A black and yellow-checked taxi idled at the light half a block up. Hannah stepped out into the street to wave at him, but when the light turned green, the fare light went off and the taxi turned right and away.
"Hey! Damn it!" Hannah looked up and down the street. No other cabs in sight. The bus stop was a block and a half down and the streetlight was out next to it. Hannah started back to the sidewalk. Her head was spinning.
A car pulled around the corner. Hannah didn't know why she suddenly felt fear that dissolved the fumes of scotch in her head. Maybe it was the way the car hugged the curb as it turned, maybe the fact that all the windows of the Lincoln were tinted so dark as to be almost black or the slow way it approached. Hannah watched it, held for a moment like a deer in its headlights, then backed toward the curb. Tinted windows shushed down in the rear, and a head wearing an H. Ross Perot mask stared at her.
Hannah started to run for the entrance of the Dead Nicholas.
The Lincoln accelerated.
It was such a small sound. A cough. Something hot and fast slammed into Hannah and spun her around. She screamed at the pain, surprised to find herself sprawled face down on the sidewalk. Someone — she could only see the feet — came out from the Dead Nicholas and she heard the Lincoln squealing away around the next corner. Hannah tried to turn her head to follow the car, to see if she could see the license plate, but her head wouldn't turn and it seemed that the lights had gone out anyway. Even the entrance to the club was dim now and the pain and the wetness on her back seemed to be feelings experienced by someone else and there was yelling and a person was screaming but it all sounded distant …
… so distant …
***
The arms of the octopus coiled about her. Screaming, she ripped one of the sucker-laden arms away, tearing her flesh, but a tentacle still curled around her waist, another at her throat, yet another around her legs. The beast, an unseen, black presence just below the surface of the water, pulled her inexorably toward itself. Rising now above the waves, its great, lidless eyes glaring at her, the hooked beak of its maw clicked as it brought her nearer and nearer. She struggled, but it was useless. She could smell the creature now, and it smelled like the open door of a slaughterhouse. It smelled of open sewers and piss and corruption.
It smelled of death.
"Hannah? I'm sorry, Hannah."
She opened her eyes. Quasiman was standing in the far corner of the hospital room, away from the hospital bed, like a child sent to his corner. An IV drip burned in Hannah's arm and her chest and shoulder were swaddled in gauze underneath the thin gown. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she'd scraped her face on the concrete when she'd fallen. One eye seemed swollen shut. "It wasn't your fault," she said, her voice cracking. Hannah frowned. There were vague memories: of an ambulance, of serious faces hovering over her and someone saying something about an exit wound. "Who did it?"
Quasiman snorted. He lifted his powerful shoulders. "No one knows. No one cares. The police came, wrote down their reports and left." His fist pounded slowly against the walclass="underline" Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. "I had to have seen it before. I must have known. Why didn't I remember?"
"Quasiman." Thunk. He looked at her with bleak eyes. "Stop it. It's not your fault. No one blames you. You can't control when and where your mind goes." Without warning, then, the tears came, and the fright. Hannah shuddered, gasping for breath, then fought back her control. She forced herself to breath slowly, biting her lips. She sniffed, dabbing at her nose with a Kleenex from the box alongside her. "Ouch," she said, and gave a short laugh. Quasiman was watching her, her own anguish reflected in his gaze. "That's the second time someone's tried to kill me," she said. "Y'know, I don't really like the experience." She tried to smile at her joke and couldn't.
"You can give it up," Quasiman said. "I'd understand that."
"So would I."
The voice came from the doorway. Hannah turned her head. David was standing there, a bunch of carnations drooping from his hand. He seemed to remember the flowers at the same time. He held them up apologetically, then set them on the stand alongside the bed. "You look like hell," he said.
"You were always such a romantic, David." Hannah didn't know what to say or feel. The last time I saw you I was leaving. You were telling me how stupid I was. Not knowing how to reply, she retreated into polite nothings. "Thanks for the flowers."
"Uh-huh." He was dressed in the Italian-styled tailored suit he'd bought that summer, his expensive Hart amp; Dunlop overcoat on his arm. His hair was newly trimmed. "You going out, David?" Hannah asked.
"The Governor's in town. There's a party. Lots of high muck-a-mucks will be there: the Mayor, Judge Bradley, Brandon van Renssaeler of Douglas, Mannerly …" The familiar last name gave Hannah a physical shock, but David didn't notice. He wasn't even looking at her. David was only too happy to be talking about himself. "In fact, Brandon's responsible for inviting me. I've been handling some litigation for the firm. There's talk that maybe President Barnett will come up from Washington, and — "
"I'm so happy for you."
David stopped in mid-sentence. His mouth clamped shut and Hannah saw him slip into his lawyer face, the non-committal, oh-so-serious and oh-so-rational mask. "I see you've worked on your sarcasm since you've been gone."
"Hey — " Quasiman said, and David nodded toward the joker without looking away from Hannah, frowning.
"The nurses tell me the hunchback's been in here since you were brought in. They don't like it. Why don't you tell your friend to take a hike? You and I have things to talk about."
Any remaining illusions Hannah might have had dissolved with the words. "I won't tell him that because he is my friend," she told him.
"Hannah — " David began, but Quasiman cut in.
"It's okay, Hannah," he said. The joker shot David a glance that Hannah couldn't decipher. Some silent communication seemed to pass between the two men. "I'll be right outside," Quasiman added.
And the joker vanished, soundlessly. Hannah enjoyed the involuntary yelp that David, let out. "Goddamn freaks …" Then the lawyer mask slipped back into place. "Hannah, I won't beat around the proverbial bush with you. I've talked with Malcolm, and believe me it took a lot of talking, but because of the good publicity the Bureau's received after you solved the case, he's agreed to ignore your little scene with him. The job's still yours." He smiled. Like I'm a puppy being handed a bone: "Sit up, girl. Roll over, girl. Good girl." Looking at him, Hannah knew that David expected gratitude, that he expected her to thank him, maybe even to cry in relief. Disbelief at his arrogance drove away her pain and she sat up in the bed, ignoring the pulling of torn muscles in her shoulder.
"I didn't solve the case — it was handed to me practically tied up in a bow. I'm still working on the case."
"Hannah, the arsonist has been found. Please do yourself and everyone a favor and drop this paranoid joker fantasy of yours. There's no conspiracy. There's no hidden agenda. It was a psychotic's lone deed and it's over."