But you don't have dementia yet, and you don't knock back enough booze to be hallucinating. You heard them, clear as day. Jeezus C., who are they?
Pershing walked around the apartment and flicked on some lights; he checked his watch and decided getting the hell out for a few hours might be the best remedy for his jangled nerves. He put on a suit — nothing fancy, just a habit he'd acquired from his uncle who'd worked as a professor — and felt hat and left. He managed to catch the last bus going downtown. The bus was an oven; empty except for himself, a pair of teens, and the driver. Even so, it reeked from the day's accumulation; a miasma of sweat and armpit stench.
The depot had attracted its customary throng of weary seniors and the younger working poor, and a smattering of fancifully coiffed, tattooed, and pierced students from Evergreen; the former headed home or to the late shift, the latter off to house parties, or bonfires along the inlet beaches. Then there were the human barnacles — a halfdozen toughs decked out in parkas and baggy sports warmup suits despite the crushing heat; the hard, edgy kind who watched everyone else, who appraised the herd. Olympia was by no means a big town, but it hosted more than its share of beatings and stabbings, especially in the northerly quarter inward from the marina and docks. One didn't hang around the old cannery district at night unless one wanted to get mugged.
Tonight none of the ruffians paid him any heed. From the depot he quickly walked through several blocks of semi-deserted industrial buildings and warehouses, made a right and continued past darkened sporting good stores, bookshops, and tattoo parlors until he hooked onto a narrow side lane and reached the subtly lighted wooden shingle of the Manticore Lounge. The Manticore was a hole in the wall that catered to a slightly more reserved set of clientele than was typical of the nightclubs and sports bars on the main thoroughfares. Inside was an oasis of coolness, scents of lemon and beer.
Weeknights were slow — two young couples occupied tables near the darkened dais that served as a stage for the four-piece bands that played on weekends; two beefy gentlemen in tailored suits sat at the bar. Lobbyists in town to siege the legislature; one could tell by their Rolexes and how the soft lighting from the bar made their power haircuts glisten.
Mel Clayton and Elgin Bane waved him over to their window booth. Mel, an engineering consultant who favored blue buttonup shirts, heavy on the starch, and Elgin, a social worker who dressed in black turtlenecks and wore Buddy Holly — style glasses and sometimes lied to women at parties by pretending to be a beat poet; he even stashed a ratty pack of cloves in his pocket for such occasions. He quoted Kerouac and Ginsberg chapter and verse regardless how many rounds of Johnny Walker he'd put away. Pershing figured his friend's jaded posturing, his affected cynicism, was influenced by the depressing nature of his job: he dealt with emotional basket cases, battered wives, and abused children sixty to seventy hours a week. What did they say? At the heart of every cynic lurked an idealist. That fit Elgin quite neatly.
Elgin owned a house in Yelm, and Mel lived on the second floor of the Broadsword — they and Pershing and three or four other guys from the neighborhood got together for drinks at the Manticore or The Red Room at least once a month; more frequently now as the others slipped closer to retirement and their kids grad uated college. Truth be told, he was much closer to these two than he was to his younger brother Carl, who lived in Denver and whom he hadn't spoken with in several months.
Every autumn, the three of them, sometimes with their significant others, drove up into the Black Hills outside Olympia to a hunting cabin Elgin's grandfather owned. None of them hunted; they enjoyed lounging on the rustic porch, roasting marshmallows, and sipping hot rum around the campfire. Pershing enjoyed these excursions — no one ever wanted to go hiking or wander far from the cabin, and thus his suppressed dread of wilderness perils remained quiescent, except for the occasional stab of nervousness when the coyotes barked, or the wind crashed in the trees, or his unease at how perfectly dark the woods became at night.
Mel bought him a whiskey sour — Mel invariably insisted on covering the tab. It's you boys or my ex-wife, so drink up! Pershing had never met the infamous Nancy Clayton; she was the inimitable force behind Mel's unceremonious arrival at the Broadsword fifteen years back, although judging from his flirtatious behavior with the ladies, his ouster was doubtless warranted. Nancy lived in Seattle with her new husband in the Lake Washington townhouse Mel toiled through many a late night and weekend to secure. He'd done better with Regina, his second wife. Regina owned a bakery in Tumwater and she routinely made cookies for Pershing and company. A kindly woman and largehearted; she'd immediately adopted Mel's cast of misfit friends and associates.
After the trio had chatted for a few minutes, griping about the «damnable» weather, mainly, Elgin said, "What's eating you? You haven't touched your drink."
Pershing winced at eating. He hesitated, then chided himself. What sense to play coy? Obviously he wished to talk about what happened. Why else had he come scuttling in from the dark, tail between his legs? "I. heard something at home earlier tonight. People whispering in the vent. Weird, I know. But it really scared me. The stuff they said.»
Mel and Elgin exchanged glances. Elgin said, "Like what?"
Pershing told them. Then he briefly described what Wanda said about the mystery girl. "The other thing that bothers me is. this isn't the first time. The last couple of weeks I've been hearing stuff. Whispers. I wrote those off. Now, I'm not so sure."
Mel stared into his glass. Elgin frowned and set his palm against his chin in apparently unconscious imitation of The Thinker. He said, "Hmm. That's bizarre. Kinda screwed up, in fact. It almost makes me wonderd —»
" — if your place is bugged," Mel said.
"Bugged?"
"This from the man with a lifetime subscription to the Fortean Times," Elgin said. "Damn, but sometimes I think you and Freeman would make a great couple." Randy Freeman being an old school radical who'd done too much Purple Haze in the '60s and dialed into the diatribes of a few too many Che Guevara — loving hippie chicks for his own good. He was another of The Red Room set.
Mel took Elgin's needling in stride. "Hey, I'm dead serious. Two and two, baby. I'll lay odds somebody miked Percy's apartment."
"For the love of — " Elgin waved him off, settling into his mode of dismissive impatience. "Who on God's green earth would do something crazy like that? No-freaking-body, that's who."
"It is a bit farfetched," Pershing said. "On the other hand, if you'd heard this crap. I dunno."
"Oh, hell." Elgin took a sip of his drink, patently incredulous.
"Jeez, guys — I'm not saying Homeland Security wired it for sound. maybe another tenant is playing games. People do wacko things."
"No forced entry." Pershing pointed at Mel. "And don't even say it might be Wanda. I'll have to slug you."