Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) (24 page)

It turned out we didn't need the Glenlivet. After two bottles of the cheap stuff the goop started to change. The color was first, turning grayish, and then it got runnier, like an egg cooking in reverse. I watched it for a while and it was definitely flowing, slowly, towards a low spot that looked like it concealed a drain. It had lost the surreal animation and had become just a floor full of slime.
 

“Is it safe now?” I asked.

“Let's give it couple of minutes,” Godiva cautioned. “Best not to get it on bare skin even after it's poisoned. And I don't have shoes.”
 

“I can carry you,” I volunteered. She looked at me and I added, “Me. I'm not helpless without Catskinner, you know.”

you are not helpless,
Catskinner agreed.
you can carry her.
 

Godiva smiled at me, brushed her hair out of her face with a bloody hand, “Of course you're not, James. I'm just a little . . . fragile at the moment. I'd rather walk.”
 

“How about water?” I asked.

“I'd rather have rum,” Godiva admitted.

“No,” I pointed down, “for the stuff. We could wash it down the drain, right?  It wouldn't wake it back up or anything?”
 

“Hmm? No, once the outsider's decoupled from the material, it degrades pretty fast.”
 

I scooted down some more on the counter. There was a double sink, I put a stopper in one side and started it filling, then looked around for a bucket or something like one. I found a big square stainless steel dish—it looked like it fit into a steam table.
 

As I was waiting for it to fill I asked Godiva, “What do we do?”

“Just rinse it down the drain. It's not—”

“No! I mean about this whole mess. I can't go on like this. They're going to keep trying to kill me, and sooner or later they'll succeed, and, hell, I don't even know who they are!”
 

i can protect you.

“Shut up!”

Godiva was staring at me. “I didn't—”

“Not you,” I pointed at my head. “Him.”

The dish was full. I dumped it over the side of the sink, set it back in to fill again. The water made pretty good headway on the goop.
 

“James.” Godiva's voice was soft.

I looked at her. She was sitting on the edge of the steel table, her bare legs dangling above the slimy floor, her body wrapped in bloody paper and plastic. She smiled at me.

“Just relax, okay?”

“Relax?” I couldn't think of any part of this situation that called for relaxing.
 

She nodded gravely. “Relax, and try to think. There are things that don't add up. There's more going on here than just what we see.”

The pan was full again, I dumped it over the side. More goop swirled down the drain. It was starting to smell, I noticed, like meat gone bad.

“More going on?” I prompted her.

“Keith Morgan isn't the only player in this game.”

“Keith Morgan!” The pan was full again, I dumped it. “Keith Morgan isn't a player in any game any more, unless it's bowling. As the ball.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean some woman in red had his head cut off and stuck in an ice bucket. She showed it me.”

Godiva stared off into space for a moment, chewing her lip. “Interesting,” she said slowly.  Then, “A woman in red?”

“Yeah, she said her name was Agony. Agony.... something French.”

“And she said she'd had Morgan killed? Did she say why?”

I thought back. “He was foolish. He tried to get Catskinner to agree to a covenant.”

Godiva smiled and nodded, working out something in her head. I dumped another pan of water. The floor around the drain by the sink was pretty clear, just wet. I hopped down off the counter. I didn't dissolve.
 

It's the small victories that count.

“I should have seen that coming, after the bowling alley, but I was too focused on trying to save White, and then they jumped us, of course.”
 

“White's alive, by the way,” I said. “They dropped them off at the hospital.”

“They did?” she seemed mildly surprised. “Morgan wouldn't have. He must have been overruled.”

“Or else he was already dead by then.” The pan was full again, I sluiced the water towards the table Godiva was sitting on.
 

“Or . . . maybe he didn't know about ambimorphs and blue metal boy. Hell, he couldn't have gotten that attack together that fast—he would have just found out the minraudim failed.”
 

“So two different people are trying to kill me?”

“Probably more than two,” Godiva answered absently, then added, “But not all of them want to kill you.”

“That's good news. Isn't it?”

Godiva looked over the side of the table. “Very good news—we just have to make sure the right group wins. Help me down from here?”

Her body, under the wrapping, felt warm and soft and alive again. It felt good to have her lean against me, but I could feel how injured she was. She winced and muttered, “Fucking adhesions.”

She was able to stand on her own, though, and I took a slow step back. She smiled at me. “Not so bad, really, I just have to move slowly.”
 

I let out a deep breath that I hadn't known I'd been holding. “Good. We can go slow. What next?”

She looked around. “Let's see if I can find some clothes. They wear uniforms in this dump?”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“reality is temporary. also amusing.”

When we went out the back door—both of us wearing shirts that proclaimed us employees of Endless Night Catering and Events—the lot was a mess of flashing red and blue lights. At least four patrol cars, an ambulance, a big hook and ladder truck that seemed to have no purpose except to block anyone entering or leaving the parking lot. No one was looking in our direction, so we glanced around. We'd found Godiva's glasses and teeth, but her clothes hadn't survived.
 

A bunch of dazed conventioneers sat around, hovered over by uniformed personnel. In one corner was a knot of arguing suits. I figured that was my best bet for finding Russwin.
 

He didn't disappoint me. He and Alice were both there, being lectured by an overweight man who sat on the trunk of an unmarked car, a lit cigarette burning in one hand.
 

“Look, I've got thirty-seven witnesses, or possibly victims, or maybe perpetrators, but what I don't have is a fucking crime. I've got statements here that there was some kind of disturbance during a presentation, and, okay, we've got some minor injuries. There was a panic, people got stepped on, it happens. Other than that, what I've got is a colossal waste of my time.”

