The Last Coin (46 page)

Pennyman cracked the fused dimes like an egg on the old worn slats of the pier, cupping his hands over the two coins, trapping them as they fell out together, the dimes rolling away in a dozen directions. He tipped back the hinged lid of the box, and the two coins popped in among their brothers like tiddly winks and drew the silver lid down after them with a bang as the pier heaved again in counterpoint to the slamming of the box lid. Pennyman stumbled and caught himself. He smiled and looked out over the sea.

He was scarcely human. His white suit was ragged and soiled with dirt from the treasure hunt and from kneeling in the alley. His ripped-apart shoes only half-hid what his feet had become, and his face, as if in keeping with the rest of him, had warped into a goat-like parody of a human face. His tongue lolled above his pointed beard as if there wasn’t room for it in his mouth. In the west the moon was setting over the sea, and its reflected light made Pennyman’s eyes seem opaque yellow, like disks.

“I’ll begin with you,” he said suddenly to Pickett. “You seem to be the detective, the clever man. Let’s see how smart you are when smart is at a premium. Tell me where the coin is, or I’ll blow you to kingdom come.” He aimed the pistol. Andrew tensed, ready to jump.

“It’s here,” said a voice behind Andrew, and he turned in disbelief to see Rose standing in the cast-open door of Len’s Bait House.

Pennyman turned the gun on her, a flicker of surprise and the hint of a smile appearing and disappearing on his face, replaced in turn with a look of grimacing idiocy.

“Look!” Andrew shouted, pointing away down the pier, where a tiny car bumped up off Main Street humming along toward them. It stopped, and someone got out to take down the rope. It was Uncle Arthur.

The pistol cracked. Too late, Andrew threw himself wildly at Pennyman, caring nothing about saving the world, but wanting only to turn the pistol on him, to … His hand and arm smashed into something that felt like a wall of cold, wet clay, and then he slammed into it bodily, rolling down onto the deck of the pier and against the bottom railing. He was up in an instant, puzzled, but throwing himself without thinking at Pennyman again, who stood holding the smoking pistol. Pickett reeled away, grasping his shoulder, and when Andrew leaped the second time, Pennyman was leveling the pistol at Rose, who flung herself back against Aunt Naomi, the two of them disappearing into the bait house.

Again Andrew smashed into the clammy, rubbery, invisible wall and found himself on his back. He looked wildly behind him, only to see Uncle Arthur buzzing toward them at full throttle, agonizingly slowly. Pennyman turned and fired at the oncoming car, and the wind screen spiderwebbed with cracks as the car swerved, caromed off the railing, and came on again.

Mrs. Gummidge sprang out of the shadows just then, with a shriek that stood Andrew’s hair on end. He’d almost forgotten her, so intent was he on foiling Pennyman. She flew at Pennyman’s back when he shot at the car, and maybe because his guard was down, there was no barrier to stop her as Andrew had been stopped.

The shriek gave her away, though, and the old man turned as he fired, sweeping his arm around savagely, roaring through his wide-open mouth, his eyes lit with hatred and with the joy of knocking her down. She slammed back against the pier railing, which caught her in the small of her back, and in an instant Pennyman’s hand was at her throat, smashing up into her chin with adrenaline-charged strength, cutting off her scream as her head snapped back with an audible breaking of bone, and she flew backward over the railing, falling headlong into the sea, all of it done in a moment.

Aunt Naomi pushed through the bait house door, swinging her cane at Pennyman’s head as he turned back toward them, howling pointlessly, as if he knew that the killing of Mrs. Gummidge called for some expression of emotion—laughing or yipping or hooting—but was no longer human enough to puzzle out what sort. His eyes flew open and he snarled into Aunt Naomi’s face.

Andrew saw her cane shudder to a slow stop a foot from the old man, as if Pennyman were walled-in again by magic, protected by the accumulated coins. He snatched the tip of the cane out of the air, and before Andrew could react, could clamber up and leap, Pennyman jerked Aunt Naomi toward him, grabbing her wrist and twisting her around, pointing the pistol at her head.

