Nightmares And Dreamscapes Part 48

'Moira Richardson, Brandon Pearson.'

'h.e.l.lo,' Pearson said, and took her outstretched hand. 'Credit a.s.sistance, isn't it?'

'That's like calling a garbage collector a sanitation technician,' she said with a cheerful grin. It was a grin, Pearson thought, that a man could fall in love with, if he wasn't careful.

'Credit checks are what I actually do. If you want to buy a new Porsche, I check the records to make sure you're really a Porsche kind of guy . . . in a financial sense, of course.'

'Of course,' Pearson said, and grinned back at her.

'Cam!' she called. 'Come on over here!'

It was the janitor who liked to mop the John with his cap turned around backward. In his streetclothes he seemed to have gained about fifty IQ points and a rather amazing resemblance to Armand a.s.sante. Pearson felt a small pang but no real surprise when he put an arm around Moira Richardson's delectable little waist and a casual kiss on the corner of her delectable little mouth. Then he offered Brandon his hand.

'Cameron Stevens.'

'Brandon Pearson.'

'I'm glad to see you here,' Stevens said. 'I thought you were gonna high-side it this morning for sure.'

'How many of you were watching me?' Pearson asked. He tried to replay ten o'clock in the plaza and discovered he couldn't - it was lost in a white haze of shock, for the most part.

'Most of us from the bank who see them,' Moira said quietly. 'But it's okay, Mr. Pearson - '

'Brandon. Please.'

She nodded. 'We weren't doing anything but rooting for you, Brandon. Come on, Cam.'

They hurried up the steps to the porch of the small frame building and slipped inside. Pearson caught just a glimpse of muted light before the door shut. Then he turned back to Duke.

'This is all real, isn't it?' he asked.

Duke looked at him sympathetically. 'Unfortunately, yes.' He paused, and then added, 'But there's one good thing about it.'

'Oh? What's that?'

Duke's white teeth flashed in the drizzly dark. 'You're about to attend your first smoking-allowed meeting in five years or so,' he said. 'Come on - let's go in.'

3.

The foyer and the bookstore beyond it were dark; the light - along with a murmur of voices - was filtering up the steep staircase to their left.

'Well,' Duke said, 'this is the place. To quote the Dead, what a long strange trip it's been, right?'

Pearson agreed.

'Is Kate a Ten O'Clock Person?'

'You better believe it,'

'The owner? Nope. I only met her twice, but I have an idea she's a total non-smoker. This place was Robbie's idea. As far as Kate knows, we're The Boston Society of Hardboiled Yeggs.'

Pearson raised his eyebrows. 'Say again?'

'A small group of loyal fans that meets every week or so to discuss the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, people like that. If you haven't read any of those guys, you probably ought to. It never hurts to be safe. It's not that hard; some of them are actually pretty good.'

They descended with Duke in the lead - the staircase was too narrow for them to walk abreast - and pa.s.sed through an open doorway into a well-lit, low-ceilinged bas.e.m.e.nt room that probably ran the length of the converted frame house above. About thirty folding chairs had been set up, and an easel covered with a blue cloth had been placed before them. Beyond the easel were stacked shipping cartons from various publishers. Pearson was amused to see a framed picture on the left-hand wall, with a sign reading DASHIELL HAMMETT: ALL HAIL OUR FEARLESS LEADER beneath it.

'Duke?' a woman asked from Pearson's left. 'Thank G.o.d - I thought something had happened to you.'

She was someone else Pearson recognized: the serious-looking young woman with the thick gla.s.ses and long, straight black hair. Tonight she looked a lot less serious in a pair of tight faded jeans and a Georgetown University tee-shirt beneath which she was clearly braless. And Pearson had an idea that if Duke's wife ever saw the way this young woman was looking at her husband, she would probably drag Duke out of the bas.e.m.e.nt of Kate's by the ear, and never mind all the batpeople in the world.

