Chapter Twenty Three

Frank Norton chewed on a stale glazed doughnut and regarded the improbable figure that had just appeared in the doorway of his office. The kid looked seventeen or eighteen, his skinny body awkwardly put together and slightly hunched. Dirty brown ringlets of hair hung in his face. The lenses of his glasses were as thick as Coke bottles. His beady little eyes peered suspiciously through them.

“Is Agent Cover here? ” he demanded.

Should've known he was looking for Ab, thought Norton. Who else has teenage nerds in his office at seven in the morning? “Nope. He had a rough time chasin' down a Chevy pickup yesterday and he's not in yet. ” The kid stared blankly at him. “Can I help you? ” he added.

“My name is Stefan Duplessis. I'm assisting him with the Bosch case. ”

Ah. The stoolie. “Sure, Stefan. What can I do for you? ”

“I've found a very important clue. ” Duplessis held up a sweat-stained piece of newsprint. “I think Zach Bosch planted this article in the Times-Picayune. Furthermore, I think he's in North Carolina. The first article said so, and this one does too. I've even figured out the name of the town! ”

Furthermore. Jesus. “Is that so? ” Norton asked politely. Ab was really grasping at straws on this case. That hacker was probably living it up in Australia by now. “Well, Stefan, I'm afraid that's not my case. You'll have to leave it on Agent Cover's desk. ”

“But I need to talk to him now! ” The last word was pronounced naaaaow, like the noise his sister-in-law's Siamese made when Norton pulled its tail.

“Sorry, kid. You can't. ”

“Then I'll wait till he gets here. This is too important to leave on his desk. ”

“Suit yourself. There's a bench in the hall. ”

Duplessis made his exit with an air of wounded dignity. Ab Cover isn't a Secret Service agent, Norton thought. He's a goddamn babysitter.

A few minutes later he got up to get a cup of coffee and saw the hacker sitting forlornly on the hard wooden bench, still clutching his section of the Times-Picayune. Norton's curiosity got the better of him. “Hey, kid, can I take a look at that? ”

Duplessis handed him the paper. It was smudged with the gray whorls of his fingerprints, and he had circled the article in green felt-tip.

Travis Rigaud of St. Tammany Parish accidentally shot himself while cleaning his collection of handguns-five different times with five different guns, twice in the left foot,

once in the right calf, and once in each hand, severing two fingers. . .

Norton handed it back. “That's real nice, Stefan. He'll be happy to see it. ”

Ab Cover isn't even a baby sitter, Norton decided with vast amusement as he poured himself a cup of coffee and settled back down with his doughnut. He's a fucking lunatic.

Kinsey Hummingbird was having a nightmare. It was a dream he often had, in which irate rednecks kept dropping off decrepit, barely running cars and pickups at the Sacred Yew, telling him to have them ready by six o'clock this evening. Kinsey would look up at the club's sign and see that it had been repainted to read s. YEW GARAGE & AUTO PARTS.

Someone was leaning rudely on a car horn now, demanding service. WHOOOOOONKH! WHOOOOOOOOOONKH! The sound blared loud and long through his bedroom. Kinsey opened his eyes. It was just getting light outside, and he thought he could still hear the horn. The sound had never carried on after he was awake before. Perhaps he was going slowly insane from overwork.

No. Well, maybe; but someone was blowing a horn outside. It sounded again, sharp and clear in the hush of dawn. Kinsey sat up and twitched the curtain aside, peered out the window above his bed. He saw Zach's black Mustang in the yard, wheels cutting deep swaths through the unmowed grass.

Kinsey slipped his bathrobe on over his pajamas and hurried through the blue-lit house. He realized too late that he had forgotten his slippers, let himself out the front door, and crossed the soggy yard to the car. Trevor was behind the wheel, his face drawn with exhaustion and pain. He finally looked his age, Kinsey thought, perhaps even older. — Beside him, Zach was alternately pulling at his own hair and beating his hands on his knees. His face was a bruised, bloody mess. Kinsey saw crisscrossing stripes of blood beginning to soak through the cloth of his shirt, adding random touches of gore to the exploding Kennedy head already printed on it.

