Shift. Part 27

"Evenin', bub," he drawled in a voice that could've been hostile or friendly, Chandler didn't know and didn't care. "It's five tonight."

Chandler's fist caught the bouncer square in the face. The man's nose exploded in blood, and the stool splintered beneath his flailing limbs and he hit the ground like a rotten tree knocked over in a storm.

Chandler grabbed the man by the wrist and dragged him into the shadow of some crepe myrtle that didn't so much adorn the front of the club as shrink away from it. He tossed the pieces of stool after him, then pushed open the smoked-gla.s.s door. As he went in he noted a flyer pasted to the gla.s.s: BILL DEMARVersatile Ventriloquist And Comic master in the art of extra-sensory perception A mephitic glow illuminated a long narrow corridor that sloped toward a black curtain. Mid-tempo jazz pushed through the curtain, and smoke, sweat, and stale alcohol saturated everything. Another bouncer sat on the far side of the curtain, and Chandler fought back the urge to use his power to reach into his mind. He had to save his energy. Pick his battles.

"Has the new girl come in?"

The bouncer didn't take his eyes from the peroxide blonde shimmying off-tempo on stage.

"We got a lotta girls, bub. They're all good."

"The new girl," Chandler insisted. "Short, dark, black eyes."

"Our girls aren't really known for their eyes, if you catch my meaning."

"Olive complexion," Chandler said, his throat tight. "Dark hair."

The bouncer must've heard the edge in Chandler's voice, because he turned to him, his mouth curled in a snarl.

"Little Lynn?" The man licked his lips lasciviously. "Jack's saving her for prime time. Why don't you grab yourself a beer and a chair and enjoy the show till then? Either that or get the h.e.l.l out, makes no difference to me."

Chandler hit him then. He couldn't help it. The idea of this creature-this crowd-mooning over Naz, waving dollar bills at her, pawing at her, was just too much. Their l.u.s.t surrounded him like a locker-room funk, and bits and pieces of their disgusting fantasies flickered in his mind like pages ripped out of a blue magazine.

As soon as the bouncer went down, Chandler knew he'd made a mistake. Shouts came from the tables and chairs fell over as men stood up too rapidly, spoiling for a fight to liven up the evening. Chandler could feel their excitement, knew he had to deal with all of them now, instead of just Ruby, wherever he was, or Melchior, if he was here.

Suddenly he noticed the fallen bouncer was reaching inside his jacket, pulling out a gun. He was in Texas, after all. Chandler's foot lashed out and the gun sailed all the way across the room, smashed into the racks of bottles above the bar.

The music continued to play, but the dancer slowed to a little shake, her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s swaying, her heavily painted eyes staring at the two men like a barbarian queen looking down on a pair of warriors. Chandler caught glimpses of himself and the fallen bouncer through the dancer's eyes. Apparently the bouncer'd been pressuring her to sleep with him and she was hoping he was about to get his a.s.s kicked but good.

"This is for Felisa," he said, dropping to one knee and slamming his elbow into the side of the bouncer's face. He heard the man's jaw snap over the thumping ba.s.s.

A big man in a Stetson was b.u.m-rushing him when he stood up. Chandler felt him before he saw him. The man had no interest in what was happening. He just wanted to hit someone.

Chandler sidestepped, sent the man flying into the wall. There was another patron, this one with a chair. Chandler barely managed to get out of the way. He b.u.mped against a table and his fingers closed around a lowball. He hurled it at the man's temple and the man went down like a deer shot at close range.

There were four, no, six more patrons. The dancer was among them, a bottle in her hand like a club. Now that her man was down she wanted nothing but to defend him. Chandler had no choice but to push.

"Okay, folks," he said in the most authoritative voice he could muster. "That's enough excitement for tonight."

The six men and one girl paused, blinking. The dancer even rubbed her eyes, wondering how she'd failed to notice the troublemaker was a cop.

"Get on outta here," Chandler said, adding a little local color, "before I see fit to call your wives and mommas and tell 'em where you been keeping yourselves."

He continued pushing until the last of the men, supporting the patron Chandler had clocked with the rocks gla.s.s, filed out the front door, while the dancer retreated through a curtain at the back.

Chandler sighed now, let his concentration drop. The effort of reaching into so many minds had used up a good portion of his energy, and he needed to save what little he had left.

Something was wrong, though. Where was Ruby? How come he wasn't out here trying to figure out why he'd been raided? Chandler sent out the lightest feelers he could, trying to discern who was still in the club. He counted three girls in the dressing room, all of them thinking about stuffing their tips into their purses before Ruby could take his cut. There were the two unconscious bouncers, the barman hiding behind the bar. Nothing that felt like Ruby. But ...

He pushed toward a mirror set in the wall high over the bar. Not a mirror, he realized. A window. It must be the office. There was a ... cloud on the other side of the gla.s.s. Not a mind, not as he'd come to understand it, but not a void either.

He looked around, saw a door off to one side of the bar. He went to it, pushed it open. A narrow staircase led up.

