People below began to see small newspaper clippings floating down to the midway at Navy Pier. People in the cars below him caught a few of the clippings in their cars, and they heard his swearing, although they could not see him. One man yelled up at him, “Shut your dirty mouth! I have little kids down here!”
Giles finally pried loose the restraining bar but his foot kicked the box as if guided there by Mother, and the entire box, along with the Spigot, slid incrementally along the floorboard of the car. Giles went to his knees for the box, but the foot area refused to accommodate his size. As a result, his bulk shook the gondola badly. The operator had begun cursing sailor fashion at Giles to remain seated and to calm himself. People on the ground feared a suicide attempt in the making.
Then he realized the note written by Mother to him overlaying the pictures and the clippings that told of the history of Mad Matthew Matisak was gone. He knew it had not been swept out of the gondola, but he could not see it anywhere with the paperwork.
He finally got a firm hold of the box and the Spigot and returned to his seat, clutching both in his lap, rifling through the dense pile for any sign of Mother's departing note to him. It had simply vanished. But he had not seen it go out over the side.
“The bum in the park. That old bastard… like some kind of prophet. It had to be him.”
The wheel lurched forward and down, stopping at each gondola now as the operator began pulling people off as quickly as possible. Those pulled off began to form a small crowd at the base of the Ferris wheel, some angry, most confused, all of them looking up to where Giles sat waiting his turn to be removed from the wheel.
“Lovely up here, isn't it, Mother? Just beautiful. Wonder what it would be like to end it all right here. To take the one-hundred-fifty-foot leap. You, me, Father here. What a spectacular splash we'd make. Surely, it will make my artwork go through the roof at Cafe Avanti, if they sell it before the cops can confiscate it.”
He stood in the gondola, rocking it as he prepared to jump. But a dizziness from having had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours and the height conspired against any resolve he may have had. He plopped back onto the seat and, in a fit of rage at having lost his resolve to end this misery called life, began filling his hands with words of Father and tossing all the photos, clippings, sketches, court documents, paperback books and magazine articles and bubble-gum cards devoted to Matthew Matisak out over the side of his sinking ship.
The papers floated down the length and breadth of the Ferris wheel like confetti now, growing larger as they meandered down and down. The first snowflake-like sheets and half sheets were now within grasp of the adults standing guard about their children below. In a moment, the midway floor around the wheel was littered with the debris of the box.
Save for the Spigot, the box sat empty now, and it lay sad beside Giles as the operator pulled him roughly out of the gondola, angry and snatching at his clothes, whipping him to the ground and throwing the box at him, shouting, “And don't fucking ever come back!”
The curious who could read stood about looking at the clippings and pictures they'd gathered up, and they stared from the newspaper stories and other stuff to Giles. He felt no pity or concern from this crowd, only confusion and fear and perhaps, if they guessed the truth, loathing.
Giles handed the ornate box with its now rattling contents to a small smiling boy standing closest to him, his mother's arms draped about him in protective stance.
“What's your name?” he asked the boy.
Perhaps five or six, the handsome, happy little boy proudly shouted, “Kevin!”
“Go ahead. You like the box? You keep it.”
Little big-eyed Kevin looked up to his mother on high, craning his neck, for the OK. She nodded her approval.
“Put your frogs and your play toys in it for me, Kevin. All the things that make you happy.”
“I will… I will.”
Giles got to his feet and shambled off, muttering, “The box'll like that, having a new owner with new stuff.”
Giles heard the sound of sirens. Someone had called the cops.
He must get away. Must blend into the crowd and rush, get some rest, try to clear his head now that he had divested himself, finally, of Father. What to do next? Where to go? What of his showing at the cafe? All seemed lost and confused now. But after a good night's rest… perhaps he could think clearly enough to find a way out, one that didn't involve a Ferris wheel and a failed attempt at leaping off it.
“Maybe I can find the nerve to use this,” he said aloud to himself, fingering the.22-caliber gun he'd purchased earlier on the street. “A shoot-out with the cops. They're bound to kill me. They gotta fire on a man who opens up on a crowd like this.”
He saw a small army of uniforms coming at him, and a number of plainclothes detectives as well. A door marked GARAGE opened on the enormous parking facility at Navy Pier. Giles weaved in and out of the aisles as police rushed the Ferris wheel, responding to a call about some nutcase dropping newspaper clippings from atop the wheel, all of which related to Mad Matthew Matisak.
Giles held firm to the gun in his pocket, at the ready if he had a moment's opportunity to take advantage of the cops, to use them one final time. To go out under his own terms. But he waltzed from the garage unimpeded and down the darkened little street running alongside the inlet to the Chicago River where boats sat silent, some idling, waiting to board passengers.
He grabbed on to a rope and climbed aboard one of the many cruise boats plying up and down the water, asking if he might exit at Irving Park.
“Absolutely,” said the captain's mate who welcomed him aboard. “What sort of ruckus is going on at the midway?”
“Not sure… some damn fool caused a big disturbance at the Ferris wheel, I think.”
Giles found a seat on the boat and stared across the water. A waitress came to his table and asked what he'd like to drink.
“Spinal fluid,” he said.
She laughed a giggling, tinkling, feminine laugh. She had a southern accent. “Ho-whoa, now you are a funnin' me ain't-cha now? I been waitressin' from Georgia to here for six years, but I never heard that one. Bartender's gonna hafta dig out his drink manual for a Spinal Tap. Is it some new kinda Chicago drink?”
“Yeah, tell your bartender to mix Johnnie Walker Red in equal parts with a tumbler of Absolut Vodka, J amp;B Scotch, gin, vermouth and three inches of white grape juice-and you got Spinal Fluid.”
“I better write that down!” she joked back.
The boat began to move away from the dock, the pull of the current wanting to take it opposite of its engines, but the engines revved and they were off to follow the coast of the lake first south toward the museums to see the magnificent multicolored Buckingham Fountain and the skyline of Chicago, for the photo-obsessed tourists, and then they would turn and do the shuttle run north.
The city lights twinkled as if alive in the distance. Beautiful beneath a warming breeze. How Lucinda would have loved this boat ride, Giles thought.
NINETEEN
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion,
through the dark cold and empty desolation.
Surveillance of Giles Gahran's rented apartment in
Chicago continued. Watching for any sign of him, Petersaul and Cates spent the time discussing and arguing their next step.