“What the—?” somebody along the curved corridor called.
The lighter was a gas thing. I pressed, got light, spun the control for tallest flame, tried to look out and down as a goon hurtled at me, lobbed the thing out onto the cylinders below.
Heat slammed the world, spinning it round. Odd, but all a brain remembers is clatter, clatter, when you find it hard to think what on earth could be clattering, when fire is shooting with a terrible tearing noise and a whole side of a building comes apart with a low screaming sound.
I remember thinking I should have maybe warned Emelda, at least told her what I was planning, but that’s typical for me, because by then something prickly was cramming itself into my face and people were screaming about fire, and a great golden shape was mushrooming out of the darkness nearby as a building crumbled and the hillside spread light and flame as a beacon for the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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YOUR mind plays tricks. I can see myself running, scrambling up when I fell among vegetation, hauling myself along on all fours when the terrain suddenly let me down. It was some old serial I’d seen when little, funny man at antics to make laughter. Except this one was bleeding, clothes anywhere. And it was me.
Finally laying himself down, spent and stunned, among rocks with a curtain of flames ascending the hillside, something from a biblical epic now, roaring with a terrible grandeur and a massive building’s turrets silhouetted against the orange-scarlet. So many colours, so much to see, if only the man’s eyes could see. They couldn’t quite focus. And people were screaming and shouts coming closer among scrub. And, oddest of all, whole trees suddenly exploding like they’d been fragged by grenades as the heat reached them and their aromatic perfumes caused the night to quiver in a death thrill as they sucked the flames into each burst of spark.
And the wahwahs, flicking their reds and yellows and blues in feeble simile while the mountainside erupted in roars and the fire moved through the vegetation like savage ascending lava.
The helicopters came, and police, and lights shone from the sky throughout the land, and it was all fireworks and spacecraft and people jumping down.
In one last feeble frame, me looking down from some great flying thing onto the forecourt of that great palace, where uniformed people, very like police, were taking orders from a dapper figure standing there in the mayhem and disorder as vehicles and helicopters moved stately all about him, the centre of that swirl. Except it couldn’t be him, because he was surely dead, wasn’t he? He’d lost the Game. And in any case he was the instigator of the crimes, and the deaths. Hadn’t he ordered two people killed, not counting me? And I sank and let the frigging world get on with it. I should have stayed with Irena, and left things alone, let them take their course. Or maybe I ought to have run back in for her after the explosion? Better to have stayed making love, even if it was on that fake antique banquette.
At least I’d have finished something.
“MR SHAMOON? Joe?”
Somebody was tapping my face, like nurses do when you’re coming round from the anaesthetic, the swine.
A policeman was sitting by the bedside. Mine. Why mine?
He had a brewer’s goitre, the beer belly hauled in by an ineffectual belt hung about with firearms and ominous leatherette cases. All that blubber was presumably paid for. But why is adiposity threatening in uniform? A thin geezer would have seemed friendlier.
“Eh?” Who was Joe? I wasn’t up to discussing people yet. I watched the cop. He chewed, more threat. A nurse swept in, swept out. Should be paid by the mile.
“Where were you when the fire started at the Revere, Joe?”
“The fire?” I was Joe?
My mind cranked slowly into gear. A hospital of some kind. Should I recover, or stay slightly delirious? I’ve been concussed before now. This didn’t feel quite the same.
“I remember a fire,” I said slowly. It seemed to take years to get the words out. “A sort of blast, people running, screaming, helicopter, fire up a hillside…”
“You got it, Joe.” He seemed pleased, told a hand recorder the time, place, date. “What were you doing at Revere Mount?”
Not what you think, officer. “Waiting for the boss. Some sort of charity…”
“Uh huh. You see the fire start?”
“No. I was with a… I think there was a broad.”
“Okay, Joe. I’ll be back.”
He left. Joe lay wondering why he wasn’t Lovejoy.
The jacket? It was surely mine, the one I’d grabbed up. Or was it? The neighbouring alcove had held the moaning couple. They’d been further into reality than Eilen and me. I couldn’t quite remember if the bloke had shed his jacket. But I could recollect how I’d had to shuffle obliquely across the corridor to the window, snatching up a jacket as I’d hopped, trying to haul up my pants with one hand while…
Good old Joe Shamoon. Hope he made it. Or maybe he was still back there, into bliss?
I slumbered, woke and had a drink. Orange juice.
When I woke it was night. I clambered erect, steadied my dizziness against the wall, checked I wasn’t bleeping from any wires into one of their infernal machines or being dripped into.
There was a light switch. I put it on, stared at myself in the mirror. Yes, Lovejoy all right. For a fleeting second I’d had a horrid vision of seeing some other bloke’s face, as on corny telly re-runs. I looked almost a picture of health.
My clothes were in a small wall cupboard, but no sign of any wallet. I brooded and dozed until dawn, then got hold of the first nurse I could and asked for my valuables, please. She brought them quickly, openly assuming I wanted to arrange payment for hospitalization. I almost choked on that, but it seems to be their system.
“Sure this is mine?” I checked shrewdly.
“Positive, Joe.”
Still Shamoon. I had Joe’s wallet, billfold of money, credit cards with signatures, two sets of keys, driver’s licence, spectacles. I didn’t need the specs, but took them anyhow, and two chequebooks. Joe did all right for himself. I wondered what Mrs. Joe Shamoon was like. Maybe I could finish what naughty old Joe had started so vigorously, when I found the addresses. The two addresses were in L.A.. Both had phone numbers.
With many a groan and wheeze, I asked the desk girl to hold the completion papers steady while I signed my credit-card gelt over to the hospital. The sum made me gasp, but I disguised it as a sudden twinge. I sent down for new casual clothes, billing it up to good old Joe Shamoon.
Then I left hospital, after a health check with a registrar. They called him a resident intern, as if he was an old-age prisoner. Funny language. He said I’d got off okay, but prescribed a ton of pills for me. I put them in a dustbin as I left.
One thing, I bet Joe Shamoon was having a hell of a time if he was trying to get treatment on Lovejoy’s credit in there.
“What’s the joke?” the taxi driver asked, surly.
“I just got better in hospital,” I said.
“That’s a joke?” He snickered. “Hell, L.A.’s the joke, man.”
REDONDO Beach was the second of the two addresses. It was a low condominium block alongside the seafront road. Joggers were scooping their feet the way they do when finally the taxi dropped me by the sand. Sunshades and the weirdest collection of parasols adorned the coast in numbers I’d never seen before.
I tried dialling both of Joe’s homes, in case he should answer and I’d get myself arrested. Also, I was suddenly more worried about turning up, a strange husband for an alarmed wife, maybe a set of babes all wondering who the new geezer was. No answers.
One thing about California, you can wait on a beachside without giving rise to suspicion. It’s what the ocean’s for. I sat in a line of reminiscing geriatrics from the Bronx and New Jersey and Brooklyn all saying how they’d like to go back but who the hell wanted snow and better get mugged occasionally in sunshine than in an alley filled with ice and falling masonry, huh? Some, especially the old birds, had reflectors shooting hot sunshine up from below under their chins. They wore false white paper noses and a ton of cream. They all agreed retirement was great. I said I could see that, listened until the guard in the condominium block got up from his stool under the awning and went inside. I said so-long to my gang and quickly entered, fiddling with the keys, then climbing to the third floor.