The Great And Secret Show Part 70

On the seventh day after events in Kissoon's Loop the morning news informed them that search-parties were going into the town. The destruction of the Grove had been a big story, of course, theories being advanced from countless sources as to why the town had been singled out for such devastation when the rest of the Valley had survived with no more than a few tremors and some cracks in the freeway. There was no mention amid these reports of the phenomena witnessed at Coney Eye; governmental pressure had silenced all those who'd seen the impossible happen in front of their eyes.

The entry into the Grove was cautious at first, but by the end of the day a large number of survivors were back in the town, looking to salvage keepsakes and souvenirs from the wreckage. A few were lucky. Most weren't. For every Grover who came back to a once familiar street to find their house intact there were six who met a scene of total ruination. Everything gone; splintered, smashed or simply vanished into the ground. Of all the neighborhoods the one least damaged was paradoxically the least populated: the Mall and its immediate environs. The polished pine Palomo Grove Shopping Center sign at the entrance to the parking lot had slid into a hole, as had a fair portion of the lot itself, but the stores themselves were virtually undamaged, which meant, of course, that a murder investigation (never solved) got underway as soon as the bodies in the pet store were discovered. But corpses aside, had there been Grovers to shop the Mall could have opened for business that day without much more than a dusting off. Marvin Jr., of Marvin's Food and Drug, was the first to organize a removal of unspoiled stock. His brother had a store in Pasadena, and customers who couldn't give a d.a.m.n where their bargains originated. He made no apology for the haste with which he got about his profiteering. Business was business, after all.

The other removal from the Grove, of course, and this a business of a grimmer sort, was that of bodies. Dogs and sound-sensitive equipment were brought in to establish whether anybody was left alive, the efforts of both drawing a blank. Then came the grisly task of retrieval. By no means every Grover who'd lost his life was found. When the final calculations were made, almost two weeks after the search began, forty-one of the town's members were unaccounted for. The earth had claimed them, then closed over their corpses. Or else the individuals in question had slipped away into the night, taking this opportunity to re-invent themselves and start afresh. One of the latter group, so rumor went, was William Witt, whose body was never recovered but whose house, upon investigation, was found to contain enough p.o.r.nography to keep the Combat Zones of several cities supplied for months. He'd had a secret life, had William Witt, and the general suspicion was that he'd chosen to go and live it elsewhere.

When the ident.i.ty of one of the two corpses in the pet store was revealed to be that of Jim Hotchkiss one or two of the astuter journalists noted that his had been a life dogged by tragedy. His daughter, they reminded their readers, had been one of the so-called League of Virgins, and in remarking on this the writers took a paragraph to comment on just how much grief the Grove had endured in its short life. Had it been doomed from the outset, the more fanciful commentators asked, built on cursed ground? There was some shred of solace in that thought. If not, if the Grove had simply been a victim of chance, then how many of the thousands of such communities across America were vulnerable to the same outrages?

On the second day of the search Joyce McGuire's body was found in the ruins of her house, which had sustained considerably worse damage than any of the surrounding property. It was taken for identification, as were the bulk of the bodies, to a makeshift mortuary in Thousand Oaks. That onerous duty fell to Jo-Beth, whose brother would be numbered among the missing forty-one. Identification made, arrangements were begun for her burial. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looked after its own. Pastor John had survived the levelling (indeed he'd left the Grove the night of the Jaff's attack on the McGuire house and hadn't come back till the dust had settled) and it was he who organized Momma's funeral. Only once in that time did he and Howie cross paths, and Howie was quick to remind the Pastor of the night he'd blubbered beside the refrigerator. The Pastor insisted he remembered no such incident.

"Pity I haven't got a photo," Howie said. "To jog your memory. But I've got one up here." He pointed to his temples, upon which the last traces of Quiddity's reconfiguration of his flesh was fading. "Just in case I ever get tempted."

"Tempted to what?" the Pastor asked.

"To be a believer."

Momma McGuire was consigned into the embrace of her chosen G.o.d two days after that exchange. Howie didn't attend the ceremony, but was waiting for Jo-Beth when it was all over. They left for Chicago twenty-four hours later.

Their part in events was very far from over, however. The first sign that the adventure of Cosm and Quiddity had made them part of a very select band of players came half a week after they'd got to Chicago, with the arrival on their doorstep of a tall, handsome-gone-to-harrowed stranger, dressed too lightly for the weather, who introduced himself as D'Amour.

"I'd like to talk to you about what happened at Palomo Grove," he said to Howie.

"How did you find us?"

"It's my job, finding people," Harry explained. "You may have heard Tesla Bombeck mention me?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Well you can check with her."

"No I can't," Howie reminded him. "She's dead."

"So she is," D'Amour said. "So she is. My mistake."

"And even if you did know her there's nothing Jo-Beth and me have to say. We just want to forget about the Grove."

"There's not much chance of that," a voice from behind him observed. "Who is this, Howie?"

"He says he knew Tesla."

"D'Amour," the stranger said, "Harry D'Amour. I really would appreciate a few minutes of your time. Just a few. It's very important."

Howie glanced at Jo-Beth.

"Why not?" she said.

"It's d.a.m.n cold out there," D'Amour observed as he stepped inside. "What happened to summer?"

"Things are bad all over," Jo-Beth said.

"You noticed," D'Amour replied.

"What are you two talking about?"

"The news," she said. "I've been watching it, you haven't."

