Calahan's Con Part 12

Of Antonio Donnazzio Junior his own mother had once said, "You know how some people don't know s.h.i.t? Little Tony don't suspect s.h.i.t." (To which his maternal grandfather had replied, "f.u.c.kin-A. Little p.r.i.c.k makes his old man look like that Lord Stevie Hawkins. Whaddya mean, who? You know who I mean. Rain Man in a wheelchair.") There had never been the slightest danger of Tony Junior suddenly needing a tuxedo because he'd been invited to Stockholm, and no one had ever, at least not with sincerity, asked his advice on anything.

Nevertheless, he'd had an entire night to integrate in his mind both brand-new information-I know somebody who can get younger with some of the oldest information his brain retained-the world is owned by five very very old men.

Everything he had been doing for the past few weeks, ever since he'd arrived in Key West, had the single purpose of impressing one or more of those very very old men. For although he was not bright enough to have figured it out for himself, he had finally terrorized someone knowledgeable into explaining to him that this was what it would take for him to become a made guy-that no mere capo or even don would or even could make that decision. Pressed, hard, his informant had explained that it wasn't, at least not entirely, because Tony wasn't Sicilian, and it wasn't, at least not entirely, because he was, let's face it, a potential discipline problem, and it wasn't even that most people found him a little intimidating on a one-to-one basis, or even a one-to-six heavily-armed basis. What it mostly was, really, was that he was the son of Tony Donuts Senior, who in his own gaudy pa.s.sage through life had made few even temporary allies and no friends, and not for nothin', but it didn't help he even had the same friggin' name fachrissake. This was monstrously, manifestly unfair, of course, but there was nothing Tony Junior could do about it except strangle his informant, which was small satisfaction.

Mulling it over for months, he'd seen that the Five Old Men could not be either frightened or reasoned with. They would have to be bribed. But they were used to being bribed by the best, with the most, so it was going to take a pretty big piece of money.

That was what had led to his southward migration. The only plan he'd come up with himself for raising serious money was to double the tax he imposed on each of his personal stable of extortion victims. It was not a great plan. His standard rates had not been merciful, even by protection racket standards; doubled, they became a burden so crushing that a few of the, goats actually dared to balk. During one such renegotiation Tony found himself distracted, and digressed to ask the other party where in the h.e.l.l he'd ever found such a stupid T-shirt. The shop owner had acquired the memorably obscene garment in question on Duval Street during a recent vacation in Key West, had noticed the obvious signs of Russian mob incursion there, and was well aware of Tony's only frustrated ambition; in desperate hope of shortening his hospital stay, he invented the whole scam on the spot and gave it to Tony. Go down there, roll up the Commies, give their b.a.l.l.s and their loot to the old men, and they'll give you a b.u.t.ton. It took two or three repet.i.tions, each faster and more concise than the last, for Tony to grasp the nub of the scheme, but when he did, he liked it so much that he generously put its inventor out of his misery at once.

On arrival in Key West, he quickly learned that Einstein had screwed him. The Russians were well dug in, in numbers that even he had to respect, and their princ.i.p.al racket appeared to be money laundering, about which Tony understood slightly less than nothing. They'd be hard to take, and once taken would const.i.tute a prize he wasn't even sure how to pick up, much less present to the old men.

So he had stalled. First he would lock up the rest of Key West, which anyone could see was a boat race for a man of his talents, and then from that power base he would take on the Russians. So far, the strategy was not working a h.e.l.l of a lot better than it had for Napoleon or Hitler.

It was just as much aggravation and legwork to lock up Key West as any other city, but once you had it, there was far less than usual to steal. Tony slowly learned that Key West was where all the losers in North America ended up, sooner or later. A few days after he had that epiphany, it occurred to him that Key West was where he had ended up, and from that time on, he tended to be even more impatient and irritable than his nature would have dictated. Not good.

And then along came his lucky break, the unexpected answer to all his problems. Not just a miracle, but the miracle: the only thing that the Five Old Men wanted more than money. In the possession of a girl. Who got littler and more defenseless-and more infuriatingly insolent-every time he saw her.

Tony's impatience escalated to a state not far short of frenzy.

