Over the years, I had read thrillers in which the authors wrote things like "the air was full of violence" and "the pending violence hung over the scene like black thunderheads." I had always judged this to be clumsy writing, but maybe they should have won n.o.bels and Pulitzers.
"Take my hand," Hoss Shackett repeated.
I said, "I"m already dating someone."
"What"s the point of dating if your p.e.c.k.e.r"s broken off?"
"It"s a platonic relationship, anyway."
My hands were folded on the table. Viper-quick, he struck, seizing my left hand, folding it tight enough in his to make me wish I"d had my knuckles surgically removed.
The grim concrete cell vanished, and I stood once more on Armageddon Beach, in a tempest of crimson light.
Chief Hoss Shackett was not a man who lightly revealed what he was feeling or thinking. But when he dropped my hand, returning me to reality, and leaned back in his chair, I could tell from a slight widening of his pupils that he had shared my nightmare vision.
"So," I said, "what was that that about?" about?"
He did not reply.
"Because," I said, "that has only happened to me once before, and it freaks me out."
He had a hard strong face that Stalin would have envied. His jaw muscles were so knotted at the hinges that he appeared able to crack walnuts in his teeth.
"Nothing like this-sharing a dream-has ever happened to me before," I a.s.sured him. "It"s every bit as awkward for me as it is for you."
"Sharing a dream."
"I had this dream, and now people touch me and I"m thrown back into it. What is this-the Twilight Zone?"
He leaned forward, a small move, but it was like being in a Jura.s.sic meadow when the T. rex T. rex that has its back to you casually looks over its shoulder. that has its back to you casually looks over its shoulder.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I have no idea."
"I won"t keep asking nice like this."
"Sir, I appreciate how nice you"ve been. I really do. But I"m serious. I have amnesia."
"Amnesia."
"Yes."
"That"s pathetic."
"It really is. Not knowing my past, my name, where I"m from, where I"m going. It"s totally pathetic."
"You told Reverend Moran your name was Todd."
"Sir, I swear, it was just a name to tell him. I could have said Larry or Vernon, or Rupert, or Ringo. I could be anybody. I just do not know."
He did the staring thing again. It was as effective as it had been previously. Second by second, I became increasingly convinced that if I didn"t spill everything about myself, he would bite off my nose. For starters.
Although he would infer weakness if I looked away from him, I had to break the stare before his eyes sucked out my soul. I examined my left hand to confirm that he had returned it with all my fingers.
With the solemnity of Darth Vader, the chief said, "You aren"t carrying any identification."
"Yes, sir. That"s right. If I had some identification, I"d know who I was."
"I don"t like people in my town not carrying ID."
"No, sir, you wouldn"t like that, you being a man of the law. I wouldn"t like it if I were in your shoes, even if there"s nothing in the Const.i.tution that requires a person to carry ID."
"You"re a const.i.tutional scholar, are you?"
"No. Well, I guess I could be. I won"t know until I recover my memory. What I think happened was somebody mugged me."
Gingerly I felt the lump on the side of my head, which Whittle had raised with his flashlight earlier in the night.
The chief watched me rub the lump, but he said nothing.
"Whoever mugged me and gave me amnesia, he must have taken my wallet."
"When were you mugged? Tonight on the beach?"
"On the beach? Tonight?" I frowned. "No, sir. I think it must have been a lot earlier in the day."
"People don"t get mugged in my town in broad daylight."
I shrugged.
Clearly, he did not like the shrug. I couldn"t take it back.
"So you"re saying you were mugged before you jumped off the pier this afternoon?"
"Yes, sir. In fact the first thing I remember is walking along the boardwalk toward the pier, wondering who I am and where I am and whether I had lunch or not."
"Why did you jump off the pier?"
"Since being mugged unconscious, sir, my behavior hasn"t been entirely rational."
"Why did you tell Utgard that a thirty-foot tsunami was coming?"
"Utgard?"
"Utgard Rolf."
"Is that a person, sir?"
"You"ll remember him. A walking mountain with a chin beard."
"Oh, yes. He seemed nice. Excellent taste in Hawaiian shirts. I don"t remember telling him about a tsunami, though. I must have been delirious from the mugging."
"Utgard put a hand on your shoulder-and saw the very thing I just saw when I touched your hand. He described it to me."
"Yes, sir. You and him. It happened twice now. It"s the dream I had while I was mugged unconscious, before I found myself on the boardwalk, heading toward the pier."