'I'm fine, darlin,' he said. 'I was bringing along another convert to the Church of the f.u.c.ked-Up Bat, that's all. Janet Brightwood, Brandon Pearson.'

Brandon shook her hand, thinking: You're the one who kept sneezing.

'It's very nice to meet you, Brandon,' she said, and then went back to smiling at Duke, who looked a little embarra.s.sed at the intensity of her gaze. 'Want to go for coffee after?' she asked him.

'Well . . . we'll see, darlin. Okay?'

'Okay,' she said, and her smile said she'd wait three years to go out for coffee with Duke, if that was the way Duke wanted it.

What am I doing here? Pearson suddenly asked himself. This is totally insane . . . like an AA meeting in a psycho ward.

The members of the Church of the f.u.c.ked-Up Bat were taking ashtrays from a stack on one of the book cartons and lighting up with obvious relish as they took their seats. Pearson estimated that there were going to be few if any folding chairs left over when everyone had gotten settled.

'Got just about everyone,' Duke said, leading him to a pair of seats at the end of the back row, far from where Janet Brightwood was presiding over the coffeemaker. Pearson had no idea if this was coincidental or not. 'That's good . . . mind the window-pole, Brandon.'

The pole, with a hook on the end to open the high cellar windows, was leaning against one whitewashed brick wall. Pearson had inadvertently kicked it as he sat down. Duke grabbed it before it could fall and possibly gash someone, moved it to a marginally safer location, then slipped up the side aisle and snagged an ashtray.

'You are a mind-reader,' Pearson said gratefully, and lit up. It felt incredibly strange (but rather wonderful) to be doing this as a member of such a large group.

Duke lit his own cigarette, then pointed it at the skinny, freckle-splattered man now standing by the easel. Freckles was deep in conversation with Lester Olson, who had shot the batman, pop-pop-pop, in a Newburyport barn.

'The redhead is Robbie Delray,' Duke said, almost reverently. 'You'd hardly pick him as The Savior of His Race if you were casting a miniseries, would you? But he might turn out to be just that.'

Delray nodded at Olson, clapped him on the back, and said something that made the white-haired man laugh. Then Olson returned to his seat - front row center - and Delray moved toward the covered easel.

By this time all the seats had been taken, and there were even a few people standing at the back of the room near the coffee-maker. Conversation, animated and jittery, zinged and caromed around Pearson's head like pool-b.a.l.l.s after a hard break. A mat of blue-gray cigarette smoke had already gathered just below the ceiling.

Jesus, they're cranked, he thought. Really cranked. I bet the bomb-shelters in London felt this way back in 1940, during the Blitz.

He turned to Duke. 'Who'd you talk to? Who told you something big was up tonight?'

'Janet,' Duke said without looking at him. His expressive brown eyes were fixed on Robbie Delray, who had once saved his sanity on a Red Line train. Pearson thought he saw adoration as well as admiration in Duke's eyes.

'Duke? This is a really big meeting, isn't it?'

'For us, yeah. Biggest I've ever seen.'

'Does it make you nervous? Having so many of your people in the same place?'

'No,' Duke said simply. 'Robbie can smell bats. He . . . shhhh, here we go.'

Robbie Delray, smiling, raised his hands, and the babble quieted almost at once. Pearson saw Duke's look of adoration on many other faces. Nowhere did he see less than respect.

'Thanks for coming,' Delray said quietly. 'I think we've finally got what some of us have been waiting four or five years for.'

This sparked spontaneous applause. Delray let it go on for a few moments, looking around the room, beaming. Finally he held his hands up for quiet. Pearson discovered a disconcerting thing as the applause (in which he had not partic.i.p.ated) tapered off: he didn't like Duke's friend and mentor. He supposed he might be experiencing a touch of jealousy - now that Delray was doing his thing at the front of the room, Duke Rhinemann had clearly forgotten Pearson existed - but he didn't think that was all of it. There was something smug and self-congratulatory in that hands-up, be-quiet gesture; something that expressed a slick politician's almost unconscious contempt for his audience.

