Volta closed his eyes and tried again to imagine Daniel vanished with the Diamond, tried to see the spiral flame through Daniel’s mind. He was failing so badly he was relieved to hear a key in the lock and Smiling Jack’s voice booming down the stairs, ‘Dreamers awake!’
Volta swung his feet to the floor, muttering, ‘One dreamer’s not sure anymore if he knows the difference.’
As he stepped from behind the partition, Smiling Jack advanced, waving a half-gallon of Ten High. ‘What do you say, Volt? Let’s get really fucked up and full of sentimental despair and then finally decide life, despite every heartbreak and anguished cry, is worth each pulse and breath.’
Volta tried to smile. ‘I’d drink to that, but you have work to do and I won’t drink and get stupid without you.’
‘What work? Message I got said we’re shutting this one down.’
‘We are, but I’m putting you in charge of loose ends. You tie such strong knots.’
‘What is this, an alliance of magicians and outlaws or the fucking navy?’
‘It changes with every breath,’ Volta said.
‘Maybe so,’ Jack sighed, ‘but I’m not going to try to change your mood. Be grim, glum, and gloomy.’
‘Jack, while I can’t admire your alliterative abilities, I thank you for your thoughtfulness.’
Smiling Jack sat down on the worn beige sofa. ‘How’s Daniel? What’d he have to say?’
‘He’s emotionally ragged and spiritually lost – dangerously so. He’s trying to see something inside the Diamond that he thinks only he can behold. He believes the Diamond wants him to see inside it. He intends to keep the Diamond until it opens and he understands. He said it is a thousand times more important to him to pursue the Diamond than revenge his mother’s death. Other than that, our conversation was devoted to relieving each other of responsibilities for our stupid decisions.’
‘What do you think?’ Jack said.
‘I’m trying not to. That’s why I want you to take responsibility for the follow-through. Two things: stay on Alex Three’s identity, and do justice to Mr Debritto. Set him up with the code as we’ve already discussed. When, where, and which Raven is up to you. I don’t want to know till it’s over.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said solemnly, ‘but there may be another loose end. Shamus called Dolly this morning, claiming he has some crucial information he can only share with you and Daniel, so he wants to set up a meeting. He said he’d never heard of an Alex Three.’
‘How’d he sound to Dolly?’
‘Nuts.’
‘No meeting right now. Have Dolly convey that we’re both unavailable.’
‘Where are you going to be?’
‘Home,’ Volta said.
Daniel woke in the front seat when the sun was high enough to blaze through the windshield. He had planned it that way when he’d parked the truck facing east, well hidden behind the burned-out gas station.
After talking to Volta he’d vanished with the Diamond. He tried concentrating on the twist of flame at the Diamond’s center, focusing to a pinpoint intensity and then suddenly letting go, hoping the force of the Diamond’s resistance would collapse outward – like someone holding a swinging door closed spilling into the street at the abrupt removal of the counterbalancing force. It didn’t work.
He tried staring into the thread-thin, spiraling flame and praying with all his heart that the Diamond would open to him, let him see what he needed, let him step across the threshold clean. It didn’t work.
An hour before dawn he took out his pocketknife and nicked his left thumb. He held his thumb above the Diamond, let the blood drip on the radiant globe before he sought to see inside. It didn’t work.
Beaten and exhausted, he’d fallen into a dreamless sleep at dawn, not stirring until he felt the sunlight on his face. He sat up blinking, checked the Diamond in the bowling bag on the floor, and slid back behind the wheel.
Daniel drove straight through to Phoenix. He stopped at a Shell station for a city map, then checked the Yellow Pages in the phone booth’s directory. He found exactly what he sought in the first listing under Auto Dismantling – ‘Aura Wreckers … cash to smash.’ When he noticed his fuel gauge showed less than a quarter tank, he unthinkingly pulled over to the pumps. When the attendant asked him, ‘Fill’er up, sir?’ Daniel started laughing so hard he could barely shake his head and gasp, ‘No, empty ’er.’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing,’ Daniel said, more in control, ‘I thought I needed gas but I don’t.’
‘Help you with anything else?’ the attendant said. He eyed Daniel with wary concern.
‘No, I guess not,’ Daniel told him. ‘I don’t even know if I want in or out anymore, or if there’s a difference.’
‘You look like you’ve been on the road awhile. Tired. It gets to you.’
Daniel said earnestly, ‘I hope so.’
The attendant nodded vaguely and said, ‘Well, take it easy. Have a good one.’
Daniel thanked him and headed through Phoenix.
He stopped down the street from Aura Wreckers. In the camper, he dressed in his bowling shirt, jeans, and shoes, packed a change of clothes and toilet kit in a day-pack, and stuffed a thousand-dollar roll from the attaché case in his front pocket. He took the pack and attaché case back to the cab and set them on the floor with the bowling-bagged Diamond. He crumpled the phony registration and pink slip in the ashtray and burned them, tear-blind from the smoke before he cranked the windows down.
Daniel wheeled into the oil-splotched yard of Aura Wreckers and pulled up near a crane with a powerful magnet on its cable. The crane was picking up hulks from a pile of wrecked cars and dropping them into a forty-ton hydraulic crusher that turned each one into a small metal cube. A large beer-bellied man operating the crusher yelled at Daniel, ‘Hey, no parking! Office is back there.’ He pointed toward the building.
Daniel gathered the bowling-bag, attaché case, and day-pack and walked toward the man, who looked pained at his approach. Before Daniel was halfway there the man called, ‘C’mon, man – move your ride and put you in it – we don’t have no insurance that covers fools. This is a heavy-equipment area, and I’m the yard boss.’
Daniel stopped in front of him and looked into his eyes. ‘My truck must be destroyed.’
The yard boss looked at the truck and then back to Daniel. ‘What for?’ he said suspiciously. ‘It was still moving when you got here.’
Daniel roared, ‘It is possessed of demons! I know because I am a man of God and a professional bowler. As a Minister of Faith with the Gospel Strike Church of Imperishable Bliss, I am under vows of frugality, and therefore drive from match to match on the PBA tour, spreading some of the Sun Lord’s literature on the way. And as I travel these faithless states, I pick up every hitchhiker I see, some of whom are striking young women, many not even seventeen, wandering lost in this world, bereft of love and comfort. I swear to heaven my intentions are noble when I pick them up – to share the wisdom and consolation of The Word – but there are demons in the truck, vinyl warlocks, devils of chrome, and they tear my heart from the River of Light and hurl it into the Sewer of Raw Desire. I know it’s the truck, because lewd and carnal desires seize those comely young women, too, and soon the demons have dragged us panting into the camper where we rut for hours like lust-crazed warthogs, and I feel their hot, tight, naked bodies move under me like a wave of ball bearings and my heart wants nothing more than the endless replication of our joined moment of release forever and forever!’