"Hullo, Evelyn," Spencer said to her. "My friend and I were wondering if you'd care to join us for lunch."
She looked up, startled, and then spoke with a casualness that Thomas felt was not genuine. "Spencer! I didn't expect you. Lunch?" She glanced at the wall clock. "Okay. Doris, I'm clocking out. Cover for me for ten minutes, will you?"
Evelyn stood up and took Spencer's arm, and the three of them left the building by a side stairway. They walked quickly down Pico away from the police station.
"I was afraid you were killed, Spencer," Evelyn whispered breathlessly. "Forty armed police were sent out to put down a riot in Pershing Square. Were you there? They just returned a little while ago, and they said they had to open fire on the crowd."
"That's what they did, all right," Spencer said. "Yeah, we were there. This is my friend Thomas, by the way. Thomas, Evelyn." They nodded to each other. "There's a few things I want to find out about all this. Let's stop somewhere. Are there any restaurants open?"
"I hear Pennick's is," Evelyn said.
"Pennick's it is, then."
Pennick's was a cafeteria a few blocks away; Thomas spent ten of his 11 solis on a roast beef sandwich and a cup of watery beer. Evelyn and Spencer bought the same, and the three took a table in the back corner.
"So what happened?" Evelyn asked as soon as Spencer had taken a sip of beer.
"We were in a good position in line," Spencer said, "but it was a spooky line. The people behind tried to take our places. It began to look like we'd have to risk losing teeth to keep our positions, and we didn't really want ration numbers anyway, so we ducked out just as the fight started. Then all these cops arrived and just started pouring bullets into the square."
"They claimed they gave everyone a chance to leave peaceably," Evelyn told him.
"I didn't hear anything like that," Spencer said. "In fact, we saw them shoot down a lot of people who were trying to give themselves up." He had another pull at the beer. "The thing that worries me is this: the police showed up—what would you say?—about ten seconds after the first rock was thrown, and they started shooting no later than five seconds after that. They were trotting up Olive, with their rifles at the ready, while everything was still more or less peaceful."
"Yeah?" said Evelyn slowly.
"Yeah. I think they were going to shoot up the crowd in any case. The fact that a fight happened to be going on just gave them a better excuse than any they might have planned on."
"What would they want to do that for?" Evelyn asked skeptically. "That sounds paranoid to me."
"I don't know why they would," Spencer said, "but that's how it looked."
Thomas nodded. "I'd have to agree," he said. "It looked like that's what they'd planned to do from the start."
"Whew," Evelyn exhaled, reaching for her glass. "Well, to answer your soon-to-be-asked question: no—I haven't heard or seen anything that'd support your suspicion. Maybe their padmus all shorted out at once, and they've all gone crazy; the other big news today was—"
"Padmus?" Thomas interrupted.
"Priority and decision-making units," Spencer explained. "What was the other news?" he asked Evelyn.
"Oh, some monk who ran off from the Merignac monastery. There are more murders and robberies and arson going on lately than we can even file, and what are they wasting all their time on? Chasing a monk."
Thomas drained his beer in one gulp and wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.
"That is odd," Spencer agreed. "Why are they so hot to get him?"
"I don't know. I just know they're all looking for him. His name's Thomas, as I recall, and they're looking for him around MacArthur Park. Somebody thinks he saw him there."
"Maybe they are all going crazy," Spencer said. "Be careful at the damn station house." He stood up, wrapping his sandwich in a napkin and sliding it into his coat pocket. "We gotta go, Ev. I'll see you tonight." He leaned over and kissed her.
"Okay," she said. She waved at Thomas. "I'm sorry. What was your name again?"
"Rufus Pennick," he blurted automatically.
"Huh! Any relation to this place?"
That's where I got the name from, Thomas realized with some panic. "Uh, yes," he said quickly. "My great-uncle used to own it, I believe. I don't know whether he still does or not. Haven't kept in touch."
"I know how it is," Evelyn nodded. "I haven't seen my family in two years. Good meeting you. Later, Spence."
The two young men stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. Thomas was about to speak, and then noticed that Spencer was shaking with suppressed laughter.
"What in hell is so funny?" he demanded testily.
Spencer coughed and straightened his face. "Nothin', Rufe," he drawled.
"Yeah? Well I'd like to see what you could come up with on the spur of the moment."
"Ladies and gentlemen, Rufus Pennick—of the restaurant-baron Pennicks, you know," said Spencer in a ridiculous British accent.
"Will you stop? The L.A. police are devoting their lives to catching me, and you're kidding around."
Spencer sobered. "You're right. What have you done, anyway? They wouldn't go to this much trouble for a… cannibalistic child molester who spent his weekends blowing up old ladies with a shotgun."
"I don't know. I told you I was sky-fishing. And I punched Brother Olaus—maybe he died? I can't really picture that from just one sock in the belly, though. And I ran out of a restaurant yesterday morning without paying for breakfast… oh, and I threw a poodle through a window." He grinned. "Those are are my sins, father."
"Go to hell, my son. This doesn't figure, though. None of that stuff would be enough to get 'em really interested, even if old Brother Olaf did die. Especially these days, with Pelias in a coma and riots in the streets." He scratched his jaw. "I wonder what it is they think you've done."
The Bellamy Theater, seen by daylight, was a good deal larger than Thomas had imagined the night before. Its broad entrance, crowded now with gawking people, took up nearly a third of the 200 block of Second Street, and rose upward for three stories in a grand display of balconies, tile-roofed gables and rust-streaked concrete gargoyles.
Seeing the knot of people around the entrance, Spencer quickened his pace. "What now?" he muttered. The crowd parted for two purposeful-looking young men and a moment later Thomas saw, lying on the pavement, the body of the girl who had cleaned and bandaged his wound the night before.
She was obviously dead. The left half of her shirt was drenched in blood and her head lolled at an unnatural angle. Someone had straightened her limbs, but her eyes remained open and, Thomas thought, puzzled-looking.
"What happened?" Spencer asked sharply.
Gladhand rolled forward in a wheelchair. "She was in Pershing Square," he said, "when the police opened fire on the crowd. This gentleman"—he nodded toward a heavyset man in overalls—"brought her back here."
"She was alive when I found her," the man said humbly. "She told me to take her here. Only she died in the back of my cart."
"Who are all these people?" Spencer asked, waving at the rest of the crowd. They grinned in embarrassment and shuffled their feet.
"Spectators," Gladhand said.
Spencer shoved one of them in the arm. "Get out of here, you bastards," he spat.
"See here," began one. "You can't—"
"I can break your teeth, slug. Get out of here!" The indignant crowd began to break up. "Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!" he shouted at them.