He mounted the stairs slowly, pushing all the while at the cloud. It had edges but no dimension. He kept trying to see around it, but there was just more cloud.

His head came up to the floor level of the office. He saw a carpet littered with cigarette b.u.t.ts, coffee cups, soda bottles, the kind of stains you don't want to look at too closely in a place like this. He mounted higher, reached the landing, turned around.

A voice spoke from the shadows at the opposite end of the room.

"h.e.l.lo, Chandler."

He squinted, and Melchior's face jumped out of the darkness. He pushed then, pushed with all his might, but all he felt was the cloud, and he stumbled forward and nearly fell.

Melchior smiled, and only then did Chandler see the gun in his hand.

Chandler heard the click when Melchior pulled the trigger, but instead of a shot he heard a hiss of compressed air followed immediately by a stabbing punch in his abdomen. He looked down to see a barb dangling from his chest, then felt himself falling to the floor.

Washington, DC November 20, 1963

At first glance, it seemed that Charles Jarrell had acquired several new stacks of newspaper in the eleven days since BC'd seen him last. The foyer was barred by a wall of densely packed newsprint; to get into the rest of the house you had to veer into the living room, following a trail that led almost all the way to the far wall before doubling back into the front hall. Jarrell led BC through this maze into a room that had apparently once been a library or study: several thousand books still filled the built-in shelves, but they'd been turned spine in, so that all one saw was the different colored pages aligned in faded vertical strips like one of the abstract paintings in Peggy Hitchc.o.c.k's house. several new stacks of newspaper in the eleven days since BC'd seen him last. The foyer was barred by a wall of densely packed newsprint; to get into the rest of the house you had to veer into the living room, following a trail that led almost all the way to the far wall before doubling back into the front hall. Jarrell led BC through this maze into a room that had apparently once been a library or study: several thousand books still filled the built-in shelves, but they'd been turned spine in, so that all one saw was the different colored pages aligned in faded vertical strips like one of the abstract paintings in Peggy Hitchc.o.c.k's house.

Jarrell tipped his bottle of rye into the two gla.s.ses that sat on the stack of papers in front of the couch. BC was sure they were the same gla.s.ses from his last visit.

"Excuse the mess. You caught me in the middle of refiling."

"Refiling?"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n Company broke in here night before last. They break in pretty regularly, so I need to make sure they can't find anything." Even as he spoke, Jarrell grabbed two feet off the top of one of the stacks, moved it to another.

BC looked around the room. In addition to the stacks, loose papers lined the floor and snaked up the walls. He felt like he was inside a giant papier-mache sculpture.

"The, uh, Company breaks in?"

"Once a month, sometimes more. They try to put things back, but I can always tell when they've been here." Jarrell split a stack into a half dozen units, reshuffled them like cards, then moved the whole pile to a corner of the room. "Bureau probably comes half that often."

"That just leaves KGB," BC said, his voice light but tight.

"They've only been here once or twice." Jarrell busied himself building what looked like a castle wall complete with gun emplacements. "That I know of."

"I meant in New York. I, um, had a run-in with them."

"I know." Jarrell grunted now, continued moving paper. "In a mere eight weeks you've gone from being a COINTELPRO weasel to being a person of interest to both the Bureau and and the Company, albeit they don't know it's you they're looking for. But I gotta admit even the Company, albeit they don't know it's you they're looking for. But I gotta admit even I I was surprised to hear that you took out Dmitri Tarkov." was surprised to hear that you took out Dmitri Tarkov."

"You heard about that?"

"Heard that you caused a bit of a ruckus at Madam Song's, too." Jarrell paused to regard BC through his stacks of paper. "What have have you stumbled into, Beau-Christian Querrey?" you stumbled into, Beau-Christian Querrey?"

"I had him," BC said then. "I had him, and I let him get away."

"Melchior?"

"Orpheus," BC said. "Chandler. I had him. I had Naz, too, and I let them both get away." He looked up at the crazy man spreading paper around with the frantic energy of a rat lining the walls of its cage. "I'm sorry I came back here, but I didn't know what else to do. I've run out of leads." BC said. "Chandler. I had him. I had Naz, too, and I let them both get away." He looked up at the crazy man spreading paper around with the frantic energy of a rat lining the walls of its cage. "I'm sorry I came back here, but I didn't know what else to do. I've run out of leads."

Jarrell met BC's gaze, then looked away. He grabbed his gla.s.s, saw that it was empty, walked over to BC and picked up his drink, and drained it in a swallow.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," he said then. "Must be those puppy-dog eyes."

"What?" BC demanded.

"Melchior got called into Langley day before yesterday about a little dustup at Union Station."

"The gunfight? I read about that in the, uh, paper."

"He said he'd been contacted by a Soviet agent with a cipher no one'd ever heard of, wanted to ask him some questions about Cuba, then pulled a gun on him when he wouldn't talk. Story had more holes in it than a loaf of bread after a mouse has been at it, but instead of keeping him locked up until they got to the bottom of it, Angleton and Everton sent him to Dallas instead. They want him to retrieve an agent known as Caspar."

