wearing
a mask is what I do for a living. It has slipped, though, and I don't like what
lies under it. Maybe the cops'll be along pretty soon. Maybe we can get towed
out of this mess, huh?"
Solange looked at him. There were tears in her eyes. "I've seen behind your
mask. There's a Bantu saying: You are what you are when you awaken. Before you
open your eyes, before you swim up out of sleep, that's the real person. Many
mornings I've watched you, and I've seen you curl uplike a little boy needing
protection or love or just . . . warmth. I think that's all you ever really
needed. But you mistrust it. You push it away and look for it somewhere else,
and so you never really find it at all."
He grunted and came up with a line from "Sheer Luck." "Elementary, Dr. Batson.
Deucedly clever, what? Shit! This fucking storm's not going to stop. I've never
seen so much sand without a bottle of Coppertone in my hand and a transistor
radio beside the chair." He told himself to start taking shallower breaths,
maybe then she could get more air that way. "That's where I'd like to be right
now. The beach at Acapulco. How'd you like that?"
"It would be ... very nice."
"Damn straight. That's what we'll do when we get towed in. We'll make
reservations at the Royal Aztec . . ." He stopped speaking as the car shuddered
again.
"You're the best of them all," Solange said. "No one was ever any better to me
than you are. I will take care of you-if I can." Then she hugged herself close
to him, and he held her very tightly. He kissed her forehead, tasting her
honey-pepper flavor, then listening to the moaning winds. He was starting to
strain his breath through his teeth.
And around the stranded car the wind whispered like the voice of a little girl
in a dream Wes had had a couple of nights ago. Come out. Come outside and play
with me. Come out, come out . . .
... or I'll come in ...
ELEVEN
Palatazin brought the Falcon to a halt. "Wait a minute," he said, staring up
through the windshield; the wipers were turned to full-speed, the headlights on
274
bright. "I thought I saw something." What he thought he'd seen was a huge dark
shape up there amidst the rocks and trees through a quick break in the swirling
amber clouds. Now there was nothing, just sand spinning against the glass.
"What was it?" Gayle leaned forward from the back seat. "The castle?"
"I'm not sure. I just saw it for a second before the clouds closed up. I
couldn't tell very much except that it was big and way up on the mountain. It
might've been a couple of miles from here, I don't know. Wait! There!" He
pointed. The clouds had broken again, and for an instant they all could see it
quite clearly, its high turrets standing against a darkening gold sky. From this
distance it looked to Palatazin much like the ruins atop Mount Jaegar. Yes, he
thought. That's the place. That's where he's hiding. At that height the vampire
king would have an unobstructed panorama of L.A.; he could gloat as the lights
went out in house after house. The castle looked as sturdy and impregnable as
any fortress Palatazin had ever seen in the mountains of Hungary. Seeing it was
one thing, he thought, reaching it was quite another thing entirely. The cold
knot of tension that had formed in his stomach suddenly expanded, sending out
chill tendrils into his arms and legs. He felt pitifully weak and frightened out
of his wits.
"The wind's getting worse," Jo said in a tight, strained voice.
"Yes, I know." Sand had been spinning across the road for fifteen minutes now,
and Palatazin could see piles of it collecting in pockets between rocks. Higher
up the clouds tumbled over each other like great yellow dogs hearing the dinner
whistle. They closed again, sealing off the Kronsteen castle. The Falcon's
engine gave out a sudden wheeze and a tremble, and Palatazin revved it a couple
of times. He looked at his watch and saw with horror that it was twenty minutes
after five. With these thick clouds rolling in, darkness would fall within
thirty minutes. The nagging thought that they would not make it to the castle in
time now rang out in his brain like a clear clarion of warning. "We're going to
have to turn back," he said finally.
There were no objections. Now the trick was finding a place to turn around. He
drove on, conscious of the aged engine's sputtering. Suddenly a wall of wind
came roaring through the scrub trees to the right, parting them like a comb
through hair. It hit the car like a bulldozer, forcing it toward the rocky lip
of the road. Palatazin fought for control. Jo screamed as the car shuddered to
the left-hand shoulder and started to totter over the edge; she could see toy
houses with their red roofs below and toy cars scattered on black and gold
ribbons. Nothing moved down there for as far as she could see.
Palatazin slammed the gearshift into first and wrenched up the parking brake.
The wind roared on, carrying wild, twisting coils of sand down into Hollywood.
Very carefully Palatazin put the Falcon in reverse and backed away from the
edge, slowly releasing the brake.
"We'll have to go up to find a place to turn," he heard himself say. His voice
was dry and thin. "Neither one of you should've come. I was a fool to let you."
He climbed farther, looking for a cut in the trees or rocks that he could back
the Falcon
275 pf
THEY THIRST
into. The storm was steadily worsening; another quarter-mile up the terrain was
completely covered with blowing sand. It reminded him of the blizzards that had
roared through Krajeck, particularly the storm that had been moaning outside the
night his father had come home. A thought struck him like a blow to the temple,
Did the vampires have any measure of control over the weather? If they did, this
freak sandstorm would be an effective way to immobilize the city's population.
It would cut people off from each other, keep them confined to homes or offices.
Planes wouldn't be flying, and the sea would be thrashed into a frenzy as well.
And driving? Palatazin realized they might not get down off this mountain alive.
If the winds didn't take them crashing over the edge, if the sand didn't choke
off the engine, if darkness didn't fall too soon ... He could feel the castle
crouched above them, perhaps less than a half-mile away along this twisting,
sand-slick road.
Something huge and gray suddenly bounded up onto the hood, its snarling face
pressed close to the glass. Gayle said "Jesus!" and Jo grasped Palatazin's arm.
The thing looked more wolf than dog, but he could see the nail-studded collar
and the tags around its neck. Its thick coat was full of sand, its eyes yellow
and fierce. Over the sound of the wind, Palatazin could hear its low, menacing
growls. The message was obvious. Palatazin saw other dogs slinking on the road
ahead-a boxer, an Irish setter, a few mutts. They all shared the same glazed
expressions of ferocity. So, he thought, the vampire king has made sure his
fortress is well protected. Even if we could reach the castle, we'd be mangled
by these dogs when we got out of the car. When Palatazin slowly drove on, the
wolf-dog howled with rage and started scratching at the glass; it snapped
repeatedly, as if trying to bite Palatazin's hands on the steering wheel. In
another moment he saw a space on the right large enough to turn the Falcon
around in. The wolf-dog stayed crouched on the hood, its baleful eyes glowering
into Palatazin's until the car was turned back down the mountain. Then it jumped
off and disappeared with the rest of the pack.
The Falcon chugged like a weary locomotive, winds buffeting it from all
directions. Once the engine rattled and quit, and they were rolling down to
Hollywood, but Palatazin kept trying the key and finally it caught again,
wheezing like an old man with emphysema. He raced the darkness back toward
Romaine Street, threading his way across Hollywood and Sunset boulevards-both
dotted with stranded cars-and finding some streets blocked by wrecks or dunes.
The Falcon crossed a deserted Santa Monica Boulevard and made it about three
more blocks before it staggered and stopped dead. Palatazin tried the engine
several times, but now the battery was groaning. Sand filled the engine. They
were stranded almost five blocks from the house, and night was falling fast.
The interior of the car was already stifling. "Can we run for it?" Gayle asked
softly.
"I don't know. It's five blocks. Not so far maybe. Maybe too far." He looked at
Jo and then quickly turned away. Sand was already covering the windshield,
sealing them in. It was as if they were being buried alive. "It's a long way,"
he said finally.
"What about these other houses?" Gayle asked. "Can't we ask for shelter?"
276
"We could, yes. But do you see any lights? Any life? How do we know we won't be
stepping into a nest of vampires? How do we know some other poor souls won't
mistake us for vampires and try to kill us? My house is protected with the
garlic and the crucifixes. These are just . . . waiting for invasion."
"So what do we do? Sit here and suffocate?"
". . . or suffocate out there?" Palatazin pointed out. "The wind will slow us
down. You'll get more sand into your lungs than air, just like this car did.
Just like all these other cars did. But no. We definitely cannot stay here. The
vampires won't be hampered by the storm because they don't breathe. So . . ." He
looked at Jo again and smiled weakly. "Shall we flip a coin?"
"Hell no!" Gayle said. "I'm not staying here!"
Jo shook her head. "We try to make it back."
"All right then." Five blocks, he thought. God, what a distance! He was going to
have to leave the stakes, mallet, and holy water in the trunk; there would be no
way to carry them. No, he had to have the holy water at all costs. He took the
keys out of the ignition and shrugged out of his coat, handing it to Jo. "Keep
that up to your face," he told her. "Both of you, remember to breathe through
your mouth with your teeth gritted. I'm going to get something out of the trunk.
When I knock on your window, Jo, I want you to step out and grasp my hand. When
you touch me, knock on Miss Clarke's window, and she'll take hold of your
shoulder. Then we'll start to move. I doubt if we'll be able to see very far out
there. If one of us loses the others, don't move from where you are. Just keep
shouting and cover your face with your hands. Okay?"
They nodded.
He started to open the door and then stopped. The car vibrated with the force of
the wind. He got the trunk key in position so he wouldn't waste precious seconds
fumbling. "All right," he said. "I'm going." He sat there for a few more
seconds, then he stepped out of the car.
A blast of oven-hot wind seemed to suck him out. He got the door closed and
pulled himself along the side of the car, his lower face tucked into the crook
of his left arm. He couldn't even take a fraction of a breath without sucking in
sand. A crosscurrent of wind hit him behind the knees, knocking him to the
ground. He began to crawl, his face flayed raw. He pulled himself around to the
trunk, got the key in, and twisted. The trunk shot open. He found the
cloth-wrapped vial and used the cloth to shield his mouth and nose, putting the
vial in his back pocket. Then he struggled around to the other side of the car.
The wind arid sand nearly dragged him down.
When he rapped on the glass, Jo stepped out and almost fell, crying out as their
hands slipped. When she was ready, she knocked on the glass behind her and Gayle
came out. She grasped Jo's shoulder like a vise. The short human chain started
off, being whipped and shoved along the street. In another moment Palatazin felt
Jo's hand grinding his fingers together, and he knew she couldn't get a breath.
"NOT FAR!" he shouted, instantly choking. She nodded, her slitted eyes weak and
277 FJW<!
THEY THIRST
glazed. All he could see of Gayle was a faint dark shape.
Jo fell. As he helped her to her feet, dark motes spun before his eyes, and he
knew they were all slowly suffocating to death. They weren't going to make it;
there were still three blocks to go. "COME ON!" he shouted, and pulled them
toward the gray shapes on the right-hand side of the street. The shapes slowly
materialized into wood-framed, two-storied houses not much different in design
from his own. They were all terribly dark, and Palatazin was afraid of what they
might be holding. He tripped over something that lay on the sidewalk,
half-covered with sand. It was the corpse of a young man, a bullet hole in his
cheek. Palatazin stared dumbly at the body for a few seconds and felt the hot
waspish buzz pass his face before he heard a muffled crack! He looked up in time
to see the orange flash of the second shot fired from an upstairs window in the
house that stood before him. The corpse at his feet shuddered. A man's voice
rose to a frenzied wail, "Get away, ye heathen things of Satan! God Almighty
shall strike you DEAD! And DEAD! And DEAD!" Palatazin pulled Jo after him,
running toward the next house. The front door, its paint scoured down to the
bare wood, was closed but unlocked. Palatazin plunged inside as the madman's
shrieking turned into a sob of anguish.
When Gayle was through the door, Palatazin slammed it shut and bolted it. The
air within the house was stale and heavy, but at least there were no torturing
winds here. His face and hands felt raw, and he could see that Gayle's eyes were
terribly bloodshot. Jo was gagging; she still held on to his coat, and sand was
slithering off it to the floor. He helped Jo over to a chair and wiped the beads
of cold sweat off her face with his cloth. Her eyes were dark and vacant; she
didn't seem to know where she was. "Jo?" he said. "We're all right now. We're
safe." She began to cry very softly. Through the wind's howl Palatazin could
hear the madman's scream. "... show yourselves! I know you're hiding in there,
ye foul Satan spawn!" He began to sing in a high, croaking voice, "Shall we
gather at the riiiiiiver, the beautiful, the beautiful riiiiiiver . . .?"
Palatazin shut him out. Now he was wondering if they were alone in this house.
The idea of being locked in there with an armed maniac filled him like sour
wine. He was glad to have the reassuring weight of the .38 in its shoulder
holster, though from the size of the bullet hole in that corpse's face the man
next door had to have a high-velocity rifle.
Gayle had the same idea at the same time. "What if we're not alone here?" she
whispered.
"Anyone home?" he called out. There was no answer. Palatazin took his gun out of
its holster and released the safety. He walked through the neatly furnished
living room and into a short hallway where a flight of stairs led up to the
second floor. "Anyone here?" he said, watching for the slightest movement. "We
won't hurt you! We just wanted to get out of the storm!" He waited another
moment, but there was still no reply. He put his gun away and went back to the
living room. "I think we're alone," he told Gayle. "Maybe they got out before
the storm hit."
278
Gayle looked around. There was a circular red-and-blue braided rug on a hardwood
floor, a large, comfortable-looking sofa with scrolled arms and legs, a dark-
stained coffee table where a few copies of Antique Monthly, National Geographic,
and Horizon magazines were neatly arranged, a couple of overstuffed chairs with
clear plastic on the arms; and a brick fireplace over which hung an upside-down
horseshoe. She could see ashes being stirred in the hearth by the wind's force.
There were framed sepia-tone prints on the walls and on the fireplace mantel a
grouping of color photographs-a middle-aged couple smiling and hugging each
other, kids and dogs at play.
The madman next door brayed with laughter.
"Jesus!" Gayle said softly. "That bastard tried to blow our heads off."
Palatazin nodded and stepped over to Jo, who'd regained at least some of her
color. "You're better now?"
"Yes," she said, and smiled weakly. "Better."
"Night's falling," Gayle said. "Very soon now." She pulled aside a curtain to
look out at the street and could see very little but the swirling sand. The
darkness was creeping. She turned and stared at Palatazin. "This storm will. . .
keep them away, too, won't it?"
"No. They don't breathe, and they have some kind of transparent eyelids that
will keep the sand out. They have us where they want us."
"And where it that?" she asked.
"Trapped. All of us. Everyone in this city. No way out." He held her gaze for a
moment and then looked away quickly because he'd realized they were in an
unprotected house-no garlic smeared on the windowsills, no crucifixes on the
doors and windows. He dropped his hand to his pocket to touch the bottle of holy
water there; it seemed terribly small. "I'm afraid," he said softly, "that it's
much too late for your story to do any good. The balance has shifted in their
favor. They hold the power-"
"No!" she said. "There's still something we can do! We can call somebody, the
police or the National Guard or ... somebody-" She was silenced by the sand that
spattered up against the window, hissing like hot fat at the bottom of a frying
pan.
"I think you know better than that. I doubt if the phones are working. I'd try
the lights if I wasn't afraid we'd stand out like a neon sign over a vampire
diner. The air's none too good in here, is it?"
Gayle put her head in her hands. "Shit," she said in a faraway dreamer's voice.
"All I ever wanted to do was ... be a good writer. That's all. Was that too much
to ask?"
"I don't think so."
"I wanted to leave my mark. I wanted to ... do something important. Be somebody
important instead of a nobody . . . which-let's face it-I am." Her voice cracked
a little bit, but she quickly cleared her throat, and then she was okay. "All
mouth and fake guts," she said. "Will . . . what they do ... be fast or slow?"
Palatazin pretended not to hear her.
The night closed in.
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Father Silvera had reached his church before the worst of the storm hit, and now
he opened the front door a crack and peered out. The street was deserted and
already heaped with small sand drifts. There were no lights in any of the
tenement windows simply because there was no electricity. Silvera had turned on
the sanctuary lights for perhaps fifteen minutes before they flickered several
times, dimming steadily with each flicker, and then went out. Darkness was
filling up the church, deepening every minute. He looked out for a while longer,
narrowing his eyes against flying grit, then went back to his room. He found
several candles, meant for either weddings or funerals, tucked away in a drawer,
and he lit all of them, dripping wax onto saucers and sticking the candles into
the hardening puddles. He took the candles out into the sanctuary and placed
them around the gleaming brass crucifix on the altar. Looking at the Cross
shamed him. He prayed that Palatazin would be safe in his journey and that when
he found that castle, there would be no master there, no vampires there at all.
He prayed that Palatazin was wrong, that he was suffering from fatigue or
overwork. But at the back of his brain a shadow had begun to stir, and he was
trying very hard to keep it from fully awakening. He had recalled something that
an older priest had told him during his education in Mexico: "Some men are
prisoners of rational thought." Perhaps he had been seeing the world through
bars for a long time.
The sanctuary door creaked open. Silvera looked up from the altar, to see a
small figure come staggering out of the storm, whirlwinds of sand spinning
around him. It was Leon LaPaz. Before Silvera could reach him, he fell, coughing
violently, to the floor. Silvera helped him up onto a pew and then used all his
strength against the door to keep the sand out.
"Are you all right, Leon?" he asked the boy, kneeling down beside him. Leon
nodded, but he was pale and there were tear tracks down his cheeks. "I'll get
you some water," Silvera said. He hurried back to his room, took a glass from a
shelf over the sink, and turned on the cold water tap. The pipes stuttered for a
few seconds, then let out a thin trickle of brownish water. Damn it! Silvera
thought. The sand's even getting into the water! He sipped it, then spat it into
the sink. The stuff was undrinkable.
"I'm sorry, Leon," he said when he went back out to the boy. "The water's going
to have to wait." He put a finger under Leon's chin and tilted his face up. The
boy's lips were wind-chapped, pulped, and swollen. "What were you doing out in
that? You could've died out there!" Then he suddenly asked, "Where's Sandor? You
father hasn't come home yet?"
Leon shook his head, his eyes glimmering with tears. He was still breathless,
and it was difficult for him to speak. "No ... a man ... came ... a little while
ago ... for my sister . . ."
"A man? What man?"
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"A ... black man," Leon said. "To the apartment. He was tall and . . . mean and
... he told me to come tell you . . . 'Cicero remembers' . . ."
"Cicero?" Silvera remembered the name of the black heroin dealer he'd stuffed
into a garbage can. "When was this?"
"Maybe . . . maybe ten minutes." Leon gripped the priest's arms with small,
trembling hands. "He took Juanita, Father! He said for me to come tell you he
remembered and then he ... took my sister and left! Where'd he take her, Father?
What's he going to do to her?"
Silvera was stunned. What was Cicero doing in this neighborhood during a raging
sandstorm? Perhaps he'd been selling more horse and had been caught by the
winds, unable to get out? And now that he had four-year-old Juanita, what would
he do to her?
"There are other people in my building, Father," Leon said. "A lot of the
windows are broken, and the sand's getting in. They can't breathe too good."
"How many others?"
"Mrs. Rodriguez, the'Caracas, Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza, Mr. Melazzo, maybe thirty
more."
My God! Silvera thought. What would happen to the hundred of others trapped in
those flimsy tenements as the sand whipped through empty window frames and
cracks that should've been repaired years ago? They would slowly suffocate if
they couldn't find a better refuge! Silvera paused, then made his decision.
"Leon, you know where the staircase to the bell tower is, don't you?"
"Si. Through that door over there."
"That's right. Now listen to me carefully. I want you to climb to the tower and
crack open the shutters up there; you'll see the handles. The wind may get bad
after that so you'll have to be very careful. Then I want you to take the rope
that hangs down and pull on it as hard as you can. The bell may lift you off
your feet, but that's all right, you'll come down again. Just don't let go of
the rope, and keep ringing the bell. Can you do that?"
Leon nodded, his eyes bright with the importance of his mission.
"Good." Silvera squeezed his shoulder. Now he needed something to cover his
face. As Leon scurried back through the door, Silvera took a towel from his
bathroom and jammed most of it down into his coat so he could press the other
end of it against his lower face and not worry about the wind carrying it away.
