Zod Wallop (25 page)

The man in the white suit had, indeed, surfaced, the floundering action of his arms indicating that he had not lost consciousness. The teenager reached him first, but the lifeguard was only a moment behind. Together they brought the man back to shore.

His white suit was now a translucent gray as he lay on his back on the sand. His face was very white with grainy black stubble surrounding his open mouth, like silt that had failed to wash down a drain. His eyes were closed—tightly so that he appeared to be angry—and his beaklike nose pointed skyward imperiously, causing several of the onlookers to look up nervously.

“He had a gun,” someone said.

“They are calling an ambulance,” someone else said.

“Looks too late for that,” a third party observed.

“What’s this?” Raymond Story shouted, climbing out of the parked car and racing over the dunes toward the crowd on the beach.

Harry didn’t bother shouting “Stop” this time, but simply followed at a reasonable pace.

The man lying on the sand was coming to when Harry arrived. The man was not coherent, however. He rolled on his side and vomited salt water.

Someone touched Harry’s shoulder. “It’s the Duke,” Raymond said. Harry blinked at the old man, whose thinning hair was plastered to his pale skull, patches of wet sand adhering to wet flesh. Their hope: the Duke.

Then Helen was next to Harry, leaning forward. Harry heard a siren in the distance, saw flashing lights coming down the darkened beach.

He heard Helen’s voice in his ears. “My God,” she said. “I know this man.”

“Robert Furman,” Helen said. “That was Robert Furman.”

Harry recognized the name, one of the once-famous, but couldn’t remember the who, what, or where of it.

Harry and Helen were sitting in the lounge of the St. Petersburg Arms. Helen was sipping a glass of hot tea, Harry a beer. Raymond, Emily, Rene, and Arbus were lodged in two adjoining suites on the third floor.

“You remember,” Helen said, “Robert Furman wrote
Liar’s Kisses
, that poetry collection that all the college kids were reading in the early seventies. It was actually pretty good too, which is not what you expect from best-selling poetry. I knew him. I mean, I met him. Once, at a party in the Hamptons. His agent was Lori Ives, and we were friends then—that was a long, long time ago—and she introduced us. He was very handsome and very drunk—but charming. Later, he ceased being charming, did the entire alcoholic deranged-author thing including that famous moment on Carson when he slugged that rock star.”

It was coming back. Harry did have some recollection of the event, talk television’s scandals being, sadly, more memorable than lines of metric poetry.

Robert Furman had taught poetry at a small, eastern college, refusing to be wooed away by larger, more prestigious institutions. The students had loved him and he had loved them back—literally on occasion (at least if rumor were based on fact)—and then, as his alcoholism increased, he had stopped teaching and disappeared from public view.

“And now he’s trying to kill himself,” Harry said. They had heard the story of the gun.

“Perhaps he was drunk,” Helen said. “People will do strange, irrational, melodramatic things when they are drunk and repent them in the morning. That is, of course, if they are alive to repent.”

Harry finished the beer and ordered another from a hovering waiter. He noticed Helen’s look, interpreted it as one of censure, and said, “I’m not planning on getting drunk and shooting myself if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all. I wasn’t—if you’ll believe it—thinking of you. I was thinking of Emily. I was thinking that, if there is any meaning to all this, then Emily must be its center. Our arriving here now, today—surely that can’t be a coincidence.”

Harry sighed. The beer had made him groggy. “I’m not following this,” he said.

“No. I’m not making myself clear, of course. I don’t believe I ever told you—everything has been such a rush—but I know some of Emily’s history. I went to great pains to discover it when I thought…” Helen waved a hand in the air. “Emily has always had to have a caretaker. Her condition, whatever diagnosis you accept, has been with her since birth. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and after their death, she was adopted by her uncle who cared for her until…well, until that task proved too much for him, I suppose. He then turned her over to the care of private institutions.”

Harry waited, but Helen’s eyes suggested she had drifted into another revery.

