With a pair of trousers in my hands and one leg up ready to insert, I realized I was staring at our bed. Did God sleep on a mattress? Or use a pillow? How big was His bed? Why was I suddenly smiling? I was going to be dead soon because my poor brain was going to explode. In the meantime I had to catch mad Caz de Floon before he shot someone else, then find the fourth whatever so as to save the universe. Why was I smiling?
After slipping on the pants, I straightened up and struck a pure Bruce Lee pose—arms up in inverted “L’s” ready to deliver lethal blows. I swatted one out while growling, “Heeee-ya!” in my best Hong Kong karate movie voice. McCabe, dying Master of the Universe. Because George was right—it was too much to even imagine, much less absorb. It just seemed logical to do whatever I could and then leave the rest to Barry, his gang and whoever else was out there in the stars.
I didn’t have a solution but I had to admire the enormity of the problem.
Where to find Floon? In his situation where would I go? Hmmm? Where could I go with no money or identification? I was assuming he arrived here with only the clothes on his back. Plus he had no clue of the specifics of what was going on today. If I were suddenly shot back thirty years with no preparation and no resources to work from, I don’t know what I’d do. He’d said he wanted to “change some things” which I took to mean take greedy advantage of what he knew about the future to affect his fortunes then, i.e., buy a zillion shares of Microsoft stock the first day it goes public. But how could he do that? Rob a bank to get some startup capital? He had his gun and certainly the balls to do something like that.
Standing in front of the dresser slipping things into my pockets, I looked at myself in the dresser mirror trying to figure this out—where would Floon go? What’s the first thing he would be likely to do?
Magda is an orderly woman. Everything in its place, our house is always spick-and-span, her desk is empty of any extraneous papers, and monthly bills are paid punctually. It’s one of her qualities I deeply appreciate because I am not usually tidy in either mind or checkbook. Every morning when the mail arrived she put whatever letters were for me in a neat pile on top of my dresser. When I came home from work and changed clothes, I’d fan through them and read any that looked inviting. The others I left on the dresser for when I could summon the small interest to open them. Magda and Pauline kidded me about how many contests I’d lost or orphans I let starve because I didn’t open most of those letters for days.
Today on top of that pile was a quarterly report from my stockbroker. When my pockets were filled with what I thought I would need—money, notebook, pistol… I mentally ran through the list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. While doing this, my eyes remained on the broker’s letter, specifically the company’s mailing and email addresses. Something dawned on me.
“Elementary, my dear Watson!” And then I was galloping out of the house like a horse on fire.
Our town library was the pet project of Lionel Tyndall, the only obscenely wealthy resident of Crane’s View. A lonely old eccentric who made a fortune in oil prospecting, Tyndall gave the library so much money before he died that the place is a joy to visit. Not only do they have a wide array of constantly changing books, but their equipment is always the most tiptop, cutting-edge, and up to date. The head librarian, Maeve Powell, patiently taught me how to use a computer and, when I had it down, how to surf and make the most of the Internet.
That morning when I entered, Maeve was sitting behind the front desk looking at a large coffee table book on wristwatches.
The library’s computer room is behind that desk and off to the right. There was no way I could see into it from where I was standing. It made me nervous knowing Floon might be a few feet away but I had no way of knowing it.
Librarian Powell is as serious as a postage stamp, so when she smiles you should consider it a special gift. She looked up from her book and smiled. “Good morning, Francis.”
“Hi. Have you been here since the library opened today?”
“Yes. I was just reading about the Breguet Tourbillon—”
“That’s nice. But did a guy come in here in an ugly-colored jogging suit, around sixty years old and with a lot of white hair? He speaks with an accent.”
“Yes. He was quite nice. Asked for the CDs of the Encarta encyclopedia and dictionary we keep on reserve. Then he went into the computer room with them.”
“I knew it! I knew he’d look for a computer and that goddamned Internet! Is there anyone else in the library?” I looked around. A fat woman in a yellow dress sat at a table reading an Utne Reader magazine. “Anyone besides her?”
Maeve got my message. Her voice turned grave and quickened. “Yes, there are a couple of children in the computer room too.”
“Shit.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, we’ll just have to deal with it.”
“Who is this man, Frannie?”
For a moment I was tempted to tell her but something held me back. “It doesn’t matter. I just have to talk to him and it might be dicey. Who else is in the library besides her and those kids?”
“No one.”
“Then why don’t you go outside for a while and take that woman with you.”
“Should I call the police station?”
“No, let’s see if I can take care of it without a fuss. You two go ahead outside.”
She stood immediately but then hesitated. It was clear she wanted to say something. Instead she walked around the desk and over to the woman. Both of them stared at me while Maeve spoke. Fatso clearly did not want to leave. But she heard something that changed her mind. She jumped out of that seat like she’d been ejected from it. She motored by me toward the door at a speed that said it all.
When Maeve was passing me she stopped. “Frannie.”
“Yes?” I looked from her toward the door to the computer room, wishing she would leave so I could get on with this.
“My daughter Nell is in there. Nell and her friend Layla.”
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
“If anything were to happen—”
I spoke lightly—as if this were no big deal. “Nothing’s going to happen, Mrs. Powell. I’m going in there and come right out again with this guy. Zip zip and we’re gone. Please, trust me.”
“I do trust you, Frannie. But it’s Nell in there. Don’t let anything happen to my child.”
“Never.” I touched her cheek with my hand. Her eyes were brimming with tears and her eyelids trembled.
When she had left the building I walked slowly around the desk. Pressed flat against the wall, I took out my Beretta and checked to see if the safety was off. Holding it at my side, I slid slowly toward the computer room. On reaching that door, I got ready to sneak a look through the glass. Without warning a nova of unimaginable pain burst in my head. Because my back was to the wall I sort of crumpled against it and slid to the floor. If I hadn’t been leaning I would have fallen on my face. I had no control over my body.
I thought I’d been shot. Then my mind blanked because there was no room for anything else in that space but pain. The breath froze in my throat. I could not see. No agony was worse than this, nothing. The most terrible part was I remained conscious throughout—no blackout, no physical escape. I must have looked like a drunken man, sitting on the floor dazed and gone. It was like an underground nuclear test. You know—when the bomb goes off the only visible sign is the earth collapsing inward toward the fifty megaton fire in its belly half a mile below.
I don’t know how long it lasted—five seconds, a minute. I don’t know how I survived. When it stopped I was stupefied. Is that the word? Stupefied, paralyzed, nothing in my brain would ever work right again. Nothing ever could after that.
Sitting on the floor outside the computer room I stared unseeing at a large black-and-white photograph of Ernest Hemingway on the opposite wall. Next to him was one of Fitzgerald, then Faulkner, Emerson, and Thoreau. I knew the faces but it took an eternity to dig their names out of the rubble of my mind. To make sure it was Hemingway, I said his name. It sounded correct although it came out of my mouth slowly, as if the word were made of chewy caramel.