As he approached the sanctuary door, he heard the first clear peal of Mary's
Voice. It was an urgent, warning sound, metallic and determined. The bell's
movement made the tower groan over Silvera's head, and he could envision Leon's
little body being jerked upward. Silvera put his hand against the door and then
he stepped out. The wind screamed in his ears.
Sand ripped into his face and hair. He was almost flung to the ground, but he
fought for his balance by leaning against the wind. He could see absolutely
nothing; the darkness had conspired with the storm to isolate him inside a well
with spinning black walls. He struggled on across the street, hearing tattered
fragments of Mary's
281
Voice-it alternately pealed and moaned overhead.
Slowly, the line of buildings emerged from the murk. He was gasping for a full
breath by the time he reached the door of Leon's building. Sand covered the
towel, and some of it had slipped through into his mouth and nostrils. His face
felt as if it were shredded. Shattered glass from the building's door lay about
his feet as he stepped into the front corridor. He could hear tortured winds
wailing along the stairs, and they tried to pull him in all directions at once.
He tried to breathe without the protective sieve of the towel; his nostrils and
lungs instantly flamed.
He knocked on the first door he came to, and Carlos Alva peered out, his dark
eyes bugging above the gritty handkerchief he had pressed to his face.
"Carlos!" Silvera shouted, though he stood less than a foot away from the man.
"Get your wife and children! You're going to have to come to the church with
me!" Alva didn't seem to understand, so Silvera put his mouth next to the man's
ear and shouted again. Alva nodded and disappeared into the room for his family.
Silvera moved on to the next door.
It took him more than forty-five minutes to get them all gathered together on
the first floor-thirty-three people not counting the infants in their mother's
arms. Silvera had planned on getting them out in a human chain, hand-to-hand,
but the infants created a problem.
"Listen to me, all of you!" Silvera shouted at them. "We're going to have to
make it to the church! Can you hear the bell ringing?" Now it sounded distant
and muffled, and Silvera knew that Leon's arms would be about ready to rip from
their sockets. "We're going to follow that sound!" he yelled, pointing in the
direction of the church. "Everyone clasp the shoulder of the person in front of
you and hold on tightly! I don't want the women to carry their babies. Give them
to your husbands! The wind's very strong out there so we've got to walk
carefully." He saw frightened eyes everywhere around him. There were cries for
God and muttered prayers.
"We're going to be all right! Don't be afraid, just hold on! Be sure to cover
the infants' faces! Is everyone protected? All right! Are we ready?" Someone
started sobbing. Carlos Alva, holding his baby son in one arm, gripped Silvera's
shoulder. Silvera took a breath of flaming air and moved out into the street,
the people trailing behind him.
He couldn't hear the bell for a few seconds. Keep ringing it, Leonl he called
out mentally. Then he heard it, wailing for the lost. Behind him the human chain
flailed against the wind, some of them falling and having to be helped up. The
street had never seemed so wide or so wicked. Silvera felt he'd reached the
middle of it because he couldn't see either side, but he couldn't be certain.
Suddenly he heard a piercing scream behind him that went on and on. It reached a
high crescendo and then rapidly faded. "What is it?" Silvera said over his
shoulder to Alva. "Who screamed?"
Alva sent the question back. In another moment he told the priest, "Mrs. Mendoza
is gone! Something pulled her out of the chain!"
"WHAT?" Silvera shouted. "STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" He felt his way back
281
282
to the hole where Mrs. Mendoza had been between her husband and Mr. Sanchez.
"What happened to her?" he asked her husband, whose face was pallid with shock.
The man couldn't answer; he was muttering "Maria, Maria, Maria . . ." over and
over again. Silvera looked around for her but couldn't see a thing. He peered at
Sanchez. "What happened?"
Sanchez's teeth were chattering. "I don't know, Father!" he shouted. "She was
holding on to my shoulder one second, then . . . she wasn't there! I heard her
scream, and when I looked around, I thought I saw ... I thought I saw . . ."
"What? What was it?"
"Something ... a man maybe . . . dragging her off . . ."
Silvera stared into the darkness, sand slithering down his neck. There was
nothing out there, nothing at all. He heard himself say, "Close the hole," and
then he felt his way back to the front of the chain. His heart was thundering,
his stomach roiled with fear. Alva clutched his shoulder again, and they started
off. Within ten seconds there was another scream, fading into the distance.
Silvera's head whipped around. "Felizia!" he heard a woman wail. "What happen'
to my little girl? FELIZIAAAAAH! The woman started to leap out of the chain, but
Silvera shouted, "HOLD ON TO HER! WE KEEP MOVING!"
A figure suddenly ran in front of him, and then was quickly engulfed in the
storm. He stopped so abruptly he could feel the entire chain bump together. He'd
gotten the impression of a young boy in a black jacket, grinning out of a
silver-eyed skull. Sweet Jesus, protect us! he thought. Please help us get to
that door! PLEASE! He began walking again; Alva's hand dug into his shoulder.
There was a scream from far behind, almost at the end of the chain. "KEEP
MOVING!" he shouted, though he knew they couldn't possibly hear him back there.
He hoped they'd close the gap and stagger on. And now he seemed to be aware of
movement all around him-figures darting back and forth, shadowy shapes made
formless by the blowing sand. He stepped onto the opposite curb. The church door
was only a few feet away at the top of five steps.
"WE'RE HERE!" he shouted, and realized at the same instant that Alva's hand was
gone. When he looked back, he saw that both the man and his wife had been taken
out of the chain, leaving only their small daughter frozen with terror, her hand
outstretched where she'd been clutching her mother's dress. Silvera grasped her
hand. The bell sang out furiously overhead. Silvera threw open the church door
and stood there, quickly herding them in whiled he counted them. Of thirty-
three who'd left the building, twenty-six had made it. When the last one had
stepped across the threshold, Silvera slammed the door shut and leaned against
it, the breath rasping through his lungs. Several people fell down before the
altar and began to pray; there were shrieks and sobs, a wild tumult of noise.
He hadn't believed in vampires; he wasn't sure now if he did or not, but he knew
one thing for certain-whatever could exist in that storm wasn't human. He
touched Juan Romero on the shoulder. "Go up to the tower and take over the bell
from Leon," Silvera said. "Keep ringing it until I send someone else up. Hurry!"
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Juan nodded and moved away. If anyone could hear that bell, Silvera reasoned,
then maybe they could reach the church and safety. He put his face in his hands
and prayed for strength. He was going to have to go back out there, into the
dozens of other buildings that surrounded the church, to help as many people as
he could find. He was afraid there would not be very many. But this time he
wouldn't go out unprepared.
He walked to the altar and picked up the heavy brass crucifix; it caught the
golden candlelight and shimmered. But it was so cold. Though it was a symbol of
hope, he felt full of dark, bleak hopelessness. He gripped his hands around the
crucifix's sharp edges, aware of how many eyes were watching him. He could use
this to break into a grocery store for canned goods and bottled water. The
stained- glass image of Jesus, occasionally shuddering with the violent wind,
stared down at him through stern gray eyes. You're dying anyway, Silvera told
himself, so why should you be so afraid? Why should you want to cling to life
like an old woman wringing drops out of a dishrag? Your days are numbered. Make
them count.
Then he gripped the crucifix, adjusted the towel over his face, and stepped back
out into the maelstrom.
THIRTEEN
"Reminds me of the blizzards we used to have back home," Wes said softly,
watching as the last clear square on the windshield was covered over. Now he and
Solange sat in darkness. She had pressed against him, leaning her head on his
shoulder, and though it was terribly hot, Wes didn't mind and neither did she.
It was better somehow to be near one another. "One day Winter Hill would be a
study in golds and browns, then when the storm passed through during the night
and you looked out the window in the morning, the world would be white right up
to the horizon. Trees, houses, fields . . . everything. People ride sleighs in
Winter Hill when the snow falls like that, no kidding. Did I ever tell you I
know how to snowshoe?"
"No," Solange whispered.
"What'd I say I know how to do?"
"Snowshoe."
"Louder."
"Snowshoe!"
"Gesundheit! Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, about the sleighs. They were a
terrific way to get around. The last time I went home for Christmas, everybody
was using those damned snowmobiles. Progress, right? Well . . ." He decided he'd
better shut up because he suddenly realized he couldn't breathe worth a damn. He
finally managed to find a gulp of air. He wanted to comfort Solange, though,
because when they were silent for too long she began to cry. Out of all the
thousand or so jokes he had told before audiences in L.A., Las Vegas, and San
Francisco he
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couldn't seem to remember a single one, just fragments of comedy bits that
didn't make sense-What's big, stiff, and belongs to Roy Rogers? Trigger. What'd
the hung- * over angel who'd visited earth overnight say to a furious St. Peter?
Sorry, Peter, but I left my harp in Sam Frank's disco. Missionary in Africa's
out walking one day and comes face-to-face with a lion. He sinks down to his
knees and starts to pray for his life when the lion gets down on its knees
beside him. "Dear brother lion," the missionary says, "how wonderful it is to
see you joining me in Christian prayer when just a moment ago I feared for my
life . . ." And the lion growls, "Don't interrupt while I'm sayin' grace!"
Praying, Wes thought. Now that might be an idea. What should I say? God please
get us the hell out of here? God don't give up on old Wes and Solange just yet?
God whose side are you on anyway? The answer to that seemed painfully clear.
I've come a long way to die in a fucking sandstorm, Wes thought. From frat
parties to bars to the Comedy Store to the big time, more or less, and all of it
could now be just so much shit in a totebag. No agent to get the jobs now, no
accountants to find the tax loopholes and the shelters, no fan mail pouring into
the slot. Nobody saying how good I was and how much money I was going to make
and that I was going to be King of Comedy Hill for a long, long time . . .
nobody now but me and Solange.
Well, he thought, that would have to be enough.
His brain felt feverish. Where the hell are we? Sitting on the freeway, maybe
right in the middle of it, somewhere over East L.A. Probably no shelter for
blocks; the Mercedes stalled in what looked like a Sahara Desert sand dune. And
vampires out there somewhere. Jimmy dead. Screaming in agony before he died. A
bell ringing. Ambulance sirens wailing, lights flashing across a wide green
lawn. A bell ringing. , Crazy old lady in a wheelchair, grabbing my arm scaring
shit out of me. Blackberry brandy. Police car coming. A bell ringing. Parker
Center, and a girl cracking up in the elevator. A bell. . . RINGING . . .?
He opened his eyes, hadn't even felt himself starting to slip away. What was
that noise? Wait a minute, wait a minute! WAIT A MINUTE! A bell's ringing out
there somewhere! Or is it my imagination? He thought he heard it again, a soft
distant moan that had a musical note to it, not like the shrill hissings of the
wind at all. But now it was gone, if it had ever been there to begin with. He
gently shook Solange. "What is it?" she said thickly, her breathing hoarse and
uneven.7
"Listen. Wait a minute . . . there! Did you hear that? A bell ringing?"
She shook her head. "No. It's the wind." Her eyes dropped, and she laid her head
back on his shoulder.
"Don't go to sleep!" he said. "Wake up and listen! I'm telling you that's a bell
ringing out there!"
"Bell . . . what bell . . .?"
And now he heard it again, a distinct, low, musical note through the harsh
discord of the storm. He thought it was coming from somewhere to the right, but
( he couldn't tell how far away. "Solange," he said, "I think maybe we're closer
to ' " shelter than we thought! We can make it there, I think! It won't be too
far away!"
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"No," she whispered. "I'm sleepy. We can't make it . . ."
"We can!" He shook her again, harder, trying to stave off the long dark rolling
waves that were beginning to spread through his body. "We're going to have to
try, at least! Here, put your hood up. Cup your hands in front of your face to
keep the sand out of your lungs. Can you do that?"
"I don't know ... I'm so tired . . ."
"Me too, but we can't stay here if there's a safe place so close! We can sleep
when we get there, okay? Come on. Put your hood up and try to shield your face
with it." He did it for her. "There you go. Okay, I'm going to get out first and
come around for you. Take a couple of deep breaths." When she tried, she winced
with the effort; there was barely any air left to breathe. Wes's head was
buzzing fiercely, the dark waves closing in. "I'm opening the door now. You
ready?"
She nodded.
Wes pushed against the door and found it jammed shut. Panic exploded in his
stomach. He shoved harder, the muscles in his shoulder straining. Sand began to
stream off the window in thick rivulets, and it slithered into the car as Wes
pushed. Then he'd opened it wide enough for them to slip out. He took Solange's
hand as she slid across the seat and stepped out into a blinding flurry of sand.
A wall of sand came sliding over him, and as he tried to fight free of it, he
almost lost Solange's grip. But then his face was clear, and he wrenched Solange
after him through what he now realized had been a sand dune heaped up against
the Mercedes's side.
It was dark now, and through the twisting currents of wind, he could see faint
sparkles of light from across the river in downtown L.A. Behind him, East L.A.
and beyond lay in utter darkness. The wind seemed to have lessened somewhat
since Wes had stopped the car; at least he could stand without having to
struggle for balance. Sand still stung his face like hellish nettles and flamed
the air he tried to draw between his teeth. There was air, though, and he found
he could breathe fairly well if he kept his teeth gritted and remembered to spit
every minute or so to clear his mouth. Above him he could hear howling currents
of air; the worst of the storm seemed to have risen and was now circling
relentlessly over the city. Wes saw that the Mercedes was stripped of all its
paint. There were more cars scattered on the freeway up ahead, all of them
scoured down to shining metal. Dunes six and seven feet high had heaped up
around them, collapsing over hoods and roofs. Most of the sodium-vapor lights
along the freeway had gone out, but those few that remained cast a cold bluish
glow down upon a scene of desolation that again reminded Wes of the aftermath of
a blizzard. One of the lightposts had gone down just ahead and lay stretched
across the freeway, its bulb crackling like a dying meteor.
Wes heard the moaning of that bell again way off to the right. Somewhere down in
the darkness of East L.A. He spat sand out of his mouth, shielding his eyes with
one hand. "You okay?" he asked Solange, having to shout. She answered with a
slight squeeze of his hand, and he began moving toward the nearest off-ramp, his
shoes sinking into a couple of inches of sand. They passed a car with several
bodies
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tumbling out of it, as if they'd died trying to dig their way out. Solange
caught sight of one staring, blue-fleshed face and quickly looked away. Farther
on they came to a corpse, half-buried in the sand, that grinned up at them
through a twisted death rictus; Wes could envision that thing sitting up, sand
streaming off its body, and whispering, "See? I got away from them. Oh, no, I
wouldn't let them take me, so I just laid down and went to sleep. That's what
you should've done, too. It would have been so much easier . . ."
The sound of that bell seemed nearer. Wes thought he saw an off-ramp just ahead
under the pale glow of a sodium-vapor lamp. "You still with me?" he said.
"I'm fine! Don't worry about me!"
Wes almost stepped on two bodies, a man and a woman holding hands. He guided
Solange around them, his nerve about to break.
They had started down the off-ramp when Wes heard a distant rumbling. He looked
back over his shoulder and saw headlights moving quickly toward them from the
west. Motorcycles, about fifteen or twenty of them. His heart stuttered- highway
patrol cops! He let go of Solange and started waving his arms, shouting, "Hey!
Over here! Over here!"
"Wes," Solange said. "Wait ... I don't think . . ."
The motorcycles curved toward them, sending up spinning tails of sand. Wes saw
the face of the lead rider, white-fleshed and skeletal, red eyes burning with
hunger. The thing grinned, then opened its mouth wide and motioned for the
others to hurry. The fangs glinted with ghostly blue light.
Wes turned in horrid slow-motion and reached for Solange, but suddenly his
vision was filled with a blinding white light, and the stuttering roar of the
motorcycles bore down on him. He was struck in the side by a booted foot. Pain
shot through him as he fell to the pavement. He hung motionless for a few
seconds over a dark void and then slowly, slowly tumbled head-over-heels into
its maw. From its center he heard the shrilling of wind, cracking and popping
motorcycle exhaust, laughter, and Solange calling to him. Her screaming soon
stopped. "Good-lookin' bitch ... so good, so fiiine," someone said, the voice
echoing in Wes's head. "You can have what's left of him, Viking. Oh yeah, baby,
you're gonna be so gooood to Kobra . . ."
The throbbing of his ribs roused Wes. He was being turned over by rough,
freezing hands. Through a mist of pain Wes saw the face over him-broad and
bearded, pallid and vampiric. "He's alive," the biker said. "Ain't much to him,
but I figger he's worth a couple of swigs . . ."
"You said I could take the next one, man!" someone else called out.
"Viking rates over you, Dicko," the one called Kobra said. "Let him feed. You'll
take the next one."
"Shit!" Dicko said. "Ain't nothing but dead meat around here!"
"Take it easy, man. When we hook up with those Ghost Riders and the rest of the
Death Machines, we'll flush 'em out like rats. Be plenty for everybody."
Viking bent over Wes, his mouth slowly opening. Wes could see the bursts of
287 m--'
THEY THIRST
silver in his eyes, and his own face reflected in the merciless mirrors.
"Git some, Viking!" one of the others called out, and laughed.
Suddenly Viking blinked and jerked his head back. "Shit! Burnin' my eyes!" He
scrambled up and away from Wes, his large belly shaking as his body trembled.
"Bastard's got somethin' in his clothes. Kobra! Got something that burns my
eyes!" He rubbed at them and backed away.
Kobra shoved him aside and towered over Wes; he leaned down, staring balefully
at Wes, and seemed to be sniffing the air. Almost instantly his eyes squeezed
shut with pain, and he scrambled away.
"What's he got, Kobra, huh?" Viking said. "What's he got, what's he got?"
"Shut up!" Kobra rubbed his eyes and then glared at Wes. "Don't matter what he's
got. Bastard's ribs are caved. When the wind blows up again, he'll be lying
under about two feet of sand. Forget about him."
Viking scooped up a handful of sand and flung it at Wes. "You're gonna die,
motherfucker!" he said savagely. "And death is cooolllddd . . ."
"Come on." Kobra moved past him and out of Wes's field of vision. "I'm taking
your black bitch with me, mister. She'll be nice and warm up at the castle, old
Kobra'll see to that. You just lay there and think about that, okay?" Engines
revved. Wes tried to pull himself to his feet, but pain exploded along his left
side, where he'd been hurt in the crash of Jimmy's Cadillac. He fell back,
panting. The motorcycles swept past him, roaring like wild animals. "Solange!"
he tried to shout, but the name came out as a whisper.
And then they were gone, the sound of their cycles rapidly fading.
"Solange ..." he whimpered, and curled up to die. Around him the wind began to
chuckle.
The bell was still ringing, but now it seemed a world away.
Anger ached within him. "Can't die!" he shouted at himself. "Got to find
Solange! Can't let her be . . . like them!" He lifted his head and whispered,
"I'll find" you!" After a while he turned on his belly and started to crawl,
sliding with the agonized movement of a crushed jackrabbit. He thanked god for
the amulet Solange had given him; he didn't know how it had worked, but it had
kept the vampires from biting him.
Now he counted the tolling of that bell to keep himself from slipping into
darkness. "One . . . two . .. three . . . four . .. five .. ." Anger carried him
along, and just behind him off in the shadows, he felt the presence of some
grinning, scabrous thing with a vaudeville stagehook, trying to catch hold of
him and drag him back. He kept crawling.
FOURTEEN
Lights glowed dimly from the ceiling of a concrete-walled factory in Highland
Park. Every so often they flickered out and, when they were gone, the conveyor
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belt would stop, too, and the workers had to pull the coffins along in the dark.
But so far the electricity had been weak but fairly constant; the conveyor belt
hummed, gears meshing perfectly. The gleaming coffins passed one after the
other, faster and faster. Figures with shadowy faces grinned and nodded, pleased
with their work. Soon they would be allowed to go out and feed, and another
shift would take over. From now on, according to the Master, the factory would
work from dusk until dawn, electricity or no. If the buzz saws went out, there
were always hand saws and plenty of files and planes and other necessary tools.
At the end of the conveyor belt, where the big tractor-trailer trucks were lined
up at the loading docks, there was a huge mound of sandy brown California soil
the dump trucks had brought. Before the coffins were sealed and shoved into the
trucks, the workers would lay down a good bed of dirt inside each of them. Then
they were ready to go.