“I'm keeping myself awake, ” Zach said when he saw Kinsey looking in at him. “I have a head injury. We kinda could use some help. ”

“What happened? ”

“Could we tell you on the way to a hospital? ” said Trevor. He held up his right hand, which had been hidden in his lap. Kinsey stared at it, aghast. The hand was purple, swollen to three times its normal size. The two middle fingers were twisted at dreadful angles. It looked like Wile E. Coyote's hand after he'd managed to smash it with the giant wooden mallet intended for the Roadrunner.

Kinsey opened the car door for him, and Trevor climbed out carefully, as if his whole body was sore. Zach got out the other side by himself and promptly fell over. Trevor and Kinsey hurried around the car, but he had fallen on the soft rain-soaked grass and was only lying there cussing helplessly through his tears. “I can't think straight, ” he said as they helped him up and led him to Kinsey's car. “It's the worst feeling in the world. It's like opening a bad oyster. . . it's like. . . um. . . shit. . . um. . . ”

“Keep talking, ” said Trevor. He helped Zach into the back seat and climbed in after him. “It's like a bad oyster? Why? ”

” 'Cause my thoughts feel all slimy and rotten but I've already swallowed them and I can't. . . um. . . ”

“Regurgitate them? ”

“Yeah! ”

Kinsey listened to conversation in this vein for more than twenty miles. Occasionally he interjected a comment or question to help Trevor out, but he did not press them for details of what had happened, though he was madly curious and more than a little concerned. They would tell him when they could.

The emergency room in Raleigh was nearly deserted at this early hour. Kinsey sat in an orange plastic chair designed to conform to no human ass in existence, paged through an assortment of magazines that no one would ever want to read. He listened to Trevor check himself in, then help Zach check in under the name “Fredric Black, ” telling the nurse only that they had been in an accident.

“How would you like to pay for this? ”

Zach fumbled in his pocket. “I have some credit card numbers. . . ”

“Cash, ” said Trevor hurriedly. He had Zach's entire bankroll on him, and it was considerable.

“Marital status? ” the nurse inquired. Zach stared wildly up at Trevor. “Single, ” Trevor told the nurse. “He's with me. ”

The nurse looked at them for a long moment. “Brothers? ”

“Uh, yeah. ” Trevor nodded at Kinsey. “That's our uncle over there. ”

“All right. You can go back together. ” The nurse handed them their forms and waved them down the antiseptic green corridor.

Another nurse washed the blood and plaster off Trevor's hand, then picked seventeen slivers of mirror glass out of his knuckles with a pair of tweezers. He was given an ice pack to hold while the doctor looked Zach over, probed the wound in his scalp, shone a light into his eyes, and finally pronounced his concussion genuine but not serious. “Make him rest, ” he advised Trevor. “Don't let him move around a lot. ”

“I have to, ” protested Zach. “I'm a professional rock star. ”

“I won't, ” Trevor promised. He helped Zach down from the examining table with his good arm. The doctor glanced at the gash in Zach's head again. “Jesus, kid, maybe we ought to stitch that up. ”

“No! No stitches! ”

“Well, it's your head. . . What hit you, anyway? ”

“Diamonds. ”

“Couldn't have been diamonds. You'd be dead. That's one of the hardest substances known to man. ”

“It was diamonds, ” Zach insisted.

The doctor glanced at Trevor. “He may not be, uh, real lucid for a day or so. ”

“I understand. ” Trevor squeezed Zach's arm. I believe you, he thought. It was diamonds, just like the one Skeletal Sammy pressed into my hand. He had no idea what the significance of diamonds might be. But it meant Zach had been in Birdland too.

The only bad part for Trevor was when the doctor pulled his fingers straight to splint them. He gripped Zach's hand and made himself ride the waves of pain instead of sinking beneath them. He had done this to himself. He would endure whatever he must to fix it. And when it was healed, he would draw whatever he wanted to for the rest of his life.

On the way back to Missing Mile they huddled together in the back seat, Zach lying with his head in Trevor's lap. Trevor tried to give Kinsey a comprehensible version of the night's events. Kinsey didn't say much, but seemed to believe everything.

“I don't know what we're going to do, ” he told Kinsey. “Could we hole up for a couple of days with you? ”

“Sure. As long as you want. ”

“I don't think it'll be very long. ” I like everything else about Missing Mile, Trevor thought, but I don't even want to be in the same town with that house anymore. I know what I need to know now. And Zach has to fly soon.

