Last Call: Expiration Date Part 22

Kootie let the mania carry him for one more second, howling out of him to swamp Edison's words in a torrent of unreasoning noise; finally the m.u.f.fled scream wobbled away to silence, leaving his lungs empty and aching. He raised his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, held it for a moment, and then let them slump back down-and the panic fell away from him, leaving him almost calm, though the pounding of his heart was visibly twitching his shirt collar.

Kootie was motionless now, but as tense as a flexed fencing foil. He told himself that Edison was right; he had to stay alert. n.o.body was going to kill him right here in these people's minivan; eventually someone would have to cut him free of this seat, and he could pretend to be asleep when they did, and then jump for freedom in the instant that the tape was cut.

He was in control of himself again, coldly and deeply angry at the Fussels and already ashamed at having gone to pieces in front of them.

And so he was surprised when he began weeping. His head jerked down and he was wailing "Hoo-hoo-hoo" behind the tape, on and on, even though he could feel drool moving toward the corner of his distended mouth.

"For ... G.o.d's sake, William," said Mrs. Fussel in a shrill monotone. "Have you gone crazy? You can't-"

"Pull over," the man said, blundering back up toward the front of the van. "I'll drive. This is the kid, El, it's Koot Hoomie Parganas and he's obviously an escaped nut! They'll put him back in restraints as soon as we turn him over to them! I'll... bite my arm, and say he did it. Or better, we'll buy a cheap knife, and I'll cut myself. He's dangerous, we had to tape him up. And it's twenty thousand G.o.dd.a.m.n dollars."

Kootie kept up his hoo-hooing, and did it louder when Mrs. Fussel turned the wheel to the right to pull over; and then he felt his drooling mouth try to grin around the tape as the three of them were jolted by the right front tire going up over the curb. Edison's enjoying this, Kootie thought.

Mr. Fussel slapped him across the face-it didn't sting much this time, through the tape. "Shut up or I'll run a loop of tape over your nose," the man whispered.

Edison winked Kootie's good eye at Mr. Fussel. Kootie hoped Edison knew what he was doing here.

The Fussels found a place to park in a lot somewhere-the windshield faced a close cinder-block wall so that no pa.s.sersby would see the bound and gagged boy in the back of the minivan-and then Mr. Fussel picked some quarters out of a dish on the console and climbed out, locking the pa.s.senger door behind him.

After several seconds of no sound but the quiet burr of the idling engine, Mrs. Fussel turned around in the driver's seat.

"He's a nice man," she said. Kootie could almost believe she was talking to herself. "We want to have children ourselves."

Kootie stared at the floor, afraid Edison would give her a sardonic look.

"Neither of us knows how to deal with ... a child with problems," she went, on, "a runaway, a violent runaway. We don't believe in hitting children. This was like when you have to hit someone who's drowning, if you want to save them. Can you understand? If you tell the people from the hospital-or wherever it is that you live-if you tell them Bill hit you, we'll have to tell them why he hit you, won't we? Trying to bite, and yelling obscenities. That means nasty words," she explained earnestly.

Kootie forgot not to stare at her.

"Your parents were murdered," she said.

He nodded expressionlessly.

"Oh, good! That you knew it, I mean, that I wasn't breaking the news to you. And I guess someone hit you in the eye. You've had a bad time, but I want you to realize that today really is the first day of your, of the rest of your-wait, you were living at home, weren't you? The story in the paper said that. You weren't in a hospital. Who's put up this reward for you?"

Kootie widened his eyes at her.

"Relatives?"

Kootie shook his head, slowly.

"You don't think it was the people that murdered your parents, do you?"

Kootie nodded furiously. "Mm-hmmm," he grunted.

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true."

Kootie rolled his eyes and then stared hard at her.

After a moment her expression of concern wilted into dismay. "Oh, s.h.i.t. Oh s.h.i.t. Twenty thousand dollars? You were a witness!"

Close enough. Rocking his head back and humming loudly was as close as Kootie could come to conveying congratulations.

She was saying "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" as she got out of the seat and stepped over the console, and then she was prying with her fingernails at the tape edges around his wrists.

The tape wasn't peeling up at all, and Kootie didn't waste hope imagining that she'd free him. He wasn't surprised when keys rattled against the outside of the pa.s.senger door and the lock clunked and then Mr. Fussel was leaning in.

"What are you doing, El? Get away from-"

"He's a witness, Bill! The people that killed his parents are-are the ones you just called! Did you tell them where we are? Let's get out of here right now!" She hurried back up front to the driver's seat and grabbed the gearshift lever.

