Hip Cities and Lost Souls
Chapter 21
"Here," Mike said, shaking Lance
awake with one hand while pushing a luke warm cup of coffee towards him with
the other. Day light streamed through the branches of the bush under which he
lay, full day light suggesting a time as late as Eleven. Crying babies and
screaming kids emphasized the effect. He closed his eyes again. They hurt, as
did his back from a cool night sleeping on the hard ground. The quilt from home
had kept few stones from biting into him. Nor had the blankets kept him warm.
More than once he'd wished for the van or the motel luxury of Denver.
"Thanks," he said and sat up,
sipping the spill over from the lid. "Where did you find this?"
"A pioneer market just over the north
side of the park," Mike said, easing over to the still-sleeping Marie a
few feet away, nudging her with his free hand. She groaned and opened her eyes,
her hair splayed across her face like bright red fingers. She brushed the
strands aside.
"What is it?" she asked, keeping her
eyes closed against the light.
"Time to wake up, honey," Mike said
softly.
She squirmed, her face twisting into the
indignant expression of an annoyed Goddess. Her eyes opened, her brows
descending into a puzzled frown as she stared up at the leaves.
"Drink this," Mike said, pressing
the cup into her hands. "Quickly. We're not safe here."
"Bucking...?" Lance asked.
"No, Tinkertons," Mike said with an
edge of rage. "They seem to have a pipe line into our secrets. They
started arriving about an hour ago. They're everywhere."
"But they couldn't know about the
meeting, could they?"
"I don't know," Mike said, peering
out from the cover of the willow branches, a small eastern luxury transplanted
here but doing badly, its leaves budding brown rather than green, the dying
brown of inappropriate environment. "They have our scent and that worries
me. They might know there's meeting but not exactly when. In which case they're
not taking any chances."
"Daddy's men?" Marie said, the
horror finally seeping through the last layers of sleepiness.
"What are we going to do?" Lance
asked.
"Re-disguise Marie for one thing,"
Mike said, dragging out a shopping bag Lance recognized as one of Sarah's.
"I took the luxury of going back to the van. Things seemed to have quieted
down at Dale's place for a while. It might even be safe enough for us to go
back there if we have to."
"Any place seems safer than here,"
Lance said, shivering-- Sarah's squirming form leaping into his mind even with
his eyes closed. "But with all the noise last night and drugs, I'd feel
much more comfortable elsewhere."
"We don't want to go too far away,"
Mike said, dumping the bag onto the ground at Marie's feet.
"If only we could convince Daddy's men
Marie wasn't here," Lance mumbled, imagining the grand scene their arrival
at Dale's would make, one mindless cult meeting another.
"You're not sending me anywhere,"
Marie said. "Not while you two are having all the fun."
Another time and place her indignant
expression would have been comical, but Mike didn't laugh.
"Fun?" he said sharply. "Our
meeting with Buckingham is no social engagement."
"Then why are we meeting him?" she
asked.
Mike took a long breath, his gaze catching
Lance's for an instant and in that instant came a flash of pain. "To kill
him," he whispered.
Lance's stomach tightened and he closed his
eyes again, the back fire of a car north of the park making him jump.
"Which means it's going to be crazy
enough around here without your father's men breathing down our necks,"
Mike said, pacing the bare ground, crimping hands.
"But they'll still be here whether I go
or not," Marie argued, drawing a deep frown from Mike.
"Huh?"
"Someone told them I'm here. So even if
you send me some place, they won't know."
"And," Lance added, "if
Buckingham sees them, he might just shy away."
"Then we're screwed," Mike mumbled.
"No," Lance said, pushing himself
up, something clicking in his stiff neck.
"What can we do?"
"Send them elsewhere."
The frown deepened into a cut between Mike's
eyes. "How?"
Lance wiped the coffee and sweat from his lip
with a sleeve. He knew how bad the next words would sound to Marie and knew
exactly what kind of reaction to expect.