“And…” Harry said.

“Oh,” Helen said. “Well, that’s it, that’s the story. Poor Emily shunted from one posh caretaker to another, an expensive china doll. But the uncle… Emily’s uncle is Robert Furman.”

Harry fell asleep as soon as he crawled under the covers of the big, old-fashioned four-poster. In the early hours of the morning, he woke, feeling feverish, his heart beating in his temples. Raymond’s bed was empty, and the room was silent. The bathroom door was open on a dark rectangle. Harry was alone in the hotel room. A small night-light a foot above the baseboard cast pale shadows on the ceiling. Harry tugged on his pants and shirt. He found his tennis shoes, pulled them on over bare feet, and walked out into the hall. He took the elevator to the lobby.

Outside the ocean was lively under the moonlight. It didn’t accuse him, as he thought it might, but seemed simply strange and alien, nothing to do with anything human.

Harry thought of Robert Furman walking into the ocean to kill himself. Didn’t the man know that that wouldn’t be the end of it? At least, not in that damnable kingdom of Zod Wallop. In Zod Wallop, the dead were thrown into the Ocean of Responsibility and they returned, the Less-Than, to swell the ghastly armies under Lord Draining’s command.

Why did I write that book
? Harry wondered. If writing it was supposed to rid him of despair and loss, it had failed. The wound was raw and incapable of healing. His daughter was still dead.

He saw Raymond’s unmistakable silhouette then, out on the pier, pushing Emily in her wheelchair.

Harry ran down the boardwalk toward them.

“Well met, my Lord,” Raymond shouted.

They walked out to the edge of the pier and stood in silence as the wind harried them. Emily, bundled up against the night chill, showed no signs of life. Her eyes were closed.

“So Raymond,” Harry said. “What now?”

Raymond turned and frowned. “I am not a Diviner, my Lord. I am a humble wizard.”

“Is there something we must do? We have come here for a reason, certainly?”

“Reasons and more reasons, my Lord,” Raymond said, nodding vigorously. “We must do what all men must do. We must do our best.”

Harry thought he might have something to say about that, but time passed and he didn’t. Eventually, they turned and retraced their steps to the hotel.

“I don’t know if I’m up to my best,” Harry said. “I haven’t felt tip-top for some time.”

A
LLAN
D
ROVE
A
CROSS
the long, high bridge, squinting at the dimpled sea. Sunlight sprawled everywhere, an over-abundance of pure light that made Allan itch inside. He didn’t want it; couldn’t use it.

He was in St. Petersburg—the sign had told him as much—but he still had to find them. He hoped it wouldn’t take long.

He came off the bridge and drove for another mile. He stopped at a gas station, filled the car up, and realized he was empty himself. He lost track of his body sometimes, and he was always surprised when it announced its demands.

He found a vending machine and shoved change into it. A couple of Snickers and he’d be all right for a while. The machine did nothing. He thumped it; hit the coin return. Nothing.

He went up to the man at the register and told him, “I lost sixty cents in the vending machine.”

The man behind the counter was a longhair with bad teeth and a ferrety look. He grinned. “Don’t tell me. Come around here next Tuesday and tell it to Walt. He comes in about ten to freshen up the machine, likely he would be sympathetic to your troubles.”

Allan didn’t say anything. He figured he would pop the guy in the mouth, one tight, from-the-shoulder fist into those bad teeth. That’s all, just one quick one.

A big, dark man with a mustache and curly black hair stepped up next to Allan and said, “I guess this is yours. I saw you at the vending machine before me, so I guess this belongs to you.” He handed Allan the candy bar.

“See there,” the ferrety guy said, “your troubles are solved.”

Allan paid for the gas and went back to his car. Sitting behind the wheel, he swallowed the Snickers in two bites, confused. He couldn’t believe that he wasn’t meant to hit that guy in the mouth, and he waited a moment to see if anything else might be revealed. But there was nothing and the photo in his back pocket flipped into his thoughts again and his true purpose was renewed.