Mr. Fussel gripped her hand. "Where'd you get all that, El? He can't even talk. These people sounded okay."

"Then let's drive somewhere and let Goaty talk to us, and you can call them back if we're sure it's all right."

"Mm-hmm!" put in Kootie as loudly as he could.

"El, they'll be here in ten minutes. We can talk to them right here, this is a public place, he'll be safe. It's his safety I'm concerned with; what if we have an accident driving? We're both upset-"

"An accident? I won't have an accident. They can-"

"They're bringing cash, El! We can't expect them to be driving all over L.A. with that kind of cash, in these kinds of neighborhoods!"

"You're worried about them? They killed his-"

The minivan shook as something collided gently but firmly with the rear end, and then there were simultaneous knocks against the driver's and pa.s.senger's windows. Even from the back seat Kootie could see the blunt metal cylinders of silencers through the gla.s.s.

That wasn't ten minutes, thought Kootie.

A voice spoke quietly from outside. "Roll down the windows right now or we'll kill you both."

Both of the Fussels hastily pressed b.u.t.tons on their armrests, and the windows buzzed down.

"The boy's in the back seat," Mr. Fussel said eagerly.

A hand came in through the open window and pushed Mr. Fussel's head aside, and then a stranger peered in. Behind mirror sungla.s.ses and a drooping mustache, he was nothing more than a pale, narrow face.

"He's taped in," the face noted. "Good. You two get out."

"Sure," Mr. Fussel said. "Come on, El, get out. You guys are gonna take the van? Fine! We won't report it stolen until-what, tomorrow? Would that be okay? Is the money in something we can carry inconspicuously?"

The face had withdrawn, but Kootie heard the voice say, "You'll have no problems with it."

Mrs. Fussel was sobbing quietly. "Bill, you idiot," she said, but she opened her door and got out at the same time her husband did.

A fat man in a green turtleneck sweater got in where she had been, and the man with the mirror sungla.s.ses got in on the pa.s.senger side. The doors were pulled closed, and the minivan rocked as the obstruction was moved from behind it, and then the fat man had put the engine into reverse and was backing out. He glanced incuriously at Kootie.

"Check the tape on the kid," he said to his companion.

When the man in the sungla.s.ses stepped into the back of the van, Kootie didn't make any noises, but tried to catch his eye. The man just tugged at the seat belt, though, and then found the roll of tape and bound Kootie's ankles together and taped them sideways to the seat leg, without looking at Kootie's face.

Somehow Kootie was still just tense, no more than if he were one of only a couple of kids left standing at a spelling bee. After the man had returned to the front seat and fastened his seat belt, Kootie wondered what had happened to the Fussels. He supposed that they were dead already, shot behind some Dumpster. It was easy for him to avoid picturing the two of them. He looked at the backs of his captors' heads and tried to figure out who the two men could be. They didn't look like a.s.sociates of the raggedy one-armed man.

Kootie was surprised, and cautiously pleased, with his own coolness in this scary situation ... until he realized that it was based on a confidence that Thomas Alva Edison would think of some way to get him out of it; then he remembered that Edison seemed to have gone crazy, and in a few minutes tears of pure fright were' rolling warmly along the top edges of the duct tape on Kootie's cheeks as the minivan rocked through traffic.

They may not mean to kill me, he thought. Certainly not yet. Our destination might be miles from here, and- He tried to think of any other comforting thoughts.

-And there'll probably be a lot of traffic lights, he told himself forlornly.

CHAPTER 29.

'I don't like the look of it at all," said the King: "however, it may kiss my hand, if it likes."

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland SULLIVAN HAD DRIVEN UP the 405 past LAX airport, past one of the government-sanctioned freeway-side murals (this one portraying a lot of gigantic self-righteous-looking joggers that made him think better of the fugitive graffiti taggers with their crude territory markers), and then he followed the empty new sunlit lanes of the 90 freeway out to where it came down and narrowed and became a surface street, Lincoln Boulevard, among new condominium buildings and old used-camper lots.

The plaster hands were on the pa.s.senger seat and the Bull Durham sack was in his shirt pocket, above the sun-and-body-heated bulk of his .45 in the canvas f.a.n.n.y pack. He had bought, a triple-A map at a gas station and studied it hard, and he had only nerved himself up to come to Venice by vowing to stay entirely out of sight of the ocean.

The ca.n.a.ls, thin blue lines on the map, were only half a fingernail inland from the black line that indicated the sh.o.r.e, and it was in the surf off this little stretch of beach that his father had drowned in '59-and it was from there that he and Sukie had fled in '86, leaving Loretta deLarava in possession of their father's wallet and keys and the three cans of ...