Everyone stood as if frozen. The electronic car stopped fifteen feet away. Andrew was stymied. Heroics would accomplish nothing at all. He couldn’t get near Pennyman, not while Pennyman held the coins, not while he threatened Aunt Naomi. The pier shuddered, nearly throwing the lot of them onto their faces. The ocean had grown weirdly calm, and the shuddering now could have nothing to do with storm surf. There
was
no surf; it had fallen strangely flat, as if it were waiting. Pennyman laughed again hoarsely, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Take it,” Rose said, holding out the spoon.

“Yes,” said Pickett. Blood seeped through the fabric of his jacket in a growing patch. “He still doesn’t have them all. There’s one in the fish. He can’t get that one. The fish doesn’t care about his gun.”

Pennyman nodded sagely, as if in response to the conclusions of an intelligent four-year-old. “Put it in my pocket,” he said to Rose.

“Don’t go near him!” Andrew shouted.

Pennyman shrugged, tipped the gun up, and shot through Aunt Naomi’s hair. Rose screamed at the crack of the pistol, staggering against the doorway. Aunt Naomi flinched and bent forward, unhurt. Pennyman laughed. “I want it now,” he said.

Rose stepped forward to give it to him. He couldn’t take it, though, not with one hand on Aunt Naomi and the other on the pistol. She would have to put it into his pocket, as he’d said. Andrew waited, poised, ready to leap. If Rose wasn’t repelled by invisible walls, then he wouldn’t be either. He’d knock the old man down, kick him to bits. If he touched Rose …

But Pennyman jerked Aunt Naomi around, covering Andrew with the pistol, waving it back and forth between him and Rose. In an instant the spoon was in his pocket, and when Rose grabbed Aunt Naomi’s shoulders and pulled the old lady away from him, Pennyman let her go.

His eyes were rolled half up into his head, so that crescents of bloodshot white shone under each iris. His teeth chattered and his breath came in gasps. He seemed to be twisted from within, as if he’d swallowed a handful of ten-penny nails, and his hand shook as he clutched at his silver box, laying it on the pier and pulling it open. Twenty-eight silver coins lay within, glowing an almost sickly green in the lamplight. There was a ghastly, rotten smell on the wind, as if Pennyman were a ripe cheese or was riddled with dead, gangrenous flesh. The pier shuddered again, the creature in the sea, perhaps, growing impatient.

The spoon wouldn’t fit in the box. It was too long. The lid closed against the handle. The surface of Pennyman’s face moved as if it were a swarm of insects, betraying a dozen emotions in a moment, and he sniffled and drooled over the box, kneeling on it finally to warp the lid down around the spoon handle. There was the snap of the lid catching, and Pennyman stood up, holding it, backing toward the very corner of the pier, staggering as the pilings shook, his mouth working, but nothing but babble croaking out of his throat.

He climbed onto the railing. The great fish lolled on the surface of the sea—an immensely long undulating whale, looking like something out of an illustration of a Paleozoic ocean.

It came to Andrew abruptly that the great fish was Pennyman’s destiny. Pickett was wrong. Pennyman didn’t need the pistol any longer. He was merely going to leap into the gaping mouth of the fish, into the belly of the fish where lay the last of the coins. Pennyman was a modern-day Jonah. But he was a corrupted Jonah. And when the fish spit him up finally onto a Southern California beach, it wouldn’t be the grace of God that brought him forth. Nor would Pennyman any longer be a man. He would be something else entirely.

There sounded the beeping of a tinny little electric horn, and Andrew threw himself out of the way as Uncle Arthur’s red car surged past. It angled arrow-straight toward where Pennyman was perched on the corner of the pier railing, squatting like a wind-bedraggled sea bird, clutching the box, the pistol, and—in the crook of his elbow—the iron lamppost. He stood up boldly, flinging the pistol into the sea just as Uncle Arthur’s car smashed feebly into the post. Andrew lunged forward, grabbing futilely for Pennyman’s foot, over the tiny hood of the stalled car.

Pennyman swung around the iron pipe of the lamppost, waving the box of coins in his free hand, a wild, damn-all look in his eyes, intoxicated with coin-magic. He flailed at the railing, at the post, scrabbling to steady himself, waiting for the moment to deliver himself into the mouth of the fish.

The pier shuddered again, a vast, heaving, concrete-snapping quake that threw Andrew backward and into the railing. He grabbed for a hand hold, his legs slewing around and through, between the parallel rails. His head banged hard against an iron post as he latched onto the wooden curb along the very edge of the pier and hung on, nearly sobbing with the effort of stopping his fall and looking down at the roiling water, seeing Pickett out of the corner of his eye, hunkering along toward him as the pier tossed and groaned.