Oh, get off it, Pearson told himself. You can't know anything like that.

True, quite true, and Pearson tried to sweep the intuition out of his mind, to give Delray a chance, if only for Duke's sake.

'Before we begin,' Delray went on, 'I'd like to introduce you to a brand-new member of the group: Brandon Pearson, from deepest, darkest Medford. Stand up for a second or two, Brandon, and let your new friends see what you look like.'

Pearson gave Duke a startled look. Duke grinned, shrugged, then pushed Pearson's shoulder with the heel of his hand. 'Go on, they won't bite.'

Pearson was not so sure of that. Nevertheless he got up, face hot, all too aware of the people craning around to check him out. He was most particularly aware of the smile on Lester Olson's face - like his hair, it was somehow too dazzling not to be suspect.

His fellow Ten O'Clock People began to applaud again, only this time it was him they were applauding: Brandon Pearson, middle-echelon banker and stubborn smoker. He found himself wondering again if he hadn't somehow found his way into an AA meeting that was strictly for (not to mention run by) psychos. When he dropped back into his seat, his cheeks were bright red.

'I could have done without that very well, thanks,' he muttered to Duke.

'Relax,' Duke said, still grinning. 'It's the same for everybody. And you gotta love it, man, don't you? I mean, s.h.i.t, it's so nineties.'

'It's nineties, all right, but I don't gotta love it,' Pearson said. His heart was pounding too hard and the flush in his cheeks wasn't going away. It felt, in fact, as if it was deepening. What is this? he wondered. A hot-flash? Male menopause? What?

Robbie Delray bent over, spoke briefly to the bespectacled brunette woman sitting next to Olson, glanced at his watch, then stepped back to the covered easel and faced the group again. His freckled, open face made him look like a Sunday choirboy apt to get up to all sorts of harmless d.i.c.kens - frogs down the backs of girls' blouses, short-sheeting baby brother's bed, that sort of thing - during the other six days of the week.

'Thanks, folks, and welcome to our place, Brandon,' he said.

Pearson muttered that he was glad to be here, but it wasn't true - what if his fellow Ten O'Clock People turned out to be a bunch of raving New Age a.s.sholes? Suppose he ended up feeling about them as he did about most of the guests he saw on Oprah, or the well-dressed religious nuts who used to pop up on The PTL Club at the drop of a hymn? What then?

Oh, quit it, he told himself. You like Duke, don't you?

Yes, he did like Duke, and he thought he was probably going to like Moira Richardson, too . . . once he got past the s.e.xy outer layer and was able to appreciate the person inside, that was. There would undoubtedly be others he'd end up liking as well; he wasn't that hard to please. And he had forgotten, at least temporarily, the underlying reason they were all here in this bas.e.m.e.nt: the batpeople. Given the threat, he could put up with a few nerds and New Agers, couldn't he?

He supposed he could.

Good! Great! Now just sit back, relax, and watch the parade.

He sat back, but found he couldn't relax, at least not completely. Part of it was being the new boy. Part of it was his strong dislike for this sort of forced social interaction - as a rule, he viewed people who used his first name on short notice and without invitation as hijackers of a sort. And part of it . . .

Oh, stop! Don't you get it yet? You have no choice in the matter!

An unpleasant thought, but one it was hard to dispute. He had crossed a line that morning when he had casually turned his head and seen what was really living inside Douglas Keefer's clothes these days. He supposed he had known at least that much, but it wasn't until tonight that he had realized how final that line was, how small was the chance of his ever being able to cross back to the other side of it again. To the safe side.

No, he couldn't relax. At least not yet.

'Before we get down to business, I want to thank you all for coming on such short notice,' Robbie Delray said. 'I know it's not always easy to break away without raising eyebrows, and sometimes it's downright dangerous. I don't think it'd be exaggerating to say that we've been through a lot of h.e.l.l together . . . a lot of high water, too . . . '

A polite, murmured chuckle from the audience. Most of them seemed to be hanging on Delray's every word.

