Sullivan looked down at Elizalde, who was still crouched over Kootie. “My father flew over to him,” he explained. “How is Kootie?”
“I think he’s waking up. You’ve got instant coffee in your van? Could you go get it?
“Sure.” She had carried in Houdini’s hands and laid them by the door, and he hefted one up as he stepped outside, but though the night breeze chilled him in his damp clothes he didn’t feel peril in it, here. He walked shivering across the lot to the van and lifted the parachute to get at the side doors with his key; in the total darkness inside, he groped like a blind man, finding the coffee jar and a spoon and a couple of cups by touch, with Houdini’s hand tucked under his arm.
Before he climbed down out of the van, he stood beside the bed and sniffed the stale air. He could smell cigarette smoke, and the faintly vanilla aroma of pulp paperback books, and the machine-oil smells of the .45 and the electrical equipment he had bought today. It occurred to him that it was unlikely that the van would ever be driven again, and he wondered how long this frail olfactory diary would last. On the way out he carefully pulled the doors closed before lifting the parachute curtain to step away from the van.
Kootie was awake and grumbling when Sullivan got back inside, and Bradshaw was sitting against the wall in the corner, muttering and laughing softly through pink tears. Sullivan pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, but didn’t go over to where Bradshaw and his father were talking, instead striding on to the kitchen. Elizalde stood up from beside Kootie to help Sullivan unpack the supplies.
They took turns washing their hands in the sink, then opened the pizza boxes. “Edison says he doesn’t want any,” Elizalde said as she lifted a hot slice of pepperoni-and-onion pizza onto a paper plate, “but I think he will when he sees it.”
Sullivan had measured a spoonful of powdered coffee into one of the cups, and now he turned to frown at the water he had left running in the sink. “I wonder if this is even connected to a hot pipe,” he said, putting a finger into the cold stream from the tap.
“You could always make it from the back of the toilet,” she said. “That’s plenty hot. And it’s what Edison deserves.”
“Kootie is still in there?” Sullivan asked quietly.
“Yes. It was him that first woke up. Edison’s planning to ‘go into the sea’ tomorrow, and I think it’s doing Kootie good to have him run things in the meantime, so Kootie can get a lot of sleep.”
“You’re the doctor.” The water was still running cold, so Sullivan put down the coffee cup, jacked a Coors out of one of the six-pack cartons, and popped the tab on top. “Do you figure you’ve laid Frank Rocha?” He stepped back before her sudden hot glare. “What I mean is, you know, is the ghost laid. Is he R.I.P. now? Can we just… buy some kind of old car and leave California?”
“You and me and Kootie?”
“Kootie? Is he part of the family?”
“Are we a family?” Her brown eyes were wide and serious.
Sullivan looked away, down at the pizza. He lifted another triangle of it onto a paper plate. “I meant partnership. Is he part of the partnership?”
“Is your father?”
“Jesus, is this what you psychiatrists do? Take the night off, will you?” He looked across the room just as Johanna stepped up to the front door. “Here, Johanna, you want a piece of pizza?”
“And a beer, please,” she said, walking in. Her blue eye shadow looked freshly applied, but her eyes were red, and she was wearing a yellow terry-cloth bathrobe.
Sullivan pushed the paper plate across the counter to her and opened her a beer. He didn’t want to talk to Elizalde; he was uncomfortable to realize that he had meant the double entendre about laying Frank Rocha, though he had acted surprised and innocent when she had glared at him. Was he jealous of her? He knew he was jealous of Bradshaw’s easy conversation over in the corner with his father, though he didn’t want to take Bradshaw’s place.
Then abruptly his ear tickled, and his father’s tiny voice said, “Nicky’s got to go to some other building here. Let’s you and me walk along. Your girl can talk to Nicky’s girl”
My girl, thought Sullivan. “That’s not how it is,” he said. He was sweating in spite of his clinging, wet clothes—for his father would want to talk seriously now—and he picked up the can of Coors.
“Your sister went on to drink a lot, didn’t she?”
Sullivan paused, with the beer halfway to his mouth. “Yes,” he said.
“I could tell. Do you know why I came back, out of the sea? There goes Nicky, follow him.”
Bradshaw was at the open doorway. “Nick,” said Sullivan, putting down the beer and stepping past Elizalde out of the kitchen area. “Wait up, I’ll—we’ll—walk you there. “
“Thank you, Pete,” said Bradshaw. “I’d like that.”
Bradshaw began clumping heavily across the dark lot toward the office, and Sullivan walked alongside, his hands in his pockets. “Nick,” he said. “What does. ‘L.A. cigar—too tragical’ mean?”
“Damn it,” said Bradshaw in his flat voice. “Did you burn up the car?” He stepped up to his office door and pushed it open.
“No, but I threw your cigarette lighter out onto Santa Monica Boulevard.” Sullivan followed him inside to the kitchen, where Bradshaw opened a cupboard to pry a finely painted china plate out of a dusty stack.
“It’s a…mercy thing,” said Bradshaw, not looking at him. “That some people do. It’s a hippodrome, where it reads the same forwards as backwards. I don’t know who started it, or even who else does it. But you write it around…(gasp)…ashtrays, and lighters, and chimneys. I’ve seen little shops on Rosecrans, where you. Can buy frying pans with it written. Around the edge.” He had opened a drawer and lifted out a handful of shiny pebbles. “The hippodrome words attract new ghosts. They hang around—trying to figure it out how the end can be the same as the beginning. And then when the fire comes. They get burned up.” He spread the pebbles on the china plate, and then carried it back out through the dark office and right outside to the parking lot.
“Beasties!” he called in a harsh whisper. “Din-din, beasties!” He put the plate down on the pavement. “It’s a mercy thing,” he said again. “They’re better off burned up and gone. If they hang around, they’re likely to get caught by people like Loretta deLarava. That’s Kelley Keith, Uncle Art, what she calls herself now. Caught, and digested, to fatten the parasite’s bloated, pirated personality. And if they don’t get caught by somebody…”
He stepped back, almost into the doorway of the office, and Sullivan joined him in the shadows.
From around behind an upright old car hood on the other side of the yard, a lumpy figure came tottering uncertainly into the glow of the parking-lot light. It was wearing a tan trench coat over its head, with apparently a broad-brimmed hat under that to hold the drapery of the coat out to the sides like a beekeeper’s veil. Its groping hands looked like multi-lobed sweet potatoes.
And from the overgrown chain-link fence on the other side of the lot came a rattling and scuffling, and Sullivan saw more shapes rocking forward out of the darkness.
Bradshaw turned and walked into the dark office, and when Sullivan had followed him inside he closed the door. “They’re shy,” Bradshaw said. “So’s your dad. I’ll be back at the party.”
“Nicky, wait,” said Sullivan quickly. When the fat old man turned his impassive face toward him, he went on almost at random, “Have you got copies of the Alice books? Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass?”