John Mail listened with half an ear; he was playing one of Davenport's fantasy games on a Gateway P5-90. He was in trouble: all of Davenport's games were full of traps and reversals. When you were killed, you could restart the game, carefully edge up to the point when you were killed-and get killed by something that passed you through the first time. A back-trail trap, a switchback ambush; must be some kind of circular counting mechanism in the program, Mail thought. He felt he was learning something about the opposition.
On the tuner, the DJ's voice followed a nice set of Queen. His phony bubble-gum rap was a subliminal annoyance, but not worth changing. Mail heard the beep-beep-boop of the phone dialing. And when the phone rang on the radio-at that very instant-the phone rang in Andi Manette's purse.
Mail sat up, pushed away from the game with a spasm of fear. What was that? Something outside? The cops?
When he'd finished with Andi Manette the first night, he'd gone to the store for groceries and beer. Andi's purse was on the front seat of the van, where he'd thrown it after the attack. He opened it as he drove and pawed through it. He found her billfold, took out almost six hundred dollars, a pleasant surprise. He found her appointment book, a calculator, miscellaneous makeup, and the two pounds of junk that women seem to accumulate. He'd pushed it all back in the purse.
Later, a little drunk, and preoccupied with the question of Genevieve-the presence of the too-young girl bothered him; a kind of psychological thorn, for no reason that he understood-he dropped the purse on the floor near the kitchen door, intending to get rid of it later.
Now he stood, tense, up on the balls of his feet. Gun, he thought. The.45 was on a bookcase, and in two steps, he had it. Lights? No, if he turned them off, they'd know he'd heard them.
The buzzing continued. Nothing furtive about it. The fear recoiled a notch, but he kept the gun. Somebody outside? Or the stove clock? A broken smoke alarm? He moved quickly toward the kitchen, looked around-and saw the purse. In the background, the phone was ringing on the radio, the DJ said, "That's four…" and Mail's ear picked up the synchronized ringing between the radio and the purse.
He dumped the purse on the table. No phone, but the purse still rang at him, and was too heavy in his hand. He pulled open the front pocket and found it, a portable phone. As he looked at it, the DJ was saying, "That's six… and that's seven. George Dunn, if you're on the pot you better get off, 'cause… that's eight…"
Mail turned the phone in his hands, flipped it open, saw the phone switch. He looked out the window-nothing. If it was the cops calling, they didn't know where he was.
"He's not gonna answer," the tech said. "That's nine."
Mail answered on the tenth ring. "Hello?" And Lucas jabbed a finger at the tech: "That's him."
At the radio station, the DJ leaned into it. "George Dunn? Damn, boy, you almost missed the call of your life, of the week, anyway."
And Mail could hear it all on the radio.
"This is Milo Weet at K-LIK with a We-Squeeze-It, You-Suck-It-Up; one thousand, two hundred and nine dollars on the line. You know how we play-we squeeze out a classic rock song in five seconds, the whole song, and you have ten seconds to tell us what it is. Are you ready?"
Mail knew the game. They thought his name was George Dunn, that was Manette's husband, but Weet was asking again, "Uh, George, excuse me, this is where you're supposed to say, 'Go ahead, dude,' unless you been into the vegetable matter again, in which case, give me your address and I'll be right out."
"Uh, go ahead, dude," Mail said. He'd never been on the radio. He could hear himself with his other ear, a strange, electronic echo.
"Here it comes, then, Georgie." There was a second of dead air, and then a nearly incomprehensible packet of noise with a vague rhythm to it, almost recognizable. What was it? Da-duh-da-Duh-da-Duh… Let's see.
The tech was working what looked like a television set, shouting at the pilot, "Hold it there, hold it, hold it…" while yellow numbers scrambled across the screen, and then, "Go 160, go, go…" and they took off, southeast.
"George? You there, boy? You got it? Tell you what, buddy, this is getting old. I'll give you another five seconds, another song by the same group. Not the same song, the same group…"
The tech was saying, "We've got him on, goddamn, he's right between us." He clicked on his microphone. "Frank, you got him?"
From the radio: "We got him, we're heading out at 195, but we're getting some shake in the reception…"
The second squirt of sound ended, and Mail said to Weet, "'All Night Long, by AC/DC."
He added, on the air, "Davenport, you cocksucker."
And he was gone.
CHAPTER 13
Mail punched the Off button and with the phone still in his hand, ran outside. Overhead, a jetliner passed in-bound for Minneapolis-St. Paul. That's how they'd come, he thought, looking into the sky for lights, red or white, blinking, swooping, focusing on him. Choppers. An envelopment.
He ran down to the drive and piled into the van, fumbled the keys out of his jeans pocket, roared backwards out of the driveway onto the gravel road. If they were coming, and if he could get just a little bit north, maybe he could lose himself in the suburban traffic…
Mail wasn't frightened as much as he was excited. And angry. They'd played him for a sucker. He'd bet a hundred-to-one that Davenport was behind the call. Hell, he'd go a thousand-to-one. It was all very slick. So slick that he found himself grinning in the night, then sliding into an angry sulk, then grinning again, despite himself. Slick.
But not quite slick enough, he thought.
From a mile away, atop a hill, Mail looked back at his house. He couldn't really see it, but he could see the lighted kitchen door, which he'd left open, a thin candlestick against the dark fields. There was nothing near him-nothing coming. He shifted into park, and let the engine idle. Nothing at all.
After a moment, he turned off the engine and got out to listen: nothing but a thin breeze blowing through the goldenrod in his headlights…
Andi and Grace had nearly given up on the weapon idea. The only thing they could find, that might be anything at all, was a large nail that had bent over when it was being driven into the rafters above them. If they could pull it free, Andi thought, they might be able to hone it on the granite fieldstone in the walls.
"ltd be like a short ice pick, I guess," Andi said. They had nothing to work with, except the aluminum cans that the strawberry soda came in. While they were trying to figure out how to use the cans to pull the nail free, they began experimenting with the cans themselves. They could pull the tops and bottoms off without too much trouble-Andi wrapped her fingers in her shirt, and literally tore the aluminum free. They then had a thin, flexible sheet of aluminum. They tried folding it and flattening it, with the idea of sharpening the point and using it like a knife blade.
They could get a point, but not with enough stiffness to penetrate skin and muscle deeply enough to do damage. They might get an eye.
They tried twisting the stuff into spirals, but that wasn't as good as folding it. Grace suggested that since the edges of the aluminum were quite sharp when freshly torn, if they could somehow mount an edge between folded pieces, they might be able to use it like a razor. Again, it seemed that it might cut, but not enough to do mortal damage.
"If he was… on you, and I tried to cut his throat…" Grace suggested, her face pale.
Andi shook her head and pressed a strip of aluminum ingot into the back of her arm. "It takes too much force," she said. "Look."