The wetsuit was talcumed on the inside, and slid on easily. How would he explain it to Denny? Just that he didn’t know what to expect. Denny would probably not be able to understand, under the best of conditions, the tensor calculus he’d used as a shot-in-the-dark guess for describing the thing’s behavior. And these were not the best of conditions.
He opened the Chinese carryout box and looked at Herman, who stared back accusingly. He couldn’t leave him at home, and couldn’t leave him with his mother with no explanation. Herman probably had a better chance of surviving, hurtling into the unknown in a ’56 Thunderbird, than risking Denny’s pet-sitting abilities.
He put the jar of Baby Reptile Chow in the suit’s blouse pocket and picked up the time machine along with the case of bottled water and the bright yellow square of emergency raft, and walked back into the kitchen.
“Holy shit,” Denny said. “I’m swearing off the stuff.” He blinked twice, slowly. “I could swear you were standing there in a SCUBA outfit.”
“Just the wetsuit. I don’t know what environment we’re— I’m going into. Couldn’t afford a space suit.”
“You’re going into outer fucking space?”
“No, no, nothing like that. The last time I used this machine, it moved. But less than a millimeter.” He held up his thumb and forefinger.
“So not outer space. Guaranteed?”
“No. Not outer space.” He hoped.
“Just the fucking ocean. You’re going to take my T-Bird and drop it in the ocean?”
“No. It probably won’t move more than an inch.”
“But just in case you dump it in the ocean—”
“Or the Charles or the Harbor—look, Denny, I can’t swim. The probability is almost zero, but it scares me shit-less. ”
That mollified him a little. “Yeah. Me, neither.” He shrugged. “If it was the Charles or the Harbor, I guess we could haul it back up.”
“Yeah. No problem—unless I drowned. Then I wouldn’t be able to tell you where it was.”
Denny nodded rapidly and stood up with surprising speed. “Let’s do it.”
Matt and Herman followed him through the kitchen and out into the garage. There it was: a 270-horsepower dinosaur gleaming under a dozen coats of Tahitian Red lacquer.
“It … it’s beautiful,” Matt said.
“New paint job. Be careful with it.” He opened the door and snapped on the radio. It started playing “I’m Mr. Blue” by the Belmonts.
Matt unfolded the tripod and set up the camera so it would be pointed at him in the front seat. He put the machine and the rest of his gear on the passenger side and hooked up the alligator clip to the car’s frame.
“Hey, and don’t get any Chinese on the upholstery.”
“It’s not Chinese food. It’s a turtle.”
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”
“Almost forgot.” He reached into the pocket with the Baby Reptile Chow and brought out a three-by-five card with Professor Marsh’s name and phone number. “Anything goes wrong, call this guy. My boss.”
“Professor Marsh, like in swamp?”
“Right.” Matt started to close the door but left it open. If he wound up in water, he wanted to be able to jump out. “I’m ready if you are. Just point and shoot.”
When Denny pushed the button, so did Matt. He was suddenly blind, immersed in opalescent gray. He heard Herman nervously scratching around in his box.
It was strange, but not unexpected. He had time to wonder whether it would be a minute, ten minutes, forty days—and then all hell broke loose.
Bright daylight dazzled him and a Yellow Cab crashed into his open door, tearing it off and spinning into the oncoming traffic, where it was broadsided by the slow-crawling #1 bus.
He was in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, outside of the Plough and Stars pub. Traffic was squirreling to a halt all around him, horns blaring. With a loud bang, the yellow raft decided to inflate itself. He grabbed Herman and scrunched out of the car, pursued by a wall of yellow plastic, his wetsuit rather incongruous under the present circumstances, morning rush hour with snow all around. A siren wailed and a large female police officer came bearing down on him with her ticket book flapping in the cold breeze.
“Officer,” he said, “I can explain …” Or could he?
She sniffed at his breath. “Are you drunk?”
A male voice yelled, “Hands in the air. Put your goddamned hands in the air!” Matt did, and another policeman marched toward him holding a really large pistol at eye level with both hands.
“But I haven’t done anything,” he said inanely. Just dropped an antique car in the middle of Mass Ave during rush hour. With no tires; those were still in Denny’s garage.
The man’s pistol was homing in on Matt’s nose. “Ran the plate,” he said to the woman. “The car’s stolen. Owner murdered.”
“What?” Matt said. “Denny?”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the woman said, her own gun pointed at Matt’s heart. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”
“But I didn’t kill anybody.” Including the Yellow Cab driver, who was very much alive even though his nose was bleeding profusely as he stomped toward the three of them, yelling incoherently.
Never losing her point of aim, the woman reached up and took the Chinese carryout box and expertly thumbed it open with one hand.
She peered inside. “A turtle?”
“Well,” Matt said, “it’s a long story.”
7
They allowed Matt to change out of the wetsuit and into gray prisoner’s coveralls. Then they put him in a small room and handcuffed him to a chair. The room had a big mirror or one-way window, and a tear-off calendar on the table said it was February 2, consistent with a time jump of thirty-nine days, thirteen hours.
“What’s with the handcuffs?” he asked the guard. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s standard operating procedure when someone shows up in a wetsuit holding a pet turtle. We don’t have any straitjackets. ”
He left and was replaced with a Detective Reed, a small tough-looking man who smoked nonfilter cigarettes. Where did he get them, Matt wondered, and how come he could smoke on city property?
The detective sat down across from Matt and crushed out his cigarette stub in the ashtray, where it continued to smolder. “You knew Dennis Peposi. You bought dope from him.”
“I bought Ritalin, for concentration enhancement.”
“I suppose you had a prescription and can produce receipts.” Matt shook his head. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“December 14, at exactly 9:38 P.M.”
Reed wrote something down. “That’s about the time he died. The day, anyhow.”
“He was alive when I saw him. Drunk and stoned, but alive.”
“Sometime around then, he was murdered. Presumably by the person who stole his million-dollar car.”
“How did he die?”
“Suppose I ask the questions for a while? How well did you know Mr. Peposi?”
“Not too well. Met him through another student when I was an undergraduate at MIT. Maybe eight years ago.”
“He was just your dealer?”
“We went to some parties now and then. He liked to show off the Thunderbird.”
“You did hard drugs at these parties?”