'Not the department itself,' Dan said. 'Just a few rotten apples in it.'
'Still, who's to say he doesn't have friends in the FBI too? And while we'd be able to get Melanie back from the government if they took her away from us, we'd probably never find her again if Boothe regained control of her.'
For a couple of minutes they were silent. They ate lunch, and Laura tried to feed Melanie, though with little success. A Whitney Houston number faded away on the jukebox, and in a couple of seconds Bruce Springsteen began to sing a haunting song about how everything dies but some things come back and, baby, that's a fact.
In their present situation, there was something decidedly macabre and disquieting about Springsteen's lyrics.
Dan looked at the rain and considered how this new information about Boothe helped them.
They now knew that the enemy was powerful, but that he wasn't as all-powerful as they had feared. That was a damned good thing to know. It improved morale. It was better to deal with an ultrawealthy megalomaniac — with one enemy, regardless of how crazy and influential he might be — than to be confronted by a monolithic bureaucracy determined to carry out a course of action in spite of the fact that it was an insane course of action. The enemy was still a giant, but he was a giant that might be brought down if they found the right slingshot, the perfectly shaped stone.
And now Dan knew the identity of 'Daddy,' the white-haired and oh-so-distinguished pervert who regularly visited Regine Savannah Hoffritz in that Hollywood Hills house that couldn't decide if it wanted to be Tudor or Spanish.
'What about John Wilkes Enterprises?' he asked Earl. Even as he voiced the question, he saw what he should have seen earlier, and in part he answered his own inquiry: 'There's no John Wilkes. It's entirely a corporate name, right? John Wilkes Boothe. The man who assassinated Lincoln, although I think that was spelled B-O-O-T-H, without the E. So this is another company owned by Palmer Boothe, and he called it John Wilkes Enterprises as — what? — a joke?'
Earl nodded. 'Seems like an inside joke to me, but I guess you'd have to ask Boothe himself if you want an explanation. Anyway, Paladin looked into the corporation this morning. It's no deep dark secret or anything. Boothe is listed as sole stockholder. He uses John Wilkes Enterprises to manage a collection of small endeavours that don't fit under his other corporate or foundation umbrellas, one or two of which don't even turn a profit.'
'John Wilkes Press,' Dan said.
Earl raised his eyebrows. 'Yeah, that's one of them. They publish only occult-related books, and they break even some years, lose a few bucks other years. John Wilkes also owns a small legit theater in the Westwood area, a chain of three shops that sell homemade chocolates, a Burger King franchise, and several other things.'
'Including the house where Boothe keeps his mistress,' Laura said.
'I'm not sure he thinks of her as his mistress,' Dan said with considerable distaste. 'More like his pet… a pretty little animal with some really good tricks in its repertoire.'
They finished lunch.
The rain beat on the windows.
Melanie remained silent, empty-eyed, lost.
At last Laura said, 'Now what?'
'Now I go see Palmer Boothe,' Dan said. 'If he hasn't run like all the other rats.'
Before they paid their check and left the coffee shop, they decided that Earl would take Laura and Melanie to a movie. The girl needed a place to hide for a few hours, until Dan had a chance to speak with Palmer Boothe either in person or on the telephone, and seeking shelter in yet another motel room was too depressing to consider. Neither the FBI nor the police — not even the minions that Boothe could marshal — would think of looking for them at an anonymous shopping-center multiplex, and there was virtually no chance that they would be accidentally spotted by someone in the darkness of a theater. In addition, Laura suggested that the right film might hold therapeutic value for Melanie: The forty-foot images, unnaturally bright color, and overwhelming sound of a motion picture sometimes gained the attention of an autistic child when nothing else could.
Newspaper-vending machines stood in front of the restaurant, and Dan dashed into the rain to buy a Journal for its film listings. The irony of using Palmer Boothe's own publication for the purpose of finding a place to hide from him was not lost on any of them. They settled on a Steven Spielberg adventure fantasy and a theater in Westwood. It was a multiplex that was showing a second film suitable for Melanie, so after the Spielberg picture they could take in another feature and pass the rest of the afternoon and the early evening there if necessary. Their intention was to remain at the theater until Dan had either found Boothe or had given up searching for him, at which time he would return for them and relieve Earl.
When they went outside to Earl's car, Dan got in with them for a moment. While the rain fell from a roiling gray sky, he said to Laura, 'There's something you've got to do for me. When you're in the theater, I want you to keep an even closer watch on Melanie than you've done so far. Whatever happens, don't let her go to sleep. If she closes her eyes for any length of time longer than a blink, shake her, pinch her, do whatever you have to do to make sure she's awake.'
Laura frowned. 'Why?'
Not answering the question, he said, 'And even if she remains awake but just seems to be slipping into an even deeper catatonic state, do what you can to pull her back. Talk to her, touch her, demand more of her attention. I know what I'm asking isn't easy. The poor kid's already extremely detached, so it's not going to be easy to tell that she's drifting off a little further, especially not in a dark theater, but do the best you can.'
Earl said, 'You know something, don't you?'
'Maybe,' Dan admitted.
'You know what was going on in that gray room.'
'I don't know. But I have some… vague suspicions.'
'What?' Laura leaned forward from the backseat with pathetic eagerness, so desperate to understand what was happening, so frantic for any knowledge that would shed light on Melanie's ordeal, that she gave no thought to the possibility that knowing might be even worse than not knowing, that knowledge might be a far greater horror than mystery. 'What do you suspect? Why is it so important for her to stay awake, alert?'
'It would take too long to explain right now,' he lied. He wasn't certain that he knew what was happening, and he didn't want to worry her unnecessarily. And there was no doubt, if he were to tell her what he suspected, she would be considerably more distraught than she was now. 'I've got to get moving, find out if Boothe is still in the city. You just keep Melanie as awake and as alert as you can.
'When she's asleep or deeply catatonic,' Laura said, 'she's more vulnerable, isn't she? Somehow, she's more vulnerable. Maybe… maybe It even senses when she's asleep and comes for her then. I mean, last night, in the motel, when she slept, the room got cold and something came, didn't it? And yesterday evening, at the house, when the radio became… possessed… and when that whirlwind full of flowers burst through the door, she had her eyes closed and she was… not asleep but more catatonic than she is most of the time. You remember, Earl? She had her eyes closed, and she seemed unaware of the uproar around her. And somehow It knew she was the least alert, and It came then because she was vulnerable. Is that it? Is that why I have to keep her awake?'
'Yes,' Dan lied. 'That's part of it. And now I've really got to go, Laura.' He wanted to put his hand to her face. He wanted to kiss the corners of her mouth and say good-bye with more feeling than he had any right to express. Instead, he looked at Earl. 'You take good care of them.'