He had to literally push his way through a mound of garbage bags to get near the back stoop.
The rear door was standing open a crack — no need to lock it behind that malodorous barricade — and in a moment Robideau found himself at the back of Bulwer’s industrial-sized kitchen. A fluorescent panel buzzed over the stove, revealing the obstacle course that surrounded him. Stuff was piled to the rafters in tall, unstable heaps. It looked as if it might collapse on him at the next shivering boom of thunder.
“I know you’re a pack rat, Bulwer,” Robideau breathed, “but oh, my dear maiden aunt!”
Chuck was right. Call in Metro Gariuk’s backhoes.
The thunder and lightning now was almost continuous. Shadows marched and leaped on the walls. Everywhere were the ubiquitous garbage bags and newspapers, stack upon tottering stack of them. He saw a wall of biscuit tins with jolly labels: MCGARRIGALS FOR A TASTY TREAT! YOu’lL LOVE BECk’s CREAMY CENTERS! MIGHTY FINE MUNCHING — HARVEYS! He thought about the little creeping things — Pete’s squirmin’ vermin — moving in all this rubbish, and revulsion traced a cold finger from the nape of his neck all the way down to his tailbone.
There was a passageway through the confusion, circumnavigating a central island. He followed it to the door of the dining room. Beyond the wide French doors, a dark-framed dining table was all but invisible under the junk.
A blinding lightning flash pierced the room, followed hard by a crash of thunder. The strike lit up the room like a flashbulb and made Robideau jump.
He licked his lips and went into the sitting room.
Here again were paths carved through the rubbish. The stink of mildew and cat litter was nauseating. Every few seconds a crack of thunder or flash of lightning struck at his nerves. Bulwer’s chair loomed before him. Empty. Where was the old guy?
He squeezed past it and stepped into the den.
The storm was raging now, going hammer and tongs. It rippled behind the stained glass windows, shedding an intermittent and sulphurous glow on things. Lengths of pipe, a snakelike garden hose, a dozen dry and empty pet shop fish tanks. Stacks upon stacks of old film canisters, so many of them they took up most of one wall. An electric heater. A large fan-back chair.
And...
He caught only an ephemeral glimpse of something. In a flicker of lightning, a shadow closed on his, and something struck him on the back of the head.
When Robideau opened his eyes he found Bulwer Onager looming over him. A floor lamp lit the big man’s face. “I’m very sorry about that, Chief Robideau,” he said, “but you were sneaking around in my house like a thief.”
Robideau’s head felt as if someone was drilling into it with a brace and bit. He realized that he was back in the living room, half sprawled on the floor, his shoulders propped against a yellowing stack of newspapers. He must have been dragged here. He was still groggy.
“The back door was... was open, so—”
“I leave it open sometimes. For the cats.”
“I came here... looking for Oddlot. I thought he might be... hiding here.” Robideau sat up a little straighter, and the room dipped and swayed. He pressed a hand to the back of his head. He saw Bulwer more clearly now, sitting in his raggedy chair, balancing a cricket bat across his knees. He still had his WIMPY shirt on. Haltingly, Robideau explained about the backpack and the missing girl.
“Oddlot isn’t here,” Bulwer said. “He must be up at the theater.”
“I just came from there. The place was closed.”
“Closed to the public, yes. Not to Oddlot and me. We’re different.”
“If Oddlot knows anything about that girl, he needs to speak up,” Robideau said, thinking, Yes, you most certainly are different. We can write that down and have it notarized.
The old man sniffed. He had other thoughts on his mind. “They want to tear the Palace down, you know.” He seemed not to remember Robideau’s appeal to him. “They’ll probably open a video store there. I could never agree to that.”
Robideau began to rise. Bulwer lifted the bat, shook his head, and the chief sank back down again. What was the old man playing at? And then he remembered that in the other room, he had seen... Just what had he seen?
“You could reopen your place.”
“That’s not possible. No money, you see. No credit.”
“You could find investors, Bulwer. Modernize. Divide the place up into one of those multiplexes.”
“Pooh. Those aren’t theaters. They’re just screening rooms with the sound turned up too loud.”
Robideau thought hard. He had to keep the old man talking.
“I used to love going to the Palace, you know.”
Bulwer nodded. His troubled face was suddenly in silhouette as a stab of lightning leaped in the room.
“That’s nice. We had some good years there. But then TV came along and changed all that. We couldn’t afford the new gimmicks: Cinerama, wide-screen, 3-D with those silly eyeglasses. When I showed The Tingler they wanted me to rig buzzers under the seats to give people an extra scare. And then color TV came along. Bigger screens. Vee-cee-ars.” He said it as if the word tasted bad. “And now there’s digital television, did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“TV screens as thin as your hand and two or three meters across. Sound systems. Not speakers. Sound systems. Even the multiplex theaters are going to go under. Just wait and see if I’m not right.”
Bulwer’s eyes slowly lowered to look at him.
“Have you got a TV in your house, Chief Robideau?”
Robideau hesitated. He didn’t want to provoke the old man. “Well, yes. Everybody does these days.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, you’re wise. They’re a darn waste of time.”
“That’s right. That’s just what they are. The old movie houses, they were different. They got you out of the house. Brought you downtown. They were an experience.” Bulwer’s eyes glistened. “On a Saturday night the street was alive out front of the Palace. The marquee was so bright it took your breath away. Go there now, you’d think you were in a ghost town. TV is nothing but a curse.”
“No argument here,” Robideau said.
“In the Forties, movie attendance was ninety million a week. By the end of the Fifties, forty million. Today, twenty or thirty. See where it’s going?”
“Listen,” Robideau said, “you better let me up, okay? We’ll go somewhere and have a coffee, sit down and talk this out.”
“I have to leave soon,” the old man said. “I’m missing the show.”
“The show?”
“Yes. Oddlot’s getting it ready. Mother’s favorite film, you know.”
“What film is that?”
“They don’t make films of that caliber anymore. All blood and gore these days. And special effects. It’s like being at a circus.”
“What film?”
“A Hitchcock film. He knew how to make movies!”
“Which one?”
Bulwer gazed down at him. Robideau felt like a human sacrifice at the feet of an unbalanced god. “Did you like the old Hitchcock films, Chief Robideau?”
“Sure.”
“We had people lining up at the doors when we showed that film.”
“Which one are you talking about?”
“Anthony Perkins should have won an Oscar. I, for one, think he was robbed.”
Bulwer’s chair creaked under his weight. He closed his eyes. His hands relaxed on the cricket bat, big hands, powerful hands, liver spotted and puffy, but strong and capable hands.