So when he went to Duval Street to get his Jeep back the next morning, he was in no mood to waste any time on the transaction. He had a broad to hunt. And was aware that almost every other male on Duval Street was also hunting a broad, which was bound to obscure his view, and also that there were thousands of broads around, maybe half of them blond, at least this week.

Fortunately for the peace of the commonweal, the staff of the emergency room at the hospital on Stock Island, and himself, the elderly tourist from Wisconsin was punctual. When Tony got out of the cab, which departed without waiting for payment, there the geezer was, and there parked beside him was Tony's Jeep.

Tony walked around the vehicle with a critical eye. From the front b.u.mper to the new rear one, it was visibly in far better condition than it had been yesterday. He grunted in satisfaction. Even the interior looked good: the floors had been swept, the ashtray had been emptied, and a crack in the driver's seat upholstery that had been starting to annoy him was repaired. He turned, leaned back against the vehicle, and said, "Ahright," holding out his hand for the keys.

"Had to pay double to have it ready this fast," the geezer said, greatly relieved by Tony's approval. In a wild spasm of optimism, he pa.s.sed over the receipt along with the keys. "Come to thirteen hundred."

"You got f.u.c.ked," Tony told him. He climbed into the Jeep, started it up, and drove away without looking, confident that the stream of traffic would let him in.

His plan was to drive a few blocks farther, park, and go up to the observation deck of the Holiday Inn LaConcha. It is one of the tallest structures in Key West (the tallest with an elevator), and centrally located. The only way to get a better view of the entire island at once is to rent a helicopter, and helicopters are noisy and don't serve booze. But before he'd driven even half a block, Tony's attention was distracted by something irritatingly not-right about the brake pedal.

He stopped to examine the problem. (Fortunately the driver behind him today was more alert than the geezer had been yesterday, and stopped so far short of rear-ending Tony that even when his own car got rear-ended and punted forward a foot, he was still okay.) The problem turned out to be just what it had seemed to be: a piece of paper, ridiculously taped to the brake. With difficulty he bent and picked it up. (Another collision occurred, several vehicles back; croquet effect pushed the first car in line to within a few inches of Tony's brand-new rear b.u.mper, and the driver began having an anxiety attack.) It was a photocopy of a delicate hand with Tony's own inimitable signature on it, and its middle finger was extended.

Tony had just ten seconds ago inspected the interior of the Jeep, and there had been no paper taped to its brake pedal then. Therefore, the little miracle broad was no more than a couple of hundred yards behind him, laughing at him.

He climbed out of the Jeep just before it was jolted forward a foot by the car immediately behind it, amid a blaring of horns that fell silent when he appeared. Automatically he started to tell the other driver to have the Jeep back here, fixed, by tomorrow, but the man seemed to have fainted.

Tony had no time to screw around; he gave the responsibility and keys to the second driver in line-an elderly nun from Fresno-and forgot the Jeep's existence for now.

He could see the geezer from where he stood, sitting now in the front seat of his own car, being berated by his geezette. He had begun to drive away from there, but then the traffic had halted, stopping him halfway out of his parking s.p.a.ce. Apparently he was farsighted; before Tony had taken more than a few steps in that direction, the old bird saw him, paled, spun the wheel hard left, and stomped on the gas. His car slammed into a gap between two of the vehicles blocking it, and burst through them; the impact helped it complete its U-turn on the narrow street, and then it was dwindling into the distance, bound directly for Wisconsin. The hectoring geezette seemed to be pinned in place by her personal safety device, now: an airbag supporting a gasbag.

Tony Donuts Junior didn't do running. He walked rapidly to the spot where his Jeep had been parked only moments before, planted himself in the empty parking s.p.a.ce, and began turning in a slow clockwise circle. He was sure the girl he was looking for would appear.

It didn't turn out well for him.

The first pedestrian he saw was another geezer-no, a coot-this one solidly built, heavily tanned, balding on top, and possessed of a splendid round grey-and-white beard.

Tony's gaze continued moving clockwise, and five degrees later encountered another stocky coot with a tan and a Kris Kringle beard.