One of the workers, known as Mitchell Everett Gideon in his previous life,
leaned on his shovel and waited for the next coffin to come down the line. His
face was streaked with dirt, his eyes dark and sunken. He was cold with hunger
but reassured by the knowledge that the plant whistle would blow in about an
hour, and then he'd be allowed to feed. He wouldn't even have to spend time
hunting, for one of the tractor-trailer trucks was loaded with humans, the
Master's reward for work well done.
The next coffin came. He filled the bottom of it, pressed the dirt down with his
shovel, and then it was carried away to a truck. Trucks were always coming and
going, and it pleased him to see such efficiency. He was an important part of
the machine now, much more important than he'd ever been in his life. He'd even
met the Master and had told him everything he knew about the factory, about
casket making, about getting the best possible effort out of a work crew. The
Master was pleased and had asked Gideon if he could rely on him for help and
suggestions. Gideon said yes, of course.
Another coffin came. Gideon filled it, working with a newfound strength, and
watched it being carried away. Another truck moved out of its slot on the docks,
and another backed in. He was ecstatically happy, ecstatic with his love for the
Master. He had been granted the gift of eternal life . . . eternal youth.
It was all a dream come true.
FIFTEEN
At the end of two hours, Father Silvera had found more than fifty people and
herded them back into the church. Some of them were dazed, some were hysterical,
others whimpered softly. The sanctuary teemed with life-people crying and
praying, infants howling, people babbling, nearly insane. Silvera appointed four
men to act as supervisors over the group; some of them wanted to go with him
when he left again to continue his search, but he firmly told them no.
289
It was all he could do to keep himself steady out there. He didn't want to be
responsible for losing anyone else. Stepping across that threshold and out into
the dark, sand-whipped street was the most terrible thing he'd ever asked
himself to do. He was shaking very badly now, his grip on the heavy brass
crucifix so weak that several times he thought he couldn't continue holding on
to it. But he did, mentally commanding those strained, deteriorating muscles to
hold firm just a moment, just a second longer. His hands ached with his body's
insidious betrayal.
Now out on the street again, he was alert for running shapes. He'd seen them
several times, and once one of them had come dangerously close before it
suddenly stopped and dodged away. Silvera presumed it was because of the
crucifix. Perhaps thty were afraid of it, just like in all the old vampire
movies. He walked on, thankful that the wind had dropped enough for him to see
the buildings on either side of the street. His face was raw and swollen from
the sand's abrasion, and it was by sheer habit now that he kept his eyes
narrowed into tight, protective slits. Mary's Voice called out behind him, the
sound echoing from street to street. He passed a grocery store where the front
window had been knocked out by a wind-tossed garbage can; he made a mental note
to come back and get food and water for the people in the sanctuary. He was
about to step into an apartment building on Marquesa Street, just three blocks
from his church, when he heard a voice call, "Father Silvera! Help me!"
It was a little child's voice, and he didn't recognize it at first. But then he
heard "Please help me!" and a series of broken sobs that faded away. He looked
across the street and up, and there in a broken third-floor window was Juanita
LaPaz, her tiny face barely visible over the sill. He could see her fingers
grasping the wood tightly, her eyes wide and terrified. "Please I wan' my papa!
I wan' my . . ." She started to cry again, her hands going to cover her eyes,
and then she disappeared from the window.
Silvera ran across the street, his shoes sinking down into sand, and entered the
building. It seemed deserted and was as hot and dirty as a bowl of street-corner
chili. He took the stairs three at a time and was panting when he got to the
third- floor hallway, which was littered with newspapers and old furniture and
clothes. Graffiti covered the walls, along with splatters of what looked like
paint and dried blood. He paused, listening for the little girl's crying.
"Juanita?" he called out. "It's Father Silvera! Where are you, querida?"
He heard her muffled sobbing a couple of doors away. When he opened the door, he
found her standing barefoot in a room whose walls were covered with Power to the
People posters. Beneath her black bangs, her eyes looked dull and glazed, as
if-oh, my God! Silvera thought-as if someone had given her drugs. She stood
staring at him and shivered.
"Thank God I've found you!" Silvera said, bending down and hugging her. She
didn't respond; her arms hung limply at her sides. "Are you all right?"
"Si" she replied very softly. She seemed to be staring right through him.
"Where's the man who took you, Juanita? Where did he go?"
289
290
"Gone far away. Please help me, I wan' my papa. Gone far away. Please help me, I
wan' my . . ." Her eyes moved a fraction, staring over his right shoulder, and
he saw a quicksilver glimmer of the terror frozen behind the doll-like mask of
her face.
Silvera twisted his head around just as Cicero leapt through the doorway with a
triumphant shriek.
They slammed together and crashed to the floor. Cicero hissed and tried to force
the priest's chin back to get at the jugular vein. Silvera tried to gouge out
the thing's eyes, but every time he struck, Cicero's head whipped to one side to
evade the blow. Silvera clung to the crucifix with all his strength, and with
his free hand he slammed an uppercut to the vampire's jaw. Cicero blinked but
seemed unhurt. The vampire's head darted forward, fangs glistening. Silvera
threw his arm across his neck and spat into the thing's eyes. Cicero recoiled,
and Silvera struck out with his fist again, so hard he felt the vibration thrum
up his shoulder. Before the thing could regain its grip, Silvera twisted and got
a knee between them, then kicked out with tremendous thigh-cracking effort.
Cicero was flung back across the floor, but he quickly scrambled to his feet.
Silvera stood up, his lungs heaving. He grasped Juanita's shoulder and shook her
hard to try to break the vampire's power over her. "Get behind me, Juanita!
Hurry!" She was too dazed to understand.
Cicero grinned, the fangs sliding out of his upper and lower jaws. "Ain't gonna
be so easy as that, Mr. Priest. Oh, nooooo. You in old Cicero's territory now.
You got to play by my rules." The vampire stepped forward, hands curling into
claws.
Silvera took a step backward. The crucifix felt leaden in his left hand. He held
it up and thrust it forward at the vampire, his arm trembling. "Get back!" he
commanded. "Your master's dead, Cicero! He's destroyed!"
Cicero stopped, his face contorting. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
"'Get back'? Ha! Man, you been watchin' too many old movies!" His eyes flamed.
"Cicero Clinton ain't ashamed of what he is! I never believed in that religion
bullshit anyway, man, so that thing don't hurt me none now! And you're wrong.
The Master lives! He's in me right now, and I'm hungry, reallll hungry ..." He
came forward, his claws twitching, his face split by that leering, terrible
grin.
Silvera grabbed the little girl and shoved her against the wall so he stood
between her and the vampire. He heard her saying, like a broken record, ". . .
gone far away. Please help me, I wan' my papa . . ."
"Gonna take you out slow, Mr. Priest," Cicero whispered. "Gonna make you hurt .
. ." He tensed, knees bending for the leap. When he came for the priest's
throat, he was a savage blur of motion.
But Silvera stood his ground. He swung the crucifix around in a vicious arc,
aiming for the vampire's head. Cicero twisted slightly, but the sharp brass edge
sliced a sizzling wound at the base of his neck. The dead flesh rippled and
writhed, trying to close the smoking tear. There were yellowish-white tissues in
the cut, but the vampire did not bleed. Silvera stepped forward quickly and
struck again, aiming
291
for the same place. The cut's edges now hissed and widened. Cicero staggered
back, trying to shield the wound with his hands. Silvera's strength was
weakening rapidly, and he felt his grip slipping. He feinted toward the thing's
eyes, then struck again at the neck. Gray flesh ripped like rotten cheesecloth,
exposing dead tissue and veins. The next blow of the crucifix almost severed
Cicero's head from his body. The vampire staggered back, arms flailing in pain.
Cicero's face hung at a right angle. It was contorted with fury; the fangs
clicked together, seeking a hold on human flesh.
Then Cicero shrieked and rushed forward, trying to get the crucifix away from
Silvera. The priest braced himself and swung out with the rest of his ebbing
strength.
Cicero's head ripped from his body and tumbled into a corner. The headless body
staggered on, its claws gripping Silvera's coat and hanging there; the fingers
still writhed. Silvera could feel the waves of cold rolling off it, and he heard
himself cry out in terror. He jerked away from the thing, and the body crumpled
to the floor at his feet.
It was then that Juanita screamed and ran into his arms. He hugged her close,
pressing her head against his shoulder so she would not see anymore of the
horror. Across the room the fangs in the severed head kept clicking like
dreadful castanets. The body at his feet suddenly shuddered, twisting like a
dying snake. "God help us!" Silvera breathed. The body's limbs were still
moving, it was pushing itself toward the head in the corner. Silvera didn't wait
to see what would happen when it got there. With Juanita around his neck,
Silvera raised the crucifix high over his head and slammed it down through the
thing's spine. Bone and wood cracked; Silvera had driven the crucifix through
the body and into the floor. The vampire writhed, the feet trying to push it
forward, but it was firmly pinned to the floor. The fangs began to grind
together. Silvera left the crucifix where it was, put his arms around Juanita,
and raced out of the building.
On the street he realized that he and the child were unprotected, but he felt
certain that if he hadn't left Cicero's body pinned, it would have crawled
across that floor and somehow made itself whole again. His stomach turned over
at the thought. The moving shadows seemed to be on all sides. He was running now
as hard as he could, his lungs pumping like bellows. He thought he heard
something coming up from behind, but when he dared to look back, he saw nothing.
Less than a half-block from the church, he saw a corpse lying in the middle of
the street. He was almost around it when the corpse's hand shot out, grabbing
his ankle and almost tumbling him to the ground. The man raised his sand-caked
face and whispered, "Help me . . ."
292 293
Thursday, October 31
the ghost town
294 295
Tommy Chandler stirred uneasily. The last bell was ringing, echoing down the
long, silent halls of Fairfax High School. He was running and trying to hold on
to his books. When he looked back, he could see the shadow that followed him
relentlessly, its long arms swinging like the orangutan's from "Murders in the
Rue Morgue." And he heard the loathsome guttural voice rolling down on him like
a tidal wave. "I told you not to come back, fuckface . . . told you not to ...
told you not toooooo . . .!"
"Go away!" Tommy shouted, his voice cracking. "Leave me alone!" And then he
dropped his books all over the hallway, which suddenly started changing shape,
elongated to incredible dimensions like a set from The Thousand Fingers of Dr.
T. He stopped to gather up his books, but they kept slipping away from him, and
he could hear the muffled boom boom boom of Bull Thatcher's combat boots coming
up fast behind him. A shadow fell upon him like a winter storm, and he looked up
in terror . . .
... at the clock beside his bed. He could hear the alarm ringing, and he reached
out to shut it off. But before he could grasp it, the ringing stopped. He heard
his father's voice say, "Who is this? Why don't you say something? Damn it,
Cynthia, either someone's making crank phone calls or . . ."
Tommy sat up in bed and fumbled for his extra pair of eyeglasses on the table
beside his bed. He put them on and looked at the clock; it was a windup and
hadn't gone off at nine-forty, when the electricity had died. It was five
minutes after midnight. Who could be calling now? he wondered. The wind was
still screaming at his window, punctuated by the scatter-shots of sand on glass.
Before the television had gone black, the special KABC weather report had said
to expect winds of between thirty-five and fifty miles per hour. And then the TV
and lights had flickered out.
The telephone was ringing again. Tommy heard his father's muffled curse as he
picked up the receiver.
Tommy had walked home from school that afternoon buffeted by hot western winds.
He could look at the sky and tell a storm was coming because the clouds were
thickening and cartwheeling for as far as he could see. He'd never seen anything
quite like it before, not even in Denver. But the freak storm wasn't anything as
incredible as the miracle at school yesterday. Of course, he'd had to return to
the locker room, and as he was hurrying to gather up his books and get out, Mark
Sutro told him not to worry, that Bull Thatcher and Ross Weir hadn't come to
school, so he was safe. Buddy Carnes did come in while he was still at his
locker, but Carnes hadn't even given him a sidelong glance. Now there might not
296 R. McCAMMON
even be any school today. That would be great, he thought, then he could watch
"Flash Gordon" and "Thriller" on the Mexican stations ... if the electricity
came back on.
He got out of bed. From one wall a poster of Orion Kronsteen, resplendent in his
King Vampire makeup, glowered down at him. He went out into the hall and knocked
on his parents' door. His father, a thin, pale man with thick eyeglasses like
his son's, looked out. "What are you doing out of bed?"
"Woke up. Heard the phone ringing." Tommy yawned, lifted his glasses, and rubbed
his eyes. "Who's been calling?"
"I don't know. Some idiot who won't answer. I can hear a lot of static, but no
voices. Why don't you try to go back to sleep?"
"The storm's still pretty bad, isn't it, Dad?"
"Yes. It is." He paused for a few seconds and then opened the door wider. "You
want to come in and talk for a while?"
Tommy's mother, a sharp-chinned Radcliffe grad with dark, intense eyes, was
sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, making a mountain out
of the covers. She was staring at the pale green curtains drawn across the
window, watching them tremble every time an errant whisper of wind slipped
through the casement. She looked at Tommy and smiled her tight, crooked smile.
"Can't sleep either, huh?"
"Nope."
"Sounds like a hurricane, doesn't it? Gosh, who ever heard of a hurricane in
California?"
"It's not as bad as it was a little while ago," his father said quietly. He sat
on the edge of the bed and looked at the telephone. "I wonder who the hell that
was? Somebody playing a joke?"
"Not very funny," Cynthia said.
Tommy stepped to the window, pushed aside the curtain, and looked out. For an
instant he could've sworn he was back in Denver-there was snow all over the
place out there! Heaps and heaps of it, even beginning to cover over cars! But
then he saw a felled palm tree, all its fronds stripped away to leave a bare,
ugly nub, and then he remembered this was California so that couldn't possibly
be snow. It was sand, hot and thick, slowly piling up into mountainous dunes.
"Where did all this sand come from, Dad?" he asked. His heart was beating a
little faster.
"The Mojave Desert. The wind just carried it right over the mountains. That
would be our luck, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah," Tommy said. "It sure would be." He strained his eyes to see across the
street through the swirling yellow sheets to the Vernon house.
"I never wanted to come to California," Tommy's father was saying. "I told Mr.
Oakes I was an Achilles man all the way and, of course, I wanted the promotion,
but. . ." He looked at his wife. "I wish we could've stayed in Scottsdale. That
was a really beautiful city, and you didn't have to worry about earthquakes or
smog or
297
some crazy murderer running loose . . ."
"Dad," Tommy said very quietly. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, wasn't sure
at all, but he thought he should say something.
"Now this," his dad said. "Christ! No electricity, no ... where's that
transistor radio, Cynthia?"
"Dad," Tommy said. "There's-"
"The one you bought at K-Mart? I think it's still packed away in a box, honey.
Probably out in the hall closet. I doubt if the batteries are still working."
"I'll try to find it. Tommy, why don't you scare up some candles and matches if
we're going to stay up? Okay?"
Tommy nodded and looked back out the window. What he thought he'd seen -a figure
standing amidst the sand drifts on the Vernon's front yard, staring across at
his house and seemingly right at him-was no longer there now. He craned his neck
to either side but could see no one out there, if he had actually seen anyone at
all. Still, a shiver ran up his spine. He went to get the candles and matches,
passing his dad rummaging through the hall closet and feeling his way down the
stairs to the kitchen. The wind shrilled and whistled around the house, trying
to suck it off its foundations, but at the house's center there seemed to be a
hole of unearthly darkness and silence, the stuff that had crept in when the
electricity had gone. Tommy started opening drawers. He found a couple of
candles and now he needed matches. He searched on a shelf above the sink and
from the corner of his eye saw something move near the window that looked out
over their tiny backyard. He wasn't sure what it was, but it had looked like
someone ... running. He stared out, his heart pumping ice water. "Hey, Mom!" he
shouted. "Where are the matches?"
"Look under the sink!" she called down to him.
He opened a couple of cupboards down there and finally found a large pack of
Fire Chiefs, the kind you could strike anywhere. And suddenly from the front of
the house, there came an ugly-sounding whump and he could hear things crashing
around in the living room. A whirl of wind and sand hit him as he raced out of
the kitchen to the stairs. He could see the front door hanging on one hinge, and
a coffee table had gone flying against a wall. His dad called out from upstairs,
"Tommy? What was that?"
"Door's open!" he said. "The wind knocked it loose ... I guess."
"Christ! If that sand gets inside . . . Tommy, can you prop it shut?"
"I'll try!" He moved across the room against the wall of wind and dragged a
chair over to secure the door. It held, although the whistlings through the
doorjamb had grown savage. Then he hurried upstairs, the flesh at the back of
his neck beginning to creep.
His father had found the transistor radio and tuned it to KALA. A rock song was
playing, the singer wailing something about everybody being part of a food
chain. Tommy lit the candles and placed one on either side of the bed. The
gruff- voiced dj came on after the song had ended, his patter garbled by static.
"Yeaaah! That was Tonio K. and 'Life in the Foooooodchain!' Thass what it's all
about now,
298
ain't it, brothers and sisters? Lemme reeeelay to you what the scouts are
tellin' old Tiger Eddie. Got a whole lot of fine young ones trapped up in the
Hollywood Recreation Center on Lexington Avenue. You get yourself up there early
for the best pickin's, you dig? Got a few scattered all along Rosewood Avenue,
you just got to keep knockin' on them doors 'till you get lucky . . ."
"What's he talking about?" Tommy's dad asked nervously, looking at his son.
". . . old Tiger Eddie's gonna be with you right up 'til night-night time about
five-thirty this morning. Here's a little note to make your mouths water. There
are sixty-count 'em, sixty-holed up over at the Westside Jewish Center between
Olympic and San Vicente. Just a reminder-the Master don't want 'em old, you dig?
You find some old coots, just do us all a favor and fling 'em out in the wind,
okay? Yeah! Dig it!"
"Christ! What's . . . what's that idiot talking about?"
And then something stepped through the open doorway into the bedroom.
It was" Mr. Vernon. His eyes shone in a ghastly chalk-white face. He was wearing
a dirty white shirt and dark trousers, and even in the dim candlelight Tommy
could see the brownish spots on his collar. Tommy's heart leapt into his throat,
almost choking him. His mom gave out a little scream, and his dad whirled around
so fast his glasses almost flew off. "Pete!" his dad said in a trembling voice.
"What are you ... I mean . . . why are . . .?"
"I've come to visit," Pete Vernon said in a soft hiss of a voice. "Oh, listen to
that wind. Isn't it wonderful?"
"How did you . . . get in?"
"The front door, of course. As any visitor would enter. I've brought my wife
with me. Dianne?"
And then she was there, too, both of them blocking the doorway, both of them
pale and grinning.
"Don?" Tommy's mom said softly to his dad. Her face had gone white, her eyes
swimming with fear.
"Don," Dianne Vernon whispered, gripping her mouth around the name. Her eyes
shifted very slowly and stared into Tommy's face. Her gaze burned like hellfire.
Then she grinned and opened her mouth wide, and Tommy's brain screamed with the
terrible word-VAMPIRE-he'd heard in a thousand monster movies-VAMPIRE - when he
was sitting in a safe chair at a safe distance-VAMPIRE-in his own safe, private
little world, but now this was real-VAMPIRE-real, real, real . . .
"No!" he tried to shout, but it came out as a croak. Mrs. Vernon swept past him
like a gray wind, moving inexorably upon his father. He cried out, "NO," and
grasped at her, trying to hold her back. She hissed and twisted, and in the next
instant Mr. Vernon's freezing hands were on him, flinging him like a sack of
rags out into the hallway. He smacked against the wall hard and slid to the
floor, his brain reeling with pain and terror. He heard his mother scream, then
there was a high peal of wicked laughter that was so terrible Tommy thought he
would go crazy before it stopped. But when it did stop, the sucking sounds
began, and those were much, much worse.
299
And then a beautiful, terrible voice whispered, "Tommy?"
He looked up, cold sweat breaking out on his face.
