Veil's laugh was sharp, without humor. "He's got to be kidding. He really said that he wanted to meet you at eleven, and you should come alone?"
"Maybe he thinks I never go to the movies. But he could be on the level, and in any case it's an opportunity for me to try and see if Garth's all right. I have to go. I want you to ride shotgun."
"You've got it. I'll be there in an hour or so."
"We've got plenty of time, so you don't have to rush. Can you make a stop in an electronics store?"
"What do you need?"
"A miniature tape recorder, and a pair of paging beepers with matching frequencies and signal buttons."
"I'm not sure I like the idea of using beepers," Veil said as he sipped coffee at my small kitchen table and nodded at the two pocket-sized instruments in front of him. "Why don't I just come up with you?"
"He's going to be meeting me downstairs."
"You're going to have to find a way to leave the door wedged open, anyway. I'll follow the two of you up. He said he'd be keeping the staff busy elsewhere."
"Yeah, but we don't know where 'elsewhere' is. There's too much open space up there, Veil, too many long corridors. It would be hard for even a ninja to keep visual track of me without risk of being spotted."
"I can do it, Mongo," Veil said evenly. "Nobody will know I'm there."
"Let's stick with the beepers. I'm pretty sure I can distract Slycke with a little sleight of hand, and I'll use a credit card to wedge the door open. If I do need you, then you can come running. Did you bring a gun?"
Veil patted his right ankle.
"Well, let's hope neither of us will be needing it," I said, shoving my keys across the table to him. "You take these. The little one will open and operate the elevator; the one with the M on it will open any other door in the clinic once you get up there. You've got the floor plan I drew for you, and I've put an X over Slycke's office-which is where I assume we'll be."
"Are you taking your gun?"
I shook my head. "In my situation, I don't think it's a good idea to take a gun into a mental ward. If something does happen to me, it's conceivable that a patient could get hold of it and start spraying bullets around for no reason at all. I don't want to be shot with my own gun, and I don't want to take any undue risk of innocent people getting hurt or killed. You'll be my gun-if I need you."
Veil nodded, then slipped my keys into his pocket.
"I'll be at the entrance to Building 26 exactly at eleven," I continued. "Precisely ten minutes later you'll get a beep-if everything is okay. You'll be in your car out on the street. After that, if I'm in there for any length of time, I'll beep you once every half hour to signal that I'm all right."
"Let's make it every fifteen minutes Mongo."
"All right, twenty. After the first beep to signal I'm in no danger, twenty-minute intervals should be enough. If Slycke is dealing with me straight, and if I have to pay attention to something he's saying or showing me, I don't want to have to keep looking at my watch. One beep means that Slycke and I are having tea and crumpets and don't wish to be disturbed. Two slow beeps means I don't like something I'm seeing, but that there's time to involve RPC Security and bring some cops up with you; those keys you're carrying should get their respectful attention. Three quick beeps-or no beep at the proper interval-means that the bad guys are tying me across the railroad tracks, and the train's coming around the bend; I'll need you in a big hurry."
"Got it," Veil said evenly as he came around the table to synchronize his watch with mine while I buttoned my shirt over the miniature tape recorder taped to my chest. The wall clock read 10:55. "You watch your ass, Mongo."
"Yep," I said, rising to my feet and reaching inside my shirt to turn on the recorder. "Let's do it."
We left the staff building thirty seconds apart, with Veil going to his car while I cut behind the chapel to Building 26. I'd been expecting Slycke to be waiting for me outside, by the empty kiosk. He wasn't there. I gave it three minutes, then tried the door. It was open. I stepped inside, stopped in the vestibule in front of the elevators, looked around. The lights were on in the corridor, but they were decidedly dimmer than usual.
Suddenly I wished I had brought my Beretta.
"Slycke?"
There was no answer.
I'd done a few stupid things in my life, but over the years I hoped I had learned not to confuse stupidity with courage. I was getting too old for heroics, stupid or otherwise, and I'd already seen enough of this dimly-lit-corridor nonsense to convince me that I was walking into a trap. I wasn't going to walk any farther. It was certainly a classic two-beep situation if ever I'd seen one, but I didn't even plan on signaling Veil and waiting until he showed up with the cops. I'd go with him to get RPC Security, and would give Mr. Lippitt an emergency call for backup troops.
I was heading back to the main entrance, feeling quite smug with myself for displaying such obvious good sense, when something very hard hit me on the back of the head, and even the dim lights in the corridor winked out.
13
Someone was singing, "Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go. ."
I'd never much cared for that song, and I particularly disliked it now that it was being sung in a low, rasping, ominously familiar voice.
"The voices will stop after I kill you, dwarf," Mama Baker said.
"Blauugfh," I said-or something to that effect. My ears seemed to be working perfectly well, but not my tongue.
The fact that I couldn't make my tongue and lips form words didn't really make any difference, since Mama Baker obviously wasn't interested in hearing anything I had to say, but only in sacrificing me to the cruel, demanding, maliciously chatty gods he carried around with him inside his head.
"Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go. ."
Nothing else seemed to be working right, either. My vision consisted of blurred, wavering images that only occasionally came into focus, then exploded or dissolved into wisps of luminous vapor that were sucked down long, multicolored DayGlo tunnels. My head felt as if the skull had melted and fused with my brain into a ball of thick rubber that was rolling around on my shoulders; I was very conscious of my own breathing, slow and deep, and the air in my lungs bubbled, fizzed, and popped like sparkling champagne; I imagined I could feel my blood, like warm milk, coursing through my veins and arteries, hear my heart pumping.
Somebody had shot me up with something seriously psychotropic, I thought, and wondered if this was how some psychotics experienced the world before they were medicated.
I was floating in the air face down, gently bobbing up and down like a toy blimp caught in a light breeze. I could feel my legs, and even managed to move them, but my feet weren't in contact with the ground, and so my feeble kicking was futile. My arms, however, weren't hanging in their accustomed places, and I wondered where they could have gone.
"I'm going to hang you up and slit your throat, dwarf," Mama Baker said. "When all the blood has drained out of you, I'll be free."
"Mmfltelkpt!" I replied as I rolled the ball of rubber that was my head to the left and, just for an instant, clearly saw the figure of Charles Slycke slumped against the wall just outside his open office door; the thick plastic barrel of a good-sized hypodermic needle was protruding from his right eye.
Somebody had shot Slycke up pretty good.
"Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go. ."
Human shapes appeared, dissolved, reappeared in the rainbow mists swirling around me. Patients I recognized.
"Fmmlptzxchpht!" I cried, shouting for help and feebly kicking my legs.