A little to the right of him, a third sanguine Santa in khaki shorts and sandals was gesturing with his pipe at a fourth bronzed Geppetto in a Hawaiian shirt. Tony's gaze slowed but kept moving.

A few people to the right of them, a pair of j.a.panese tourists were excitedly photographing yet another florid white-bearded senior, this one in slacks and a jacket with lots of pockets and epaulets.

Tony and his gaze stopped rotating, and his pulse climbed. Almost nothing frightened him, and hardly anything made him uneasy-but he had heard terrified drunks in bars read aloud from the Post or the Enquirer on this very subject more than once, and had seen numerous movies about it, all nearly identical (ironically), and all of them creepy.

Jesus, he thought, they're all the same f.u.c.kin guy-they're whaddyacallit, clunes!

He tried to recall what it was about dunes that was so creepy-were they from s.p.a.ce?-but could remember for sure only that there were scientists involved. Tony regarded scientists the same way Conan the Barbarian did wizards. Even strength and b.a.l.l.s were no use against them.

Still, these clunes were doing nothing overtly threatening, and n.o.body else on the street seemed alarmed by them, plus which anyway how much trouble could even half a dozen Xerox copies of an overweight Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi be for a guy like Tony?

The word "copies" reminded him of his other science project. Miracle Girl. Who, come to think of it, had been using photocopies to taunt him-was this more of her work? Tony really hated it when people were subtle. More determined than ever to wring the secret of youth from her, so he could then wring her neck in good conscience, he was just about to resume his clockwise scan when something belatedly registered on him. He backed up dubiously, but no s.h.i.t. There between Geppetto and Santa, holding Geppetto's hand in fact, was a woman his eye had subtracted the first time because she was the wrong age, race, and shape to be Miracle Girl, an Asian in her thirties (he estimated) with no hips and a pleasant smile. Tony was well aware that standards in Key West differed greatly from those of Brooklyn, particularly at the beaches, but he was sure this was the first woman he had seen stark naked on Duval Street in broad daylight.

No, not naked-she was wearing paint. Some talented artist had painted fishnet stockings, a frilly white garter belt, a lacy white cupless bra and tiny white crotchless panties on her tanned skin. And the high heels had to be real.

By now a certain sense of unreality was beginning to grow upon Tony. He'd seen at once on arrival that nearly everyone in Key West was f.u.c.ked up somehow, but this was getting excessive. Since he didn't read, tuned out most of what people said to him, and changed the channel if he didn't hear at least small arms fire, there was no way he could have heard of Key West's legendary weeklong Fantasy Fest-Mardi Gras without the ugly parts, Carnevale without the dark side-which was about to start that evening, and probably no hope of his understanding that in another few hours, and for the next few nights, the woman he was staring at might seem overdressed for the party. No more could he be expected to have heard of Ernest Hemingway, fathomed the Hemingway Lookalike Contest held in Key West every April, or appreciated that he was looking at several of that year's finalists, gathered together informally to boggle the Fantasy Fest tourists and promote their own festival. Tony's policy when faced with the weird was to think about something else, so he was just about to return his attention, again, to the search for Miracle Girl when a car horn went off a couple of feet from his ear.

It was not, oddly, the first time in his adult life that someone had honked at Tony Donuts Junior, but he was the only living person who knew that. Doesn't matter how tough you are, a car honks right next to you, you're gonna flinch, and Tony hated flinching. Plus which he was busy now. He turned to confront the offending vehicle, a van with a heavily tinted windshield that had pulled halfway into the parking s.p.a.ce and clearly wanted him to move so it could finish the job. Tony glared at the unseen driver and gave him the finger. The horn sounded again, longer this time. Tony swelled himself until his clothes threatened to split like Bruce Banner's when he turned into the Incredible Hulk ("Eat me!"), and tried to recall just where you punched a van of that particular make to kill it.

The engine shut down, doors opened, and four people got out. Tony swelled another increment...then slowly began to deflate. ("Drink me!") He had been in Key West long enough to know it was the mecca for East Coast drag queens, the place where people from Provincetown and Fire Island went to see something really exotic. Tony had never had a problem with queers in his life, any more than with muggers. He even grasped that drag queens weren't necessarily queers, having raped some of both. But these four were striking. For a start, they were gorgeous, even by the standards of Key West. In face, body, dress, carriage, makeup, and style, they would have pa.s.sed in daylight not just for women, but bombsh.e.l.ls.