It was her, mounting the stairs now and coming down the hallway toward him with
slow, supple steps. He could see the long golden hair splashed over her bare
shoulders. She was wearing a violet halter, the deep dish of her navel exposed
over tight denim cutoffs decorated with different-colored patches-one showed
Snoopy reclining atop his doghouse, another said Have a Nice Day! Her thigh
muscles tensed as she neared him, and in the darkness he could see the awful
sheen of her eyes. That beautiful flesh would never again be touched by the sun.
"Tommy?" she whispered, and when she smiled, she was still so pretty, even like
this. She held out one graceful hand to him. "How's about you and me gettin' it
on, huh?" she said softly.
"You're . . . dead!" Tommy said, the effort to speak making sweat run down his
face in rivulets. "You're not Sandy Vernon anymore. You're not human . . ."
"You're wrong, Tommy. I'm still Sandy. And I know how much you want me, Tommy. I
could always tell. That's why I liked to tease you and show off my legs for you.
I want you, too, Tommy. I want you reeeeeeal bad . . ." She stepped forward,
about to touch him. Her eyes blazed with wicked and soul-shaking promises. He
felt all on fire and yet so cold, as if he stood facing an inferno while a
blizzard raged at his back. His mind slipped toward her, and he began to
envision all the wonderful possibilities, how he could just put his hand into
hers-NO!-and she would guide him right into his own room to the bed-NO! YOU
CAN'T-and then it would be better than anything he'd ever known, better than a
Mexican horror film festival- SHE'S IN YOUR MIND, GET HER OUT.'-or even three
Orion Kronsteen films right in a row, all he would have to do would be to lie
back and let her-GET HER OUT, SHE'S COMING CLOSER.'-do everything to him,
everything, everyth-
"GET OUT!" he shrieked. "GET OUT!" He twisted away from her grasp, from the
fangs that were coming down out from under her full, luscious lips, arid raced
back along the hallway. He burst through a door into the bathroom and locked it
just before the beautiful vampire started battering on the wood. "Let me in!"
she shrieked in a frenzy. "You little bastard, let me in right now.'"
There was a tremendous blow, and the door shuddered; wood began to split. The
blows followed one after the other very rapidly now, and Tommy thought that Mr.
and Mrs. Vernon were probably out there, too, helping to batter the door down. A
great crevice suddenly appeared in the wood; the door started to cave in.
Tommy realized he was still gripping the pack of matches. But what good were
they? What could he do with them? He couldn't think; the noise outside was too
loud. Then he flung open the medicine cabinet and was sweeping aside bottles of
vitamins, cough medicine, and cold capsules. There was nothing he could use.
Suddenly the door shattered, and they were on him, all three of them ravenous
and fighting over him, trying to tear him to pieces. They started to drag him
out of the bathroom.
His hand clutched a can of his mom's hair spray, which was sitting on the sink.
300
As Mr. Vernon's grip closed on his throat, he shook a match into his hand and
flailed out, trying to scrape it across the wall. He missed, and now Sandy was
trying to grasp his arm, screaming shrilly, "HE'S MINE! HE'S MINE! IT'S NOT
FAIR!"
Tommy reached out, almost popping his shoulder out of the socket, and dragged
the match across plaster. It sputtered and flared, illuminating the sudden burst
of fear in the vampire's eyes. Tommy knocked the cap off the hair spray can, got
his thumb on the button, and pushed. Immediately he could smell sweet flowers,
and the image of his blood-drained mother lying in the next room streaked
through his head. He held the match up in front of the spray just as Mr. Vernon
made a guttural animal noise and leapt for his throat.
A two-foot jet of flames shot out of the spray can. He heard Mrs. Vernon scream,
and he stuck that blue torch right in her husband's face.
Mr. Vernon roared in agony as the flame hit his eyes. He staggered back out of
the bathroom, he and Sandy fighting for an instant as they jammed into each
other in the doorway. Tommy charged them, keeping his thumb pressed down. The
vampires stumbled over each other, trying to get away. "Come on back and fight!"
Tommy screamed at them. "Come on, you dirty bastards!" He forgot and released
his thumb. The flame instantly went out. Sandy's eyes gleamed, and she started
back along the hallway for him. Tommy raced back to the bathroom, where the
matches lay scattered on the floor. He struck another one and lit his torch
again; this time he kept more matches clutched in his hand. Sandy stopped just
beyond the bathroom door and immediately backed away. "We'll get you!" she
promised from the head of the stairs. "We'll come back for you, you'll see!"
And then they were gone, sweeping down the stairs and away.
Tommy couldn't lift his thumb for another minute. The flame went out, and he
stood in the midst of a stinking swirl of smoke. He was trembling, but he was
afraid to cry because he knew if he started to, he couldn't stop. He was sure
those things meant what they said-they would be back.
It was a long time before he could make himself go into his parents' bedroom. On
the floor Tiger Eddie's voice still growled from the transistor radio. "Oh
yeaaaaah, brothers and sisters, got some real fine news for you if you happen to
be huntin' out Santa Monica way. Seems there's a whole bunch of'em stuck out at
the Santa Monica Airport waitin' on planes that never took off, can ya dig it?
You be first over there and have yourselves some fun for Tiger Eddie, okay?
Gonna be keepin' you up-to-date 'til sign-off time. Right now here's a fine disc
from the Motels . . ."
Tommy picked up the radio and flung it against the wall. It shattered into small
bits of plastic and metal. Then he stood and looked down at his parents' bodies,
a sob trying to work its way out of his throat.
He began to cry, but he kept his finger on the hair spray button.
301 TWO
The madman next door was singing again, trying to outshout the wind. "Onnnn
Christ the solid rock I stand . . . alllll other ground is sinking sand, alllll
other ground isssss sinking ... I see you out there! You stay away, you hear
me!" There was a quick crack of a shot fired at shadows. Then silence except for
a few hoarse sobs.
You'd better save those bullets, Palatazin thought. They may not be worth much,
but I'm sure they're better than nothing. He was sitting on the floor beside the
window, his back against the wall. Jo lay on the sofa, drifting in and out of a
troubled sleep.
Gayle came back from the kitchen, eating a slice of ham. "You sure you don't
want any more of this?" she asked him quietly. "It's just going to go bad in
that fridge."
He shook his head.
"There's fruit," she said. "Some apples and oranges."
"No. I don't want anything." He watched as she stepped cautiously to the window
and peered out. "You'd better get some sleep while you can," he told her.
"How long until sunrise?"
"About three hours."
Softly, she said, "When is that wind going to stop?"
"The storm's died a little bit," he said, "but I wouldn't suggest our trying to
leave this house. There's no telling what we might run into. I think we're about
as safe here as we could possibly be."
"Some consolation. What happens at dawn?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know the vampires go crawling back into their graves or holes or whatever,
but what happens to us? Where do we go when the storm stops?"
Palatazin almost voiced his fears-that the storm had somehow been brought on by
the vampires and would not stop, but would probably intensify during the
daylight hours to keep the pockets of humanity isolated from each other-but he
didn't. Instead, he said quietly, "I want you and Jo to try to get out."
"Okay, I'll buy that. But what about you?"
"I'm going to finish what I began. I'm going to find a way up to the Kronsteen
castle . . ."
"Alone? You're crazy if-"
"Yes, alone," he said firmly. "And I may be crazy, I admit it. But who else is
there to do it? And if it's not done-if it's not at least tried-then from now on
every night will be just like this one. People hiding in the dark, waiting for
the vampires. When they're finished here, they're going to sweep eastward, town
after town, city after city. Los Angeles is now, for all intents and purposes,
theirs. How long do you think smaller cities would last? How long before they
reach Chicago and New
302
York? I think there are already vampires in those cities, placed there by their
master as advance scouts. But I think they're waiting to see how successful
these vampires are here before they begin massing their armies."
"Surely some news is getting out to the rest of the country!" Gayle said.
"Surely . . . somebody out there knows . . . what's happening to us! Don't
they?"
Palatazin shook his head. "I doubt it. Right now all they know is that the
sandstorm of the century has hit L.A. Other than that, what could they know? How
could the news get out? No, Miss Clarke, I'm afraid we're quite isolated, which,
of course, is exactly what the vampires want."
She was silent for a moment, wincing as a gust of wind blew sand against the
glass. She sat down in a chair, drawing her legs up underneath her. "Why did
they choose L.A.?" she asked him finally. "Why begin with us?"
"I'm not sure. Oh, I have my theories, but..." He shrugged. "Los Angeles may be
one of the largest cities in the world, but it's really a gathering of villages,
many of them having no real contact or intermingling with any of the others. I
think the vampire king has had . . . much experience in taking villages, and he
began here because he recognized that fact about L.A. Also, he probably realized
how isolated this city already is from the rest of the country, cut off by
mountains and desert. And if you hear about strange goings on in L.A.-for
instance that Gravedigger thing-most people here and in other parts of the
country tend to simply shrug and say, 'Well, that's life in Los Angeles.'
Believe me, the vampire king has studied this city thoroughly, and he saw how he
could take advantage of such attitudes. Also, to conquer a city of this size . .
. think of the confidence that's going to give the vampires who are scattered
all over this country, waiting for their master's command. They're going to
think they're invisible, that nothing can stand in their way. They may be
right."
"How are you going to get up that mountain with those dogs standing guard?"
He looked at her and smiled grimly. "I don't know."
Gayle shivered. "Maybe I will try to get some sleep. God knows I need it. I'm
going to go scare up a pillow and a blanket." She rose to her feet and started
toward the stairs.
"Will you bring a pillow for Jo, too, please?" he asked her.
"Sure. Back in a minute." She climbed the stairs in the dark, her hand gripping
the banister hard. She opened a door and peered in. It was a bedroom. There were
a couple of pillows on the bed, but the blanket and bedspread had been kicked
off. She gathered up the pillows, hurrying because the moan of the wind at the
windows sounded so ghastly, when her heart gave a violent kick. She stared at
the bed, an odd recollection ticking in her brain.
There were no sheets. Just as in Jack's apartment before she'd found him . . .
"Palatazin," she said. It came out as a dry, throaty whisper.
Something rustled in the room, shifting heavily. There was the muffled noise of
ripping cloth.
"Oh, God," Gayle whimpered, one hand going to her mouth. "Oh, God, no, no, no .
. ."
303
In the darkness the closet door began to open. Another movement caught her eye,
and now she could see a cocooned shape writhing out from under the bed. It
jerked and stretched and, with the soft tearing of cloth, a grasping white hand
protruded, fingers clawing at the sheet. A body came tumbling out of the closet.
It was the gray-haired man in the mantel photographs, his legs still wrapped
tightly. He fought to get free, and slowly his gaze turned upon Gayle. His eyes
flamed.
Gayle screamed. She backed out of the bedroom, and as she did, she saw a woman's
head appear out of the other shroud. "WHAT IS IT?" she heard Palatazin shout
from downstairs. "GAYLE?"
She started down the stairs, tripped and fell headlong before she could grasp
the banister. When she looked back, she saw the man coming at her, a black
tongue licking his lower lip. He reached down and grasped her arm, his grip
colder than the dead of winter. His grinning sickle of a mouth gaped, and Gayle
almost fainted with horror as the fangs began to close in on her throat.
Palatazin stepped to the foot of the stairs with Jo behind him. The vampire, its
fangs a half-inch from Gayle's jugular vein, looked up, its eyes narrowing as it
sensed that something was not right.
Palatazin flung out his arm with the bottle of holy water clamped in his hand
and saw the droplets spray across the vampire's face. Instantly the vampire
shrieked in agony, trying to hold an arm over its eyes. It let go of Gayle and
scurried up the stairs. Palatazin followed, his face gone gray.
In the bedroom the vampire whirled to face him, and Palatazin could see the
smoking holes where the drops of water had struck. The female vampire had almost
kicked free from her shroud, and now she began to crawl across the floor toward
the scent of hot blood. The male vampire hissed and advanced toward Palatazin.
He stepped back, slamming against the wall, and flung out with the bottle again.
A machine-gun slash of holes crossed the vampire's forehead, putting out one
eye. The thing screamed and fell to its knees, writhing in pain as if it had
been sprayed with acid. When Palatazin stepped toward it, the vampire staggered
up, shuddering with fear, and crashed through the window on the other side of
the bedroom in a silvery shower of glass.
The female vampire gripped Palatazin's ankle, pulling herself toward him. He
poured a little of the water in the palm of his hand and flung it quickly into
her face. She howled and contorted, pulling free of her cocoon, both hands
pressed to her eyes. Then she was up and staggering blindly, trying to find the
window. When her hand closed on the glass fragments on the sill, she pulled
herself up and over, falling out of sight.
Palatazin looked through the window, wind whipping into his face. He saw the two
figures, still running, and heard the madman's strident cry, "Ye foul spawn of
Satan I strike the blow of God." There were three quick shots, and the vampires
disappeared into the storm. Palatazin was stunned; he'd had no idea the holy
water would have that destructive an effect. His stomach heaved, dark motes
spinning before his eyes. He could hear Gayle downstairs, babbling hysterically.
When his
304
dizziness passed, he looked at the bottle of holy water. It was a little less
than half full now. What was in this water that could've caused a reaction like
that? he wondered. There was a single drop remaining in the palm of his hand. He
sniffed it, then licked it.
The water was salty.
Seawater? he asked himself. Then perhaps the salt had an immediate, corrosive
effect on the vampires' dead flesh? He didn't know why Father Silvera had
brought him seawater, but he was decidedly grateful for it.
"Andy?" Jo called from downstairs. Then in a panicked voice, "ANDY!" He walked
back down the stairs on trembling legs. "I'm all right," he assured her. "I'm
fine. But now we have to check this house from top to bottom. I don't think
there are any more of them hiding here, but we have to be certain." He looked
into the living room where Gayle was huddled on the sofa, whimpering like a
little girl. "You're going to be all right, Miss Clarke?" he asked her.
"Yeah," she said quickly. "Yeah. Yeah. Let me get my breath. Okay. Yeah." He
nodded, knowing there was very little that would keep her down for long. He
squeezed Jo's hand. "We'll start with the basement," he said quietly.
THREE
Tommy was running. Behind him his house was on fire.
He hadn't thought it would go up so quickly, but he figured the wind had helped
fan the blaze. He'd stood over his parents' corpses for a long time, just
looking at them and wondering what to do. He knew what was supposed to happen
now. His mom and dad were supposed to sleep until the next nightfall, and then
sometime in the darkness they would awaken to walk the streets with the rest of
the Undead. That's what happened in all the movies.
The Undead.
That sounds so cold, Tommy had thought. So final. Once you've stepped across
that line, you don't come back, not ever. But this is my mom and dad lying here,
not . . . vampires! "Wake up," he whispered in the terrible darkness. "Both of
you . . . please . . . wake up . . ."
But they hadn't even moved, and Tommy could see the deep punctures on their
throats that told him they weren't ever going to wake up as Don and Cynthia
Chandler again.
So after a long time of just standing there, he'd gone to his room, put on his
jeans, a shirt, and his all-weather jacket, then looked in his closet for the
old Army surplus backpack he'd used briefly when he was a Boy Scout in
Scottsdale. He'd put some matches into his jacket pocket, then the rest of them
went into the backpack along with an extra can of hair spray and his dad's Right
Guard aerosol deodorant. He went downstairs and made himself a couple of
peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwiches, put them in sandwich bags, and slipped them
into the pack along
305
THEY THIRST
with a meat cleaver he found in a drawer. The main question that faced him was
whether he should try to make it to the ocean or head up into the mountains.
He'd thought about staying here in the house until sunrise, but he couldn't bear
the idea of letting his parents slip over that Undead line, and he couldn't stay
with them lying in the bedroom all white and empty. The ocean was too far away,
so he decided on the mountains.
But one thing he couldn't be sure of was how many real people there were in the
houses around him, and how many vampires waited out there for little boys
running in the night. He decided that is he saw anyone, he would assume the
worst. He folded the sheets around his parents and stuffed newspapers under the
bed. Then he cried a little bit before he could muster the nerve to strike the
first match. He lit his spray-can torch and touched the flame to the sheets;
they crisped and caught fire very quickly. There was no way he could wait to see
if the bodies caught or not. He turned and ran, his face scorched by an
agonizing lick of flame.
Now he was racing along the edge of Hancock Park, sand stinging his cheeks, the
wind bringing the odors of oranges and cloves from the tar pits, the air
metallic in his gasping lungs. He could tell the storms had diminished in force
during the last several hours. Now sand dunes lay scattered across the white
field of the park, and broken branches littered his path. He was a good runner;
he knew he could last a long time because whenever he jogged with his mom and
dad in the evenings he always left them behind and just kept on going until he
looked back and saw them as only two struggling dots. His heart seemed jammed up
in his throat. He turned and thought he saw a faint reddish glow in the sky
where his house was-had been-but he wasn't sure. He decided not to look back
again.
He was heading northeast toward the only wooded refuge he could think of that
was anywhere near his house. In August his dad had taken him up to the Nature
Museum and Bird Sanctuary on Mount Hollywood, then down into the four thousand
acres (so the guidebook had said) of Griffith Park. There were a lot of bridle
paths crisscrossing the park but very few roads, and Tommy remembered being
amazed at how close a really unspoiled mountain area was to the winding
residential streets of Hollywood. So that was where he had to go. He knew he
could lose himself in that park, but getting there meant crossing through the
heart of Hollywood, and he was bitterly afraid of what might be lurking there.
He still gripped the can of hair spray he'd repelled the Vernons with, and there
were good old dependable Fire Chiefs-what I used to burn up my mom and dad with,
he thought suddenly-in his jacket pocket. As he ran, he saw the wind rippling
currents of sand before him, and he thought of that terrified kid in Invaders
from Mars, running across a sand hill that whirlpooled beneath his feet to send
him into a subterranean world of alien horrors.
And then he was aware of the figure running behind him about thirty yards off to
the left. Tommy looked over his shoulder. There was a hideous moon-white face
floating toward him from the darkness. He increased his speed, zigzagging deeper
into the park. When he dared to look back, the thing was gone.
306
The high fence around the largest of the tar pits had blown down; a sheen of
sand, white mottled with black, covered the surface of a lake from which a huge
concrete mastodon struggled to escape. Tommy ran along its edge toward the
eastern edge of the park. He passed benches stripped of paint where the old men
played checkers on Saturday mornings; he passed long strips of pavement that
would not be used by Sunday afternoon roller-skaters for a long time to come.
And then something slammed into the small of his back. A hand dug into his
jacket, almost ripping it off his shoulders, and flung him to the ground with
brutal force.
He lay there fighting for breath, a shrill alarm, Don't let them bite you!
Don't, don't, don't! screaming in his head. He'd lost his grip on the spray can,
and when he raised his head, he saw a couple of hulking boys standing over him,
both of them leering in anticipation. The one who'd knocked him down was a
fat-jowled Chicano with thick eyebrows and a spill of dirty black hair on his
forehead; he wore a blood- spattered blue workshirt. The vampire looked at the
can of hair spray at his feet and kicked it far out into the tar lake, where it
sank with a burst of bubbles. Then he advanced on Tommy, his eyes already glazed
with pleasure.
But before the vampire could reach Tommy, a length of chain came snaking out of
the darkness, cracking the Chicano across the face. He fell to his knees,
howling with rage. The second vampire, a skinny, dark-haired kid with a scraggly
mustache and goatee, whirled around to face the attacker. The chain whirred,
striking him in the temple. He staggered and was about to rush forward when he
saw who it was that had struck him.
Tommy's heart had risen; now it fell again to a sickening depth. Bull Thatcher,
armed with a three-foot chain, had stepped between Tommy and the two vampires.
Tommy could see the bloodless, awful face of the Fairfax High Horror.
"You're on my turf," Bull said menacingly. "I'm huntin' here. Get out."
"It's our kill, you . . ." the Chicano began. He was silenced when the chain
whistled across his face again.
"GET OUT!" Bull roared.
Tommy, his arms shaking so badly they moved like a jerky marionette's, slowly
began to slip off his backpack.
"Get out, both of you!" Bull repeated. "I'm hungry, and I'm takin' this kill,
you understand?" The vampires glowered at each other hotly but began to retreat
when Bull lifted that chain and cracked it to the ground like a whip.
