Twenty-four
When seeking Wolfgang, I’d had no face to associate with the name, but I’d had his singular gravelly voice to conjure in memory, which helped me to focus my mind, my gift, and home in on him. In the case of Jim and Bob, I had glimpsed them from the back of the motor home, but I hadn’t seen their faces, and neither of them possessed a memorable voice. Having their first names only, I wasn’t hopeful of being the Tonto that they feared.
I still believed that the key to unlocking the cultist’s plan and the means to thwart it could be found in the carnival, but the longer I stalked the midway, the more discouraged I became about my prospects of finding my quarry. I tried to navigate the surging crowd on the concourse, but the people repeatedly turned like a tide and resisted me, their faces either glassy with excitement or weary with a surfeit of joyless “fun,” but always indifferent to me, as the sea would be indifferent as it drowned me in a treacherous current.
Each time I passed the carousel, the wild-eyed horses pumped up and down more frantically with each rotation, and the calliope seemed to pipe with greater frenzy, growing ever more off-key. The Dodgem Cars crashed into one another with great—and then greater—abandon, their trolley poles striking ever-brighter showers of sparks from the overhead electric-wire grid. The shrieking of the shrouded riders in the Caterpillar and the screaming of those who stood in cages on the rapidly spinning and then up-tilting Roulette Wheel sounded not like expressions of delight, but instead like the death cries of terrified people pierced by the pain of mortal wounds. As they stumbled and tumbled through the giant revolving barrel that expelled them from the fun house, their shrill laughter was, to my ear, like the insane cackling in the deepest cells of an asylum, and all the while, the giant face of the ogre growled and blew out a fierce breath that took strollers by surprise.
If I concentrated too intently on Jim and Bob, if I sought them too insistently, too urgently, through the strobing lights and flung shadows of the spinning rides, I risked becoming the hunted instead of the hunter in a moment of reverse psychic magnetism. Sometimes, when I tried too long or too ardently to be drawn to my quarry, they were instead drawn to me. On those occasions, I saw them only after I had been seen and recognized, which was a dangerous situation when those I sought were ruthless murderers.
At last, the mélange of odors (frying burgers, diesel fumes from a generator, the reek of steam rising from grab-joint wells in which too many hot dogs had been boiled in the same water, cigarette smoke, cloying perfumes, human sweat, the stink of ripe manure wafting over from the animal exhibits in the part of the fair that was off the midway) and the whistling-honking-clattering-banging-hissing-ringing hoopla of the ten-thousand-voice Sombra Brothers extravaganza became too much for me to endure when my senses were dialed wide open as they had to be when I practiced psychic magnetism.
I decided to take a brief break from the midway. I intended to return after a calming visit to the exhibition hall, where many county artists and craftsmen and homemakers exhibited their wares and participated in judged competitions for the coveted best-of-the-year blue ribbon in categories ranging from quilts and needlepoint pillows to kiln-fired pottery, from homemade cookies and chili to elegant bentwood rocking chairs.
When I passed the exhibition hall and kept going toward the main parking lot, where I had left the dinged and dirty Ford Explorer, I realized that by shifting off the midway, I had shifted into gear. I was on the trail of Jim and Bob, after all.
Approaching the Explorer, I grew cautious. I half expected the two executioners to rise from the bed of a pickup truck in which they had been reclining in anticipation of me, or to step from behind one SUV or another. The parking lot was more brightly lighted than the carnies’ campground. Before boarding the Explorer, I circled it, peering through the dust-filmed windows into the backseat and the cargo area, to be certain that when I climbed into the driver’s seat, I wouldn’t be surprised by an unwanted passenger with a penchant for shooting people in the back of the head, though I was likewise averse to having my throat slit.
By the time I piloted the Ford along the exit lane, I felt sure Jim and Bob had departed the fairgrounds. Even with as little as I knew about them, I seemed to be raveling toward them, spooling up an invisible ribbon that they had unspooled in their wake. I accelerated onto Maricopa Lane, which led first through the outskirts of town and then toward the center of it. Soon I began to make a series of turns from street to street, turns that seemed to be meaningful … until I began to feel that I’d lost my quarry.
In a residential neighborhood, I pulled to the curb, switched off the engine, and got out of the Explorer. I had parked under a grandly spreading Ficus nitida, which most everyone called an Indian laurel, though it wasn’t a laurel and had no connection to any Indian tribe. I stood with my back to the tree and to the SUV, watching the nearby houses.
A stillness lay upon the street. The torpid air stirred not a rustle from the dense foliage of the ficus. The front porches were deserted, and no one appeared on the sidewalk with or without a dog. Although lights glowed in a number of windows, I heard no muffled TVs or even the faintest strains of music.
Perhaps because the dense clouds had erased the moon and stars, because they had lowered in what appeared to be preparation for an unseasonable storm, the town felt as though a pressure weighed upon it. I might not have been surprised if this reality and my dream had suddenly become one, if dead bodies floated into the street, drifting through the thick air as through water, their eyes protuberant and their faces contorted in terror.
Intending to call Chief Porter, I switched on my phone. But then at the end of the block, a car rounded the corner that I had recently turned, and it started toward me, and the fine hairs prickled along the back of my neck.
