Time Bomb (33 page)

Sitting in the two seats closest to the podium were Bud Ahlward, in the same brown suit he’d worn the day he’d shot Holly Burden, and a thin, attractive woman with taffy-colored wedge-cut hair, a deeply tanned face, and a jawline so tight it looked like a seam.

Mrs. Latch. The former Miranda Brundage. Looking at her attire reminded me the sixties were ancient history. Or maybe they’d never happened at all. She had on a two-piece black leather outfit with padded shoulders and gold lamé appliqué, diamond earrings, and the rock Linda had mentioned—a solitaire on a chain that, even at this distance, reflected enough light to brighten a ballroom. Her legs were well shaped, sheathed in gray silk, crossed at the ankles, her feet encased in spike-heel thonged affairs that had to be handmade Italian. She alternated between gazing out at the audience and looking up at her husband.

Even at this distance she looked bored, almost defiantly jaded. I thought I remembered that she’d once wanted to be an actress. Either she had no talent or wasn’t bothering to fake it.

Latch held forth in echoplex eloquence:

“. . . so I told DeJon [jon . . . jon . . . jon] you’re someone everyone looks up to [to . . . to . . . to]. Your message is positive, a message for today, and the kids at Hale need you!”

Applause line.

Latch stopped and waited.

The kids didn’t get it, but the suits and the orange gorillas did. The sound of twenty pairs of hands clapping was feeble.

Latch beamed as if it had been an ovation at the National Convention, removed his welfare glasses, and loosened his tie. His wife’s affection for high style hadn’t rubbed off: He had on a rumpled tan corduroy suit, blue chambray shirt, and navy knit tie.

“DeJon said
yes
!” Up-raised fist.

“The school board said
yes
!” Punching air.

“So
we
put it
together
for
you
!” Both hands raised. Dual victory V’s.

“. . . So here he is, boys and girls of all ages: the
Chiller,
the ultimate
Crowd-Thriller,
De
Jo-on
Jonson!”

Power chords tumbled out of the speakers like avalanche boulders: rumbling, deafening, threatening, finally picking up melodic content and terminating as a sustaining organ tone—a fugue performed by an E. Power Biggs on acid. A hailstorm of guitar chords shattered the silence. Thunderous drums. Hissing cymbals. The suits on stage looked stricken but kept their places. The orange T-shirts marched toward them and touched the backs of their chairs. As if choreographed, the bureaucrats in the suits got up and filed off the stage. Miranda Latch and Ahlward hung back, she applauding with aerobic fervor that seemed disconnected to the ennui in her eyes.

Latch left the podium and took her hand. Waving to the audience, the two of them walked off the stage. Ahlward trailed, looking bored, one hand inside his jacket.

The three of them took seats in the front row, amid a group of plainly dressed women—my group. The mothers were all applauding. I couldn’t see their faces.

The music got louder. Linda grimaced.

I said, “One sec,” and made my way toward the front of the assembly, weaving past news crews and camera gear.

Finally I got close enough to see. Hundreds of faces. Some blank, some puzzled, some burnished with excitement. I glanced over at the front row. The mothers looked intimidated but not unhappy. Instant celebrity.

Latch noticed me. Smiled and continued snapping his fingers in time with the beat. Bud Ahlward followed his boss’s glance, let his eyes settle on me, then looked away. Miranda was snapping her fingers too. For all the fun she was having it might have been physical therapy.

I returned my attention to the kids. The volume of the music continued to climb. I saw one little girl—a first grader—slap her hands over her ears.

I moved forward to get a better look. The little girl’s eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was trembling. A blast from the speakers and she burst into an open-mouthed wail rendered silent by the din. No one noticed. All eyes, including those of her teacher, were fixed upon the stage.

I went back to Linda and managed, with gestures and shouts in her ear, to communicate what was happening. She looked over at the little girl, who was crying harder. Then she nudged me and pointed. A couple of other kids in the lower grades were looking unsteady, holding their ears too. More tears.

Linda gave a furious look and stomped forward, elbowing cameramen and orange bruisers until she reached the little girl’s teacher. She talked behind her hand, pointed discreetly. The teacher’s mouth formed an O. Looking chastened, he turned his attention back to his class.