Nothing looked familiar, for he had been here only that one time, in '86. He managed to miss North Venice Boulevard, and had to loop back through narrow streets where summer rental houses crowded right up to the curbs, and parked cars left hardly any room for traffic, and then when he came upon North Venice again he saw that it was a one-way street aimed straight out at the now-near ocean; and though he was ready to just put the van in reverse and honk his way backward a couple of blocks, he saw a stretch of empty curb right around the corner of North Venice and Pacific, and he was able to pull in and park without having to focus past the back b.u.mper of the Volkswagen in the s.p.a.ce ahead of him.

He didn't want to be Peter Sullivan here at all, even if n.o.body was looking for him-presumably his father's ghost was in the sea only a block away, and that was enough of a presence to shame him into a.s.suming every shred of disguise possible.

So he tied an old bandanna around the plaster hands and took them with him when he got out and locked the van. The sea breeze had cleared the coastal sky of smog, but it was chilly, and he was glad of his old leather flight jacket.

Two quarters in the parking meter bought him an hour's worth of time, and he turned his back on the soft boom of the surf and stalked across Pacific with the hands clamped against his ribs and his hands jammed in his pockets. The plaster hands were heavy, but at a 7-Eleven store an hour ago he had bought six lightbulbs and stuffed them into his jacket pockets, and he didn't want to risk breaking any of them by shifting the awkward bundle under his arm. He stepped carefully up the high curb at the north side of Pacific.

Almost there anyway, he told himself as he peered ahead.

He was in a wide, raised parking lot between the North and South Venice Boulevards, and past the far curb of South, just this side of a windowless gray cement building, he could see a railing paralleling the street, and another that slanted away down, out of sight. There was a gap there between rows of buildings, and it clearly wasn't a street.

He crossed the parking lot and hobbled stiffly across South Venice, and when he had got to the railing and the top of the descending walkway, he stopped. He had found the westernmost of the ca.n.a.ls, and he was relieved to see that it didn't look familiar at all.

Below him, fifty feet across and stretching straight away to an arched bridge in the middle distance, the water was still, reflecting the eucalyptus and bamboo and lime trees along the banks. The ca.n.a.l walls were yard-high brickworks of slate-gray half-moons below empty sidewalks, and the houses set back from the water looked tranquil in the faintly bra.s.sy October sunlight. He could see a broad side-channel in the east bank a block ahead, but this ramp from South Venice led down to the west bank, and apparently the only way to walk along that side-ca.n.a.l would be to go past it on this side, cross the bridge, and then come back.

By the time he had walked halfway down the ramp toward the ca.n.a.l-bank level, he had left behind the gasping sea breeze and all of the sounds of the beach-city traffic, and all he could hear was bees in the bushes and wind chimes and a distant grumbling of ducks.

He had never cared to read up on this particular seaside town, but from things people had said over the years he had gathered that it had been built in the first years of the century as a mock-up of the original Italian Venice; the ca.n.a.ls had been more extensive then, and there had even been gliding gondolas poled by gondoliers with Italian accents. The notion hadn't caught on, though, and the place had fallen into decrepitude, and in the years after World War II it had been a seedy, shacky beatnik colony, with rocking oil pumps between the houses on the banks of the stagnating ca.n.a.ls.

He was walking along the sidewalk now, and he'd gone far enough so that he could look down the cross ca.n.a.l. Another footbridge arched over the blue-sky-reflecting water in that direction, framed by tall palm trees, and a solider-looking bridge farther down looked as though it could accommodate cars.

City-planning types had moved to have the ca.n.a.ls filled in, but the residents had protested effectively, and the ca.n.a.ls were saved. The neat brickwork of the banks was clearly a modern addition, and many of the houses had the stucco anonymity or the custom Tudor look of new buildings, though there were still dozens of the old, comfortably weather-beaten California bungalow-style houses set in among ancient untrimmed palm trees and overhanging shingle roofs.

Two women and a collie were walking toward him along the sidewalk he was on, and though neither of the women looked particularly like the pictures he'd seen of Elizalde, he dug with his free hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out one of the lightbulbs and the paper 7-Eleven bag.

Sullivan noticed a brown plastic owl on a fence post, and it reminded him that he had seen another one on a roof peak behind him. Ahead, now, he spied still another, swinging on a string from a tree branch. And he could hear several sets of jangling wind chimes-maybe Elizalde was right about ghosts being drawn to places like this, and the residents had set out these things as scarecrows. Scareghosts.