He glanced down to make sure Zach wasn't falling asleep. The doctor had said not to let him do so for another hour.

But Zach's eyes were open, watching Trevor steadily, the color of jade shining in the clear morning light. He looked wide awake, and very glad to be alive.

The morning red-eye express took off from New Orleans International at eight-twenty. Agent Cover had just enough time to scrape together the bare bones of his original raid team and notify the Special Agent in Charge at the Raleigh office that they were coming. The SAIC was supposed to meet them on the other end with cars.

A stewardess pushed a gleaming cart of drinks along the aisle and stopped beside their row with a saccharine smile. “Can I get you somethin'? ”

“Coffee, ” said Loving, Schulman, and DeFillipo.

“Coffee, ” said Cover.

“Cream and sugar? ”

“Black, ” they said as one.

Cover flipped open the Bosch file and stared at the newspaper article. His heart had sunk this morning when he arrived at the office and saw the pasty, sniffling boy waiting in the hall. Duplessis pored over the papers until they were soft and sweat-stained, unpleasant to handle. And all his “discoveries” so far hadn't amounted to shit.

But when Cover read this one, he got excited right away. The other article had mentioned North Carolina outright; this one seemed to hint slyly at it, which could mean Bosch was there and had decided to stay for a while. And there was a town called Missing Mile. And no one could really shoot himself five times with five different guns.

The clincher came when Schulman delivered the news that Joseph Boudreaux, Times-Picayune reporter, had never even heard of the goddess Kali.

Agent Cover thought Bosch had finally fucked up.

He stared out the window at the bright blue morning sky, at the sunlight washing over the creamy tops of the clouds. He always felt safe at twenty thousand feet. He took his mirrorshades out of his breast pocket and put them on, then glanced back down at the file. The little photo of Bosch stared up at him, lips twisted in a punk sneer, eyes accusing.

I'm coming for you, he thought. I hope you had a ball in North Carolina, because you aren't going anywhere else for a long, long time.

He was a little surprised to find himself elated. He was supposed to be a granite agent. Instead he felt like a kid on an Easter egg hunt, closing in on the big chocolate bunny.

Terry drove his Rambler into town around two, sent his afternoon worker home, cranked up R. E. M. 's first album, and sat behind the counter at the Whirling Disc staring contentedly at the shifting patterns of sunlight on the opposite wall. He always felt wonderful the day after doing mushrooms. The visuals took about twenty-four hours to fade completely from his brain, and they gave the next day a distinct psychedelic edge. Even his throat felt better.

R. J., who still preferred to live like an eleven-year-old kid most of the time, had just said no and gone home to bed. Terry tripped with Victoria, Calvin, and David, the redheaded boy Calvin had met at the show. David turned out to be a brilliant twenty-year-old exchange student from London who entertained them all with witty banter until Calvin dragged him off into one of the bedrooms. Terry and Victoria took the other one. There was nothing quite like sex on hallucinogens to strengthen a relationship.

Around four-thirty A. M. they'd all met back up in the kitchen, bedraggled and happy, and managed to make a batch of popcorn. Then they put Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on Terry's VCR, snuggled up on the couch, and thrilled to the sinister tale until dawn, rewinding it again and again at the part where Gene Wilder said “WE are the music makers, and WE are the dreamers of dreams. ” After that Terry and Victoria crashed while Calvin and David went zooming off to breakfast, still full of crazed fungal energy.

Terry suspected that psychedelic drugs affected the body chemistry of gay men differently than straights. He could never eat greasy diner food on 'shrooms, and though he'd enjoyed Ecstasy the couple of times he'd done it, he hadn't felt remotely like dancing to disco music all night. Or techno, or rave, or whatever was the current noise of choice. Calvin and David had kept wanting to drive to Raleigh where they imagined they could find' some glamorous after-hours club and do just that.

That made him think of Trevor and Zach. Terry had hoped they would show up again, but they never did. He wondered if they had spent the night tripping in that house. The thought made his nuts crawl. Terry remembered scaring his younger friends with the story of the murders as a teenager, wondering aloud if the McGees' ghosts still lived in the house, daring them to go inside with him.

