Darkman (22 page)

He stared down the barrel while the Durants wrestled the door back and forth. Nope, there was a bullet waiting down there at the bottom, where the pretty spiral dead-ended. So just what was the deal?

The Durant inside the building let the door go. It flipped open, sending the other one crashing down on his butt. The inside Durant became an outside Durant, and the outside Durant became the Durant on the sidewalk. Martinez began to sweat, not used to posers like this one. He looked helplessly at Skip. Skip shrugged.

“Shoot him!” the new outside Durant commanded, and Martinez aimed the pistol at the man on the ground. The Durant on the ground wobbled to his feet and pointed at the outside Durant. But they were both outside now, and there weren’t any handy labels to differentiate the two. But then, one Durant was red-faced and sputtering mad while the other seemed just as mad but still looked okay.

“Shoot him!” one of them said, but it was getting hard to tell now. Martinez fought the urge to point the gun at his own head and end this confusion. Both Durants were pointing at each other, shouting. From nowhere a puff of yellow smoke rose in the air, smelling funny. Now one Durant had a hand clapped to his cheek.

Shoot him!

Shoot him!

Shoot him!

Shoot him!

Shoot him!

Shoot him!

Martinez almost wept. That stinking yellow smoke had drifted his way, and it smelled like burned hair. It occurred to him that the red-faced Durant was hot enough that his hair might catch fire, so he aimed at him. But no, it was still impossible to tell. Unfortunately, as far as mental prowess went, Martinez was not Mensa material. More puffs of yellow smoke were drifting up, along with strange popping noises. The white-faced Durant lunged at him, screaming “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” He swung a hand and slapped Martinez across the face.

Now that was more like the boss. He aimed at Red Face.

“You fucking idiot!”
Red Face screamed, and lunged at Martinez as well. He began to throttle him. Also unfortunately for Martinez, this was more like the boss too. On the verge of nervous collapse, he threw the gun at the door, managing to explode the glass and make four huge Chinese fellows charge out. Twinkling glass crunched under their shoes and sluiced across the sidewalk like glistening pebbles. Martinez was relieved when two of them pulled Red Face away, who was most certainly the boss, because the other Durant had sprinted away with his hands over his face, trailing smoke as he high tailed it from the scene of the botched crime.

Durant wrestled himself away from the Chinese men. He snatched Martinez’s gun from the place it had landed and charged after the impostor. Happy once again, Martinez bent and yanked a small backup pistol from his ankle holster. Together he and Durant, followed lamely by Skip, gave chase.

The impostor turned a corner, ducking out of sight. Durant and his employees thundered around the same corner thirty seconds later. Durant stepped on a smoking pile of slop on the sidewalk and fell down hard, hurting his knees and elbows. He jumped up, enraged, and looked down the street for the other Durant.

Pedestrians, dozens of them. He had melded with the crowd.

Durant shook his fists. What the hell was this bullshit all about?

“Hey,” Martinez said behind him. “Hey, boss.”

Durant spun around. Martinez had picked the puddle of slop up with two fingers. It was sizzling, producing foul yellow smoke. As Durant watched with endless disgust it fell into three revolting pieces, two of them plopping to the cement. They looked like melting latex gloves. Martinez slung the last piece against a building. It stuck on the bricks there, dripping and burping, Durant’s own footprint marring the features, but Durant could still tell what it had been.

His face.

It looked like the crime game was becoming a little too technical, a lot too strange.

27

Later That Same Day . . .

D
ARKMAN MADE HIMSELF
into Peyton once again, doing it much faster now that the digitization procedure was on hard disk inside his new computer. He could become Durant anytime he felt like it, become Pauly if he needed to come back from the dead, which wasn’t likely. Durant’s other goon, that Smiley fellow—well, there were no photos of him yet. It didn’t matter much, he was not a pivotal part of the plot. He would die, as would the others, when the time came. It reminded Darkman of that old board game called Mousetrap, where a touch of one part of the Rube Goldberg apparatus set the trap in motion and eventually caught the toy mouse. Darkman was not an assassin. He was Rube, and if his traps got set in motion by blundering goons, well, tough luck. There would be no blood on his hands.