If they had not each been very close to Tony's size.

He had seen guys almost his size before-admittedly, not often-and was confident he could take all four at once if it came to it. He'd taken guys bigger than him; viciousness was what counted in the end, and viciousness was his best thing. He also knew that dropping these clowns could take a good half hour of hard work in the hot Florida sun, and that to have that long to work, here on the main drag, he'd have to put down at least one or two cops, too. And none of this would help him find Miracle Girl. Without a word he turned his back on the quartet and stepped back up onto the side-walk, deleting clunes and clowns alike from his universe.

Only as the driver was pulling the van into the parking s.p.a.ce did it occur to Tony that an outside observer might have misunderstood, and believed that he'd been made to back down. By broads ... and not even real broads. Miracle Girl had probably observed it, and was laughing at him right now. His shirt split in the back, not vertically but the hard way. He heard the van door slam behind him as the driver got out to rejoin his sisters, and when the inevitable t.i.ttering began, he turned around again. Of course they weren't looking anywhere near him, and could not stop murmuring and giggling.

The van was parked sloppily, angled in and nearly a yard (Tony believed the only use for the metric system was to confuse juries as to how much drugs you'd been caught holding) from the sidewalk. He walked to the front of the van, studied it, and put his fist through the windshield at its lower right corner. This let him get a good grip on the window post. His right arm swelled, his shirt split all the way from cuff to shoulder under his suit, the van's tires all made sounds like a moron imitating a motorboat, and the van moved a couple of feet deeper into the parking s.p.a.ce and a foot closer to the curb. The drag queens all hit the mute b.u.t.ton. Duval Street itself became comparatively quiet for a main, uh, drag.

Tony studied his work and frowned. The van was closer to the curb, but its angle was even worse now. He walked to the rear quarter, transvest.i.tes scattering out of his way, and saw that to get as good a grip at this end he would have to punch through the wall of the van. He frowned up at the sun, sighed . . . walked around behind the van, and put it flush against the curb with a single kick. A complexly layered sound issued from inside it, mostly treble but with some bottom, as well. "All my G.o.dd.a.m.n makeup!" wailed the stricken driver. One of his friends put a hand over his mouth, and all three led him hastily away. Aside from his dwindling sobs, the only sound to be heard on that part of Duval Street was the clashing music from the nearest dozen establishments, the composite murmur of a dozen air conditioners, and an elderly nun half a block away, swearing colorfully as she tried to pry a crumpled b.u.mper away from the rear wheels of a Jeep with a short tire iron.

Satisfaction carried Tony for several seconds, before it dawned on him that by now his chances of spotting Miracle Girl had plummeted to lower than the neckline on the van's driver. Prioritizing had always been a problem of Tony's; it was why he liked shotguns. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day to terrorize all the pains in the a.s.s who had it coming; someone was bound to slip through the cracks, and it always seemed to be the biggest pain in the a.s.s.

But Tony Donuts junior was not the sort of man who gave up on something just because he knew it wasn't going to work. He doggedly resumed his by-now-hopeless clockwise scanning rotation, and got a whole two seconds' look right at her before he felt a sharp tug at his nipple, the right one this time, and realized she had blown past him on a bicycle again.

He'd failed to recognize her for those two seconds because he'd been looking for a seventeen-year-old. Today she was no more than thirteen, tops, b.o.o.bs like apples, hair short like a boy.

Since he had worked out in some detail exactly what he would do if this ever happened again, and reminded himself to remember not to forget, it only took him five or six seconds to work out what to do. No time to hot-wire the van, no point jacking other wheels with traffic at a standstill, too hot to run, the key to eternal power and wealth was disappearing down Duval Street as he watched. Briefly he pictured himself in a bicycle race with a kid ... and that finally brought his train of thought back to Shining Time Station. He located the nearest moped-he thought of it as a baby motorcycle-and by the time he reached it, n.o.body was driving it anymore. Now watch, Witch b.i.t.c.h, thought Tony (noticing nothing about the sentence), and he bestrode the moped, and while he was figuring out how to make it go, both tires quit. There was no bang, they simply farted themselves dead in harmony.