' . . . and no one knows any better than I do how difficult it is to be one of the few people who actually know the truth. Since I saw my first bat, five years ago . . . '

Pearson was already fidgeting, experiencing the one sensation he would not have expected tonight: boredom. For the day's strange pa.s.sage to have ended as it was ending, with a bunch of people sitting in a bookstore bas.e.m.e.nt and listening to a freckled housepainter give what sounded like a bad Rotary Club speech . . .

Yet the others seemed utterly enrapt; Pearson glanced around again to confirm this to himself. Duke's eyes shone with that look of total fascination - a look similar to the look Pearson's childhood dog, Buddy, had worn when Pearson got its food-dish out of the cupboard under the sink. Cameron Stevens and Moira Richardson sat with their arms around each other and gazed at Robbie Delray with starry absorption. Ditto Janet Brightwood. Ditto the rest of the little group around the Bunn-O-Matic.

Ditto everyone, he thought, except Brand Pearson. Come on, sweetheart; try to get with the program.

Except he couldn't, and in a weird way it was almost as if Robbie Delray couldn't, either. Pearson looked back from his scan of the audience just in time to see Delray s.n.a.t.c.h another quick glance at his watch. It was a gesture Pearson had grown very familiar with since he'd joined the Ten O'Clock People. He guessed that the man was counting down the time to his next cigarette.

As Delray rambled on, some of his other listeners also began to fall out a little - Pearson heard m.u.f.fled coughs and a few shuffling feet. Delray sailed on regardless, seemingly unaware that, loved resistance leader or no, he was now in danger of overstaying his welcome.

' . . . so we've managed the best we can,' he was saying, 'and we've taken our losses as best we can, too, hiding our tears the way I guess those who fight in the secret wars have always had to, all the time holding onto our belief that a day will come when the secret is out, and we'll - '

- Boink, another quick peek at the old Casio - ' - be able to share our knowledge with all the men and women out there who look but do not see.'

Savior of His Race? Pearson thought. Jesus please us. This guy sounds more like Jesse Helms during a filibuster.

He glanced at Duke and was encouraged to see that, while Duke was still listening, he was shifting in his seat and showing signs of coming out of his trance.

Pearson touched his face again and found it was still hot. He lowered the tips of his fingers to his carotid artery and felt his pulse - still racing. It wasn't the embarra.s.sment at having to stand up and be looked over like a Miss America finalist now; the others had forgotten his existence, at least temporarily. No, it was something else. Not a good something else, either. ' . . . we've stuck with it and stuck to it, we've done the footwork even when the music wasn't to our taste . . . ' Delray was droning.

It's what you felt before, Brand Pearson told himself. It's the fear that you've stumbled into a group of people sharing the same lethal hallucination.

'No, it's not,' he muttered. Duke turned toward him, eyebrows raised, and Pearson shook his head. Duke turned his attention back to the front of the room.

He was scared, all right, but not of having fallen in with some weird thrill-kill cult. Maybe the people in this room - some of them, at least - had killed, maybe that interlude in the Newburyport barn had happened, but the energy necessary for such desperate endeavors was not evident here tonight, in this roomful of yuppies being watched over by Dashiell Hammett. All he felt here was sleepy half-headedness, the sort of partial attention that enabled people to get through dull speeches like this without falling asleep or walking out.

'Robbie, get to the point!' some kindred spirit shouted from the back of the room, and there was nervous laughter.

Robbie Delray shot an irritated glance in the direction the voice had come from, then smiled and checked his watch again. 'Yeah, okay,' he said. 'I got rambling, I admit it. Lester, will you help me a sec?'

Lester got up. The two men went behind a stack of book cartons and came back carrying a large leather trunk by the straps. They set it down to the right of the easel.

'Thanks, Les,' Robbie said.

Lester nodded and sat back down.

'What's in the case?' Pearson murmured into Duke's ear.