O’Hara nodded. “Right,” he said.
Dunstan said, “What about the site of the robbery? It’s just the other side of that fence, down a ways. Is anybody still there?”
Caliato shook his head. “No,” he said, “they all cleared out. The armored car’s gone, everything’s gone. I just had one of the boys go around and check five minutes ago.”
“That’s good,” O’Hara said. He was sorry he hadn’t thought about asking that question himself, and surprised Dunstan had come up with it. But he supposed it just showed he was full of excitement and anticipation and Dunstan was full of apprehension. Still, it was a good thing somebody had thought to check. It wouldn’t have been pleasant if they’d started yelling through a loud-hailer in here with people from the force just the other side of the board fence.
Caliato said, “Any time you’re ready, O’Hara.”
“Then let’s get it over with,” O’Hara said.
“We’ll stay back here out of sight,” Caliato said.
“Right.”
O’Hara and Dunstan both carried flashlights. They lit them and walked forward into the park along the main blacktop path toward the center, where in the summer a fountain was lit by colored lights. On the way, they passed the Desert Island on their left and Island Earth on their right. A snack bar on their left, amusement rides on their right. A small footbridge — they crossed over the little stream that meandered through the grounds. On their right, a black-light ride called Voyage Through the Galaxy.
On their left, the fun house, dominated by a huge round laughing face with open gaping mouth.
They stopped short of the concrete fountain, and looked at one another. O’Hara could see his own nervousness reflected in Dunstan’s eyes, and he hesitated just a second, as though he could mill change his mind, do things differently. But of course he couldn’t. It was way too late to change now, even if he wanted to.
He lifted the loud-hailer to his lips, depressed the trigger.’
‘We know you ‘re in there, “his amplified voice suddenly roared. “You were seen climbing over the gates with the suitcase full of money. Come nut now, throw down your weapons, give yourself up. This is the police. The park is surrounded. “
The silence echoed for a while when he was done. He lowered the loud-hailer, shone his flashlight this way and that, waited for some indication that he’d been heard.
Nothing.
He raised the loud-hailer to his mouth again, and suddenly light, noise, laughter poured down on him from behind, flooded over him like a shock wave. He yelped and dropped the loud-hailer and jumped forward, stumbling, almost falling into the empty concrete pool where in summer the fountain played. He turned around and stared.
The fun house. In the middle of the silent, empty, dark, frozen park, the fun house had suddenly surged into life. All the lights were shining, yellow and white and orange and red, cartwheels of light spinning around the entrance, flashers revolving on the roof, light everywhere, flickering like a huge fire in a Roman-candle factory.
And noise. The huge laughing face on the front of the fun house was moving in its slow mechanical circle, and from behind it came the boom of recorded laughter, huge maniacal rolling laughter. Plus music, recorded calliope music blaring from loudspeakers at the corners of the building.
“My God!” O’Hara screamed, and turned wild-eyed to see Dunstan running like a crazy man for the darkness by the front gate.
Eleven
WHEN THE fun house suddenly took off, Caliato was so startled he stepped involuntarily backward and bruised his elbow on a gate post. The pain brought him back to himself, and he looked at all that coruscating light and found himself smiling with real pleasure.
He hadn’t expected the quarry to be so unorthodox. The guy should either have given up quietly to O’Hara and Dunstan, or he should have cowered in a corner somewhere, hunched over his suitcase of money, until Caliato and his people found him. But to counterattack like this, right at the very beginning, was something Caliato hadn’t expected.
The two cops were running this way, both of them all shook up. Caliato saw them coming, and that finished the job of getting him his own equilibrium back. Before either of them had reached him he’d turned to the others and started barking out his orders. “Abadandi and Pulsone, stay on the gate here. Chaka, get around to the back of that fun house, see if there’s any other way in there. Benny, come with me.”
Dunstan was there, breathless and blowing as though he’d just run a mile. While the others were saying right and moving to their posts, Caliato said to Dunstan, “Get hold of yourself. We’ll want to go in after him.”
O’Hara had showed up. “He — he — “
“It’s just a fun house,” Caliato told him. “It isn’t an atom bomb.”
O’Hara took a deep breath, and Caliato saw him getting hold of himself. “I know what it is,” he finally said. “But what the hell’s he doing it for? If there’s anybody around the neighborhood at all — “
“He knows what’s up, that’s why,” Caliato said. “He saw us when we saw him, and he’s figured out what’s the story. But the point is, he had to be in that fun house to turn it on. Come on.”
He led the way, trotting along the snowy backtop, feeling the unfamiliar weight of a gun in his overcoat pocket. The old man’s .44. He dragged it out of the pocket as he ran.
The fun house was still going wild. Caliato said, “Be careful going in. He’ll be watching these doors.”
“Why not wait for him to come out?” O’Hara said.
“We’ve got to turn this racket off, that’s why.”
They went in cautiously, through the main entrance, Benniggio in the lead, Caliato next, the two cops following. They all had guns and flashlights in their hands, though they didn’t need the flashlights yet.
They were all inside, and nothing had happened. They were in a crazy room, with walls and floors tilted funny ways, odd-shaped furniture, all things to make you think you were leaning one way when you were leaning another, so if you weren’t careful you’d lean too far the wrong way and fall on your face.
There were several doors leading out. Caliato said, “Split up. The first thing we do is find the main switch. But everybody take it easy, he’s got to be inside here someplace.”
They each went through a different door, moving with cautious haste, looking all around, all of them distracted by the booming laughter and the calliope music and the whirling lights.
Caliato found himself in a semi-dark narrow passageway. The floor seemed to roll and squirm uncomfortably under his feet, as though mice were moving back and forth under the rubber mat. The walls were of different substances, all of which had a distasteful feel to them, some slimy, some sticky, some an uncomfortable furry feel. When Caliato looked at his fingertips, he was surprised to see them still clean.
Spiders and bats and other things hung from the ceiling on thin black wires, some of them dipping and rising in regular motion, others just hanging in one place, turning lazily. Caliato, a neat man, almost finicky, found this passage almost nauseating, and when one of the bat figures brushed his forehead with its furry wings, he recoiled as though from an electric shock.
The end of the passage was a black curtain, vaguely repellent to the touch, as though made of snake bellies. Caution was replaced in Caliato with disgust, the need to get away from here, out of this rotten place. He pushed through into another room, and suddenly saw himself a dozen times. He saw the long-barreled .44 in his right hand, the unlit flashlight in his left. Over and over, a dozen times.