Stuffed, satisfied, and sticky-sweet they returned to bed and fell asleep in a warm tangle.
Perhaps it wasn’t love that they had in common; perhaps it was only a need for escape and forgetting. But they found it.
Three hours later the alarm clock sounded and Jenny left to go wait tables at H.P.’s Cafe. Travis slept dreamless, groaning and smiling when she kissed him good-bye on the forehead.
When the explosions started, Travis woke up screaming.
PART FOUR
MONDAY
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
23
RIVERA
Rivera came through the trailer door followed by two uniformed officers. Robert sat up on the couch and was immediately rolled over and handcuffed. Rivera read him his Miranda rights before he was completely awake. When Robert’s vision cleared, Rivera was sitting in a chair in front of him, holding a piece of paper in his face.
“Robert, I am Detective Sergeant Alphonse Rivera.” A badge wallet flipped open in Rivera’s other hand. “This is a warrant for your and The Breeze’s arrest. There’s one here to search this trailer as well, which is what I and deputies Deforest and Perez will be doing in just a moment.”
A uniformed officer appeared from the far end of the trailer. “He’s not here, Sergeant.”
“Thanks,” Rivera said to the uniform. To Robert he said: “Things will go easier for you if you tell me right now where I can find The Breeze.”
Robert was starting to get a foggy idea of what was going on.
“So you’re not a dealer?” he asked sleepily.
“You’re quick, Masterson. Where’s The Breeze?”
“The Breeze didn’t have anything to do with it. He’s been gone for two days. I took the suitcase because I wanted to know who the guy was that was with my wife.”
“What suitcase?”
Robert nodded toward the living-room floor. The Haliburton case lay there unopened. Rivera picked it up and tried the latches.
“It’s got a combination lock,” Robert said. “I couldn’t get it open.”
Sheriff’s deputies were riffling through the trailer. From the back bedroom one shouted. “Rivera, we’ve got it.”
“Stay here, Robert. I’ll be right back.”
Rivera rose and started toward the bedroom just as Perez appeared in the kitchen holding another aluminum suitcase.
“That it?” Rivera asked.
Perez, a dark Hispanic who seemed too small to be a deputy, threw the suitcase on the kitchen table and opened the lid. “Jackpot,” he said.
Neat square blocks of plastic-covered green weed lay in even rows across the suitcase. Robert could smell a faint odor like skunk coming from the marijuana.
“I’ll get the testing kit,” Perez said.
Rivera took a deep sniff and looked at Perez quizzically. “Right, it could be just lawn clippings that they weighed out in pounds.”
Perez looked hurt by Rivera’s sarcasm. “But for the record?”
Rivera waved him away, then returned to the couch and sat down next to Robert.
“You are in deep trouble, my friend.”
“You know,” Robert said, “I felt really bad about being so rude to you yesterday when you came by.” He smiled weakly. “I’ve been going through some really hard times.”
“Make it up to me, Robert. Tell me where The Breeze is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you are going to eat shit for all that pot over there on the table.”
“I didn’t even know it was there. I thought you guys were here about the suitcase I took. The other one.”
“Robert, you and I are going to go back to the station and have a really long talk. You can tell me all about the suitcase and all the folks that The Breeze has been keeping company with.”
“Sergeant Rivera, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I wasn’t quite awake when you were telling me the charges… sir.”
Rivera helped Robert to his feet and led him out of the trailer. “Possession of marijuana for sale and conspiracy to sell marijuana. Actually the conspiracy charge is the nastier of the two.”
“So you didn’t even know about the suitcase I took?”
“I couldn’t care less about the suitcase.” Rivera pushed Robert into the cruiser. “Watch your head.”
“You should bring it along just to see who the guy was that it belonged to. Your guys in the lab can open it and…”
Rivera slammed the car door on Robert’s comment. He turned to Deforest, who was coming out of the trailer. “Grab that suitcase out of the living room and tag it.”
“More pot, Sarge?”
“I don’t think so, but the whacko seems to think it’s important.”
24
AUGUSTUS BRINE
Augustus Brine was sitting in his pickup, parked a block away from Jenny’s house. In the morning twilight he could just make out the outline of Jenny’s Toyota and an old Chevy parked in front. The king of the Djinn sat in the passenger seat next to Brine, his rheumy blue eyes just clearing the dashboard.
Brine was sipping from a cup of his special secret roast coffee. The thermos was empty and he was savoring the last full cup. The last cup, perhaps, that he would ever drink. He tried to call up a Zen calm, but it was not forthcoming and he berated himself; trying to think about it pushed it farther from his grasp. “Like trying to bite the teeth,” the Zen proverb went. “There is not only nothing to grasp, but nothing with which to grasp it.” The closest he was going to get to no-mind was to go home and destroy a few million brain cells with a few bottles of wine — not an option.
“You are troubled, Augustus Brine.” The Djinn had been silent for over an hour. At the sound of his voice Brine was startled and almost spilled his coffee.
“It’s the car,” Brine said. “What if the demon is in the car? There’s no way to know.”
“I will go look.”
“Look? You said he was invisible.”
“I will get in the car and feel around. I will sense him if he is that close.”
“And if he’s there?”
“I will come back and tell you. He cannot harm me.”
“No.” Brine stroked his beard. “I don’t want them to know we’re here until the last minute. I’ll risk it.”
“I hope you can move fast, Augustus Brine. If Catch sees you, he will be on you in an instant.”