Andrew shook his head, and pain lanced across the back of his skull where he’d hit the post. He sagged with the weight of fatigue and defeat and pain. He hadn’t slept for two days. What could anyone expect of him? He was powerless to help himself, let alone the world. He could do nothing but hang on, and steel himself for the sliding rush, the smash of cold ocean water.

Blood from his lacerated scalp dribbled down past his shirt collar, and somehow the wild rush of the world around him paled and he focused on that little tickling dribble. It would be simplest just to hold on and wait, to be acted upon instead of acting.

Pickett hadn’t made it to him. He couldn’t help. He hugged the railing ten feet farther down, his left arm bloody. Rose huddled with Aunt Naomi against the wall of the bait house, and Andrew could hear Rose shouting at him, hollering unnecessarily for them both to hang on.

Then Aunt Naomi lurched forward across the pier toward Andrew. She shouted something, but he couldn’t make it out. She stopped, nearly pitching forward, then steadied herself for a moment and flung her cane. It bounced, clacked down, and skittered toward Andrew, and he let go of the precious rail to grab it, shaking his head hard, letting the shot of pain wake him up—call him back to the world.

Andrew twisted his face into the wind as the pier heaved again. He hauled himself to his feet, the cane in his right hand. He could see Uncle Arthur slumped behind the wheel of his car, the electric motor still humming. Pennyman balanced on the top railing for a long, gasping moment. A hundred sea birds swarmed around him, snatching at his clothing, pecking at his eyes. He batted at them, slamming away with the box. There was one last shuddering quake, and Pennyman was thrown backward, off balance, clutching the coins to his chest as the entire corner of the pier—deck, lamp post, sink, railing, and all—began to crack loose from the rest of the pier with a groaning of twisting metal and a snapping of wood and bolts.

Andrew lunged, shouting, and swung the cane like a baseball bat, with both hands, slamming the hooked end across Pennyman’s knuckles. There was a shriek and a clang—the sound of Pennyman screaming and of his coin box banging against the cold iron of the lamppost that fell now as if in slow motion into the sea.

Andrew whipped the cane back to hit him again, just as the badly latched box sprang open and the coins sailed out in an arc, into the ocean, across the pier. For an instant Pennyman had a look of horrified, uncomprehending defeat in his eyes, and then he went down end over end, scrabbling after the flying coins like a man in a cartoon as the corner of the pier collapsed piecemeal into the sea. Andrew dived back toward the railing to save himself, throwing away Aunt Naomi’s cane, tearing out the knees of his trousers on the rough deck of the pier and hugging the splintered wooden curb.

He held on and watched Pennyman fall, watched his cloven hooves shiver and metamorphose into the feet of an old, old man, his magic gone, the coins no longer his. Pennyman turned his face to the sky, betraying the yellow, sunken-eyed features of a mummy, of a man long dead but half-preserved by potions. And then he splashed into the sea like a something built of sticks and twine.

The red electronic car geysered in after him, carrying Uncle Arthur inside its little cab. And just as Andrew thought of letting loose, of sliding in after it all, of trying to drag poor Uncle Arthur out of there, the dark bulk of the whale gave one last heaving lash and it opened its mouth like the door of Aladdin’s cave, swallowing them up, Pennyman and Arthur both, and the car into the bargain.

The great fish humped around and slipped away, into the shadowed depths, and was gone.

The surface of the sea boiled with fish, but almost immediately it was still, and the dawn light illuminated the depths enough for Andrew to see that the fish were diving toward the bottom, darting after the coins that shimmered and disappeared into deep water.

The sky suddenly, was full of birds—sea gulls and pelicans, parrots and crows and curlews—dropping down and pecking at the scattered coins on the pier, flying off with the coins in their beaks. Andrew heaved himself through the twisted railing, rolling over onto his back on the deck of the ruined pier. Something gouged him in the shoulder blade. He sat up and looked. It was the spoon.

He picked it up, and on an impulse, cocked his arm to throw it into the sea, into the newly rolling swell and the ribbon of sunlight that had just then blazed up across the blue-green water. Let the fish have it, he thought. Let them swim it away to some other continent, out of his life entirely. But then he stopped himself.