Elvendude (21 page)

Anything
but
a flashy car would stand out here.

Presto opened the door before Daryl knocked. Wordlessly, he let Daryl in and closed the door behind him.

The apartment was designed to look like it belonged to a poor person living well above his means. The apartment itself was expensive, but the furniture was cheap. Presto had put in enough used furniture to make the place look lived in, but he didn't live there himself. The older man flopped down on a beat up old futon in couch mode, and Daryl situated himself in a lumpy papasan that a cat had sprayed profusely. Multiple launderings of the cushions left behind a stale cat spray and Bounce scent that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

Presto gave Daryl the creeps. The man was just too pale to be alive, and looked like he'd just walked off the screen of
Night of the Living Dead.
His appearance reminded Daryl that he'd been in court the day before and assumed it had gone well, since he was here and not in jail. He'd lost even more hair since the last time Daryl'd seen him, and was now, for all intents, completely bald.

Daryl knew better than to ask. When Presto spoke, it was never an answer to a question.

The old dealer pulled a shoe box from behind the futon and placed it on a glass-and-chrome coffee table between them. It was full of black-stoppered vials of crack.

Oh, Lordy, look at all that beautiful rock,
Daryl thought, salivating. If Presto knew Daryl did the product he sold for him, he didn't seem to care. But he did care if it was done in his presence; that he knew from Monk, an even stranger individual than Presto, who was in jail.

"Think you can turn these for me?" Presto said hollowly, with that half-smirk Daryl knew was more challenge than amusement.

"Sure I can," Daryl said flippantly. "I've sold everything else, haven't I?"

Presto reached down and plucked a pair of glasses from the immaculate black carpet. They were round and silver, and looked rather cool on Presto, who had the kind of rough face needed to pull it off. Most younger kids looked dorky with round glasses. When Daryl tried some on, he thought he looked like a cross between a pseudointellectual jerk and a periscope. On Presto, the glasses made him look wise.

"It's not your usual crack," Presto said softly. "Be careful with it. It's potent. If you do any of that shit yourself, stay away from driving is all I can say."

Daryl glanced down at the box, guessing there were about a hundred bottles. At ten dollars apiece, that was a thousand bucks staring at him.

"Sell them for ten, give me eight. Keep the profit. And don't smoke it all. You don't look so hot today, kid."

Daryl shrugged, wondering if he should mention the Wintons' mess. Then he decided against it; Presto might suspect him of cooperating with the police.

"Put it in this," Presto said, pulling out a rusty old
Jetsons
lunch box, sans thermos. "Try the Yaz. I hear there's action down there."

Daryl knew what the Yaz was like or, more specifically, the Marketplace. Security cameras everywhere. He would have to watch out for those, maybe even limit his time inside. There were other, seedier places he might try later if he struck out at the juice bar.

He shelved these secondary plans for his immediate pressing need to get loaded. When he pulled out of the apartment parking lot, tires squealing, he caught a glimpse of Presto looking out a window, shaking his head in disapproval.

As he got back on the highway, he reached under his seat and pulled out a small glass pipe. The water had shaken out of it, but he didn't care. He'd smoke the stuff directly on his tongue if he had to.

One-handed, he popped open a black-stoppered vial, loaded a single rock into the pipe, then stuck the pipe between his teeth where he held it. With the same hand he found an economy pack of Bic lighters, pulled one out, and lit the pipe. During the entire procedure, his speed never dropped below eighty.

The rock hissed and cracked as he sucked the vapors down, down, burning all the way down through to his lungs because there was no water in the pipe to cool it. As soon as the drug hit his lungs, it flashed through his entire nervous system.

Then he knew why Presto had advised against driving under the influence of this particular crack.

The 'Vette began to fly. It began as a lightness in his feet and hands, then he felt the front two wheels leave the pavement. Then, as wind rushed under the 'Vette, the rear wheels levitated, until the car evened out. He glanced out the window, figured he was about a foot or two off the pavement.

He cruised along like that for several moments, watching the other traffic drop behind him. No one seemed to notice the flying Chevy in the lane next to them. He might as well have been invisible. When he passed an eighteen-wheeler, his window was even with the driver's, who was drinking a Bud and smoking a Marlboro, never once glancing left to see the flying 'Vette beside him.