"We'll get you!" the Chicano shouted. "We'll find you when you're sleepin', and
we'll fix you . . ."
Bull moved forward a few steps, the chain swinging above his head. The vampires
were running away now. Tommy threw his pack off, got to his feet, and ran in the
other direction. Bull Thatcher watched the vampires run out of sight with a
defiant smirk and then turned for his prize. Running along the lake's edge,
Tommy heard his angered roar and flinched. He unsnapped a pocket and reached in.
Bull Thatcher was chasing him, coming like the wind. Sweat popped up on
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Tommy's face; he could hear the thing gaining on him, and he dared not look
back.
But then he heard the chain whistling toward his right ear, and he ducked his
head, spinning around to face Bull and bringing out the meat cleaver in a
tightly clenched fist at the same time. Before Bull could stop, Tommy had flung
himself at the thing, burying that cleaver between the vampire's eyes with all
his strength. Bull, thrown off-balance, staggered and fell into the tar pit on
his back. Instantly bubbles exploded around his body, and he flailed at the air
for something to grab. "NOOOO!" he roared like a maddened animal. "NO! I WONT
LET YOU-!" Water and tar rushed into his mouth. He began to sink, tar streaking
his face in thick black lines. He fought wildly, but the tar had him and he knew
it. He began to scream, the meat cleaver buried in his forehead but the wound
bloodless.
Tommy knew the other vampires would hear and come back. He started to run again,
slipping his pack around his trembling shoulders. He wanted to be sick, he
wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, but there wasn't time for any of that baby
stuff anymore. When he looked back, he saw Bull's face disappear, and the scream
bubbled away.
He ran on, breathing in great painful heaves. He left the park and ran northward
across Third Street and through dark, silent residential streets where the
merest suggestion of movement was enough to make him whine with fear. Then he
was across Beverly Boulevard, still going north. Sand whipped into his face;
were it not for his glasses, he would have been blinded. His lungs flamed, and
now he knew he couldn't go much farther. The worst part of it lay ahead, those
main arteries through Hollywood. He was certain the vampires would be waiting
there. How many would there be? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? He crossed Melrose
and started to veer toward the northeast; he saw a group of moving shadows and
dived beneath some hedges until they passed. He made himself continue,
staggering from street to street, crossing through backyards and alleys. A gust
of hot wind hit him, almost stealing the last of his breath. Light-headed, he
tripped and almost fell over something that he realized three strides later must
have been a corpse.
And then a voice roared over his head. "I see you, child of the devil! Ye legion
of Lucifer . . .!" There was a loud crack! right behind his ear, then a freight
train knocked him off his feet and rumbled on past, leaving him crushed in the
sand.
FOUR
"A boy!" Jo said, peering out the window through widened eyes. "That maniac shot
a boy!"
Palatazin eased over beside her and looked out. He could see the small figure
lying prone in the sand right in front of the house. At first he'd thought the
boy must be a vampire, but if that were so, a single bullet wouldn't have
stopped him. Palatazin paused, his heart beginning to hammer, then took his .38
from its shoulder-holster.
308
Jo stared fearfully at the gun. "What are you going to do?"
"That boy may not be dead. I'll have to go out and see." He moved past her
toward the door and, from the sofa, Gayle said, "For Christ's sake, be careful!"
Palatazin nodded and squeezed out the door onto the porch, where a furnace
breath of wind rocked him on his heels. Grit stung his eyes, and he had to wait
a moment before he could see anything. Then he was moving down the porch steps,
his grip already sweaty on his .38. He was alert for any movement in the windows
of that silent house next door, but so far he couldn't tell where the man was.
He tensed and then ran out to the curb where that boy lay sprawled on his face.
Palatazin could see a bleeding gash across the back of his head, the dark brown
hair matted with blood. He got his arms under the boy and started to lift him.
"Heathen!" the voice shrieked. "God's blight on the world!" A shot rang out,
kicking up sand two feet away. Palatazin lifted the boy, struggled to his feet,
and started to run back to the house. Another bullet screamed past Palatazin's
face, leaving what he thought was a burning red streak in the sullen air. Then
he was on the porch, and Jo was opening the door to pull him in.
Gayle had brought a pillow and bedspread from upstairs, and now Palatazin laid
the boy on the sofa, his forehead cradled against the pillow. "How badly is he
hurt?" Gayle asked.
"I don't know. The bullet took off some scalp at the back of his head, probably
gave him one hell of a knock, too." He took off the boy's backpack and laid it
on the floor. It was heavy, and things clanked together inside. He unzipped and
unsnapped several of the backpacks' pockets, rummaging through them. "I'd say he
was prepared for a little of everything," Palatazin said. "I wonder where he was
trying to get to."
Jo was gingerly parting the boy's hair to look at the wound. In the darkness she
couldn't see it very well, but her fingers were already sticky with warm blood.
She reached over and grasped his wrist. The pulse seemed strong if erratic. "Can
you find me some towels, Andy?" she said. "Maybe we can stop some of this
bleeding."
He went upstairs to search the bathroom.
The boy suddenly stirred and moaned. He said in a weary, old-man's voice,
"You're dead . . . leave me alone! . . . burned them up, I burned them, burned
them . . ." Then he was quiet again.
"Do you think he's going to die?" Gayle asked.
"I'm certainly no doctor," Jo said. "But he's a small boy. I hope he's stronger
than he looks."
Palatazin brought the towels, one of which he'd soaked in cold water. Jo started
cleaning the crusted blood away, then pressed a towel against the wound.
Gayle watched for a few minutes and then turned away. She could hear the wind's
shriek outside, and it seemed to her that it sounded much more savage than it
had only half an hour before. She stepped to the window and saw sand
corkscrewing in the middle of the street like a miniature tornado. The window
rattled in its frame. Oh, my God, she thought. Oh, no ... "How long until
sunrise?" she asked Palatazin.
309
"An hour or so."
"My God," she whispered. "I... I think the storm's building again. The wind's
getting stronger." Her control broke, hot fear flooding out of her. "Why won't
the storm move out to sea? Why won't it just ... go away or die down or ...
leave us alone? Why won't it?" She turned to stare at Palatazin.
"Because somehow they brought it here," he said quietly. Jo looked up at him
from the boy. "It'll grow stronger during the daylight hours to keep people
isolated and trapped. Then when night falls again, the vampires will be out in
full force."
"We can't ... we can't last another night!" Jo's voice was thick with dread.
"I know that. Somehow I've got to reach that castle today. I've got to find the
vampire king and destroy him."
"How?" Gayle asked. "When the storm gets worse, you won't even be able to get
two blocks from here, much less make it all the way across fucking Hollywood!
And what about those dogs up there? Do you think they'll step off the road and
just let you walk right on past?"
"No. I don't. I'm going to make it up the mountain some way other than the
road-"
"Climb it? Now you're really flipping out."
"What would you presume I do?" he shouted at her, his face reddening. "What are
my choices? There's Death on every side now, but shall we just sit here and wait
for it to come grinning in the night? NO! I have to reach the Kronsteen castle
before sundown!"
The boy stirred again. "Kronsteen . . ." he moaned. "Vampire. Bit you . . ."
Palatazin looked down at the small body in surprise. What could this boy know of
Orion Kronsteen? But then the boy was quiet, and whatever questions Palatazin
had for him would have to wait-if he could ever answer them at all.
"You can't make it up to that castle," Gayle said. Behind her the wind gnawed at
the glass.
"If I don't" he answered her coldly, "who will?"
Jo could see that Andy had already decided, and there was nothing more to be
said. She went back to work on the boy, her eyes burning. It was all hopeless,
of course. Everything was hopeless, she thought, from his reaching the castle to
her being able to save this boy. But perhaps in Andy's decision there was a
spark of hope that might keep them all alive for just one more day.
FIVE
Prince Vulkan sat at the head of his council table in his attack command
chamber, the same room in which he had crushed Phillip Falco's skull and tossed
him into the fireplace. The stink of charred meat still clung to the walls. Maps
of i| Los Angeles were smoothed out before him, and at the table sat his
lieutenants, Kobra on his right and Roach-the only human within a radius of more
than a mile-at his left.
310
It was almost time to sleep. Prince Vulkan could feel the heavy weariness
overtaking him fast, but he was elated. From the reports of his lieutenants
those areas called Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles, Culver City, and Highland
Park had been completely overrun. The human population of Boyle Heights had been
reduced to a few hidden groups, and the central part of Hollywood had all but
fallen as well. His lieutenants were as fat as ticks. Like celebrants at a Roman
orgy, they had fed, thrown up blood, fed, thrown up again, and feverishly hunted
down more victims.
"Master," a young black vampire, who had in life been an administrative aide to
the mayor, was saying, "the East Division needs more troops in Alhambra and
Monterey Park. We can take those areas in one night if we're allowed another
thousand." He wore the dirty remnants of what had been an expensive gray vested
suit; there were spatters of blood on his shirt.
"It's most important to concentrate on the canyon communities, Master," a
vampire across the table said. He had curly iron-gray hair and wore a profusion
of silver chains spilling down the open vee of his Calvin Klein western shirt.
Up until several nights ago he had been a major power at the Warner Bros,
studios. "I've had reports from both Laurel and Coldwater canyons of scattered
sightings. They're trying to escape across the Santa Monica Mountains."
Vulkan's gaze flared. "Were they stopped?"
"Yes. Most of them . . ."
"You didn't answer my question. They weren't stopped, were they?" Vulkan stared
at him for a silent moment, his cat eyes blazing.
"We ... we need more troops to patrol the . . . canyons," he protested softly,
beginning to tremble.
Vulkan leaned forward. "I want none of them escaping, do you understand that?
None of them. I don't care if the Central Division has to go without food. I
want those gaps filled. And they will be filled. Won't they?"
The vampire nodded. "Immediately, Master."
"Perhaps Western Division can spare a thousand or so?" Vulkan looked across the
table at a young vampire with shoulder-length blond hair and the last yellow
tinge of a surfer's tan.
"We can after we finish up in Venice," he said. "Lots of 'em are still hidin' in
their basements over there. Then we'll go right through the condos at Marina Del
Rey like shit through a goose, just slice 'em to pieces. I figure we can spare a
thousand or so easy."
"Good." Vulkan's eyes were bright and giddy. He grinned and clasped his hands
together, like a child at a carnival who sees so many lights he doesn't know
where to turn first. He wished his father could see him now; he knew the Hawk
would be very proud, perhaps even a bit envious. His father's greatest
campaign-a war of revenge into the wild northland after rampaging barbarians had
set two of the Hawk's villages to the torch-had lasted almost six months and
resulted in a critical weakening of his army. Now here was Prince Conrad Vulkan,
son of the Hawk, who would be young and strong forever, on the eve of conquering
a city the size of
311
which might have driven his father to madness. His army could never lose its
strength; it would only grow in power, night after night, faster and faster,
until the world trembled at its thunderous approach. Oh, he thought, how good it
was to be alive! He looked at Kobra. "And the armored infantry? How many do you
command now, Kobra?"
"The Death Machine, the Ghost Riders, most of the Angels, and the Undertakers
-about thirty-five hundred able to ride right now, another fifteen hundred
who'll be ready tomorrow night. We've got the hogs in a warehouse over near the
river, but I don't know how long the engines are gonna last with all this sand
blowin' around. That shit gets in the carbs and the fuel lines, and there's hell
to pay. 'Course, we've got mechanics workin' on 'em but . . ."
"You won't have to deal with the sand much longer," Vulkan said. "Once our
objective is reached, the storm will pass. Until then you'll have to make do."
He looked to the center of the table, where the sand was beginning to corkscrew
faster in the gleaming golden bowl. The others had stared at it fearfully when
they'd come to the council, and none of them dared touch it.
"What powers that, Master?" Roach asked, his voice brimming with wonder. It
looked to him like some gleaming jewel, a golden mechanism sent spinning by a
force he couldn't even begin to understand.
"The hand that powers us all," Prince Vulkan said. "It's a holy object, and you
would do well to remember that." He cast his gaze along the table. "Any more
comments, reports, or suggestions? No? Then it is time to sleep. The council is
adjourned." They rose from their chairs and moved toward the door. "Sleep well,"
Vulkan told them, and then looked up at Roach, who'd lagged behind. "Yes?"
"I just wanted to ... say ... I want to be like you someday. I want to ... live
forever, like you and the others. I want to know what it feels like, Master."
His eyes were huge and shining behind his glasses, and he was almost panting.
"Will you make me like you?"
Vulkan regarded him in silence for a moment. "Perhaps someday," he said finally.
"Right now I need you as you are."
"I'll do anything for you, I'll follow you anywhere! Anything you ask, but
please let me feel the power, too!"
Vulkan said, "Leave me. I want to be alone now."
Roach nodded and backed away. He stopped at the door. "Do you want me to go down
and feed the dogs now?"
Someday, Vulkan thought, you shall. Just as Falco did when his usefulness had
ended. "No, not yet. But make sure they're out at sunrise."
Roach left the room, his footsteps scuttling away down the stone-floored
corridor. In the firelight the golden urn winked like a maleficent and beautiful
eye. The sand had begun to spin with greater force. Vulkan watched it,
mesmerized.
And now he could sense the presence of spirits around him, shades of beings who
had lived and died in Los Angeles for scores of years. They were everywhere now,
floating through the castle, like silver cobwebs. His activity had stirred them
312
up, brought them back from the dead in defiance. He recalled the night he'd
intercepted the messages flowing between the spirit that had walked here when he
first came and a house in that section of the city called Bel Air. The dead were
restless and trying to halt his advance. But what should he care about them?
They were phantoms, things that moved without shape or substance, and he was
well beyond their grasp. Now he was Prince Conrad Vulkan, King of the Vampires,
and no power on or of earth could ever stop him! He stared at the urn and
thought he saw a specter moving toward it, trying to pass a shadowy grip through
the spinning column of sand. Of course, that couldn't be done, and Prince Vulkan
began to laugh with childish glee. The laughter grew, echoing in the rafters
like a demonic chorus./
Nothing could stand in his way now; nothing could halt the advance of his army.
When darkness fell again, the divisions would secure their own areas and then
begin to radiate outward, like an exploding star, while the Central Division
continued to explore the inner city in wider spirals, searching for stragglers.
But Prince Vulkan knew there would not be many.
It was almost dawn. He could feel the coming sunlight-which this day would be no
more than a faint glow in the thick amber grain of the sky-with a sense of
unease at the pit of his stomach. He left the chamber, left the swirling,
helpless ghosts, and went down into the murky depths of the castle, where his
ebony casket filled with coarse Hungarian dirt waited.
SIX
Father Silvera was guiding a long chain of people toward his church from a
decrepit, tottering tenement. The storm was furious, sand lashing his face like
a cat-o'-nine-tails. He gripped the hand of the person behind him, and now he
was stepping over half-buried corpses at his feet. He could see the church
ahead, the vague dark outline in the yellow wind. When he reached the steps, he
felt a shudder vibrate up his arm and looked back. They were all gone, all the
people swept away either by the storm or by the vampires. He'd been gripping
empty air, and his dead hand hadn't even registered the difference. In the
distance he could hear people shrieking for his help, calling out his name,
sobbing. He shouted "Where are you?" but then the sand whipped into his mouth
and began to choke him, and he knew he could never find all of them, he knew
he'd let them go, and there was nothing he could do for them, nothing . . .
nothing . . .
His head jerked upward. His eyes opened. He lay in deep blue light, the pounding
of his heart making his entire body tremble. He was aware of three distinct
sounds-the tolling of Mary's Voice above his head, the muffled sound of voices
talking and weeping, and the steady roaring of the wind. He sat up from where
he'd fallen asleep-how long? An hour or more?-on a pew and found that someone
had spread a striped blanket across him. There was someone else asleep
313
beside him, and at the end of the pew, a girl who looked no more than fifteen
was nursing an infant. From the rear of the sanctuary, a woman began to weep in
long, agonized moans; someone else whispered to her, trying to calm her. A baby
began to wail. Father Silvera suddenly realized that there was a trace of light
within the church from outside. He looked at the stained-glass window and saw
some of the blue panes beginning to glow. On the altar most of the candles had
burned themselves out.
Morning, he thought with a surge of relief. Oh, thank God! We've survived the
night! He stood up, stepping over and around people huddled both on the pews and
the floor, and peered out the front door. Sand whipped into his face; the wind
had risen, and now it screamed violently around the church. The dunes had
already shifted, and now they were building up eight and nine feet high against
those walls that cut the wind's force. No one could go out in that and live very
long, he knew. He closed the door and rebolted it, grit prickling the stubble of
his beard.
He was walking back toward the altar when someone huddled on the end of a pew
with a blanket draped around his shoulders said, "Father?"
Silvera stopped. It was the young man he'd found sprawled on the ground. He was
shirtless, his broken ribs now bandaged with the torn strips of a woman's brown
dress. "Did a woman come in last night?" the young man said, his eyes sunken and
dark with hopelessness. "A black woman, very beautiful . . .?"
"No," Silvera said. "No one else came in after I found you."
The young man nodded. There were deep lines around his eyes, as if he'd aged
twenty years in one night. He looked dazed, on the verge of tears, Silvera had
seen that look of shock often enough now to become familiar with it. "They took
her," the young man said softly. "The ones on the motorcycles. I've got to find
her, Father ... I can't let them . . . make her one, too . . ."
"What's your name, son?"
"Name? Wes. Wes Richer. Where is this place?"
"My church is in East L.A. Where did you come from?"
Wes seemed to be trying to remember, but was having difficulty. "My car," he
said. "The freeway . . ."
"The freeway? The nearest off-ramp is over a quarter-mile away!"
"I heard the bell," Wes said. "I knew if I kept going, I'd reach it. I wasn't
aware of how far away it was, I just knew I ... had to get there. Her name was
... is ... Solange. The ones on the motorcycles took her." He pressed a hand
against his side and winced. "Broken ribs, huh? I figured as much. How bad am
I?"
"One of the woman looked after you. She says you've got two fractured ribs on
the left side. How bad do you feel?"
"Pretty fucking bad. Oops, sorry." He looked at the brightening window. "Is it
morning?"
"Yes. Where did these motorcycle riders go?" The idea of vampires on motorcycles
chilled him. It was bad enough that they were on foot, but vampires with
vehicles was almost too terrible to think about.
314 R. McCAMMON
"I don't know. East, I think. They were members of some kind of biker gang, and
they said they were going to connect up with some others." He coughed a couple
of times and winced. "Shit. My throat and lungs feel like they've been
sandpapered. Do you have any water?"
"I'll get you some." Silvera went back to his room, where he'd taken the case of
bottled water and packs of paper cups that he'd gotten from the grocery store
down the street. Two of the bottles were already empty. Silvera poured just a
little into a cup and took it out to Wes. "Make it last," he told the young man,
who nodded and drank gratefully.
"I've got to go," Wes said when he'd finished. "I've got to find Solange."
"No one's going anywhere. The storm's gotten stronger. You couldn't walk two
blocks in it before you laid down and died."
"It was my fault they found us. I stood there and waved and shouted like an
idiot, and then they swooped right down on us like fucking vultures. I should've
known what they were! I should've known that only the .. . the vampires would be
out there. Now they've got her, and God only knows what they've done to her!"
His lower lip quivered. He crushed the cup and flung it aside. "I've got to find
her!" he shouted, his eyes flaring with defiance.
"And where will you start looking?" Silvera asked him. "They could've taken her
anywhere. And by now they've ..." His voice trailed off because saying it would
be unmerciful.
"NO!" Wes said. "I don't believe that!"
"You can't go out in this storm, Mr. Richer. Do you want to die so much?"
Wes smiled thinly. "Man, I'm half-dead already. So what does it matter, huh?"
Something about the cold logic of that pierced Silvera. It seemed to him that
only the half-dead might have the courage to fight against the vampires because
the living would have too much to lose. He had refused to help Palatazin, and
that man had surely gone to his death. He remembered Cicero's triumphant shriek:
"The Master lives!" Yes, Palatazin-or what had been Palatazin-was dead by now,
and the master's flock had increased. Only the half-dead, only those who had
seen the limits of their lives and accepted that end as a fact, could hope to
find the strength within themselves to fight back.
