Another Creature had come in, with banging noises and shouting noises. It crossed in front of the bright square, it went into other darknesses and came back, it yelled and yelled, and then it leaned down to stare at the parrot, to stare at that left eye observing it, and yell and yell the same phrase over and over.
The parrot had never spoken. The parrot had never been in a social situation where it seemed the right thing to do was to speak. The main Creature who lived with him, in his cage outside the cage, almost never spoke. It had never occurred to the parrot to speak.
But now this Creature, some unknown foreign Creature, was yelling the same sounds over and over again, and it came to the parrot that he could make those sounds himself. It might be satisfying to make those sounds. He and the Creature could make those sounds together.
So he opened his beak, for the first time ever not to grip a bar, and the first thing he said was a rusty squawk, which was only natural. But then he got it: “Air izzi? Air izzi? Air izzi?”
The Creature reared back. It shrieked. It yelled many different things, too fast and too many and too jumbled for the parrot to assimilate. Then it jabbed the end of a metal rod into the cage, wanting to poke it against the parrot’s chest, but the parrot sidestepped it easily on his swinging bar, then clamped his left talon around the long metal rod.
The Creature had not finished yelling. The parrot joined it: “Air izzi? Air izzi?”
The parrot leaned his head down and swiveled it to the right. His left eye looked down the long round tunnel inside the metal rod. “Air izzi? Air izzi?”
The searing white flame came out so fast.
9
Trooper James Duckbundy was a health nut, which was why he liked to drive with the cruiser’s window open. Trooper Roger Ellis would have been just as happy with General Motors air, but Duckbundy was at the wheel this time out, so it was his call.
They were driving to Pooley from Barracks K because some old coot had reported mislaying his weapon, a handgun. Both troopers understood the citizens’ right to bear arms and all that, but both sincerely believed the world would be a safer place if idiots didn’t own guns. They could understand how a person at almost any age could mislay their car keys or watch, but to lose your piece? That was just the sort of individual, in their opinion, who shouldn’t be armed in the first place.
Of the sleepy little towns in the world, Pooley had to be one of the sleepiest. They drove in to few lights and no traffic, and Duckbundy parked in front of the address, a small house lit up like a Christmas tree, the only house in town that seemed to have every last light switched on, interior and exterior. Losing his handgun seemed to have made the householder nervous.
Because Duckbundy was a health nut, which meant his window was open, before he even switched off the engine they both heard the flat serious crack of a shot. Up ahead it came from, and on the other side of the road.
They looked at each other. “That was no handgun,” Ellis said.
“It wasn’t applause, either,” Duckbundy said, and put the cruiser back in gear.
There were no further shots as they eased slowly down the road, but there didn’t need to be. It is a crime to discharge a firearm within five hundred feet of a dwelling, and one time will do.
They both peered at the houses on the left, inching along, until Ellis said, “Movement back there.”
There was a boarded-up empty house at that point, with a driveway next to it and what looked like a garage in back. Duckbundy braked, swiveled the spotlight, and clicked it on. In the sudden glare, a man down there by the garage, with a rifle in his right hand, was just getting into a black Taurus. Something wet glistened on the barrel of the rifle as the man spun around, glaring into the light, clutching the rifle now with both hands.
Ellis had the microphone in his palm and carried it with him as he stepped out to the roadway. “Police,” roared the speaker on the cruiser’s roof. “Stop where you are. Lay the weapon down.”
He didn’t. He screamed something, gibberish, something, and then he did bring the rifle up.
Between them, the troopers fired eleven shots. Any three would have done the job.
10
What do you call a parrot? Does it have to start with “P”? Polly Parrot; Peaches Parrot. Penitentiary Parrot; not good. Greeny Parrot.
There was less traffic tonight, and fewer roadblocks. It seemed to Tom the authorities no longer believed they had the fugitives trapped; they were just going through the motions.
How was Ed going to get there, without a car and without an ally? Or had he somehow phoned someone, while Tom was away from the house, and arranged to meet with another professional like himself, another hard man, who would come with him to Gro-More to help in the robbery? And get what out of it?
Tom’s share, of course.
He could still pull over, at any open gas station, and call the state troopers to tell them where they could find one of the men they were looking for. Unless Ed had left the house almost immediately after Tom.
But it didn’t matter; he wasn’t going to stop. It was too late to change anything now, too late to decide to do something other than this.
Different cars appeared in his rearview mirror, and some passed him because, with all this fretful thinking inside his head, he couldn’t keep up to his normal speed, but poked along at probably ten miles an hour below his regular average. There was a gray Volkswagen Jetta in his mirror for miles, somebody else as poky as he was, but then he came to another of the rare roadblocks, and after that pause, the Jetta was gone, and for some miles his mirror was dark.
He next became aware of other traffic when a different car’s lights appeared well behind him, coming on fast. This one was pretty much a speed demon, who tailgated Tom a mile or so and then, at the next passing zone, roared on by him like a freight train. In Tom’s headlights, as it raced away, he could see it was a black Infiniti, a faster, more powerful car than his, soon out of sight up ahead.
Perry Parrot? Ed Parrot? Madonna Parrot? William G. Dodd Parrot?
What if he doesn’t show up? What if, after all this, I get there and I never see Ed Smith again? What if he’s gone from my life just as abruptly as he came into it?
There would be a relief in that, but Tom knew it wasn’t the right question. The question was, if Ed Smith disappeared, could Tom do it himself, come back with both duffel bags full, take the whole gate from the track on his own, double the secret inside the boarded-up house?
Tom didn’t believe it. If he got there, and waited half an hour and Ed never appeared, he knew damn well what he’d do. He’d turn tail. He was still the same gutless wonder he’d always been. He needed Ed Smith to give him a backbone. He hated that he needed the man, but he knew it was true. Even after all this, he wouldn’t be able to take the track’s money on his own.
Do I want him to show up? Do I want this thing to happen, or do I want an excuse just to go back to my crappy little house and vegetate in there forever? Which do I want, which do I really want?
Like the parrot’s name, he just didn’t know.
11
Suzanne woke to the patter of pebbles on her window. Annoyed, not wanting to be awake, she thought, Who would be pestering me at this hour? What time is it, anyway?
No, it’s not pebbles, it’s shooting! Guns, shooting.
Suzanne opened her eyes to utter madness. Instead of the silent dark of her own hushed peaceable room, she was seated upright in some harshly angular place of bands of hard glare that sliced down across full crowded banks of blackness. Light above, dark below, black on all sides—a window?