Ring Game (45 page)

How could she be angry at him? He hadn’t done anything. He was the one that should be mad at her.
He
was the injured party.

Crow rolled onto his side, hoping the movement would reroute his thinking. It didn’t work. He was still back in Paris, still fuming. That whole thing with that band had got to him worse than anything. They were supposed to be taking a vacation, spending money, and getting to know each other, eating cheese and visiting museums and taking walks along the Seine. It wasn’t supposed to be a business trip. All of a sudden she’s spending half her time with a bunch of French generation Xers, hanging out in bars listening to a parade of godawful postpunk Johnny Rotten wanna-bes. Crow had met René. The guy was a prick. He tried to tell that to Debrowski but all she wanted to talk about was the way the guy looked on stage, how he had the makings of a rock and roll idol.

Crow wondered if she’d—no! He heard himself groan and felt the sheets dragging across his hip as he turned over again. He wasn’t ready for the image of Debrowski with that scrawny, cocky little frog-eater. The concept was too disgusting to bring into focus. Crow pushed it down, pushed it out, buried it in a storm of mental static.

How could she be mad at him?

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

—Publius Syrus

T
HE PLAN HAD BEEN
to arrive at Stonecrop with the entire Prescott police force. To storm the chapel, guns drawn. Rush to the altar to save the virgin bride. The
pregnant
virgin bride. The image was powerful and magical and would make great TV. Hyatt had spent many hours fantasizing the climactic scenario. He saw himself striking a dramatic pose, sweeping his bleeding bride into his arms, rushing her to the hospital escorted by a phalanx of bluejackets.

The reality did not quite measure up. The rain had not been a part of Hyatt’s vision, nor had the phlegmatic Officer Rob Grunseth. It had never occurred to Hyatt that there would be only two cops on duty at night in this small town, and that one of them would happen to be gone, and that the other one would refuse to leave the station unattended. It was almost as though Grunseth didn’t believe his story.

Grunseth had kept him sitting there for an hour, asking questions, even making him touch his nose and recite the alphabet. The harder Hyatt worked to convince the cop that they had a genuine emergency, the stupider the cop became. Grunseth kept repeating Hyatt’s story back to him.

“So, you say you and your fiancée got kidnapped on the way to your wedding, right?”

“That’s right,” Hyatt said.

“And you say it was those folks building that place up top, on the bluff, right?”

“The Amaranthines.”

“And they hauled you up there and tied your girlfriend to an altar and proceeded to drain the blood out of her.”

“That’s right.”

“You say that these Am-ran-
theens
are violating your girlfriend … why?”

“How many times do I have to tell you this? Carmen could be dying!”

“I just like to hear you say it, son.”

Hyatt sighed. A hundred thousand cops in the country and he gets the densest one of the crop. “They want to be immortal,” he explained for the third or fourth time. “They think if they drink her blood, the blood of a virgin, they’ll live forever.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Grunseth said. “They’re like—”

“Vampires,” Hyatt said.

“Vampires! That’s what I thought you said. You see any of ’em turn into bats?”

“They aren’t that kind of vampire.”

“Uh-huh. And these vampires, they were going to drink your blood, too?”

“I don’t know what they had planned.”

“You a virgin?”

“Look, we really don’t have time for this. Can you call somebody? We have to get up there and save her. I’m not kidding around here.”

“I’m just trying to get this straight. So then you escape from the vampires’ clutches, jump in your limousine, and come barreling down the bluff road and smash into my car. Have I got that right?”

Hyatt nodded. Hearing his own story told back to him—he had to admit, it
was
a little far-fetched. But wasn’t that what made it sexy? Wasn’t that what made it powerful? What about Moses hearing voices from a burning bush? What about God saying to Abraham, “Kill me a son?” Did anyone believe them at first? Hyatt didn’t think so.

He said, “You know, you could call up to Minneapolis. The kidnapping must’ve been reported. Can’t you call up there?”

“Well now, I could. But if I call there and no such thing ever happened, I’m going to be very upset, son. So let me make sure I got this straight. You and your fiancée were on your way to the church—”

“American Legion Post.”

“Right! I knew I had something wrong. So you’re riding along in your big white limousine …”

The other night-shift cop showed up then, a tall, lanky young man with a lot of pink in his face.

