Ring Game (51 page)

“Did you know—I had a doctor on my show a few months ago—did you know that they are actually using leeches again? In the United States of America?”

“No, I—”

“We’ll be right back, ladies and gentlemen, to talk more with Hyatt Hilton, whose bride-to-be was
kidnapped
on the way to their wedding, and we’ll talk some more about plastic surgery; and I’ll also be telling you about my experience with plastic surgery—and I’m not talking about my tattoo, ladies and gentlemen. Now I
know
you can’t see me over your radio, but I have to tell you—let me just say that I considered it the thoughtful thing to do, and anyone who knows me knows that I’m a pushy broad but I’m one of the most
thoughtful
people I know. That’s right. And out of respect for the people who have to look at me every day, I try to keep up appearances, and I might not be immortal but I care about how I look. So. You know me. I love quality, I
love
my pearls and my gold jewelry, and I
love
my jeweler, and if you love quality and if you care about how you look,
you’ll
love my jeweler too …”

Hyatt felt as though someone had given his brain a hotfoot. Yow! Thirty minutes of being grilled by Barbara Carlson had cooked his synapses good. Oh well, maybe it would get the ball rolling, get some of the other media interested. He might work his way up to Imus or Larry King. And then the biggies, the TV shows:
Geraldo Rivera
,
Ricki Lake
,
Maury Povich
. He hoped he’d sounded okay on the radio. Serious, but entertaining. That was what they wanted, what they would pay for.

He rested his hand on the phone. What next? Maybe call that morning guy on KQRS. Or should he go straight for the national exposure? No, start local. That was what Chip would call the
strategic
approach. Or maybe the strategic approach was to go straight to the top.

Maybe he should call Rochester again, see if he could get through to Carmen. See if she was still alive. The way to really work this media thing was to do it as a couple. If there were two of them, people would believe. Get Carmen’s pretty face on the tube talking about the vampire church, and people would sit up and listen. The two of them on
American Journal
—that would be perfect. He wondered what had happened to her. He’d tied her up good. She hadn’t untied herself, so it must’ve been that idiot Chip, getting it wrong. But how had she ended up in that cornfield, and where was Chip? For that matter, where were Rupe and Polly?

Too many questions. Hyatt opened the refrigerator and looked again for something edible. All he saw were the same dried up pizza remnants—some of them had no doubt been in there for months—and scraps of wire neatly tied in bundles and sorted by color. Jimmy Swann had lived on pizza, and he liked to keep his wire collection below forty degrees.

He wondered what had happened to Jimmy.

Having no cash and no place to go, Hyatt had arrived at Jimmy Swann’s doorstep yesterday afternoon, hoping that Jimmy had forgotten about their last meeting. It was worth a try—assuming that Jimmy didn’t have another tinfoil-wrapped shotgun. He had approached the front door cautiously. When his ringing and knocking produced no response, Hyatt had twisted the handle and found the door to be unlocked. Jimmy was gone.

Hyatt would soon be gone, too. He had called every pizza joint in a five-mile radius, and every one of them had refused to deliver. Jimmy Swann scared off all the pizza delivery guys, which was probably what had ultimately forced him to leave. Starved out. Ventured back out onto the street, where the police might find him. He wasn’t sure why they were looking for him, but whatever the reason, he was sure it would only serve to cramp his style. It would be tough to do media interviews from a jail cell. Find a new base of operations. Jimmy’s place was too damn weird. Besides, it still reeked of Jimmy. That son-of-a-bitch Drew—
Andy
Greenblatt—was going to miss out big time. Story of the century, and he walks away from it. He’d be damn sorry when he turned on his TV and saw Hyatt Hilton being interviewed by Katie Couric.

He wished he could get through to Carmen.

What he had to do, he had to get on the phone again. Keep working the phone. That was the secret.

He had just been put on hold by the assistant to Jenny Jones’s producer when someone knocked on the front door.

Crow stepped back from the door, the foil-wrapped, antennae-studded shotgun in plain view, holding it in what he hoped was a nonthreatening manner. He’d found Hyatt’s BMW tucked back in the alley, but he wasn’t sure who or what else lurked within this old house.

A curtain moved. Seconds later, Hyatt Hilton opened the door.

“Am I glad to see you!” he said.