Silvera held his hands up before his face. They were shaking like the hands of
an elderly man with the palsy.
How much longer could he hope to live? Two years? Three, possibly? Incurable,
the doctors had said. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's disease. First
weakness and atrophy of the muscles in the hands coupled with fibrillations and
spasticity. Muscular atrophy spreading to the forearms and shoulders. Wasting
away week after week. Incurable. Lying in a hospital bed, probably in some
charity ward, softening into a gray mass of jellied flesh. Nurses with grim lips
hovering at his bedside. Incurable. Being fed through his nostrils. Time
creeping. Messing his pants and being wiped clean by the nurses, trembling in
bed, caged within a house that had gone rotten but refused to fall until all the
dignity of its tenant had been
315
thrown out into the garbage with the rubber diapers and the bibs and the nasal
catheters.
Is that how I want to die? he asked himself. Now he saw his impending death as a
gift from God. He had been given the opportunity to choose his death with
dignity.
The Master lives, Cicero had said. And Silvera knew it was true. In that castle
I; somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, the Master lived and plotted his moves for
the next night's assault on the remaining humans of Los Angeles. A knot of dread
was slowly gathering in his stomach. Palatazin had surely been killed. Who else
but he knew that the Master had taken refuge in the Kronsteen castle? Calm
determination set in, but the fear kept jumping in his stomach like something
trying to draw his attention. How could he get through the storm to the castle?
He really didn't even know how to find it, and there were hundreds of roads,
both paved and dirt, twisting through the hills. And what about the people here
in the sanctuary? He couldn't just leave them to fend for themselves. But
tonight the vampires would be back, maybe many times stronger than the night
before. He was going to have to pray and seek guidance.
"I want to find Solange," Wes said grimly. "I don't care what I have to do or '
where I have to go."
"Don't be a fool. How far could you get with those broken ribs? You don't even
|; know where you'd be going. You'd wind up suffocated on some East L.A. side
street." He paused because he could see the anger in Wes's eyes quickly giving
way to pain. "I'm sorry," Silvera said quietly. "How about some more water?"
Wes shook his head. "No. I ... I just want to try to sleep . . ."
"All right. And I have some thinking to do. If you'll excuse me." He moved away
from Wes without looking back, because he'd seen the young man's face and heard
his first strangled, hopeless sob.
SEVEN
The boy on the sofa suddenly screamed and jerked his head up.
Jo, sitting in a chair beside him, leaned forward and put a hand on his
shoulder. "It's all right," she said soothingly. "No one's going to hurt you.
Come on, lie back."
"No! House is on fire! They're burning up, both of them!" His eyes were wild,
and he was fighting the bedspread that covered him.
"It's morning," Jo said, putting more pressure on his shoulder to keep him
still. "Whatever happened to you last night is over. Everything's going to be
all right now."
"Huh?" He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. "Who are
you?"
"I'm Jo, and that's Gayle over there. What's your name?"
"It's... uh ..." He squinted and touched the back of his head. The wound had
316
been covered with a couple of large square Band-Aids. "Head hurts," he said. "My
name is... uh ... Tommy!" Everything but his own name seemed dark and jumbled
together. Strange backward images of things were caught in his brain like
distorted reflections in a hall of mirrors. "Head hurts bad," he said.
"It should. But I guess that's a good sign. You've been shot."
"Shot? Like with a bullet?"
"Well, grazed is the right word, I suppose. Come on, lie back down. You don't
want to start bleeding again, do you?"
He allowed her to push him back down on the pillow. Thunder crashed between his
temples, and he felt sick to his stomach. He was trying to remember his last
name and where he lived and what he was doing on this sofa with this woman
sitting next to him. He concentrated on making sense out of one of the funhouse
mirror reflections. There was a bed, and on that bed there were shapes covered
with the sheets. They were lying very still. Something painful struck him across
the top of the head, making him wince and whimper, and that mirror shattered to
pieces. He decided not to think about any more reflections, not just yet.
"He's been gone a long time," Gayle said, standing next to the window. Her voice
was as taut as overstretched cable, and all she could see out there were blowing
currents of white and yellow.
"He knows what he's doing," Jo answered. Something cold surged around her heart;
she forced it away and smoothed the spread up under the boy's chin. Tommy was as
pale as death, and now she could hear him whimpering softly. What kind of hell
did he go through last night? she wondered.
In another moment Gayle said, "There he is!" and opened the front door. A swirl
of wind and sand blew in, and at the center of it Palatazin, a sheet around his
head and face like an Arabian headdress, stepped across the threshold, carrying
the cardboard box of stakes he'd just retrieved from the Falcon. Gayle quickly
closed the door, having to push hard against it. Palatazin laid the box on the
floor and unwrapped his protective shroud. It had strained the air enough for
him to breathe through his teeth, but walking out there was like struggling
through glue while being struck in the face with buckets of sand. His shirt was
soaked with sweat.
"Could you see anything moving out there?" Gayle asked him.
"I could hardly see five feet in front of me," he said. "I walked right past the
car before I realized where I was. But there's one blessing. Our friend with the
rifle can't see either. How's the boy?"
"He was awake a few minutes ago," Jo said. "He says his name is Tommy."
Palatazin came over beside the sofa and looked down at him. "Do you think he's
going to be all right? He's so pale!"
"You would be, too, if you'd taken a bullet across the back of your head." She
lifted the cold washrag and felt his forehead for perhaps the twentieth time in
an hour. "He doesn't have a fever, but I wouldn't know whether he had a
concussion or not. At least he was coherent when he spoke."
Palatazin nodded, his brow furrowed in concern, and then turned back to the
317
window. He was glad this boy was alive, of course, but now he was responsible
for the life of one more person. What was going to happen to them after he'd
gone? Taking them with him was out of the question. If Jo protested, he would
remind her that she'd almost died in the storm last night, and having to keep
three other people together out there would be more than he could handle. He
gravely doubted his own chances of making it across Hollywood. "The car's
completely covered over now," he said to Gayle. "The dunes are piling up almost
as tall as the house."
"And you still think you can make it up to the Kronsteen castle?"
He didn't look at her. "I have to try."
"It's over four miles! If you say you can't see more than five feet in front of
you, how the hell will you even know where you're going?"
Palatazin motioned toward the gun and shoulder-holster lying across the back of
a chair. "I want you to keep that. I'm going to leave you the rest of the holy
water, too. If I get up there . .. when I get up there ... I won't need anything
more than the hammer and stakes. I think the vampire king is somehow controlling
this storm. When he dies, I think the storm will blow itself out to sea. Until
then it's going to circle over the city and possibly get worse before
nightfall-"
"Wait a minute!" Jo said, rising from her chair. "Do you think you can climb up
that mountain alone?"
"You're staying here, Jo. All of you are. Don't argue because the decision's
been made."
"Like hell it has! We'll take a vote on it!"
"No, we won't!" he said angrily. "Yes, I'm going up alone to the Kronsteen
castle. You and Gayle and the boy are staying right here. You'll have the holy
water and the gun. I suggest you go down to the basement after dusk and lock
yourselves in. Save the holy water as long as you can. If you have to use the
gun, aim for the vampires' eyes. With any luck and the help of God, I can reach
the castle much faster than if I had to take care of the two of you and an
injured boy .-. ."
"We can take care of ourselves!" Jo said. "You won't have to worry about us!"
"You're staying here," he told her, his voice stern.
"The Kronsteen castle? Orion Kronsteen's castle?"
Palatazin looked past Jo. The boy sat up from the sofa; he still looked dazed
and weak, but his voice was clear. "Is that where you're going?" the boy asked.
"That's right," Palatazin said. "How are you feeling?"
"Better, I guess. My head keeps ringing."
Palatazin smiled and walked over to the sofa. "Young man, you should be grateful
you have a head. If that wound were perhaps a fraction of an inch deeper, you
might not. Tommy, is it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Tommy what?"
The boy started to speak, but then his eyes seemed to lose their focus. He
winced and shook his head. "Tommy . . . Tommy . . . Ch . . ."
"Take your time." Palatazin glanced quickly at Jo, then back to the boy. "Do
318
you remember anything of what happened to you last night?"
Tommy closed his eyes. He was trying to look into the funhouse mirrors that
stood along the distorted corridor in his mind. There was a girl in one of them,
a very pretty girl with long blond hair. She was reaching out for him and
smiling, but suddenly her smile turned hideous, and he could see the glistening
fangs slowly protruding from her jaws. That mirror abruptly shattered. There was
a fire burning in the next one, but he couldn't bear to look into it. The mirror
after that rippled with darkness; there seemed to be figures in it, chasing
after him, getting closer and closer. There was someone with a chain, shouting.
The mirror cracked with the same loud sound he remembered hearing before he'd
slid down a sandy maw into the belly of a toadish, squatting monster. "Can't
think," he said. He backed out of that corridor and opened his eyes. "My head
hurts too much."
Palatazin reached down and picked up the backpack. "You were wearing this."
"Uhhhh, sure! I know that! From the Scouts. My dad used to take me when we lived
in ... in ..." The chain of dim memories suddenly collapsed. Tears sprang to his
eyes.
"Your father? What happened to your parents?"
"Can't," Tommy said very softly. "Can't."
Palatazin realized they were probably dead, or worse. He could see the pain
etched across the boy's face so he put the backpack down on the floor. "It's
okay," he said. "You don't have to remember just this minute. My name's Andy. I
guess you must be hungry, huh? I think we can find you something from the
refrigerator if it hasn't all gone bad by now."
"There are some cans of Vienna sausage in the pantry," Jo said. "And sardines."
"Ugh," Tommy said. "I don't think I can eat anything just right now anyway,
thanks. My stomach doesn't feel so good." He looked up and held Palatazin's
gaze. "Why do you want to go to Orion Kronsteen's castle?"
"Because of the vampires," Palatazin said quietly. "I suppose you do know about
them?"
"Yeah." Another mirror shattered in Tommy's head. He'd seen vampires in the
movies. No, no, that wasn't right. They were here in L.A., and one of them
looked like the blond girl in tight denim cutoffs who'd lived across the street.
Her name was . . . Sandra . . . Susie . . . something . . .
"I don't know how many there are now, but I'm sure they number in the thousands.
They're trying to take over this city, Tommy. Somehow they brought this
sandstorm here and they don't want any of us to get out." His eyes had gotten
very dark, reflecting the state of his spirit. "I think their leader is hiding
up in the Kronsteen castle. Someone has to find him and kill him before sundown,
or ... what happened last night will happen again, only ten times worse. There
are probably other vampires hiding there with him, and they're all going to have
to be destroyed."
"You? You're going to do it?"
Palatazin nodded.
"I know all about the castle!" Tommy said excitedly. "Last year Famous
319
Monsters-that's a magazine-did a story about it. Forry Ackerman and Vincent
Price toured it on the tenth anniversary of Orion Kronsteen's murder! They took
a psychic up there and everything! She said she could feel his ghost walking
around-"
"That's fine," Palatazin said, "but-"
"They had a lot of pictures of the place," Tommy continued, "and a diagram that
showed most of the rooms. A couple of months ago my ... dad ..." He frowned
suddenly, memories streaked through his brain and vanishing into darkness. He
tried to grasp some of them before they were gone. "My dad ... drove me up there
on a ... Sunday afternoon, I think. We couldn't go all the way to the top
because there was a ... chain and a No Trespassing sign across the road. But
I... remember seeing it through the trees way up in the distance." He blinked
suddenly, as if startled. "A blue Pacer! My dad drove a blue Pacer!" Images
started to come back to him, like bright red explosions in the blackest of all
black nights. A stucco house on a long street lined with similar houses. The
flaring of a match, illuminating hideously pale faces. A concrete mastodon
struggling to free itself from a lake of tar. A grinning dark-haired boy
standing over him. Someone else-another boy, larger than the first
one-staggering backward, falling into that clinging black ooze and screaming.
Tommy felt cold sweat on his face. He said, "I think . . . something bad
happened to my mom and dad. I think I left them because ... because ... there
were vampires and . . ." His face suddenly crumpled. Whatever had happened was
too terrible for him to think about.
Palatazin put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "It's over, son."
Tommy looked up at him grimly, his face streaked with tears. "No, it's not. The
vampires got my mom and dad. I know they did! You're going after the king
vampire, aren't you?"
Palatazin nodded. He knew he'd never seen any harder, more determined eyes than
those in the face of this skinny boy.
"He's the one who holds them together," Tommy said. "If you can kill him and the
ones around him, the others won't know what to do. They'll be too disorganized
to think for themselves. That's what happened in Midnight Hour, the one where
Orion Kronsteen played Count DuPre. Professor Van Dorn found him in the abbey
ruins and . . ." His voice trailed off. "But that was just a movie, wasn't it?"
he said softly. "That wasn't real at all."
"I'm going to have to use your backpack, okay?" Palatazin said after another
moment. "To carry the stakes."
Tommy nodded. Palatazin dumped everything out of the pack and started putting
the stakes in. "The matches and the spray can," Tommy said. "You can make a
torch out of them."
Palatazin thought that over and returned them to the pack. He stuffed six stakes
into the largest pocket, and three more in the others. There was barely enough
room for the hammer.
"You won't be able to find him so easily," Tommy said. "He'll be hidden,
320
probably down in one of the basements."
Palatazin looked up and frowned. "One of the basements?"
"There are two. That place has more than a hundred rooms. It'll be easy to get
lost once you've gotten inside. You might not even be able to find your way out
again."
Palatazin glanced over at Jo. She looked dazed, and he didn't know how much more
of this she could take. Outside, the light was a thick, dusty amber. He looked
at his watch and saw that the crystal had been cracked and grains of sand clung
to the face. He remembered checking it when he'd awakened from two hours of
sleep just after sunrise, and now he thought he must've broken it in getting the
stakes out of the car. The frozen time was ten-fifty.
"I can help you get in and out," Tommy said. "You won't be able to kill all of
them. If the others find you, they'll tear you to pieces."
"No."
"I can help you!" Tommy suddenly stood up. His head spun, his vision going in
and out of focus, but he forced himself to stand steady. "I know what the castle
looks like inside!"
"Lie back down, son," Palatazin said firmly. "You're in no condition to go
anywhere." He slipped the backpack over one shoulder, then over his head so it
hung down at his side within easy reach. It was time to go now.
"How are you going?" Gayle asked him.
"The fastest route I can," he said. "I'll walk to LeBrea Avenue-that's only a
couple of blocks west-and head northward across Hollywood."
"It's a long way up there," Gayle said. "Four or five miles at least."
"Please." He smiled grimly. "No pep talks, okay?" He looked at Jo and knew she
was trying very hard to be brave for him. "Well." He shrugged in mock
incredulity. "Who would've ever thought this fat, bald, middle-aged cop would
turn out to be a vampire hunter, huh?" He put his arms around her and held her
close. "I'm going to be all right," he whispered into her ear. "You'll see. I am
going to finish it, and then I'll be back for you." He looked at Gayle. "Will
you help me wrap that cloth around my mouth and nose?"
When she'd finished, there was just the narrowest of slits left for his eyes. He
turned up the collar of his coat and buttoned his shirt all the way. Then he
went to the door. He stopped, his hand gripping the knob, and looked back at
them.
"I want you all to remember this. If I come to the door in the night, don't let
me in, no matter what I say or do. My ... mother opened the door on that last
night in Krajeck, and I don't want any of you doing the same thing. Keep the
holy water close at hand. If I'm still on the porch at daylight, then you'll
know I'm ... the same man I was when I left. Is that understood?" He waited for
Jo to nod, then he said, "I love you."
"I love you," she answered; her voice cracked.
Palatazin walked out into the wind. Jo stepped to the window and watched him
vanish into the yellow swirl. She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.
321
THEY THIRST
^| ,Tommy stood beside her. He's going to die, Tommy thought. Or worse, just
like my parents. He's going to get lost in that castle, and then the vampires
will have him. Jo reached out and took his hand. Her touch was very cold.
EIGHT
The sanctuary was tumultuous with noise. From the end of a pew, Wes watched
Father Silvera trying to cope with all of them. It seemed he was always bending
or kneeling down beside somebody to pray with them, or trying to comfort someone
who was weeping inconsolably. That's got to be one of the toughest gigs there
is, Wes thought. But Silvera seemed to be handling everything okay; only once in
a while did Wes see him falter when a quick weary expression swept over his
face. Then he was talking with someone else, kneeling down beside them, or
simply listening while they poured out their terrors distilled from the night
before. Wes saw that it had been rough on everybody. There were children who
looked as m forlorn as war orphans, their dark eyes confused and terrified. One
little girl had curled up in a corner, sucking her thumb and staring straight
ahead. Father Silvera i and others had gone over several times to talk quietly
with her, but she never j answered and never moved. A few of the men had brought
guns into the sanctuary with them, and it was only with much effort that Silvera
persuaded them to give their guns up. The priest had taken the weapons into the
back of the church and put them away. Good thing too, Wes thought, because one
of those men had snapped about an hour ago and had to be forcibly restrained
from running out into the storm by three others. A gray-haired woman with deep
wrinkles in her face came over to check on him, babbling in Spanish while she
unwrapped the bandages and tenderly pressed at his side. He kept saying Si, si,
even though he didn't understand a word she was saying. When she was finished,
she wrapped the bandages back very tightly and left him.
He couldn't keep his mind off Solange for very long. Her last scream had drilled
a hole straight through his brain, and it felt as if his life-force were slowly
leaking out. Was it possible she was still alive? And more importantly, was it
possible
'she was still... human? That remark the one called Kobra-that grinning, murder-
j ous albino-had made about a castle still puzzled him, though he tried
attacking it from all angles. What castle had the vampire meant? Or had it just
been a figure of speech? The only place he could think of that could really be
referred to as a castle was that monstrosity Orion Kronsteen had put together up
in the hills. He recalled the night-God, how long ago that seemed!-Solange had
asked questions over her Ouija board and the spectral reply that he'd first
thought was one of Martin Blue's parlor tricks-They thirst. Now he saw the
actual meaning of that message, and it chilled his blood. Even then the spirits
had been trying to warn them of the hideous force gathering strength over L.A.
Had Kobra meant the Kronsteen castle? Wes could see how that would be a
322
perfect refuge for the vampires. It was fairly isolated yet at a strategic
height that overlooked the entire city in all directions. The place was as huge
as an old medieval fortress, and it had been empty since Kronsteen's death about
eleven or so years ago. The vampires might even have found it quite homey. That
phrase spelled off the Ouija board thudded into his brain. If they had contacted
Kronsteen that night, then perhaps it was the old man himself trying to let them
know that the Undead had made themselves uninvited guests in his desolate old
castle . . .
Yes. It was a place, at least, to begin looking. Solange might still be alive.
Maybe they'd bitten her but hadn't . . . killed her yet ... or whatever they did
to make you as they were. She might be alive up there at the Kronsteen castle!
Overhead the church bell tolled intermittently. He could hear the shriek of the
wind outside, and every so often the beautiful stained-glass window trembled, as
if about to cave in. The eyes of Jesus seemed fixed upon him, urging him to be
strong. And suddenly the answer to a frequently asked question seemed very clear
indeed-God is on the side of those who don't give up.
Wes turned toward the door. He thought he'd heard another sound at the center of
the storm, a deep rumbling that seemed to shake the church. What is this? he
thought. An earthquake? Now others had heard it, too, and for a moment absolute
silence hung within the sanctuary. The rumbling intensified, became the muffled
thunder of ... machinery.
"That's an engine!" Wes said. He stood up painfully, moving past a knot of
people near the door. As he hurriedly unbolted it, Silvera joined him, and
together they looked out into an eye-stinging swirl of sand.
Blinding white headlights were approaching very slowly. In another moment they
could see a large grayish-green shape, a scoop pushing aside mountains of sand.
It was some kind of military vehicle, and when it came to the gleaming metal
hulk of an abandoned car, its massive treads reared up and over, smashing the
car flat. Silvera could see wipers and spray working at a frantic pace across a
high windshield. Printed across the driver's door was: United States Marines,
Camp Pendleton, Ca.
