Better make it two cans, he thought. Tomorrows Halloween. This might be a demanding twenty-four hours, and already I feel like shit.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
“There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint,” he remarked to her, as he munched away.
“I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,” Alice suggested: “—or some sal-volatile.”
“I didn’t say there was nothing better,” the King replied. “I said there was nothing like it.”
—Lewis Carroll,
Through the Looking-Glass
RUBBERS,” said Neal Obstadt, using a pencil to push a tightly latex-sleeved vial across his desk. The roof of his penthouse office was folded back again, but the breeze out of the blue sky was chilly, and a couple of infrared space heaters had been rolled in and now glowed like giant open-walled toasters in the corners. “Why do they pack ‘em in rubbers?”
The vial was empty. All ten of the ghosts Sherman Oaks had paid as his November tithe had been compressed and sealed inside glass cartridges, along with some nitrous oxide for flavor, but Obstadt had kept one of the vials to roll around on his desk.
“The guys in the lab say they don’t,” said Canov impatiently. “They say it must be some kind of special gift wrap. Listen, I’ve got two urgent things. You said to monitor deLarava’s calls. She—”
Obstadt looked up sharply. “She’s said something? What?”
“No, nothing that seems to be important. She’s talked to that Webb guy in Venice, but he still hasn’t sensed the ghost she’s apparently got cornered there, the one that drove all those sea creatures onto the beach Wednesday morning. Mainly she’s busy setting up for her shoot on the Queen Mary tomorrow. But we—”
“Gift wrap,” Obstadt interrupted. “Gift wrap. Is it sarcasm? Disrespect? I’ve snorted nine of ’em already, and they’ve been primo, every one. A diorama of Los Angeles citizens. No complaints about the merchandise, and I’m a connoisseur. Still, rubbers. What do you think? Does he mean Go fuck yourself? Go fuck yourself safely?”
“She has a telephone line we weren’t aware of. Her listed office lines, and the phones in her stateroom on the Queen Mary—” Canov paused to peer nervously down at Obstadt, but Obstadt was staring at him with no expression. “She got another,” Canov blurted. “JKL-KOOT, that’s the number—”
“On those billboards. The famous Parganas kid.” Obstadt tried to think. “I’m like a cat,” he said absently, “I’ve got nine lives.” Nine of them he had snorted up, since yesterday afternoon! No wonder he couldn’t think—he was awash in other people’s memories, and the Los Angeles he pictured outside didn’t have freeways yet, and Truman or Eisenhower or somebody was president. “The Parganas kid! Are the cops still buying that Edison driver’s hijack story?”
“It looks like it. He’s been let go, after questioning, anyway.”
“Why does Loretta want that kid? Why did Paco Rivera want him, why really?” He waved his hand. “I know, his name was Sherman Oaks. A joke. We assumed it was Oaks that murdered the kid’s parents, and that he wanted to kill the kid because he could identify him; but…they both got away, right? Yesterday? Oaks and the Parganas kid?”
“Not together.”
“And Loretta wants the kid, too?”
After a pause, Canov shrugged. “Yes.”
Obstadt stuck his pencil into the opened vial and lifted it up. “The big smoke that hit town Monday night…” he said thoughtfully, whirling the vial around the pencil shaft. “Oaks would have been… terribly…aware of that. How old is the kid?”
“Eleven.”
“Not puberty yet, probably.” He was nodding. “The kid has got to have the big ghost. Either he’s carrying it, or he’s inhaled it and it’s grafted onto him, not assimilated. That’s why Loretta wants him, and why Sherman Oaks wanted him. Oaks can’t have got the ghost yet, or not as of yesterday afternoon, anyway, or the kid would be dead, not running around.”
Obstadt looked up from the spinning, condom-sheathed vial, and smiled at Canov. “Your guys caught the kid yesterday! Took him away from that yuppie couple, the dead Fussels! And you gave the kid to Sherman Oaks!” Obstadt was speaking in a wondering tone, still smiling, his eyes wide. “And if you had done what I told you, monitored fucking all of Loretta’s phone lines, I’d have the kid, I’d have the big ghost, which is probably goddamn Einstein or somebody, do you realize that?” Obstadt was still smiling, but it was all teeth, and he was panting and his face was red.
Almost a whisper: “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Good.” Obstadt knew that Canov must be aching to say, But you got a thousand and ten smokes! How big can this one be in comparison? You weren’t there, Obstadt thought, Canov my boy—you weren’t there Monday night, you weren’t aware, anyway, when that wave swept across L.A. and every streetlight dimmed in obeisance, every car radio whirled off into lunatic frequencies, and every congealed-ghost street bum fell down hollering.
“There’s another thing,” said Canov in a strangled tone. “You told me to check out any kids deLarava might have. No, she doesn’t seem to have any—but she’s looking for this Peter Sullivan, and she’s got a description of the van he’s driving, and the license number. He used to work for her, along with a twin sister of his named Elizabeth who everybody called Sukie, who killed herself in Delaware Monday night.”
“She did? Now, why—”
“Listen! The Sullivan twins were orphans, their father was a movie producer named Arthur Patrick Sullivan, okay? He drowned in Venice in 1959. Now Sullivan the Elder was the godfather of this Nicky Bradshaw character—”
“Who Loretta’s also looking for, right. Spooky, in that old TV show.” “And…and Sullivan the Elder had just got married to a starlet named Kelley Keith. He drowned, while she was on the beach watching, and then she took a lot of his money and disappeared.”
“In ‘59,” said Obstadt thoughtfully. “He drowned at Venice, and now Loretta’s… after the son, and the godson, and a big-time ghost that apparently came out of the sea…in Venice.”
“And she was obviously after the daughter too, but she killed herself. Clearly you follow my thinking.”
“Okay!” Obstadt opened his desk drawer and took out the glass cartridge that contained the last of Sherman Oaks’s tithe ghosts. The lab boys had painted a blue band around it to distinguish it from the others—the vial its smoke had come in had been tucked into a different kind of condom: Trojan, while the others were all Ramses. How do the lab boys know? he wondered. Nobody should be an expert at recognizing different kinds of rubbers.
Trojan—it reminded Obstadt of something, but Canov was speaking again.
“Loretta deLarava is almost certainly Kelley Keith,” he was saying, “and she seems to be unwilling to have that fact known.”
“Maybe she’s got crimes still outstanding,” mused Obstadt aloud, “hell, maybe she killed the old movie producer! Any number of possibilities. Whatever it is, we can use it to crowbar her, and she would be a useful employee. Meanwhile! Tomorrow is Halloween. Get all your men out—find the Parganas kid, and this Peter Sullivan, and Oaks, and bring ’em all to me. Alive, if that’s easily convenient, but their fresh ghosts in glass jars would be fine. Better, in a lot of ways.”