“’Bout time you got back,” Grunseth said. “You feelin’ better now?”

“I feel great,” said the cop, looking curiously at Hyatt. “What happened out there? Where’d that limo come from?”

“This here is Mr. Hyatt Hilltop, vampire fighter.”

“Hilton,” said Hyatt.

“Vampire fighter?”

“Mr. Hilltop is going to take us to his missing bride, aren’t you, son?” said Grunseth. He grinned at Amundson. “What do you say, Vince? Want to take a ride up the bluff?”

“Sure,” said Amundson uncertainly.

“Let’s go, Mister Hilltop. On the way there you can tell Officer Amundson all what you told me.”

The rain was coming down thick and hard. They had pulled in as close to the chapel as they could get, which still left fifty feet of downpour to negotiate. Officer Grunseth did not look happy. “All I got to say, son, if I’m gonna get soaked, there better be a bleeding bride in there.”

“She’s in there,” Hyatt said. “Let me out.”

“You keep your ass on that seat, mister,” Amundson said. He turned to Grunseth. “What do you think, Rob? We just go knock on the door?”

“You sure you can’t get us any closer?”

“It don’t look so good. There’s some kind of rock garden in the way. You want to wait for the rain to let up a little?”

Grunseth growled, flung open his door, and ran for the chapel. He opened the chapel door and disappeared inside. Amundson hopped out of the car and followed.

Hyatt took a long, deep breath. This was it: the turning point of his life. The point where instead of Hyatt Hilton going to the world, the world would come to Hyatt Hilton. From now on, it was out of his hands. His only concern, at the moment, was that Chip would show up at some inconvenient moment. What had happened to him? Most likely, he had simply gotten lost, or become so involved in his reconnoitering that he’d lost track of time. Would he have sense enough to simply disappear?

Ten minutes passed before Amundson and Grunseth returned, walking slowly through the rain, arguing. Amundson got behind the wheel and started the car.

Grunseth said, “It’s a damn tragedy is what it is.”

Hyatt felt a chill rise up through his body to settle in a pool around his heart. His throat tightened. Something was very wrong.

“Is she … is she okay?”

Amundson put the car in gear and said to Grunseth, “I don’t see what’s so terrible. She’s eighteen, isn’t she?”

“She’s twenty-three,” Hyatt said.

Grunseth said to Hyatt, “Shut up.”

Amundson said, “They’ll get married, the guy’ll get a better job. Daphne’s not the first kid to start a family that way.”

Hyatt said, “Hey! What are you talking about? What did you find in there?”

“Shut up. We’re taking you back to town.”

“Oh my god.” Hyatt slumped back in the seat. “She’s dead, isn’t she? You have to arrest them. I know who did it. It was the Amaranthines. Polly and Rupe. I knew it. They just left her there, didn’t they?” Hyatt was both horrified and thrilled by the concept. Part of him was thinking that it was no problem if Carmen was dead. He could still make it work. He would be the bereaved fiancé, the survivor of a heinous crime, witness to the horrors visited upon the innocent by the blood-drinking Amaranthines.

Polly entered the hospital room. “Dr. Bell says the girl’s going to be all right. She’s lost a lot of blood, but she’ll be fine.”

“Good,” said Rupe. He was propped up on the bed, a cool, wet towel draped over his face and forehead. They were back at Youthmark, Dr. Bell’s private hospital in Rochester. Dr. Bell had given him a couple of capsules; his headache was beginning to subside, but the nausea that had plagued him for the past few weeks was stronger than ever. Sunrise was an hour away.

“I’m not so sure it is good. What are we going to do with her? I told you Hyatt was up to something.” Polly sat down. “Maybe we should have let her bleed to death.”

“Don’t say that, my sweet.” Rupe pulled the towel away from his face. The bandages were gone. The flesh around his eyes looked swollen and tender.

“Why not? You realize that we are about to be savaged, don’t you? Look what he’s done to us!”

“Nothing. He’s done nothing to us. We have a situation, that’s all. Hyatt will go to the police and make a few wild accusations. The police will go to Stonecrop. They’ll find nothing. We will be here. Dr. Bell said he would vouch for us.”

“In exchange for a small donation, yes. I don’t trust him any more than I trust Chip.”

