Tilton rode up front with Lucas Drackman, while Mr. Smaller stretched out on a pile of blankets in the back of the van. He slept through the larger part of the drive.
The scourge of Bilderbergers was a little less hairy than usual. He had changed his appearance by shaving his head, though he had also grown a mustache, which had sprouted into a thick brush in no time. Although he had never before been able to lose weight, he’d dropped ten pounds in sixteen days, which he attributed to the fact that for the first time in his life he was “doing something that mattered.” Blowing up a bank, making off with a fortune, and thereby sticking it to the establishment gave him greater self-esteem than he’d ever had before, and he wanted to look better.
Drackman had dyed his blond hair black and had started growing a beard, which he also had to color. Although it was necessary, he regretted the dye job, because he’d always been immensely pleased with his looks just the way they were.
Like Mr. Smaller, Tilton had shaved his head and had started to cultivate a mustache. He didn’t think he had changed his appearance enough to be out in public when the police, the FBI, and every Dick and Jane were looking for him. He didn’t want to return to the city. He didn’t want any part of what Lucas intended to do. But the man terrified him, and he was in deep now, and he knew he couldn’t split, couldn’t survive and stay free on his own.
He missed Aurora. She knew how to soothe a man’s nerves. She’d gotten him into this, just as she’d drawn Smaller into it. Playing at revolution excited the woman; it was a real-life romance novel to her, spiced with violence. She had an edge to her that he hadn’t been aware of at first, and for some reason guys wanted to cut themselves on that edge. He had thought she was a brainiac before he’d spent a lot of time with her; now he suspected that nothing complex happened in her head.
The windshield wipers thumped, thumped, thumped like a hammer rhythmically striking something soft, and from time to time the rubber blades stroked a thin sound from the glass, reminiscent of the whimper of a beaten animal.
96
Malcolm stayed for dinner with Grandpa, Mrs. Lorenzo, and me. Mom was already off to Diamond Dust. We dined on chopped salad, slow-cooked Swiss steak, baked corn custard, carrots with tarragon, and green beans with minced onions.
Grandpa said he felt too full to have a slice of the peach pie right then, but maybe he would enjoy it later, when he got home from his gig at the hotel restaurant. Because of the bad weather, he left early, making sure that Mrs. Lorenzo locked both deadbolts on the front door.
Malcolm’s mood had improved somewhat through dinner. He scooped the vanilla ice cream while Mrs. Lorenzo plated three pieces of pie.
When he put my dessert on the table in front of me, he said, “You okay?”
“Huh? Sure. I’m great.”
“You have indigestion or something?”
“Indigestion?”
“The way you keep touching your chest.”
The pendant. I was repeatedly feeling for the Lucite heart, as if some sneak thief might have slipped it from the chain and made off with it.
97
The three arrived in the city as the daylight steadily washed out of the turbulent sky. The storm had no more lightning in its quiver, but rain still fell in torrents, flooding some intersections.
Judging by the few cars in the parking lot, the motel had many vacancies. A two-star enterprise in a one-star part of town.
Lucas Drackman took a parking slot close to Room 14. There was no one in sight when he rapped on the door. After Fiona ushered them inside, she looked left and right along the covered promenade that served the rooms, saw no one.
She’d gotten sandwiches and bags of potato chips from a deli. They plucked bottles of beer from the bathroom sink, which was filled with ice.
Two of them had chairs, and the other two sat on the bed. In recognition of the thin walls between units, they spoke softly, but for the most part, they ate in silence.
Drackman could tell that Fiona was wired, strung tight. She’d drunk a Mountain Dew instead of beer, but it wasn’t the caffeine-laden soft drink that had drawn her so taut. Whatever she had taken, if anything, her condition probably had less to do with drugs than with anticipation of the pending operation. She was excited, ready. Fiona loved action. And she had a particular appetite for action against the Bledsoe family.
To remind them that they were part of something cool, he said, “Man, all these riots, huh? New York, Toledo, Grand Rapids. I mean, how radical is that—riots in Grand Rapids?”
“Detroit’s half burned down,” Tilton said.
“Carl Sandburg’s dying,” Fiona said.
Smaller frowned. “Who the hell is he?”
“A poet.”
“Ah, that’s all phony shit, all them rhymes and stuff.”
“Sandburg’s poems don’t rhyme,” she said.
“That ain’t right. So how’s he a poet?”
“Because he says he is.”
“Then I’m a damn poet,” Smaller declared.
“We’re all poets,” Drackman said.