There was no time for rage; Miracle Girl's lead was increasing with every second. Tony spotted a slightly bigger moped, presumably stronger, driven by an obvious rich guy who proved his superior intelligence by bringing it to Tony without being told, as soon as he saw Tony's gaze lock on it. As the rich guy handed it over, he gave a very quick little pantomime lesson in moped driving and stepped back. Tony sat cautiously, lifted both feet from the ground. The tires accepted the load, and he kept his balance, but he looked profoundly ridiculous, his knees sticking out to the sides like the booms of a swordfish boat. No matter. Tony would not learn to mind being laughed at until someone tried it. Several bystanders struggled with that very impulse, seeing him now, but they all mastered it. He stared up Duval Street, acquired his target-that was definitely a thirteen-year-old a.s.s, tops-hunched forward over the handlebars of his moped as he'd seen bikers do before laying rubber, and twisted the accelerator grip like a knife, as far as it would rotate. The moped whined like a neurotic chain saw, and in under five seconds went from zero to ten, where it topped out.

Even the fear of death and the love of life itself could not prevent giggles from breaking out on Duval Street then. One oblivious child frankly whooped, and every third adult seemed to be coughing, rubbing his upper lip, or smoking an imaginary cigarette. Tony glowered down at the moped already learning to mind this, and decided to treat the accelerator like a neck-if you can't twist it any farther, twist hard. The result was exactly the same: it snapped, spun freely, and the patient stopped screaming, coughed, and died.

Everyone lost it now. Even a monster like Tony couldn't kill everybody. The Hemingway clunes tried hard to laugh loudest, but one of the drag queens topped them.

Tony climbed off the body-it was already leaking and darting to cool-flung it through the windshield of the van, and considered his options. Miracle Girl was still visible in the middle distance, but only just; heavy pedestrian traffic had her stopped, but not for long. Under this remarkable confluence of pressures, serial traumas, provocations, and incompossible yearnings, Tony Donuts Junior accomplished something painful and for him almost unprecedented. He reasoned.

Miss Thirteen was heading west on Duval. If she kept going straight for too much longer, she would pedal off a dock and into the Gulf of Mexico. If she hung a left at any point, she could go one whole block to Whitehead, where traffic was almost as slow, and then pedal off a dock into the Florida Strait. Those little side streets south of Duval were the heart of Tony's new manor, the barnyard of his victim-farm. If she did go that way, he would find her spoor easily.

But if she hung a right, she could go anywhere in Old Town, over fifty square blocks, pa.s.s all the nicest houses and scenery, and encounter far fewer moving cars-or keep going past Old Town to anywhere in Key West-or leave the rock altogether and start pedaling for America, a hundred gorgeous miles north.

Tony shrugged off the ruins of his suit jacket-double breasted, yes; double-backed, no-and shirt, and he started running west after her as fast as he could; the first chance he got, he hung a right. Behind him., the laughter faltered for a moment, then resumed. Yeah, he definitely minded being laughed at, now that he'd tried it.

Among the other pedestrians Tony pushed out of his way as he ran were two s.p.a.cemen, a Chinese Tarzan, Lady G.o.diva riding on a pig, and a Bahamian b.u.t.terfly with really gorgeous wings-more Fantasy Fest people jumping the gun, trying out or drying out their costumes in advance. He ignored them, except as impediments in the obstacle course he was running, but they contributed to his growing sense of unreality.

He decided to turn left one block north, onto Simonton. It paralleled Duval for its entire length, and had vastly less traffic, pedestrian or auto; he would be able to run at nearly full speed without hurting anybody. No matter where Miracle Girl made her own right off Duval, Tony would see her cross Simonton from left to right, and adjust his own course. He was fairly confident he could run down a little girl on a bike who didn't know she was being chased.

