Pipsqueak (22 page)

“What about Elk?” I persisted. “You got him?”

Mortimer looked even more annoyed. “We’ll get him.”

Nicholas cleared his throat. “Hey, I’ll need paperwork from you boys, you know, for my insurance-fraud investigation.”

Mortimer leaned in close to Nicholas, and I’ll be damned if my steely brother managed not to shrink from that imposing mug. In a soft, ominous voice, Mortimer mapped his position in no uncertain terms.

“NSA don’t give out papers on nothin’. Listen up, Slick. I ain’t seen you. You ain’t seen me. If you walk real slow and steady and don’t look back, maybe, just maybe, we won’t reach out an’ squash you two. This is a matter of national security, which gives me a shitload of discretion and authority when it comes to due process. Maybe the murder cases of Tyler Loomis, Sloan, and Marti Folsom will just shrivel up and disappear, and you two won’t get charged with obstruction of justice, go to jail, and mysteriously find the parole board keeps you in the jug twenty years past your parole eligibility.” His face lightened, the spittle at the corners of his lips ebbing back into his mouth. “That’s not advice, boys.” A friendly, hideous glow shimmered on his face. “That’s a warning.”

Mortimer stepped aside, daring us not to take the long, slow, and ultimately wise walks of witness denial that are at the core of all cover-ups.

A uniform cop led us out of the theater basement, and in the gloom we found a line of police leading to an open back door. Outside the line, the production staff scurried about their business as though the police weren’t arresting the Special Musical Guests. Someone was talking earnestly onstage, and we walked through a narrow space behind a giant screen. Pictures of kids with bandages on their heads were being projected onto the screen, and the unfortunates loomed over us. Must be President Ford talking. As we reached the other side of the screen, the audience broke into applause. And just before we reached the exit, Speed Wobble came around the corner, presumably headed for the stage for their farewell performance. Bart and Liam stopped and stared as we were led out.

“Aw, that’s a drag, man,” Bart hailed, looking over his granny glasses at me. “Narcs!”

Liam put up a peace sign. “Keep the faith, Todd baby! Our best to Meat, awright?”

I got outside and realized I was still carrying the
Bat out of Hell
guitar.

Chapter 31

D
on’t take this off until you get home.” Our escort slapped a red sticker to our lapels. “Shows you’re clear to leave the perimeter.”

“Wait!” In her high heels, Angie ran on her toes and would have fallen flat on her face if I hadn’t caught her. “Garth, what’s happened? Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.” Nicholas grinned and sauntered out of earshot.

“The short answer? The retros are finished. The long, incredible answer will have to wait until I’ve had a beer. No, five or six beers. Won’t Peter be missing you?”

“Oh, no. I need at least one juicy detail to hold me. Did they get General Buster? Did you see him, even?”

“Not yet.”

“You know” —Angie’s brow was knit, the puzzle machine at work— “I find it very interesting that through all this, Bookerman hasn’t shown himself.”

“Look, go in and finish the gala.”

“Not after what just happened in there. Besides, I want to make sure you’re okay. Peter can stuff it.” She made an annoyed face and waved the subject of Peter away. “Come on, let’s go home.”

“What, and miss the Princess wearing your jewelry?” I took her by the shoulders and smiled. “Not on your life. I’m fine, just exhausted. Look, Otto and I will come pick you up when you’re done. I just need some air.”

“No, Garth—”

“I insist. Really. I’ll see you in an hour or so. And I’ll tell you about the whole thing.”

She was pouting.

“And be careful in those shoes. You don’t want me to worry.”

“Promise me.” Angie squinted and held up an admonishing finger. “Promise me you’ll just go sit with Otto.”

“I promise, I promise.”

She turned and went back down the hall.

When I was ushered clear of the perimeter, past the paddy wagon full of musicians, and sent on my way, I found Nicholas headed back toward the front of the theater.

“See you later, Garth. A little unfinished business, you know how it is.”

“Nicholas, I wouldn’t do anything to piss off Mortimer. Besides, it’s over. Bookerman is dead.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He grinned. “I’ll catch up.”

I gave a lazy salute and watched him turn the corner. The maniac was going to get in more trouble, I just knew it. I was done, no more trouble.

No need to go back and return the guitar, either. I could return it another day, anonymously. The Savoy Revue probably wouldn’t be too happy about the bullet through the soundboard.

No, I made up my mind to do what I wanted to do in the first place that evening. Go sit with Otto in the Lincoln and have a cigarette. Pulling my bow tie loose, I tromped across a plaza toward the cross street. Sure enough, the joint was wall-to-wall limos, each end of the block stoppered with uniform cops and plainclothesmen. The way they dashed to and fro, touching antennae, checking people’s IDs, double-checking that shop doors were locked, they were like ants who’d just had a twig stuffed down their hill. Some of the men-in-black types started to fan out among the closer limos, checking underneath, talking to the drivers. Looking for an escaped retro, I thought.

