Dees heard a rustle and flap and knew it was a cape, just as he knew that if he turned around, he could strike the "almost certainly" from his last thought. He stayed where he was, palms biting the edge of the basin.
A low, ageless voice spoke from directly behind him. The owner of the voice was so close Dees could feel its cold breath on his neck.
"You have been following me," the ageless voice said.
Dees moaned.
"Yes," the ageless voice said, as if Dees had disagreed with him. "I know you, you see. I know all about you. Now listen closely, my inquisitive friend, because I say this only once: don"t follow me any more."
Dees moaned again, a doglike sound, and more water ran into his pants.
"Open your camera," the ageless voice said.
My film! part of Dees cried. My film! All I"ve got! All I"ve got! My pictures!
Another dry, batlike flap of the cape. Although Dees could see nothing, he sensed the Night Flier had moved even closer.
"Now."
His film wasn"t all he had.
There was his life.
Such as it was.
He saw himself whirling and seeing what the mirror would not, could not, show him; saw himself seeing the Night Flier, his batty buddy, a grotesque thing splattered with blood and bits of flesh and clumps of torn-out hair; saw himself snapping shot after shot while the auto-winder hummed . . . but there would be nothing.
Nothing at all.
Because you couldn"t take their pictures, either.
"You"re real," he croaked, never moving, his hands seemingly welded to the edge of the basin.
"So are you," the ageless voice rasped, and now Dees could smell ancient crypts and sealed tombs on its breath. "For now, at least. This is your last chance, my inquisitive would-be biographer. Open your camera . . . or I"ll do it."
With hands that seemed totally numb, Dees opened his Nikon.
Air hummed past his chilly face; it felt like moving razor blades. For a moment he saw a long white hand, streaked with blood; saw ragged nails silted with filth.
Then his film parted and spooled spinelessly out of his camera.
There was another dry flap. Another stinking breath. For a moment he thought the Night Flier would kill him anyway. Then in the mirror he saw the door of the men"s room open by itself.
He doesn"t need me, Dees thought. He must have eaten very well tonight. He immediately threw up again, this time directly onto the reflection of his own staring face.
The door wheezed shut on its pneumatic elbow.
Dees stayed right where he was for the next three minutes or so; stayed there until the approaching sirens were almost on top of the terminal; stayed there until he heard the cough and roar of an airplane engine.
The engine of a Cessna Skymaster 337, almost undoubtedly.
Then he walked out of the bathroom on legs like stilts, struck the far wall of the corridor outside, rebounded, and walked back into the terminal. He slid in a pool of blood, and almost fell.
"Hold it, mister!" a cop screamed behind him. "Hold it right there! One move and you"re dead!"
Dees didn"t even turn around.
"Press, d.i.c.kface," he said, holding up his camera in one hand and his ID card in the other. He went to one of the shattered windows with exposed film still straggling from his camera like long strips of brown confetti, and stood there watching the Cessna accelerate down Runway 5. For a moment it was a black shape against the billowing fire of the genny and the auxiliary tanks, a shape that looked quite a lot like a bat, and then it was up, it was gone, and the cop was slamming Dees up against the wall hard enough to make his nose bleed and he didn"t care, he didn"t care about anything, and when the sobs began to tear their way out of his chest again he closed his eyes, and still he saw the Night Flier"s b.l.o.o.d.y urine striking the porcelain, becoming visible, and swirling down the drain.
He thought he would see it forever.
Popsy.
Sheridan was cruising slowly down the long blank length of the shopping mall when he saw the little kid push out through the main doors under the lighted sign which read COUSINTOWN. It was a boy-child, perhaps a big three and surely no more than five. On his face was an expression to which Sheridan had become exquisitely attuned. He was trying not to cry but soon would.
Sheridan paused for a moment, feeling the familiar soft wave of self-disgust . . . though every time he took a child, that feeling grew a little less urgent. The first time he hadn"t slept for a week. He kept thinking about that big greasy Turk who called himself Mr. Wizard, kept wondering what he did with the children.
