Last Call: Expiration Date Part 29

"You've got that compa.s.s," said the boy grimly. "I've been in a 'van,' and I can scream these lungs pretty loud."

"We're not going to kidnap you," said Elizalde.

They shuffled to a rocking halt at the Lucas corner, panting and waiting for the light to turn green. Elizalde was still looking around for pursuit. "I don't even know if my friend would want another person along," she said. She shook her head sharply, wondering if it could even be noon yet. "But I think you should come with us. The compa.s.s-anybody in the whole city who knows about this stuff can track you."

The boy nodded. At least he was standing beside her, and hadn't pulled away from her hand. "Yeah," he said. "That is true, sister. And if I put my light back under the bushel basket, if I-step out of the center-ring spotlight, here, this kid will collapse like a sack of coal. So you've got a place that's safe? Even for us? How are you planning on degaussing me? This d.a.m.ned electric belt's not worth one mint."

Hebephrenic schizophrenia? wondered Elizalde; or one of the dissociative reactions of hysterical neurosis? MPD would probably be the trendy a.n.a.lysis these days-multiple personality disorder.

She floundered for a response. What had he said? Degaussing? Elizalde had heard that term used in connection with battleships, and she thought it had something to do with radar. "I don't know about that. But my friend does-he's an electrical engineer."

This seemed to make the boy angry. "Oh, an electrical engineer! All mathematics, I daresay, equations on paper to match the paper diploma on his wall! Never any dirt under his fingernails! Maybe he thinks he's the only one around here with a college degree!"

Elizalde blinked down at the boy in bewilderment. "I-I'm sure he doesn't-I have a college degree, as a matter of fact-" Good Lord, she thought, why am I bragging? Because of my rumpled old clothes and dirty hair? Bragging to a traumatized street kid? "But none of that's important here-"

"B.S.," said the boy now, with clear and inexplicable pride. "Let's go meet your electrical engineer."

"s.h.i.t, yes," said Elizalde. The light turned green, and they started walking.

CHAPTER 37.

"But that's not your fault," the Rose added kindly. "You're beginning to fade, you know-and then one ca'n't help one's petals getting a little untidy."

Alice didn't like this idea at all ...

-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Gla.s.s SULLIVAN HAD SEEN ELIZALDE crossing the street, and when he saw that the reason she was moving slowly was because she was helping a limping kid along, he swore and got out of the van.

He had noticed the onset of bar-time as he'd been driving, five or ten minutes ago, when he reflexively tapped the brake in the instant before the nose of a car appeared out of an alley ahead of him; he had then tested it by blindly sliding a random ca.s.sette into the tape player, cranking the volume all the way up, and then turning on the player-he had not only cringed involuntarily, but had even recognized the opening of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," just before the first percussive yell had come booming out of the speakers. He had switched the set off then, wondering anxiously what was causing the psychic focus on him, and if it was on Elizalde too.

And now here she was with some kid.

He met them by the traffic-light pole at the corner, and he took the shopping bag from her. "Say goodbye to your little friend," he said. "We've gotta go now. Bar-time, you feel it?"

"Yes, I do," she said, smiling. "Other people out here probably do too. Act natural, like you don't feel it."

She was right. He smiled stiffly back at her and hefted the bag. "So, did you get your shopping done? All ready to go?"

Two teenage Mexican boys swaggered up to them, one of them muttering, "Vamos a probar la mosca en leche, porque no?" Then one of them asked her, in English, "Lady, can I have a dollar for a pack of cigarettes?"

"Porque no?" echoed Elizalde with a mocking grin. She reached into her pocket with the hand that wasn't supporting the sick-looking boy, and handed over a dollar.

"I need cigarettes too!" piped up the other teenager.

"You can share his," said Elizalde, turning to Sullivan. "We're ready to go," she told him.

We're not taking this sick kid along with us! he thought. "No," he said, still holding his smile but speaking firmly. "Little Billy's got to go home."

"Auntie Alden won't take him today," she said, "and it's getting very late."

Sullivan blew out a breath and let his shoulders sag. He looked at the boy. "I suppose you do want to come along."