Silvera stepped out into the storm and started waving his arms, oblivious to the
sand lashing into his face. The vehicle, some sort of huge tractorlike troop
carrier, hardly needed to veer toward the curb since it took up most of the
street. Hydraulic brakes hissed, the most beautiful sound Silvera had ever
heard. From behind the troop carrier another smaller vehicle, a jeeplike thing
with an enclosed cab and large solid rubber tires, like those used on dune
buggies, came up over the curb onto the sidewalk and stopped just in front of
the priest. Two Marines inside slipped gray hoods over their heads, covering
their noses and mouths, and stepped out of the cab. One of them motioned toward
the church and followed Silvera in.
"I'm Lieutenant Rutledge," the first Marine said when they'd gotten inside. He
took his hood off and shook the sand out of it. He was a tall man with
regulation-cut brown hair and glacial blue eyes. Wes caught the glint of a .45
in a waist holster beneath his poplin jacket.
323 KTHEY THIRST
"Ramon Silvera," the priest said, and shook his hand. "To say we're glad to see
you would be quite an understatement."
"I'll bet," Rutledge said. He looked around the sanctuary quickly and returned
his gaze to Silvera. "We've moved into the area from Camp Pendleton with about
thirty-five tractors. Another fifty are on the way. We're evacuating as many as
we can up to the Red Cross facilities at Crystal Lake. How many do you have
here?"
"Fifty-eight," Silvera said.
Rutledge glanced back at the other Marine, who Wes figured must be his driver.
"That's pretty strange, sir," the lieutenant said. "In a six-mile grid we've
found only nine people. Just where is everybody?"
"Don't you know?" Silvera looked at him incredulously, feeling a ripple of dark
laughter vibrate through him.
"No, sir. I'm afraid I don't . . ."
Wes, who'd put on his shirt and dark brown leather jacket, glanced again at that
.45 and moved away. He turned his back on them, his heart pounding, and walked
toward the rear of the sanctuary. He knew he was going to have to be very
careful because never in his entire life had he done anything like what he was
about to try. He knew only that he needed a way to get up to that castle. He
slipped through the door into the priest's meager living quarters.
"All right, everyone!" Silvera called out in Spanish. "We're going to be leaving
in a few minutes! Everyone's going to be moving through the door single file!
There's a truck outside that will take us all out of here . . ."
Wes was frantically hunting for the weapons Silvera had confiscated. It took him
a few minutes, but he found them-three pistols and a couple of switchblades -at
the bottom of a chest of drawers. He picked up one of the knives and flicked it
open; a nine-inch blade flashed out. He closed it and put it into his jacket. Of
the three guns, only one of them-a .22 with a carving of Jesus on the white
ivory, handle-looked fit to use. The others were rusty things that might fall to
pieces or explode in his hand. He wanted only to put a scare into the Marines,
but he knew he'd need a gun he could depend on later. It felt obscene and oily
in his grip. He'd never liked guns, but now this one would help him find
Solange. The ugly thought that he might have to use this gun surfaced within
him, like something nasty |l floating on a slimy pool. His gaze fell upon the
small ceramic crucifix next to the door. He didn't know how much good it would
do, but he lifted it off its nail and went out into the sanctuary.
People were gathering up their children and belongings, linking hands, and
crossing the threshold into the wind. No one was in the bell tower now, but the
storm's force made the bell shudder every few minutes, and the clapper gave out
a muffled, tentative moan. Wes saw Silvera standing at the doorway, herding the
people out; he didn't see the Marines and assumed they were already outside,
helping with the loading of the troop transport.
Wes waited for most of them to step across and, as he neared the door, the
priest suddenly looked first at his face, then at the crucifix in his left hand
and the
324
gun in his right. "What do you think you're going to do, amigo?" Silvera asked
him quietly.
"Just stay out of my way, Father. I appreciate your help and all that, but now
I've got to do this." He started to step past the priest, but Silvera's hand
came up and grasped his collar.
"What are you planning? To take their jeep?"
Wes nodded. "I've asked you to stay out of my way."
Silvera looked over his shoulder out at the transport truck. The rear gate had
dropped down, and Lieutenant Rutledge was hustling people inside. In another few
minutes everyone was going to be aboard. Silvera glanced at the jeeplike
vehicle, then back to Wes. "Where do you think you're going? There are several
thousand places the vampires could've taken your friend."
"I know where I'm going. I think they may have taken her up into the Hollywood
Hills, to . . ."
"The Kronsteen castle?" Silvera asked.
Wes's eyes widened. "That's right. What do you know about it?"
"Enough." He let go of the man's collar. "Give me the gun."
"Father, I told you I . . ."
"Give me the gun," Silvera repeated evenly.
"You haven't heard a word I've said, have you? This may be the only chance I get
and I've got to take it!"
"Chance?" Silvera frowned and shook his head. "What chance?" He gripped Wes's
wrist and pried the gun loose from his fingers. "You didn't even know enough to
release the safety, did you? Are you sure it's loaded?"
"I'm not going to any goddamned Crystal Lake!" Wes said, his face reddening.
"I'm taking that jeep if I have to-"
"What?" the priest asked blandly. "Fight for it barehanded? Kill for it? No, I
don't think you want to do that." He glanced over and saw the last of his people
filing into the transport. "I don't want anyone else getting hurt. So do you
think you're going to be able to drive right up to that place-through this
storm-and take on a hoard of vampires with a gun and a crucifix? What else did
you take?"
"A knife," Wes said. "Sorry, I didn't see any stakes lying around here."
Silvera regarded him for a moment in silence. "You must love that woman very
much."
"I've . . . always been there when she needed me. She needs me now."
"She may be like them by now. You know that, don't you?"
"And maybe she's not," Wes said. "I have to know for sure before I... leave her
behind."
Silvera nodded. "You surprised me. But regardless of whatever rage you're
feeling, you're going to need more than these implements. Much more." He turned
his head and saw Lieutenant Rutledge waving him over. Then he said to Wes, "You
wait here. Understand?"
"Why?"
325
"Just wait." Silvera left Wes, walking across the church to his room. He took a
small clear flask from a silk-lined black case resting at the top shelf of his
closet. The flask was identical to the one he'd taken to Palatazin. Then he went
out to the font of holy water in the vestibule, and dipped the flask down into
the small white ceramic basin. The flask filled quickly, with a little more than
two ounces. He wasn't sure how much effect holy water would actually have on the
vampires, but he figured-he hoped-Palatazin had known that it would have some
effect, even if just to frighten them. Silvera lifted the flask, capped it, and
thought of something his mentor Father Raphael had said back in the tiny village
of Puerto Grande. "Now, my son. You ask me why I dip up water from the Pacific
Ocean for the rituals. The answer is both simple and complex. Well water is too
precious here to deprive humans of it, no matter how holy the ritual. God saw
human needs long before he saw the need for ritual. Secondly, what holier water
is there than water from the cradle of life? God's blessing only makes it more
so, but the strength is already there. You've seen how saltwater heals wounds
and sores, how it cleanses and purifies. Any water can be holy; it needs only to
be blessed. But this-seawater -is twice blessed . . ."
Silvera had kept Father Raphael's tradition alive, though now it was more
difficult to bring jugs of water back from the Pacific. But now he needed a
purifier, something to wash away this unholy evil that gnawed like a cancer at
human flesh. He held the flask up; it felt slightly warm in his hand, and the
warmth seemed to spread up his forearm. He was ready now. He returned to where
Wes waited and put the flask in his inside coat pocket. "All right," he said.
"We can go now."
"We?" Wes said. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm going with you. The holy water may help even up the odds. And that man
won't shoot me." He motioned toward Lieutenant Rutledge, who shouted, "Let's go,
Father!" and waved impatiently. Silvera dropped the gun down to his side and.,
shielding his face with his forearm, walked toward the tractor with Wes right
behind him. Lieutenant Rutledge and his driver stepped back to allow them up
into the dark cavity, but suddenly Silvera turned toward him and thrust out the
gun.
Rutledge stared incredulously at it, then looked into Silvera's face. "What's
this shit?" the man shouted.
"My friend and I are taking your jeep, and we don't have time to argue! Tell
your driver there to give us the keys!"
"You want the Crab? What are you, crazy or something? We're trying to get you
out of this mess!"
"You can help us by giving us the keys! Come on!"
"Man, you take the cake, you know that? You and I both know you're not going to
shoot anybody, so let's just forget this-"
Silvera yanked the hood off the Marine's face and put the barrel alongside his
nose. "I don't have time for a debate!" the priest said. "Hand them over!"
"Shit!" Rutledge lifted his hands now and glanced fearfully at the other Marine.
326
"Okay, okay! Whitehurst, give these maniacs the keys to the Crab! Look, you!
Priest or not, you steal a military vehicle and your holy ass is going under the
stockade!"
"Wes, take his keys! And the .45, too. You've got clips for that!"
Rutledge patted his inside jacket pocket. Silvera reached in, took out two
clips, and handed them to Wes. Then he stepped away from Rutledge and backed
toward the jeep. Wes slipped into the driver's seat and started the engine.
"You're crazy!" Rutledge shouted, pulling his hood back down. "Both of you!"
Whitehurst grasped at his arm and guided him up into the transport vehicle, then
in another few seconds the rear gate began to swing shut.
Silvera had a last glimpse of Rutledge's furious face before he climbed into the
jeep. Wes put it into reverse, backed along the sidewalk, and then swung out
into the street. The vehicle's tires gripped hard, carrying them between
monstrous dunes and away from Silvera's church. The priest turned to look back
through the Plexiglass rear windshield. The tractor was moving away in the
opposite direction, lumbering like a huge metallic beetle. He put the two guns
down on the floorboard. "Can you drive this thing?" he asked.
"Handles like a dune buggy," Wes answered. "Steering's tighter, though." The
headlights were cutting clear yellow paths in the storm ahead, and the
instrumentation panel-which curved slightly around Wes like a plane's
cockpit-glowed a faint green. He changed gears, noting the gearshift pattern
depicted on a small metal plate on the dashboard-there were four forward gears
and two reverse. The interior seemed to be stripped down to the bare minimum but
was comfortable enough. It smelled slightly oily, just as Wes thought the
interior of a tank might smell. He could feel a powerful engine behind him,
pushing them along now at about ten miles per hour; he was afraid to drive any
faster because of the dunes and wrecked cars that littered the street ahead,
coming up swiftly out of the gloom. "I hope you know what you've gotten yourself
into, Father," Wes said quietly.
"I do." Silvera leaned over and looked at the gas gauge-there was a little more
than half a tank. He looked behind the seats into a roomy storage compartment,
finding a full three-gallon can of gasoline, a coiled rope, maps of the city,
and a couple of small red cylinders of oxygen in green backpack carriers. Near
the oxygen bottles there were two green rubber masks complete with wide-vision
goggles. Those, he thought, might be especially useful, and he silently gave
thanks for Rutledge's careful preparations.
Wes put the knife and crucifix on top of the dashboard. Sand was beginning to
pile up on the windshield, so he turned the wipers on at their highest speed.
The jeep thumped and jubbled over rapidly shifting sand dunes, but the thick
tires gave them enough traction to get through without sinking. When Silvera
looked back again, he couldn't see his church or the troop carrier, just a solid
sheet of blowing yellow. In another moment Wes turned a corner, the jeep barely
sliding around two cars that had crashed together in the middle of the street,
and found himself at the bottom of the freeway ramp he'd crawled down. He slowed
and peered up. The ramp was blocked by a mountainous sand dune that had built up
over another stalled car. Wes cursed softly.
327
"We'll run into fewer of those if we stay off the freeway," Silvera told him. "I
think I know the way from here. Across the river and around L.A. Back up a block
and turn left." Wes did, the tires slipping with a sickening lurch but always
catching just when he thought they were about to start digging a grave.
The air was getting bad. Silvera reached back, opened the nozzle on one of the
oxygen tanks, and let some bleed out. He was sweating profusely, beads of
moisture dappling his cheeks.
"You wouldn't have shot that lieutenant, would you?" Wes asked as they turned
onto the stark yellow desolation of Brooklyn Avenue in dead Boyle Heights.
"No one would die for a set of keys. He doesn't care about the vehicle."
"Why did you help me?"
"Not because I think we can find your friend. I don't. But if you're willing to
go to that place, knowing what's probably waiting up there, then I am, too.
Let's leave
j it at that."
"Fine with me." The engine suddenly sputtered, then coughed out a wad of sand.
Wes checked the temperature gauge; it was running hot, but what the hell. If the
damned Marines couldn't build a vehicle that could plow through this fucking
storm, then nobody could. Wes hoped their luck and good old American machinery
would hold out just a while longer. If it didn't, they would die; it was as
simple as that.
|]A fierce wind struck them broadside, shivering the jeep as if it were made of
cardboard. The vehicle slipped to the left, tires digging for a purchase, and
then darted forward like a land crab scrambling away from a shadow across a
wind- rippled beach. Wes remembered Rutledge calling it the Crab. That was
probably one of those cute names the military stuck on everything, but it
described the tenacity and responsiveness of the vehicle pretty well. A Crab it
was.
Nothing moved on Brooklyn Avenue except the dunes, sliding like hot yellow
dancers to a mad maestro's shrilling tune. Everywhere there were stranded cars,
and Wes didn't see the almost mummified corpses until the Crab had gone right
II over them, snapping them like twigs. His hands tightened around the wheel.
Death
was very close.
The boulevard stretched on out of sight. Behind them the way back had already
closed.
NINE
Palatazin had been gone for almost twenty minutes when Tommy turned away from
the window and said to Jo, "He's going to die up there." He said it quite
calmly, without emotion and very seriously, because he knew it to be true.
"Why don't you sit down, kid?" Gayle said. She didn't want Jo to start crying
again. There was a look in the boy's eyes that scared the hell out of her. They
were y like an old man's eyes, filled with pain and bitter wisdom. "Okay?" she
urged. "Why don't you?"
328
"He doesn't know anything about the castle! I do! He'll get lost in there!"
"Please . . ." Jo said weakly, and collapsed in a chair.
"I could help him," Tommy said, his gaze moving from Jo to Gayle. "I know I
could!"
"Oh, Christ!" Gayle said, anger leaping in her eyes. "Why don't you shut up?
He's going to be all right!"
Tommy stood motionless, staring at her. She looked out the window quickly, but
she could still see him reflected in the glass. He walked back to the sofa and
took the case off the pillow. "What are you doing?" Jo asked, but he didn't
answer. He put on his jacket, zipped it up to the neck, and raised the collar.
"No!" Jo said. "You're not!"
He folded the pillowcase into a square. "I guess you both think I'm a stupid
little kid, don't you? Well, I may be little . . . but I'm sure as hell not
stupid! That man who just left here is stupid because he thinks he can get into
the Kronsteen castle, find the king vampire, and get out again just like that."
He snapped his fingers. "Or he may just be trying to fool himself into believing
that, I don't know. Well, he won't be coming back ... at least not as what he
was when he left, if I don't help him. If I hurry, I can catch him . . ."
"You're not going anywhere!" Gayle said firmly, taking a step toward him.
Tommy stood his ground. His eyes were like chunks of ice. "My parents are gone,"
he said quietly. "They're dead. I'm not a little boy anymore."
Gayle stopped suddenly, realizing that he was right, he wasn't a child anymore.
Whatever had happened to him last night had changed him forever. And wouldn't he
have the same chances out there as Palatazin? Probably better. Certainly he
could move faster, and his lungs were probably in much better shape. She glanced
at Jo, then back at Tommy. "Do you think you can get him in and out of there
safely?"
"I know I can." He stepped past her toward the door. "I'll have to hurry. If I
can't find him, I'll have to come back, but I'll look as long as I can." He put
the square of cloth up in front of his face like a mask. "Wish me luck," he
said, and slipped out through the door.
"That's a very brave little boy," Gayle said after he'd gone.
"No," Jo answered. "A very brave young man."
Tommy ran in the direction he'd seen Palatazin take. He was hoping he'd see
footprints in the sand, but they'd already been blown away. He was half-blind,
trapped within a cubicle of swirling yellowish-brown walls, his lungs scorched.
His head was beginning to throb, but he welcomed the pain because it would keep
him alert. He ran on, realizing that he might pass within ten feet of Palatazin
and never know the man was there. Panic hit him-for a few seconds he couldn't
draw a breath. He made himself slow down to a walk and breathe through his mouth
at a regular pace. Sand scraped his cheeks and forehead, and now he realized
that even if he did want to go back, he'd never find the way.
Huge dunes stood all around him, most of them towering over the hulks of
329
cars. They shifted and slithered down as he passed, threatening to collapse over
him. The world was dim amber light, a shriek of wind, and the coarse hissing of
sand. The wind whipped around him, almost throwing him to his knees. He thought
he heard a high whining voice at the center of it, whispering Little boy, little
boy, lie down and sleep . . .
He went on and in another moment a dark shape emerged from the twisting
currents. It was a Lincoln Continental, the paint stripped down to the bare
metal, most of the car covered over by a dune. He decided to get inside it for a
few minutes to clear the sand out of his eyes and mouth. When he pulled the
driver's door open, a withered blue-faced corpse came sliding out, its arms
outstretched toward him. He swallowed a cry, spat out sand, and continued on.
The wind whispered around his head-Lie down and sleep, lie down and sleeeeeep .
. . "No!" he heard himself shout. "NO, I WONT!"
In another three steps he tripped over something and fell to the ground. His
legs had gotten tangled in the frozen arms of a dead woman, the flesh over her
skull stretched as tight as old leather. Tommy kicked free and crawled away,
tears stinging his eyes. Sleeeeep, the wind moaned. Close your eyes now, and
sleep . . .
It was so tempting. Maybe I should, Tommy thought. Just for a little while.
Close my eyes and rest, and when I get my strength back, I can keep on looking
for him. Yeah. That's the thing to do. He wondered if Mr. Palatazin was also
sleeping somewhere, all curled up and comfortable. A yellow blanket began to
drift over him.
And then he realized what he was doing and kicked off the blanket. He struggled
to his feet, his heart pounding. I was lying down to die, he realized. Old Death
almost got me that time, and it slipped up so softly ... "NO, I WONT!" he
shouted, though the words were ripped to shreds by the wind. He began to run
again, past more stranded cars and half-covered things that were probably
bodies, but he was afraid to look at them too closely. He ran past a street sign
that said LaBrea Avenue, and now there were indentations on the ground that
might have been scattered footprints or just deep-rippled places-he couldn't
tell. In the shadow of a towering dune, there was an imprint that might have
been made by a falling body. Panic flared within him. He knew he had to hurry;
he might already be too late.
Ahead, at the corner of LaBrea and Lexington avenues, Tommy saw Palatazin's body
sprawled in the windbreak of a stranded car. There was a long groove where the
man had dragged himself for several yards.
Tommy ran to him and bent down. He could hear Palatazin's tortured breathing.
"Wake up!" Tommy said, shaking him. "Don't go to sleep! WAKE UP!"
Palatazin moved, lifted a hand, and grasped his shoulder. He tried to focus on
Tommy, but his eyes were bloodshot and watery. Sand had filled the cracks in his
face, giving the look of a dried-up riverbed. "Who . . .?" he whispered
hoarsely. He let his head fall back. "Oh, God," he breathed. "Go back ... go
back . . ."
"NO! YOU'VE GOT TO WAKE UP!"
"Can't make it ... too far . . ."
330
"We'll find our way back together!" Tommy said, but he knew they couldn't, not
really. The man was too weak and so was he, the wind too strong, the sand too
dense. "Stand up! Come on!" He pulled at Palatazin's arm with both hands; his
unprotected face felt as if it was being flayed. Palatazin stirred and tried to
rise, the effort showing in the grim set of his eyes, but he only got up on one
knee and leaned against the car, his breath coming in heaving gasps.
"What are ... you ... doing out here?" Palatazin shouted at him. "I told you ...
told you to stay at the house!"
"Can you walk?" Tommy shouted back.
Palatazin tried to stand up again, but he didn't seem to have any strength left
in his legs. His heart was racing, his lungs pumping like bellows but only
drawing in short, burning gasps of air. He felt dizzy and about to pass out, and
he clung to the boy for support. "I guess... I'm not in as... good a shape as I
thought I was. Lungs are hurting."
