Reverend Leo Barnett's standing in the polls became very high, very respectable, almost immediately. Of course a few of the voters were a little concerned about what he was doing in the Edge in the first place, especially with regard to that hotel room he and the young mission worker had checked into, but it wasn't as if either one was married or anything. And there had been talk, which neither would confirm or deny, of an impending engagement announcement. Women in the Democratic party, as it turned out, were particularly impressed that the Reverend Leo Barnett might have found his true love and his political destiny on the same night. If true, then perhaps all that carnage hadn't been in vain.
If God doesn't judge America, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
– REVEREND LEO BARNETT presidential candidate
All the King's Horses
III
The junkyard sat hard by the oily green waters of New York Bay, way at the end of Hook Road. Tom got there early, undid the padlock, and swung open the gates in the high chain-link fence. He parked his Honda beside the sagging tin-roofed shack where Joey DiAngelis had once lived with his father, Dom, back in the days when the junkyard had been a going concern, and sat for a moment with his arms folded across the top of the steering wheel, remembering.
He'd spent endless Saturday afternoons inside that shack, back when it had still been habitable, reading old issues of Jetboy to Joey after they'd heisted their comic book collections back from a PTA bonfire.
Over there, back behind the shed, was where Joey used to work on his cars, long before he turned into Junkyard Joey DiAngelis, king of the demolition derby circuit.
And way in back where no one ever went, behind that mountain of rusted junkers, that was where he and Joey had welded armor plate over the frame of a VW Beetle to make the first shell. Later, much later, after Dom had died and Tom had bought the junkyard from Joey and shut it down, they'd dug the bunker under the junkyard, but they hadn't been that sophisticated at the start. A greasy tarp was about all the concealment they had.
Tom climbed out of the car and stood with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his shapeless old brown suede jacket, breathing the salt air off the bay. It was a chilly day. Out across the water a garbage barge passed slowly, flocks of seagulls circling around it like feathered flies. You could see the vague outline of the Statue of Liberty, but Manhattan had vanished in the morning haze.
Vanished or not, it was out there, and on a clear night you could see the lights shining off the towers. A hell of a view. In Hoboken and Jersey City run-down houses and cramped condos that offered views like this went for six figures. Constable Hook was zoned for industrial use, and Tom's land was surrounded by an import-export warehouse, a railroad siding, a sewage treatment plant, and an abandoned oil refinery, but Steve Bruder said that none of that mattered.
That big a chunk of land, right on the waterfront, it was just prime for development, Bruder had said when Tom told him he was thinking of selling the old junkyard. He should know; he'd already made himself a millionaire with real estate speculation in Hoboken and Weehawken, rehabilitating old tenements into expansive condos for yuppies from Manhattan. Bayonne was next, Steve said. In ten years all this rust-belt industry would be gone, replaced by new housing developments, but they could be first and make the biggest killing.
Tom had known Steve Bruder since childhood and cordially loathed him most of that time, but for once Bruder's words were music to his ears. When Bruder offered to buy the junkyard outright, the price made Tom's head spin, but he resisted the temptation. He'd thought this all out beforehand. "No," he said. "I'm not selling. I want to be a full partner in the development. I provide the land, you provide the money and know-how, we split the profits fifty-fifty."
Bruder had given him a shark's slow smile. "You're not as dumb as you look, Tudbury. Someone been coaching you, or is this all your own idea?"
"Maybe I've finally gotten smart," Tom said. "Now what is it, yes or no? Shit or get off the pot, asshole."
"It's not nice to call your partner an asshole, wimp," Bruder said, extending his hand. He had a very firm handshake, but Tom was careful not to wince.
Tom looked at his watch. Steve would be bringing the bankers by in about an hour. Just a formality, he said. The loan would be candy; the property screamed with potential. Once they had the line of credit, they could get the zoning changed. By spring they'd have the junk cleared out and the land subdivided into building lots.
Tom wasn't sure why he'd come so early… unless it was just to remember.
It was funny that so many of his important memories were rooted in this junkyard… but somehow appropriate, considering the way his life had gone.
But all of that was about to change. Forever. Thomas Tudbury was about to become a rich man.
Tom walked slowly around the shack, kicked at a threadbare tire in his path, then lifted it with his mind. He held it five feet off the ground, gave it a brisk telekinetic shove that set it spinning, and counted. At eight the tire began to wobble; at eleven it fell. Not bad. Back in his teens, before he'd crawled into a shell, he could have held that tire up all day… but that was when the power had been Tom's, before he'd given it away to the Turtle. Like he'd given so much else.
"Sell the junkyard?"Joey had said when Tom told him the plan. "You're serious about this, aren't you? That's one hell of a bridge to burn. What if they find the bunker?"
"They'll find a fucking hole in the ground. Maybe they'll worry about it for five, ten minutes. Then they'll push some dirt into it and it'll be over."
"What about the shells?"
"There are no shells," Tom said. "Just some junk that used to be shells. 'All the king's horses and all the king's men,' remember? I'll go out there one night and turn Turtle just long enough to drop them into the bay."
"Hell of a waste," Joey said. "Weren't you the one telling me how much money and sweat you put into those fucking things?" He took a long swig of beer and shook his head. Joey looked more like his father Dom every year. The same skinny arms, the same rock-hard beer-belly, the same salt-and-pepper hair. Tom remembered when it had been pure black, always falling down into his eyes. In those days before pull-tabs, Joey used to wear a church key around his neck on a leather thong, even when he'd donned a cheap frog mask and gone to Jokertown with the Turtle to help roust Dr. Tachyon from an alcoholic pout.
That was twenty-three years ago. Tachyon hadn't aged, but Joey had, and so had Tom. He'd grown old without growing up, but all that was changing now. The Turtle was dead, but Tom Tudbury's life had just begun.
He strolled away from the shoreline. Broken headlights stared at him like so many blind eyes from mountains of dead cars, and once he felt live eyes and turned to see a huge gray rat peering out of the damp, rotten interior of a legless Victorian sofa. In the depths of the junkyard he passed between two long rows of vintage refrigerators, all the doors carefully removed. On the far side was a flat, bare patch of earth where a square metal plate was set into the ground. It was heavy, Tom knew from past experience. He stared at the big ring set into the metal, concentrated, and on the third try managed to shift it enough to reveal the dark tunnel mouth below.
Tom sat on the edge of the hole and dropped down carefully into darkness. At the bottom he fumbled against the wall and found the flashlight he'd hung there, then walked down the cold, damp tunnel until he emerged in the bunker. The old shells waited for him in silence.