The boy had a c.o.c.ky grin on his face. "Sure, plug. On your own, you might get careless and open a switch without turning off the current first."

Sullivan couldn't help frowning. He had spent the morning at an old barn of a shop on Eighth Street called Garmon's Pan-Electronics, and he wondered if this boy knew that, somehow. Was the boy's remark the tw.a.n.g of a snapped trap-wire?

"I told him you're an electrical engineer," said Elizalde in a harried voice. "Let's go!"

After a tense, anguished pause: "Okay!" Sullivan said, and turned and began marching his companions back across the liquor-store parking lot toward the van. "The collapsing magnetic field," he told the boy, in answer to the boy's disquieting remark, "will induce a huge voltage that'll arc across the switch, right?" Why, he wondered, am I bothering to prove anything to a kid?

"Don't say it just to please me," the boy told him.

When they had climbed into the van and pulled the doors closed, Sullivan and Elizalde sat up front, and the boy sat in the back on the still-unmade bed.

"Why did you give that guy a buck?" asked Sullivan irritably as he started the engine and yanked the gearshift into drive.

"He might have been Elijah," Elizalde said wearily. "Elijah wanders around the Earth in disguise, you know, asking for help, and if you don't help him you get in trouble at the Last Judgment."

"Yeah?" Sullivan made a fast left turn onto Lucas going south, planning to catch the Harbor Freeway from Bixel off Wilshire. "Well, the other guy was probably Elijah, the guy you didn't give a buck to. Who's our new friend, by the way?"

"Call me Al," spoke up the boy from the back of the van. "No, my name's Kootie-" The voice sounded scared now. "-where are we going? It's all right, Kootie, you remember how I didn't trust the Fussels? These people are square. I'm glad you're back with us, son. I was worried about you."

Sullivan shot Elizalde a furious glance.

"He's magnetic," she said. She seemed near tears. "Compa.s.ses point to him. And I used up my mace spray on a crowd of bad guys who were trying to force him into a truck."

"It's okay," Sullivan said. "That's good, I'm glad you did. I wish I'd been there to help." Good G.o.d, he thought. "Did you get some likely ... groceries?"

"I think so." She sighed deeply. "Did you hear what those two vatos said? They described you and me as la mosca en leche. That means fly-in-milk-like 'salt-and-pepper,' you know, a mixed-race couple. They thought I was a Mexican."

Sullivan glanced at her. "You are a Mexican."

"I know. But it's nice that they could tell. How did you do, did you get some good electronic stuff?"

Sullivan was looking into the driver's mirror on the outside of the door. A new Lincoln had sped up to make the light at Beverly, and it was now swerving into the right lane as if to pa.s.s him. He was glad of the distraction, for he didn't want to talk about the ragtag equipment he'd bought.

"Not bad," he said absently, "considering I didn't know what I wanted." When the Lincoln was alongside, Sullivan pressed the brake firmly, and the big car shot ahead. "They had some old carborundum-element bulbs there cheap, so I bought a few, and I got an old Ford coil for fifty bucks, and a Langmuir gauge." He made a show of peering ahead with concern.

But the Lincoln ahead had actually slowed, and now another one just like it was speeding up from behind. "Other stuff," he added-nearly in a whisper, for something really did seem to be going on here. His palms were suddenly damp on the wheel.

There was a cross street to the right ahead, and he waited until the last instant to touch the brake and whip the wheel around to cut directly across the right-hand lane; the tires were screeching, and a bar-time jolt of vertigo made him open the sharp turn a little wider before the van could roll over, and then he had stamped the gas pedal and they were roaring down the old residential street.

A glance in the mirror showed him the second Lincoln coming up fast behind him. He could hear the roar of the car's engine.

"Bad guys," he said breathlessly. "Fasten your belts-kid, get down somewhere. I'm gonna try to outrun 'em. They want us alive."

The other Lincoln had somehow looped back, and was now rushing up behind the nearer one, which was swerving to pa.s.s Sullivan on the left. Sullivan jerked the wheel that way to cut the car off, and he kept his foot hard on the gas pedal.