“How is he doing?”

“He’s sleeping. Dr. Bell gave him a pain shot. A rather potent one, I believe.”

“Good. The man was in pain.”

“He’s lucky he’s alive. I could have shot him for a prowler.”

Rupe shook his head. “No one should die at Stonecrop. You did the right thing.”

“At least we won’t have to worry about him for a few hours.”

Polly stood up and went to the window. “Do you know what this is going to look like? The Amaranthine Elders at a plastic surgery clinic? Look at my face! I’m red as a tomato, and you with your eyes all puffy and sore from your surgery. And down the hall we’ve got a bride who was kidnapped by one of our employees, who is a few rooms down the hall with second-degree burns on his scrotum. Even if we can prove that this was all Hyatt’s doing, the press will strip us bare. It’s all about to blow up, Rupe. Between the media and the police and the rest of the hyenas, they’ll rip us open like a wounded lion.”

Rupe grimaced. “That’s disgusting.” He replaced the moist towel across his face. “I wish you wouldn’t watch those nature shows. They’re all Death Programming.”

“That’s how it’ll look. We’re facing our Watergate, our Waco. What do you think will happen when they start talking to Chip?”

“Chip will tell the truth.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. He’ll tell them about our surgeries, our actual biological ages, the whole bit. He’s been spying on us, Rupe. I doubt there’s anything he doesn’t know. It’s one thing to have Hyatt out there making wild accusations, but Chip and Hyatt together—that’s really bad. Even if we’re off the hook for the kidnapping, the rest of it will sink us. How many of the Faithful do you think will keep writing us checks when they find out we’ve been lying to them?”

“Possibly most of them. They want to believe, Polly.”

“And those that don’t? Stonecrop is going to look to them like a giant scam. How many of the Faithful have you promised private cottages?”

“Everyone will be taken care of, dearest.”

“Only if half of them die. Chip is going to sink us, Rupe. He knows everything, and he’s going to talk. He’s lost his faith, just like Hyatt.”

“You told me he repented.”

“Yeah, he repented with six ounces of boiling hot tea in his lap and a gun to his head. But what happens when his blisters heal and some reporter gets hold of him? He’ll repent every which way. The man is a dog, Rupe. As for the girl, who knows? I’m still not clear on whether she’s working with Hyatt, or if she even knows what was going on at all. She could’ve died if we hadn’t pulled that tube out of her arm.”

“We saved her life,” Rupe said. “When we found her she had lost a whole champagne bottle of blood, and then some. She didn’t even know who she was. We should be heroes.”

“That’s not how the media will see it.”

They sat without speaking, listening to the faint early morning buzzes and hums and respirations that filled the small hospital. Rupe could hear his pulse thumping in his right ear.

After a time Rupe said, “Are you sure about that, love? At bottom, they are all Pilgrims.”

Everyone should have enough money to get plastic surgery.

—Beverly Johnson, Supermodel

C
ROW WAS STILL AWAKE
at dawn, standing at the window, watching the sky lighten, waiting for the sun to mount the horizon. The rain had stopped, the clouds were all but gone. At seven o’clock he realized that he was facing west. He reached up with both hands and rubbed his jaw muscles, willing them to relax. His gums hurt from clamping his teeth, and his brain felt heavy. He had mentally rehearsed his next conversation with Debrowski too many times. It no longer had a logical thread, only a kind of dirgelike inevitability. He would confront her with his feelings, support his position with a structure of facts and, if necessary, delineate for her the inevitable balance between rights and obligations in all human relationships. He was sure she’d be impressed.

Crow returned to the bed. After a time, he slept.

His first visitor, Wes Larson, was sitting quietly in one of the plastic chairs when Crow awakened.

When he saw Crow looking at him, Wes nodded. “Good morning.” Wes Larson was not smiling, but he looked content.

Crow raised the head of his bed, bringing him up to the same altitude as Wes’s thumblike head. “How’s it going?” he said, figuring that Wes would take the question literally and talk for a while, giving him a chance to wake up.

Wes said, “You awake enough to answer a few questions?” There was a heartiness to his voice, along with a self-assuredness that Crow had never before heard from this social maladroit.

“I could use a cup of coffee,” said Crow.