"Tell me about your dream."
"There"s not much to tell, sir. You saw it. The red sky, the sea full of light, the sand so bright, very scary."
The pupils of his eyes grew wider, as if he intended to switch off the lights and hunt me down like a serpent chasing a mouse.
"Very scary," I repeated.
"What do you think it means?"
"Means? The dream, sir? I"ve never had a dream mean anything. That"s for those old movies with Gypsies."
Finally he looked away from me. He stared so long at the third chair in the corner that I turned my head to look at it.
Mr. Sinatra sat there. I don"t know how long he had been in the room. He pointed at me as if to say Looking good, kid. Looking good, kid.
Hoss Shackett did not see the Chairman of the Board. He was staring into s.p.a.ce, perhaps envisioning my evisceration.
The chief bent his fingers and studied his well-manicured nails as though checking to be sure that no dried blood remained under them from his most recent interrogation session.
He gazed at the ma.s.sive door for a while, and I suppose he was recalling how effectively it had contained the screams of those who had been in this room before my visit.
When he shifted his attention to the oppressively low ceiling, he smiled. He had the kind of smile that, if he turned it on the sky, would cause birds to fall dead in flight.
He looked down at the steel top of the table. He leaned forward to consider his blurry image in the surface, which had been burnished by years of wear and by a mult.i.tude of sweaty hands.
His reflection was not recognizable as his face or as a face at all. It was a series of smears, dark whorls, lumpy and distorted.
He seemed to like himself that way, however, because he smiled once more.
Chief Hoss was making me so crazy that I wished he would look at me again.
My wish was answered. He met my eyes.
He said, "Kid, what do you say-let"s you and me be friends?"
I said, "That would be swell, sir."
TWENTY-SIX.
CHIEF HOSS SHACKETT UNDERWENT A CHANGE worthy of one of those intelligent alien machines in that toy-based movie, Transformers, Transformers, that can morph from an ordinary period Dodge into a giant robot with a hundred times the ma.s.s of the vehicle from which it unfolded. that can morph from an ordinary period Dodge into a giant robot with a hundred times the ma.s.s of the vehicle from which it unfolded.
I do not mean that the chief suddenly filled the cell and left me without elbow room. He metamorphosed from Mr. Hyde, if Mr. Hyde had been a s.a.d.i.s.tic warden in a Soviet gulag, into the benign Dr. Jekyll, if Dr. Jekyll had been a folksy sheriff from a small town where the biggest crime in twenty years had been when Lulamay copied Bobbijune"s rhubarb-jam recipe and pa.s.sed it off as her own in the county-fair compet.i.tion.
The eat-your-liver-with-fava-beans grin melted into the smile of any grandfather in any TV commercial featuring cute little kids frolicking with puppies.
The knotted muscles in his face relaxed. The tension went out of his body. As if he were a chameleon moving from gray stone to a rose, a touch of pink appeared in his skin.
Amazingly, the venomous green shade of his eyes changed, and they were now Irish eyes, happy and full of delight. Even his eyes were smiling, his lips and his eyes, his entire face, every line and plain and dimple of his countenance marshaling into a spectacle of sublime good will.
The previous Hoss Shackett could never have become the chief of police of Magic Beach, which was an elected position. Before me now was Hoss Shackett, the politician.
I was dismayed that he wasn"t up for election this year, because I wanted to go out right this minute and work in his campaign, put up some signs, canva.s.s a few neighborhoods, help paint his portrait on the side of a four-story building.
Mr. Sinatra came to the table to stare more closely at the chief. He looked at me, shook his head in amazement, and returned to the corner.
Slumped in his chair, so relaxed that he seemed to be in danger of sliding onto the floor, Chief Hoss said, "Kid, what do you want?"
"Want, sir?"
"Out of life. What do you want out of life?"
"Well, sir, I"m not sure I can answer that question accurately since at the present time I don"t know who I am."
"Let"s suppose you don"t have amnesia."
"But I do, sir. I look in the mirror, and I don"t know my face."
"It"s your face," he a.s.sured me.
"I look in the mirror, and I see that actor, Matt Damon."
"You don"t look anything like Matt Damon."
"Then why do I see him in the mirror?"
"Let me hazard a guess."
"I"d be grateful if you would, sir."
"You saw those movies where he has amnesia."
"Was Matt Damon in movies where he had amnesia?"