"Afternoon," he said as he pa.s.sed the ladies and the dog.

When they were behind him he slid the lightbulb into the bag and crouched over the pavement. He glanced back at the two women, and then swung the bag in an arc onto the cement, popping the bulb.

Both of the women jumped in surprise-right after the noise.

"Excuse me," he said sheepishly, nodding and waving at them.

He straightened and kept walking, tucking the jingling bag back into his pocket.

The white-painted wooden footbridge was steep, and he paused at the crest to shift the Houdini hands to his left side. He was sweating, and wishing now that he'd left the things in the van.

The water below him was clear, and he could see rocks in it but no fish. There had been fish- He was halfway up the sidewalk of the branch ca.n.a.l, staring at a bleached steer skull on the wall of an old wooden house (another scareghost!), and he had no recollection of having descended from the bridge or walking this far up.

Aside from the two women he had seen, who had since disappeared, there seemed to be no one out walking along the ca.n.a.ls this afternoon. He looked around. Even the houses all seemed to have been evacuated-he hadn't even seen a cat. (His heart was knocking inside his chest.) The water was too still, the houses by the ca.n.a.l were too low, crouching under the tall legs of the palm trunks, and the silence wasn't nice anymore-it was the silence of a dark yard when all the crickets suddenly stop chirping at once.

Elizalde wasn't here, and he didn't want to meet whatever might be.

Without noticing it he had already pa.s.sed the footbridge on this ca.n.a.l branch, but the wider bridge was still ahead of him, and as he started toward it he saw a car mount it from the islanded side, pause at the crest, and then nose down the far slope-slowly, for the arch was so steep that the driver couldn't be able to see the pavement ahead of him.

Just A.O.P., dude, Sullivan thought.

He was clutching the plaster hands with both of his own hands as he walked now, and it was all he could do not to break into a run. He didn't look back to make sure nothing was crawling out of the ca.n.a.l behind him, because he was sure that if he did, he would have to keep on looking back as he fled this place, would have to walk backward toward the bridge that led away to the normal city channels that were asphalt and not water, and something would manifest itself ahead of him, and then just wait for him to back into it.

His eyebrows itched with sweat, and he was breathing fast and shallow.

This is just a funk, he thought, a fit of nerves. There are other ca.n.a.ls here (Are there?) and Elizalde might be on the sidewalk of the next one over, or the one beyond that; she might be stark naked and waving her arms and riding a G.o.dd.a.m.n unicycle, but you won't see her because you're panicking here.

So be it. She couldn't have helped me anyway. I'll find some other way to warn my father's ghost (this trip out here was an idiotic long shot) after I drive out of this d.a.m.ned town and find a place to relax and chug a couple of fast, cold beers.

His right shoulder was brushing against vines and bricks as he strode toward the bridge, and he realized that he was crowding the fences of the houses, avoiding the bank-horrified, in fact, at the thought of falling into the shallow water.

the way all sounds echo like metallic groans underwater He must have just dropped the plaster hands. He was running, and his unimpeded hands were clenched into fists, pumping the air as his legs pounded under him. From the shoulder of his jacket he heard a snap, and then another, as if st.i.tches were being broken.

At the foot of the bridge he stopped, and let his breathing slow down. This bridge was part of a street, Dell Street, and he could hear cars sighing past on South Venice Boulevard ahead. Even if something audibly swirled the water of the ca.n.a.l now, he felt that he could sprint and be in the middle of the boulevard before his first squirted tears of fright would have had time to hit the pavement.

With a careful, measured tread he walked up the slope of the bridge, and he paused at the crest. Ahead of him on the right side of the street was the grandest yet of the neo-Tudor buildings, a place with gables and stained-gla.s.s windows and an inset tower with antique chimney pots on its shingled funnel roof. He was wondering if it might be a restaurant, with a bar and a men's room, when in the bright stillness he heard something splashing furtively in the water under the bridge.

All he did was exhale all the air out of his lungs, and then rest his hands on the coping of the bridge and look down over the edge.

There was someone crouched down there, beside a small white fibergla.s.s rowboat that had been drawn up onto the gravel slope beside the bridge abutment; the figure was wearing a tan jumpsuit and a many-colored knitted tam that concealed the hair, but Sullivan could see by the flexed curve of the hips and the long legs that it was a woman. Blinking and peering more closely, he saw that the woman wasn't looking at the boat, but at the barred storm drain that the boat was moored to. She was swirling her hand in the water and calling softly through the grating, as if to someone in the tunnel on the other side of the steel bars.

"Frank?" she said. "Frank, don't hide from me."