Puppets (22 page)

Mr. Smith was getting worked up again. He wasn't paying attention, and when Johnny suddenly bolted, the leash ripped out of his hands. The dog tore through the woods with a growl, after something—another dog, Mr. Smith saw, a little black mutt. Some damned pet on the loose. Johnny would rip it to pieces, and people would come looking for it, and—

There was no point in calling Johnny back. The black dog was high-tailing it in a wide circle through the trees, with Johnny gaining fast. Mr. Smith opened the backpack and quickly found the radio-control unit. He thumbed the switch, saw the light flash on, and pushed the pain toggle over all the way.

Johnny's body stiffened in midleap and he careened headfirst into the trunk of a tree. He tumbled stiffly to the ground and screamed, not a doggy yelp but a mechanical sound like a car screeching to a stop. The little dog disappeared into the darkening woods as Johnny flopped and humped.

Mr. Smith let go of the toggle and the big yellow body stopped convulsing. After a moment Johnny staggered upright and stood drunkenly, head bobbing like a dashboard folly. He got his bearings and then unexpectedly tore off in the direction the little dog had gone. Mr. Smith, running toward him, hit the pain toggle again. Johnny arched and went over, flailing against the pain, making that screech like air brakes.

Mr. Smith released the toggle when he was twenty feet away, and Johnny just lay for a moment on the forest floor, his chest heaving. When he got up, every muscle was quivering. He lurched several times and cowered at Mr. Smith's approach. And then he lunged.

Mr. Smith had just time to shove the daypack into the snarling mouth. As Johnny wrenched it out of his grip, he managed to snag the trenching spade and wrestle it free of the bag. He whanged Johnny on the head with the folded implement and sent him sprawling, then opened the blade and followed up with a hack to the neck. The blade bounced harmlessly off the radio receiving unit. Mr. Smith's face felt like it was going to explode as he swung and missed, swung and missed, and then connected as Johnny lunged back at his throat. The dog went down and he hacked him again and again on the top of the spine with the edge of the spade. Mr. Smith's heart was hammering, his neck was a snarl of pulsing veins, a nest of snakes.

When he was very sure the dog was dead, he caught his breath and carefully scanned the landscape for observers.
Mo-ther fuck-er.
That had been too close for comfort. But the darkening woods were still, tranquil, the distant noises unchanged.

The soil was soft and moist here, and it turned easily. He dug a shallow trench, cut the electronics off Johnny's head, and put the bloody tangle into the bag that had held the meat treats. He rolled the dog into the grave, and when he'd covered the body, he dragged over an ancient car door and arranged the soil-sodden metal over the spot. Then he raked leaves and dirt around the area until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the forest floor.

When he was done, he felt better. Somehow the act of smoothing the ground had smoothed his mood. The dog's death represented the loss of a considerable amount of research effort, but it wasn't the first time, and he had learned a great deal. The neural implants were enormously promising, he still had the German shepherd. Anyway, given the situation with Number Three and Rebecca Ingalls and Morgan Ford, he had other concerns besides canine conditioning experiments. The pure science was a luxury he couldn't afford for a while, he was in a fight for his life now. And that was something he knew well, even looked forward to. It did focus the mind and galvanize the spirit, did it not, to have your back to the wall.

He headed back toward the house, already planning it out. He felt refreshed and more lucid than he had in weeks. A little shot of adrenaline could do wonders for your state of mind. Time for some serious damage control.

29

T
HE THING OF NOT having a decent suit bothered Mo. He hadn't gotten around to replacing the one ruined by Big Willie and was half considering buying another on his way into the city. Not to try to impress Rachel, there was no way he could guess what would make an impression on a fifteen-year-old kid, he needed a good suit anyway, why wait on buying a new one? So for a while he debated stopping at Harry's, on Forty-second, on the way in. Finally he decided that there wasn't time, he'd have to make do with what he had.

"We're going to grab dinner at around five thirty," Rebecca had said when she'd called, "and it occurred to me you two should maybe get a glimpse of each other. Nothing fancy, just this midtown pizza place Rache likes. Before I drop her off at her dad's, over in Englewood." She made the invitation sound offhand, but her voice gave her away: trying too hard to be casual.

"You sure Rachel wants an unexpected visitor?"