"They go on a boat-ride, Mr. Sheridan," the Turk told him, only it came out Dey goo on a bot-rahd, Messtair Shurdunn. The Turk smiled. And if you know what"s good for you, you won"t ask any more about it, that smile said, and it said it loud and clear, without an accent.
Sheridan hadn"t asked any more, but that didn"t mean he hadn"t kept wondering. Especially afterward. Tossing and turning, wishing he had the whole thing to do over again so he could turn it around, so he could walk away from temptation. The second time had been almost as bad . . . the third time a little less . . . and by the fourth time he had almost stopped wondering about the botrahd, and what might be at the end of it for the little kids.
Sheridan pulled his van into one of the handicap parking s.p.a.ces right in front of the mall. He had one of the special license plates the state gave to crips on the back of his van. That plate was worth its weight in gold, because it kept any mall security cop from getting suspicious, and those s.p.a.ces were so convenient and almost always empty.
You always pretend you "re not going out looking, but you always lift a crip plate a day or two before.
Never mind all that bulls.h.i.t; he was in a jam and that kid over there could solve some very big problems.
He got out and walked toward the kid, who was looking around with increasing panic. Yes, Sheridan thought, he was five all right, maybe even six - just very frail. In the harsh fluorescent glare thrown through the gla.s.s doors the boy looked parchment-white, not just scared but perhaps physically ill. Sheridan reckoned it was just big fear, however. Sheridan usually recognized that look when he saw it, because he"d seen a lot of big fear in his own mirror over the last year and a half or so.
The kid looked up hopefully at the people pa.s.sing around him, people going into the mall eager to buy, coming out laden with packages, their faces dazed, almost drugged, with something they probably thought was satisfaction.
The kid, dressed in Tuffskin jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins tee-shirt, looked for help, looked for somebody to look at him and see something was wrong, looked for someone to ask the right question - You get separated from your dad, son? would do - looking for a friend.
Here I am, Sheridan thought, approaching. Here I am, sonny - I"ll be your friend.
He had almost reached the kid when he saw a mall rent-a-cop ambling slowly up the concourse toward the doors. He was reaching in his pocket, probably for a pack of cigarettes. He would come out, see the boy, and there would go Sheridan"s sure thing.
s.h.i.t, he thought, but at least he wouldn"t be seen talking to the kid when the cop came out. That would have been worse.
Sheridan drew back a little and made a business of feeling in his own pockets, as if to make sure he still had his keys. His glance flicked from the boy to the security cop and back to the boy. The boy had started to cry. Not all-out bawling, not yet, but great big tears that looked pinkish in the reflected glow of the red COUSINTOWN sign as they tracked down his smooth cheeks.
The girl in the information booth flagged down the cop and said something to him. She was pretty, dark-haired, about twenty-five; he was sandy-blonde with a moustache. As the cop leaned on his elbows, smiling at her, Sheridan thought they looked like the cigarette ads you saw on the backs of magazines. Salem Spirit. Light My Lucky. He was dying out here and they were in there making chit-chat - whatcha doin after work, ya wanna go and get a drink at that new place, and blah-blah-blah. Now she was also batting her eyes at him. How cute.
Sheridan abruptly decided to take the chance. The kid"s chest was. .h.i.tching, and as soon as he started to bawl out loud, someone would notice him. Sheridan didn"t like moving in with a cop less than sixty feet away, but if he didn"t cover his markers at Mr. Reggie"s within the next twenty-four hours, he thought a couple of very large men would pay him a visit and perform impromptu surgery on his arms, adding several elbow-bends to each.
He walked up to the kid, a big man dressed in an ordinary Van Heusen shirt and khaki pants, a man with a broad, ordinary face that looked kind at first glance. He bent over the little boy, hands on his legs just above the knees, and the boy turned his pale, scared face up to Sheridan"s. His eyes were as green as emeralds, their color accentuated by the light-reflecting tears that washed) them.
"You get separated from your dad, son?" Sheridan asked.