A loud, rapid popping began, and the van shuddered and rang and shook as splinters whined around the seats. Sullivan s.n.a.t.c.hed his foot off the gas and stomped the brake; Elizalde tumbled against the dashboard as the front end dropped and the tires screamed, and then as the van slewed and ground to a halt, and rocked back, he slammed it into reverse and gave it full throttle again.

The closer Lincoln had driven up a curb and run over a trash can. Sullivan had to hunch around to watch the other one through the narrow frames of the back windows, for the door mirror had been blown out; the van's rear end was whipping wildly back and forth as Sullivan fought the wheel, and he heard five or six more shots, but then the second Lincoln too had driven up onto a lawn to get out of Sullivan's lunatic way, and the van surged back-end foremost right out into the middle of Lucas Avenue.

A hard, smashing impact punched the van, and as Sullivan's chin clunked the top of the seat back he heard two more crashes a little farther away. The van was stalled, and he clanked it into neutral and cranked at the starter. Feathers were flying around the stove and the bed in the back, where he had last seen the kid. At last the engine caught.

Sullivan threw the shift into Drive again and turned around to face out the starred windshield, and he hit the gas and the van sped away down Lucas with only a diminishing clatter of gla.s.s and metal in its wake.

Sullivan drove quickly but with desperate concentration, yanking the wheel back and forth to pa.s.s cars, and pushing his way through red lights while looking frantically back and forth and leaning on the horn.

When he was sure that he had at least momentarily lost any pursuit, he took a right turn, and then an immediate left into a service alley behind a row of street-facing stores. There was an empty parking s.p.a.ce between two trucks, but his sweaty hands were trembling so badly that he had to back and fill for a full minute before he had got the vehicle into the s.p.a.ce and pushed the gearshift lever into park.

"Kid," Sullivan croaked, too shaky even to turn around, "are you all right?" His mouth was dry and tasted like old pennies.

In the sudden quiet, over the low rumble of the idling engine, he could now hear the boy sobbing; but the boy's voice strangled the sobs long enough to choke out, "No worse than I was before."

" 'They want us alive,' " said Elizalde from where she was crumpled under the dashboard. She climbed back up into the seat and shook gla.s.s out of her disordered black hair. "I'm glad you've got these guys figured out, you a.s.shole."

"Are you hit?" Sullivan asked her, his voice pitched too high. "They were shooting at us. Am I hit?" He spread his hands and looked down at himself, then shuffled his feet around to see them. He didn't see any blood, or feel any particular pain or numbness anywhere.

"No," said Elizalde after looking herself over. "What do we do now?"

"You-you left your jumpsuit in Solville. Get a jacket of mine from the closet in the back, and a T-shirt or something for the kid. Disguises. I got a baseball cap back there you can tuck your hair up into. You two take a bus back, you'll look like a mother and son. I'll drive the van, and-I don't know, take backstreets or something. I think I'll be out of trouble once I get on the freeway, but you'd be safer traveling in something besides this van."

"Why don't we all take the bus?" asked Elizalde. "Abandon the van?"

"He'd have to abandon the stuff he bought," said the boy, who was still sniffling, "and a couple of these things aren't useless rubbish."

"Thanks, sonny," said Sullivan, not happy that the kid had been examining his purchases. Then, to Elizalde, he said, "Oh-here." He unsnapped the f.a.n.n.y-pack belt and pulled it free of his waist. "Have you ever shot a .45?"

"No. I don't believe in guns."

"Oh, they do exist, trust me." He pulled the loop and the zippers sprang open, exposing the grip of the pistol under two straps. "See? Here's one now."

"I saw it last night, remember? I meant I don't like them."

"Oh, like them," said Sullivan as he popped the snap on the straps and drew the pistol out of the holster sewed inside the f.a.n.n.y pack. Pointing the pistol at the ceiling, he managed to push the magazine-release b.u.t.ton beside the trigger guard, but missed catching the magazine as it slid out of the grip. It clunked on the floorboards and he let it lie there. "I don't like 'em. I don't like dental surgery, either, or motorcycle helmets, or prostate examinations."

He pulled the slide back, and the stubby bullet that had been in the chamber flicked out and bounced off Elizalde's forehead.

"Ow," she said.