"You're very considerate to ask. Don't worry, I talked to her. She said it was fine."

"You and I, we're dealing with some pretty hairy stuff. You sure this is the time?"

She answered immediately, as if she'd given it thought, "We've got to keep our priorities. I long ago resolved that I wasn't going to let bad things I encountered in my professional life keep me from attending to what matters in my personal life. Right?"

It was Sunday, midafternoon, and he'd spent the first part of the day looking at three dismal apartments and trying to figure how he could decide on one when he was uncertain of so many things. Was he still going to be a homicide cop, and if not, how much would he make in whatever new career he started, how much rent could he afford? Where should the place
be,
given he didn't know where he might end up working? He'd gone around and around on it all long enough. It would be good to see Rebecca. Dinner in Manhattan might be nice, even if the prospect of meeting Rachel was kind of intimidating.

Ricci's was not as casual as he'd thought. The restaurant had a front door framed by two trees in big pots, Italianate motifs sandblasted into the frosted glass of the windows, real tablecloths. About half the tables were full. Mo scanned the room and didn't see Rebecca anywhere, but about halfway back he spotted a teenager sitting by herself, face hidden by a sheaf of blond hair striped with hennaed purple. He waved off the hostess and made his way back.

She was busy torturing one of her fingernails, scowling and picking at it, and didn't look up as he came to the table.

"Are you Rachel?" he asked. Knowing it was her from the photos. She lifted her head, eyes widening in surprise and then quickly narrowing with suspicion. Rachel had her mother's good nose and cheekbones, but she had plucked her eyebrows into thin lines and wore unflattering mascara the same color as the hair stripes. The little ring in her nostril looked uncomfortable. "You're the detective?"

"I'm Mo Ford."
The detective
sounded pejorative, but he smiled anyway. "I'm glad to meet you. Your mother has told me a lot about you."

"She's in the bathroom." Rachel tossed her chin toward the back of the room and looked back at him as if surprised to find him still there. "You can sit down."

"Thanks," Mo pulled out a chair, put his jacket over the back, and sat. He tried to think of something to say, came up short, decided to take a drink of water. "Am I late? You guys been here long?"

She flicked her gaze at him, still fussing with her fingernail. "We were early. My mother is a stickler for punctuality."

"Well, I have to say, she wears it very gracefully." He couldn't tell if she'd said it with disapproval. She was still watching him, but not steadily. Instead she looked his way in intense bursts, her gray-blue eyes meeting his briefly and then glancing around the room and at her fingers again and back at him. He asked, "So I hear you're fairly new to New York yourself. How are you liking it so far?"

"It's okay. I'm pretty used to it by now."

"You're doing well, then. I've lived around here all my life, and I still can't say I'm used to it. Sometimes this town seems like a big loony bin to me."

Her eyes checked in quickly, gauging his intent, then flicked around the room again, lingering on the back of the dining room. Looking for her mom.

"Are you finding it a lot different from Chicago? I've never been there."

"Pretty different." Again she looked toward the back of the room, and Mo automatically did, too, wishing Rebecca would return soon. He wasn't making much headway. This was the closest he'd ever gotten to a fifteen-year-old. Probably with a high-powered professional father and mother and an upper-income lifestyle and so on, she wasn't much impressed by what she was seeing in those quick appraising glances. Suddenly he wished he'd stopped for the new suit.

"Got a question for you," he said impulsively. "Your mother, she always says what she's thinking, even if it's blunt or a Uttle shocking sometimes. At least around me. Is she that way with everybody?"

"Tell me about it," Rachel said. She rolled her eyes.

Mo forged on, "Because if I were frank like that? Fight now I'd say, oh, something like, 'Hey, Rachel, we can both sit here and wait for your mom to rescue us from each other. Or we can yak a little and impress her. Make her feel good.'"

This time her gaze lingered a bit longer, skeptical.

Mo rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, but opted to keep the pressure up: "Or maybe I'd put it, 'Give me a break, make it look like we're getting along here. So I can impress her.'"

On some level she seemed to kind of like that. She stared at him, bolder now. "I mean, what kind of person would want to spend all his time with, like, looking at dead bodies and chasing down crazy psycho murderers?" she asked. "Doesn't it gross you out?"