"They would flock to some other place at
midnight if they believed Marie would be there."
"And just how would they come to believe
that?" Marie asked coldly, her suspicious gaze working over Lance. She
knew what he had in mind but wanted him to say it.
"We could arrange a meeting between you
and your father..."
"No!" she howled.
"It wouldn't be for real," Lance
said. "They just had to believe it was."
"But I would have to talk to Daddy,"
she said, pushing herself up, her long red hair tumbling down over her
shoulders, dented from sleep and the previous night's captivity beneath a wig.
"Why?" Lance asked. "Couldn't
one of us call Detroit?"
"Daddy wouldn't believe it. Only hearing
my voice would convince him and I couldn't talk with him."
"Why not?" Mike asked.
"Because--" she said and shuddered,
her now-hard eyes glaring at Lance as if she could kill him. "--because he
might convince me to come home."
"What?" Mike said.
"You don't know how persuasive that man
can be."
"But Lance and I will be right beside
you. We'll stop it if he does."
"Please, Mikie," she whispered, her
cheeks already spouting tears. "Don't make me do this."
"We don't have a choice," Mike said,
tossing her clothing and a new wig from the bag. "Get into these and then
we'll find a telephone."
***********
"Something's wrong," Dan said,
twisting his neck. The sleep in the car had been both dangerous and painful,
the steer wheel fighting him for space. He had thought to drive here sooner and
begged space to rest from Free Press Bobo. But something had stopped him,
making him settle for a dark parking space near Fountain and Vine.
"Huh? What?" Bobo asked, head rising
from over the rear seat, his eyes red and miserable like after a long drunk. He
slept heavy-- which surprised Dan. Even the cars whining start and bumpy
journey hadn't woken him.
"It's too quiet," Dan said.
"This place is usually packed this time of day."
Hell, it rarely went without people at night
either, its lawn an unofficial love-in and crash pad for many regular street
people. But now the space behind the hedge was vacant, lacking even a sleeping
bag or abandoned undergarment as evidence of occupation.
"What time is it?"
"After eleven."
"Maybe Bob took the day off to go to the
beach," Bobo mumbled, stifling a yawn.
"Not him," Dan said. "He's all
business. It would have taken something serious for him to close up shop."
"Like what?"
"Like a bust, maybe."
The reddened eyes widened, then narrowed
again. "Or Buckingham," Bobo said, reaching for one of the weapons
under the seat.
"No guns," Dan said, popping open
his door, the earlier drizzle long vanquished by the rising, brutal sun-- a
foreshadowing of an equally brutal summer. "Whatever happened here is
history. It just feels bad."
"So why don't we skip it?" Bobo
asked, drawing himself out the rear passenger door-- his once perfect clothing
now a wreckage of wrinkles. Even his tie was askew and he tried in vain to
straighten it using the dusty window as a mirror.
Dan shook his head, eyeing the driveway on an
angle. Someone coughed beyond the corner of the building, a hacking, cigarette
cough not much different from his own. "We should see what's going
on," he said, starting across the street.
His lung felt sore in his chest. Maybe the
doctor's had been right. Maybe he wouldn't survive another summer in the city
with its shell of smog. A queasiness had come over him. He felt a bit
discombobulated, as if a fog had risen around him, blurring everything
slightly.
But he could smell the bite of something
familiar in the air as he stepped into the driveway, something...
"Damn!" he cursed and stopped. The
crossed arms of a police barricade blocked their way. Crime-scene tape flapped
loosely from the folded wood like the loose end of a bandage. Cold swept over
Dan. He stepped over them and hurried to the door. It stood ajar, its gap
emitting the smell of newspapers and gunpowder and blood.
"Hey!" a sharp voice shouted from an
alley between the garage and the apartment building wall next door. The cop
appear re-zipping his zipper. "What are you doing in there?"
