I always get bored on a stakeout, and this time it was no different. I thought about Maynard and Celeste and the hotel room, and I thought about Walter Surface, and I thought about the kangaroo. I thought about Catherine Teleprompter, wondered where she was and how she looked now. I thought about a lot of things. Eventually I thought about make, and I thought about it a lot, and I thought about a lot of it. Big piles. I’d laughed at plenty of junkies in my day, all the while making damn sure I had a straw for my nose when I needed it, and now I went back and apologized to each and every one of them. My system was trying to run without the fuel that had made it go for years, and it was hell. I could feel my bloodstream panhandling my fat reserves for whatever last traces of the vital addictol they had stored away, and I could feel my fat cells turning out their pockets and saying sorry pal, there’s nothing left.
I don’t know how long I sat there like that. I certainly didn’t keep my eyes on the stairwell door very long. My hands slipped off the wheel and into my lap, and I fell asleep. My dreams were murky, incomprehensible, like babyhead talk. I didn’t wake up until the sun was out again, but it wasn’t the sun that woke me up. It was the voice of the kangaroo, unmistakable, and jarringly close to my window.
I started to reach for the gun in my pocket when I realized he wasn’t talking to me.
“Get in the car,” he was saying. I poked my head up enough to see he was saying it to Barry Phoneblum and a couple of strong-arm louts from central casting. The kangaroo unlocked the passenger seat in the car in front of mine, and the babyhead clambered in. The louts got in the back, and one of them pulled out a gun and checked its load. I put my hand on Barry’s gun in my pocket and laid low.
“I told you he wouldn’t come here,” said Barry.
The kangaroo went around and got in behind the wheel. His window was up, and when he said something, I didn’t catch it.
“He’s probably got better things to do,” Barry went on.
I wished like hell I did.
The kangaroo started the car, and they drove away. It was obvious they were looking for me. I cursed myself for falling asleep in Joey’s front yard, then offered up a quick improvisational prayer to the patron saint of dumb luck and trembling junkies. I was stupid for coming here at all. When I’d waltzed in on Phoneblum, I’d had the double insurance of his concern for his various “loved ones” and his peculiar sense of class and sportsmanship. With the kangaroo I had neither. I was lucky to still be alive.
When I was sure the coast was clear, I straightened up and took a quick inventory. Both legs were asleep from being wedged under the dashboard, there was a taste like puke in my mouth, and when I unclenched my hand from around the gun in my pocket, it started shaking again. Otherwise, I was intact. I drove down the hill and found a pay phone and called Surface, collect.
It was time to stop fucking around.
CHAPTER 6
THE OLD APE DIDN’T SOUND TOO ENTHUSIASTIC ON THE telephone. But when I arrived at the Office, he was waiting in front of the building, and he fell into step with me as I went up the stairs to the lobby.
“Thanks for showing, Walter,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” he grunted.
We went in. The Office always seems caught off guard at people walking in on their own steam. They don’t have a reception area so much as they have a sort of ramp for tossing people out of the building from, and a long, clear lane for picking up speed before they get to the ramp. As for going in, they expect to have to drag you struggling through the back entrance, or unconscious on the floor of an Office van. You walk in the door, and every head turns. It was no different now.
We strolled up to what passed for a reception desk, though the guy sitting at it surely hadn’t received anything more elaborate than a delivery pizza for the boys upstairs.
“I want to talk to Inquisitor Kornfeld,” I said.
The guy surprised me by tapping the name into his console.
“Not available,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Inquisitor Morgenlander.”
We came up against the same dead end.
I got a funny feeling. Those had been the two factions when I checked out, and Kornfeld seemed a shoo-in to run things in the Office his way for a while to come. It wasn’t that they weren’t in the building that bothered me—it was that the guy needed to consult his computer for the names.
“Inquisitor Teleprompter,” I said.
His hands came off the keyboard. “I’ll see if she’s here,” he said, and for the first time looked me and the ape over carefully. I smiled for him, and after a minute he picked up die intercom and hit a couple of buttons.
“Ms. Teleprompter,” he said. “There’s a guy here at the door says he wants to talk to you.” He listened, then turned back to me. “What’s your name?”
I told him, and he said it to hen.
“Stay right here,” he said, a little wide-eyed. I guess he was surprised.
Surface and I were just stepping back from the desk to cool our heels when a cloud of Office hoods came stiff-shouldered and scowling, and bunched around us like an elastic waistband.
“Mr. Metcalf?‘“said one of them.
“Metcalf and Surface,” I said. “We’re traveling together.” The ape didn’t look exactly grateful, but he didn’t contradict me. The inquisitors took us each by the arms and steered us to the elevator. I didn’t think we could all get on, and was about to suggest that Surface and I catch the next one, but they insisted, and we managed it. The fat ones sucked in their gut, and up we went.
When the elevator stopped, on the third floor, they walked us to one of the executive offices. I was impressed, but I knew better than to think it was a good sign Catherine had moved upstairs. The game upstairs was no cleaner than the game on the streets, last I knew. Our escorts punched in a code at the door and pushed us inside, and a couple of them followed while the rest camped in the hall.
It was one of the nice offices, with a big picture window facing the bay, and a lot of pretty photographs and memorabilia pinned to the walls. Catherine was behind a desk as big as they come, looking six years older and not a day worse. The same hair was pulled back to expose the same throat, and I got lost there for a minute before I noticed her eyes were hard.
“Clean them up,” she said.
The boys worked us over. They located the gun on me and a little notebook on Surface, and they handed them to Catherine along with both our cards. She tossed the stuff in a drawer and told the muscle to wait outside.
“Sit down,” she said. We did.
“You were supposed to get out of town, Metcalf,” she said. “You know the way it works.”
I went up against her eyes, but it was a dead end. She didn’t budge. She didn’t even blink, or if she did, she timed the blinks to go with mine. The effect was impressive.
“I’m two days old, Catherine,” I said. “Give me a break.”
“Don’t call me Catherine,” she said. “By letting you and your monkey into my office, I already gave you one break too many.” Her voice was like a dentist’s drill.
Our eyes met again. I was looking at the woman I’d climbed into bed with two nights ago, but I had to remind myself she hadn’t spent six years in bed waiting for me to return from the bathroom. The deeper I buried those memories, the better.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. You’re on the inside now. Congratulations, and I’m sorry. Where’s Kornfeld?”
She didn’t flinch at the question. There was still that much between us. “Long gone,” she said. “He pushed it too far, and now he’s spending time in the freezer.” She made it sound like she’d done the job herself, and maybe she had. “If you’ve got business with Kornfeld, don’t wait underwater.”