The man with the mustache, Al Butts, got back into the car with his employer, Karl Bahden. Karl sat behind the wheel. They pulled out into traffic following the kid.

“You figure he knows where he’s going?” Al asked.

“You got to have faith,” Karl said. “You don’t have faith you might as well kiss your butt good-bye, Butts.”

“Don’t kid with my name,” Al said.

“What’s that?” Karl turned and smiled at his employee.

“Nothing,” Al said.

At noon the kid pulled into a ratty blue motel called the Periwinkle (the drawing on the sign looked a little like a gigantic twat with teeth but Karl figured it was some kind of seashell), and Karl stopped the car down the street at a fast-food joint and said, “I gotta make some calls. Get me a double cheeseburger, a large fries, and a chocolate shake.”

From the pay phone he called Dr. Roald Peake. “We are in St. Petersburg,” he said. “I don’t know. I think it’s the end of the line. He’s driving around like he’s looking for something now. His buddies are in the city, but he don’t know where, that’s how I figure it. Okay.”

Karl hung up and then called Blaine and gave him the news too. Karl didn’t think of himself as a traitor or some fancy kind of double agent. It was just that his mother had always emphasized the virtues of enterprise. Even as a kid, he’d always held two jobs. If one paycheck was good, two were better. It wasn’t an inclination for betrayal that motivated Karl; it was just a real strong Puritan work ethic. For a while it had looked like the one goose was going to kill the other—and it probably would shake down to a single employer in the long run—but for now business was booming. God bless capitalism and the spirit of competition.

Dr. Roald Peake put the phone down. He blinked at the wall of smoke and lit another cigarette. He felt both good and bad. Good because events were rising to a climax and, as he always said, “It is better to blow up than to peter out.” Well, perhaps it was Lord Draining who had always said this, but it was a sentiment Peake shared with his Lordship.

Bad because someone, some vile interloper, some scurrilous agent of, no doubt, the Gorelord himself (Andrew Blaine, that is), had stolen the book, the precious book. Ha! If they thought they could rob Roald Peake of its knowledge by doing so, they were mistaken. The book was committed to the deepest recesses of his memory. In fact, it wasn’t simply memorized, it was busy in his mind. All manner of stories and shapes were growing.

He punched the intercom. “Ms. Goddard,” he said. “Tell Jordan I want everything ready within the hour. We are going to St. Petersburg, Florida.”

Andrew Blaine and Gloria Gill had been preparing to make love when the phone call from Karl Bahden came.

Blaine had answered on the speaker phone.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine told Gloria, untying her from the polished rack. Her pale, round body was shiny with honey. “We’ve got to fly down to Florida immediately. We’ll have to continue this later.”

Gloria pouted, sticking her lower lip out. “They could die in the meantime,” she said, staring ruefully at the mason jar full of ants.

Blaine patted her sticky shoulder. “My dear, Florida is full of fire ants.”

Gloria grinned then, turning and hastening to the shower. Blaine smiled after her.

My little bundle of screams
, he thought.
My sweet mortification
.

The man next to Jeanne on the plane was nervous and wanted to talk. He was a fat man in a blue dress shirt about two sizes too small for him, and he was sweating powerfully. “I don’t go for flying,” he said, waving his hands over his stomach. “I don’t like the idea of it, up here thousands of feet in the air listening to Neil Diamond on earphones. Pretending to be something we aren’t. Jesus didn’t fly in airplanes.”

Jeanne agreed and suggested they talk of other things. He got off into sports, baseball, which seemed to calm him, and Jeanne was able to smile and let her thoughts run elsewhere.

She felt remarkably good. She felt up for whatever was going to happen, for whatever terror and wonder St. Petersburg had to offer. She felt a curious physical hum, as though she were floating in some clear, heated current, thicker than water, massaging, electrifying. Her mind seemed better informed of her body, as when, coming home, one sees things for the first time.