Crow said, “Really?” He peered past him into the dim interior. “Is your friend here? I want to return his magic gun.” Crow held up the shotgun.

“I can take it.”

Crow handed Hyatt the gun. “It’s not loaded.” He followed Hyatt inside. “Your friend likes to read,” he said, noticing the piles of magazines.

Hyatt leaned the gun against the wall. They stood in the cluttered hallway, facing each other.

“I’d offer you coffee, but I’m fresh out.”

“How about you just tell me what you and Carmen have been doing. Why stage a kidnapping? I don’t get it.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Hyatt said, ignoring the question. “I heard you were in the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Crow said. “But I wouldn’t mind sitting down for a minute.”

Hyatt led him through the hallway. The smell of beer and sweat became stronger. They entered what had once been a sitting room. Hyatt pointed at the sagging, unfolded sofa-bed. Every other item of furniture was covered by magazines and empty pizza boxes.

“Maybe I don’t need to sit down,” said Crow. “You know, the cops want to talk to you.”

“They should be talking to Rupe and Polly. I’m the victim here, Joe. Nobody seems to understand that.”

“I heard you on the radio this morning.”

“Oh? How did I sound?” Hyatt sat down on the edge of the mattress.

“Like a guy looking for attention. I didn’t believe anything you said.”

Hyatt wrinkled his forehead. “Really?”

“Yeah. Yesterday I thought maybe you were telling the truth. Today I think you’re full of it.”

“Was it something I said?”

Crow laughed. “Yeah. You said, ‘You can’t believe what anybody tells you.’”

Hyatt looked thoughtful. “I might’ve said that.”

“I talked to Carmen.”

“You did?”

“She said to tell you she’s not going to do it.”

Hyatt frowned. “She’s not? Do what?”

“That’s what I want to know. What’s really got me curious is why? I know you arranged for that Chip guy to hit me and drive off with the limousine—”

“That’s not true!”

“And I’m pretty sure that the Elders of the Amaranthine Church are not bloodsucking vampires. Bloodsuckers, maybe, but not in the literal sense. What I can’t figure out is, what’s your angle? Were you planning to somehow extort money out of them? Embarrass them? Or is this just your way of keeping yourself entertained?”

Hyatt said, “Joe, all I ever wanted to do was get married and settle down. You know how old I am?”

“Forty-four.”

Hyatt jerked as if from a mild electric shock. “I was going to tell you forty,” he said, wagging his index finger, chiding. “But obviously you’ve been snooping. Anyhow, when you get to be my age, Joe, you’ll understand. You got one last chance, one more load to shoot, so to speak, before you wake up and look down and see you got one foot in the grave.”

“I know that feeling.”

“You’re too young to know it. By the time you’re my age I’ll be a few years short of getting screwed out of my Social Security. All that money I put into the system, poof. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“Hy, you never put a dime into the system.”

“That’s not the point. Me and Carmen, we’re a team. We’re going to reschedule the wedding and get married. That’s all I want. Also, I’ve been talking to a lot of media people. I’m going to get on TV and tell my story. Once they hear how it was, they’ll understand. It’s a great story.”

“It sounds like that’s all it is.”

“You don’t understand,” sighed Hyatt. “First of all, I didn’t do what you say. And second, even if I had, don’t you think I’d have done a better job? I mean, what a mess! Media people don’t like things messy. They like stories that are nice and neat, like the guy whose wife cut off his dick. That was a good story.”

“Maybe you should try that.”

Hyatt sighed. “Right now, it feels like maybe that’s what I did.”

Someone knocked on the front door.

“Who’s that?” Hyatt asked.

“A friend of mine,” said Crow. “Name of Wes. I told him to meet me here.”

Laura Debrowski was sitting in the GTO trying to open the combination padlock Crow had left on his dashboard. It was one of her hobbies—usually she could crack a lock in about three minutes, but she’d been working on this one ever since Crow had entered the old gray house. At one point, ten minutes after he’d gone inside, she’d nearly abandoned the project to go in after him. But then the two cops had shown up, so she’d gone back to work on the lock.

A few minutes later, Crow got in the car wearing a faint smile.

Debrowski said, “How’d that go?”

“It went fine. He was there.”

“He tell you what you wanted to know?”

“I’m not sure what I wanted to know. I think Hy just wants to be on TV.”