"You have to stand up!" Tommy shouted. "I'll help you! Hold on to me and-"
"No," Palatazin said. "Just let me lie down and rest for a little while . . .
just a little while . . ."
"YOU HAVE TO STAND UP!" Tommy shook him, but now the man was sliding down into
the sand. His eyes were closing, and he was just a heavy mass of flesh without
consciousness or will. And suddenly Tommy realized there was someone standing a
few feet away from them, just behind his left shoulder. He whirled around to
face a lean, leathery-looking man with long grayish-brown hair and a wild gray
beard that flowed down over his chest in tattered, dirty strands. He wore filthy
blue jeans and a yellow T-shirt that said Timothy Leary for President across the
front under a picture of Leary sitting atop the White House and smoking a joint.
Tommy was afraid to move. The man stared at him through keen electric- blue
eyes, barely seeming to mind the storm. Then the man looked around quickly and
fell to his knees beside Tommy. He oozed with the odors of grime, sweat, and
sewage. "You're not one of them, are you, man? I mean, you can't be one of them
because you're out here in the daylight, aren't you? I mean, what daylight there
is, right? What's ailing this dude?"
"He's going to die!" Tommy shouted. "Help me make him wake up!"
The man dug a dirty hand into his pocket, fished around for a few seconds, and
then brought out a clear plastic capsule and popped it open under Palatazin's
nose. Palatazin immediately sputtered and opened his eyes, and Tommy smelled the
heavy odor of ammonia. "Peace, brother," the man said, holding up two fingers in
a V before Palatazin's face.
Tommy realized the man had no protection, nothing to mask his face, not even a
jacket. "Where did you come from?"
"Me? I come from everywhere, man! From under the hot earth where the cool
streams run! From where the babbling brooks play in the concrete night! That's
where I live!" He pointed a skinny finger, and Tommy looked over his shoulder.
He could see the open manhole.
331
5THEY THIRST
"The vibes aren't right up here, man! Not right at all! Gimme a hand and let's
get this dude downstairs!" The man started dragging Palatazin toward the open
hole in the center of the street, and Tommy pulled as best he could. Palatazin
was conscious but dazed, his breathing still forced and ragged. The bearded man
clambered down a few metal rungs with familiar ease, then helped Palatazin down
into the darkness. Tommy followed. At the bottom of the metal rungs, in a large
circular concrete tunnel with pipes and cables running along its sides, the man
eased Palatazin to a sitting position, picked up a bull's-eye lantern from the
floor, and then scurried back up to pull the manhole cover into place. Tommy
watched the daylight disappear and with it went the scream of the wind. When it
was gone, the man switched on his lantern and climbed down again. He shone the
light at Palatazin, who was weakly pulling the rest of the sheet away from his
face. "You need another popper, man?"
Palatazin shook his head. "One's enough." His nostrils felt as if they were
still on fire, but at least his brain was working again. Finding shelter from
that savage wind was a blessing, no matter how foul the mingled odors of human
excrement were down there.
"Damn straight." The man sat on his haunches, his face whitened by the backwash
of the light, and looked from Palatazin to Tommy with quick animal-like jerks of
his head. "Bad vibes up there these days," he said finally, motioning with a
tilt of his chin. "You want to be careful. Dig it!" He grinned, showing a
mouthful of teeth that would've driven a dentist mad.
"Who are you?" Tommy asked.
"Me? I'm the Big R, the Hollywood Creeper. I'm Johnny Ratkins. My friends call
me Ratty."
"You . . . live down here?"
"No, man, not here!" He scowled and pointed a finger down. "Here!" Now he made a
broad, expansive movement with the same hand. "Everywhere. This is my mansion,
safe from all the bad vibes there ever was or ever will be. Got a million rooms
down here, a million corridors. Got babbling brooks and sweet streams and lakes
. . . yeah! Real lakes, man! If I could just figure out how to get a Chris-Craft
through that little hole, I'd be one happy dude! Dig it! What are you two dudes
doing out in those bad vibes?"
Palatazin coughed a couple of times, spat out phlegm thickened with sand, and
said, "Trying to get across Hollywood. I thought I could make it, but . . ." He
looked at Tommy. "Why did you leave the house? I told you to stay back there!"
"You'd be dead now if I had! I said I could help you, and I still can!" '
"You're a little fool!"
Tommy glowered at him, and when he spoke, his voice carried a cutting edge.
"You're not my father, so don't try to tell me what I can or can't do."
Ratty whistled through the nubs of his front teeth. "Heaaaavy! That's the
center, man. That's Truth in a teacup!" He grinned at Palatazin. "The little
dude's telling it like it is. If I hadn't heard him shouting, I wouldn't have
stuck my head out
332
to see what was going down. What was going down was you, man, so you'd better
cool it."
"I suppose I should say thank you for getting us out of that."
"No need. Ratty does what he can. Oh, I've come across other folks like you two,
stumbling around and lost with all those bad vibes sucking the air right out of
their lungs. Some of them I helped." His gaze darkened. "Some of them I
couldn't. The poppers wouldn't even bring them around. You feeling okay now?"
"Better," Palatazin said. What he was breathing was not the sweetest air
possible, but at least he didn't have to sift it through his teeth, and for that
he was grateful. His lungs felt raspy and raw.
"You want something to pick you up?" Ratty dug into his jeans again and this
time brought out a handful of ampules, pills, and capsules in a variety of
colors. "I've got whatever you need. Speed, yellowjackets, reds . . . got a
microdot here somewhere that'll fuck up your head for a week!" He giggled and
offered them to Palatazin.
"No, thank you."
"How about some angel dust? Or . . ." He reached into another pocket and brought
out a clear cellophane packet containing what looked to Palatazin like sliced
mushrooms. Ratty gazed at it lovingly. "Magic," he said.
Palatazin shook his head, and Ratty looked offended, as if his greatest offering
had been refused. "What are you?" Palatazin asked him. "A dealer?"
"A dealer? Me? Listen, I'm an artist, man! Look at these!" He shook the packets
in front of Palatazin's face. "All meat and pure magic, the finest you can buy
on the whole fuckin' coast! Magic mushrooms! No additives, no preservatives,
just pure homegrown, farmed by yours truly using all natural elements in the sod
. . ."
"That's fine," Palatazin said, and waved the packet away.
"This other stuff is junk compared to my mushrooms," Ratty said. He put the rest
of his cache away, opened the packet, and sniffed at it. He closed his eyes and
thrust the packet out toward Palatazin, who caught the heady odor of sewage. "I
grow 'em down here," Ratty said. "I just got to figure out a way to get rid of
the smell, then I'll be in the high cotton . . ."
Palatazin grunted and moved a few feet away from the man because he'd caught a
whiff from him that was less than delicate. What kind of lunatic was this? he
wondered. Some hippie holdover who'd been living in these sewers for years
perhaps, happy just to pop pills and grow "magic mushrooms" on ... God!. . . did
he say "natural elements in the sod"? Surely he had to go out sometime, if just
to get batteries for his flashlight. And what did he eat? His mind quickly
shunted that thought away.
But then Ratty leaned forward and said, "Hey, what's in the bag? You don't have
a can opener in there, do you? I sure could use one. I lost mine a couple of
days ago. You don't have a ham sandwich in there, do you?"
Palatazin unsnapped one of the pockets and brought out a stake. Ratty was
immediately silent. He took it and shone the light on it as if it were some
relic from
333
THEY THIRST
a lost civilization. "What's this for?" he said quietly. "The bloodsuckers?"
«T"i1 >y
1 he vampires.
"Bad vibes. Baaaad vibes!" He handed the stake back and wiped his hand on the
leg of his filthy jeans. "I've seen them, man. They're everywhere, multiplying
like flies,on a fruitcake. You look in their eyes, and they get you-powl-just
like that." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Couple of them
chased me last night. I broke into Hoffman's Deli and got myself some food. On
the way out there they were, right on the corner. I didn't know what they were
at first, but then one of them flashed his chompers and I said, 'Uh-oh, old
Ratty may have had some bad dreams in his time, but never like this!' So I took
off, and they came after me. I was flying high on speed, and I was making moves
like O.J. Simpson, but I still couldn't shake 'em. And all the time I was
hearing these crazy voices, shrieking and screaming in my head." A nervous grin
flickered across his face. His eyes were bright, scorched blue. "They chased me
down into the line that runs underneath Hollywood Boulevard. I tried to hide in
the dark. They move so ... quiet. They don't even breathe. They can come up
behind you, and you'd never know it until it was too late. I stayed where I was
for a long time, until finally I heard somebody scream way on down the line. I
figured there were other people hiding in the sewers, too, and the vampires
found them instead of Ratty. Lucky Ratty, huh?"
"Yes," Palatazin said. "Very lucky." But now a terrible uncertainty struck him-
what if there were more vampires down here? Could they move about freely in this
dark world, or would they still be bound by their unholy fear of sunlight? He
wondered where the sun was now. God! he thought. What time is it? "We've got to
hurry," he told Tommy.
"How? We can't go anywhere up there!"
Palatazin paused. He glanced at Ratty, then back at the boy. "You're right. We .
. . can't go anywhere up there." "Huh?" Tommy said.
"How far do these sewers go?" he asked Ratty. There was an anxious excitement in
his voice.
The man shrugged. "Everywhere. Across Hollywood, L.A., Beverly Hills, up I -into
the canyons . . ." He stopped and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Where are you
trying to get to?"
jjj"Up above the Hollywood Bowl, just this side of Mulholland Drive . . ."
"Jesus! What's this, an expedition?" "Of a kind." § "Yeah, well, too bad you
didn't bring your wadin' boots," Ratty said, "'cause
you'd sure as hell need 'em! That's a long way to go, man." I"But could it be
done?"
Ratty was silent. He sat on his haunches and seemed to be thinking it over for a
few minutes. Then he said, "Where-exactly-do you want to go?" .b"Across
Hollywood to Outpost Drive, then up into the hills. There's another road
branching off from Outpost, up higher, but I doubt if a sewer runs under£ neath
it."
334
"I know where Outpost starts. On the other side of Franklin Avenue. Goes
straight up the mountain, doesn't it?"
"That's right."
"Means a lot of shit pouring down the line, too. Hard going. Be like climbing a
mountain covered with ice. 'Course now, not all the lines are the same size.
Some of them you can walk in, some of them you crawl through, some of them . . .
you hope you can get out of without gettin' stuck tight as a cork. It's about a
three-mile hike from here to Franklin. You didn't answer my question. Where do
you want to go?"
"The Kronsteen castle. Do you know where that is?"
"Nope, but it sure as hell sounds like a place with bad vibes. You say it's up
close to Mulholland? You're takin' about another couple of miles almost straight
up. If you can get through the tunnels. If you don't take a wrong turn and get
lost, because all the lines aren't laid down exactly underneath the streets.
I've got a nose for direction, man. I've been down here ever since I got back
from Nam." Something sharp and brittle passed across Ratty's gaze. "I'd rather
be down here where it's safe. The world up there has gone nuts, you dig? Bad
vibes all over the place! Anyway, I know the line system like you know the way
back and forth from your boob'tube to the John. But even I get lost sometimes,
and there are a lot of places I ain't been. Got the picture?"
"You're saying it can't be done?"
"Nope. I'm saying you can't do it."
"I know that," Palatazin answered.
Ratty looked from him to Tommy and back again. Tommy could hear the muffled
roaring of the storm through the manhole cover above his head; it sounded like
some huge animal gnawing at the iron, trying to get in at them. "What's the
deal?" Ratty asked.
"We're going after the vampires," Palatazin said quietly. "At best we've got
only four hours of real daylight left because when the sun drops low enough the
storm cover will bring early darkness. We can't make it to the castle up there.
We could make it by using the sewers. Couldn't we?"
"Maybe," Ratty said. "Don't like screwing with the bloodsuckers, man. That gives
Ratty the creeps. You . .. going up to this place to give them the shaft, huh?"
"That's where their leader-their king-is sleeping. I think if I can destroy him,
it might throw the rest of them into confusion . . ."
"Like Indians, huh? You get rid of the chief, and the rest of them are scared
shitless?"
"Sort of like that, yes."
"Yeah. I can dig that." Ratty nodded and looked down into the stygian darkness
of the tunnel. "I mean, this could be like . . . the end of the world or
something, couldn't it? Those bloodsuckers keep getting stronger all the time,
more and more of them . . . less of us. Right?"
"Yes." Palatazin held Ratty's gaze. "I have to get up to that castle. We have to
start now. Will you help me?"
335
Ratty chewed his fingernail for a minute. His eyes kept getting larger and
larger. He giggled suddenly. "Why not, man? I'm a crazy patriot. Shit! Why not?"
He grinned into the darkness with all the good humor and courage his pills could
give him. Then he stood up, his knees popping, and shone the light ahead along
what looked to be an endless tunnel. "This is the way." He waited for Palatazin
to stand and then start moving, his back seemingly permanently bent. Palatazin
followed with Tommy bringing up the rear. The stink of sewage was getting
stronger, but it was certainly preferable to the hellish wasteland above. Water
trickled at their feet.
Time was their enemy now, and time lay on the vampires' side. Palatazin felt
freighted with responsibility, not only for Jo and Gayle and Tommy but for the
hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in L.A. What might happen to them
tonight and all the nights to come if the king vampire couldn't be found? He
felt as if he were going to do battle with an ancient adversary, a nightmare
that had ripped away his childhood and plunged him into a world where all
shadows were suspect, where every twilight was a terrifying reminder that
somewhere the vampir were awakening.
He saw something move out of the corner of his eye, an indistinct shape touched
briefly by the lantern's backwash. His first thought was that a vampire had
gotten Tommy and was now coming up behind him, but when he looked over his
shoulder, there was nothing there and Tommy was fine. And then he heard the
faint whisper of a remembered voice brushing past his ear. He was quite sure of
what it said. Andre, I wont leave you . . .
That made him feel better. But there was such a long way to go, and nothing
could stop the relentless descent of the sun.
TEN
The Crab had slowed to a crawl. Brooklyn Avenue at Soto Street in the center of
Boyle Heights was blocked by towering dunes that had built up around a
horirendous traffic accident, nine or ten cars slammed together right at the
intersection. Wes stopped the Crab. The visibility was so bad now that even the
high-intensity y headlights couldn't pierce the dark amber gloom, and he had to
drive as slowly as possible without stalling the engine to avoid crashing into a
dune or a twisted, wrecked car. The worst of the storm, he knew, had hit
yesterday at rush hour, so there would be thousands of wrecked and stranded
cars-all of them now scrap metal for the dunes to grasp and grow over like
pregnant yellow leeches. He wondered what had happened to the drivers of these
cars. Had they found shelter before they suffocated? Or had the vampires found
them first? "Dead end," he said to Silvera. "We can't get around that." "Turn
right on Soto. There's a Hollywood Freeway entrance ramp about eight blocks
ahead."
336
Wes was relieved to find that the ramp was clear; but when the Crab had crested
it, the headlights picked out one wrecked or stalled car after another. The
dunes shifted restlessly, threatening to spill over and bury the Crab. There
were many corpses caught in the airless cars and many who had been caught out in
the open as well. Some of them looked as if they were simply sleeping; others
had died in agony, eyes and mouths filled with sand. Wes felt his nerve
breaking. The Crab made it about fifteen yards before it was halted by another
mass of sand and metal. The wind sucked and pulled wildly at the vehicle.
"Back down the ramp," Silvera said tersely. He reached back and leaked some
oxygen into the cab. "We'll have to find another way."
"THERE'S NOT ANOTHER WAY!" Wes shouted. "Jesus Christ! Everything's blocked!"
Silvera waited for him to calm down and said, "Take it easy. That's not going to
solve anything and it's sure as hell not going to get us across L.A."
Wes was trembling. If he'd ever needed a joint or a plain old cigarette before,
this was the time, but he had neither and there was no air to spare, anyway. Do
you want to give up? he asked himself. No.' I can't! Like the priest says, we'll
have to find another way . . .
"Back up," Silvera said.
"I can't see a thing." The rear windshield was layered with sand, and he could
envision backing into one of those huge dunes. It would be good-bye with a
slither and a moan. The engine kicked a couple of times, and Wes's heart started
to pound.
"All right." Silvera got one of the oxygen masks from the rear compartment and
slipped it on. The second of the oxygen tanks was in a backpack carrier that
would allow it to fit right between the shoulder blades. Silvera fumbled for a
moment while he attached the rubber line from the mask into the tank's small
feed- out nozzle; there was a soft click as the male and female joints
connected. He turned on the oxygen and took a breath of sweet, cold air, then
shrugged the backpack over his shoulders. "I'll go out to guide you down," he
said, his voice muffled by the mask. "I'll be right behind you. I'll slam on the
right side when I want you to turn right, left for left. Got that?"
"Yeah," Wes said. "For Christ's sake be careful!"
Silvera stepped out and the wind almost threw him to the ground. He moved like
an astronaut in an alien atmosphere, cabled to his life-support system. There
were two half-obscured corpses right beside the Crab, a woman clutching a little
girl. He shivered and went around to the back as Wes put the Crab into reverse
and started moving. Several times Silvera had to hammer against the sides to
keep Wes from backing into either a dune or a wrecked car. When they reached the
ramp, cold sweat clung to his face, and he was dizzy from hyperventilating. He
quickly climbed in, took his seat, and removed the mask. "You're clear," he
said. "But I think we can rule out the freeways from now on."
They passed under the freeway and turned left on Marengo, moving past the dark
buildings of the County General Hospital complex, where a doctor named
337
Doran had told Silvera he was dying. Now he wondered if Doran had beat him
there, or whether the good doctor might now be making a totally different kind
of midnight house call. They curved slowly around the complex to North Main
Street, which Silvera knew would take them across the river and through downtown
L.A.
The Crab was almost across the North Main bridge when its headlights picked out
the monstrous cluster of yellow dunes blocking their way.
Rats in a maze, Wes thought as he braked the Crab. That's what we are. The
headlights gleamed off the grillwork of a Cadillac caught under a mountain of
sand. The dunes loomed up like the mountains of the moon.
"Back up," Silvera said, tension crackling in his voice. His face had turned the
color of dried clay.
It took them over another hour of starts and stops at the dead ends of mangled
wreckage and blowing dunes before they found a clear way across the river at 7th
Street, more than five miles south of the place where they'd first tried to
cross. Factories and warehouses stood on the other side of the river, all of
them dead and dark. Chain-link fences had been blown down, and they lay tangled
across 7th Street like barbed wire. About a block farther was an overturned
truck in the center of the street.
Wes slowed and turned right, driving along a narrower street with warehouses on
each side. He thought he knew where he was now. Downtown L.A. lay just a few
streets over, and from the center of town he could wind his way up into
Hollywood. It would be a fearful trip, but nothing compared to what might be
waiting for them in Kronsteen's old fortress. The Crab still seemed to be in
pretty good shape, though the engine continued to sputter. Wes figured it had
been built for rough duty, though, and probably had a system of air filters that
trapped most of the sand. Still, he recalled that it had been traveling very
close behind the massive troop carrier, presumably so that the bigger vehicle
would take the brunt of the storm. The Crab might shudder and die at any minute,
or it might carry them all the way without a whimper. He just didn't know.
Suddenly Silvera looked at him oddly. "Stop," he ordered.
"What?" Wes said. "Stop where?"
"Here."
Wes braked the vehicle; it slid a couple of feet and then halted. "What is it?"
"I don't know. I ... thought I saw something back there. We passed a warehouse
on the right about fifty feet. I don't know what it was I saw, but . . ." He
looked back over his shoulder but couldn't see anything. "Caskets," he said
softly. "I think there were caskets stacked on that loading dock."
Wes put the Crab into reverse. The dark outline of a metal-walled warehouse came
up into Silvera's window. The remnants of a chain-link fence stuck up out of the
sand like picket-fence slats on a New England beach. There was a break in the
blowing grayish-yellow sheets, and through a clear hole they both saw a row of
big trucks lined up before a long loading dock, and on that dock