Despite his concentration, weird pedestrians he pa.s.sed kept threatening to distract him as he ran-a topless nun, a six-foot white rabbit writing something on a business card with a pen, a midget witch, a little girl who gave him the finger as she rode by on a blue moped, a famous movie star whose name he could almost remember, some idiot walking a live kangaroo on a leash-but hey, that was just life in Key West, and Tony was focused now, concentrating, eye on the prize, so determined to not miss his quarry crossing the street up ahead that it took him a good half a block to think, A little girl who gave me the finger as she rode by? He slammed to a halt in a spray of sidewalk-chips and spun around in time to see the tail end of a blue moped that had just turned right. It ain't her, he thought. No way. She just couldn'ta got back here that fast, not even on a f.u.c.kin' Moped. Forget about it-it would take a miracle for that girl there to be -Miracle Girl .. .

He began to run again, back the way he had just come.

Halfway back to Duval, he saw a blue moped chained to a Larking meter in front of one of the rare shops with a closed 'loon The place had no windows, no Muzak, and apparently no name, unless ADULT x.x.xXX 21+ ONLY was a name. The air above the moped's tailpipe shimmered. Tony thundered to a halt, caught his breath, planed sweat from his forehead with the edge of his hand and flung it on the sidewalk, and went inside.

It was dark in there. After having been out in the sunshine, Tony found it only slightly less dark when he remembered to take off his sungla.s.ses. He stood with his back to the door, blocking the exit, while he waited for his eyes to adjust. It was also ma.s.sively air-conditioned in there, which Tony hated, especially after exercise; already he could feel a charley horse threatening in his left calf. The more he made out of his surroundings, the bigger his pupils got, and soon he could see just fine. Tony had been involved in the distribution end of the p.o.r.n business once or twice, until amateur video killed it-and some of the stuff offered for sale in this chilly little hole in the wall startled him, even shocked him in one or two cases. He made himself ignore it and looked around for the girl. No sign of her, and nowhere she could be hiding unless she could fit into a video box or hide behind a magazine. The whole place was about the size of a New York kitchen. There was a counter on the right, with an aging hippie behind it, but it didn't look like he had enough room back there even to take advantage of the merchandise without barking his knuckles.

Still, there was nowhere else to go. Tony approached the counter-racks of videotape boxes slid aside to make way for him-and confronted the clerk. Long curly hair, lots of mustache, and a silly little tuft of beard hanging off his chin. He reminded Tony of Buffalo Bill-or was it General Custer he was thinking of?-only with mostly grey hair. He was dressed conservatively for a hippie, by Key West standards, but he didn't look scared of Tony, so he must be very stoned. Tony put enough menace and volume in his voice to get the guy's attention. "I'm lookin for a blonde, about thirteen, short hair."

"Aisle three," said the hippie. "Second row from the top."

Tony closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began counting to ten. At five, he forgot he was counting and said, "Not in a movie. For real."

The hippie shook his head. "We don't do live," he said. "Take a left on Duval, go about five blocks-but you better have a lot of money, and be prepared to settle for a pretty good fake."

Tony started over from three, having lost his place, and this time got to seven before deciding screw it. Softly, slowly, he said, "About a minute ago. A real live little teenybopper. Blond hair, yellow outfit. Got off a blue bike and came in here."

The hippie opened his mouth.

"If you're ready to die, right now, keep on bulls.h.i.ttin' me." The hippie closed his mouth.

"Or keep me waitin five more seconds," Tony suggested.

The hippie again opened his mouth, and of course Tony could see he was getting ready to lie, so Tony naturally got ready to hit him, and of course the hippie could see that so he started to duck behind the counter, where of course there would be some sort of lame weapon, so naturally Tony decided to pound him on the top of his head so hard he'd lose interest in weapons for a while, and he made his hand into a fist and his arm into a club and raised it high, but before he could bring it down, a soft high voice behind him, back there in the s.p.a.ce where Tony had just personally made certain here were no people and no ways for one to enter or leave, said, "Let it go. I'm afraid he's not going to take no for an answer."

Tony stopped and turned around and stared at the thirteen-year-old girl until even he realized that he looked like a parody of the Statue of Liberty and put his arm down at his side.