I must be invisible.

When turning, the car responded as if it were on the pavement. Sluggishly, at first, then with its usual tightness, the car turned and switched lanes with ease. The wheels, Daryl speculated, must be acting like rudders. Since the Corvette was not designed for air travel—at least to this degree—it was the only explanation that came to him.

Should I file a flight plan somewhere?
he thought whimsically.
Get a pilot's license?
These were the only things that came to him as he sped down Highway 75 south.

Sitting on the passenger's side, a deep green gargoylelike thing with long, pointed ears and eyes as black as charcoal reached across and touched Daryl's right arm.

The pipe fell from his teeth and clattered to the floor.

He would have believed the creature to be a hallucination, brought on by the new version of crack coursing through his system. And for that matter, the flying phenomenon as well, since Corvettes didn't fly. Not really. But the thing had touched him, and that made it real, and Daryl wanted to scream.

Instead, he just kept driving. His new passenger was smaller and thinner than he was, with long spindly arms and legs, and not much of a torso. It wore some kind of black Spandex shorts, and a black tanktop that said "New You Fitness Center." The leg warmers, hugging ankles no wider than Daryl's wrist, looked like elastic snakeskin.

"Don't you think a seat belt is in order, young human?" the creature asked, with a wicked grin that gave him the willies.

"Yeah, uh, sure," Daryl said, pulling the belt over and buckling it. He avoided looking at the creature directly.

The situation was fearfully bizarre, the creature hideous, but he found no terror in himself. Either numbed by the drugs, or hypnotized, or controlled by a mind-ray, he simply was not afraid of his uninvited passenger. The fear and anxiety seemed to leak away as soon as his brain manufactured it, as if something siphoned it off before his consciousness felt it.

Afraid or not, he wanted to be as far away from the creature as possible.

"Presto warned you not to smoke our creation while operating heavy machinery," the creature lectured. It reached over to his CD box and started sorting through it, pausing to look at this or the other, finally selecting
Machines of Loving Grace.

"If I were
Unseleighe,
" the thing said as it deftly operated the CD player, loading the disc, selecting
play,
"I wouldn't know how to do this. I would be afraid of this
thing
of technology. I'm just an agent like you, working for the Man."

"So what do I call you?" Daryl said, but
Machines
drowned out his words. "You're not a Colombian or anything?"

"Oh, no," the thing said, evidently hearing him over the first raspy cut anyway. "Let's see . . . you can call me Mort. That would be suitable." Mort's lips curled over bright, white incisors, punctuating the black face with ferocity. "I think you've had enough of
this
chapter," Mort said cryptically. "Turn the page. Time for round two. Guaran
teed
to get that little ticker of yours going pitty-pat."

In the 'Vette's rearview, a red and blue light bar came to life. It was the new, brighter disco light show version the cops had started using lately, brilliant and flashy enough to land a 747 on a dark pasture. Daryl was usually more observant of black-and-white paint jobs, but hadn't noticed this one until it was at his back door.

"I believe the correct human response is, 'Oh,
shit,
' " Mort said.

At some point during the brief pursuit, the Corvette apparently remembered it was a car and not an aircraft, and had returned to the pavement. Daryl nudged the vehicle down to seventy, sixty, then a sedate forty. And, yes, his heart was pounding away at his sternum, threatening to blast through his chest like the critter in
Alien 3.
But he wasn't particularly afraid, at least didn't feel any of it, in spite of the fact that he had no insurance, was going at least ninety in a sixty-five mile an hour zone, had a dirty pipe and a hundred vials of crack cocaine in a
Jetsons
lunch box on the floor.

"I'm going to jail," Daryl said woodenly as the Corvette rolled to a stop.

"Probably," Mort said. "How do you drive one of these things, anyway?"

Daryl sighed. "They'll probably tow it. Or confiscate it. Yeah, that's what they'll do. They'll throw my ass in jail and do something weird with my 'Vette, like turn it into a showcase black-and-white or some stupid—"

The cop tapped Daryl's window with a nightstick.