I found Otto sitting on the hood of the Lincoln, smoking. He was parked under a faulty street lamp, the luminaire flickering orange light and buzzing overhead. In front of him were several other chauffeurs, chewing the fat and smoking. I heard the distinctive purr of muttered Russian. It seemed Otto had found pals among the other émigrés.

“Garv, vhat you do, my friend!” Otto clapped his hands together, then showed me his palms as if showing me his disappointment. “Vhy you not show do sit at watch? Vhere Yan-gie?”

“She’s okay. Angie is still inside. I’ve had all the excitement I can take for one evening.” I handed him the guitar, climbed into the front passenger seat, and melted into the upholstery, my eyes half closed, the Russians in front of the car a blur of silhouettes.

“Ah, very nice.” Otto stroked the guitar. “Gatar, it is belong to Meat, yes?”

My eyebrows went up. “You know Meat?”

“Yes, of course, I to know Meat. In Russia, very many peoples know to Meat. Eh?
Yob tvoyu mat
!” He explored the bullet hole with a fingertip. “Garv not vorry. Otto to fix hole.”

My eyes drifted to the front again, just as a chauffeur was extending his lighter toward another driver’s unlit smoke.

Otto began singing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” to himself:

“Bey-be, beybe let me slip on eet, bey-be, beybe let me slip on eet. Let me slip on eet, I tell you I lose you in mornink!”

In the Zippo light, I caught a glimpse of a face, a face that pulled back from the chauffeurs and vanished among the flickering orange shadows between the limos. Perhaps I was seeing things. But I didn’t think so, and Angie’s words echoed in my head.

I find it very interesting that through all this, Bookerman hasn’t shown himself.

“I must know—right now!” Otto falsettoed. What next? Phil Rizzuto?

I snapped my fingers. “Otto!”

“Eh?” He leaned down to where I was slumped, the waft of his nicotine washing over me.

“You know these guys? The ones here you were talking to?” I whispered.

“Know? I know all Russians,” he whispered back, singing: “Bey-be, beybe let me slip on eet—”

“I mean, have you met them before?”

“No, I not to meet.”

“Were they all Russian?”

“Yes, all Russian, Garv. Beybe, beybe let me—” Now he was doing air guitar.

“No . . . foreigners?”

“Eh?”

“Like dark skin.”

“No. Like Yakut, meybe.”

I grabbed his forearm to halt his swaying and hopefully the singing. “Yakut?”

“Yes, Yakut.”

“What’s a Yakut look like?”

“Siberia, many Yakut.”

“They look like you?”

“No, Garv, they to look like round face.”

“Hair?”

“All time blek.”

“Skin?”

“Brown skeen.”

“Eyes?”

“China, eh?” He tweaked the corner of his eyes.

I sat up, then stood up, holding on to the windshield as I scouted the crowd of drivers in the flickering light.

A whistle blew down the block, and drivers started to clamber for their cars. The police were starting the post-event car queue, and I could see a search gauntlet forming at the head of the line. Police cars blocked the back way out of the street.

“Garv, vhat you do?”

“Get in,” I waved, climbing out of the car. From the backseat I grabbed the FedEx box. “I’ll catch up to you.”

It took me about fifteen limos before I opened the correct driver’s door and found him behind the wheel. I got in and closed the door. Roger sighed, with what sounded like relief.

“Thank goodness you aren’t hurt, Garth.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and checked his mirrors. “You know, Scuppy was intent on killing both you and Palihnic.”

Roger was in an ill-fitting black suit, white shirt, and black tie. His gray ponytail was tucked up under his chauffeur’s cap. He was a natural for the part.

“I could have sworn it was you, Roger, who told the boys to throw us in the shaft when they were through.”

“You didn’t think, Garth, that I meant them to harm you? I’m as much a victim in this as you. Scuppy is a desperate character. I was in fear for my life. I only hope you and I, working together, can get out of this traffic jam and escape him.” He gave me a fatherly pat on the knee. “The shocking truth is, Garth, that Scuppy has my daughter hostage. If we hurry, we can get to the girl and free her before Scuppy catches up to us. Will you help me?”

“Your daughter?” I gasped. “Shouldn’t we get these policemen to help us, then? I mean, isn’t this a matter for the police?” I noted that the limo line was creeping forward steadily. The front of the line was only five cars ahead.

“I wish we could, Garth, by God I wish we could.” He thought for a moment. “But it’s too risky. You must know by now that Milner’s plot involves all kinds of people.”

