(It had been Ramon Novarro, and Oaks had occasionally wondered, though never with remorse, if Novarro’s brutal death in the early hours of Halloween, 1969, might have been a long-delayed consequence of that lie.)
And in 1929 he had somehow inhaled a ghost that had been stored in an opaque container; and the stinking lifeless thing had choked his mind, blocked his psychic gullet, rendered him unable to inhale any more ghosts at all. (He thought of the collapsed face he had seen yesterday on the steps down to the parking level at the Music Center up on Temple.)
Oaks knew that he had got past that catastrophe somehow. (A suicide attempt? Something about his missing arm? The memories were like smoke on a breeze.) Some psychic Heimlich maneuver.
The Edison truck had pulled up then, and a man in bright new blue jeans and a Tabasco T-shirt had opened the passenger-side door and hopped down to the pavement.
“Oaks?” he said. When Oaks nodded, he went on, “Here she is. Driver’ll pull into an alley and let the van aboard, and then you got half an hour of drive-around time. More than that, and your monthly rate increases. What’s in the box?”
Oaks held out the cardboard box on the fingertips of his one hand, like a waiter. “Next month’s payment, in advance.”
The man took it. “Okay, thanks—I’ll see he gets it.”
A new Chrysler had pulled in behind the truck, and the man carried the box to it and got in.
Oaks had looked bleakly at the orange and black and yellow truck—Halloween colors!—then sighed and walked around to the back as the Chrysler drove away. When he’d pulled up the sliding back door, he’d been grudgingly pleased to see the things he’d asked for laid out on the aluminum floor: a flashlight, twine and duct tape, and a Buck hunting knife. In the front right corner he could see the gun the driver had apparently insisted on, a shiny short-barreled revolver. Won’t be needing that, Oaks had thought as he’d grabbed the doorframe, put one foot on the bumper, and boosted himself up.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
And once she had really frightened her old nurse by shouting suddenly in her ear, “Nurse! Do let’s pretend that I’m a hungry hyaena, and you’re a bone!”
—Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking-Glass
EVEN by straining all his muscles, all together or against one piece of restraining tape at a time, Kootie had failed to break or even stretch his bonds; though he could reach his fingers into the pockets of his jeans.
The flashlight swung wildly as the man climbed over the passenger seat and leaned down over Kootie. He reached out slowly with his one arm, closed his fingers in Kootie’s curly hair, and then lifted the boy back up to a sitting position. Then he sat down on the console, facing Kootie, and stared into the boy’s eyes.
Kootie helplessly stared back. The one-armed man’s round, smooth face was lit from beneath by the flashlight, making a snouty protuberance of his nose, and his tiny eyes gleamed.
“No ectoplasm left, hey?” the man said. “No dog-mannikin today?” He smiled. “Your mouth is taped shut. You’ll be having trouble expiring, just through your nose that way. Here.” He leaned forward, and Kootie wasn’t aware that the man had a knife until he felt the narrow cold back of it slide up over the skin of his jaw and across his cheek almost to his ear, with a sound like a zipper opening.
Kootie blew out through his mouth, and the flap of tape swung away from his mouth like a door. He thought of saying something—Thank you? What do you want?—but just breathed deeply through his open mouth.
“My compass needle points north,” the man said. “Your smoke is clathrated. You need to unclamp, open up.”
He lowered his chin, pushing the flashlight to the side, and he held his right hand out so that it was silhouetted against the disk of yellow light high up on the riveted truck wall. Squinting up sideways at the projection, the man wiggled his fingers and said, with playful eagerness, “What would you say to a…rhinoceros?” He bunched the fingers then, and said, “Clowns are always a favorite with little boys.” The thumb now made a loop with the forefinger, while the other fingers stuck out. “Do you know what roosters say? They say cock-a-doodle-doo!”
Kootie realized belatedly that the man was doing some kind of shadow show for him. He blinked in frozen bewilderment.
“Helpful and fun, but not very exciting,” the man concluded, lowering his arm and letting the flashlight swing free so that it underlit his face again. “What could be more exciting for a lonely little angel than a flight up the hill to where the rich people live? Aboard a charming conveyance indeed! I believe I can provide a snapshot of that.”
He stared into Kootie’s eyes again, and hummed and bobbed his round head until the spectacle of it began to blur from sheer monotony. In spite of his rigid breathlessness, Kootie thought he might go to sleep.
All at once the motion of the truck became jerky and clanging and upward, and the seat under him was hard wood. He opened his eyes, and jumped against his restraints.
Cloudy daylight through glass windows lit the interior of a trolley car climbing a steep track up a hill. Kootie’s seat was upright, though, and when he looked around he saw that the trolley car had been built for the slope—the floor, seats, and windows were stepped, a sawtooth pattern on the diagonal chassis. A city skyline out of an old black-and-white photograph hung in the sky outside.
There was a little boy wearing shorts and a corduroy cap sitting in the window seat next to Kootie, and he was staring past Kootie at someone across the aisle. Kootie followed the boy’s gaze, and flinched to see the round-faced man sitting there, still wearing stained old bum clothes but with two arms and two hands now.
“Where is the gentleman you boys came with?” he asked.
The boy beside Kootie spoke. “In heaven; send thither to see; if your messenger find him not there, seek him i the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.”
“Hamlet to Claudius the man said, nodding. “Showing as a youngster, then, eh? Why not?” He smiled at the boy. “What’s the matter, don’t you like my pan?”
“Not much,” the boy said.
The man chuckled. From under his windbreaker he pulled a pencil that was a foot long and as wide around as a sausage, and with his other hand he pulled out a giant pad of ruled white paper. “At the top of the hill I’ll fill out the adoption papers on both you lads,” he said affectionately.
The boy next to Kootie shook his head firmly. “I have a snapshot myself,” he said.
Then the whole length of the cable car fell to level, silently, the front end down and the back end up, though none of the three passengers were jarred at all. It was just that the seats and floor were all lined up horizontally now, like a normal car. The gray sunlight had abruptly faded to darkness outside the windows, and flames had sprung up in little lamps on the paneled walls.
The car was longer and broader now, chugging along across some invisible nighttime plain. The man with the little eyes was sitting several rows ahead now, and he was wearing a ruffled white shut and a gray cutaway coat. In the aisle next to him stood a tall black man—his clothes were as elegantly cut, but seemed to be made of broad teak-colored leaves stitched together.