“That’s what this was about?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know. But I found out something else. I found out that Hyatt Hilton and Joe Crow have something in common.”

Debrowski held up the stubborn lock. “Impossible to open?”

“Yeah, that, too. But mostly I found out that we’re both mortal.”

As soon as he heard the news that Hyatt Hilton had been arrested, Chip Bouchet decided that his best strategy would be to head for the Pacific Northwest and find a militia to join up with. He spent several hours reconnoitering and surveilling the Minneapolis apartment building where he had lived for the past several years, then went in and grabbed his bug-out bag. One hour later he was on a Greyhound bus heading west on I-94.

He began rereading
The Turner Diaries
, which described the coming collapse of the United States government. It was a very good book. He finished it just as they were passing through Bismarck, North Dakota.

Having just emerged from the future described in
Diaries
, Chip began to look at his fellow passengers in a whole new way. There was one guy he was sure was a Jew, and there were no fewer than six negroes, who were enslaved by the Jews although they did not yet know it. And then there was the man with the radio transmitter affixed to his head. Possibly a communications expert, but for which side? The longer Chip looked at him, the more convinced he became that the man was in contact with one of the militia groups he was hoping to join. The copper wires and tubes might not be a transmitter at all, but a scrambling device designed to prevent the government from monitoring him.

As the bus entered Montana, Chip decided to make contact. He moved up the aisle and accidentally on purpose dropped his copy of the
Diaries
on the man’s lap.

The man looked down at the book and said, “The day of reckoning is upon us.”

“Amen, brother,” said Chip, taking the seat across the aisle. “Amen.”

Prosper, and Live Long.

—Third Maxim of the Amaranthine Church

T
HE AMBIENCE AT BIGG
Bodies had not improved in Arling Biggie’s absence. Beaut, still nursing his broken foot, was opening up late every morning, closing early at night, and doing little else. The place was falling apart—dumbbells racked out of order, mirrors smudged with oil and chalk dust, and the lat machine suffering from a broken pulley. Piles of lint were growing in the corners, and the locker room floors were unspeakable. Beaut had dragged Bigg’s comfortable leather chair out of his office and put it behind the front counter. He spent his days slumped in the chair reading magazines—today it was a dog-eared copy of
Fem-Physique Quarterly
—his bad foot propped on one of the weight benches. Beaut hadn’t shaved lately; his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was saggy. Every few minutes he took a sip from a plastic Spiderman cup.

Both Beaut and Bigg Bodies looked as if they had been neglected for months on end, but it had only been six days since Bigg’s arrest. Crow marveled at how quickly things could fall apart. Beaut was a mere husk of his former overinflated self. Both Beaut and the gym were slowly crumbling. Rupe might have something to say here. Something about short telomeres.

Crow loaded another pair of plates onto the bar and did a set of bench presses, ten nice, slow lifts. He racked the bar and sat up, then noticed a blocky man in a blue suit come in through the front door. Not until he saw Beaut sit up and drop his magazine did he recognize Arling Biggie, the sequel.

The new Arling Biggie had removed his Fu Manchu mustache and his sideburns, and his previously clean-shaven head was now dark with new hair growth. Even more startling: a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses teetered on his thick nose.

Bigg exchanged a few words with Beaut, then spotted Crow. He approached, his demeanor uncharacteristically subdued.

“How’s it going, Crow?”

“Not bad,” Crow replied. “You made bail, huh?”

“I had my lawyer sell one of the limos. I’d have sold both of them, except the one I let you use is still impounded.”

“You’ll get it back.”

Bigg shrugged, bent over, and picked a piece of lint off the rubber floor mat. He looked around, seemed to take in the general neglect, and dropped the lint back on the floor. “The place looks like hell.”

Crow wasn’t sure whether he should agree or disagree.

Bigg said, “I just got done talking to my lawyer. You know what he told me? He said I’m probably going to jail for a while. He wants me to plead something. Reckless endangerment. And all I did was shoot at a closed door. Besides, I hear the guy’s immortal. How can they charge me with trying to kill somebody that can’t die? They don’t even care about the fact that the day before, the guy hit me over the head with a wrench. You know what I’m talking about. You got clobbered, too. What are you supposed to do, you run into the guy that hit you? You going to say, ‘I forgive you, brother’? You going to turn the other cheek?”