“I can move,” Brine said with a confidence that he did not feel. He felt like a fat, old man — tired and a little wired from too much coffee and not enough sleep.
“The woman!” The Djinn poked Brine with a bony finger.
Jenny was coming out of the house in her waitress uniform. She made her way down the front steps and across the shallow front yard to her Toyota.
“At least she’s still alive.” Brine was preparing to move. With Jenny out of the house one of their problems was solved, but there would be little time to act. The demonkeeper could come out at any moment. If their trap was not set, all would be lost.
The Toyota turned over twice and died. A cloud of blue smoke coughed out of the exhaust pipe. The engine cranked, caught again, sputtered, and died; blue smoke.
“If she goes back to the house, we have to stop her,” Brine said.
“You will give yourself away. The trap will not work.”
“I can’t let her go back in that house.”
“She is only one woman, Augustus Brine. The demon Catch will kill thousands if he is not stopped.”
“She’s a friend of mine.”
The Toyota cranked again weakly, whining like an injured animal, then fired up. Jenny revved the engine and pulled away leaving a trail of oily smoke.
“That’s it,” Brine said. “Let’s go.” Brine started the truck, pulled forward, and stopped.
“Turn off the engine,” the Djinn said.
“You’re out of your mind. We leave it running.”
“How will you hear the demon if he comes before you are ready?”
Begrudgingly, Brine turned off the key. “Go!” he said.
Brine and the Djinn jumped out of the truck and ran around to the bed. Brine dropped the tailgate. There were twenty ten-pound bags of flour, each with a wire sticking out of the top. Brine grabbed a bag in each hand, ran to the middle of the yard, paying out wire behind him as he went. The Djinn wrestled one bag out of the truck and carried it like a babe in his arms to the far corner of the yard.
With each trip to the truck Brine could feel panic growing inside him. The demon could be anywhere. Behind him the Djinn stepped on a twig and Brine swung around clutching his chest.
“It is only me,” the Djinn said. “If the demon is here, he will come after me first. You may have time to escape.”
“Just get these unloaded,” Brine said.
Ninety seconds after they had started, the front yard was dotted with flour bags, and a spider web of wires led back to the truck. Brine hoisted the Djinn into the bed of the truck and handed him two lead wires. The Djinn took the wires and crouched over a car battery that Brine had secured to the bed of the truck with duct tape.
“Count ten, then touch the wires to the battery,” Brine said. “After they go off, start the truck.”
Brine turned and ran across the yard to the front steps. The small porch was too close to the ground for Brine to crawl under, so he crouched beside it, covering his face with his arms, counting to himself, “seven, eight, nine, ten.” Brine braced himself for the explosion. The seal bombs were not powerful enough to cause injury when detonated one at a time, but twenty at once might produce a considerable shock wave. “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, shit!” Brine stood up and tried to see into the bed of the truck.
“The wires, Gian Hen Gian!”
“It is done!” Came the answer.
Before Brine could say anything else the explosions began — not a single blast, but a series of blasts like a huge string of firecrackers. For a moment the world turned white with flour. Then storms of flame swirled around the front of the house and mushroomed into the sky as the airborne flour was ignited by successive explosions. The lower branches of the pines were seared and pine needles crackled as they burned.
At the sight of the fire storms, Brine dove to the ground and covered his head. When the explosion subsided, he stood and tried to see through the fog of flour, smoke, and soot that hung in the air. Behind him he heard the front door open. He turned and reached up into the doorway, felt his hand close around the front of a man’s shirt, and yanked back, hoping he was not pulling a demon down off the steps.
“Catch!” the man screamed. “Catch!”
Unable to see though the gritty air, Brine punched blindly at the squirming man. His meaty fist connected with something hard and the man went limp in his arms. Brine heard the truck start. He dragged the unconscious man across the yard toward the sound of the running engine. In the distance a siren began to wail.
He bumped into the truck before he saw it. He opened the door and threw the man onto the front seat, knocking Gian Hen Gian against the opposite door. Brine jumped into the truck, put it into gear, and sped out of the doughy conflagration into the light of morning.
“You did not tell me there would be fire,” the Djinn said.
“I didn’t know.” Brine coughed and wiped flour out of his eyes. “I thought all the charges would go off at once. I forgot that the fuses would burn at different rates. I didn’t know that flour would catch fire — it was just supposed to cover everything so we could see the demon coming.”
“The demon Catch was not there.”
Brine was on the verge of losing control. Covered in flour and soot, he looked like an enraged abominable snowman. “How do you know that? If we didn’t have the cover of the flour, I might be dead now. You didn’t know where he was before. How can you know he wasn’t there? Huh? How do you know?”
“The demonkeeper has lost control of Catch. Otherwise you would not have been able to harm him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before? Why don’t you tell me these things in advance?”
“I forgot.”
“I might have been killed.”
“To die in the service of the great Gian Hen Gian — what an honor. I envy you, Augustus Brine.” The Djinn removed his stocking cap, shook off the flour, and held it to his chest in salute. His bald head was the only part of him that was not covered in flour.
Augustus Brine began to laugh.
“What is funny?” The Djinn asked.
“You look like a worn brown crayon.” Brine was snorting with laughter. “King of the Djinn. Give me a break.”
“What’s so funny?” Travis said, groggily.
Keeping his left hand on the wheel, Augustus Brine snapped out his right fist and coldcocked the demonkeeper.