I counted about six or seven children crying by now, four of them kids I recognized easily because they were in the high-risk group. Linda saw them too. She went over to each of them, bending low, patting heads, talking in their ears. Taking their hands and offering them the choice of leaving.

Four headshakes, three nods. She removed the nodders from the group, herded them past the press clutch, back into the school building.

I followed her. It took me a while to get into the building. Linda was halfway down the main corridor, sitting on the floor in a circle with the three children. Smiling, talking, holding a hand puppet and making it talk in a high-pitched voice. The children were smiling. No distress that I could see.

I took a few steps forward. She looked up.

“Look, kids, it’s Dr. Delaware.”

“Hi,” I said.

Shy waves.

“Anything you guys want to ask Dr. Delaware”

Silence.

“Looks like everything’s under control, Dr. Delaware?”

I said, “Great, Dr. Overstreet,” and went back outside.

Though the music was louder, the stage was uninhab-ited. Not a musician in sight, not even a synthesizer wizard. I realized this was going to be a lip-sync exhibition. Prefab passion.

Nothing happened for several seconds. Then what appeared to be a huge orange flame burned its way through the black backdrop. Gasps from the audience. As the flame got closer, it turned into an oversized sheet of heavy satin, trailing along the stage. Beneath the satin was movement—a swelling and pulsating as the sheet shimmered forward. Like a gag horse, minus head or tail. Cheap trick, but eerie.

The sheet bumped and grinded its way center stage. Organ crescendo, cymbal crash, and the sheet dropped, revealing six more huge men, bare-chested and wearing orange tights and silver jackboots. Three blacks, on the left, scowling under broom-bristles of straightened yellow hair. On the right, a trio of Nordic types in royal-blue Afros.

The six of them spread their legs and assumed wrist-gripping iron-pumper poses. Between them appeared a very tall, very skinny man in his mid-twenties, with skin the color of India ink, Asian eyes, and orange Jheri-curled past-the-shoulders hair that looked as if it had been braised with axle grease. Wide shoulders, the hips of a prepubescent boy, rubbery limbs, a Modigliani neck, and the terminal-illness cheekbones of a
Vogue
model.

He wore electric-blue goggles in tiger-hide plastic frames that were wider than his face, a tight silver silk jumpsuit embroidered with orange thread and festooned with costume sapphires in baroque patterns. His hands were encased in fingerless blue satin weight-lifter’s gloves; his feet shod in silver high-tops with orange laces.

He snapped his fingers. The musclemen retreated, satin sheet in hand.

The music picked up pace. Jonson pranced, knees high like a drum majorette, did a Nijinsky leap, shot off a flurry of tap-dance pyrotechnics, and ended with a split that transformed him into an inverted silver T and made my groin hurt vicariously.

Then, sudden quiet topped by a high-pitched hum from the speakers. A few of the older kids were out of their seats, bouncing and clapping and calling out, “DeJon! DeJon! Do ‘Chiller’! ‘Chiller’! DeJon! DeJon!”

The orange-haired man scissored himself upright and smiled feverishly. Went pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, shimmied, squatted, did a backwards double somersault followed by a headstand and some rapid hand-walking, then jumped back to his feet, flexed each bicep, and bared his teeth.

The music resumed: a modified reggae beat supercharged by a string-popping funk riff.

His teeth parted and his mouth opened wide enough for a tonsil display. A very whispery tenor oozed out of the speakers.

When the night moves in,
And creepies crawl,
And thingies creep,
Over castle walls,

Gasp. Hand to mouth. Look of exaggerated fear.

That’s when I’m real.
That’s when I live.
I’m your party man,
Got so much to give.
Cause I’m a chiller. Love your chiller.
Baby I’m your chiller. Got to love your chiller.
Sweet kind of chiller. Got to kiss your chiller.

Seductive leer. Change of tempo to a manic two-four almost drowned out by shouts and applause. Jonson belly-danced, jumped back, raced forward, skidded to a stop at the edge of the stage, rolled his eyes. When he lip-synced again, his whisper had turned into a raspy baritone:

And when the snakes of wrath
Meet the toads of fire,
And scorpions waltz
Across the pyre,
That’s when I breathe.
That makes me whole.
I’m here to love
Your mortal soul.
Cause I’m a chiller. Love your chiller . . .