Eventually, of course, they had. At first it had just looked like any old abandoned house, all sagging wood and ancient dust and shadow. But as they approached the bloodstained doorway to the hall, the shadows had seemed to shift around them, to change, and for a moment they were no longer in the house at all.

He didn't know if it had been a group hallucination or what. He doubted so, because it didn't seem to have anything to do with the murders. Terry had seen a city street around him, a boarded-up slum, wavering like a mirage but definitely there. R. J. had seen a dark deserted bar with shattered glass on the floor and cracked mirrors on the walls so dusty that he could not see his face in them. And Steve would never say what he had seen, except that it had legs like a bug.

They had all felt that the place was sucking at them, that they could get lost in here and never come back. What Terry hadn't admitted to the others-but suspected they'd felt as well-was that for a moment the idea of getting lost had tempted him. Here were sweet poisons and twisted dreams. Here were things he could never touch with hands of mere flesh and bone...

They had run out yelling, slapping high-fives but not fooling each other for a second. They had tumbled off the porch and across the weed-choked yard, toward the small stubborn figure of Ghost far away on the other side of the road. None of them had ever gone back. But Terry had dreamed of it, that strange seductive slum. And he would be willing to bet Steve and R. J. had had dreams of their own.

Terry realized he had been woolgathering. Two kids were standing by the imports section eyeing him speculatively. One was a lean black guy wearing a Yellowman shirt and voluminous multipocketed fatigue pants, long color-threaded dreadlocks pulled back in a thick ponytail from his amiable, slightly horsey face. The other was an absolute knockout, a stunning Asian girl with short hair that accented her large tilted eyes and exquisite bones. She wore a lot of earrings, but no makeup. Terry hadn't seen either of them around town before.

“Help you with something? ” he inquired. Probably they were looking for Steve and Ghost. Kids from the fringe had started drifting into town over the past year, since Lost Souls? had managed to get their tape distributed to record stores up and down the East Coast. Most just wanted to see a show; a few wanted to camp out in the band's yard, or thought Ghost was their true soulmate due to secret personal messages they heard in his lyrics. It was a little unnerving, but it had brought in tons of business when Steve worked at the store. Even now that Lost Souls? was touring, when Terry pointed out that he had played drums on their tape, these kids would always buy a Whirling Disc T-shirt.

The girl stepped forward and, to Terry's surprise, pushed a photograph of Zach across the counter. The photo had been taken at night, and Terry recognized the locale as New Orleans, probably during Mardi Gras. Zach was hanging on to a lamppost with one hand, clutching a Dixie beer with the other, wearing a purple jacket and a shirt made of black fishnet and a huge shit-eating grin, obviously drunk within an inch of his life.

“We're looking for this boy, ” she said. “His name is Zachary. He's a good friend of ours, and he's in a lot of trouble. ”

“He looks like he might be. ” Terry picked up the photograph, pretended to consider it. “Nice young kid, though. I'd hate to see the cops get hold of him. ”

“We're not cops! We're trying to warn him about-” The girl shut her mouth as if she thought she'd already said too much. Her companion approached the counter.

“We come in peace, ” he said, holding out a large slender hand. “We are his brudda an' sista. My name is Dougal. The lady is Edwina. Eddy. ”

Terry took the hand and shook it. Dougal spoke with a thick Jamaican accent, and his eyes were sharp, kind, stoned. The girl's burned like embers. Terry believed they were Zach's friends, though probably not his actual brudda an' sista. They smelled faintly sweaty, as if they had been driving all night. And the photo was worn, rubbed around the edges. Someone had spent a lot of time looking at it, and Terry was willing to bet that someone was Edwina. Eddy.

Still, it was one thing to trust people based on a gut reaction; it was quite another when the feds might be involved. He was glad they hadn't happened upon Kinsey first. “How come you to ask in here? ”

“Because Zach's a freak, ” Eddy said simply, “and freaks tend to frequent record stores. ”

Terry couldn't argue with that. “Well-look-you understand I want to be sure you're cool. Give me something I can trust. ”

“How 'bout we all relax a little firs', ” said Dougal, and pulled out a straw pouch and a package of rolling papers. As soon as he opened the pouch, the sweet sticky reek of absolute primo weed filled the store. Terry saw a double handful of tightly packed bright green bud bristling with tiny red hairs. Dougal pinched off a generous amount and started rolling a huge spliff right there on the counter.