Dan turned, Bobo at his elbow like a
frightened dog. "We're looking for Free Press Bob," Dan said.
"He's not here," the cop said, his
bored tone suggesting persistent repetition as people came looking for
information and newspapers.
"Did something happen?" Bobo asked,
tentatively pointing towards the flapping tape.
"A mugging of some sort," the cop
said. "I don't know all the details. I'm just here to watch the
place."
"Is he all right?" Dan asked.
"I mean..."
"He's not dead. At least he wasn't last I
heard. But the paramedics said he was in pretty bad shape. I think they took
him down to Hollywood Presbyterian."
"Come on," Dan said, grabbing Bobo's
arm.
"Come where?" Bobo asked, digging
his heals in at the barricade.
"Where do you think?"
***********
"This is crazy," Bobo protested as
Dan pulled the car into the slanted parking slot. The meter still had time on
it, though he finished a dime out of his pocket and added two hours. "Who
the hell knows if he's even alive?"
"If he is we need to talk to him."
"Why?"
"To find out what happened and what he
saw."
"You mean he might have seen...?"
"That's what we're here to find
out."
"What about Mike? Shouldn't we be looking
for him?"
"We've still got hours before the meeting.
If we know who Buckingham is, we might be able to stop things before the
killing starts."
Bobo nodded and climbed out his side of the
car, staring up at the brick face of the building, his gaze jittery. "I'm
not fond of these places, Dan," he said softly.
"Nor am I," Dan mumbled, the
tightness growing in his chest. He wondered if his face showed the pain and if
anyone would notice it inside as he prowled the halls.
Witch doctors is what he'd called them after
their pronouncement of death.
What do you mean you don't have a cure?
Sometimes that happens, they said.
But this is 1970, man. Science can cure
anything.
Not anything. Not even remotely. And certainly
not the thing he had. Rest. Breathe clean air. Maybe then, he
would live a reasonably long life.
"What if he is dead?" Bobo asked.
Dan had no answer to that. Not after Bobo's
Jake, or his woman in East L.A. People like Billy deserved to die. But there
was something uglier about the death of innocents, like a shotgun blast into a
gang of kids.
"Let's hope he isn't," Dan said and
started up the walk towards the glass doors, sunlight shimmering off the
windows around him with artificial cheer.
***********
Her hands shook as Mike pressed the receiver
into them.
"Just stay calm, honey," he said and
popped the coins in, one quarter after another till the required amount
vanished into its maw. She could hear the chimes of each one falling, like some
strange form of music which she would remember for the rest of her life--
Daddy's music-- Dancing the 1500 miles back to Detroit. She could almost
picture his broad face and ample smile, and the glow in his eyes whenever he
looked at her.
"Dial," Mike whispered, his own
voice shivering, as if Daddy were already on the other end of the line and
could hear everything. She nodded and began the sequence of coded numbers--
some which she had to read from a piece of paper held up by Lance. But the last
seven digits she knew by heart, having dialed them ten thousand times for more,
always followed by the same ringing, always leading to her own voice saying: Daddy,
I'm in trouble...
Yet never so deep in trouble as this time, and
never so painful to confront.
This time the ringing sounded dim and distant,
reaching all the way to Daddy's private office-- a luxurious room to which he
often went to escape-- mother's hounding, the pressures of home life, the idea
of being a husband, father, and important figure in the community. His sons
were little more than a pack of jealous wolves, waiting for him die. His wife, her
mother, a bitch who wanted everything she saw. Only Marie ever made the man's
life bearable. Only Marie had this number to reach him at need.
"Hello?" a weary voice said--
Daddy's voice-- but a voice strained through the ghosts of the long distance wires,
like a ghost itself, full of the memory of his kindnesses and rages.
She slammed the phone down. "I
can't..." she sobbed.
"Damn it, Marie!" Mike howled.
"You've got to!"