Copping out?

No. Shut up.

What kills? The gun, the bullet, or the man holding the gun?

Do shut up.

Building the gallows does not obviate you from guilt when the trapdoor opens.

Yeah? Sez who?

Never mind. I’ll shut up.

Thanks so much.

It took an age to leave the dead part of town behind and find a taxi, and Peyton swore to God and his angels that he would buy a car or die trying. He made it to Julie’s apartment with only thirty-three minutes left on the stopwatch. They went to Baker’s Square, where a carnival had been set up for the upcoming Oktoberfest, and strolled between the rides and gyp joints and food stands, hand in hand, listening to the barkers and the thundering diesel engines and the terrified screams of kids eighty feet in the air and having fun.

He had called Julie after the desperate escape from Durant and his boys, shaking, knowing he had nearly bought the farm, needing to see her. It was Saturday and she was free. He promised to be at her place by four and he did not lie. She assailed him with a flurry of questions, both on the phone and when he picked her up, and he tried to handle these fastballs and tricky curveballs without sounding defensive. Uppermost on her list was why he had run away at the graveyard. He stuttered something about needing medication, and she had frowned and let the matter drop. Good move on her part; Peyton did not want to lie to her, merely keep a lid on the truth until either the skin was perfected or she was ready to accept Darkman as her lover.

Hardy-har on that one. He could barely stand to look in a mirror—what would she find attractive in him?

The answer was, most surely, nothing at all. Thus the lie must live and prosper.

It was at the carnival, where a mellow afternoon sun beamed down on the whirling rides and the smell of sawdust and pony manure was thick yet somehow exhilarating, that Peyton almost blew the whole thing. Never one to try the booth where crooked BB guns were waiting for a sucker to dump quarters into the barker’s pouch, he let himself pass every rip-off game without a qualm. There were ringtoss and coin tosses, plastic ducklings floating with secret numbers on their undersides, the Wheel of Fortune, the Alligator Lady, the Incredible Two-headed Baby soaking in his jug of formaldehyde, another plastic fraud. He laughed at them, and Julie laughed with him. The air was mildly cool, speaking of winter but not demanding it, and good fun was only a ticket away. It was when they passed the throw-a-softball-at-the-milk-bottles game that Peyton’s descent into horror began.

It started with Julie suddenly squealing and pointing. Peyton had an arm slung over her shoulders as they walked. She was pointing at a large pink elephant hanging on Peg-Board in the softball booth, an elephant surrounded by other stuffed animals and looking very new and expensive. Peyton shook his head good-naturedly, knowing that once you started, it was hard to quit. Besides, it was just a big rip-off.

Barely two minutes ago, as they were passing the noisy double Ferris wheel, Julie had made an attempt to close the gulf of silence that had existed during his absence. “Peyton,” she had said, “I’ve been trying to sort out a few things. Things about us. All that time you were gone, when I thought you were dead, I kept thinking about that day of the fire, when you vanished. Do you remember proposing to me?”

He smiled. “Awkward situation, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. I tried to call you that afternoon, but no one answered. I wanted to tell you that I had decided about the marriage. I was going to say yes.”

She looked faintly embarrassed. Peyton caught her chin with a gentle hand and guided her into a kiss.

When she pulled back, she rubbed her lips, frowning. She looked at her fingers. “What’s this?” she asked, and Peyton’s chest felt suddenly hollow. It was lipstick.

“Medicine,” he said. “Burn ointment.”

She frowned, looking puzzled, rubbing her fingers together, then bringing them up to her nose. “Lipstick,” she murmured.

He forced a laugh. “Next you’re going to say I’m gay.”

“Don’t be silly. But why do you need burn ointment? You look fine.”