“Okay! Okay! ” Terry jumped up. “Hang on! Let's go in the back room and talk this over. ” He locked the door, flipped the sign to the side that read BACK IN 5... OR 15... OR WHENEVER.

In the back room, among piles of records, tapes, and CDs, stray equipment stored here by various bands, and posters rolled into unwieldy, unstackable paper tubes, Dougal fired up the joint and Eddy gave Terry a quick rundown of their situation. She didn't offer many details; only that Zach had managed to get himself into an awful lot of trouble with his computer and they wanted to help him get out of the country. Terry had read about computer hackers and been intrigued by them, but he didn't know they ever ripped shit off on the scale Eddy implied Zach had.

He hit the joint, which tasted even better than it smelled, and held the smoke in for a long time. He didn't think so much of theft, but it was hard to feel sorry for vast bloated corporate entities like Citibank and Southern Bell. They loved to talk about how the cost of such theft was passed on to the consumer, Terry reflected, but when was any cost of big business not passed on to the little guy at the bottom of the ladder?

Whatever Zach's morals (or lack thereof), Terry genuinely liked him. If there was even a slim chance that feds were heading for Missing Mile to nab him, Terry knew he had to help Zach get away.

“Okay, ” he said. “Truth. Zach's in town. ”

Eddy's face lit up with a beautiful, delighted smile. She was obviously crazy for Zach-along with half the world, it was beginning to seem. Terry refused to be responsible for breaking the news of Trevor to her. It wasn't his damn business anyway. But he had a hunch that the plane out of the country was going to be carrying an extra passenger, and not the one Eddy probably hoped it would be, either.

“He's staying with a friend, ” Terry said. “In an abandoned, haunted house. Now I'm not going out there, and I don't guess you better go by yourselves either. But I'll take you over to my friend Kinsey's. He doesn't mind ghosts. He'll go tell Zach you're here. ”

Someone pounded on the front door. All three heads jerked up; all three faces snapped toward the sound.

“Wait here, ” said Terry. “Don't come out unless I call you. If you hear any other voices, go out the back door over there. ” He picked up a can of Glade air freshener and tossed it to Eddy. “Here, spray some of this crap around. ”

Terry ducked under the curtain and went to the front of the store. Two broad-shouldered guys in suits and mirrorshades were at the door, already pounding again. “Hold your fuckin' water, ” Terry muttered. He unlocked the door and opened it a crack. “C'n I help you? ”

“Absalom Cover, U. S. Secret Service. ” The taller dude flashed a badge at Terry. He was lean and hard-jawed, with dark hair slicked back from his narrow face. Terry thought he could make out the bulge of a pistol beneath that well-cut jacket. “This is my partner, Stan Schulman. May we step in and ask you a few questions? ”

“Uh. . . actually, no. ” Terry slipped out through the door, pushed it shut behind him. The sidewalk was bright and dazzling, and he realized he was about as stoned as he could be. But he knew his rights. If they didn't have a warrant, he didn't have to let them in the store.

“I'm doing inventory, ” he explained, “and there's stuff piled up everywhere. I can't have a bunch of people walking around knocking my stacks over. You wanna ask me something out here? ”

“Your name? ”

“Terry Buckett. I own this place. ”

The other agent, Schulman, reached into his jacket. He looked dumpy and unkempt next to the sleek Cover. Terry could see oily beads of sweat standing out on the man's scalp, clearly visible through the thinning hair. There were even a few in his mustache. Terry tried to imagine what it would be like to have a job that made you wear a jacket and tie in the heat of a Carolina summer.

Schulman pulled out a small photograph. “Have you ever seen this person before? ”

Terry studied the photo, managed not to laugh at Zach's fuck-you scowl. “No... I don't think so. ”

“You must see a lot of kids in your line of work, ” Schulman urged. “Try to be sure. His name is Zachary Bosch. He's nineteen years old. ”

“And he's a dangerous criminal and a menace to society, right? Nope, sorry, I haven't seen him. ” Terry folded his arms across his chest and stared at the agents. He saw himself reflected in their sunglasses, four little images of his ratty hair and faded blue bandanna cheering him on. Bosch. It figured.