"Why? Why can't we just leave town. It
isn't as if we've got to meet Buckingham! He's not going to help us get out of
the country anyway. Let's just go and hide somewhere, Mikie, till everything
blows over."
"It isn't as simple as that any
more," Mike said.
"Why isn't it."
"Because Buckingham won't rest. He'll
come looking for us."
"So we've kept out of sight before? We're
good at it, remember?"
"Not that good," Mike mumbled, as
much to himself as to her. "Sooner or later someone will recognize me.
Maybe we'll be in a store somewhere where they've seen my picture on TV. Or
maybe it'll just be some freak acquaintance with enough connections back in the
drug community for word to filter out. The next thing we know Buckingham'll be
lying in wait, taking aim at us. We have to end this thing here and now. We
need to know why he is doing this and get him to stop, or kill him."
"And we can't set up another
meeting?"
"Sure, but you're father's boys'll be
there, too. They seem to have their thumb on the pulse of this thing and know
as much as we do, or Buckingham. Maybe Buckingham called them, I don't know.
Nothing would surprise me any more considering what he seems to know. Sometimes
I think he's inside my head, knowing what I'm going to do before I do it. He
knows how I'll react to a thing like he's studied me for years. But we need to
out fox them all. And if that means doing something as terrible as calling your
father, then we have to do it. Because it's the last thing Buckingham would
ever expect us to do. Now call, honey, and tell your father what I told you to
say."
She took up the phone again, eyeing Mike,
feeling the urge to kill him herself. Why did she ever take up with him? What
did she see that was so special? She saw only the hunted, frightened eyes now,
nothing like her visions of Jesse James, nothing like the story-book figures
her father's men hunted in olden days. She wasn't sure she even loved him any
more. He seemed too much like Daddy, telling her how to live her life. She
caught a glimpse from Lance, an expression mixing pain, lust and sympathy, as
if saying he understood a little of what she was going through, or wanted to.
Why didn't he tell Mike to lay off her then. But Mike was too much like Daddy
in that respect, too-- one couldn't argue with him once his mind was made up.
"All right," she said coldly.
"Put the money in already." And as Mike dropped the coins in the
slot, she rehearsed her speech:
Meet me in Griffiths Park, Daddy...
***********
"I'm
sorry," the nurse said, eyeing them across the visitor's desk with all the
sympathy of a potted plant. "Admission's restricted. Close relatives
only."
"But I am close, damn it," Dan
protested. "I'm his brother sort of."
"Sort of doesn't hold any weight here,
young man," the woman said, her cold gaze moving up and down Dan in a
swift and critical assessment. "You must be a blood relation to get in.
Doctor's orders."
"Let me handle this, Dan," Bobo
said, wedging himself between the red-faced Dan and the unmovable nurse.
"Ma'am, you don't understand how important this is to my friend here. Of
course, he's not related by blood. The poor man inside doesn't have a soul to
call his own, raised from childhood by this man's parents-- like a brother, if
not so in fact. And we just got word of this tragedy and came to give him some
comfort before the end."
The nurse glared at Bobo. "And I suppose
you're his brother, too?"
"No, just a dear friend..."
Dan caught a shift in her gaze, a slight rise
to view something behind them, her head nodding ever so subtly as if some kind
of signal.
"Bobo," he whispered. "Let's
just...."
"All right, you two," a hard voice
said as the point of something cold touched his neck. "Why don't you lift
your hands up real slow. That's it."
Cops! And more than a few by the feel of it.
Hands patted him down and turned him. Pistols and shotguns filled the lobby
with a sea of metal. Grim-faced men shoving Bobo against the counter in a
repeat from the Selma.
"Now just come along real quiet,"
the closest cop said. "And neither one of you'll need a doctor."
They slapped cuffs on and dragged them down
the hall, his legs unable to stand the pace of their march. Dan got pushed into
a small, bright office where Demetre's splotched face greeted him with
something of a smile.