Charming.

I searched for signs of anxiety among the children. Many of them were rocking and bopping, singing along, shouting out Jonson’s name. Taking it the way it was meant to be taken—as a sound-wave gestalt, the lyrics irrelevant. It went on for another minute. Then a rain of orange and silver flowers appeared out of nowhere, butterfly-delicate. The musclemen reappeared with the orange sheet and Jonson was whisked offstage. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

Latch got back onstage and mouthed inaudible thank-yous over the cheers. The press surged past him, taking off in the direction of the sheet. Latch stood there, abandoned, and I saw something—a spoiled, peevish look—creep onto his face. Just for a second. Then it was gone and he was grinning again and waving, his wife and Ahlward by his side.

Things had gotten wild out in the cheap seats. The kids were pelting each other with flowers; teachers struggled to line them up. I looked back at the front row and saw my mothers standing alone, confused. The Latches and Ahlward stood nearby, surrounded by young-scrubbeds like the ones I’d seen the day of the sniping. Lots of congratulations from the troops. Latch getting what he needed, soaking it up while maintaining a TV face. No one made any attempt to talk to the mothers.

I started making my way over, waiting for whole classes to pass, getting my insteps trampled by tiny feet. Camera crews were pulling up cable, creating tripwires, and I had to watch where I stepped. When I was a few feet away, Latch saw me, grinned, and waved. His wife waved too; Pavlov would have given her an A. Ahlward remained stolid, one hand in his jacket.

Latch said something to him. The redheaded man walked over to me and said, “Dr. Delaware, the councilman would like to speak with you.”

“Gee whiz,” I said.

If he heard me he didn’t let on.

22

I followed him, but at the last moment I veered away and went to the mothers. Latch’s face took on that same deprived-brat look. I wondered how long it had been since he had been told no.

The women looked deprived too. Of their bearings. A few held paper flowers, seemed afraid to throw them away.

I walked up to them and introduced myself. Before they could reply, a voice behind me said, “Dr. Delaware. Alex.”

No choice but to turn. The councilman had regained his camera happy-face. But his wife had gotten tired of wearing hers. She’d put on sunglasses—copper-and-gold de-signer originals with a lavender-blue tint. The two of them were standing together but seemed far apart. Ahlward and the dress-for-success bunch hung back several yards.

Latch held out his hand. “Good to see you again, Alex.”

“Councilman.”

“Please.
Gordon.”

The inevitable pressing of flesh. He pumped hard enough to draw water.

I turned back to the mothers, smiled, and said, “One minute, please,” in my basic Spanish.

They smiled back, still confused.

Latch said, “Alex, I’d like you to meet my first wife, Miranda.” Chuckling. Her smile was murderous.

“Randy, this is Dr. Alex Delaware, the psychologist I told you about.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor.” She gave me four fingertips and retracted them quickly. Her formality seemed defiant. Latch gave her a quick, nervous look, which she ignored. Up close she seemed smaller, brittle of voice and bone. And older. Her husband’s senior by a good five years. Betrayed by her skin. The rich tan and well-applied makeup failed to mask the fine wrinkles and liverish blotches. Her mouth was wide and had a nice, sensual curve to it but had started to pucker. Her nose was skinny and short with large nostrils—probably rhinoplasty. Her chin was marred by a sprinkle of pocks. Her diamonds were flawless but made her look washed-out in contrast.

Latch said, “Randy’s always had an interest in psych. We both have.” He put his arm around her. She tensed and smiled at the same time.

She said, “That’s true, Doctor. I’m a people person. We’re organizing—Gordie and I—a mental health committee for the district. Concerned citizens reaching out to help the mentally ill. I’d be privileged if you’d join our advisory committee.”

I said, “I’m flattered, Mrs. Latch, but my time’s pretty committed right now.”

Her smiled evaporated and her lower lip curled—another spoiled child. A little girl used to guilt-tripping Daddy. But she replaced it almost immediately with an inch of charm-school tooth-flash. “I’m sure it is,” she said airily. “But if you change your mind—”

“Let us know, Alex,” said Latch. He spread his arms over the yard. “Pretty fantastic, wasn’t it? The kids really got into it.”