“We know he's in town, ” said Schulman. “They gave us a positive ID up the street at the diner. We've got this whole place blanketed. If you know where he is and don't tell us, all sorts of bad things could happen to you. ”

” 'Scuse me? ” Terry tapped the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “I must be hearing wrong. I thought I woke up in America this morning. ”

“You did, Mr. Buckett. ” Cover leaned in menacingly. “And possession of marijuana is illegal in America. Aren't you a little stoned right now? ”

Shit. “I don't know what you're talking about, but I gotta get back to work. If you want to waste your time getting a warrant and searching my store, go ahead. You won't find anything. I thought you guys were supposed to guard the President, not harass innocent citizens. ” He saw both agents' jaws go stiff when he said President.

“We do our jobs, Mr. Buckett. ” That was Cover, cold and deadly. “We expect innocent citizens to help us out when they can. ”

“And the rest of us are guilty, huh? ”

“Of something, Mr. Buckett. ” Even with mirrorshades on, Cover managed to look smug. “Everybody's guilty of something. And we can find out what. Good afternoon. ”

“And a terrific afternoon to you, ” said Terry as he went back into the store and locked the door behind him. He stood there for a minute watching them walk away, cold shivers running up his spine. He couldn't help but wonder what in hell he was getting into here.

But he knew which side he was on, and that was about all he needed to know. Terry looked at the phone, thought of calling Kinsey. But what if the agents were hiding around the corner, waiting to see if he would jump on the phone as soon as they left?

He stuck his head through the curtain. The back room reeked of pine air freshener. “Bad news. The spooks are here looking for him. ”

Eddy's eyes went very wide. “Did they follow us? Did we lead them here? ”

“I don't think so. They didn't seem to know you were around. I got the impression they were acting on some kind of tip. ”

“The newspaper. Shit! Goddamn that fucking Phoetus! ” Eddy pounded her small fists against her knees. Angry, with her jeweled ears and spiky haircut and elegant Asian face, she looked like some sort of feral-eyed Tibetan goddess. A couple of extra arms and a lolling tongue would have capped off the image perfectly.

“Look, ” said Terry, “I'm gonna sneak out and make a call. ”

Dougal reached into a pocket of his baggy fatigues and pulled out a cellular phone. “You wan' use this? ”

“Well-sure. ” Terry examined the sleek little gadget. “Where do you turn it on? ” Dougal showed him. He dialed Kinsey's home number, heard a truncated ring, then a piercing electronic voice.

“The-number-you-have-reached-has-been-temporarily-disconnected. . . ”

“Goddamn, I wish that guy would keep his bills paid. I guess we better get over there. ”

Eddy tapped his arm. “Was one of those spooks named Cover? ”

“Yeah, the spookier one. ”

“I can't go out there. He'll recognize me. ”

“I think they're gone—”

“Our car is parked all the way down by the hardware store. I can't take the chance. ”

She was right, Terry realized. “Okay, wait here by the back door. We'll pull up in the alley and get you. ”

Terry and Dougal left the Whirling Disc together and walked with elaborate nonchalance along a series of back streets, gradually winding toward the other end of town. Terry imagined agents lurking behind every telephone pole, peering through every tinted window. “Doesn't your car have Louisiana plates? ” he asked Dougal. “Won't it be dangerous to drive through downtown? ”

“No mon. We stop on de way here at a-what you call de toilets by de road? ”

“Rest stop? ”

“Ya mon. We fin' a car broken down but still have de license plate, an' I take de liberty of borrowin' de plate. ”

Terry nodded, marveling. He had met plenty of freaks in his time, complete fuckups and brilliant artists and everything in between. But for sheer resourcefulness, he thought, these kids outdid them all.

Still, they didn't have the U. S. Government on their side, weighing the scale down with money and power. Street smarts wouldn't be much use against a loaded Uzi.

Terry didn't stop sweating until they had Eddy safely in the car, crouching in the back seat with a towel over her head, and they were well on their way to Kinsey's. Even then, he couldn't quit looking in the rearview mirror.