The preparations gave him a sense of urgency. Ready for anything, that’s how they’d find him. He’d tackle Yamoto now. He could hear the roar of his mower. It would be best not to simply charge out and confront the wily gardener. That had been his mistake the last time, when he’d been defeated by a garden hose. There must be a way to vindicate himself now, not only in his own eyes, but in the eyes of the law. It could easily come to that. It was odds-on that it would. And if it did, some link between Yamoto and Frosticos would go a long way toward justifying his own actions, his escapes from the sanitarium. Paranoia, after all, ceases to be paranoia in the light of revealed evidence. Edward would agree with him there.
William slipped out onto the front porch, flattening himself against the wall of the house that enclosed the end of the porch. He peeked around the corner of it. Yamoto chased his mower across the lawn. He jerked around in a tight little turn and headed back. William ducked away, waiting. As soon as Yamoto reversed direction again, William was off, scampering across the lawn toward the pickup truck. He was safely hidden by the fender when Yamoto reversed again, and in the next instant he was clambering into the cab, as quietly as he could, throwing himself fiat on his back atop the seat.
He breathed hoarsely, out of fear rather than exertion, and ran his hand along under the seat. There were nothing but springs. He had no idea what he hoped to discover. A walkie-talkie? A gun? A medical bag? His hand closed on a book. He hauled it out It was written in Oriental characters. William couldn’t tell which end was which. He tossed it to the floor in disgust. ‘Then why can’t he talk like a man,” he muttered, quoting Huckleberry Finn, and popped open the glove box. An avalanche of debris cascaded out onto the floor. He shoved his hand in and swept out the rest: cigarettes, hard candy, street-maps, napkins, little plastic containers of mustard and ketchup, a fountain pen, another book, nuts and bolts. Nothing, though, that really sewed the case up. Nothing damning, as the lawyer would say. Nothing but a little wooden box, carved, it seemed, out of rosewood — in the figure of a goldfish, bent in the middle like the yin half of a yin and yang. William popped the top off. There were pills inside, Bayer aspirin, from the look of them. William touched his tongue to one. It was bitter.
Of course they would look like aspirin. In an organization of the magnitude of Han Koi’s it would be a simple enough business to press morphine and heroin into false aspirin tablets. And the goldfish — a dead giveaway. It would mean nothing, of course, to the casual observer. But to William, to someone with knowledge of the arcana, the machinations of the world by the clever Han Koi. … William shoved it into his pocket.
He raised himself onto his elbows and looked back over his shoulder at the house. Yamoto cut on, oblivious. William laughed. Damn it! he thought to himself. If only he’d brought a potato to jam into Yamoto’s exhaust pipe. He’d wait in the bushes, watching. Yamoto would try to start the truck. Nothing would happen. He’d crawl down out of the cab, scratching his head, and open the hood. The engine would tell him nothing. It would leer at him. Puzzled, he’d creep around, peering under the truck, wiggling things, chattering. Mrs. Pembly would come out with her arms folded and commiserate. Both, of course, would harbor suspicions, fears. They’d look around in vain. Was William Hastings about? Had he been coming and going like a ghost in the night? Had it been he who had destroyed the plan to penetrate the Earth?
Mrs. Pembly would shake her head. Yamoto would crouch on his hands and knees at the rear of the truck, staring in horror at the business end of a potato stuffed up his exhaust pipe, thwarting the flow of necessary vapors, stopping utterly the workings of the engine. He’d poke at it. Mrs. Pembly would marvel, perplexed, asking him why on Earth? Then both would stop. There’d be a rustling in the bushes behind them. William Hastings would step out, smiling, wearing a suit and tie. He’d bow, inquire after the health of the dog. Suggest modifications in the sling and harness affair in the tree. They’d be dumbstruck, Yamoto holding the potato like a fool, Mrs. Pembly falling back at the sight of him. “Aspirin?” he’d ask, holding out the incriminating box. Yamoto would pale.
William giggled, thinking about it. If he hurried, he might still have time to pull it off. He stared at the fabric stretched across the ceiling of the cab. There seemed to be a million little holes in it, all in uniform lines. It was just possible, though, that they weren’t holes, that they were little dots painted on.
“Aspirin?” asked William aloud, canting his head and widening his eyes.
An unimaginable scream jammed him against the seat — a short, violent scream like the scream of a man in mortal terror. William sprang up, slamming his head into the ceiling. Yamoto, his mouth working, stared in at him through the open window, gibbering, looking as if he’d seen his own corpse in a bush.
“Hah!” shouted William after his initial surprise. He waved the rosewood goldfish at him. “So this is your game? Heroin, morphine? What is it? What do you know of Han Koi?”
Yamoto stumbled backward, waving his open palms before him in a sort of ritualistic dance. William reached for the dashboard to steady himself, found Yamoto’s book, and pitched it out the window. He could think of nothing else to do with it. The same was true for the debris on the floor. William picked up a handful and tossed it out onto the lawn, furious. They’d see who it was they’d run afoul of. He pushed open the door and shoveled the rest into the gutter. Mrs. Pembly was on the porch. If she had any sense, she’d stay there.
Yamoto ran toward his tools. So it was that way. He’d been spooked by William’s knowledge of the pills in the box. This wasn’t ten-cent bets on baseball games anymore. Yamoto was desperate. William climbed out of the cab and into the bed of the truck. He tripped over a bamboo rake. The bastard. He cursed at it, stomping the little bent fingers of the thing. He picked it and sailed it into the bushes like a spear. Yamoto waved his hoe menacingly. William laughed aloud, dumping a gunnysack full of grass clippings out onto the road and rolling a power edger out after it down the lowered tailgate, the red and yellow machine clanging to the street on its side and lying there dead. William shouted at it. Then he shouted at Yamoto, who, he could see, was keeping his distance. He leaped off the truck onto the parkway, stumbled, and clambered to his feet again before Yamoto had a chance to be on him with the hoe.
He advanced toward the porch. Yamoto was a gibbering wreck. It was Mrs. Pembly who now most desperately required comeuppance. “Do you think,” shouted William, waving his arm, “that I know nothing of your little game with the dog?”
Mrs. Pembly shot into the house like a rocket, slamming the door. She reappeared at the window. William made a hash of one of her begonias while Yamoto protested loudly and incoherently. William stomped another. “Keep your filthy dog off my lawn!” he shouted. The speeches he’d rehearsed in past weeks were taking flight in the face of his rage. He yanked a third begonia out by the roots, tore it to bits, and flung it at Yamoto, then stomped another into scrap.