In a way, he was grateful to be arrested. He didn't think his new passenger, Mort, was legit, and was probably doing things to his mind that were unhealthy. But then, smoking crack wasn't healthy, either.
Crack doesn't turn into a gargoyle and go through your CD collection. Or does it?
At any rate, he would be separated from this creature, unless they arrested him, too. This presented problems as well. How does one explain this to the judge?

"License and proof of insurance," the cop said. "You were doing ninety. Where's the fire?"

Usual cop shit.
Daryl fumbled for his wallet, which he wasn't even sure he had, having tossed it into the growth of clothing on his bedroom floor the night, or two, before.

Mort leaned over and said in a loud, baritone voice, "You don't need his license. Or the insurance."

The cop didn't seem to notice the apparition as he penned his ticket, confirming his suspicion Mort was a hallucination, induced by the crack.
But crack is not a hallucinogen,
he thought, maddeningly.
What the hell's going on with my head?

"On second thought, never mind," the cop said. He ripped the pink ticket out of the book and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Tell me, sonny, what's that in the lunchbox?" the cop asked.

Daryl looked down at the
Jetsons
lunch pail, which sat precariously between Mort's thin, knobby knees. The lid was open, the hundred or so black-stoppered vials in plain sight. It was exactly what it looked like.

"Uh, nothin'," Daryl said weakly.

"Never you mind about the lunchbox," Mort said, closing it. "It's a government secret."

The cop shrugged. "Son, you might want to slow it down a bit. You were going at least a hundred. If you hit anything in this car, you'll get a big eight-cylinder Chevy engine block shoved through your chest."

"Okay," Daryl said, as a bead of sweat dripped off his nose.

"Drive careful, now," the cop said, smiling. He climbed back into his cruiser, turned off the lights, and took off. Daryl waved as he passed.

"That was weird," Daryl said, cranking the 'Vette back on.

"To the Yaz. We have goodies to sell," Mort said, yawning. "He's lucky I didn't blind him."

When they got to the Yaz, Daryl smoked down the last rock from the vial he'd already opened, out in an auxiliary parking lot near some railroad tracks. He hadn't come down yet from the first hit, but he knew he would, particularly after the close scrape with the cop. Mort even lit his pipe for him.

"You're not coming in, too, are you?" Daryl asked.

Mort gave him a hurt look. "You don't want to be seen with me in public?"

"Well, no . . ." Daryl said, fumbling for the words, the right words. "I'm going to be selling. You would, let's say, attract attention."

Mort didn't bother to open his door; he oozed through it with a sucking gelatin noise that made Daryl flinch.
That sounded painful.
"I'm more spirit than flesh. You're the only one who can see me."

"Oh," Daryl said, feeling silly. "So you
are
a hallucination."

Mort held his palms open, a gesture of acceptance. "Only in that you are the only one who can see me. I do exist." He gave Daryl a look, one eyebrow upturned. "I did get that cop off your back, didn't I? Where's your gratitude? Typical human. If it weren't for me, you'd be sitting in jail making your one phone call to Daddy."

Daryl groaned. "Don't remind me. I'm already in deep
caca
at home."

Mort giggled obscenely. "When
aren't
you?"

Daryl felt that he should be angry at the insult, but again an unseen force diverted the feelings, pulled them off somewhere else.

For a Monday—no, Tuesday—evening, the West End Marketplace was unusually busy. There was the usual electronic loudness erupting from the arcades below, and a thick mass of people winding up the stairs and escalators. Daryl went directly, but nonchalantly, as if he had no real destination, to the Yaz.

The juice bar, also, was packed—or what passed for packed on a Tuesday night. Adam and Spence were tending bar, as usual, but that weird Korean guy who owned the place was nowhere around. He surreptitiously scanned for cameras, hidden or not, and once he was satisfied there were none, strolled into the Yaz.

The crowd consisted of a mixture of goody-goody types and his friends, or at least people he recognized. There seemed to be an invisible rope dividing the two groups, right down the middle of the bar, where kids sat and stood around booths and tables, sipping Cokes, espressos and exotic coffees. The lighting was subdued, it being the early evening hours, and the dance floor was dark and empty. Still in cafe mode, the Yaz had yet to switch to disco.