He seemed to notice his cigarette, took a deep drag, then turned to Alice. “Now, ma'am, I understand your concerns, honestly, and I want to help. But these days, I can't just pull people off the street for a psych eval unless I have some kind of evidence that they represent a clear and present danger. 'The guy looked goofy to me, your honor,' just ain't good enough. Not that I'm doubting your professional expertise, but I need to cover my ass.”

He looked up as we approached the group. “And who the hell are you?” he asked, not belligerently, just exasperated.

“Ergot poisoning,” Godiva said.
 

He blinked at that. “Okay, Miss Ergot Poisoning, what are you doing here?”

“It's Dr. Ergot Poisoning. Millerson, CDC.”

“Charmed. Now we've got, what, a food poisoning outbreak?  And how did I end up ass deep in feds without anybody letting me know you were going to be in my town?”

Alice and Russwin were both staring at us. Alice recovered first. “Dr. . . . Millerson. Good to see you're okay.”
 

Russwin was still staring.

The cop shook his head. “Ergot. That's what, a poison mushroom?  Makes people go crazy, right?”

Godiva nodded. “It's a fungus, usually found in contaminated grain. I've reason to believe that there may have been organic foodstuffs that contain significant amounts of contamination.”

He sighed. “This crowd is certainly loony enough.” He pulled a radio out of his jacket pocket. “Advise the EMTs that we may be dealing with ergot poisoning.” A pause. “Ergot, Echo Romeo, Golf, Oscar, Tango. It's a fungus. Have them check for it, okay?”
 

He put the radio away and looked at me. “Do I want to know who you are?”
 

“Ozryck, DEA.” I held out my hand, but he didn't take it.

“And DEA is here . . . why?”
 

I looked over at Russwin. “I'm on loan.”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “On loan, huh”—a phone rang in his pocket—“hold that thought.”
 

He stuffed his radio in one pocket, pulled a small phone out of another. “Clarke.”

“Okay.” He held up his hand—quite unnecessarily—for silence.
 

“Yeah. . . . I got that. . . . Right.”  He closed his phone and glared at each of us in turn, ending at Russwin.
 

“Okay, Deputy Special Agent Mister Russwin Sir, why don't you, your shrink,” a nod to Alice, “your doctor,” a nod to Godiva, “and your library book,” a glare at me, “leave my crime scene, if this
is
a crime scene, and if it's not too much trouble, my city. In fact, why don't you all go back to Washington? Or, really, any place you like—so long as it's not here.”
 

Russwin nodded, looking contrite. “Thank you for your cooperation, Captain Clarke. I'm sorry for any confusion.”

Captain Clarke turned away without another word and began waving over some uniformed officers. We slunk away.

I was heading around to the front parking lot, but Godiva caught my arm. “Your van's over here.”

Russwin and Alice were still going the other way.

“Wait,” I said, “Uh, where . . .?”
 

“We'll meet up at your motel,” Alice replied.

“Okay.”

It was good to be back in my van. It didn't look like anything was missing. I could check under the spare tire for the cash I'd hidden there later.

It was good to Godiva back with me. I was kind of surprised how natural it felt to look over at her, sitting in the passenger seat, lip syncing along to the radio. I got on Highway 55, going north.
 

“Take 44,” Godiva said.

“But the motel's off 70,” I pointed out.

“We've got a stop to make first.”

“Is this part of your plan?”

“Yep.”

“Make sure the right one wins? Wins what?”
 

“The struggle for Morgan's old job.”

“How do we make sure the right one wins?”

“I dunno yet.”

“Oh. Well, who is the right one?”

“I'm not sure.”

I drove along quietly for a while. When the interchange for 44 came, I took it, going west. I considered asking more about her plan, then decided I'd probably be happier not knowing.

How long do I need to rest before you can come out again? I asked Catskinner.

a day, perhaps.

We could stay hidden that long. Probably.

Godiva was staring out the window.

“So,” I asked her, “are you really a doctor?”

“Huh?” She looked over at me. “I was. My license's not current.”

“What happened?”

A sigh. “I woke up one morning and realized that I didn't want to spend my life cleaning up other people's blood and shit, and I owed too many people too much money to do anything else.”

“Oh.” I thought about that. “Yeah, I guess that'd be bad.”

A shrug. “So when Dr. Klein offered a way out, I took it.”
 

“Where'd you meet her?”

“I met her at the candy store. She turned around and smiled at me—you get the picture?”

“No, not really.”

“Never mind. I met her at the hospital. She was a pharmaceutical rep. Heh. That was just a sideline. She was in a lot of other businesses.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Get off at Lindbergh.”

I signaled and started getting over, then looked over at her. “Where are we going?”

“The Good Earth.”

That didn't sound right. “Why? Morgan's dead.”
 

“Somebody's going to be there. We need to know who.”

Did we? Did I need to know who was cleaning out Morgan's store? Godiva seemed to think that there were good guys and bad guys, and the good guys would help us. I hadn't seen any good guys, just a succession of people trying to kill me. They'd almost succeeded, too. I'd never been pushed this hard, this long. Was that the point? Was their plan to just keep sending threats at me until my body rebelled at Catskinner's control? Did they know that I had such a limit? I hadn't, not until I hit it.
 

All I had was questions, and no good answers. Put that way, maybe Godiva was right—at this point any information would be welcome. I felt like I was doing a jigsaw puzzle with too few pieces. And no picture on the box. Plus some of the pieces were on fire. Also every time I got a piece out of place a trap door would open in the ceiling and drop an alligator on my head.