“The police too?”

“Yes, even police. If they . . .” He paused, carefully checking his side mirror.

I ducked to check the passenger-side mirror. A group of plainclothes cops were advancing through the limos, looking under cars, talking to drivers.

“Who do you think they’re looking for?” I wondered aloud.

“They must be onto the retros. We may be in luck, Garth.”

“Then—”

“But we couldn’t risk it. What if they’re looking for us?” He hastened to add, “Poor Brenda. I hope these scoundrels haven’t hurt her.”

“Well, we’re almost to the front of the line. But won’t they want to know who I am?”

“Just say you’re a bodyguard. I’ll cover for you.”

Roger buzzed his window down and rolled up to the head of the line. “Yes, Officer?” He blinked into the cop’s flashlight, a toothy smile on his face.

The policemen bent down and flashed a light on me, the luminous circle of which came to rest on the tag I’d been issued at the backstage door. They checked their clipboards and exchanged glances. “You can go,” one of them waved.

We lurched forward, Roger sitting higher in his seat. I put a hand on the steering wheel. “Stay with the others.”

“But . . . Brenda,” he intoned.

“You don’t want to tip your mitt, do you?” I peered into my mirror. “Look, they’re still watching.”

He leaned down, scrutinizing his mirror closely.

I reached over and pressed my thumb—hard—into the side of his neck. Under my thumb was the open mouth of the dead coral snake.

Crotalids, such as rattlesnakes, have folding fangs. Elapids, such as death adders and—you got it—coral snakes, have fangs fixed in grooves where their teeth would be. Fresh dead or thawed, they’re still poisonous.

Roger struggled, but I must have ground the snake’s open mouth into his neck for a full three seconds. Long enough, I hoped, for the small fangs to deliver the poison.

I let the snake fall out of my sleeve to the floor as I reached for the ignition, killed the engine, and palmed the keys. Roger was too surprised and too busy groping at the painful abrasion on his neck to stop me.

“Yob tvoyu mat!”
he wheezed, then screamed, “Shit!” The veneer gone, his angry face was brick-red ruddy.

Then his eyes latched on to the striped snake draped over the transmission hump. His voice squirmed with revulsion. “A goddamn snake!”

His next move was to reach under the seat, but I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him toward me, away from what I imagined was a gun. He fought, but he was, what, seventy-something? He did look sixty-something, but that was probably thanks to an overabundance of bean curd and carrot juice. I mean, I’m mid-forties, so he had to be pushing eighty to have worked
The General Buster Show.

“The more you struggle,” I warned, prying away the hands reaching for my neck, “the faster the neurotoxins go to your brain.”

I felt him shudder. He began coughing. “Why, Garth?” he rasped, trying to lapse back into his Father Duffy act. “You’re hurting me, Garth. Brenda, we—”

I could feel his hand making a cagey reach toward his side of the car.

“Cut the crap, Bookerman.”

He paused in his struggles and looked up at me, his right eyelid drooping slightly. Maybe he meant to say something, but he didn’t. He was obviously struggling with the muscle-relaxing effects of the venom. I hoped that the venom might also loosen his tongue. It was now or never to get to the bottom of all this.

“That’s right, I figured you out. You are
the
one,
the
only, General Buster. And you may look like an American Indian, with the hair, the boots, the turquoise belt buckle—but you’re a Yakut. You and Milner faked your death, and you either took Elk’s identity or you just made him up, I dunno which. What I don’t understand is how you got here, running a cult, from doing an afternoon kids’ show.”

His face started twitching. “What do you know about it—about anything?” he spat. Disdain, tinged with apathy, swept over him, the kind drunk elders reserve for youngsters. “The world’s going to hell and we were going to do something about it.”

“Turn the world’s clock back? But c’mon. You were a cartoon-show host. Then you go into health food, get hold of the spheres, and make a big success of Fab Form, a nasty-tasting health drink. Was it really always your intention to go from General Buster to a jive führer? To abolish TV entirely?”

Bookerman tried to glare at me but didn’t seem able to focus. His gaze softened, drifting toward the floor. “You wouldn’t understand. I’ve been places, seen things, horrible things.”

I thought of Otto and his memories of the gulag.

He tried to clear his throat. “. . . crazy things . . . you need to possess. Minds. People. Souls. Power. The power to change the very fabric of . . . We were so close.”

Was that much different from my own yen for Pipsqueak? Actually, it was very different but struck me as eerily parallel, and I shuddered. Bookerman’s big, lovable, button-eyed face was twisted in bitter, ambiguous regret. That and growing numbness. I thought he was done. Not quite.

“You wanna know how something like this happens?” he slurred. “You wanna know? What really started all this?