The yard was full of angry. Loretta was shouting at a couple of men whose backs were to Irene, and Frankie was trying to step between them. Then she realized who the men were.
“Holy fuck,” Irene said. “That’s Nick Pusateri.” Before she could explain to Joshua who that was, the kitchen door burst open, and more people rushed out: first her father, then Graciella, and a moment later, G. Randall Archibald.
There was something in Pusateri’s hand. Then he stepped forward and smashed Frankie in the face with it, and her brother went down.
“He’s got a gun!” Joshua said to her.
Oh God, she thought. Where were the kids? She needed to make sure none of the kids came out here.
“Go around to the front of the house,” Irene said to Joshua. He started to object and she said, “Listen. Round up Jun and the girls. Shit, all the kids.”
“Right,” he said. He ran for the gap between the garage and the house.
Too late, she thought. And call 911!
Nick Pusateri aimed the pistol at Frankie, who lay on his side, covering his bloody nose.
“Hey!” Irene shouted. She marched across the lawn. “Pusateri! Look at me!”
Nick glanced behind him. “Jesus, not you too.”
“Just tell me what you want, and we’ll get it for you.”
“I want what this motherfucker stole from me.” She kept walking toward him slowly. “Do that, and nobody gets hurt.”
Nick Pusateri, to her complete lack of surprise, was lying again.
FRANKIE
It was as if someone had thrown a bucket of paint into his face, and the shade was named Blinding Pain. He’d read the term “pistol whip” in crime novels and never imagined precisely what that meant. He certainly never imagined it would happen to him.
What stung even more than the blow was the unfairness of it. He didn’t have any of Nick’s money, so how could he pay him back? Frankie had stolen nothing, yet everything was going to be taken from him. He was back in the parking lot of the White Elm, after the Royal Flush had been yanked away from him. Nick and Barney were just like Lonnie. Bullies.
But worse, this time his humiliation would be witnessed not just by his sister and brother, but by the woman he loved. He only hoped that the girls weren’t seeing this, too.
Loretta crouched and put her arms around Frankie. Irene and Nick Senior were yelling at each other, something about teeth. It made no sense.
Nick yelled, “Shut up!” at Irene, then shook the gun at Frankie with renewed vigor. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” Frankie said. His voice was muffled by blood and damaged cartilage, but he tried to sound sincere—because he sincerely had no idea what Nick was talking about.
“My fucking lunch box!”
An idea dawned. “Lunch box?” It came out lun bod, but Nick got the idea.
“What did I just fucking say?”
“Put down the gun,” another voice said. It was Archibald. He’d drawn his own pistol.
Nick blinked at it. “What the fuck is that, a toy?” He looked at Barney to make sure he was seeing it, too. “Some kinda Buck Rogers shit?”
“I assure you, it’s no toy,” Archibald said. “This, my friend, is a micro-lepton gun.”
Nick said, “What the fuck is a lepton?”
“The micro-lepton gun,” Archibald said, in a calm, teacherly voice, “disrupts torsion fields, the medium by which psychic energies propagate. When targeted at a psionic individual, it permanently destroys their ability to generate such fields. But when aimed at a non-psionic, it causes instant stroke and paralysis.”
Nick stared at him. “You guys are fucking nuts.”
Frankie couldn’t disagree with that. “Look, I don’t want the lunch box,” he said to Nick. “You can have it. It’s in my van.” At least, that was where he last remembered seeing it. He was pretty distraught last night.
“I’ll get it,” Buddy said. He’d stepped out from behind the tree. Frankie didn’t even know he was there.
“Do it,” Nick Pusateri said. To Frankie he said, “But not you. You stay put. Anything happens, you get shot first, you prick.”
That’s when Loretta started screaming at the mob captain of the western suburbs.
23
BUDDY
He hurries past the van. He told Nick Pusateri Senior that he was going to the vehicle to get the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box, but that’s a lie. In the driveway is a yellow Super Soaker. He picks it up, and it’s as full of water as he remembered. Thank goodness.
He didn’t think the end would be this hard. Mostly because he didn’t try to think about it all. A gift of his final moments being so hectic, so crammed full of detail, was that it made it impossible to ruminate. To brood. Even now, there are so many things he has to do, he barely has room in his head for thoughts of the Zap.
But it’s there. He can hear the noise, and it’s the last thing he remembers before the future goes black. His heart shrivels in despair. The world is going to go on without him.
He checks his watch. 11:55. Eleven minutes to go, or maybe less. He can only remember the position of the minute hand. Why didn’t he pay more attention in that final moment? It would be really really useful to know the exact second that history stopped.
At the front door he aims the Super Soaker at the tile and starts squeezing the trigger. Empties the whole tank onto the tile until it’s gleaming. The water doesn’t run off. He’d laid the tile slightly concave, just enough to hold a shallow pool.
He tiptoes over the water and goes into the living room. Clifford Turner is crouched over Destin Smalls, pressing his wadded-up jacket against the man’s shoulder. Smalls is moaning in pain. Buddy feels terrible about Smalls. But he could see no way around that—it was a fact of the day that was impossible to change.
He goes back to the kitchen wall phone and dials. Before anyone picks up, Joshua Lee runs into the room. He’s sprinted all the way around the house, come in through the front door. “The kids!” he says, nearly out of breath. “Where are the kids?”
“Safe,” Buddy says, then holds up a finger for silence. The operator, a woman, says, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
He wants to say, The future is dying. He wants to tell her, I’m about to be erased.
Instead, he repeats what he remembers saying: “There’s been a shooting. The gunman’s still here. Please send the police.”
Joshua says, “Where’s Jun? Where are the children?”
“Downstairs,” Buddy says. In fact, he can hear one of them banging on the basement door. He hands the phone to him. “Tell the operator whatever she needs to know.”
He walks out to the backyard, circling around the clump of angry people without looking at them. Nick Pusateri says, “Hey! Where the hell is the bag?”
Buddy marches toward the tree, ignoring him. His heart thuds in his chest. Finally he reaches the spot he remembers, beside the air compressor. He’s part of a special triangle. On one vertex stands a septuagenarian mobster holding a .45 automatic. On the other, a retired stage magician aiming a psi-based beam weapon. And at the third point of the triangle, the World’s Most Powerful Psychic, and a tank of air.
In the middle of this triangle stand Irene, Frankie, and Loretta. Loretta is threatening to cut off the balls of the mob boss of the western suburbs.
Buddy flips open the metal guard to the pressure switch, exposing the button, and checks his watch. It’s 11:57, and the second hand is swooping down the right side of the dial.