“So what? Do you want us to interview you, too? It’d be a cinch. Prominent local attorney, right? The man who tracked down Spooky.’ And then we could discuss your client’s possible role in the reunion show later. How does that sound?”
Strube didn’t like her tone, or her apparent assumption that he was motivated by a desire for publicity; and he wished he could say something coldly dismissive to her.
But of course he couldn’t. “That sounds good,” he said. Then, despising himself, he went on, “Do you promise?”
“You have my word, Mr. Strube. Now where is he?”
“Well—in Long Beach, in the Twenty-first Place cul-de-sac by the beach.” Strube read her the address from the stenciled numerals on the curb. ‘I'll be there too,” he said, “and I’m confident—”
“Good,” she interrupted. “I knew somebody was confident. I should have guessed it’d turn out to be a lawyer.”
And the line went dead.
I guess she’ll be here soon, Strube thought timidly.
THE SHOUTING of the parrots made Sullivan open his eyes. He knew that he had been very nearly awake for some time; he remembered having dreamed of Venice Beach sometime during the night, but he couldn’t remember now if it had been Venice of 1959, 1986, or 1992, and it didn’t seem important.
A faint thwick from the kitchen made him lift his head—Kootie was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter, looking at Sullivan over the top of the Alice paperback, a page of which he’d just turned. Kootie touched a finger to his lips.
Sullivan turned his head sideways, and his neck creaked, and Elizalde opened her eyes and smiled sleepily.
“I guess we’re all awake, Kootie,” Sullivan said, speaking quietly just because it was the first remark of the day. He rolled over, got stiffly to his feet, and stretched. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, Mr. Sullivan—Pete, I mean. Could I have cold pizza and Coke for breakfast?”
Maybe Edison is sleeping off the hangover, Sullivan thought. “Sure. I think I’ll pass, though. We’ll probably be leaving here in an hour or two, after a…a walk down to the beach. You sure you wouldn’t like to wait, and get something hot?”
“I like cold pizza. We hardly ever have pizza at home.”
“Tear it up then.” Sullivan yawned and walked into the kitchen to turn on the hot-water tap. He couldn’t remember now whether the water had ever got hot last night; well, there was always the hot water in the toilet tank.
“Uh,” said Kootie. “Could you help me down? My cut hurts if I stretch. I was halfway up here before I knew I couldn’t climb up.”
“Sure,” Sullivan said.
“Kootie,” said Elizalde, who had got up and now hurried over to the counter, “didn’t I tell you not to put any strain on it?”
“No, miss,” the boy said.
“Oh. Well, once we get you down from there—”Suddenly a fourth voice spoke, from the bedroom doorway. “Leave him where he is.”
Sullivan spun, and then froze. A man was standing there, pointing at them a handgun made from a chopped-down double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun. Focusing past the gun, Sullivan saw that the man had only one arm; then that he was wearing baggy camouflage pants and a stained windbreaker, and that his round, pale face was dewed with sweat. His gaze crawled over Sullivan’s face, to Elizalde’s, and to Kootie’s, like a restless housefly.
“Harry Houdini made a call from Long Beach last night,” the man said in a high, calm voice, “and as it happens I’m a big Houdini fan. But when I came down here I kept getting deflections, I couldn’t get any consistent directional for him. So I remembered this dead spot by the beach, like the wood where Alice lost her name. And then you all had a party last night. A man went to an Armenian restaurant, because his friends told him to order the herring; when it was served, it was alive, and the herring opened its eye and looked at him. He left, but his friends told him to go back the next night, so he did, and he ordered the herring again. But on the plate it opened its eye again, and he ran away. The next night he went to a Jewish restaurant instead, and ordered herring, and when the waiter brought him his plate the herring opened its eye and looked at him and said, ‘You don’t go to the Armenian place anymore?’”
Sullivan felt a drop of sweat roll down his ribs under his shirt, and he kept staring at the sawn muzzles of the gun, each barrel looking big enough for a rat to crawl down it. Elizalde had stepped in front of Kootie, but now none of them were moving.
“What do you want?” asked Sullivan in an even voice.
“I want to speak to Thomas Edison.”
“This is the guy that stabbed me,” whispered Kootie; then he shivered, and in a louder voice he said, “You have my attention. What did you want to talk about?”
“Unplug me,” the man said. “The rotten ghost is jammed in my mind, and I can’t…eat. When you did this to me in ‘29, I cleared it inadvertently, by injecting a quick ghost into a vein in my arm; that worked, but it blew my arm off. I can’t afford to do that again, even if I could be sure the ghost would only blow off another limb, and not detonate inside my heart. You did this, you must know how to undo it.” His wheezing breath was a hoarse roar, punctuated with little whistles that sounded like individual cries in an angry crowd.
“And then you’ll stab me again, right?” said Edison with Kootie’s voice. “Or just blow out my middle with that scattergun and catch the boy and me both, when we breathe our last breath. It’s a Mexican standoff.” Kootie looked up at Elizalde. “No offense, Angelica.”
Elizalde rolled her eyes in angry frustration. “For God’s sake, Edison!”
“I won’t,” said the one-armed man. Distant voices shouted in his lungs. “I’ll leave you alone, and subsist on ordinary ghosts. How can I assure you of this?”
Sullivan saw Elizalde’s eyes glance across the room, and he looked in that direction. The 45 was lying against the wall where she had slept. He knew she was thinking that a dive in that direction would make the one-armed man swing the shotgun away from Kootie and himself.
But she couldn’t possibly get the gun up and fire it before the shotgun would go off; and the shotgun wouldn’t have to be aimed with any precision for the shot pellets to tear her up. He spread his fingers slowly, to avoid startling the gunman, and closed his hand firmly on Elizalde’s forearm.
A whining buzz tickled Sullivan’s car, and he restrained his free hand from slapping at it.
“What the hell is this?” said the tiny voice of Sullivan’s father’s ghost. “I can’t get to the beach by myself—I’m tethered to my grave portrait, and it’s way too heavy for me to carry.”
Sullivan looked anxiously back at the one-armed man—but the man was apparently unaware of the ghost in Sullivan’s ear.
The barrels of the shotgun wobbled. “Well?” The man’s tiny eyes were fixed on Kootie’s face.
“I could write the procedure down,” said Kootie’s voice thoughtfully, “after you let us go, and leave it in some preagreed place. You’d have to trust me to do it, though.”
“Which,” said the one-armed man, “I don’t.” He kept his little eyes fixed on Kootie, but he rocked his head back and sniffed deeply. “There’s another ghost in here. If you tell me how to get unjammed, I’ll just eat it. That’ll keep me alive until I can go gel more.”
“No good,” said Kootie’s voice, “that’s Pete’s dad, and Pete’s sentimental about it. Besides, the procedure involves a bit of work on your part.” The boy’s face kinked in a crafty grin. “It’s not just crossing your eyes and spitting.”