I wasn’t near a streetlamp. Cloaked in shadows, pressed against the ancient ficus, I doubted that they could have seen me yet. I slid down until I was sitting on the sidewalk, the massive trunk of the tree and then the Explorer between me and them. They probably weren’t assassins. More likely, they were a couple of harmless elderly citizens coming home from a church supper, talking about hemorrhoid creams or whatever elderly couples talked about.
The vehicle approached slowly, or so it seemed to me, and for sure it slowed somewhat as it passed the Explorer. But then it picked up speed and continued on its way. I dared to look after it and saw a white Mercedes SUV. No one leaned out a window to empty a .357 Magnum in my direction.
I had not seen a face or even a form in the car, as if it had been driven by something other than the living or the dead, both of whom I can see.
My eventful life is conducive to paranoia, but I am generally able to avoid imagining that there’s a bogeyman under my bed. This cult was tying knots in my nerves. The memory of that collection of severed heads in glass jars, back in Nevada, did kind of linger.
I got to my feet, leaned against the tree as before, and phoned Chief Porter. He answered on the second ring, and I said, “You’re in the motor home, sir?”
“The CSI team has it for a little while yet. We’ll search it as soon as they’re done, when we don’t have to worry about contaminating the scene.”
“Meanwhile, you’re talking to other carnies in the campground?”
“They’re not the most talkative folks.”
“Ask them if they know a Jim and a Bob.”
“Jim what, Bob who?”
“That’s all I know. They’re the executioners.”
“Everyone knows a bunch of Jims and Bobs. Must be a million Jims and Bobs in California alone.”
“This Jim and Bob hang out together.”
“That narrows it down to nine hundred ninety thousand. Are they carnies?”
“I don’t know. But there’s somebody in the campground you might get something from. He’s kind of like me, but you should pretend not to know that.”
“He’s what—a fry cook?”
“No, sir. I ran into him after I called you about the murders and left the motor home. He’s a carnie. He’s got a sixth sense of some kind. For real. I’m not sure about the scope of it.”
“What’s his name?”
“Oh, sorry. His name’s Lou. He has a friend there named Ollie.”
“Lou what, Ollie who?”
“I didn’t get last names, sir. But they’ll be easy to find. Lou is a dwarf in a bear suit. Ollie’s a huge guy tattooed head to foot.”
“In a bear suit?”
“Not Ollie, no, just Lou. And he’s probably taken it off by now. Lou might open up to you more if you tell him you know me and you know about my gift. By the way, he knows me as Norman.”
Two houses to my right, a man came out of the front door and stood on the dark porch. I was so tense, it seemed to me that a guy standing on a porch was the most suspicious thing I’d ever seen.
The chief said, “Well, Norman, I’ve never told anyone about your gift except Karla.”
I couldn’t be sure if the man on the porch saw me. I lowered my voice. “I appreciate you keeping my secret, Chief. I really do. But if we don’t find these guys and stop them, things are going to get very desperate, very fast.”
“Why’re you whispering?”
“Some guy came out on a porch.”
“Is it Jim or Bob?”
“No, sir. It’s just some guy. I think.”
A lighter flared. Porch guy had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Or so it appeared.
Chief Porter said, “Where are you, son?”
“Standing under a Ficus nitida, waiting for inspiration.”
“What’s a Ficus nitida?”
I looked up into the web of dark branches. “You probably call it an Indian laurel. Did you send someone out to the dam?”
“Sonny Wexler and Billy Mundy should be there by now.”
“Your two best. I’m glad you’re taking this seriously, sir.”
“I always take you seriously, son. Even when there’s a dwarf in a bear suit.”
“He’s a nice little person, by the way. He doesn’t have an edge like that guy in the reality-TV show.”
“There’s another thing happened,” Chief Porter said. “Just a few minutes ago. An alert came over the wire from Homeland Security. Three armed guards were transporting a truckload of C-4 between the manufacturer and a weapons depot at an Army base.”
“Plastic explosives.”
“That’s right. One of the guards killed the other two and hijacked the shipment.”
“How much C-4?”
“It might have been a thousand kilos.”
I shivered in the warm night. “Enough to blow up the dam.”
“Twice over,” the chief said.
“When did this happen?”
“About three hours ago, but we just got word on the wire.”
“Where did it happen?”
“They think about thirty miles from here. The feds say not to worry, they’re all over it. They just found the truck. The C-4 had been off-loaded into another vehicle.”
“What vehicle?”
“That seems to be anyone’s guess. When the feds say they’re all over it, that doesn’t mean they’re all over it.”
“I better get my mojo working,” I said.
“I sure hope you can, son. We need you on this. So why did you call it a Ficus didida?”
“Nitida. That’s the correct botanical name, sir. Ozzie Boone insists that even if a writer uses the common name of a tree or other plant, he ought to know the correct botanical name. He says that no matter what you’re writing about, you need to know a whole lot more on the subject than what you put on the page, or otherwise the work won’t have any depth.”
“So you’re still writing your memoirs.”
“Yes, sir. As I get the chance.”
“I guess you know a lot about Indian laurels, then.”
“I could go on for hours.”
“I just realized I don’t have your phone number.”
I gave it to him.
“Things are moving fast,” he said. “I’ll be back to you soon.”
I terminated the call.
A faint trace of cigarette smoke scented the still air. In the darkness of the porch, the smoker took a deep drag, and the end of his cigarette glowed hot orange.
Watching the man, I thought of a fuse on a stick of dynamite.
Plastic explosives were detonated with an electric current, not with a fuse, not with a flame, but I thought of a fuse anyway.