"My Popsy,"the kid said, wiping his eyes. "I . . . I can"t find my P-P-Popsy!"
Now the kid did begin to sob, and a woman headed in glanced around with some vague concern.
"It"s all right," Sheridan said to her, and she went on. Sheridan put a comforting arm around the boy"s shoulders and drew him a little to the right . . . in the direction of the van. Then he looked back inside.
The rent-a-cop had his face right down next to the information girl"s now. Looked like maybe more than that little girl"s Lucky was going to get lit tonight. Sheridan relaxed. At this point there could be a stick-up going on at the bank just up the concourse and the cop wouldn"t notice a thing. This was starting to look like a cinch.
"I want my Popsy!" the boy wept.
"Sure you do, of course you do," Sheridan said. "And we"re going to find him. Don"t you worry."
He drew him a little more to the right.
The boy looked up at him, suddenly hopeful.
"Can you? Can you, mister?"
"Sure!" Sheridan said, and grinned heartily. "Finding lost Popsys . . . well, you might say it"s kind of a specialty of mine."
"It is?" The kid actually smiled a little, although his eyes were still leaking.
"It sure is," Sheridan said, glancing inside again to make sure the cop, whom he could now barely see (and who would barely be able to see Sheridan and the boy, should he happen to look up), was still enthralled. He was. " What was your Popsy wearing, son?"
"He was wearing his suit," the boy said. "He almost always wears his suit. I only saw him once in jeans." He spoke as if Sheridan should know all these things about his Popsy.
"I bet it was a black suit," Sheridan said.
The boy"s eyes lit up. "You saw him! Where?"
He started eagerly back toward the doors, tears forgotten, and Sheridan had to restrain himself from grabbing the pale-faced little brat right then and there. That type of thing was no good. Couldn"t cause a scene. Couldn"t do anything people would remember later. Had to get him in the van. The van had sun-filter gla.s.s everywhere except in the windshield; it was almost impossible to see inside unless you had your face smashed right up against it.
Had to get him in the van first.
He touched the boy on the arm. "I didn"t see him inside, son. I saw him right over there."
He pointed across the huge parking lot with its endless platoons of cars. There was an access road at the far end of it, and beyond that were the double yellow arches of McDonald"s.
"Why would Popsy go over there?" the boy asked, as if either Sheridan or Popsy - or maybe both of them - had gone utterly mad.
"I don"t know," Sheridan said. His mind was working fast, clicking along like an express train as it always did when it got right down to the point where you had to stop s.h.i.tting and either do it up right or f.u.c.k it up righteously. Popsy. Not Dad or Daddy but Popsy. The kid had corrected him on it. Maybe Popsy meant Granddad, Sheridan decided. "But I"m pretty sure that was him. Older guy in a black suit. White hair . . . green tie . . . "
"Popsy had his blue tie on," the boy said. "He knows I like it the best."
"Yeah, it could have been blue," Sheridan said. "Under these lights, who can tell? Come on, hop in the van, I"ll run you over there to him."
"Are you sure it was Popsy? Because I don"t know why he"d go to a place where they - "
Sheridan shrugged. "Look, kid, if you"re sure that wasn"t him, maybe you better look for him on your own. You might even find him."" And he started brusquely away, heading back toward the van.
The kid wasn"t biting. He thought about going back, trying again, but it had already gone on too long - you either kept observable contact to a minimum or you were asking for twenty years in Hammerton Bay. He"d better go on to another mall. Scoterville, maybe. Or - "Wait, mister!" It was the kid, with panic in his voice. There was the light thud of running sneakers. "Wait up! I told him I was thirsty, he must have thought he had to go way over there to get me a drink. Wait!"
Sheridan turned around, smiling. "I wasn"t really going to leave you anyway, son."
He led the boy to the van, which was four years old and painted a nondescript blue. He opened the door and smiled at the kid, who looked up at him doubtfully, his green eyes swimming in that pallid little face, as huge as the eyes of a waif in a velvet painting, the kind they advertised in the cheap weekly tabloids like The National Enquirer and Inside View.