"Sorry."

"That's a Colt," said the boy, who had shuffled up behind Sullivan's seat. "Army issue since 1911."

"Right," said Sullivan, peripherally beginning to wonder who the h.e.l.l this boy was.

The slide was locked back, exposing the shiny barrel, and he tripped the slide release and it snapped forward, hooding the barrel again. He held the gun out toward her, grip first and barrel up, and after a long moment she took it.

"It's unloaded now," he said, "but of course you always a.s.sume it is loaded. Go ahead and shoot it through the floor-hold it with both hands. Jesus, not that way! Your thumbs have got to be around the side; that slide on the top comes back, hard, and if you've got your thumb over the back of it that way ... well, you'll have another severed thumb to stick in your shoe."

She rearranged her hands, then pointed the pistol at the floor. Her finger visibly tightened on the trigger for several seconds-and then there was an abrupt, tiny click as the hammer snapped down.

Elizalde exhaled sharply.

"Nothing to it, hey?" said Sullivan. "Now, it's got a fair recoil, so get the barrel back down in line with your target before you take your second shot. The gun rec.o.c.ks itself, so all you've got to do is pull the trigger again. And again, if you need to. You'll have seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, eight in all. If you hit a guy with one of 'em, you'll knock him down for sure."

She took hold of the slide with her left hand and tried to pull it back as Sullivan had done; she got it halfway back against the compression of the spring, and had to let go.

"Try it again," said Sullivan, "but instead of pulling the slide back with your left hand, just hold it steady, and push the gun forward with your right." He was nervous about having the pistol unloaded for so many seconds, but wanted her to have as much sketchy familiarity with it as might be possible.

This time she managed to c.o.c.k it, and again dry-fired it at the floor.

"Good." Sullivan retrieved the fallen magazine and slid it up into the grip until it clicked, then jacked a round into the chamber and released the magazine again to tuck into the top of it the bullet that had bounced off Elizalde's forehead. He slid the magazine into the grip again and clicked the safety up.

"c.o.c.ked and locked," he said, handing it back to her carefully. "This fan-shaped ridged thing behind the trigger is the safety; pop it down, and then all you've got to do is pull the trigger. Keep it in the f.a.n.n.y pack, under the jacket, and don't let the kid play with it."

Sullivan's chest felt hollow, and he was sweating with misgivings about this. He could have set up the pistol with the chamber empty, but he wasn't confident that she'd be able to work the slide in a panicky second; and he could have left the hammer down, along with the safety engaged, but that would require that she remember two moves, and have the time for them, in that hypothetical panicky second.

"You still got money?" he asked her.

"Three or four of the twenties, and some ones and some change."

"Fine. Grab the clothes and scoot." To his own surprise, his head bobbed forward as if to kiss her; but he caught himself and leaned back.

She blinked. "Right." To the boy, she said, "Is your name Kootie or Al?"

The boy's mouth twitched, but finally he said, "Kootie."

"All right, Kootie, let's outfit ourselves and then get the h.e.l.l out of here."

In the dim living room of Joey Webb's motel room off Grand Boulevard in Venice, Loretta deLarava sat on the bed and blotted her tears with a silk handkerchief. Obstadt's man Canov had put her on hold, and she had been sitting here now for ten minutes it seemed like, and the room reeked because Joey Webb, suspicious in an unfamiliar environment, had resumed his old precaution of hiding half-eaten Big Macs and Egg Mcm.u.f.fins behind the furniture.

"h.e.l.lo, Loretta," said Obstadt at last. His voice was echoing and weak.

"Neal, I know about it, so don't even waste a moment with lies. Why are you trying to impede me? You had your people try to kill Sullivan and the Parganas boy an hour ago! You should thank G.o.d that they got away. Now I want you to help me find them-and they'd better not be dead!-or I'll call the police about the incident. I want, immediately, all the information you have-"

Obstadt inhaled loudly, and coughed. "Shut up, Loretta."

"You can't tell me to shut up! I can call spirits from the vasty deep-"

"Me too, babe, but do they come when you call? Face it, Loretta, n.o.body gives the least particle of a rat's a.s.s about your ... magical prowess."