He searched his mind for new and better lies. Something clicked, and he had it. “I inhaled a lot of superheated air. It burned my entire respiratory system, including my mouth and lips.”

“Is that why you smell a bit odd? Does the medicine have mineral spirits in it?”

He almost panicked. It was the mastic she was smelling, that dumb, stinky glue that held his lie together. “Must have,” he said, growing nervous. He pulled the stopwatch out and furtively checked it. Eight more minutes and he would have to ditch her. How long could she go on with a man who ran away so often? He ground his teeth, feeling helpless and ashamed. Goddamn Durant . . .

“When do you want to get married?” she was asking.

He ducked his head. “Springtime would be nice.”

“All right, then. April first it is.”

“April Fools’ Day? Heavens.”

She laughed and changed the date to April second. They walked on a bit, barkers shouting at them, and then he stopped. “I have a question, Julie. A delicate one that I shouldn’t even ask.”

“Ask away,” she said sprightfully.

“Sure. Um, while I was gone, did you happen to, ah, find someone else?”

“Find someone else? Hardly. I did meet a nice man who helped me through the grief as best he could. I respect him for his kindness but he’s only a friend. You’ll meet him, I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

They walked on toward the softball booth—and the catastrophe that was waiting. He checked the stopwatch again, trying to dredge up a decent excuse for leaving abruptly.

She saw him do it. “Will you please stop looking at that watch, Peyton? To hell with the time. Let’s spend the whole day together, the whole night. The whole week, maybe.”

He grunted a temporary answer as apprehension slithered up his spine and oozed fear into his brain. What now, Mr. Bright Guy? Spill the beans? Let the cat out of the bag? Open a can of worms? Pandora’s box?

“Julie,” he said, almost breathless, “the fire . . . it changed me. Both physically and, well, mentally. I—”

A shout interrupted him. Ahead, a greasy-looking barker was loudly inviting people to come into his show of nature’s freaks for only a dollar. Beside him was a man in a rubber lizard suit, snarling and hissing. Though it was fake, it turned Peyton’s stomach. Why wasn’t
he
up there, a living freak with no face?

He decided that Julie must never know.

And at this moment, sure that his secret would die with him, they crossed in front of the softball booth and Julie saw the pink elephant and pointed. Glad for the change in subject, he decided to try for it, hoping Julie was done with her questions. He looked at his watch.

Three minutes left. Would the elephant help placate her when he traipsed off to nowhere? Better than nothing, maybe.

He laid down a dollar, which the barker snatched up. He was the perfect gyp-joint operator: dirty blond hair, blackheads all over his face like blown pepper, no shirt, a filthy baseball cap on his moron’s head. He thumped three softballs onto the dirty counter.

“Pink elephant if I nail it?” Peyton asked.

The kid made a noise. “Good luck, Pops.”

Pops?
Did he look that old?

He threw the first ball, ignoring the taunt, missing the stack of wooden bottles entirely. He gave Julie a grin and threw the second one. It hit the stack at the base, where the ones weighted with lead shot were. The softball bounced off. The kid barked a short laugh.

Peyton picked up the last ball, growing angry. Sure it was a rip-off, sure it was rigged. But he wanted that pink elephant because Julie did.

He threw the ball hard, the adrenaline of anger pumping through his veins and making his ears ring. The ball hit the lower tier, the weighted bottles. They exploded off the stand and thumped against the canvas behind.

Peyton breathed easier, glad that he had kept control. He grinned at the kid. “The pink elephant, please.”

The kid stuck a cigarette between his lips, looking bored. “It don’t count if you’re not behind the line,” he said.

Peyton looked down at the dust between his feet. “There is no line.”

“Pity, huh?” The kid’s eyes twinkled, showing that, at the very least, he was actually alive.

“Do you see this woman?” Peyton asked, feeling the adrenaline again. He touched Julie’s face. “This is my fiancée, and she wants the pink elephant.”