"Step into my parlor, little buddy," Sheridan said, and produced a grin which looked almost entirely natural. It was really sort of creepy, how good he"d gotten at this.
The kid did, and although he didn"t know it, his a.s.s belonged to Briggs Sheridan the minute the pa.s.senger door swung shut.
There was only one problem in his life. It wasn"t broads, although he liked to hear the swish of a skirt or feel the smooth smoke of silken hose as well as any man, and it wasn"t booze, although he had been known to take a drink or three of an evening. Sheridan"s problem - his fatal flaw, you might even say - was cards. Any kind of cards, as long as it was the kind of game where wagers were allowed. He had lost jobs, credit cards, the home his mother had left him. He had never, at least so far, been in jail, but the first time he got in trouble with Mr. Reggie, he"d thought jail would be a rest-cure by comparison.
He had gone a little crazy that night. It was better, he had found, when you lost right away. When you lost right away you got discouraged, went home, watched Letterman on the tube, and then went to sleep. When you won a little bit at first, you chased. Sheridan had chased that night and had ended up owing seventeen thousand dollars. He could hardly believe it; he went home dazed, almost elated, by the enormity of it. He kept telling himself in the car on the way home that he owed Mr. Reggie not seven hundred, not seven thousand, but seventeen thousand iron men. Every time he tried to think about it he giggled and turned up the volume on the radio.
But he wasn"t giggling the next night when the two gorillas - the ones who would make sure his arms bent in all sorts of new and interesting ways if he didn"t pay up - brought him into Mr. Reggie"s office.
"I"ll pay," Sheridan began babbling at once. "I"ll pay, listen, it"s no problem, couple of days, a week at the most, two weeks at the outside - "
"You bore me, Sheridan," Mr. Reggie said.
"I - "
"Shut up. If I give you a week, don"t you think I know what you"ll do? You"ll tap a friend for a couple of hundred if you"ve got a friend left to tap. If you can"t find a friend, you"ll hit a liquor store . . . if you"ve got the guts. I doubt if you do, but anything is possible." Mr. Reggie leaned forward, propped his chin on his hands, and smiled. He smelled of Ted Lapidus cologne. " And if you do come up with two hundred dollars, what will you do with it?""
"Give it to you," Sheridan had babbled. By then he was very close to tears. "I"ll give it to you, right away!"
"No you won"t," Mr. Reggie said. "You"ll take it to the track and try to make it grow. What you"ll give me is a bunch of s.h.i.tty excuses. You"re in over your head this time, my friend. Way over your head."
Sheridan could hold back the tears no longer; he began to blubber.
"These guys could put you in the hospital for a long time," Mr. Reggie said reflectively. "You would have a tube in each arm and another one coming out of your nose."
Sheridan began to blubber louder.
"I"ll give you this much," Mr. Reggie said, and pushed a folded sheet of paper across his desk to Sheridan. "You might get along with this guy. He calls himself Mr. Wizard, but he"s a s.h.i.tbag just like you. Now get out of here. I"m gonna have you back in here in a week, though, and I"ll have your markers on this desk. You either buy them back or Pm going to have my friends tool up on you. And like Booker T. says, once they start, they do it until they"re satisfied."
The Turk"s real name was written on the folded sheet of paper. Sheridan went to see him, and heard about the kids and the botrahds. Mr. Wizard also named a figure, which was a fairish bit larger than the markers Mr. Reggie was holding. That was when Sheridan started cruising the malls.
He pulled out of the Cousintown Mall"s main parking lot, looked for traffic, then drove across the access road and into the McDonald"s in-lane. The kid was sitting all the way forward on the pa.s.senger seat, hands on the knees of his Tuffskins, eyes agonizingly alert. Sheridan drove toward the building, swung wide to avoid the drive-thru lane, and kept on going.
"Why are you going around the back?" the kid asked.
"You have to go around to the other doors," Sheridan said. "Keep your shirt on, kid. I think I saw him in there."
"You did? You really did?"