She wore what looked like the same sunsuit, a lemon yellow sleeveless one-piece affair that ended in shorts, only it looked a lot bigger on her today. The outfit had a belt-no, two belts, only one of which went through the belt loops-what was that about?

"Thank you for your loyalty, Willard," she went on, "but I won't have your blood spilled in my behalf. I fear I have far too much of that against my account already."

"Your call, Ida," said the hippie. "I think you're making a mistake."

"If so, it won't be the first, will it? I'm tired, Willard. Tired of hiding and running and being afraid. Perhaps a ... a really strong, brutal man is what I've needed all along."

Tony was not a subtle man; nuance usually p.i.s.sed him off. But it was dawning on him that, in some way he was not equipped to pa.r.s.e, this kid did not sound like a thirteen-yearold trying to sound like a grown-up. What she sounded like was a very old lady trying to sound like a kid. Physically she was perfect, looked just like a little kid on the verge of p.u.b.erty. Verbally, though, she was completely unconvincing.

"You ain't no little kid," he accused.

"And you are no fool," she said. Behind him, Willard the hippie smothered a sneeze and excused himself.

Tony ignored him. "How old are you? Really?"

She sighed, looked up to the ceiling-then squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye as she answered. "I was born in 1848."

Tony knew how to solve arithmetic problems: frighten the nearest person into giving you the answer. He frowned ferociously, swelled his shoulders, and asked, "How old does that make you?"

"She's a hundred and fifty-one," Willard said behind him.

Tony turned and looked at him. He was pretty good at telling when people were bulls.h.i.tting him-they tended to be pale and sweaty, and tremble noticeably-and this Willard seemed no more frightened than people usually were when confined in an enclosed s.p.a.ce with Tony Donuts Junior. He didn't even look as if he expected Tony to believe him-that more than anything else made Tony think that the old hippie was telling the truth.

He turned back to Miracle Girl, took a long second look at her eyes, and mentally promoted her to Miracle Woman. No, Miracle Hag.

Ambiguity and Tony were barely nodding acquaintances, but now he experienced a rare mixed reaction. This was certainly good news. The little b.i.t.c.h was even more valuable than he'd realized. Tony had a sudden mental image of one of the Five Old Men, just after Tony explained to him that he would soon be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g like a teenager again, and picturing that smile made even Tony want to flinch just a bit-he was about to be richer than a CEO. h.e.l.l, richer than a CEO's lawyer.

On the other hand, the only kinds of humans Tony had ever had the slightest difficulty in controlling had been hags and little girls. He could dimly sense that a combination of both was not going to be good for him.

It this little Miracle Hag seemed, at least for the moment, to have surrendered. "Willard is correct," she said. "I was born Ida Alice Shourds in 1848." She waited, seeming to expect him to react to the name, then continued. "If you look me up in the public records, you'll be told that I died nearly seventy years ago, at the age of eighty-two. I died in a little sanitarium in upstate New York, where I had been locked away for thirty-three years. Can you imagine, sir, what pa.s.sed for a mental hospital in Central Valley, New York, in the early part of this century? What it was like to be confined in such a place?"

Tony felt his shoulders tighten. "My old man died in a hatch," he said. "Federal prisoner. They had him on drugs so bad, he was takin' guff from janitors."

Ida's face showed empathy that even he knew should have been impossible for a thirteen-year-old. "Then perhaps you can appreciate that decades ago, before your father was born, they kept patients docile with methods that would one day make Thorazine seem an enlightened breakthrough."

"Doctors," said Tony.

"Indeed."

"So you faked bein' dead somehow an busted out."

She nodded. "With Willard's help. He was a janitor at the sanitarium then."

Tony glanced over his shoulder at the hippie. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Almost ninety," Willard admitted.

"Ya don't look a day over sixty"

Willard thanked him solemnly. Tony returned his attention to Ida. "Okay. So you died seventy years ago. Continue the story."

"My death may have been faked, but that most certainly did not make it painless," she said. "You see, at the time of my death my name was Ida Alice Flagler, and I was worth thirteen million dollars."

"That's 1930 dollars," Willard put in.

"Of which I never got to spend a penny," she said bitterly.