When Rebecca came back, she smiled hello to Mo and kissed her daughter on the top of her head before she sat down. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, and she wore black jeans with a snug black, sleeveless top. The sight of her almost knocked Mo off his chair.

"I'm sorry I took so long. Both stalls were occupied—you might say it was a standing-room-only crowd back there. I hope you two are getting along. Rache was a little peeved with me because we were supposed to go bowling tonight—"

"It's a Midwestern thing," Rachel said. "He wouldn't understand." Mo asked,
"Bowling?
There's a bowling alley in Manhattan?"

"We go to some lanes over in Fort Lee, just across the river. I know it's silly, but—" Without thinking about it, Mo stood up, put his jacket back on. "Let's go," he said. "Let's head over there." He'd never bowled in his life, but anything would be better than sitting here with this kid resenting him, trying to figure out what to say while dodging discussion of how gross what he did for a living was. "There's time before you have to go back to your dad's, right? They got a grill there, we can get hamburgers or something?"

It hadn't been his intention to try to win points with her, but Rachel gave him a look of surprise and reappraisal.

Actually, the drive was kind of fun, Mo acting as tour guide for the West Side and the George Washington Bridge, Rebecca laughing softly at his jokes, Rachel lounging in the backseat and catching his eyes occasionally in the rearview mirror. The Star Bowl was an older place in an older shopping center, a pollution-grimed facade with neon in the neo-deco style that had long since come and gone. The shopping center was in a pocket of Fort Lee that had been cut off twenty years ago by the new bridge access interchanges, which made it hard to get to and must have knocked the whole section into a downward spiral.

"How'd you find this place?" Mo couldn't help asking. He was thinking,
Star Bowl? More like Dust Bowl.

"Convenience. Rachel's dad lives only about ten minutes away, in Englewood. Usually we bowl and then I drop her off."

Inside, the women showed him the ropes: how you rented the wizened-up leather shoes, smooth-soled and stinking of foot powder, and found a ball with finger holes the right size and spread. There were twelve lanes, only about half in use. Mostly the other bowlers were solidly built, middle-aged guys and their equally bottom-heavy wives. At first Mo had to consciously quell his startle reflex at the explosions of pins that echoed like gunfire through the place.

"I don't know about this," he told them. "I'm going to look pretty stupid."

Rachel was looking around the place and frowning appreciatively as she laced her shoes. "Yeah, but we do this ironically. Half the fun is that this isn't our kind of thing, it's totally weird anyway, it's okay to look dorky. Look at these other people—even when you get good at it, you don't exactly come across as fashion plate."

Rebecca showed him how to place his fingers on the ball, then demonstrated the steps and slide, the arc of the ball arm. He liked having her next to him, showing him how to do this stuff, watching her body move. At first having Rachel observing put him on edge, but after a while he realized he couldn't hide anything, his response to Rebecca would show no matter what he did. So instead he concentrated on having a good time. And it turned out to be kind of a riot, not so different from shooting a gun at the range, really, aiming at the target and letting go with a slow-moving bullet. On his first toss, the ball bounced hard and careened into the gutter. The second wasn't much better, and for a moment he wished he had his gun with him, could pull it out and take the heads off the pins with ten quick shots. Show off. But he got his third ball down the alley and knocked down a few pins. Maybe he could get the knack for this after all.

He turned back to the bench to find the women grinning and clapping lightly. Sitting side by side, they looked disconcertingly alike despite the difference in age and hair and clothes.

"What," he said.

"We were just enjoying your form," Rebecca said.

"Mom!" Rachel scolded, scandalized. To Mo she said, "You looked like a clown. You just about fell over. Probably everybody in the place was looking at you."

Mo threw himself down on the bench. Lesson one was surely that you couldn't let these kids get under your skin. "So go ahead. Show me how it's done. Show me how the pros do it."

Rachel jumped up to pull her ball out of the rack. "At least I don't like fall down all over myself." She wasn't smiling, but Mo realized this was something like trash talk, almost affectionate. Jesus, this was educational, he thought. And then—
kablam!
—the guy two lanes over knocked down all his pins with a crash that made Mo jump practically out of his skin.

"Rache," Rebecca said mildly, "show Mo some mercy. Try to be kind to us thirtysomethings, huh?"

"We're being
ironic,
Mom, remember?" Rachel rolled her ball hard and brought down most of the pins.