"Sit them down there," the super-narc
said, motioning towards two wooden chairs. Dan landed on his hands and
complained, but the uniformed cop growled for him to behave.
"I can take it from here," Demetre
said, motioning them away, staring down at Dan and Bobo. "We do meet in
the strangest places," he said, sitting back, putting his feet on the desk
and his hands behind his head.
"I thought we had a deal," Bobo
complained.
"Did we?"
"You know damned well we did!" Dan
shouted.
"Ah, you mean that thing back at the
Selma Hotel. I seem to recall some bit of trivia there."
"Then why are you hassling us?" Bobo
demanded.
Demetre let his feet slide off the desk, then
stood, his face twisting into a mask of rage. "Because I'm sick of
following a trail of blood!" he shouted. "A trail which you two seem
to have some intimate connection."
"What exactly are you talking
about?" Bobo asked, glancing with a confused look at Dan.
"This, damn it!" Demetre said,
grabbing up a file folder. He removed several 8x10 black & white photos and
slapped each onto the desk. The first few showed the East L.A., apartment and
its devastation. The last showed the dead lover's embrace. "I've got
witnesses putting you two at the scene."
"After the fact," Bobo argued.
"They were already dead when we got there."
Demetre eyed Bobo, squinting with disbelief.
"Oh? Your lover in bed with another man and you expect me to believe you
didn't kill them?"
"That's right."
"And then you go onto the Free Press
office just out of coincidence?"
"No, not exactly."
"Which means what?"
"We were looking for Mike."
Demetre's expression changed, the anger
melting from his face. His gaze shifted startled from Dan to Bobo and back.
"You mean to tell me you don't know where he is?"
"Not exactly," Bobo said.
Demetre sat down heavily into his chair.
Something had gone out in his eyes.
"We really didn't kill any body,"
Dan said.
"I know," Demetre said flatly,
staring at the desk top, but not exactly at the photographs. "They were
dead for hours before we followed you there."
"Followed us?" Bobo said
indignantly. "You mean to tell me...?"
"What the hell do you think?"
Demetre asked sharply, but still with a vague sense of not being with them.
"I'm going to let two suspects wander around the city without my keeping
an eye on them. I know a much about your activities as you do-- except this bit
about Mike. That's bad. Real bad."
"Why?" Dan asked. "Did
something happen?"
Demetre looked up, but he seemed not to hear
Dan. "All right," he said softly. "No more bullshit. I want the
story from beginning to end. Everything. You leave out a detail and I'll break
you."
"We don't know much," Bobo said.
"But you know where Mike'll be tonight
for this meeting-- and it's not in Griffith's Park."
Bobo's mouth clamped shut.
"Damn it, you two!" Demetre yelled.
"This is important. You're not going to save Mike's life by keeping
silent. Buckingham is going to kill Mike that meeting unless someone's there to
stop him."
"Maybe Mike'll kill Buckingham," Dan
said.
"Maybe," Demetre said. "Which
would be just as bad. I want Buckingham, too. But the right way."
Bobo shook his head, his eyes glowing darkly.
"No."
"Fine!" Demetre snapped. "Then
you'll both rot in a Goddamn jail cell."
The cop clamored up and around the desk, as if
to call someone in. But Dan spoke up.
"A deal," he said, stopping the cop
at the door.
"No, Dan," Bobo howled. "I
don't want that son of a bitch busted. He's mine!"
"He won't be anybody's if we're in
jail."
"What kind of deal?" Demetre
demanded.
"I'll tell you where the meeting is if
you let us see Free Press Bob."
Demetre stared. "What good'll that do
you?"
"Maybe none," Dan admitted.
"But he's a friend and we wouldn't be here if he didn't matter."
"All right," Demetre said. "You
got your deal. Now where and when?"
"First these?" Dan said, holding up
his cuffed hands. "And the visit. Then, we'll tell you everything."
"By then the meeting'll be over,"
Demetre growled.