"One of the other Wise Men?"

"He just got back from almost two years in the Soviet Union. Angleton thinks he might've been doubled by KGB, told Melchior he wants him brought in for more debriefing."

"Do you have an address for him?"

"I took the liberty of looking that up, just in case." Jarrell reached into a stack of papers. It was impossible to conceive that he could find anything amid the thousands and thousands of sheets of paper, but he had to sift through only a couple of pages before he pulled out a copy of the Dallas Times Herald Dallas Times Herald. The front page was covered with hatch marks-no, not hatch marks, but a series of red and black X's and O's drawn around single letters. Jarrell scanned them a moment, then began copying out an address a letter at a time.

"I meant to ask you about that," BC said. "The X's and O's."

"Old cipher system from OSS days," Jarrell said, moving on to a second address. "Computers made it pretty much obsolete, but I still use it. Keeps my mind sharp." He was on to a third address, a fourth.

"Good lord," BC said.

"Guy seems to move around a lot," Jarrell said, although BC had been referring to the fact that somehow Jarrell had managed to encode four different addresses on the front page of a newspaper that had come out only that morning.

"This is the most recent address Everton had," Jarrell said, tapping the first, "but they gave him these others too. This is the wife, who lives in Irving, a suburb of Dallas. The Bureau's sent men out there a couple of times, but apparently he's only around on the weekends."

BC nodded absently. His eyes had been caught by the two-line headline that stretched almost all the way across the page.

PLEA FOR s.p.a.cE PLAN.

KICKS OFF JFK TOUR.

"BC?" Jarrell said.

"Melchior isn't the only one going to Dallas, is he?"

Below the headline was a map of the president's motorcade route. BC and Jarrell stared at the diagram-Main Street, Houston, Elm, and on to the Trade Mart-and then Jarrell wrote down a fifth address on the page, labeled it "Texas School Book Depository."

"What's that?" BC said.

"It's where Caspar works."

"Why are you-"

"Because it's right there," Jarrell said, circling the intersection of Houston and Elm on the motorcade map. "Right across from-"

"From Dealey Plaza," BC finished for him, and reached for Jarrell's bottle.

Dallas, TX November 20, 1963

He was on his hands and knees. He had no idea how long he'd been- been- A foot caught him in the side of the head and he went sprawling.

"I'm starting to wonder why I've invested so much energy in you," Melchior said. "I mean, if you're this easy to take out, what good are you?"

It felt like ice water was flowing through Chandler's veins. His hands and feet were numb, his head a sodden pillow, save for the sharp pain where Melchior's shoe had made contact.

Melchior kicked him again, and Chandler's shoulder slammed against the wall. He slumped there, too heavy to move, head hanging, eyes staring at the dart dangling from his chest.

"What's in the dart?" he said weakly.

"I believe the preferred term is flechette." Melchior giggled. "Thorazine mostly. Keller figured out that it protects our minds from you, although we have to chew amphetamines like vitamins to counteract the sedative effects. Between that and the other downers flowing in your veins, you should be out cold. I've been wondering for a while if whatever Logan gave you did more than change your brain. Now it looks like the answer is yes. Fortunately, however-"

Melchior popped another dart into the gun, leveled it at Chandler.

The numbness seemed to have peaked. Chandler felt that if he could just stay conscious for a few more seconds, he could figure out how to fight it.

"Why do do you want me?" he said, stalling for time. you want me?" he said, stalling for time.

"Duh. You can do things no one else can. You could walk right up to Nikita Khrushchev in front of the Politburo and kill him with no one the wiser. You could kill anyone else for that matter, from the president of the United States to some two-bit guerrilla that someone was willing to pay five or ten grand to have knocked off. No facility would be secure, no mind safe, no target out of reach."

"You have to know I'd never do those things for you."

"You'd be surprised what people can be convinced of doing. A tape recording of Miss Haverman's screams might prove to be very motivating."

Chandler would have launched himself at Melchior if he could have mustered more than a twitch. But he could feel things changing inside him, the warmth coming back into his body, the strength beginning to return to his muscles. Just a few more minutes ...

"Of course you're right," Melchior continued. "Coercion's a poor subst.i.tute for voluntary action. At this point we're less interested in you as an operative than a research tool. We're pretty sure Logan gave you nothing but garden-variety acid, which means that whatever made you into you is inherent. In your genes, or your blood, or your brain. But wherever it is, whatever it is, Dr. Keller's gonna find it and cut it out of you, and then we're gonna make us a whole army of Orpheuses. So if you don't mind"-Melchior raised his gun-"let's just put you back to sleep and get you as far from Dallas as we can, cuz in a couple-a days no one's gonna want to be anywhere near near this town." this town."

Chandler gathered himself. He heard the click of the trigger, saw the dart's needle emerge from the barrel. It was too late to dodge. He would have to- His arm swung, his hand smacked against something. He wasn't sure it was the dart until it thudded into the far wall.

The expression on Melchior's face was half-stunned, half-delighted.

"Well now, that is is impressive." impressive."