"It's like a full moon every night," D'Amour said. "A lot of people are acting very strange. The suicide rate's doubled since the Grove Breakout. There's riots in asylums across the country. And I'd lay money we're only seeing a little part of the whole picture. There's a lot being kept under wraps."

"Who by?"

"The government. The church. Am I the first one to find you?"

"Yes," said Howie. "Why? Do you think there's going to be others?"

"For certain. You two are at the center of all this-"

"It wasn't our fault!" Howie protested.

"I'm not saying it was," D'Amour replied. "Please. I haven't come here to accuse you of anything. And I'm sure you deserve to be left in peace to get on with living. But it's not going to happen. That's the truth. You're "too important. You've seen too much. Our people know it, and so do theirs."

"Theirs?" Jo-Beth said.

"The Iad's people. The infiltrators who kept the army at bay when it looked like the Iad were about to break out."

"How do you know so much about all this?" Howie wanted to know.

"I have to be a little careful about my sources just at the moment, but I hope I can reveal them to you eventually."

"You make it sound like we're in this with you," Howie said. "We're not. You're right, we do want to get on with living our lives, together. And we'll go wherever we have to- Europe, Australia, wherever-to do that."

"They'll find you," D'Amour said. "The Grove brought them too close to succeeding for them to give up now. They know they've got us spooked. Quiddity's tainted. n.o.body's going to have many sweet dreams from now on. We're easy meat, and they know it. You might want to live ordinary lives but you can't. Not with fathers like yours."

It was Jo-Beth's turn to express shock at his words.

"What do you know about our fathers?" she said.

"They're not in Heaven, I know that," D'Amour said. "Sorry. Bad taste. Like I said, I've got my sources, and very soon I hope I can reveal them. In the meantime I need to understand what happened at the Grove better, so that we can learn by it."

"I should have done that," Howie said softly. "I had a chance to learn from Fletcher, but I never took it."

"You're Fletcher's son," D'Amour said. "His spirit's in you. It's just a question of listening to it "

"He was a genius," Howie told Harry. "I really believe that. I'm sure he was out of his mind on mescaline half the time, but he was still a genius."

"I want to hear," said D'Amour. "Do you want to tell me?"

Howie stared at him for a long moment. Then he sighed, and with a tone very like surprise said: "Yes. I think I do."

Grillo was sitting in the 50's Cafe on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, trying to remember what it was like to enjoy food, when somebody came and sat opposite him in the booth. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the cafe wasn't full. He raised his head to request some privacy but instead said: "Tesla?"

She was dressed in quintessential Bombecksquerie: a flock of ceramic swans pinned to a midnight-blue blouse, a red bandanna, dark gla.s.ses. Her face was pale, but her lipstick, which clashed with the bandanna, was glitzy. Her eyeshadow, when she slipped her gla.s.ses down her nose, was the same shade of riot.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes what?"

"Yes Tesla."

"I thought you were dead."

"I've made that mistake. It's easily done."

"This isn't some illusion?" he said.

"Well the whole d.a.m.n thing's that, isn't it? All a show. But us, are we any more illusory than you? No."

"Us?"

"I'll come to that in a minute. First you. How are things?"

"There's not much to tell. I went back to the Grove a couple of times, just to see who survived."

"Ellen Nguyen?"

"She wasn't found. Nor was Philip. I went through the rubble personally. G.o.d knows where she went."

"Want us to look for her? We've got contacts now. It hasn't been much fun, as far as homecomings go. I had a body to deal with, back at the apartment. And a lot of people asking difficult questions. But we've got some influence now, and I'm using it."

"What is this we business?"

"Are you going to eat that cheeseburger?"

"No."

"Good." She pulled the plate over to her side of the table. "You remember Raul?" she said.

"I never met the mind, only the body."

"Well you're meeting him now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I found him, in the Loop. At least I found his spirit." She smiled, ketchup round her mouth. "It's difficult to make this sound wholesome...but he's inside me. Him, and the ape he used to be, and me, all in one body."

"Your dream come true," Grillo said. "All things to all men."

"Yes, I suppose so. I mean, we suppose so. I keep forgetting to include us all. Maybe it's best I don't try."

"You've got cheese on your chin."

"That's it, bring us down."

"Don't get me wrong. I'm glad to see you. But...I was just beginning to get used to the fact that you weren't around. Should I still call you Tesla?"

"Why not?"

"Well you're not, are you? You're more than that."

"Tesla's fine. A body's called by what it seems to be, right?"

"I suppose so," Grillo said. "Do I look like I'm freaked out by all this?"

"No. Are you?"

He shook his head. "Weird, but no. I'm cool."

"That's my Grillo."

"You mean our Grillo."

"No. I mean mine. You can f.u.c.k all the great beauties in Los Angeles and I've still got you. I'm the great imponderable in your life."

"It's a plot."

"You don't like it?"

Grillo smiled. "It's not bad," he said.

"Don't be coy," she said. She took hold of his hand. "We've got some times ahead, and I need to know you're with me."

"You know I am."

"Good. Like I said, the ride's not over."

"Good. Where'd you get that from? That was my headline."

"Synchronicity," Tesla said. "Where was I? D'Amour thinks they'll try New York next. They've got footholds there. Had them for years. So I'm gathering half the team together, he's gathering the other half."

"What can I do?" Grillo said.

"How do you fancy Omaha, Nebraska?"

"Not much."

"That's where this last phase began, believe it or not. In the Omaha Post Office."

"You're kidding me."

"That's where the Jaff got his half-witted idea of the Art."