Dan shook his head. "There's plenty of
time. Mike set it up for midnight."
***********
He looked as if he should have been dead.
Someone had shaved his beard to fit the accumulation of tubes and other
devices. His mouth seemed stretched and his face pale. His eyes were closed
when they came in, and his breathing regulated by the machine beside the bed.
Dan felt the pang hit him as the smell swarmed
over him. The chemical scent of death that had followed him from New York.
Clean up your act, boy, the doctors had
said. Or you're going to die.
The twinge of pain came and went from his
chest. He felt as if he should have been using the machines instead of Free
Press Bob. The smell as prevalent as Nazi gas or Vietnam napalm.
Anger swelled in him. He couldn't connect
salvation with the chemical scent. Pure capitalism. Like war merchants selling
arms to both sides of a conflict, or prescription drug companies in Denver
selling speed and acid to the street. Life, death, morality beside the point.
Profit was everything. Just like on Wall Street.
"Bob?" he whispered.
The eye lids fluttered open, the man inside
the eyes looked trapped. A frightened animal locked in a cage of flesh,
squirming to be set free. But which dial did that, Dan wondered, as he gaze
swept across the machinery? It was an expression Dan had seen hundreds of times
down on the street, in the eyes of junkies just suddenly realizing an on-coming
overdose, or on the faces of prostitutes arm-in-arm with men who would do them
in. The look of a helpless soul adrift in a sea of madness. Small and
insignificant in the scheme of reality.
"It's me, Bob," Dan whispered again.
The look altered subtly as the eyes shifted
towards him. The head moved, but only a fraction of an inch in Dan's direction.
The face within the prison of tubes almost smiled.
"Hello, Dan," the hoarse voice said,
choking out the words from around the tubes. "Good to see you."
"It's good to see you, too," Dan
said-- though not like this. Want a joint, Pal? Want to fuck a
hippie chick? "How do you feel?"
Free Press Bob gestured with his shoulders. It
might have been a shrug.
"I know this is rude of me to ask,"
Dan went on, glancing over his shoulder towards the door, where Demetre and
Bobo waited just outside. Privacy part of the deal. Maybe the room was bugged.
And then all this was for naught. But the odds seemed against it. What would
the cops listen to? The man's gurgling tubes?
"I've got to know who did this to you,
Bob," Dan said, pressing the man's cold fingers, feeling death creeping up
from them like an inevitable shade. "Did you see him?"
The man in the bed made a definite shake of
his head. "Shot in the back," he gurgled. "I think he was in a
hurry."
"Why?"
Again came the shrug. "I was in the
way," Free Press Bob said. "I think he was cleaning house."
"Cleaning house?"
"...got the feeling everything... almost
over."
Yeah, it would be with the meeting set for
tonight. Almost over. And yet why mess with Free Press Bob unless the man knew
something? Unless each victim had had some connection with Buckingham in some
way.
But what? How could Free Press Bob connect
other than as a messenger service, or street lawyer, housing director...
Perhaps he was simply too powerful an opponent to leave untouched, as if
Buckingham was a chess master looking ten moves ahead for potential trouble.
Cleaning house?
He had felt that much in Denver with the men
from the Drug company. A closing down.
Was Bobo's friend Jake an obstruction, too? A
dark angel whose good works somehow interfered with the master plan? Hadn't
there been some other more subtle way of getting the drugs from Selma without
mass murder. Or was Buckingham simply sweeping down anyone and everyone with
any kind of power?
A dark thought came into Dan's head.
To whose advantage would a sweep of street
people be? And who seemed to float in and out of the scene from its beginning,
haunting the trail from Denver, pressing in on drug company and local dealers
with the same iron hand, who might be pretending to hunt himself in the name of
law and order?
There was a murder in Albuquerque with Demetre
there. And in Phoenix. And L.A. And that package of dope had somehow managed
its way onto the Van after the search.
It wouldn't have been the first time a cop had
given in to such temptations, seeing himself as the new lord of supply and
demand. He could play both sides with the drug companies, too, taking the drugs
as Buckingham, while using his alter-ego as cop to keep pressure on. And with
his abilities and the whole Federal Government as an information source, who
could stop him? Demetre could easily be the king of the west.
"Look, Bob," Dan whispered. "I
got to go now. You rest and get better. It's almost over. When the dust has
settled I'll come bring you candy."
"A joint," Free Press Bob croaked.
"I'd rather have a joint."
"Okay," Dan said with a glance over
his shoulder. "I'll see what I can do."
"Hey, Dan..."
"What?" Dan asked, stopping on his
trek from the room.
"I had other visitors looking for
you."
"Oh?"
"Dark men in suits from the drug
company."
"Shit!" Dan hissed and hurried out.
***********
"You son of a bitch!" Bobo growled
as he slammed the passenger side door. "You spilled everything!"
"It was part of the deal," Dan said,
his voice strained and his hands trembling as they gripped the wheel. He felt
empty again, and scared. Hunted. And for the first time, he truly understood
the weariness that came with being pursued. It just went on and on without
point. And the real temptation was always one of giving into it, letting
whoever and whatever catch him.
He had felt the same way back east after the
doctors had pronounced his doom, after his wife had refused to go west with
him, after his whole life vanished in the smokey magic of prescriptions and
insurance forms.
You're dead, boy, the inner voice had
told me. Maybe not right now. But sooner or later.
Was death an empty feeling then? A sense of
being hollowed out from the inside?
He could run. But where? Back to Phoenix?
Lance had mumbled something about going North
to Frisco or Portland? Maybe he could find a niche among the loggers, and air
clean enough for his disease to vanish.
"Fuck the deal!" Bobo said. "I
want Buckingham." The man slammed his heavy fist down on the dashboard.
"How much more of him do you want?"
Dan asked, quietly.
Bobo, about to shout again, sputtered to a
stop, and cast a puzzled glance at Dan. "And what exactly is that supposed
to mean?"
"I think Demetre is Buckingham."
"What?"
"Think about it-- things fit."
"No they don't fit!" Bobo said.
"The biggest narc in the country isn't an independent dealer. That's
crazy."
"Maybe," Dan mumbled. "But I
don't think we should take any chances."
"Isn't it a little late to think of that?
You've just spilled your guts out to him."
"I didn't tell him anything he wouldn't
know already."
"If he's Buckingham, you mean. But
what if he isn't?"
"Then he and Buckingham can meet in the
park."
"And leave me nothing?"
"You're not thinking, Bobo. This isn't a
street game now, where you can play and leave. Let the big boys battle it out
among themselves. Let's just get the others and scoot, before any of them get
hurt."
"Some of them have already gotten
hurt!" Bobo snapped. "Like Free Press Bob. And Billy Night Rider. And
my old lady. And Jake. How many more of us are going to get hurt before the
idea catches on in your head that we've got to stop this son of a bitch and not
leave it to the cops."
"You're the one who's missing the point.
Since we came out of Denver, we've left nothing but a trail of death behind us.
Everyone we touch or care for winds up eating bullets. I'm tired of it, tired
of your dreams and my illness. I'm even
sick of long hair and hippie life."
"So what the hell did you have in
mind?"
"Just find the others and get all of us out
of the line of fire. Afterwards, we can make plans."
Bobo stared outside. People came and went from
the hospital, some obviously employees, others the crumbling masses of a city
that never really changed, that lived on being born and dying in more ordinary
ways despite the fury of a few.
"All right," Bobo said after a time.
"Where do we look?"
Dan looked up at the sky through the tinted
glass. "It's getting late," he said, noting the slanting sunlight
coloring the brick side of the hospital in afternoon light. "If I was Mike
I'd be setting up some sort of trap in the park."